The Reckoning (21 page)

FORTY-FIVE

Michael was both disappointed and annoyed to
see that it wasn’t Donna who responded to his ringing of the doorbell, it was
her housemate. He immediately pulled out the shotgun he had taken from Frank
Morgan, which he’d kept hidden beneath the jacket he’d stolen at the Morgan
farm.

“Back inside and keep quiet!” he ordered,
pointing the shotgun at her to make it clear what would happen if she didn’t do
as instructed.

“What do you want?” Polly wanted to know, her
voice trembling with fear, as she edged back and Michael stepped into the
house, nudging the door shut behind him once he was inside.

“Where’s Donna?” Michael demanded, ignoring
the question from the woman before him. He kept his voice low to avoid alerting
anyone else who might be in the house to his presence.

“She-she’s not here,” Polly told him, her
entire body shaking as she tried desperately, without success, not to focus on
the two black holes filled with menace that stared at her from the end of the
shotgun.

“Where is she?” he wanted to know, his finger
twitching on the triggers. “Where’s Donna?” When she didn’t answer him he
became more insistent, and stepped closer to her until the muzzle of the
shotgun was just a couple of inches from her nose, which made her look
cross-eyed as she remained focused on it.

“I-I don’t know,” Polly stammered. “I think
sh-she’s still at work, she h-hasn’t c-come home yet.”

“Dammit!” Michael swore as the plan he had
come up with, which should have been so simple, fell apart. His mind raced as
he tried to come up with an alternative; only two possibilities occurred to
him. He could either stay where he was and wait for Donna to come home, and he
had no idea when that was likely to happen, or he could go to the police
station and catch her there.

Though he didn’t like to admit it – he
thought of himself as a patient person – he didn’t have what it took to sit
around and wait for Donna to finish work and come home. It was a prospect made
all the more unappealing by the knowledge that he didn’t have a clue how long
it would be before she finished. It could be hours for all he knew.

Since he didn’t have the patience to wait,
that meant he would have to go the police station, and trust the storm to
prevent anyone seeing him. With that decision made, he was left with the
problem of Polly. He couldn’t shoot her, he had enough sense to realise that;
if he shot her he’d alert everyone in the street, and he’d have to run, like
he’d been doing all day. He’d never be able to get the revenge he’d come back
to Greenville for with people looking for him.

“On your knees!” he ordered sharply,
following her with the shotgun as she obeyed him and knelt. The fear he could
see in her eyes increased as she dropped to the floor, and he felt a warm glow
spread through him, settling in his loins.

“Wh-what are you going to d-do to me?” she
asked in a tremulous voice.

Michael guessed that she was aware of what he
had done to Danielle, Emma and Melanie, and was afraid that she wasn’t going to
do the same or similar to her. She didn’t need to worry about that, he thought;
her fear might arouse him but her body turned him off. It wasn’t that she was
older than the other girls, though he was sure some people would suspect that
was the case, it was because she was fat.

Polly wasn’t grossly fat, but she was
definitely overweight, and Michael had always found fat girls a turn-off. His
first girlfriend had been fat; he no longer remembered what it was that had
attracted him to her initially, he just remembered that she had been largest
girl in his class and she had forever put him off dating fat girls. Things had
been fine between them, more than fine, until he saw her in a bikini.

Kim had looked alright when she was dressed,
but when she stripped down to a bikini he had found himself repulsed.

“P-please d-don’t h-hurt me,” Polly pleaded,
looking up the length of the shotgun’s barrel to his face. “Please!”

He saw a hint of relief flicker in her eyes
when he lowered the shotgun, set the butt on the floor and leaned the weapon
against the wall of the passage. Her relief quickly disappeared when he took
out the knife he’d killed Andy and his girlfriend with.

For some reason the knife scared her more
than the shotgun had. She had been trembling before, but at the sight of the
knife, its blade thick with blood, her body began shaking uncontrollably. She
was more frightened than any of the other girls he’d attacked, as evidenced by
the way she lost control of her bladder.

Michael wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or
disgusted that Polly was so scared of him that she pissed herself. On the one
hand, the fear he saw in her excited him so much he thought he was going to cum
in his pants, but on the other, it turned his stomach to think that the mere
sight of a knife was enough to frighten her to that extent.

“PLEASE!” she sobbed.

He looked down on her for a moment as she
sobbed, her chest rising and falling rapidly and tears running down her cheeks.
She was so pathetic, he couldn’t believe it; even Melanie Nelson, who’d only
been fourteen when he raped and murdered her, hadn’t seemed so desperately
wretched.

Finally, when he’d had enough of her pitiful
sobbing, he moved forward, being careful not to step in the patch of wet carpet
where she’d pissed herself. He stabbed once, slicing the jugular as the blade
penetrated the side of her neck, and quickly stepped back to avoid the blood
that sprayed up.

From his position by the door he watched as
Polly, seemingly in slow motion, toppled backward, blood spurting from the
wound in her neck to paint the walls and even the ceiling. After a few moments,
though, the pressure dropped as her heart ceased beating and the rest of her
blood merely soaked the carpet beneath her.

When the body had stopped twitching, he moved
forward to retrieve the knife. Indifferent to the fresh layer of blood that
coated the blade he returned the weapon to his jacket pocket, and then he
collected the shotgun.

Before he opened the door and left the house,
Michael peered out through the small semi-circular window in it. The storm
outside made it difficult to see much further than about twenty feet, but he
supposed that was a good thing. The poor visibility made it that much more
unlikely that he would be spotted while on his way to the police station.

A surge of excitement swept through him at
the thought of what he was going to do. He turned off the passage light, opened
the door and stepped out into the storm once again. He couldn’t help thinking
that the storm was a sign that his decision to return to Greenville, to revenge
himself on Donna and Denton was the right one – in so many of the movies he’d
seen where a wronged man sought revenge, they did so on a night that was
stormy.

*****

Michael was disappointed when he reached the
police station and discovered it locked up and in darkness. As far as he could
tell, Donna wasn’t there, yet something made him decide to go round to the back
door, just to be certain. That was when he happened on the second sign that his
quest for revenge was meant to be.

Sitting in the car park at the side of the
police station was the red sports car that belonged to Jason Denton. Why the
sports car was at the police station, he didn’t know, but he took it to mean
that Denton and Donna were together, and would be returning there at some
point. All he had to do was wait, and with a bit of luck he would be able to
revenge himself on both of them at the same time.

Aggrieved by the thought of having to wait,
when he had killed Polly and left the house to avoid waiting, he vented his
frustrations on Denton’s car. He scratched the paint, smashed the lights and
slashed the tyres, and felt so much better for having done so.

*****

The damage to the sports car wasn’t visible
straight away, the rain reduced visibility too much. It wasn’t until Jason got
out of Donna’s car that he saw what had been done, that he saw the smashed
lights and slashed tyres.

“Bloody hell!” he swore, stopping in his
tracks.

“What’s the matter?” Donna asked as she made
her way round to join him, she didn’t need him to answer, though. She saw what
the matter was the moment she reached his side. “Bloody hell!” she echoed
Jason’s sentiment.

Together, they walked slowly round the car,
taking in the full extent of the vandalism. All four tyres had been slashed,
every light had been smashed, the side mirrors had been broken off and the
paint on every panel had been scratched, multiple times.

“Who could have done this?” she couldn’t help
asking; at the same time she wondered how much it would cost to repair the
damage done to the expensive vehicle. She wasn’t sure she actually wanted to
know the answer to that, figuring that it would probably make her cry, even
though it wasn’t her car.

Jason shrugged. “No idea,” he said.
“Yesterday, I’d have said it could be anyone from the village, given they
thought I was the one murdering the girls, but by now they should all know that
it was Michael Davis. Whoever it was, it’s clear that they really don’t like
me; I just hope the insurance will cover it, there’s no way I can afford the
repair costs out of my own pocket.”

“Do you think there’s any connection between
this and the vandalism at the Dean Stables?” Donna wanted to know. She couldn’t
imagine what sort of connection there might be, but two acts of vandalism in
the village in the space of a day was too much of a coincidence for her.

“Not a clue,” Jason admitted. He knew almost
nothing about the vandalism at the Dean stables, so he couldn’t say what sort
of connection, if any, there was.

Donna gave a shiver then as a larger than
average rain drop ran down the back of her neck. “Come on, let’s get inside,”
she said, turning away from the damaged sports car to hurry across the small
car park to the back door of the police station. “I’ll make us both a coffee,
take some details, and call DI Anderson; he might want someone else to handle
the investigation into the vandalism, especially since he already has DS Worth
here dealing with the murder of the Morgans.” The mere thought of the Morgans
was enough to cause a rebellion in her stomach, which she squelched firmly.

“Maybe,” Jason said uncertainly, “but I’d
think DS Worth has his hands full with the Morgans; there isn’t much in the way
of evidence for him to work with as far as I could see.”

*****

From his position huddled in the bushes at
the back of the car park, Michael watched Donna and Denton as they got out of
Donna’s car and discovered what he had done to Denton’s car. He continued to
watch them as they circled the red sports car, which no longer looked as good
as it had, and then, when they started toward the back door, he left his hiding
place.

Thankful for the storm, which made his
footsteps almost impossible to hear – he couldn’t even hear them himself – he
hurried across the car park in pursuit of the objects of his desire for
vengeance. As he got closer, he switched the shotgun from his right hand to his
left and took out the knife, holding it loosely at his side, ready.

Mentally, he swore when he heard Donna and
Denton mention the Morgans, he couldn’t believe they had discovered the couple
he’d murdered. He didn’t imagine they would never be found, but he hadn’t
expected them to be found so soon. He’d killed Ellie Morgan before she could
call the police or anyone else, hadn’t he? She’d been reaching for the phone
when he shot her. It pissed him off that his murder of the Morgans had been
discovered so quickly, but he consoled himself with the thought that they
clearly didn’t know he was responsible.

Michael caught up with Donna and Denton in
the doorway of the police station, and, before they knew he was there,
immediately buried the blade of the knife he held in the small of Denton’s
back. Wanting to cause as much damage as he could, he twisted the knife as he
wrenched the blade free and then stabbed again, aiming for Denton’s kidney, not
that he was certain where it was.

Jason cried out as the knife was plunged into
his back, arching away from the assault. He stumbled forward when he was
stabbed a second time, tripping over Donna’s heels, as she stopped and turned
to find out what was wrong. He fell into the wall of the passage before sliding
to the floor.

Donna just managed to avoid being knocked to
the floor by Jason as he fell, doing so only by executing a very ungraceful
pirouette type move when he stumbled into her. Once she had recovered her
balance she turned to find out what had caused Jason to fall, and found herself
face to muzzle with the shotgun in Michael’s hands.

How she managed to avoid wetting herself she
would never know.

“Hello, Donna,” Michael said, kicking the
door closed behind him as he moved further into the police station.

“What are you doing here, Michael?” Donna
asked, somehow able to keep all but the most minor of tremors from her voice.
“I thought you were in town somewhere, trying to hide from the police.”