by Greg Enslen
But this woman had known both of his parents, and even though she hadn’t been a cop in a long time, her voice still held a commanding quality that he could not ignore. He looked at her for a long moment, thinking about what she had said, and then he slowly nodded, his eyes meeting hers.
“Good,” Norma said, rubbing her stomach with one hand. “He was a good man, and a very good Sheriff. He was the only person who could’ve caught Jasper Fines, and he came closer to catching him than anyone ever did.” Norma was quiet for a moment, collecting her thoughts. It would be painful to go through the story again, the second time today, but it had to be done - this boy hated a father he had never known, and Norma needed to tell this boy the truth. She owed William Beaumont at least that much. One arm curled around her stomach as she began.
“Well, let’s get started. First, the stories you have heard probably are close, but they’re not the truth. First of all, your father was a great man, and very smart. After the initial homicide of the little boy, your father figured that the killer had to be someone from out of town, so he sent out his deputies to ask around, checking up on the identities of…”
David listened as Norma Jenkins told the Story of his father’s last case, the case that had killed him, but he’d never heard it told like this before. She told the Story well, as only someone who had been there and seen everything could tell it, and for the first time the Story sounded real and alive.
He listened as she spoke about his father’s intelligent, logical search for the criminal, and how his father had set up the posses and the searches and the roadblocks on that final night of his life. Sheriff Beaumont had planned for it to come down almost exactly as it happened, and to hear Norma tell it, the plan would’ve worked if it hadn’t been for Jes Brown and his incompetence, making the animals and their handlers move too quickly and too loudly and tipping their hand. And dumb luck. Jasper Fines had figured out what was happening and circled around the roadblock, shooting several deputies from the cover of trees.
And in the end, the man had stood over David’s twice-wounded father, sprawled and helpless on the concrete, and had killed him, laughing the whole time. He had taken the Sheriff’s star that had been pinned to his chest, and when Norma got to this part of her telling of the Story, she had to stop and collect herself. The Story ended with the police car driving off, the twin taillights like demon eyes in the darkness, and his father had died in this woman’s arms. By the end of it, she was crying.
And he felt like crying, too, but wouldn’t. He had sat and listened as this woman had told her story, and now he wondered how much of it was true and how much of it was influenced by this woman’s obvious feelings for his father. He couldn’t help but hear the admiration in her voice as she talked about his father, and he wondered at her. But was she telling the truth? His father could engender this kind of loyalty in someone, even though the man had died almost 20 years ago?
He sat for a long moment as they all looked at him. Bethany knew that he’d hated his father for the longest time, and she wondered how he was reacting to this news. She’d just heard most of it for the second time, because Norma had started telling her about it before David had gotten back. It made sense, too - David was a good guy on the inside, despite what his Aunt had done in trying to raise him, and that good stock had had to come from somewhere.
“I guess ‘Thank You’ would be in order, here,” he said, nodding to Norma. “I have heard too many times about my father and what he did to save this town, and for me, it was always like hearing the plot from a really bad western. It never really seemed real to me until today. So, you say he was a good man?”
Norma smiled, wiping tears from her eyes. She was sniffling a little bit, and wondered if that little chill she felt was from being outside earlier, and maybe she had caught a little something. But to her, when the boy had turned to her and asked that question, he had sounded just like Sheriff Beaumont. If the hair was a little different, and the boy put on a few pounds… “Yes, he was a great man. And he did a lot of other things besides being a great Sheriff. He loved to talk about the plans he had for your family. In fact, one of the last things he talked about was how he was going to take you and your mother on a trip just as soon as you were old enough. He was talking about you in the car with me that night, before Jasper Fines had come. And though I know he never got a chance to tell you, I know that he loved you and your mother very much. He would never have left you, David. He was taken from you.”
Hearing that sent him over the edge. He stood suddenly and walked into the kitchen, not wanting anyone to see. The words - they were just words, right? He wasn’t any different from hearing them, and yet, the words had affected him so deeply that he hadn’t even seen in coming. It was like a surprise punch, someone sneaking up on him and landing one in the gut, hard and solid. The pain was in his heart and his head, though, and not in his stomach. To hear that his father had loved him so much, even before he was born, and to hear that his parents were loving and overjoyed with anticipation at David’s birth…it was almost too much to take. He’d hated them for so long for leaving him, going away and leaving him for a drunk woman to raise, and now...
Bethany came in after a minute or two and put her arms around him. “It’s okay, David. He loved you, and you’ve always known that, somewhere deep in your heart. And you’ve always pushed it away, just like you’ve pushed everything and everyone else away.”
She stood with her arms around him as he sobbed like a baby on her shoulder. And he didn’t care if it was wrong or stupid or acting like a baby - for the first time in a long time, David Beaumont really cried. And it felt good.
Norma and Julie sat in the living room, wondering what to do or say next. Julie tried her cell phone again - it was the new Motorola clamshell, the only piece of technology that the FBI had given her. It was small and sleek compared to the other cell phones out there, but it didn't matter - the storm was blocking everything.
Norma tried the phone on the end table next to the couch, but neither of them had any luck. So far, the only calls Julie had been able to make had been local calls to David’s old roommate and Bethany, so the local cell tower must be still up and running, but any number outside the local calling network was inaccessible.
Julie flipped on the TV and changed stations to the Weather Channel, finding it after a little help from Norma, and the weather patterns and bands of rain weren’t getting any better. The hurricane had slowed to a crawl, and even though its protracted hours over land had weakened the storm slightly, it was still a powerful hurricane. The latest position of the eye of the storm was right over Virginia Beach, and video of frantic motorists fleeing the path of the storm was intermixed with clips of roads and bridges being washed out. Julie flipped it to CNN before Norma shrieked at her to change it back and turn it up.
“…the bridge. County officials said that the bridge will take several days to repair, and until that time, Anne County residents will have to travel some forty miles north to the nearest crossing, north of Culpeper. Another bridge, this one connecting the beach communities of Cape View and Bay Charles in coastal Virginia, has also been washed out, making travel to the mainland impossible until ferry boats can be brought in, sometime after the hurricane passes through the area…”
“What, Norma?” Julie asked, wondering what the problem was.
Norma looked at her. “Don’t you remember crossing a good-sized bridge when you crossed the city limits? That’s the County Line Bridge, the only connection Liberty has to the east and the freeway. They were showing video of it being damaged by a floe of trees or something, and it was collapsing.”
She was quiet for a moment before continuing. “Anybody going in and out of town now has to go north to Culpeper or west up into the mountains. Or they could take the back roads through Charlottesville, but that will take forever, especially if any roads are washed out.”
“So, what are you saying - we’re trapped?”
Nor
ma nodded. “Well, I would just say that if you get through on that toy phone of yours, calling for back-up would mean that they will be delayed in getting here. It would take them ten hours.”
The conversation ended when David and Bethany came back in the room. Norma told them about the bridge, but it didn’t seem to register with David. He was far too intent on asking Norma a question.
“So, why did you tell me all of that? What good could it do to bring all of that up, now?”
Norma glanced at Julie. “Well, like I said earlier, we have a theory that could explain all the strange things going on here in Liberty lately. And if we’re right, there is a very dangerous man here in Liberty right now, and you might be in danger.”
David sat down with Bethany on the couch and took her hand. “Tell me.”
Julie spoke and motioned Norma to sit. “This part is mine to tell. I am a new agent with the FBI, and I have specialized in the use of computers to track criminals and research cases. The FBI recently obtained the use of a powerful new computer, and I was assigned the task of programming it, testing it out to make sure it was running correctly. I decided, partly because of an article I had read in the paper, to search for serial killers, specifically a special group of them that ‘collect’ things from the crime scene, including parts of the victim. I presented my search criteria to my boss, and after he approved it I entered it into the computer, and waited for the results. When they came out, I found some very interesting things…”
Julie talked for a good long time, and at points she stopped and pointed out things on the maps or charts or flipping through her reports. They interrupted her occasionally and asked for clarification, and Norma watched as these two civilians listened to the tale.
It was interesting, watching people that had never been trained in any kind of law enforcement background, because they reacted very differently at parts of the story. They grasped the importance of the constant method of operation, and asked smart questions about different collection methods and what could have been taken from the crime scene and still made it into her search criteria. They listened as Julie talked about the multiple searches, and narrowing down the data to something that could be digested, down to a list of homicides that could’ve been committed by the same person because of their physical location and proximity to other homicides that fit the same pattern.
The maps were passed around and David and Bethany looked at them, and David was finding it all very difficult to believe. If this same guy was out there running around loose, the same man who had killed his father, someone would have caught him by now.
During the course of listening to Julie’s outlandish theories, David looked over at Bethany and really looked at her for the first time since he’d gotten back from the police station. He was pleased to see that most of the color had returned to her face. She had been looking pale since he’d gotten in, but now she looked much better, much more healthy. Maybe it was having company, or maybe she really was feeling better. She had traded in the baggy old sweats for more normal clothes, a pair of jeans and a blouse, and now her hair was down and combed instead of up in that ugly bun from the night before.
Maybe he was deluding himself, but he thought he was helping her, just being here. And now that all this other stuff was coming out, he was glad to be here with her. And he knew for sure that he was better for it.
Julie saw his attention wandering and wrapped up her side discussion with Norma about the Black Diamond Killings, getting back to the task at hand. She told about killings in Texas and Florida, including the one with the cop. And then she talked about Lisa.
This quieted them. Discussing the death of someone everyone in the room had known, except for Julie, made it very difficult. Julie could see the muscles in Bethany’s face working as she struggled not to cry.
After a few minutes of this discussion, David asked a question, though Julie thought that he might’ve asked simply to break the tension. “So, if Lisa was a victim of this ‘collector’, what makes you think Aunt Gloria and Abe were victims?”
He was already suspicious of the deaths, and had been ever since Bethany had told him about them on the phone - had that only been three nights ago? It seemed like a lifetime ago, sitting there at Doris’ counter with a cup of good coffee in his hands, debating about whether or not he should call Bethany.
Julie looked at Norma, and Norma spoke up. “I have a friend on the Liberty police force, and she said that the deaths are being investigated as homicides. Parts of…your Aunt, and of Abe Foreman, were not found at the scene.”
David shook his head.
“I haven’t heard any of that, and I read the latest articles this morning before I was interviewed. There was nothing in there about the cops thinking it was homicide.”
But then, that would explain the questioning from this morning - they had sounded like they were searching for answers, looking for clues.
“Well, it’s true,” Norma said. “They are investigating links between the two. What kind of questions did they ask, like was Abe in any kind of financial trouble, or were the two of them dating, stuff like that?”
David nodded. “Yeah. And the Blake guy kept asking about connections to me.”
“That’s because when we explained our theory to him and Brown, Blake was the only one that took us seriously.”
“And I think we have absolute proof that he was here, and is probably still here. Norma, want to hand that file to David?”
Norma picked up a file from the floor by her feet and handed it to David. It was the file on the Jasper Fines, and when he looked though the file, he saw samples of what looked like his father’s handwriting.
Norma spoke while David flipped through the file. “I see you grabbed that box of your father’s files from your Aunt’s house. I’m no psychic or anything, but I’m pretty sure you were looking for that file right there.”
David nodded. “Yeah, I wanted to read some of my dad’s personal files, maybe get a better idea of what happened. Like I said, I had never heard the real story, and I was surprised to see that box of files at my Aunt’s house before I left. When I saw it there again today, I took it.” He looked up at Julie. “This file - it was in that box, right? How did you get it?”
Norma answered. “I got my friend on the Liberty police force to let me visit the crime scene, and I stole it. It was sitting right there on top of that box, and my theory that these new murders could be connected with those old homicides was driving me nuts. I took it because I thought it might give me some insight into the case, or remind me of some facts I might have forgotten.” She glanced over at Julie. “And it definitely gave me some insight, don’t you think, Julie?”
Julie nodded grimly. “Yeah. David, flip to page 34, where your father is writing about the Food Town stakeout. See anything strange about that page?”
David started reading, and he was about halfway through the report on the Food “Town” stakeout when glanced at the top of the page and saw a reddish stain up in the top right-hand corner of the second page. The pages before looked like they had been stuck together at some point, because David saw a similar smudge of brownish red on the back of the previous sheet.
It looked dark red, like blood.
But why would there be blood in his father’s report? And from the darkness of it, it couldn’t be more than a few days old. Or did blood get darker with age? He had no idea.
“Bethany, look.”
She looked, and touched it. “Yuck. Dried blood.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. He looked up at Julie and Norma. “But why is there blood in my dad’s file?”
Bethany looked at the blood, puzzled. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t look that old, maybe a week or two.”
He looked at her strangely. “How would you know?”
She smiled. “Remember my junior year in High School, I worked at the Western Sizzlin’ Steak House out on 132? I did salads but we talked to the cooks a lot. I know what dried blood l
ooks like. The butcher paper they used to use to separate the pieces of meat was always covered with that stuff, and it ages. Sometimes we’d find old pieces of that paper and the blood was a really dark brown, almost like it was burnt. That was the old blood sitting out, exposed to the air. Blood starts out red and gets darker and darker the older it is, and that stuff isn’t that old,” she said, nodding at the smear of reddish-brown.
“So, could this blood be really old and just preserved because it was packed in the files?”
Bethany chewed on one lip, a habit that drove him crazy. At any other moment, he would have kissed her. “Yeah, I guess, but I don’t think so. Blood dries, and the drier it gets, the darker. And don’t forget, it had to be fresh to make the pages stick together, if it did,” she said, pointing at the report and looking at Norma, who was nodding.
“When I read through the report the first time, those pages and a few others were stuck together,” Norma said.
He nodded, thinking. How would fresh blood get into his father’s files? There had been plenty of fresh blood lying around his Aunt’s living room, too much unfortunately, but this box had been hidden back behind another stack of boxes, right? There was no way the blood could’ve been splashed back there when Abe took his dive - and even if it had been splashed, how would it have gotten inside the file, unless the file had been sitting open or something?
“Was the file on top of the box when you saw it?”
Norma nodded. “Right there on top, like someone had just set it down there.”
“Was it sitting open to this page?”
Norma shook her head. “No, it was closed up. And there are more stains like that one on other pages of the file.”
He was confused - had someone pulled it out to read it? Why would anyone want to read this file - was one of the cops investigating the scene curious enough to pick up the case file and flip though it, thereby inadvertently getting blood stains on some of the sheets in the file? Or had someone else been curious enough to read the file even if they had just killed two people and needed to leave as quickly as possible?