by MB Mooney
It was late, and she had skipped dinner. After a long day of unearthing information that only begged more questions, she wanted answers. She needed answers.
And Bill had them.
The door opened and he stood in front of her, fully dressed, with a small glass in his hand. The glass was mostly empty.
“Why, Miss Mann, how nice of you to drop by.”
She pushed past him into his apartment, a cold, stoic place with no carpeting and very little furniture. The scent of liquor hit her as the door had opened, but his breath was rancid. “You’re drunk?”
He followed her into the apartment. “Come in, come in. Make yourself at home.”
She stood in front of him. “You’re drunk.”
“Not yet,” he said. “But I’m pretty close. Why are you here?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Kevin Stuart?”
She watched as the pain closed his eyes, slowly. “Where did you hear that name?”
Valerie pulled the old manila folder out of her coat. “In his file. This case file, which has your name all over it.”
Bill Young turned back towards the door and closed it. The latch clicked with a lonely sound. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Done what?” she said. “Look for the truth? That’s my job.”
He walked past her without talking, moving as if he waded through a rushing river and staggered into the living room, furnished with only an old couch, a dim lamp, and a small television set. Falling on the couch in a heap, he sank himself into a sitting position. “What is it you think you’ve found?”
He did not look at her, only took a sip from the glass.
She followed him into the empty room, throwing the file on the floor at his feet. It made a smacking noise as it landed. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“How’s that?” Bill Young looked once at the remainder of his glass and, abandoning it, set it down. He picked up the half-empty bottle of tequila from the floor.
“You knew. You knew he would be coming for these people. Ever since the Person case, you knew what was going on, and maybe before. And you didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell anyone.” She said it softly, because, as much as she hated him, despite her low opinion of him, she didn’t believe he was capable of this, of such …
“And what would I have told you?” He filled the small glass from the bottle, lifted it again, and took a sip.
“Russell Person, Andrea Gorman. They were connected. And there’s more, isn’t there?”
“More?”
“Yes. They found the remains of a certain David Farley this morning in an old warehouse on the north side of town. They found him after they put out the fire. It took them a while to match the dental records, but they did it.”
“And?”
“His name’s in that file, too. There are two more names. Two more connected to Kevin Stuart.” She stared at him, tilted her head and pointed at him. “You could have saved them. You could have warned them. You knew.” She waited, hoping for some type of explanation, but it never came. Bill sat there, quiet, gazing away from her.
“The other two. Are they next?”
“How the hell should I know?” he twisted his head, looking up at her.
Valerie knelt down in front of Bill Young. His eyes were so sad, and they followed her, his brow casting a shadow over his glare. He looked so old here in the dark, empty apartment. “Because you investigated this case for years. This case is ten years old, Bill. What are you hiding?”
“Nothing.” He looked away, took another sip.
“Nothing?”
“No, dammit, I said nothing.”
She shook her head. “The FBI came to see me today.”
His eyes narrowed, still away from her. “The FBI?”
“Yeah, it seems they know some things that they don’t necessarily want to tell me. They said this was their case, now. It’s a serial murder. They looked at me like I was some backwoods police chief who didn’t know what the hell I was doing, like we were the Dukes of Hazard. What do they know that I don’t know? It’s got something to do with you, though. I could tell in the tone of their voice when they asked to talk to you, when you might be in. I looked like a big moron standing there with no answers for them. Can you tell me what’s going on? You need to tell me what’s going on.”
Bill looked at Valerie, and she thought that he might cry. She thought he might actually weep. “Go get yourself a glass, Valerie.”
“What?”
“Go get yourself a freakin’ glass.” He practically yelled at her. Then his voice lowered again. “You’re going to need it.”
“No. Tell me.”
He finished his drink before speaking again. “Okay, but I warned you.”
He sighed as he stood, groaning and grasping for air that couldn’t help him up, and walked into the kitchen. She stood with him and watched as he opened a drawer and took out an old folder of his own. He made his way back to the couch and sat back down. He offered the folder to Valerie, who took it from him cautiously and opened it.
Inside was a stack of pictures. She fingered them one by one.
Valerie closed the folder and put it on the floor next to the file that she had brought with her. She walked into the kitchen.
“Where are the glasses?” she asked.
“In the cabinet over the stove,” he said.
She took a glass, a tall drinking glass, out of the cabinet and took it with her back to the couch where Bill still sat. He held up the tequila. She grabbed it from him and poured her glass full of it, and she drank half of it before hacking for breath.
“Easy,” he said. “You could hurt yourself.”
“My God, Bill. Did they do that to him?”
Bill Young patted the couch beside him. “Have a little seat, darlin’.” She sat beside him, taking another sip of her glass.
Bill closed his eyes. “We found him in a dumpster on the south side of town, near the airport,” he began. “It was the hardest day of my life. I had been up for promotion for a couple of years, but this case … this case made me rethink my position. I couldn’t just leave this case for the next gumshoe that came along. I had to investigate. I had to prove that what they had done ... that they should be punished for it.”
“Were you assigned?”
“Not initially, no.” He turned towards her now, staring. “But Valerie, you can’t understand how much I hated them for what they had done.”
“Who?”
Bill took a deep breath. “They were a clique, if you will, of criminals. A small gang that ... did things together. We could never get anything on them, but they mostly did small stuff. There were five of them. Russell Person was the brain. He usually had the plan. David Farley was the runner, the driver, the guy who would do whatever little crap jobs they had for him. The leader was Samuel Doss, a local pusher who decided to use his influence to do other things, but he ended up owing a large sum of money to the local mob. So he had his gang, and they did things for the local family to pay up.”
“The other two?” Valerie asked.
“Andrew Franklin and Andrea Gorman were a couple, a very poor substitute for Bonnie and Clyde. They were inseparable - young, stupid, and crazy. Andrew was the grandson of the head of the mob here in Atlanta. He got special treatment from Doss, of course, but he wasn’t the leader that Doss was.”
“How connected is this family?” she asked.
“Locally, very connected.” Bill shook his head. “Otherwise, I don’t know. I’ve lived here most of my life, and this I can tell you: nobody messes with the Franklins, never have. They started out running moonshine back in the thirties, mostly consolidating locals into an organization to sell up north to Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and some places in the Midwest. Of course, over the years they made their way into the city officials, government, that sort of thing, but some of that’s changed within the past few years.
“Starting in the seventies, the minority population became the
majority population here in Atlanta, and now the Franklins deal mostly with the gangs. And that gets kind of messy sometimes. That’s why Doss and his group were hired, you know, to take care of those kind of contingencies.”
“And they did … this?” She pointed to the folder on the floor.
“Kevin Stuart was a ... street kid. He had run away from home when he was fourteen and ended up on the street. His parents had been looking for him when he was found in a dumpster.” Bill took another sip. “Yeah, they did that to him.”
“But ... why? I mean, what did he ever do? Did he owe them money?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re sure it was them. You’re sure they did it?”
Bill blew out a breath of air. “Yeah, it was them. The Franklin family used their influence with the local authorities to cover it up. Then they split up the group. The word was that Doss had made a mistake, let things get out of hand. Poppa Franklin didn’t exactly appreciate such a costly mistake. His grandson could’ve gone to jail. Doss was found in the same dumpster, chopped up in four or five pieces, like that made it okay.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No,” Bill said, his tone low. “Not with me it didn’t.”
“So there’s just Franklin left, right?” Valerie asked.
“Yeah.”
“So let’s go talk to him,” she said. Bill chuckled at her. Valerie stuck to her resolve. “We can get him to confess for ... protection. We can kill two birds with one stone. We can get him to confess to the murder and ...”
“No can do, Mann. It’s over.”
“What’s over?” she asked.
“Franklin will never agree. He knows too much. His old man is probably getting him out of the state, hell, out of the country right now if he’s smart. The Franklins can protect him much better than we ever could.”
Valerie took a sip of her own neglected drink. She froze for a moment, set the drink down again. “Wait a minute,” she said. “You don’t want to stop him.”
“Who?”
“The Postman.” She pointed at him again, closer this time. “You want him to succeed. You know who he is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bill frowned at her. “I have no idea who he is.”
“I don’t believe you. Why would you have tried to get me off of this case if you didn’t know who he is? So you could handle it yourself. You could have saved those others, after Person, but you didn’t. You know who it is.”
“Saved them?”
“Yeah, saved Andrea Gorman and David Farley. You could have warned them or put them in protective custody.”
Bill shook his head at her. “Russell Person had a long history working in crime. As far as I knew, he was still associated with them. His murder could have been connected to a million different reasons. And Gorman and Farley? Gorman lived under an alias, as you know, probably given to her by the Franklins. Andrew protected her still, even after they were no longer an item. Not out of the goodness of his heart, mind you, more out of the fact that she could run and tell a whole host of things.
“After Person, it could have been Andrew himself that decided she was too risky, especially if they were still connected somehow. I’m sure Andrew Franklin reads the papers, and you gave him the perfect opportunity to make it seem like a series of murders and get rid of a long standing liability. So how could we be sure it’s the same guy? And Farley was out in the middle of nowhere as far as anyone was concerned. How you gonna find a homeless guy? I could no more have saved either one of those than you could piss up a tree.”
“You’re lying,” she said, her voice rising in the apartment. “You’re trying to explain this away like you have nothing to do with it. But you do. Gorman’s death was personal. Nobody kills like that just to shut them up.”
“You don’t know Andrew Franklin.”
“And what about the note, stuffed in her mouth?”
“I told you, put there to throw us off track.”
“But why? If the Franklins have that much influence and power, why throw us off track?” Valerie stood and turned, facing Bill. “No, this is personal, all personal somehow. I don’t have time to sit here and argue with you, let you lie to me even more.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Find him myself, whoever this guy is.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
She turned her head away from him, pausing to think. “I’m going to have a conversation with Andrew Franklin.”
Bill gave a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes. “Good luck.”
“You don’t think I can do it? Don’t underestimate me, you son of a bitch. I’ll find him. I swear it.”
“What about the FBI?”
“Screw the FBI. I can do this on my own. Alone.” She finished off her drink and threw the glass against the wall, hearing it shatter behind Bill. “It looks like that’s the way it’s been all along, anyway.” She walked past the couch, past Bill, towards the door.
She heard his voice behind her, strained, soft, hurt. “Valerie?”
It made her stop.
“What if you’re right? Let’s just say that I do want this … killer to succeed. Would that make me a bad person?”
She looked at the man on the couch, at the back of his head, bowed slightly in reverence to his own sadness. She didn’t answer him.
“They started out by raping him, you know,” Bill said, and Valerie cringed. “The autopsy wasn’t clear on exactly how much or how many times, but he was raped.” Bill spoke slowly, as if every word hurt him, as if every mention of it reminded him of a failure in his own soul.
“Then they beat him to death. They beat him with their fists. Do you know how long it takes to die when you’re a boy and grown men are beating you with their fists? I have nightmares about it sometimes. It’s amazing what the human body can take, especially a young, healthy teenage boy. They beat him until he died. Did they mean to do it? I don’t know. But it was done. And I think sometimes two wrongs do make a right. I think sometimes justice comes in a number of different ways, and we should be thankful for it when it does. Isn’t that our job? Justice?”
“No,” Valerie said. “To protect and to serve, that’s our job.”
“Oh, yeah,” Bill murmured. “But, you see, no one was there to protect Kevin that night. No one came to his rescue as he screamed while they raped him or cried out for his mother as they beat him. No one saved him or served him then.”
“But that doesn’t make this right, Bill. It can’t make this right.”
Bill took a deep breath, and Valerie watched his old body heave with the fullness of it. “I don’t know if I believe in right or wrong anymore, my dear. And if this makes me the same as this killer, then I accept it. Don’t run out of here wondering if I would do the same. If I had the ability or the courage, I would kill them all myself. And I would feel better for it, for them being dead and gone.”
“What this man is doing is not courage or justice,” Valerie said, reaching out and opening the door in front of her. “It’s madness. And he has to be stopped.”
“But isn’t justice really madness, after all? The concept that somehow we can change things or make things right? It seems like madness to me.”
“We have to do what we can,” she said.
“It won’t be enough,” he said, barely audible now as she dashed out of the apartment, leaving him alone and off to find Andrew Franklin.
Chapter 9
He was dreaming again.
It began with darkness as they all did, as Matt always remembered them, with a sparkle and smattering of color, blotches of them randomly filling his vision. Then the images would come, in color as well, this time objects around a home, a large home, but nothing that would cause him alarm. However, he felt a latent foreboding within him just the same.
The house was radiant, a big house with cream colored walls and elaborate paintings, art from around the world, and rugs that covered the bott
oms of your feet with soft elegance.
You feel like a prince here, he thought.
Two children, a little boy and a little girl, played on the winding staircase up to a fathomless hall with doors to room after room of games and toys. It was as if the house were a mansion waiting for a saint or some deserving individual in the mantle of heaven. Brightness filled the house, making the children laugh a little louder as they brought the light into their lungs, moving their hands through it, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, waiting wide-eyed and in wonder what this heaven could be. And it was heaven to them, and their nights were filled with only good dreams. But not this night.
He didn’t recognize the children, but he liked to watch them, because with children you could forget all the things that made the world a horrible place. The delight of the children filled his own heart as he looked at them and followed them through the great house.
And the children finally saw him, this stranger in their house who had been following them. He walked towards them, extending his hand, smiling at them.
“I will not hurt you,” he said to them, his words coming as a surprise to him in his own dream. He hadn’t been able to talk to people in the dreams before.
The children watched cautiously as he approached, but they both smiled at him, both beautiful young ones at the end of the hall, waiting for him. Suddenly, they looked past him and their smiles distorted into masks of horror. Pointing over his shoulder, the children began to scream, and they clutched at each other in fear.
Matt turned around and recognized the man in the dark coat, a cap over his eyes, the killer again. His heart racing, Matt took a step towards the children. The man followed, slow and steady, like death. Darkness from the man pushed back the light, and as the brightness melted away, they were all in shadow.
The children continued to scream, and Matt turned to them. “I’ll protect you,” he said, although he had no idea how.
Shaking their heads at him, the children shrunk away. “No,” they screamed. “You brought him! You brought the darkness!” They cowered together and tried to move further down the hall, but the darkness caught them. Matt turned to see how close the killer was now, but he was gone. Only a thick darkness advanced.