The Merry Pranked (19 page)

Gaining access to the house had been simple; even though she was older now, whenever she knocked on anyone’s door and told them she was in trouble that someone was after her and could they help, they always let her in. In the rush for the phone to call the police or 911, no one ever thought to take the time to re-lock the door, leaving it open for her Daddy to follow through. There was always that moment of realization that crossed their faces when her Daddy rushed them before they could dial the phone; in some cases it almost looked comical. After that it was just a matter of subduing them, which wasn’t all that hard for her Daddy; there’d be some screaming, but her Daddy would always take care of that. As she said, he always did his research, and when he knew there was a young child in the home, it was always just a matter of threatening the safety of that young child if they kept screaming to get them to quiet down.

Her Daddy went to work tying up the woman. He’d brought the tools of his trade with him. He liked to use duct tape, he felt it secured these evil women more efficiently than rope; so far no one had ever broken free.

The woman’s son was in his room still napping. Before he could start screaming, as a child tends to do, her Daddy had slapped some duct tape across his mouth, muffling his surprised screams. He also quickly secured his arms and feet with duct tape and carried him into the living room. It was always a good idea to keep a child in view if you wanted one of these women to cooperate. If they started putting up a fight, a simple knife cut across the cheek of their young son or daughter, and the sight of that blood would make things move along easier once again.

There wasn’t much she could do at this point; her Daddy had to punish and discipline this woman, so it was all him. She merely watched; she watched as he stripped her down and punished her with his hard thingy. She was ready to kill, but her Daddy wasn’t going to let her participate in the killing of any of his women. Once he’d finished punishing them with his thingy, he liked to take his knife and finish them off; he seemed to have a lot of energy at that moment and loved to just vent it by stabbing them again and again and again; she didn’t know why; she suspected that was what he’d been instructed to do by God. He said voices spoke to him in his head; it only seemed logical that that voice was the voice of God; after all, her Daddy was special. She just sat there and watched as her Daddy punished the woman, until she stopped moving. Her Daddy pulled up his pants and looked in her direction.

“Are you ready?” he asked her. “Are you ready to punish?”

“Yes Daddy,” she said.

“Good,” he said, bringing his bloodied knife over to her on the couch. The little boy, who was lying bound on the couch beside her, had stopped struggling; he’d been watching what was happening to his mother and simply gone silent. Maybe he knew his mother was evil and that finally her time had come; it made what happened easier to accept.

He stood before her and handed her the knife. “Finish off the kid,” he said. “He’s the spawn of evil.”

Gail looked over at the little boy; he had a vacant, faraway look in his eyes. He didn’t look right.

“This one is yours,” said her Daddy. “Kill him.”

Gail got off the couch and knelt down beside it, hovering over the silent boy. Her Daddy had explained everything to her; he had to find her a younger victim for her first kill. Adults were tougher, but little kids softer and easier to sink a knife into; it would be easier for her; it was important to take baby steps; once again, he was looking after her.

The child still had a blank stare. Maybe that was what evil did when it was finally caught; retreat into itself.

“Do it, honey,” her Daddy said; she could hear the love in his voice.

Gail held the knife over the little boy and lowered it; it stabbed into him, awakening him from his vacant thoughts; he immediately started screaming and crying, although the duct tape kept everything muffled. He also started struggling, but her Daddy had moved to the end of the couch and he immediately reached over and held the boy still, grabbing him by his shoulders.

“You need to put more force behind it, honey,” he said to her.

He was right. She’d played with various corpses, and knew it wasn’t always easy to stick a knife into them, but she’d thought that was because they were corpses. She figured living sinners were easier to stab; she hadn’t realized it could be the same.

Not wanting to disappoint her Daddy, Gail lifted the knife once again, and this time with more effort, brought it down hard, into the little boy’s body; this time it sunk down deep within him; it was satisfying; her Daddy looked proud. The little boy started squirming some more.

“Don’t stop, honey,” her Daddy said. “It’s only fair that you kill them quickly and fast; clean their evil with the blade of your knife. The more you stab the more they’re saved.”

She understood. Without further hesitation, she began stabbing the little boy over and over again, even after he stopped squirming all together. It was tiring work; she had actually worked up a sweat; she had kept stabbing and stabbing until her Daddy had reached out and stopped her from stabbing some more.

“That was good, honey,” her Daddy said, a satisfied look on his face.

She looked down at her work; she had done good.

Not all situations allowed them to hang around after a kill, but this one did; she was lucky, because she had made her first kill and they had time to celebrate that fact. Both were covered in blood, so the obvious next move was to take a shower. Her Daddy explained to her that it was a special day and a special moment. He was sure this time God, whose bidding they were doing, would allow them to make a baby, so after they’d showered they’d made love; her Daddy had explained to her that what they did was making love; he’d explained to her the difference between that and fucking. She hoped this time it worked.

They spent the day at that house; it was rare they could stop and enjoy a meal after a kill, but the fridge was well stocked, they knew no one was probably coming over, so they could take the time they needed and enjoy the rest of the day. Her Daddy had also said it would be rude of them not to hang around and take care of the man who’d be coming home. He’d married an evil bitch, so it only stood to reason he was evil as well. Her Daddy always thought these things through; he was smart like that. Not only was the man probably evil, but in killing him it would give them more time to put some distance between them and the discipline house. If they left before he got home, he’d find the woman and child and call the police and they’d start investigating right away; probably not a problem, as they were just passing through anyway, but why take the chance. If they stayed and killed the man, not only could they have a fun relaxing day in a nice home, but when they did leave they’d probably have more time to pull off their disappearing act. The bodies could even lay there for days before they were discovered, based on his research, giving them lots of time to get out of town and far away. It seemed like the only prudent thing to do.

Her Daddy had overwhelmed the man easily. He walked through the door calling out to the woman that he was home; her Daddy let him walk down the front hallway towards the living room, when he stepped out of a dining room and plunged his knife into the man’s back, sending him falling to his knees and the ground. Her Daddy rolled him over quickly and stabbed him a few more times in the stomach. The man had let out an initial scream, but the swiftness of the attack had pretty much kept him silent – bewildered.

“You finish him off, honey,” her Daddy said to her, holding out the bloody knife for her to take. She had come out of the living room to watch her Daddy at work.

“You mean it?” she asked.

Her Daddy nodded his head,
Yes
. She rushed to him and took the knife from his hands. Two kills in one day; he was spoiling her. Without hesitation, because she really wanted to please her Daddy, she went to work enthusiastically stabbing the man; stabbing and stabbing and stabbing, until he lay still. She looked up at her Daddy and he smiled down at her; she had done good.

A smile played across Gail’s face as she sipped her tea and sat in her hotel room. Memories of her Daddy were all she had left; they always brought a smile to her face.

chapter
SEVENTEEN

it’d
BEEN
a long day for Detectives Ray Michaels and Bryan Stork. Forensics went over Harry Madwin’s house with a fine-tooth comb and came up with a lot of hits; Ray hadn’t expected anything less. Seeing how the crime scene belonged to one of the city’s long time criminals and killers, he anticipated there’d be prints from a lot of guys and gals who had been through the system before. Degenerates liked to hang out with other degenerates.

Ray and Bryan, along with some uniformed officers, had tried to canvas the street for information, but as Detective Carroll had warned them, a wall of silence had gone up and stayed up. The police force was doing everything it could to investigate this triple homicide, but were fighting against long held prejudices; Ray couldn’t help wondering how Morgan was doing in regards to information. It’d be a sad reflection on law and order if he had in fact garnered more information than them at this time.

“This is strange,” said Bryan, almost to himself; he was sitting across from Ray and going over a copy of the forensics report.

“What’ve you got?” asked Ray.

Bryan looked up at him, realizing he had spoken out loud.

“C’mon, share it,” said Ray.

“It’s one of the fingerprints at the house, the crime scene. They belong to a reporter for the Lakeview Examiner. Leslie Marshall.”

“Leslie Marshall,” said Ray, “the guy that writes those Brannigan novels?”

Bryan looked at him, puzzled.

“Yeah, I know, I read,” said Ray. “It’s a Detective series. Crime novels. What, he’s got priors?”

“No, he’s clean.”

“Then how in the hell do we have his fingerprints?”

“We have them from way back,” said Bryan. “Seems when he was in college here, he had a job working security at the airport. That required his needing to be bonded, security clearances, and all employees were required to provide fingerprints on file; back then they were sharing those fingerprints with us; with the individual’s permission, of course.”

“So what do you think? Maybe he’s into drugs. Harry’s supplying him? Rich guy like him has the money to indulge his demons.”

“Or maybe he and Harry belong to the same book club,” said Bryan with a shit-eating grin.

“Up yours,” said Ray.

“Let’s not speculate,” said Bryan getting out of his seat. “I say we head over to the Examiner and talk to our author; see what he has to say.”

Leslie had settled into his day; the distraction of work helped a little but he still couldn’t get himself out of his own head. He was still troubled knowing the true nature of Gail, and the fact he had done nothing about it. Her explanation for the murder of the two men who worked in finance hadn’t been convincing; they were evil she’d said, her usual refrain, but she couldn’t explain how they were evil, and hadn’t bothered trying; for all he knew they were just two chumps who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and paid the ultimate price for that. They also probably left behind a lot of loved ones who also didn’t deserve to be touched by the horrors of murder. She was a killer; it was as simple as that. He knew that and he wasn’t saying anything to the authorities, so what did that make him? If she killed again, some innocent, not a goon in Morgan’s crew, would it be on his head? Could he live with himself? There were no answers and he knew sitting there obsessing about her wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

She’d said she had done him a favor.
Had she?
She’d killed Harry and he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over his death. Deep down he knew, as a civilized man in the 21
st
Century, he should be ashamed of that. Once you started believing life was cheap and expendable, what did that say about you? Was his obsession destroying his humanity? Possibly. At the same time, Gail’s killing Harry
had
been a favor – the strangest favor he’d ever received – and turning her in just wouldn’t be right. Letting her live and continue to kill was wrong, but so was the alternative.

Leslie realized he wasn’t getting anywhere, both in his debate regarding Gail and his work for the paper; deadlines were looming and he had responsibilities. There was only one thing to do, immerse himself in the stories he needed to write and try to forget about his other life on the dark side of the tracks. It seemed life had other plans for him, however. He’d just barely got down to work when Detectives Ray Michaels and Bryan Stork darkened his office door.

“You Leslie Marshall?” asked Ray, even though he all ready knew the answer to that question.

“And you’re?”

“Detective Ray
Michaels and this is my partner Detective Bryan Stork from homicide,” said Ray. “Do you have a couple of minutes? We’d like to talk with you.”

The sudden urge to flee gripped Leslie. How had they known? A full day hadn’t even passed and they were there for him. He wanted to run but couldn’t, not realistically. All he could do was his best not to look overly disturbed and guilty by their presence. Life had been so much simpler before thoughts of revenge.

“You do know I’m an entertainment reporter, don’t you?” he asked as the two Detectives entered his office and took a seat in front of his desk.

“I don’t read the Examiner,” said Bryan, “So I guess I didn’t know that.”

“I think you’re looking for our News Division or possibly Walter. Walter Souchak?”

“I do know Walter,” said Bryan. “But, no, we’re looking for you.”

“How do you know Harry Madwin?” asked Ray.

“I know of him,” said Leslie.

“Enough that your prints would be found in his home,” asked Bryan, “at a crime scene?”

Shit, he’d left his fingerprints behind? He hadn’t been wearing gloves and the way that one guy was tossing him around; it was possible he left more than a few prints behind. Gloves! That was basic. How could he have not known that?

“How do you know Harry Madwin, Mr. Marshall?” asked Ray. “How did your prints get into his house and our crime scene?”

“I wouldn’t imagine he’s part of the city’s entertainment scene,” said Bryan.

They were fishing around and trying to intimidate him; he could see that. In many ways just their presence in his office was intimidating. He could come clean and turn in Gail, after all he had acted in self defense, but somehow he didn’t think they would care; and despite himself, he really hadn’t decided what he wanted to do in that regard. He didn’t know if he ever wanted to see her again, but he did know that right now he didn’t want to be the cause of her downfall.

He had to think quickly.

“Harry Madwin is part of my past,” said Leslie. “I visited him a couple of days back.”

“May we ask why?” asked Ray.

“Harry, along with Morgan Neil murdered my parents when I was ten-years-old.”

He could see a brief look of surprise cross the faces of both Detectives; they were veterans so they hadn’t revealed much, just enough. They obviously weren’t anticipating just such an answer.

“And you decided after all these years to pay him a visit,” asked Bryan. “It a reunion date or something like that?”

“You’ve got a smart mouth, Detective,” said Leslie, looking directly at Detective Stork.

He was generally an upstanding member of society and had done nothing wrong as far as he was concerned (okay, maybe morally), so he didn’t feel he had to put up with Detective Stork’s attitude like he was being sweated in an interrogation room. As far as he knew, he really didn’t need to be talking to them at all, unless they wanted to arrest him. He’d given them an explanation and if they didn’t like it they could take the next step and haul him in for further questioning, if not he owed them nothing more. Allowing them to remain here questioning him, was a courtesy on his part.

“Why would you pay the killer of your parents a social call, Mr. Marshall?” asked Ray, interrupting the tension that seemed to be building between his partner and Leslie.

“You want to know the truth, Detective?” asked Leslie. He was suddenly feeling bold. The way he figured it, people were always trying to keep the truth from them; most information they received probably had to be pulled out of their suspects with a lot of difficulty. Throwing out information in a matter-of-fact way might just throw them off their game and give him the upper hand.

“I could live with it,” said Ray.

“I went there to kill him.”

Leslie paused to look at the two Detectives. His last remark seemed to have thrown them off their game; they hadn’t expected an answer like that. Leslie could see the wheels spinning in their heads. He’d definitely taken them off-guard. He was impressed that they recovered quickly, once again hiding their surprise;
the value of being experienced
, he thought.

“And you returned last night to finish the job?” asked Bryan.

As Bryan looked at Leslie, he found it hard to believe this man could have taken out Harry and his two buddies, although from his appearance, he looked like he had been in a couple of scuffles recently.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, Detectives,” said Leslie. “I went there to kill him. Revenge for my parents and my brother and sister. I’ve been living with their deaths for a very long time. Actually, I’ve been waiting for guys like you two to finally bring them to justice; not necessarily for my family's murder but for some other murder or crime they’d committed, and you guys haven’t done a thing. I was getting tired of waiting and thought maybe I’d take justice into my own hands.”

“How’d that work out for you?” asked Ray.

“I was lucky to get out of there alive,” said Leslie. “I shouldn’t have visited him. It was stupid. I learned my lesson the hard way.”

Sure he’d learned his lesson in an alley near Duffy’s, but they didn’t need to know that.

“Let me get this straight, you met up with Harry Madwin with the intention of killing him and he let you walk away?” asked Bryan. “That’s a hard pill to swallow.”

“I more or less crawled away,” said Leslie. “Once he knew who I was he seemed amused by it all. A ten-year-old, after all this time, shows up to exact revenge. He didn’t take me seriously and roughed me up. I got lucky.”

“You have a gun, Mr. Marshall?” asked Ray.

Leslie looked at him.

“I mean, how did you plan to kill Harry?” asked Ray.

“I brought a large kitchen knife with me,” said Leslie. He had a gun, but it was illegally purchased and it was used in the murders last night; he might have to consider sending it to sleep with the fishes in the lake before it got him in trouble.

“So let me get this straight,” said Bryan, “you, a fella whom I imagine hasn’t been in many fights in his life, decided to kill one of the city’s deadliest men, and you thought it would be a good idea to use a weapon that required you to get up close and personal to do so?”

“My family’s death has haunted me for a long time, Detective. What can I say, I wasn’t thinking clearly. That’s what happened, Detectives. As for the events of last night, I know nothing, but if you have any information you’d like to share, I can escort you both down to Walter’s office; we were talking about it earlier, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a private audience with some Detectives working the case.”

“We’ll pass on the interview,” said Ray standing up. Bryan also stood up.

“I suppose you have an alibi for last night?” asked Ray, “Or were you home alone?”

“I was with a woman,” said Leslie. “Gail Russell, the artist. Let me get you her number, I’m sure she’ll verify everything.”

Leslie grabbed a post-it note pad and wrote down Gail’s cell phone number. They had discussed this last night in the car; they’d be each other’s alibi on the off chance someone came questioning either one of them about the murders. They’d covered all the details of their night together so their stories would be straight. He hadn’t thought they’d need to do so, but luckily Gail had insisted; she’d been right. Leslie handed the piece of paper to Ray.

“Gail Russell,” Ray said reading the post-it.

“She’s an artist with a show in town,” said Leslie. “Not bad. You should check it out.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Ray putting her phone number into his coat pocket.

“Anything else, Detectives?”

“Not at the moment,” said Ray, “but if we think of anything we’ll be in touch.”

“I’ll be here,” said Leslie.

Leslie put his hand out towards Ray, who shook it. He then extended it to Bryan, who did the same.

“I know it was stupid, Detectives,” said Leslie. “I don’t know what I thought I was doing. It’s like I’d lost my mind or something, but I can assure you that after my meeting with Harry Madwin the only one hurting was me. He knocked some sense into me.”

“So you’re not planning to go after Morgan Neil?” asked Bryan with a smile.

“If you run into him, Detectives, tell him he can sleep nights.”

Both Ray and Bryan turned and left Leslie’s office. Leslie sat down. It all seemed like a plausible story; if they had anything concrete on him, or truly did suspect he was there last night, they probably would have taken him into custody. As it was, they had nothing and he had an alibi.