Moving slowly his gun at arm’s length, Eddie made his way toward his shed. Even the slightest noise caused him to jump and take aim. Had the intruder gone? Or, was the interloper hiding in his shed waiting for him? If the prowler was in the building, Eddie resolved, he would shoot him dead.
Eddie stood outside the shed trying to detect any movement through its small front window. The darkness inside the building kept him from catching a glimpse inside. Turning the knob, Eddie kicked open the door hoping to surprise anything that might be inside. He hesitated for just a moment before bursting inside like a gangbuster ready to open fire. He soon realized he was alone in the small shed. The only sound he could hear was his own breathing and the beating of his heart.
He wasted no time. The cold was quickly sobering him. He found his lantern and shook it, the sloshing telling him it was partially filled with kerosene. He reached deeper into the bag and found the matches. He would have light.
Exposed in the small building and quickly feeling the bite of hypothermia, Eddie decided to dash back into his house where he would have cover to light the lantern. Cautiously looking around before emerging from the building, Eddie bolted for his front door. This time he remained upright as he cleared the steps in one jump. He then ran through his front door, taking time to close and lock the door behind him.
Eddie placed the lantern down on the kitchen table and blew on his hands trying to get feeling back in his fingertips. His short misadventure outside the house chilled him to the bone. He went to work pumping the light, the hissing sound of kerosene soon becoming audible. He laid down his gun to lift up the glass so he could light the mantel. Striking his match, the light flickered to life in the otherwise dark trailer. The light gave him a sense of relative calm. The flickering of the match soon grew as the light of the lantern bathed the kitchen in its soft white glow.
It was just as he felt the jubilation after restoring light that he felt the presence behind him. It had approached him from the darkness as he was concentrating on the lantern. Whatever had been outside was now inside with him!
Eddie turned to face the presence. His body was stricken with fear, his heart in his throat as he looked at a figure with no face standing inches behind him. It was the form of a man, a dark man, standing like a statue, no movement, not even the sound of breathing.
Eddie was afraid to speak or to even scream as he stared in horror at the faceless figure. It was then he recalled his gun on the table by the lantern. It was just inches away. He would make a move. He knew it was his only chance to avoid joining Andy.
Without delay Eddie made a lunge for his gun, reaching out with his half-frozen right hand. He felt the cold steel for an instant. The gun, however, fell from his hand as a jolt of pain raced up his arm. He could no longer feel the cold steel.
Stunned by the sudden sensation, Eddie looked at the table where the gun still lay. Beside it was his severed hand!
Pulling the stub of his arm into the light, Eddie saw his blood pumping into the air like a fountain with each beat of his heart. He opened his mouth to scream but another blow from the machete silenced his horrified cry. His head fell from his shoulders, hitting the floor before the rest of his body could fall.
MEET THE PRESS
Sam reached for his phone. The incessant ringing ripped him from his sound sleep. His wife rousted just long enough to shoot him an annoyed look before turning over and pushing her head deep into her pillow.
“Sorry sheriff but Faulkner was afraid to call you two mornings in a row so he talked me into doing it,” came the voice of Bo Davis as Sam looked at his clock.
The red digits revealed it was just after six in the morning.
“You better get on out here," Bo said in a serious tone. "We got another.”
Still not fully awake, Sam rubbed his eyes as he tried to force himself into full consciousness.
“Another what?” Sam asked as he sat up in bed.
“Another body,” Bo responded. “It’s Eddie Young.”
Sam slammed down his phone in frustration. Eddie’s reluctance to cooperate the day before had likely cost him his life.
Sam played back his conversation with Eddie in his mind as he drove to the scene of the most recent slaying. Why had Eddie been less than forthcoming when they talked the day before - a day that would prove to be the last day of his life? What was he hiding? Did the secret he kept lead to his death?
One thing Sam knew for sure, sight unseen, the murders were related. They were likely the work of the same killer. There was something that Eddie and Andy had been into, perhaps much earlier in their lives, that led to their demise. Had it dated all the way back to the Red Dog days or was he way off the mark?
It was like déjà vu all over again as Sam rolled up to Eddie’s trailer. Yellow tape surrounded the scene of the crime. The driveway this time had three patrol cars already waiting in it. From the looks of things Sam was a late-comer.
“Crime lab boys are just a few minutes out,” Bo announced as he came out to meet his boss in the driveway. “They’re going to ask for their own office space here if we keep calling them every morning like this.”
“I guess I’d just be wasting my breath asking if it’s a homicide,” Sam said.
He already knew the answer since he didn't figure Eddie for the type who would eat the barrel of his own gun or take a handful of pills.
“Oh yeah,” Bo responded with a slight chuckle. “This is murder and then some.”
Bo motioned the sheriff toward the door and followed as his boss walked up the same steps he climbed the day before when he questioned Eddie.
Sam’s senses were immediately bombarded by the spectacle of a slaughterhouse. The room looked like something or someone had been put through a meat grinder. The veteran lawman actually gagged at the sight of the butchery.
Sam, from just inside the door, could see the severed hand on the blood-covered kitchen table. A gun was lying beside the pale appendage. Scanning the rest of the room, he realized something was missing.
“Where’s his head?” Sam asked, eyeing the rest of Eddie’s body.
Sam noticed Eddie was still dressed in the same clothes he was wearing the day before when he talked to him.
“You tell me,” Bo replied. “We looked everywhere. It’s not here.”
Sam looked his investigator in the eye realizing the lawman was being serious.
“Who takes a head? What am I going to tell his mother?” Sam posed.
The sheriff always dreaded notifying the next of kin. “You sure it’s not here?”
“Positive,” Bo said with assurance. “We’ve swept the entire property, even into the woods out back. No head.”
Sam shook his head in disbelief. He rubbed his own neck in light of the macabre scene before him. It was then he realized something was missing besides Eddie’s head.
“I wonder why he didn’t leave a message this time,” Sam declared, surprised the words weren’t spelled out again given the fact there was plenty of blood available.
Bo calmly pointed toward the other side of the kitchen counter. Sam took the silent hint and walked around the counter. There on the tile floor of the kitchen were written the words in bright red letters – Red Dog.
“We definitely have a problem,” Sam said.
Bo nodded in agreement as he looked at the carnage. “The question is who's next?”
With the smell of death starting to become overwhelming, the sheriff decided it was a good time to do a walk-around outside the trailer. Sam immediately noticed the broken windows, glass lying on the ground suggesting the windows had been broken from the inside.
“Looks like our victim shot them out,” Bo declared as he ran his finger into what appeared to be a bullet hole in the molding around the kitchen window. “Whatever came to get him was outside first and he knew it. It looks like he was trying to shoot whatever it was before it got inside.”
“Why do you keep saying whatever it is?” Sam asked. �
��We aren’t dealing with a what; we’re dealing with a who.”
“If you say so, sheriff,” Bo said as he shoved a dip between his cheek and gum. “If this is a who then he sure has some unresolved issues. Oh, and by the way, there was a passerby who lives about a quarter-mile down the road who said he thought he saw something, um, I mean someone, standing outside the trailer last evening. Our passerby said the guy was dressed all in black but it was dark out except for the moonlight so our witness couldn’t provide a useful description of him. He didn’t put any significance with it until today when he drove by and saw all this going on.”
The fact the passerby would be no help in figuring out the identity of their killer meant the sheriff had to take a different tact in figuring out what led to Eddie’s demise.
“Oh, by the way, the paper has already been nosing around,” Bo noted. “I saw that Cliff had our passerby cornered across the road so the press probably knows what we know about the guy he saw here last night. I’ve not told them nothing. Told him had to talk to you if he wanted any information.”
The sheriff ignored Bo’s mini-briefing as he was deep in thought recalling his conversation with Eddie the day before. Sam shared his suspicions with Bo concerning Eddie’s strange behavior during his interview. Perhaps the sheriff wasn’t the only person Eddie spoke with that day.
“He certainly was hiding something,” Sam declared. “Maybe he made some calls. Have Kendal subpoena his phone records. Let’s see who he talked to on his last day. It’s worth a shot. Maybe he even talked with his killer.”
If Bo was Sam’s right hand man then Kendal Parks was his left hand. The two sheriff’s investigators were like night and day. Bo, the pickup-driving, deer-hunting, outdoor-loving country boy was the complete opposite of the prim and proper Kendal Parks who was always immaculately dressed with never a hair out of place. Moving to Castle County from a large city where he was a codes enforcer, Kendal was the brain trust for the department. He could recall every nuance of the law and was a stickler to detail. He was meticulous with all the cases crossing his desk. His progress was often slower than Sam liked but the outcome was always rock solid with all his cases ending in convictions.
His by-the-book approach to policing often left him and Bo at odds. The pair fought like cats and dogs, both too stubborn to compromise with one another as Bo would often adhere to the seat of his pants philosophy of police work. Their differences, however, were by design as Sam used the strengths of both their approaches to law enforcement to his advantage. The end result was that very few crimes went unsolved in Castle County - up until now.
“Who found him?” Sam asked as they completed their walk around the house.
“The electric company actually,” Bo said. “They got a trouble call from a blocked number just before dawn and seeing how cold it is they sent a crew right out. When they got here they found what you saw.”
“So our killer wanted to make sure Eddie was found this morning,” Sam surmised. “It seems like our murderer is calling the shots so far. We need to change that.”
Sam realized they still needed the Red Dog connection kept from the general public, leaving it only something the killer would know.
“Who knows about the writing on the kitchen floor?” Sam asked.
“Just me, you, and Faulkner,” Bo responded. “The electric crew took off when they found what was left of Eddie and called us from the road. I don’t blame them for getting out of here.”
“Well, like last time, we keep this our secret,” Sam insisted. “The less people know the better. We don’t want the press to get wind of it yet.”
“So what’s your next step?” Bo asked as he pledged to keep the Red Dog angle quiet.
“I’m going to meet the press,” Sam retorted, his response getting a strange look from Bo. “Sometimes the best news never makes it to the newspaper. I think I’m going to pay a visit to our old friend Cliff Chapman at the Castle Herald and talk about the old days.”
Cliff Chapman was the Castle Herald. He had served as their crime writer for over forty years. When it came to Castle County, the veteran reporter knew it all, only a small percentage of which made it into the pages of the small town publication. Chapman had been with the company since the day of linotype and typewriters. He saw the paper business evolve to modern computers and digital cameras in recent years.
Despite being retirement age, the short gray-haired newsman refused to call it quits as he doggedly changed with the times. His old-school brand of news writing was still apparent in his stories. Even his appearance was old-school, a pipe always in his mouth as he looked out from under the brim of his green visor like he was about to deal cards at a Saturday night poker game. Sam wasn’t sure if he ever saw Cliff smoke the pipe in the all the years he’d known him and wasn’t sure why the old reporter would wear the visor even on cloudy days. One thing Sam did know, however, was if it happened in Castle County then Cliff knew about it. He was about to put his faith in Cliff to the test - the subject of that test being the Red Dog Saloon.
“Well, hey sheriff. I was just about to call you,” Cliff said as Sam walked into his office.
The reporter didn't hesitate for the normal pleasantries. “I hear you found another dead one this morning. Are we looking at a serial killer or what? Bo wasn’t too forthcoming today. He told me I had to talk to you.”
Taking a seat across the desk from the senior writer, Sam gave him a grin. He was entertained by the newsman’s eagerness to get the scoop.
“It’s good to see you too, Cliff,” Sam said as he settled into the old steel chair which Cliff no doubt used for visitors to keep their visits short and to the point. “As for your question, I can’t really say we have a serial killer but I can say for the record we think the crimes are related.”
Cliff puffed on his unlit pipe, jotting down notes on his reporter’s pad before shooting the sheriff a glance across the desk.
“I hear our boy is missing his head,” Cliff said without segue. “I also hear someone who passed by that night reported seeing a man dressed all in black - a dark man they called him - lurking outside his trailer.”
His question provided the sheriff with a bargaining chip, presenting an exchange which could benefit both of them.
“Tell you what Cliff, you help me and I’ll help you. How does that sound?” Sam proposed. “I need your help on these cases but I need you to keep the subject of what we’re about to talk about off the record.”
“Off the record huh? Well, I suppose I could do that so long as once this is over I’m the first to get the whole skinny,” Cliff responded. “What about the head?”
“Tell you what Cliff, you help me out and before I leave I’ll tell you all about the head,” Sam offered.
His bargain was readily accepted by the small-town journalist. Cliff was intrigued since he was rarely called upon to help solve a case.
“Deal,” Cliff answered as he leaned forward interested in what was on the sheriff’s mind. “So what’s this matter that you need my help on? I’m all ears.”
“What do you know about the old Red Dog?” Sam asked.
His question obviously set the wheels rolling in the reporter’s mind. Cliff sucked his empty pipe and furled his brow.
“Wow, the old Red Dog,” Cliff repeated as he reclined in his chair, lacing his hands behind his head. “Funny how that place won’t die after all these years. So do you think there’s a connection between these killings and the old saloon?”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be providing the answers right now, remember?” Sam pointed out. “I’ll return the favor in a few minutes.”
Cliff nodded in agreement. He squinted almost like he was trying look back in time and access the long forgotten drawer where he had deposited the Red Dog file.
“Let's see," Cliff began. "The Red Dog was built sometime back during the 1950s off East Ridge Highway. It started out as just a little package store, not really much more than a shack. Over the
years the owners kept adding a little here and a little there until it grew into a regular bar. Actually, it was quite a popular little hang out during the sixties and seventies. There were a lot of folks who would head out there on Saturday nights for dancing and drinking. They even had a Bingo game out there on Tuesdays. Back then it wasn’t that bad. Sure you’d get a fight here and there, but it wasn’t anything your regular bar doesn’t see. It was one of those places you’d go with sawdust on the floor, peanut shells crunching under your feet, thick with cigarette smoke.”
Lowering his tone, Cliff recalled a change that came over the well-known club in the early eighties.
“At some point Earl Cutts took over the place. I believe it was sometime in the eighties,” Cliff revealed. “That’s when things started to change. See, it was around then they passed legal liquor in Easton so bars started popping up, nice pubs folks could go to instead of the old Red Dog which was getting pretty long in the tooth by then. Plus the Red Dog was out in the country located right on the most dangerous curve in the whole county. Frankly, whoever built the place should have had his head examined. I know of at least two people who got killed out there by wandering out in the highway which was just a few steps from the front door of the bar. I mean drunks and traffic don’t mix.
“Now, once the decent folks started frequenting the clubs in the city, the Red Dog turned into a hangout for thugs and rednecks. As I think you know, back during the eighties and until it burned down in the nineties, you didn’t go out there unless you knew how to use your fists. It was the first place some folks stopped after they got out of the penitentiary and was pretty popular with your wannabe tough guys. Of course the fact Earl Cutts ran the place added to the issue since he didn’t care much what went on, especially since he was dealing more than alcohol from behind his bar. We’re talking cocaine, pot and pills. It was like a drug store.
Sam stopped the story teller for a moment, wondering aloud about any incidents that could have left bad blood over the years. Cliff scratched his scraggly beard as he considered the question for a moment.
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