Spare the Lambs (15 page)

              “Is this it?”

              He nodded and said, “it’s a few minutes walk in the woods but this is as far as a car can get.”

              The “trap” voice in my head was screaming, but I ignored it.  I was able to put all my shots into a quarter area on the ranch target, I could run three miles at a slow but constant speed, and I had proven to myself that I could kill another human.  I could handle whatever these monsters had planned.  I cocked the hammer on my gun, making a satisfyingly menacing sound, and said, “turn off the car and hand me the keys.”  He did, never looking up from his lap, “wait until I open your door before trying to get out.  You try anything and you’re dead right here.”

I got out of the car, looked along the road for any witnesses or someone waiting to ambush me, and opened his door.  He got out of the car and we started walking into the trees.  The forest floor was covered in dried brown leaves that reminded me of games of hide-n-seek I played as a child.  Games that so many kids, at least seven that I know of, would never play again.  We walked for half an hour before James stopped and turned toward me.  His face was disturbing; it held fear, sadness, a little hope, but mostly relief.  I didn't realize a face could show that many expressions at once.

“Is this the spot?”  I asked.  He nodded once.  We were in a small circular area without trees.  Slightly off-center, there was a large flat stone that was a few feet tall.  It looked like some kind of natural altar.  I wondered if they chose that spot because they thought it had a deeper meaning and not just a clearing.  I didn’t see any signs that a murder had occurred; however, it had rained a couple of times since we found her body on the beach.  He might’ve led me to the wrong place, but I hadn’t seen another person in the woods, so I doubted there was an ambush.  I looked back at the boy, who hadn’t moved an inch, and asked, “How did you get her to come?”

He shrugged, “Don’t know, Lee brought her.”

“Did she tell you why she wouldn’t kill the kid?”

James shook his head, “No.  She just stared at Lee and cried for a few minutes.  Then, she said she wouldn’t do it and closed her eyes.”

I nodded, accepting that I would never know why she made her choice.  “What happened to the kid, the lamb, after you killed Judith?”

He shrugged again, “Gerald took him home.  That’s what he said he was going to do, at least.”

“You don’t even care what happened to the kid, do you?” James gave me a flat stare.  I told him, “Lee gave me the addresses of all the others.  You’re going to confirm them.”

He gave me a sarcastic smile and shook his head, “He couldn’t.  He never knew.  I never should’ve told him where I lived.  Eric fucking killed himself and he wasn’t even the weakest link.”

His callous feelings toward his friends, pissed me off.  I kicked him between the legs and he dropped to his knees.  I kicked him in the stomach and he fell over.  I kept kicking, hitting him in the sides, back and head.  He curled into a ball and held his hand up to stop me.  I stepped back, breathing hard.  It took him some time to tell me due to his gasping and wincing, but eventually he told me that Lily lived at 1725 Norman Ave apartment number 2.

I demanded he tell me where the others lived, but he just shook his head.  I figured he knew where they were, so I sat on his chest and punched him in the face.  I had to fight to keep my anger in check.  After each hit, I asked where Sammy and Gerald lived.  I couldn’t recognize what I was punching as a face by the time he told me where Sammy lived.  I wrote 600 Ewing St. apartment number 15 down in my bloodied notebook.

Once again, I thought about giving the kid to the police.  Did I have to kill this one too?  I could leave him here, drive back to town, call the police from a payphone and hear about the arrest later.  With the beating I gave him, he wouldn’t be able to escape before the cops arrived.  He might not even survive until the police found him. 

I was warring with myself, when someone stepped around me.  I almost shot at the figure, before I recognized it was Judith.  She walked over to James and stared down at him as he wheezed.  Something touched my shoulder and my head snapped around.  Eric stood slightly behind me.  He had placed a hand on my shoulder.  I don’t know if you can feel a delusion, or if his touch proves they are real ghosts.  But, if he was real enough to touch me, then why didn’t I hear him or the girl walking on the dead leaves?  Eric’s hand fell away and he walked to stand on the other side of James.

I reached down and grabbed James’s collar.  I dragged him over to the large rock and sat his back against it.  The position seemed to help his breathing, and he stopped wheezing and didn’t wince as much.  Both eyes were swollen shut, leaving only two little slits.  He watched me as I pointed my gun at him.  His shoulders slumped.  I asked, “Are you sorry that you killed two children?”

He shook his head and winced from the pain it caused.  “Nah.  I just,” he paused, “wonder why I liked it so much.”

No, arrest was too good enough for these monsters.  A large group, a murder, of crows took flight at the loud retort of the 9mm pistol.  I left James’s body there, his head against the rock with what looked like a halo of blood, and walked back to his car.

I drove back to the gym.  I was terrified that I would be pulled over like Ted Bundy.  While I wasn’t exactly coated in blood, a traffic officer wouldn’t fail to notice it if I got a ticket.  My leather gloves gleamed with the murderer’s blood.  I wanted to take them off, but I also didn’t want to leave any fingerprints.  As I pulled into the YMCA lot and parked his car, I noticed a coat had been thrown down with the trash on the floor of the passenger seat.  It didn’t fit, but it covered my blood stained hoodie until I could get home and destroy my clothes. 

I left his car in the abandoned lot with the windows rolled down low enough that anyone could reach in and unlock the doors.  I also left the keys in the ignition and went home.

April 30, 2001 from personal computer

              So many vehicles are stolen and never found in this city, but whenever I want one to be taken, no one touches it. 

          Work was uneventful.  Agent Johnston gave me the rundown on their case, and so far, I am in the clear.  He could barely disguise his loathing as he told me.  Probably because he realized I wasn't to blame for the Easter Murders taking so long to solve.  When there are no leads, nothing can be done.  When I got home, my kitten was waiting for me.  It’s nice having a furry little creature that loves me no matter what I do out in the world.  I got on my computer and searched for anything on James Levee.  It shocked me to see that he was already on the Missing Persons website.  Normally you have to wait at least twenty-four hours, but his case was sped up because they found his car with blood that matched his type.  The report said that the amount of blood found didn’t rule out that James was alive somewhere, but they checked all the hospitals to see if anyone matching his description was admitted, with no results.

              I remember a car had been stolen in the middle of summer with a dead body in the trunk.  The police found the car because it was filling the neighborhood with the stench of rotting corpse.  Someone stole that car, but a little blood prevented James’s disappearance from going unnoticed.  However, there are so many missing people that his have-you-seen-this-person posters might not make that much of a stir.  If they do, it will be a lot harder to find the others.

May 1, 2001 from personal computer

              No work today, so I looked for Lily.  Once I found her, I realized that James’s posters wouldn’t make it harder to find the remaining killers, it just made it impossible to catch them.  I went to Norman Ave, and located Lily's apartment building.  It was still early, too early for me to except most people to be up and moving around.  Her building had a functioning lock on the front door but a little work with a lock-picking kit that I stole from a thief when I started as an officer, got me into the building.  Once inside, I found that both apartment one and two had windows that faced the road.

              I was standing stupidly in the hallway, pleased that I could watch the apartment’s windows from the comfort of my car, when I heard a squeak from an old floorboard.  I froze.  If someone saw me and then the girl went missing I might not be able to stop the others.  The door to apartment number 1 opened.  I heard a woman grumble something and the door closed.  I ran out of the building and back to my car.  A woman in her late twenties wearing hospital scrubs came out of the building a minute after I had slammed my door.  I ducked down as far as I could in the driver’s seat until she had gotten into a blue car and drove off.

              As the sun broke over the tops of the surrounding buildings, I noticed that a light was on in Lily’s window.  Another five cigarettes and I finally got my first look at Lily’s red hair as she walked out of the building.  Her hair was a bright auburn and her skin looked very pale but still healthy.  She was rather attractive, for a child.  She would’ve grown up to be a beautiful woman, if she hadn’t killed children.  Now she wouldn’t grow any older.  She wore a big sweater, black jeans, and leather biker boots.  I watched as she walked over to the bus stop at the end of the block.  I turned the key in the ignition, but waited to see what she would do.

I waited and watched Lily until a city bus pulled up to the little glass enclosed bench.  She got on the bus and I pulled out into traffic.  If the bus had had rear windows, I couldn’t have avoided being noticed.  She rode the bus for thirty painful minutes.  I, like everyone else, normally passed any bus the first chance I got.  The bus seemed to stop every ten feet.  Finally, Lily got off at the mall.

I spent ten minutes looking for a parking spot and had lost her completely by the time I entered the mall.  I walked the length of it five times before I found her.  She almost bumped into me as she was leaving a coffee shop with a frozen coffee thing.  I sat on a bench and watched as she went from store to store.  I was worried I’d raise alarm bells as some kind of pedophile if people noticed I was staring at such a young girl.  However, that fear quickly went away as I realized most of the boys and men in the building were looking, if not staring, at her.

Between a clothing store and an adolescent jewelry store, she stopped and looked at a community broad.  At first, she didn’t give much more than a casual glance but then she froze with her drink halfway to her mouth.  I started walking toward her and I had the gun in my pocket.  I thought I could get close enough to, push the gun into her back and threaten her into leaving with me.  If she listened, she would quickly be off to her just rewards.

I was four feet away, when she dropped her drink, turned, and started to run.  She bounced off of me, quickly told me she was sorry, and ran out of the mall.  I know the only way she had to get anywhere was to use the bus, so I felt safe in taking the time to look at what had freaked her out.  I swore under my breath as I noticed a poster for the missing James Levee in the upper right corner of the board.

I ran out of the mall and straight to my car.  By the time I got over to the bus stop, Lily was getting on the bus.  It took twenty minutes to get back to her apartment.  She hopped off and ran to her apartment.  I pulled into a parking spot I could see the front door, but not her window.  I sat there trying to think of what she might do now that she knew two of her friends were gone and how I could use it to get her.

An hour later, I still didn’t know what to do.  My phone rang.  When I answered it, Agent Johnston told me, with girlish excitement, that Lily Summers had just called and confessed to being one of the Easter Murderers.  They were heading over to her apartment now and he wanted to know if I would be joining them.  I told him that I was out of town and wouldn’t be back until the start of my shift tomorrow.  The moment I hung up, I started my car and sped home.

I seriously thought about going and getting Samantha right then, but I decided against it.  Soon Lily would confirm that James was also a member of the Easter Murderers.  At that point, the police would figure out that the hunters were being hunted.  Their focus would shift from catching them to finding them before they were killed as well.  If Lily Summers knew where Samantha lived, Agent Johnston might set up a sting operation to catch the killer.  To catch me.  This one redheaded monster might have just kept the other three from receiving justice. 

The Charlesville Times, cover page.

May 2, 2001

Easter Murderer in Police Custody

Yesterday, the police took in a suspect in the Easter Murders.  Lily Summers, age 17, turned herself in to the police due to mounting pressure from the investigation.  Summers confessed to the murder of Michele Hardy in 1997.  She has also confessed to having criminal knowledge of the deaths of Mick Leon, Jill Carry, Eva Collins, and Judith Smith.  FBI Agent Johnston is confident that the girl will lead them to the remaining suspects in this case; Gerald, Sammy, and James as identified in Eric Moore’s suicide confession.

Lily Summers is the third daughter of Jason Summers and his deceased wife, Brittney Summers.  According to records, Summers is 54-year-old and currently receiving disability.  Lily’s oldest sister, Jasmine, age 23, is currently serving fifteen years in prison for the murder of Alex Hall.  She murdered her boyfriend after finding him in bed with another woman.  Her other sister, Tammy, age 19, is a single mother of two.