Gabriel's Revenge (The Adventures of Gabriel Celtic Book 2) (10 page)

Chapter 29

August 25, 1998

The man had heard of the discovery by one of his usual sources, the portable scanner he carried in his pocket when he was expecting such things… and he
had
been expecting it.

The call had come in when he was out in his garden, pruning the roses. He knew the wife and daughter would be returning today after lunch. They had arrived at almost the exact moment he had predicted he thought with satisfaction as he closed the lid on the old watch.

He gathered up his tools and made his way back to his quarters, depositing the tools there before immediately going back outside to start his walk. The location was across town, still plenty of time to get there before they took the body out.

It was a beautiful day for a walk, and he took his time, enjoying God’s great works as he travelled through the neighborhoods of his route. Old Mrs. Smith’s house was on the way, and she had a proliferating rose garden that almost equaled his.

Seeing she was out as he passed, he took the time to stop and talk with her, a ritual he performed several times a week as they conversed about growing methods and different hybrid lines that they each liked.

Although his senior by almost twenty years, she much preferred hybrid lines, the newer the better she always said. He was more old school, using some of the newer versions, but with a preference to heritage lines from days of old.

“To each his own,”
he thought with a smile as he said his goodbyes and continued toward his goal. Glancing again at his watch, he stepped up his pace, wanting to ensure that he arrived before they took out the body.

Approaching the address, he was pleased to see the level of activity that surrounded the house, 3 police cars, an ambulance, and most of the neighbors crowded around the well maintained home.

He smiled.

His next job would be to work the crowd, to make sure the conversations and emotions were channeled in the correct manner. Moving closer until he was noticed by one of the neighbors, he let the conversation take its course.

Neighbor: “He was so young!”

Man: “Yes, such a shame…in the prime of his life.”

Neighbor: “And his poor daughter, growing up without her father, oh my.”

Man: “Her way will be harder, indeed. But there is hope.”

Neighbor (whispering): “I did hear he was having an affair, not that I know first hand mind you, Jill down the street mentioned it the other day; she was next door the night they had a huge blowup in the street, the police came and everything!”

Gotcha!

Man: “Oh dear, I had no idea.”

The man grew silent then, thoughtful. He now had her right where he wanted her…and she was only the first.

Neighbor: “Are you ok? You looked pained.”

Man: “I’m sorry, it’s just that…knowing what I now know…well, I can’t help but hear this stanza repeating in my head.”

Neighbor: “Whatever is it? Please, tell me!”

Man, with thoughtful, pained look: “Well…. ‘Satan stands ready to fall upon the Wicked and seize them as his own.’”

The woman stood…aghast, then…realization, acceptance.

Neighbor: “Oh my God…I mean…oh my!”

Fully hooked, he had his believer. Now he needed her as an assistant.

Man: “Would you mind accompanying me, help me console your neighbors, I am…saddened.”

Neighbor: “Of course, of course, come, I’m your girl.”

The man smiled inwardly, he had but to go through the motions now to spread the word. This project was nearly complete.

***
.

Hell and damnation were on the neighborhood’s collective minds that afternoon, and the man should have been very happy…should have been.

The police cars were still across the road, recently joined by an old man he could only assume was the coroner. Knowing that the coroner was hardly ever called in on an accident, he had to assume the worst.

Someone had seen through the ruse.

When the realization had occurred to him, he was momentarily taken aback. But he quickly worked through it in his mind. After all, he had successfully dealt with this once already, surely this would be no more difficult a problem to dispose of.

As he watched from across the street, he noticed a couple of people leaving the premises, stopping momentarily to talk to the bereaved wife who was sitting in one of the squad cars.

The girl, of Asian decent of some sort, parted from the man with a wave before he went to talk to one of the officers. The uniform dug into his pocket and produced a small notebook, which the stranger took and quickly wrote in.

The man had never seen the stranger around town before; he would have remembered someone like him. He guessed him to be between 5’ 10” to 5’ 11”, rail thin but well built. His face revealed to the man someone who spent a lot of time outside, and was used to hardships. There was also a confidence about him, a confidence that could only be explained by experience…and success. This man had had much success in his life, but there was more. There was also a sadness about him, hard to detect, but there, one could see it in his eyes.

The man suddenly realized he must be looking at the infamous Gabriel Celtic. It would seem that the information he had heard about the man was true. He had apparently picked up something that labeled Mr. Johnstone’s accident as a murder.

“Well done Mr. Celtic,”
the man thought to himself.

He watched as the detective handed the notebook back to the police officer, then turned and started walking up the street. The man couldn’t resist following at a distance, intently interested now in this man.

Celtic kept eyes ahead as he walked, his short blond ponytail swinging in tune with his steps. The man watched him walk up to a Jeep, hesitate for a moment, and then walk on determinedly, picking up his pace as his steps followed one another in an increasing pace.

Anger!

The man smiled as he recognized a weakness in his foe; the man wasn’t perfect. But then, who was?

He hung back until the blond man was around the corner. Pulling out a small notebook, he wrote a note on it, ripped off the first sheet and stuck the notebook back in the pocket. Looking around to make sure he was alone, he then walked past the vehicle, stopping just long enough to stick the paper behind the wiper before he moved on, back toward his quarters.

As he continued on with his walk, his steps surged forward with confidence. He always looked forward to a challenge.

Chapter 30

August 26, 1998

It had taken most of an hour of walking to calm down enough to where I felt it safe to drive, safe for others on the road I should say. When I arrived back at the Jeep, I noticed a piece of paper under the windshield wiper.

I pulled it from underneath the blade, opening it to read as I walked around the truck. I stopped dead in my tracks as my eyes scanned the words staring up at me.

‘Another worthy opponent.’

“What the hell?”

Looking quickly around, I saw but only a few people out up and down the street. My fingerprints were unfortunately already on the piece of paper I realized as I gently held it in the palm of my hand. Opening the door to the car, I gently placed the note on the passenger seat, hoping to preserve any evidence.

Canvassing the nearest houses around my vehicle, I could find no one that had seen anyone suspicious, nor anyone at all that had lingered around the Jeep.

Finally getting in myself, I looked through the glove box until I finally found a fairly clean envelope, where I gently placed the note. I would take it to the lab tomorrow to see if Percy Vogel could glean anything from it.

Uneasy, I sat in my seat for a few moments, thinking about the ominous words on the note. I could only assume it was written by the person who had murdered Bill Johnstone, and Frank.

The note also pointed to the fact that this person had been at the crime scene! The realization that he had been there made me shudder, but also put my mind into motion. To what end had the murderer come back to the scene of his crime. Thinking about it, I realized that there were too many reasons to try to isolate now.

It did lead me to another idea however. Had Abby taken pictures of the crowd on any of crime scenes? I could talk to her about this tomorrow, but if she had used a telephoto lens, maybe she had accidently caught a few shots of our perp.

Feeling I had explored the subject as far as I could while sitting in my car, I drove back to the house and retrieved the files and notebook from the safe. I combed through the collection to see if any of them were similar in nature to the one today, not holding much hope of finding anything.

I found two.

A little over a year ago, July, 1997, one Mr. Loren Gracen was found dead in his barn by his oldest son Billy, aged 13. Mr. Gracen was holding an old electric drill in his hands, lying in a puddle of water on the concrete floor. They had had to pry his fingers off of the drill to remove the body.

And then again, six months ago, Ms. Martha Jackson was found in her tub by the neighbor lady who lived downstairs. Her name was also Martha, Martha Collier. Seemed Ms. Collier owned the building, and got worried when Ms. Jackson didn’t show up at 8:00 in front of the duplex to go out to a bar as planned. When Martha #1 didn’t show, Martha #2 let herself in with her key after no one answered the door.

She found her in the tub, a curling iron hanging in the water. It looked to the cops on the scene like it was just an accident, the curling iron having fallen off of the sink where it normally sat. Case closed.

There was one other oddity to this case, Ms. Jackson lived in Ripley County, and it was the only case in Frank’s collection that had originated outside of our county. But Frank had included it in the pile, and I know he was onto something; so it was a relevant case to me.

Of course, these cases could be just what they seemed, accidents. Going through the two old cases and comparing them to Mr. Johnstone’s, I could find very little in the way of a connection between them.

Two were in our county, one not. One was a farmer, one a middle manager, and Ms. Jackson worked in a factory. Two men, one woman, and the age of the group ranged from 30 to 46.

On the off chance that this was political, I might look up their voting affiliations when I got the chance, but I held this out as a last chance, Hail-Mary play. I could not fathom politically motivated murders in this part of the country in this day and age.

All in all, the only thing these cases seem to have in common was death by electrocution.

I had decided to lay aside the other cases I was going to present to Allen and concentrate on these three for now. Johnstone was new and an active case; so it made sense to focus on the similar crimes…if they were indeed crimes at all.

I determined that I would go through all of the files again in detail, looking for anything that might pop out knowing what I now knew. It was a long and arduous task, and I found myself waking up at 9:30, my head lying amid the files where I had dozed off.

Up to that point, I had found nothing of note; so I went to the living room to lie down, highly frustrated. 

Maybe this was just a serial murderer that had no real plan; maybe he just liked killing, the victims random, the first person he saw on a Tuesday morning, or anyone that jumped the line in front of him at the coffee shop.

No, there was something there; more than one person had told me Frank had found something, a thread linking the killings. My eyes were heavy and sandy feeling as I finally closed them, wondering what the thread was that tied this all together.

Before losing consciousness totally, I mumbled a request to Frank.

“Help me out here buddy….willya?”

Chapter 31

August 26, 1998

Moans filled the room as they both felt the release of an orgasm simultaneously. After a few moments, Abby crawled down off of Nate and laid on her belly beside him, the dew of lovemaking glistening on her back and ass. She felt wonderful…and out of breath.

She sensed Nate’s hand fall beside her onto the bed, then start caressing her back.

“Wow,” he said with a hoarse voice, “that was fantastic, you’re an animal!”

She smiled, as she reached over with her hand and patted his face twice.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she whispered as she rose up to kiss him on the lips before rolling over on her back.

Nate’s hand again found its way to her body, this time starting on her belly and ending up on her small breast, lovingly fondling her nipple.

“You’ve been off your game for the last couple of weeks, good to see you enjoy yourself for a change,” Nate mentioned as he rolled onto his side and moved his hand to the far breast.

“I had a good day,” Abby moaned, putting her hand on his, “well, a productive day.”

Pulling his hand off her breast, she turned to face him.

“What I meant to say was, I’m sorry about that poor man that was murdered, but I feel like I made a difference today, and Gabe was amazing!”

“I’m getting a little concerned with your fascination with this Gabe fellow. I didn’t know you preferred older men.”

Smiling, she pushed his shoulder over and crawled up on his chest, looking him in the face. “Nothing like that studly,” she murmured into his lips. “He’s just a really interesting guy; you’ll see when you get to meet him.”

“Speaking of interesting,” Nate started, pulling away just a little, “I find it interesting that you go to South America for vacation for a week, and come back with him on the same plane?”

Abby rolled off and got out of bed, wrapping a towel around herself, agitated. “I met him at the airport; I told you that,” she said over her shoulder as she walked out of the room.

“Hey wait! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it… where you going?”

Silence was followed a few moments later by, “In the kitchen, sex makes me hungry.”

He heard the refrigerator door shut, and then Abby re-entered the room, licking on a huge spoon loaded with ice-cream.

“Hey! Don’t bring that messy stuff into this bed; it’ll get on everything!” 

“It’s my bed ace,” Abby said, propping herself against the pillow at the head of the bed as she continued to lick the spoon greedily.

“Sides, a little ice cream never killed anybody.”

Finishing with the dessert, she looked down at the melted cream left in the spoon.

“Whatever shall I do with the leftover messy stuff now?”

Before Nate could answer, she scooted down and started dribbling the cream on his belly, and lower. He was becoming hard again, and she hadn’t done anything…yet.

Giggling at his moans, she leaned over and started slowly licking his belly, working her way down.

“Like I said,” she mumbled between licks, “A little ice cream never killed anybody.”