The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller

by Jared Paul

  Abby sighed. “He’s an old man, Travis. When my mother died, I told myself that I would take care of him for her. I can’t just leave him alone in that big house by himself.”

  “Or leave his money alone, right?”

  Abby’s lips thinned. “That was unfair, Travis.”

  Travis let his eyes find Abby’s and he moved forward with his elbows on his knees. “Tell me right now that you could do without his money, Abby. As long as you put up with his bullshit, as long as you live your life the way he wants you to live it, he’ll give you anything you want. He’s the richest man in Collie; don’t tell me it isn’t about his money, or about the inheritance you’ll receive once he dies.”

  Abby glared at Travis so fiercely that if her glance had been as heated as she’d wanted it to be, it would have melted Travis’ face clean down to the bone. She said, “How dare you talk to me like thatlike I’m some kind of brat. I have a job; everything I have is because I earned it. I wouldn’t touch a cent of his, and you damn well know it.”

  Travis scoffed. “Then what is it? Why won’t you just be with me?”

  Abby opened her mouth to answer, but didn’t get the chance to let any sound escape her, as she was cut off by a knock on Travis’ front door.

  ********

  Travis got up from his sofa as the banging on his door continued. He bothered to look at the clock on the wall in the kitchen and thought to himself that whoever was thumping their fist like that had better have one good reason for doing it.

  Travis opened his door and it flew out of his grip and swung wide, very wide, as his bountifully curved neighbor Norma Daniels barged into his house. She was in a huff about something, her round face reddened from the march from across the street. As she proceeded to continue her agitated waltz into his kitchen, Travis noticed that the big lady was out of breath not from her physical limitations as he would have suspected, but because she was very upset and close to hysteria.

  “Norma? Are you okay, is there something wrong?”

  “I have to use your phone, where’s your phone?” Norma’s eyes were wide, red from crying, and before either Travis or Abby could say anything, Norma continued, “I have to use your phone. Our phone isn’t working. Come on! Your phone, where is it!”

  Travis pointed to a space on his kitchen counter where he kept his landline, and as Norma picked it up and began mashing buttons with her sausage fingers, Travis pulled out his cell phone and handed it to Abby. He knew in his gut that something had happened at the Daniels’ house, and if Norma was calling the emergency line for the paramedics, then there wouldn’t be enough time to find out from her what was going on.

  “Try and calm Norma down and find out what’s happened. If there’s been a crime, call my brother and tell him to get his ass over here and quick.”

  Abby palmed Travis’ cell phone and nodded as Travis made a move for the front door, it occurred to her that he was going across the street to walk into a mess he knew nothing about.

  She said, “Where do you think you’re going? If someone’s broken in her house or something, then you shouldn’t be going over there.”

  Travis pulled the sleeve of his shirt from Abby. “Look, Norma has two children who are at home by themselves at the moment. Norma doesn’t look to be in her right mind either, so I’m going over there to see if they’re okay. If her husband isn’t home, I’m bringing those kids back here to be looked after until their momma has her marbles put back in the bag. Get me?”

  “Be careful, okay?” Abby wanted to say more, but knew that it was genetically impossible for Travis to change his mind.

  Travis stepped through the frame of his front door. Before he took the first step through it, he said, “Don’t worry. I’m a police officer, I got this.”

  ********

  Travis was across his lawn and over the road and into Norma’s front yard before he could reconsider his actions. He hadn’t lied to Abby. His first thought, his gut reaction, had been to see if Norma’s children were all right. Sam and Paula were sweet kids, who always hit up his house on Halloween for the ‘bestest’ candy in the worldaccording to them. Sam was nine, Paula was six, and the thought that they could be in danger was enough for him to run head first into any situation to help them; it’s what any real man would do.

  Right away, Travis noted that the front door to the Daniels’ was wide open, and any creature with a mind to walk in there could, as if there was an open invitation. He reached for his sidearm before he remembered that he didn’t have it with him, that when he wasn’t on duty, he kept the weapon either in his car or in the gun safe in his bedroom. He doubted that someone had broken in, that it was possible that something else was wrong. Norma didn’t looked frightened to him.

  Once inside Norma Daniels’ home, Travis let his eyes roam around the living room. It wasn’t what he would have called posh, not even remotely, but it had a kind of country charm that screamed disorganized family to him. Children’s toys were scattered here and there in random places on the floor or tucked into a corner of a chair or sofa and there was a T.V. dinner tray set in front of the biggest armchair complete with a half-eaten plate of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Curious, he stuck his finger in the potatoes and discovered that they were still warm.

  “Hello? Roger?” Nothing but the sound of a commercial on Norma’s television answered him. A light at the end of the hall connecting the kitchen and living room to the rest of the house caught his attention. Travis figured that Norma had been eating dinner while watching one of her programs on the picture tube when something from the other end of the house alarmed her. Whatever it was that was behind that door, lit up like a beacon from a lighthouse, was going to give him all the answers he needed. He prayed to any deity that was listening that he wasn’t going to find Norma’s children, splayed out like a macabre oil painting for his viewing displeasure.

  ********

  Abby thought the idea of approaching the big woman in Travis’ kitchen was an even worse idea than the thought of moving in with him. The big lady looked as if she could take down a bus with her bare hands on a whim; there was no telling what she might do when agitated.

  “Please, you have to get to my house as soon as possible,” Abby heard the woman plead into the phone she was gripping like a talisman. Tears were falling freely down her face, and Abby felt for the woman. She remembered that Travis mentioned that she had children, and she silently wished that they were safe.

  “No I don’t know if he’s breathing! I had to run over to my neighbor’s house cause we don’t got a phone! Just get them damn paramedics over here as soon as possible! I ain’t calming down! Who the hell says that to someone?!”

  Abby took a chair from Travis’ kitchen table and sat down, knowing that for now, she was going to stay quiet and keep out of Norma’s way. She recognized the signs of pain etched onto the woman’s face, the kind of edge awareness that a person has as they are experiencing an event that they just have to absorb and deal with. From the woman’s conversation on the phone, Abby knew someone close to this big gal was hurt, maybe even dead.

  She witnessed as Travis’ unexpected house guest slammed the phone that she’d had previously to her ear down on the receiver. She burst into tears.

  “Roger…”

  Abby moved from her chair, not really thinking of the possible consequences and placed a hand to the woman’s shoulder. She jumped as if all this time she hadn’t noticed that there was another person in the room with her.

  “Who are you? Where is Travis?” Norma said as she blinked through her waterworks, confused. “You look familiar, do I know you?”

  Abby offered the woman a smile. “My name is Abigail Bradley. I’m Travis’ girl”

  “You!”

  Norma Daniels suddenly grabbed for Abby, and the startled girl had just enough sense to get out of the way before the unusually rotund neighbor would have curled her meaty mitts around her throat.

  “What the hell?!�
�

  “This is your fault! You and your father! My Roger was just fine yesterday! I’ll kill you!”

  Abby scrambled away from the woman turned homicidal elephant and held up her hands, thankful that there was a kitchen table between her and certain asphyxiation.

  “Wait! What in the world are you talking about? I don’t even know who you are!”

  Norma seemed to growl, her large puffy face was streaked with tears. “Like hell you don’t! My husband has been working for your father for five years!” Norma punctuated her words by attempting to lunge for Abby over the table. “He’s killed Roger and now I’m going to kill you! Hold still!”

  Playing ring around the table while a charging bull was trying to end her existence was not how Abby envisioned the night ending. Was she serious?

  “I’m sorry! I promise, I honestly don’t know who you are, and I swear, I’ve never hurt a soul in my life. Please, whatever that’s happened, let’s figure it out together. You don’t really want to kill me, do you?”

  ********

  Travis hesitated a moment before he let himself turn the handle to the back bedroom door. The sound of the television in the living room seemed distant and drowned out compared to the noise of his heart thumping in his ears. He took just a second longer to prepare himself before he eased the door open.

  Roger Daniels lay on the bed that he had shared with his wife, still as the surface of a lonely pond. His eyes were staring unblinking at the ceiling. Travis could see that he was dressed for bed; the only thing he had on among the tousled covers was a pair of boxer shorts that had red and pink hearts on them. His chest was wet with cooling perspiration, his hair matted to his face. Travis was reminded of Mrs. Lawson, of how she had seemed to be sweating right up until the moment her chest stopped rising.

  Travis went to Roger and placed a couple of fingers to his chilled neck. When he felt nothing, he could feel as his heart sank through his body and hit the floor. He waited a full minute, his eyes on nothing but Roger’s chest and not once in the whole of those long seconds did anything in the entire room stir. Roger was dead.

  With feet that didn’t want to move him, Travis backed himself out of the room and back out into the hallway. Not bothering to use caution, he checked through the other rooms adjacent to the master bedroom. Sam and Paula were nowhere to be found, their rooms undisturbed, their beds made. A sound of feet padding around on carpet caught his attention as he again found himself in the hallway and he caught his first glimpse of the light blue patched sleeve of a paramedic’s uniform. For the second time in one day, he was going to witness as someone pronounced another person he’d known as deceased.

  Travis spoke up, his voice like a gong going off in the silence, “He’s in the back bedroom.”

  The first paramedic down the hallway was Carl Dempsey, the medic that had arrived for Mrs. Lawson. In a small town, the shifts ran long and the jobs were unforgiving.

  Carl asked as he approached Travis, “Would that be Roger Daniels, Deputy Harper?”

  Travis nodded slowly at Carl but caught his elbow before Carl rushed inside of the bedroom and attempted to do the impossible. No matter how well meaning and skilled you were, you couldn’t bring someone back from the dead. “Carl, he’s gone. I checked him. I’d say it hasn’t been long. Norma’s only been at my house for about five or ten minutes.”

  Carl attempted to smile, got halfway there and stopped trying. He said, his voice just barely above a whisper, “You’d better get back over to your place. Even if it’s natural cause, you don’t need to be around two dead people in one day. Someone’s going to start talking.”

  Of all the things Carl could warn him over, that shouldn’t have to be one of them. People in small towns never stopped talking. Without saying a word, Travis walked down the hall, through the living room and back outside where he took a heaping lungful of air. He should have laughed at Carl, should have told him where he could go find a short pier to walk right the hell off of, but he couldn’t stop his brain from factoring out the logic that the man had made a point. Why was it that he had a habit of stacking up coincidences against himself?

  His foot had lifted to take the first step toward taking himself back across the street and home, but as he took his eyes from the night sky he’d been questioning, he heard Abby scream.

  CHAPTER 13

  ………………………………..

  “Get away from me, you crazy bitch!”

  Abby was attempting to run across his yard, her eyes directed at the stomping, jiggling mad woman chasing after her, waving her arms emphatically.

  “Get back here and face what you have coming!”

  Bewildered, it didn’t take Travis very long to send the signals from his brain to the rest of his body that he might be watching his girlfriend get strangled by a monster in a house dress. Just as Norma Daniels would have caught up to Abby, he was able to catch the woman by the arm and use his body to act as a barrier.

  “Mrs. Daniels, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Travis struggled with Norma, surprised at how strong she was, and managed to get her into a position where he could use his greater height as leverage to keep the grief stricken woman under control. As soon as she wasn’t able to move herself, Norma was like a lawn mower without gas. She simply puttered to a stop.

  Norma, his mouth near Norma’s ear, said, “If you agree to be calm, we can talk this out like rational people. I know you’re hurting, Norma. This isn’t the way you deal with it, understand? Don’t make me cuff you and take you down to the station.”

  When Norma nodded, Travis let go of her and gave her a foot of space to breathe.

  Norma eyed Abby, appearing as if she still wanted to choke the life from her, but since she didn’t have any steam left in her engine, she huffed and plopped down on Travis’ front lawn. There was just nothing left for her to do.

  Travis peered down at Norma, thankful that she wasn’t trying to kill Abby any longer, and then he passed a sigh towards Abby, who was bent over, her hands on her knees trying to catch her breath. Travis didn’t care what had set Norma off, though he figured it was a mix of grief coupled with the shock of finding her husband of eleven years dead in his bed.

  Travis asked, focusing back on Norma, “Where are Paula and Sam?”

  Norma shrugged her ample shoulders. “The kids are at my mother’s house. They wanted to spend the night there, and I figured, well, I had wanted to spend some time with Roger. He wasn’t feeling well when he got home from work, and so, I just let him go off to bed.” She put her great hands to her face and continued, speaking though them, “I went to check him when I couldn’t hear his snores no more. Stupid ass! Why did he have to go and leave me? What am I going to do now?”

  Travis said nothing as he watched Carl and the other fellow he worked with walk over from Norma’s house to his front lawn. It didn’t make a lot of sense to him why this all had to play out over at his place, but it was the least he could do given the situation. He knew what his brother would be like if he’d found Cory dead, and short of an act of God, would he be as calm as Norma seemed to be now. Attempted murder would be the least of Jon’s actions.

  “We’ve called the coroner. They should be here in a little while to take Roger.” Carl directed his attention to Travis. “I think I ought to put a call into your sister-in-law. I don’t think it’s so much of a coincidence that two people happened to die of similar causes on the same day.”

  Travis nodded. While he hadn’t put that much together, his cop’s gut was beginning to twist in a hunch. Nothing in Collie happened without a reason.

  ********

  “I can’t believe you’re hungry.” Travis said with a tired smile as he watched Abby down her weight in pancakes. It was probably the one thing universally known in the world; that when in doubt with a rumbly tummy, seek pancakes.

  Abby swallowed a bite of her syrup-layered nerve chiller and after she’d made sure her fork was clean, she poked Travis i
n the hand with it.

  “I got chased around your yard by a mad woman. I think I deserve the calories.”

  Travis let his eyes roam over Abby, wondering how long it had been since he’d even felt her skin against his. It hadn’t been that long, but with the last two days he’d had, with his brother remarrying and the deaths, it felt like an eternity.

  He watched as Abby lifted another bite to her mouth. It was small so she could appear to be a lady, and so it could slide past her light ruby lips without a hitch. She closed her eyes, savoring the taste and it made a twinge of hunger spike in his belly. Hunger, yes, but not for food.

  To take his mind in a different direction than it was heading, Travis asked, “So why was Norma chasing you anyway? Did you say something to her?”

  Abby took a sip of her iced tea, relishing the homemade taste of it, after she swallowed, she fixed Travis up with a stare. After a minute, she shrugged.