by David Archer
Sam shook his head. “So, we’ve not only got to clear me, we have to stop a serial killer who targets young girls. How much can I use you guys? I’m gonna need all the...”
“Ron says we are yours for the duration,” Summer said. “We don’t have any active cases at the moment, and he won’t pull any of us away unless he absolutely has to.”
“That means a lot to me, gang,” Sam said. “Between us, we might have a chance of actually catching this guy and clearing my name.”
“We will,” Steve said. “No doubt in my mind.”
Kim, who was standing in the dining room doorway, suddenly cleared her throat. “Um, hey,” she said. “Beauregard says you need to work as fast as you can. The killer is looking for his next victim right now.”
All of them turned to look at her, but it was Sam who spoke first. “Does he have any idea where?”
Kim shook her head. “No. He just knows that there’s going to be another victim found within the next twenty-four hours, and it’s going to be worse than before.”
Sam turned to Denny. “If the cases you found are the same guy, he seems to be getting more active.”
“They usually do,” Darren said. “Serial killers get a rush out of what they do, and they’re just like drug addicts. After a while, they need that rush more and more often, and sometimes they want an even bigger one. If he’s getting off on how young his victims are, they may become younger, or he may go after more than one at a time.”
“Then we have to find him, and we have to find him soon.”
“We can start looking for old Chevy vans,” Steve said. “The one I saw in the video looked like it came out of the early eighties, and it’s probably brown, maybe red or orange, something like that. Unfortunately, there was no visible damage on it; if we could say there was a specific dent or something…”
“The grille was cracked,” Walter said. “There’s a two inch crack in the plastic grille, just inside from the left headlight.”
Steve, Sam and everyone else turned to look at Walter. “You didn’t mention that when we were looking at the video,” Steve said.
“You didn’t say you were looking for damage,” Walter replied. “There’s also a small crack in the windshield, just under the right windshield wiper.”
Steve’s mouth fell open. “How in the world did you see all that? We only looked at the van for a couple seconds, as he drove away.”
“I notice little details. That’s why I can do what I do at crime scenes.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Now we’ve got details we can put out about the van. Any chance we can get O’Rourke to put out another BOLO?”
Summer grinned, taking out her phone. “Leave that up to me,” she said. “I’ll talk him into it.”
She dialed a number and walked into the dining room as she put the phone up to her ear. “Detective O’Rourke? It’s Summer Raines. I may have something for you about that van… No, not the one Sam had, the one the real killer was driving…”
Sam turned to Indie. “Have you had a chance to look at the DNA database yet?”
“Hang on,” she said. She got up from where she was sitting and hurried to the dining room, coming back a moment later with her computer. She set it on the coffee table and opened it, then tapped a couple of keys. “I set Herman to hack into it last night and look for your profile. He was still working this morning, so let’s see what he’s found.”
All the investigators gathered around her as a window opened on her screen. There were lines of code on the display, but then a link appeared below them. Indie clicked the link and Sam’s DNA profile appeared. It showed what appeared to be a sort of bar graph, with several spikes poking up from the baselines. Many of the spikes were in pairs, much taller than most of the other spikes.
“That’s your profile,” Indie said. “Now, let’s look at the database itself and see if there’ve been any recent modifications to your entry.” She backed up and looked at the previous screen, carefully reading the long, complex lines of code before turning to Sam with sadness in her face.
“No changes,” she said. “The information written into the tables that display your profile was created about eight months after you were accused of murdering Juliet Connors. Karen told me they took a DNA swab from you when you were arrested, and it went into the database. There haven’t been any changes to it since then.” She shrugged woefully. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
Sam looked at her for a moment, then looked at the faces of the other investigators standing around him. “So,” he said. “Somebody out there has a DNA profile close enough to mine to make it come back as a match. That’s the only other explanation.”
“Then that’s the person we have to find,” Steve said. “We find him, we find our killer.”
“Well, we might have a little help,” Summer said, coming back in the room. “Turns out Detective O’Rourke is familiar with Walter’s work. When I said Walter spotted those two spots of damage on the van, he agreed to put a BOLO out. Of course, he did point out that we might find a few hundred vans that could fit that description, but he said it was worth looking into.”
“I suppose,” Sam said, “I should own up that my van has been destroyed. I know it won’t help my case, but I need to be honest with him about it.”
“Don’t do that just yet, Sam,” Darren said. “Remember, you’re not under any obligation to provide them with anything they can use against you. Have they asked you what happened to it yet?”
“Darren, I haven’t even been questioned,” Sam said. “O’Rourke was so sure he had the right guy he didn’t even bother to question me when we got to the jail. Arrogant jerk.”
Darren cocked his head to the side. “That may not be arrogance,” he said. “It’s just possible it was the gut feeling of a good cop that something might not be right about his supposedly airtight case. I’ve seen that before, the cop brings in a suspect but is reluctant to talk to him because he’s afraid it might ruin the case he’s trying to build.”
Sam looked at him. “I guess we can only hope,” he said.
Footsteps were heard on the porch suddenly, and Steve Beck got to the door first. He peeked out the window, then opened the door to let Jeff Donaldson inside.
NINE
C.J. liked small towns. Most of them didn’t have anything that could really be called a police force, and it was amazing the things he could get away with when the closest thing to a cop he might run into made Barney Fife look like a genius. This particular place was a fine example, with a little portable building set up next to the only gas station and convenience store in town serving as the police department. Even better was the fact that the sign on the door said, “Closed.”
That gas station was pretty busy when he stopped to grab a snack. There was one clerk on duty, a young woman who was probably fresh out of high school. She smiled when he came in to grab snacks, and he thought of taking her for a ride, but she wasn’t the type he liked. She was too old, and her boobs too big for his taste. He couldn’t help wondering what she would think if she knew how close she had come to being his next victim.
She was counting out his change when another girl, much younger, suddenly came out of the back room.
“Hey, Stacy?”
The sound of the voice drew C.J.’s attention, and he turned to see who had spoken. She was looking at a book in her hand as she walked toward the register, and hadn’t noticed him.
“Just a minute, Chrissy,” said the girl behind the counter, and the younger one looked up. C.J. smiled at her.
“Well, well,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“She’s my little sister,” Stacy said. “She hangs out here with me sometimes.”
C.J. stared at the younger girl, who the older one had called Chrissy. She was probably eleven or twelve, and the need surged in him. He licked his lips, then motioned for her to come closer. Chrissy looked at him for a moment, then her eyes darted over to her sister. She seemed nervous and C. J. felt a bit
of anger start to build inside himself.
He glanced at the girl behind the counter, saw that she was eyeing him suspiciously, and then acted without thinking. He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out the pistol he kept there, then pointed it at her while he looked at her sister. “Come here, Chrissy,” he said. “Come over here now.”
Stacy’s eyes went wide and she started crying, and Chrissy’s eyes filled with terror. She obeyed his command, walking over to stand beside the counter as she looked at her sister imploringly.
“Ain’t you a couple of cuties,” he said. In that split second, the need forced him to make a decision he’d never considered before. “Come on, both of you,” he said. When Stacy hesitated for a moment, he reached out and took hold of Chrissy’s arm, shoving the gun against her back. “I said come on!”
Stacy held up both hands. “Okay, okay,” she said, still crying. “Please, please don’t hurt us.”
“Just come on,” he said. “And don’t try anything, or I’ll shoot her first.”
Stacy came out from behind the counter and C.J. motioned for her to lead the way out the door. As she stepped through it, he said, “Turn right, go to my van.” She turned in the direction he indicated and C.J. followed with Chrissy’s arm still clamped in his hand. He hustled both girls around to the side door, yanked it open and ordered them inside. As soon as they were in, he closed the door and hurried around to the driver’s seat, then looked around to see if they had been noticed. There were no cars in sight, and no sign of anyone outside at the few houses that were nearby.
No one saw us, he thought. It’s all clear!
“Just sit down back there and be quiet,” he said. “You can’t get out, the door won’t open from the inside. Long as you don’t make no trouble, I don’t have to shoot you. Just sit there and be quiet.”
He started the van and pulled away. There were still no vehicles in sight, so he turned onto the highway that split the town in half and started up the road. He figured he had at least ten or fifteen minutes before anybody realized the girls were gone, and he wanted to put as much distance between him and that little town as he possibly could.
There was a crossroad up ahead, and he took a left. This was an area with lots of back roads, and he figured he could make better time back on the old, undivided roads while he avoided drawing attention to himself. He got the van up to more than seventy miles an hour, flying down the old road and bouncing through its potholes.
Twenty minutes and a few more turns later, he found a spot that looked promising. A dirt road led in to some trees, and from the look of it, no one had been down there in a while. Grass and weeds grew in the tire tracks, so he figured it wasn’t a popular spot with anybody. He passed it, then stopped and backed up to get to where he could make the turn into those woods.
The old van handled the rough dirt track well, and he was out of sight from the road within a few seconds. The track wound around, so there was no possibility anyone would be able to spot the van from the blacktop. He kept going until he came to the end of the road, at an old cabin that looked like it wasn’t far from falling down.
“Perfect place,” he said. He climbed out of the van and walked around to the side door, opening it carefully in case the girls tried to jump out at him. They didn’t; they were both sitting terrified on the floor of the van. He looked at them again for a moment, then reached under the front passenger seat and pulled out several lengths of rope.
“Chrissy, come here,” he said.
The little girl looked at her sister, tears streaming down both of their cheeks, and then did as she was told. He made her turn around and put her hands behind her back, then quickly tied them together. When that was done, he pushed her to the side and looked at Stacy.
“Your turn,” he said. “Get over here and turn around.”
Stacy glanced at the gun that was tucked into his waistband, then crawled over and turned her back to him. Her hands were quickly bound as well, and then he pulled her out of the van and set her on her feet.
“Stand right there,” he said. “If you try to run, I shoot your sister.”
“I won’t go anywhere,” she sobbed. “Please, please, you don’t have to do this. If you let us go, I’ll swear up and down I never saw your face or nothing, we both will.”
C.J. ignored her as he reached inside and grabbed Chrissy by the arm again. He helped her out of the van, then took hold of both of them and marched them to the old cabin.
The door was standing ajar and he pushed it open with his foot. The place had obviously been used by kids at one time or another, and there was an old mattress laying on the floor in what would’ve been the front room of the house. He pushed the girls through the door and made them sit on the mattress, then found a chair that was intact and plopped down on it.
He sat and stared at them for several minutes, then got up from the chair and pulled more rope out of his pocket. He knelt down and tied Stacy’s and then Chrissy’s feet together, then hurried out to the van again. The girls could hear him opening the back doors, and heard a lot of rattling, and then he was back.
He sat on the chair again, continuing to watch them. He sat without a word for a couple minutes, then stood.
“We’re gonna have some fun,” he said as he approached them. He knelt in front of Chrissy and Stacy began begging him once again to let them go.
“Shut up,” he said. “I told you, we’re going to have some fun.”
Taking them both had been a spur of the moment decision, but it definitely filled the need. He couldn’t remember when it had felt so good, when the thrill had hit him so hard. Little Chrissy had been the best he ever had, and the way Stacy screamed only made it feel better. Nobody could hear them here in the middle of nowhere, so he didn’t even bother trying to tell her to stop.
Besides, the screams only got better when he finished and pulled out the knife. It had never occurred to him before that he might enjoy somebody watching what he was doing, but the look of absolute horror on Stacy’s face as he stabbed Chrissy a dozen times almost sent him over the edge again.
He almost felt bad that Stacy wasn’t getting the full treatment, but she didn’t appeal to him that way. Her boobs were too big, not small and perky the way he usually liked, so he just shoved her down and jabbed the knife in. Over and over he stabbed her, until the light went out in her eyes, and then he sat back gasping for breath. The thrill had been so strong that it left him breathless.
Afterward, with both of them laying there soaked in their own blood, C.J. carefully untied the rope and coiled it up. He’d had that rope for a long time, and there was something about it that made him hang onto it. He knew how stupid that was, because there was a lot of blood on it, but that’s why he kept it hidden under the seat. Nobody ever saw it, but he could get to it in a hurry when he needed it.
He looked at them one more time, then fixed his clothes and walked out to the van. He put the knife away and stashed the rope under the seat, then stripped off his shirt and started cleaning himself up. He kept a bottle of dish soap and a jug of water in the van for that purpose, to make sure he got all the blood off him. The side mirror of the van showed him that he even had blood in his hair, so he washed it quickly. The dish soap left it dry, but at least it was clean.
The thrill was still all over him as he climbed behind the wheel, inside him and running wild in his veins, and once more he recalled that first time. The shock of learning that the girl had actually survived and managed to get out of the water and crawl all the way back to the road had sent a chill down his spine. He carefully followed the story for weeks, whenever he caught it on the news or had the chance to look up the local newspaper articles about her.
Breanna had survived, but she was never able to remember what had happened to her. The beating he had given her had done quite a lot of damage, but whether it was physical or emotional didn’t matter. He bought himself a portable computer and had kept track of her over the years, looking for an
y new stories that might mention her name, but there hadn’t been any since that first year. All he knew was that she had never been able to tell anyone about him, she’d never been able to remember who had taken her to the lake and done it to her, but he’d decided back then that he could never take that chance again. He’d been lucky, that was all there was to it, but he didn’t think luck was something he could always count on.
He’d never taken the chance again. The old butcher knife was dirty and stained, but it always got the job done, and the stabbing and the blood only added to the thrill for him. Seeing the way they convulsed as the incredible agony of each and every stroke of the blade hit them, hearing the cries and the sobs… It was a form of ecstasy he’d never dreamed of when he was young.
Besides, they were so much more fun when they began to realize they were going to die. That’s when the screams really got hot, and they always tried to fight. It never did them any good, of course. He was far too strong for that.
It was getting dark. He started the van and turned his lights on, then made his way back through the woods to the blacktop road, took out his phone and let it give him directions to the next town he planned to visit. The voice of the nav app told him which turns to take to get where he wanted to go, and a half hour later, he pulled onto the interstate and headed east once again. He turned off the nav and looked at the phone in his hand.
He hadn’t talked to his mother in a couple of weeks, and he was in a really good mood at the moment. He hit the icon to bring up her number and listened to the line ring three times before she picked up.
“Hello,” she said. Her old phone didn’t have caller ID, so she never knew who was calling.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. “Thought I’d call and see how you’re doing. Been a while.”
“C.J.? Oh, I was hoping you’d call,” she said. “Where are you?”
“I’m just cruising,” he said. “Someplace in Illinois, I don’t know what town I’m passing through at the moment. I just wanted to give you a call and make sure you’re okay.”