by Greg Enslen
Jack glanced around and pulled out the picture from his pocket. Beaumont had his arm around his wife’s waist. Jack could see that Beaumont’s nose was a little sunburned, pink and shiny under the tropical sun. The ocean behind the pair was wide and blue and calm, and they were smiling, happy.
Jack hated that picture.
He didn’t like to think about Beaumont as being happy - he wanted to remember Beaumont as a quivering pile there on the wet and shiny road at Jacks’ feet so many years ago, looking up at him with suddenly clear eyes. The recognition had come to the man only a moment before Jack had killed him, but it had been there, all right - and that was what Jack had wanted. Even back then, when he was just starting out, Jack had thrived on the hunt and the kill, but had enjoyed the look of terror on his victims’ faces the most. And there had been naked, stark terror on that man’s face that night so long ago.
But there was nothing but happiness and joy and hope for the future on the face of the man in the picture, and it made Jack want to crumple it up and throw it away. Instead, he stuffed it back in his pocket and went back to his pancakes.
So, what to do. The Urge had been satiated on both Sunday night and Monday night, but here it was Thursday and he still had no plan. He wanted to fight and defeat the boy, and he also wanted to do something spectacular that would be remembered for years to come, something that, as a side bonus, would kill a lot of Beaumont’s precious townspeople. He hated this town for what it represented to him - stability, happiness, acceptance.
And he hated this town because Beaumont had died to save it. The man had been stupid and clumsy in his investigation - Jack remembered reading about the botched grocery trap in Beaumont’s papers as he’d waited for Gloria to die - but he had come close to catching Jack. He had managed to chase Jack off before he could kill any more people, but that was all about to change.
Beaumont hadn’t saved them; he had only bought them a few extra years. And now Jack was here to collect.
Norma drove home, the file on the seat next to her. She didn’t want to look at it until she got home. The rain was still falling, and even though she knew it was supposed to go on for days, she just wished it would dry up and the sun would come out. The rain reminded her of that night on the road, when she’d listened to Beaumont die. She had held his head in her hands...
She pulled up in front of her house and went inside and made herself a warm cup of tea, and sat down at the kitchen table with the file.
It was a thick file, full of reports, photographs, and maps of the crime scenes. The top few pages, summing up the case and explaining how everything had turned out, were in a different handwriting, and Norma remembered that the replacement Sheriff had filed those reports in the quiet days after Beaumont’s death. Someone else must’ve boxed up the papers, along with his personal effects, and given them all to his wife. There were also the official case files on everything Beaumont had done as Sheriff, those files probably still stored in some dark room of the Sheriff’s gleaming new building, but these files were his personal papers on each of the cases, and in many cases would be much more comprehensive and thorough than even the official case files.
The file was labeled “Jasper Fines Case”, and it was in reverse chronological order, starting at the bottom with the reports and coroner’s findings on the first victim. Norma already knew most of these facts, but she read everything through to refresh her memory and in case there had been any details in the case that she had not known about. The little boy had been found by a landowner in a field north of town, where the Motel 6 and Cracker Barrel were now, and the body, after it was identified, had been sent by ambulance over to Fredericksburg and examined.
The details of the autopsy were gruesome and disheartening to Norma, who read them through carefully, if a little queasily, and when she got to the part about one of the boy’s toe being missing, she simply nodded her head and continued. The coroner wrote that he was able to determine the finger was removed after death because of the lack of bleeding from the wound, but he was unsure if the finger had been removed immediately after death or if it was bitten off by an animal at a later time. How a clean cutting wound could be confused with a gnawing bite mark bewildered Norma - she figured they must be easy to tell apart, especially for an expert, but that was what the report said.
The other victim had been a town council member in his day, and the family man’s murder kicked the investigation into high gear. Sheriff Beaumont had instituted a citywide curfew and instructed Norma and his other deputies to begin questioning outsiders and strangers in town, compiling a short list of names. One of the names was circled in bright red pen, “Jasper Fines”, and following that list of names was a short interview sheet on the man. Evidently he’d been stopped by one of the deputies down near the drug store on Dale Street and had been asked some routine questions. The man had not acted strange in any way, the deputies’ handwritten report said, and he’d not been detained. Underneath, in bright red pen and in the backhanded scrawl that Norma immediately recognized as Beaumont’s handwriting, there were the words “Too Bad - could’ve saved a lot of time!”
Next was a report on the stakeout at the Food Town. The Sheriff and most of his deputies had staked out the supermarket for three nights, finally catching a break on the third night. Deputy Norma Jenkins had been working undercover, dressed as a civilian, and she’d been jumped by Jasper Fines and pulled behind a dumpster in the alley on one side of the supermarket. To Norma, if felt strange to be reading about herself in the report - it had happened so long ago, it was like she was reading about someone else. Beaumont and his men approached, but Fines evidently had heard them coming and ran inside, hiding in the storage area in the back until he had had a chance to jump a couple of the deputies and steal their guns. There was a quick exchange of gunfire and Beaumont had taken a bullet high in the left thigh, dropping him and allowing the Killer to escape.
Norma skipped the last section about that final night - she already knew all of that. But she did read on to some of the remarks placed by the replacement Sheriff, and even though Norma hadn’t been a big fan of his, the man had had some nice things to say about Beaumont in his final report. Beaumont had been, in his words, “crafty and clever and more than willing to stand up for what he believed in. He’d led the town when it had needed a leader and the Mayor and the City Council had been paralyzed with fear at the Killer in their midst. He’d taken the necessary steps to make sure that no more killings would take place.” Strong words from a man elected by the City Council - maybe that explained why the guy had only served one term and then been voted out.
It was all pretty much as she’d remembered it, and Beaumont’s personal file wasn’t too far off from the official record. Beaumont had included a few of his own personal observations, and that strong statement from the replacement Sheriff was probably more for the widow’s benefit - Norma didn’t remember seeing that in the final case report, either.
But it all made her think. She went back and read the autopsy reports again, and continued, reading the rest of the report through again, searching for clues.
She was about half-way through the report on the Food Town stakeout, reading every page carefully instead of just flipping through randomly like she had done before, when she tried to pull up the next page and found it was stuck to the page beneath. She slid a finger between the pages and pulled easily, separating the pages that had stuck together. There was a small reddish stain up in the top left-hand corner of the second page. It was what had stuck the pages together, because Norma saw a similar smudge of brownish red on the back of the previous sheet. She touched the substance gingerly and it flaked away easily, and she noticed a faint but tart smell.
Blood.
But why was there blood in the report? Norma had seen the spatters of blood around the room where she had found the box and its pile of reports, but the case file had been closed, hadn’t it? Blood on the cover of the report she could understand, but i
nside? And from the darkness of it, it couldn’t be more than a few days old.
Had someone pulled it out to read it?
Who? Who would want to read about a string of murders that happened so long ago? It could’ve been one of the cops investigating the crime scene, but she didn’t see why they would be interested in this particular case. Norma was interested in the file because it would give her some insight into the case that had changed her life. But who else? Abe? Didn’t make sense - surely Abe already had all the financial information he needed on William Beaumont and his estate as it was passed along to his survivors in his files back in his office - why read this case file?
And the chances were pretty good that it was Abe’s blood in the file, so that effectively eliminated him as the mysterious reader. Maybe the Aunt had glanced through the box and read through the file, but that didn’t account for the blood either. It was almost as if someone had read it after the man had fallen, spattering blood everywhere, and the reader had flipped the pages with a bloody finger. But that didn’t make sense either - who would read a report with a dead guy at their feet? But then, the two of them being killed didn’t make any sense either.
Unless someone else had been in the house Monday night.
The cops still listed the deaths as accidental and suicide, but Norma didn’t buy it. No one with half a brain could believe that Abe had killed Gloria Thatcher. So, what if there really had been another person in that house that night?
What if it was Jasper Fines, back for another visit to his old haunting grounds? He would have been very interested in reading the file - Norma would have bet just about anything on that question. Maybe Abe and Gloria were killed by an intruder or a prowler, but the prowler would have had to look through the file, accidentally getting some of Abe’s readily-available blood on it. And he would’ve had to do it after Abe had fallen, going against common sense. Why wait and take the chance of getting caught? Why wouldn’t he flee as soon as the people had been killed?
No, instead the reader had taken time to sit down and read the case file.
It was a stupid, ludicrous idea, one so completely ‘out-there’ that she could probably be locked up in the loony bin just for thinking about it, but there it was, her idea, real and alive and begging to be considered. If Jasper Fines was back, his most obvious target would be the Beaumont family. The son was gone, and Beaumont’s only other family was Gloria Thatcher. And had Abe just been in the wrong place?
Norma spent several more hours reading the file again, over and over, before she had to leave to make her afternoon runs. And later in the afternoon when she was driving and the kids in her charge were getting away with a little more roughhousing than normal, she continued to think about the case, and about that little boy who had grown up into a young man, a man who hated his father so much he had left town, probably for good.
David woke and stretched and after a glance at his watch began cursing loudly. Five hours! Shit! He had slept too long, sacked out in the front seat of his car in a McDonalds parking lot. He was losing valuable time.
He popped his door open and climbed out, hearing his knees and back pop as he stood. The sleep had done him some good and his head felt a little clearer. He went inside and got a late breakfast - it felt like breakfast to him but he had to order off the regular menu - and ate while sitting there in the McDonalds. He could’ve gotten the food to go and eaten in the car, but he wanted to eat slowly and relax for a few minutes. The food would settle better, and he needed his strength if he was going to drive all evening and on through the night. It would be hard on him, he knew, but it would be worth it.
All he could think about now was seeing her, and taking her into his arms, and comforting her. She was a strong girl and more than capable of taking care of herself most of the time, but when something like this happened, everybody involved needed a helping hand. David would need to grieve, too, but he hadn’t really allowed himself to think about that. And it was probably easier for him, even though Gloria had been his only relative - somewhere in the back of his mind he was used to people not being there for him, just like his folks hadn’t been there. But however you looked at it, it was going to be hard on Bethany and on him, and he wanted them to go through their grieving together. They needed each other, he had realized that somewhere along the line. And Doris had been right about a few things, like the fact that he had been running from his fear more than anything else, and that he would never be able to outrun that.
He refilled his large soda and left, heading back out to his car. A black bird dipped out of the blue sky and settled on a car a few spaces over from his little red Mazda, but he did not see it. He was thinking about the weather and the shortest path back to the town of his birth. And after he climbed into his car and started it, the engine rumbling raggedly under the blood-red hood, he drove off towards the onramp up to the freeway.
And the black bird stepped over to the edge of the car’s hood and hopped off, swooping up into the sky and joining a small group of dark birds that circled above the parking lot. As a group, they turned to follow the little red car.
Julie spent all day Thursday poring over the files and reports, and by late Thursday afternoon she thought she had begun to spot some type of pattern. She was working at her adopted desk in the Computer Center, downing cup after cup of bad coffee from the machine out in the hall and splitting her attention between the latest computer printouts and the graphical maps that Chris was throwing up on the large display on her new ‘desk’. He had gone home last night at around 7 p.m. and been surprised to find her back at the reports at 6 a.m. this morning. He would’ve been even more surprised if he had known that she had only gone home for a little while last night to change clothes and grab a bite of dinner. This sort of thing often happened to her - when she was searching for the solution to a puzzle, she would get caught up in something like this and be able to think of little else. And this puzzle was the most interesting one she had ever tried to solve.
There actually did seem to be a pattern, much to her surprise and his. The horrific Black Diamond Killings that had occurred so long ago actually did seem to lead to other cases, if the times and dates and methods of death in each case were to be believed. Another large group of similar murders had occurred in different parts of the Los Angeles area several years later, with a dozen or so murders in southern Washington, Oregon, and Northern California linking the two. And carefully working backwards from the Black Diamond killings and assuming the same method of operation in the killer, she had found several score of murders across the country. It was almost impossible to believe, but she had the proof right there in front of her. If this was the work of one person, he was surely one of the most frightening and disturbing people to ever live. And knowing that he could still be out there, still moving around and taking and killing whenever and wherever he wanted, that scared Julie Noble more than anything else.
“Okay, now what?” Chris asked her over her shoulder. It was late on Thursday, and if he were working on any other project he would be getting his coat and briefcase together and getting ready to leave. But that wouldn’t be the case with Julie, and somehow, he didn’t mind. She was pretty and smart and full of fire and spirit, and they were tracking down something that could actually turn out to be very important, if you believed all the data contained in the thousands of pages of reports he had printed out over the past few days.
She turned to look up at him and saw how tired he looked. His eyes were red and haggard looking, and he looked like he hadn’t had any sleep for several days. This wasn’t true, she knew - she’d found him napping in his office earlier in the afternoon - but they were both working very hard on what could easily turn out to be nothing. She smiled up at him. “Now, you go and sit in your office and relax, okay? I don’t need you getting burnt out, just when this thing is getting interesting.”
He nodded and headed toward his office, and for once he did not contradict her. They were both running
on coffee and little else, having thrown themselves into this search with wild abandon.
She glanced up at the monitor on her desk and saw that the clock in the lower right-hand corner was counting down from forty-three minutes, just starting with the latest database search pattern. Chris had told it to sort out and graphically display all the cases that fit Julie’s parameters across the U.S. from 1966 to 1986 before he’d headed out for a nap.
And it would be a big search.
Julie continued to compare the printouts, and on occasion could eliminate specific cases from the listings. The latest report she was looking at was a chronological list of all the unsolved murders that fit her particular search pattern, and she was able to compare the locations geographically and, in some cases, eliminate cases that didn’t fit the overall pattern or were too far away for their supposed “killer” to have perpetrated the crime. She knew she probably shooting in the dark with all of this, but it was really just about testing the capabilities of the Cray, right?
Of course, there was no way of knowing yet if all of these crimes were carried out by the same person or people. And there was no way of finding other murders this person was responsible for unless he continued to follow the pattern - a murder committed by him in which he did not take a ‘memento’ would not show up at all in her search pattern.
But Julie was scared, anyway.
Somewhere along the line, she had started to feel like they might actually be onto something here. The cases were all so similar, and investigators on each of them had made similar comments. If only the detectives had known about each other, they might’ve been able to track down a suspect. But inter-agency communication was difficult, sometimes, and national clearinghouses of crimes and criminal records were still not common. These little jurisdictions relied on their own resources and manpower to investigate the cases, and if the cases stopped and the killer moved on, they were okay with that. They would never admit that, of course, but if the case remained unsolved, that was a fair trade for an end to the killings.