A Mass Murderer - Tears for the dead (ADDITIONAL BOOK INCLUDED ) (3 page)

Patrick Shelton was the town undertaker. A quiet man, slipping painlessly into middle-age. It only took Bates and Klyne a half hour in the small town bar to learn that up to four years ago Shelton had been just another quiet man in a quiet town. Then he provided the funeral arrangements for the richest man in the area, and married his widow two months later.

Six months after that she fell down the stairs of their house and broke her neck. Shelton’s brother was the doctor and he told everyone that it was accidental death. Which didn’t stop the rumors about how the lady in question got bruises round her throat just from falling down a flight of stairs.

But it meant the Shelton instantly became one of the big men around Gila Bend, and was currently running for the post of mayor. The bar-tender reckoned that he could be bucking even higher within five years with all that heap of dollars backing him.

Lounging on the sidewalk outside the bar, the two men leaned back in a couple of battered easy chairs and watched the town going on round them.

“That’s Mister Shelton now. In the gray suit with the silvery hair. The wife of our pastor passed away a couple of days back, and they’re shipping her back to her folks somewhere in Vermont. Mister Shelton’s handling all the arrangements for it.” Informed the very talkative bar tender.

“I’m obliged,” said Klyne, rising slowly, and walking across the street after the undertaker, followed by Bill Bates. As they neared the office of Shelton, they both slipped the safety catches off their guns.

“Number two, Roy,” Bates whispered.

They had agreed while they waited outside the bar to play it as it came. Klyne went in first, with Bates at his heels. A tiny silver bell over the door tinkled and an inner door swung open. A bird-like head peeped out, with a face that seemed all bone and teeth.

“Yes?”

“Mister Shelton?”

“Yes? What do you want? It’s a busy time and my assistant’s gone out to have his dinner. Unless it’s important, I’d rather you come back later and saw him.”

Both men looked at him, seeing a man with a face like a fox, with sharp pointed nose and thin gray moustache. His tie was gray, tied in a loose knot, and held at the front with a gold pin, topped by a massive seed pearl.

“That mean you’re here on your own, Mister Shelton?” asked Klyne.

“Yes it does.”

“I’s a sort of private matter, you see. Perhaps we could go through the back and talk it over. Bill, shut the door there so we won’t be disturbed.”

Bates slipped the catch on the front door, tugging down a sun-bleached roller blind that stubbornly resisted his efforts to get it to stay. Finally, with an angry curse, he succeeded.

The mortician watched this with a puzzled face. “Listen, I don’t think that I know you gentlemen, do I?”

Klyne pushed him by the shoulder, sending him staggering into the back. “You don’t know us at all, Mister Shelton any more than we know you. But if you’re a religious man, then you could say that you knew both our wives.”

“I don’t think that…..Oh….” His hands flew to his mouth, and his dentures clicked together, like two halves of a miniature keyboard.

“Oh, Mister Shelton. Maybe we’ve just rung a little bell for your memory. Our wives, Mister Shelton. You were on a train, back somewhere, with Joe Nathan. Doing a spot of gambling. Poker was it, Mister Shelton?”

“Blackjack. It was blackjack and poker most of the time. But listen to me. Please.”

Bates slapped him hard across the face, knocking him on his back. His false teeth clacked out of his mouth, spinning on the floor near a table. Bates stepped quickly across, grinding them under his heel. The undertaker looked up at him in anguish, blood coming from his nose and lip, the red mark of Bill’s fingers livid across his cheek.

“Please!” Bates looked across at Klyne. “That’s what that other murdering bastard said. Narhan, when we killed him. With bullets through his knees and through his elbows, he tried to crawl to us saying ‘Please.’ He’s dead, Shelton, and soon you’ll be meeting him again, roasting down there in Hell.”

THE END

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ROMANCE

Begin Again

Kayla Anderson has only one wish and that is to find out what happened to her and her husband. They were happy once, but then suddenly things changed and not for the better. She believed that it was because she was working all the time. With her friends help, she is going to embark on a journey back to a time when things were better. Her hope is that she will be able to mend the rift, before it becomes a matter of divorce. Sometimes what you wish for is not exactly what you really want.

Chapter one

“I don’t understand how all of this is happening without me. All of you have found a man and my sister has had two romances in one. One was ill fated to begin with, but then she found a man that she had lost contact with all these years. I’ve been busy with fighting my divorce and hoping that we could end things amicably that that doesn’t seem to be the way that this is going. There has been things said that can’t be taken back. The only thing I really want from all of this is a chance to see what happened to make it all go to hell.” I saw my sister shaking her head and the others didn’t exactly seemed pleased by the idea that I wanted to mess with the natural order of things.

“Kayla, you are my sister and I appreciate the fact that you’ve gone through your own form of hell. I don’t know if you’re going to find what you’re looking for, but I’m willing to look past the fact that you want to play god. We’ve all had that chance, but thankfully we decided against screwing with the timeline. There was one and I will keep her name out of it.” Everybody knew that the person that she was talking about was one of the five that had gotten together to make this experiment into something that we could hold with high esteem.

“I’m glad that all of you have found some semblance of a life. I thought that I had the best of both worlds, but then that world began to tear apart. He became more distant, didn’t talk much and tried to stay out, as late as possible. Stupid me, I thought that he was just overworked and stressed beyond his limits. I had the foresight to look into a couple of vacations for the both of us. I wanted both of us to have that time to recharge and rekindle the romance that we lost. I thought it was just misplaced and not replaced with animosity. We had this one big blowout fight that ended with the both of us thinking that it was time to move on.”

I was kicking myself every day for the fact that I had let the best thing in my life slip through my fingers. I’d done so, because I thought that we were doing each other more harm than good. The only way that we could rectify the situation was to breakaway and look for something else that would complete us. “I know that this can’t be easy for you and we’ve all had particular things that we wanted to accomplish with this experiment. I know that it’s not easy, but we need to talk about it. Messing with the timeline will change things. Whether it’s for the better or the worst is something that will show itself after you get back from your ill fated journey.

“Hope, I understand all of that and I’m sorry that I wasn’t here for most of these briefings. I was dealing with something a little bit more important, or at least it was in my mind. I didn’t want to believe that things were getting to the point of backstabbing. When we ended this thing, we decided right then and there that we would walk away with what we had in our possession. It started off with a need to hold onto a piece of the relationship. From there, it escalated to lawyers and their way of fighting was to put us in front of the courtroom to air our dirty laundry.” My Sister Caroline had been front and center in the court most of the time.

“I think that everybody here can agree that we all have the right to speak our mind openly. There are no secrets between the five of us. I think that we’ve done something here that is miraculous and that no man has ever been able to accomplish in their lifetime. It remains to be seen what we’re going to do with the device, especially since we’re not able to use it again. That doesn’t mean that we can’t let others use it, but do we take the risk of trusting someone that has only bad intentions.” Caroline was only saying what was on everybody’s mind. We didn’t want to admit it, but the only people that we could truly trust were those in this room.

“My sister has a point. I don’t think that we can even take it on face value that our benefactor will not want to benefit in some way through this device. We still don’t know where the power source came from, but I have a feeling that it was a benefactor that had decided to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. I know that he has a lot invested in this, but that doesn’t mean that he can play with our lives.” I was dressed and ready to go, wearing a very old piece of clothing that I had stuck in the closet years ago. It was a blue dress with white trim and a plunging neckline.

“I think it’s safe to say that everybody here can leave. Let my sister Kayla and I to decide on what’s best for us.” Hope, Samantha and even Kate decided to throw their hands up in the air in self defeat. There were no more words spoken and the briefing had come to its inevitable end. I’ve done my hair up in exactly the same way that it would be when I arrived back in the time, before my marriage began to fall apart. I had done the necessary steps, including meditation and yoga, which was really something that didn’t understand. I did feel more centered and my breathing was level.

They all left and I could tell that they were not very happy. It didn’t matter to me. Like everybody that had gone before me, we all had our own agendas and nothing was going to deviate us from that course of action. This was after all my life and if I wanted to find out what the true reason behind my marriage crumbling, then I had the right to do that. They all spoke a good game, but none of them really paid attention to what could possibly be a catastrophic event. They could make their sermons, but to leave by them was another matter.

“Kayla, you really have to see it from their point of view. You and I both know that your marriage was not all that it was cracked up to be in the first place. You hardly ever smiled and I don’t think that it was a huge secret that you began to drink in the afternoon. That was well before you lost sight of what was truly important in your life. Just remember that, when you decide on what you’re really trying to accomplish. You never know, your wish may be something entirely different and you don’t even know it.” I listened to her and I wanted to say that I would give it some thought, but the only thing that was on my mind was finding my husband and shaking him back to reality.

“I never thought that this day would finally come. You told me that we had made the breakthrough, but I truly didn’t believe. Even after everything that I heard, I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that this was even possible. We talked about it, we worked on it together and we thought that we were getting close. This is the kind of breakthrough that makes or breaks a career. We’re not even sure if we’re going to share this with the public. To give a person that one time to go back and change something or even witness something in history is mind blowing.” I wanted to scream it to the world, but this secret had to remain between the five us and our benefactor.

The guy that did most of our mathematical equations was getting suspicious. He was sending emails to find out if his calculations were correct. What he had done was put us on the right path, but it was the rest of us that it finally made the discovery. The first time that George went back was something that I would always remember. The monkey was never the same. His journey had changed him into a more docile and compassionate animal. He was no longer wild and untamed. It was like something happened to him that gave him a perspective that he didn’t have before.

“I know what I said to the others, but I still want to stress to you that it’s very important that you don’t step on any butterflies. I know that you’re planning on something on a grander scale, but do take into consideration that it’s not just your life that you’re messing with. There will be a chain reaction unlike anything that you’ve seen in your life.” My Sister Caroline was worrying needlessly. My only main objective was to be a fly on the wall. I didn’t have any designs on making things right, but I could say that now and that could change when I finally came face to face with the problem.

I stood there looking at this device and for some reason I began to envision some kind of science fiction movie. I was always a big believer that technology was taking leaps and bounds in the right direction. Things that were not automated were now becoming more technologically sound. Over the years, things had changed. I’m not sure that I can say that they were for the betterment of mankind.

I stood on the device, my black heels clicking together, mimicking what Dorothy must’ve done when she was taken from her home by a tornado. This was my way of experiencing what she did in that story, but on a different level altogether. Caroline pressed the buttons and I waited, until finally it felt like I was upside down. My whole perspective had changed and everything was spinning in a clockwise formation. There were no lights and it was more of a blur of my own fingers stretching out against the unraveling of time itself.

Chapter two

I felt something smacking against my face. I opened up my eyes to see that it was a newspaper. I grabbed it instinctively, turning the pages, until I saw the date and the year in question. It was two years before my marriage exploded and I didn’t mean to go back that far, but this device was unpredictable at the best of times. I got up and dusted myself off, walking out of the alley to see a familiar sight. The doughnut shop that my husband and I went to almost every day was right across from me. I looked at my watch, but it was shattered. I’d forgotten that we were not supposed to bring anything with us besides our own body and clothes.

It was like time had stopped altogether, but it was just my perception of things, considering that my watch was no longer a viable source of information. I watched to make sure that the coast was clear, before crossing the street. I was almost hit by an overanxious older man in a silver lexis. He was busy on the phone, talking to who ever it was. It had distracted him from driving. It was the reason why driving and talking on the phone had become illegal. It’s wasn’t right now, but I could see the reason it would be.

I went into the doughnut shop, and was immediately accosted by the fragrance of fresh pastries being made in the morning. The owner one Gerald Reiner was busy behind the counter with a smattering of flour on his face. He looked like he was enjoying himself, immersing into his passion for pastries and making a real name of himself.

“Kayla, I’m a little surprised to see you here without…” I put up my finger and I pointed to the one pastry that had always made me aware of my waist size. “I know exactly what you’re looking for. Wait, weren’t you supposed to be in some kind of scientific conference for the next two weeks?” I really didn’t know for sure. I tried to prepare myself for any eventuality. “You said that you were going to be away for two weeks and that it involved a bunch of scientists that were getting together to talk about experiments and such.” It started to dawn on me that my appearance here was only going to confuse things. My husband didn’t even know that I was back. In reality, my other self was still enjoying the aftermath of skiing and then sitting by the fire with colleagues. We had some heated debates the lasted into the wee hours of the morning. I was never much for cold, but skiing had changed my mind in ways that I didn’t think was possible.

“I had to come back early and take care of a few things. I plan to go right back to it, but not, until I deal with a couple matters” I bit into the chocolate éclair and it was almost better than sex. If I were to be eating one of these and having sex with the man that I love, then that orgasmic high would have been something to feel for sure. I don’t know why I never tried it and every time that I bit into one of these things, it would always come to mind. I never did put it into action, which is one of my regrets that I was hoping that I could rectify.

“That is precisely the reason why I do what I do every morning. The look on your face makes it all worthwhile. I have to tell you that you really do help my business. I know that you’ve been talking me up and I don’t know how I can pay you back.” I had invested a bit of money into his success. I was happy to do it. Once I got a taste for his culinary favorites, I was hooked and ready to sign on the dotted line. I didn’t have much, but it did afford me the opportunity to eat here for free and to share in 5% of the profits.

“I take these home every day and I share them with my husband. I’ve even given them to neighbors and they rave about them like they can’t believe that your shop exists. I tell them where they can find you and I think that’s the reason why you find yourself with a lot of clients. I see the love that you put into your food and it translates into the taste that I didn’t think that was possible, but you make me a believer.” I was never one to give high praise to anyone, but for him I would make the exception.

“You are making me blush, Kayla. Your sister Caroline has been coming around and I think that I have you to thank for that. She has been spreading the word herself, but she has no idea that you and I are in business together” He took my hand and kissed it. I thought it was platonic, but now I was beginning to see that maybe there was more to his interest than just a business partnership. He was of Greek descent and he was showing that he was not above using his manly charms to woo me into a state of indecision.