Jimmy (38 page)

     “Tina, it’s okay,” Jimmy said.  He then watched as her eyes focused on something beyond his shoulders. 

     Outside police sirens began to echo.

*  *  *

     “Jimmy?” Tina said quietly, fear running through her veins.  “Is that Samantha King and Megan Reed?” 

     Jimmy followed her gaze and said, “Yeah.”

     The two girls looked dead, their bodies just hanging there, toes able to touch the ground yet not even making an effort to support their weight. 

     Not far from their feet was Brett, head cocked toward them, mouth slightly open, eyes wide.  He wasn’t moving.  Blood stained his lower face and the floor beneath his mouth. 

     “Shit,” Alan said and then winced.

     “Tina, can you help him hold his leg?” Jimmy asked.

     Tina saw the blood soaking through the blanket that Alan was pressing against himself and said, “Did you shoot him?”

     “It was an accident,” Jimmy said.  He then looked at the gun.  “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.”

     “Jimmy, why don’t you put down the gun,” Alan said.

     Jimmy looked back at the girls again, and then down at Brett and then at the gun.  Tina had no idea what was going through his head, or what was going on period, yet in that brief moment he seemed to decide something.

     “I can’t,” Jimmy said to Alan and then to Tina, “Please help him hold his leg.”

     Tina did as she was asked, her shoes dropping to the floor as she quickly bent down to press her palms against the bloody blanket. 

     Alan groaned.

     “He needs a hospital,” Tina said.

     “I know,” Jimmy said.  He looked toward the doorway.  The police sirens were louder.  “They will be here soon.”

     “Jimmy, what’s going on?” Tina asked.

     Jimmy didn’t answer.  Instead he looked at the gun and for a moment Tina thought he was going to shoot himself, but then someone appeared up by the door and shouted down, “This is Deputy Paul Widgeon with the Sheriff’s Department, is everything okay down there?”

     A dark look came over Jimmy.

     Alan must have seen it too and recognized what it meant because he suddenly shouted, “Jimmy, no!”

     Tina followed his cry with, “Jimmy!”

     Rather than listening to the two Jimmy pushed by them into the doorway, waited a second, and fired.

     Tina screamed.

     More shots erupted.

     Jimmy dropped the gun and turned toward them.  He took two steps into the shelter, a stunned pale look on his face.

     A hand went to his chest where blood was starting to darken his exposed shirt.  He then looked at Tina and Alan and said, “Sorry.”

     Blood spurted from his lips with the word.

     Silence somehow settled upon them despite the sirens above.

     Jimmy took another step, but this time his foot didn’t hold his weight when it came down and he fell to his knees, eyes rolling back as his body settled into the corner between the doorway and stairs. 

*  *  *

     “Shot’s fired, officer down,” Deputy Lawrence Milberg said into the radio while kneeling next to Deputy Widgeon.

     “I’m okay,” Deputy Widgeon said.  His voice was incredibly weak, but that was to be expected given the impact he had sustained.  “Just help me up.”

     “No, stay down for a moment,” Lawrence said.  Then, “Who’s down there?”

     “I don’t know.  They shot at me and I shot back.  I don’t know if I hit them.”

     Another deputy arrived on the scene and peeked down the trapdoor.  “I got a body on the stairs!” he shouted.

     “Help us!” a girl cried from within.

     “Come out with your hands in the air,” the deputy replied, gun pointed down the stairs.

     “Don’t shoot,” the girl said as she appeared in the doorway.  Her eyes looked down at the body on the stairs “Please, we need help.”

     “Is anyone else down there armed?”

     “No!”

     “Come on up.”

     She looked down at the body again and then back at the deputy.  “I-I . . . please, I can’t.”

     “Larry, can you cover me?” the deputy asked.  His name was Blake.  Deputy Blake Bradley or BB as they sometimes called him.

     Deputy Lawrence nodded and came over, gun drawn.  “Go ahead.”

     “I’m coming down,” Blake said.  “Just stay right where you are.”

     Paul watched as Blake disappeared down the stairs the words, “Sweet Jesus,” suddenly rising from within followed by, “We need several paramedics here now!”

Chapter Thirteen

     The following newspaper clippings can be found in a scrapbook kept by Tina Thompson, most of which were cut from the
Ashland Creek Weekly Chronicle
:

Underground Torture Chamber

Last night, what started out as a simple but vicious fight in the parking lot outside of the Ashland Creek High School Prom quickly escalated into a police shootout at the abandoned Hood residence, one which left two local high school students, Jimmy Hawthorn and Brett Murphy, dead, and another high school student, Alan Hawthorn, wounded in the leg.  Deputy Paul Widgeon, veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was shot as well, but sustained only minor injuries due to his police issue body armor that the town purchased two years earlier for all its deputies.  Following the shootout, which took place around the shed on the Hood property, deputies discovered a secret underground chamber which held captive the two high school senior girls, Samantha King and Megan Reed, who had gone missing earlier in the week.  One of the girls, Megan Reed, was pronounced dead at the scene, the cause of which has not yet been disclosed.  Samantha King was taken to the local hospital and is listed in Critical Condition.  Witnesses to the events report hearing Sheriff Reed screaming for them to ‘cut my daughter down!’ while being forcefully kept away from the scene, all while the near dead body of Samantha King was being loaded into the waiting ambulance.  When asked about this an unnamed deputy said, “We left her body hanging there because we didn’t want to disturb the crime scene.”  The investigation into who was responsible for the abduction and torture of the two girls is ongoing . . .

Jimmy Hawthorn Kidnapped Me!

Early this morning police reported that Samantha King identified the late Jimmy Hawthorn, shot and killed by Deputy Paul Widgeon, as being the one responsible for her kidnapping.  Unspecified evidence found within the shelter is reported to support this claim, though no official charges have been brought.  The Sheriff’s Department also will not comment on whether Jimmy Hawthorn may have acted alone or had an accomplice, or what his motive may have been . . .

Jimmy Acted Alone

The investigation by the local Sheriff’s Department, State Police, and FBI has concluded that Jimmy Hawthorn acted alone in the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder (Megan Reed) of the two girls who were discovered in a secret underground room on the abandoned property of the Hood family.  Earlier claims that the late Brett Murphy was involved due to the tapes found in his bedroom, tapes his friends said were taken from Jimmy Hawthorn, have been dismissed . . . 

Hawthorn Family Asked Not to Attend Funeral

The funeral of Megan Reed, which is expected to draw many mourners tomorrow afternoon, will not be attended by the Hawthorn family due to a request by the Reed family.  It is also unclear at this time if Samantha King, recently released from the hospital, will be in attendance.  When asked how their daughter was doing, the King family said she was ‘recovering slowly’.  The events of Samantha King’s captivity have not yet been made public, and investigators refused to comment . . .    

*  *  *

     Alan had just given himself a pump from his pain medication device when there was a knock on the door followed by Tina stepping into the hospital room. 

     “Hi Alan,” she said. 

     “Hi,” Alan replied.

     Tina took a seat next to his bed, her face and body looking completely worn out, which, of course, was to be expected after everything she had been through. 

     “How’s your leg?” she asked.

     Alan glanced down at the leg, which had been encased in a futuristic looking device and said, “I would be lying if I told you it was fine.”  He sighed.  “Thankfully I got this nifty little thing.”  He pushed the button on the pain pump to signify what it was, his mind knowing this time around the press would be useless because he had already used up his ration of afternoon pain killers.

     “Does it really work?”

     “It takes the edge off and makes you loopy to the point where you don’t care, but doesn’t really kill it completely.”  He yawned, a nice swirl of nothingness filling his head.  “They should really call it a Pain Duller or Memory Masher or . . . I don’t know.” 

     Tina smiled.

     “It really helps when you want to try and sleep at night.”  He yawned again.

     “I didn’t wake you, did I?” Tina asked.  “If you need some rest I could go.”

     “No,” Alan shook his head.  “Please stay.” 

     “You sure?”

     “Yeah.  Aside from the police and that really grumpy detective you’re the only one who has visited me.”

     “What about your parents?”

     Alan shook his head.  “I think . . . I don’t know what’s going on with them.”  He knew they were having a difficult time in town with locals and reporters.

     A quiet rumble came from foot of the bed.

     Tina twisted toward it.

     “It’s just my blood-clot thing,” Alan said.  “It tightens every now and then.  The nurses keep getting mad at me because I take it off, and because I’m not blowing in this thing every couple of hours.”  His hand motioned toward an odd looking clear device with a blue mouth piece and measuring scale.  “They - ” he stopped when he saw the look on her face and softly asked, “How are you doing Tina?” 

     “I’m tired,” she said.  “The police keep asking me questions and today I actually had to talk to the FBI, and these stupid reporters keep hounding me wherever I go.”  She hesitated.  “You know they are pretty sure Jimmy was the one who kidnapped those girls.”

     Alan didn’t reply.

     “Do you think they’re right?” she asked.

     Alan nodded.

     Tears welled in the corner of her eyes.  “But he was so good to me.  How could he do that to them and then be so good to me?”

     Alan didn’t have an answer for this.  Instead he kept playing over the events in his mind, angry with himself for not putting all the pieces together.

     “I knew about it,” Alan said without much thought.       

     “What?” she snapped.

     “Deep down inside I knew and I should have realized it because I had seen his video.”

     “One of the bondage videos Brett had?”  Apparently the tape Tina had seen had been just one of many.    

     “No.  The tape he made when he was younger.  I found it when looking for a tape to record . . .” he thought for a second but the title didn’t come to mind “. . . I don’t remember what, but I couldn’t find a blank tape by the TV in the basement and went into his room to see if he had one because he was always taping stuff and found one that looked good because it didn’t have a title on it and put it into his VCR to see if it really was blank.”

     Tina nodded.

     “It wasn’t.  Instead it was full of scenes of girls hanging from their wrists, one right after another, that he must have taped from TV.  I was so young I didn’t really understand it, but now that I look back, it makes so much sense.  And I should have put it together with how strange he was acting and the girls disappearing and all his bike rides. 

     “And you know what’s worse,” Alan said before Tina could reply.  “I don’t even care and get mad when I see the people on TV saying all these bad things about him and the nurses talking in the hallways.  I just want to scream at them that he was a good person and whatever it was that made him do those things, it wasn’t who he really was.” 

     Tina stared at him for several seconds and then said, “I feel the same way, but then when I hear what he did I get angry at myself and at him because I feel like I was tricked and lied to.”  She also felt cheated, but didn’t want that to slip out.

     “I’m really sorry,” Alan said.

     “Why are you sorry?” Tina asked.  “You had nothing to do with it.”

     Alan looked away for a while and then started to say, “I know I just . . .” but stopped because the words weren’t there.  He couldn’t express what he felt.

     “But really, why make a big deal out of it right?  I mean, I finally find a guy I really like who seems to like and respect me, but just happens to be a blossoming serial killer who has two girls locked up in a secret underground chamber.  No big deal.”  She put a hand to her face and started crying.  “Why did he do this to us?”