Jimmy (28 page)

     Jimmy was going to say no but then realized that couldn’t possibly be true given all the talk at school and instead said, “Yeah, I’d heard that.”

     “What I can’t figure it who would do such a thing?” Paul asked.  “If it had just been Samantha King then I could see someone just coming into town and grabbing the first girl he saw.  But you’d think they would leave town right away, not stay around and grab another girl.  Too risky, don’t you think?”

     Jimmy nodded.

     “That’s why I believe it’s someone in town.”

     “But who?” Jimmy asked.

     “That’s the question, isn’t it?  Who could do something like this?  Makes you wonder what goes on behind closed doors.”

     “Yeah,
ahhh!
” 

     “Sorry, had to press the tape down into it so it sticks.”

     “Wasn’t expecting it,” Jimmy said.

     “The gauze pad is medicated too so you don’t have to worry about disinfecting it, just make sure you take everything off in a day or two and put on a fresh bandage.”

     “Okay.”

     “And be careful.  I know you say you didn’t see anything, but you might not realize you did see something and the person or persons responsible for all this might come after you.”

     “Okay,” Jimmy said again.

     “In fact, maybe it would be better if you rode on the other side of town since this area seems to be the focal point of everything.”

     “I really like this area though.”

     “Suit yourself, just be cautious.  I don’t want anyone else to disappear or get hurt.”

     “I appreciate that and will be extra careful.” 
You have no idea just how careful I will be.

     “Great.  Can you make it home from here or do you need a ride back?”

     Jimmy didn’t want to get into the car.  “I’m fine.”  To prove it he jumped up onto the bike.  “See.”  He tried not to show how much his finger hurt when gripping the handle, but had a feeling he didn’t do a very good job because it hurt like hell.

     “I see,” Paul said.  “Be safe.”

     Jimmy wanted to ask him if they had any suspects but figured that would be too much at the moment and simply started riding home.

     Paul followed for a while, but then turned at the next intersection.

     Jimmy sighed.  He had had enough close calls at the Hood place for a while.  Hopefully his trips there would be uneventful from this point on.

*  *  *

     Deputy Paul Widgeon followed Jimmy Hawthorn on his bike until the first intersection and then made a right turn at Elm as if he were planning on patrolling another area, but really was just using the road to wrap around to the left, the three way intersection half a mile down making this possible, one which eventually connected back to the road the Hood place was on. 

     Paul slowed the vehicle as it came upon a turn off that dead ended into a cul-de-sac five houses down, the house to the right of the center being the King household.  Like all the houses along the right side of this road their home backed up into the woods, ones that didn’t end until they came upon the farm fields a few miles away.  The houses on the left also backed up into the woods, but those stretches eventually opened up into other backyards on the north side of town, properties that gradually got bigger and bigger as they headed south toward the Hood place. 

     After a moment Paul continued his journey back to the Hood house, his eyes noting the last house before their property began about half a mile from the actual home.  The land had been in the Hood family a long time and a decade earlier it could have made them rich beyond their wildest dreams if they had sold it to developers.  Now no one would buy it, the last new house having been built back when Paul was in Iraq, back before Wall Street had gone into its first nosedive.

    
Jimmy, what were you doing out here?
Paul asked himself while pulling up alongside the Hood’s crumbling driveway. 
What were you hiding from me?

     Jimmy’s story about falling off his bike had been bullshit because fingernails wouldn’t tear outward when impacting the ground from a fall.  Plus he had had no other wounds on his body, not fresh ones anyway, and if he truly had taken all the impact of a fall on his hand like that, the broken fingernail would have been the least of his pains.  Nothing had been broken though, a fact made obvious by the way Paul had been able to twist his hand back and forth while bandaging it.  It also hadn’t been swollen.  So now the question was what had Jimmy been doing that would leave him with a torn finger?

     No answer would arrive without a little investigating, so he got out and walked around.  He was pretty sure that whatever had happened to Jimmy’s finger had happened on this property because why come here after the fact - unless he had been going home from the school and took the old wooded path.  Of course such a situation would bring up two more questions the first being what would he had been doing at the school after hours, the second being why he would head home on this path when taking the sidewalk provided to him would be much faster.

    
Could he have snagged his finger while riding, which is why there were no other injuries?

     Paul asked himself this while in the backyard, his eyes looking at the thick brush everywhere.  If one were cutting though that on their bike it would be possible to get a stick caught up under the fingernail and rip it outward, but then why lie about falling?

    
And why was he out in the woods to begin with?

     He knew Jimmy had been riding his bike a lot.  He had witnessed it a few times this past week, and others had as well, most concerned by the very idea Paul had planted in Jimmy’s head about him being a target in case he had seen something he didn’t realize.  Paul, however also wondered if Jimmy could have had anything to do with the two girls having disappeared.  Most in the department didn’t think a high school student could be behind something like that, but Paul knew differently.  Paul had been overseas and had seen what people his age were capable off.  Hell, Jimmy was eighteen and that had been the age Paul had been the first time he had ever killed someone, his eyes fascinated by the damage the grenade had done in the room where the insurgent had been waiting.

    
If another girl is reported missing this evening maybe . . .
  an image of a fingernail being ripped in a struggle filled his head.

     Nothing behind the house pointed toward a struggle and so far all the reports of missing children that afternoon had been false alarms - most being the result of a late bus home from school, and one due to a parent that forgot their daughter had work that evening. 

     Paul’s radio came to life while he was walking behind the old shed on the corner of the Hood property and reported a car accident on the other side of town, one which sounded pretty bad.

     “I can be there in eight minutes,” Paul said into the radio and quickly hurried back to his patrol car, thoughts on Jimmy Hawthorn and the missing girls quickly disappearing from his mind. 

*  *  *

     Brett sat in his room for a long time that night watching the videos Jimmy had thrown away, his mind playing with ideas on how to use the tapes against him.  Earlier he had seen his stupid little girlfriend in the hallway during some odd commotion; one which had involved a deputy being called to the school and wondered what would happen if he gave some of the tapes to her.

    
What if she likes this stuff too and gets all freaky with Jimmy?  Hell the two probably were making their own tapes and posting them on some obscure website.

     Still, he wanted Jimmy to know he had these tapes and the best way to do that was to give one to the girl.  And if it turned out she didn’t know about the tapes or how sick and twisted Jimmy was it would be even better because she would probably dump him right before the prom.

    
Now if only Jimmy were in some of these tapes.

     Sadly he didn’t think this would be the case.  If it was he would have made plans to somehow show the tape during the dance, maybe on a projector screen or something so that everyone could see what a freak he was. 

     On screen he watched as a girl was lifted off the ground by her wrists and then tormented with a pink vibrator.  Kneeling next to her was another girl, this one sucking the man’s dick while he used the vibrator on the first girl.

     Brett couldn’t believe people enjoyed stuff like this, especially people like the girls in the video.  It was sick.

     At the same time he wondered what he would do if he was one of those guys and knew he could do whatever he wanted with them.  Would he join in?  If so he wouldn’t have to live with the disgrace of still being a virgin, something that weighed heavily on his mind day in and day out, especially since he knew Matt was no longer one, the jerk having scored some pussy with his coworker at the video store last year. 

     It pissed him off.

Chapter Eleven

     Megan peed herself halfway through the night while shivering from the cold, her wet clothes making it impossible for her body to stay warm as all the heat was sucked away from the underground shelter once the sun set.  It was a miserable situation, one made even worse due to her position.  Had she simply been tied up on the floor she could have scrunched herself into the fetal position, or in a corner, and maybe with one of those wool blankets.  Instead she was stretched out, her entire body exposed to the air.

    
“You’ve been hung up to dry!”

     She jerked her head toward the sound, but Samantha was the only other person in the room with her - as far as she could tell - and the voice had most certainly not been hers. 

     “Not funny,” she said.

     No one replied.

     Megan stretched open her eyes and looked around a second time, her body slowly twisting so that she could see the back of the shelter. 

    
You’re imagining things,
she said to herself. 

     It was the lack of sleep and food.

     Her eyes relaxed, the heaviness of her lids making it hard to hold them focused.  She could not sleep.  At points she managed to doze off, but it was never deep, which was why her mind was now trying to dream while awake.  It was trying to force her body into that much needed rejuvenating state.

     Megan tried to fight it, but to no avail.  Hanging like this in wet clothes made it impossible.  Hell, hanging like this in dry clothes would have made it impossible too.

     She twisted toward Samantha who was asleep and envied her position, again.  The girl was lucky.  Jimmy had allowed her to stay on the ground.

    
“The cold concrete ground.”

     Again the voice didn’t seem to be her own, yet she knew it was.

    
“The two are working together!”

     Megan shook the thought away and once again tried to focus her mind.  It didn’t work.  A permanent haze hung over everything, one that seemed to grow thicker and thicker with each passing moment.  It was so bad that Megan didn’t even realize she was peeing in her own pants until after the fact.  Instead she felt an annoying ache in her lower regions followed by relief and pleasant warmth, one which sadly faded quickly.

     Disgust followed once she recognized the act.

     It would have been one thing if she had been holding the need in for hours, the pressure building and building until she couldn’t take it anymore and had to open up.  It was another for it to just happen. 

     Memories of Samantha lying on the ground the other day, urine flowing freely down her leg arrived.

    
No! No! No!

     She didn’t want to become like that.  Worse, she didn’t want to be aware that she was becoming like that. 

    
“It will happen!”
  This time the voice seemed to echo across the shelter. 

    
Please, God, NO!

     She struggled at the ropes, the fresh scabs where the skin had torn the other day and then started to heal during her inactivity, tearing free. 

     A little bit of blood dripped down her right arm.

     Shivers followed.

     And then the haze grew even thicker.  Several hours passed without her being aware of it.

     Jimmy was now in the room.

     Megan said something about him bringing back the warmth. 

     “What?” Jimmy asked. 

     Megan didn’t reply, though this time it wasn’t a result of defiance.  Instead she simply had no idea what she had said, the words a minced up mess even within her own mind, and couldn’t repeat them, the thoughts that had generated them having quietly fled.

     Jimmy yawned and then went back to the tin bucket, which he had filled with soapy water.  He also had a pink loofa sitting on the floor.