Out For Justice (9 page)

Chapter Sixteen

“They act like I killed my own kid!” Mark Hunt pushed open the door to his house. He thrust it with so much force it slammed into the wall behind the door and caused a dent from the doorknob.

“They don’t mean nothin’ by it, honey.” Kelly tried to soothe her angry husband. “They said they do it to all parents of…of murdered children. It’s routine.”

“Routine my ass.”

Mark stormed through the kitchen into the living room and threw himself into a chair. He grabbed the remote control and said, “Gimme a beer.”

Kelly shut the door behind her, cast a furtive glance at the dent in the wall, then hurried to the refrigerator. She pulled out a can of beer, hustling to hand it to her husband before he thought she wasn’t fast enough.

“And who the hell is this Thomas guy and why do the damn cops think I know him? They’re gonna pin this shit on me, I just know they are. They always do, you know.” Mark opened the can of beer and took a long hard swallow. His throat contracted several times before he tipped the can back upright. “Asking me all those questions about if I ever hit the boy, making it look like I was the one who did this to him. What kind of questions did they ask you? Huh? Did they ask questions about me? What’d you say, woman?”

“Nothing, Mark. Nothing. I didn’t tell them anything,” Kelly answered quickly so as not to feed her husband’s paranoia. She would never tell him what the officers had asked her about him, nor would she ever tell him what she said. She had to tell the truth, they said so, and they said they’d know if she was lying by that machine they hooked up to her. It was all there in the paper they made her sign. She was honest about Mark too, and told the officers that Mark was a good husband and good father. She told them that Mark wasn’t involved with Logan’s death. She’d swear it. But they asked about particular incidents and she had to tell the truth. She told the whole truth.

Kelly’s eyes roamed the room. She was restless. The trip to the police station had frazzled her nerves and now she had a burst of energy to deal with. First thing she needed to do was call the neighbor’s house and have them send the girls back home. She didn’t like being away from them. Not since Logan died.

Thinking of Logan, she shifted her gaze to the light blue urn that now graced the top shelf of her small bookcase. They’d had Logan cremated and were able to use the money donated to the fund. She couldn’t believe how generous some folks could be. Every afternoon, the mailbox was full of cards and letters, saying how sorry folks were for their loss and how they hoped the killer would be caught soon. Kelly remembered the kind words that were said at the memorial that was held for Logan last night. So many people she didn’t know came out to say goodbye to her son.

She liked the church. It had a safe, comfortable feel to it. One lady even offered to pick up the girls for Sunday School if she wanted. Kelly didn’t know what to say, so she mumbled something and turned away. It wasn’t up to her if the girls could go, it would be up to Mark, and Kelly didn’t think Mark would let the girls go to Sunday School. He always said that religion was for weak-minded people who couldn’t make up their own minds.

The pastor had talked to her before he spoke to the crowd, and he used a lot of her words to describe her son. That made her glad. Afterward, more people stood in line to shake her hand and give her envelopes filled with checks and money. Kelly couldn’t believe her eyes when they’d gotten home last night and counted it all. What she truly couldn’t believe was how excited Mark got and all the plans he started making. He wanted to get new shocks for his truck and maybe a lift kit, he said. Kelly had sat their quietly letting him talk about all the dreams he had for the money they’d come into. She didn’t dare speak up then about how she thought his ideas weren’t right. She needed to wait. She wasn’t totally without ways to get Mark to do something she wanted. She just had to wait it out and know the right time to make her move. It’d come.

Rousing herself from her daydreaming, Kelly shook herself back to the present and picked up the telephone to call the neighbor. She wanted her girls back home with her. Where she could watch them herself.

While she dialed, she could hear Mark in the living room, cussing and slamming his hand against the arm of the chair. He still wasn’t over having to take the polygraph test down at the police station and if she guessed right, she wasn’t hearing the end of it. Nor was she going to feel the end of it, not by a long shot.

Chapter Seventeen

Karen called Mike at the lab. She needed some help in finding out what any of the evidence they collected from the Hunt boy told them. She also wanted to talk to him and see how he was doing. After the way he practically ran away from her place this morning after their run, he might be trying to avoid her. Heck, anything was possible. He had looked awfully uncomfortable. Even if he was checking her out.

“Mike? It’s Karen Sykes. I’m looking for any final analysis on the evidence you collected from the Hunt boy.”

“Hi, Karen.” Mike paused then spoke as if taking his cue from Karen’s professional demeanor. “Uh, let me get that file and I’ll be right back.”

Karen waited on hold while Mike retrieved the file. She listened to the hold music and hummed along drawing little circles and boxes on a scrap of paper on her desk.

“Karen?”

“Hmm? I’m still here.” She pushed aside the scrap of paper and grabbed her notes for the case.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I have the file.”

“So what did you find out?”

“He had sand and vegetation on his overalls. That tells us that he was probably on the beach and in the woods. Whether it was with our suspect, we still don’t know. However, we didn’t find any sand in the cast of the footprint we made, so that might indicate that the boy was not together with the suspect while on the beach. The body was found a good distance away from the family’s camp. Evidence points to the boy being strangled at the location he was found. So, somehow, the boy got from point A, his camp, to point B, the location where he was found.”

“Hmm, how did he get from point A to point B? Did he walk all that way? Doesn’t seem logical. Someone would have seen a four year old wandering the campground by himself. If our killer carried him that would explain the print on the overalls.” Karen wrote a few more notes then said, “Okay, what else you got?”

“Nothing but dirt underneath the fingernails. No sign that he fought back.”

“Nothing?”

“Nope. Nothing. Oh. The only other thing we found was a puncture wound on the bottom of his right foot. Looks like he stepped on a stick that went through his foot. That wound was pre-mortem. There wasn’t a lot of dirt or vegetation in the wound, so it doesn’t look like he walked very much on it.”

“Well, that substantiates the carry theory then.”

“I think so.”

“I really appreciate all your help, Mike,” Karen said tentatively.

“No problem. That’s what I’m here for.” Mike cleared his throat.

Listening hard, Karen thought she heard someone else in the room with Mike while he spoke to her on the telephone.

“Shh,” Mike said.

Confused, Karen said, “Huh? What, I didn’t say anything.”

“No, not you, Karen.” Then Mike whispered fiercely, “Okay, I’ll ask her, just stop it.”

“Mike, are you all right?” Karen thought she heard muffled laughter.

 “I, uh, enjoyed our run and thought that maybe, if you want, we could go out again?”

Karen closed her eyes, paused, and then opened them. His erratic behavior this morning aside, he still wanted to see her. “I’d like that. Did you have a particular time in mind?”

“This Friday?”

“Yeah. Sure. Friday. Sounds great. Shall I meet you somewhere, or…”

“I’d like to pick you up if that’s okay with you.”

“That’s fine with me. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll see you Friday about seven o’clock?”

“Seven it is. See you then.”

Karen hung up feeling much better than when she started the phone conversation. She shouldn’t have worried at all. Mike wanted to go out with her again. However, from the sounds on the line, it was probably at the persuasion of someone else. And if she didn’t know any better, it was probably Susan who was prompting Mike to ask her out. She sat and stared at the phone smiling until she heard Sam clearing his throat telling her to get back to the background checks on the Hunts.

Pulling the list of names closer to her, Karen read through them again. She was about to delve into a family’s private life, entering their world in search of justice for the murder of their son. That family already felt exposed and violated because of the horrific incident; this was only going to make it worse. Karen felt their pain, but put it aside. She didn’t have time to feel sorry for them; she needed to find a killer. She needed to find the killer before the killer decided to kill again.

Chapter Eighteen

Kelly shut the front door after watching her two daughters climb the steps into the large yellow bus. She bit her lip at the aching emptiness in the pit of her stomach. She hated to be separated from them. Even for the few hours they were in school.

Picking up her coffee cup from the kitchen counter, she reached across the clean surface and poured herself a third cup from the glass decanter of the coffee pot. It was one more cup than usual, but she hadn’t been sleeping well the last few nights. The extra caffeine would help get her through the day.

“Do you want another cup of coffee, Mark?”

“Of course I don’t want another cup of coffee. You know what that shit does to me in the morning.” Mark’s words bit into the air.

“I’m sorry.” Kelly held her cup to her lips and blew across the hot surface. She took a tentative sip.

Trying to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible, Kelly slid onto a wooden chair at the kitchen table. She watched as Mark shoveled eggs and bacon into his mouth, barely chewing before adding another forkful.

Like most mornings, Mark flipped through the checkbook, going over their money situation. This morning was not different. Kelly waited for the inevitable outburst.

Mark ran his fingers down the entries in the register, stopped, tapped his finger then slowly looked up. “What in the hell did you spend fifty-eight dollars and thirty-four cents on at Walmart?”

“I—I bought the girls some new clothes.”

“What’s wrong with their old clothes?” Bits of egg flew from Mark’s open mouth.

Kelly looked down at the table and stared into her coffee cup.
Don’t make him mad. Don’t make him mad.

“You spent too much.”

Kelly heard his words, but instead of letting them wash over her, she felt them dig into her soul. How could he be telling her she spent too much money when he’s always buying outrageous things for his truck? He spent hundreds of dollars on tools every month and never anything on her or the kids. She had to scrape every cent she used for extras from leftover change from the groceries. It wasn’t fair.

Don’t make him mad. Don’t make him mad.

The mantra played in Kelly’s head but instead of heeding its advice, she shut it down. She closed her mind and opened her mouth.

“I don’t think I spent too much.” The words carried barely above a whisper.

Mark’s mouth hung open. “What’d you say?”

A little louder, Kelly said, “The girls are growing like weeds. They needed new clothes.”

A scraping protest rang out as Mark’s chair slid back from the table and toppled over. From a far off distance, Kelly heard the crash as the chair hit the floor. Time slowed and movements were on several seconds delay. As if in slow motion, she watched Mark spring to his feet. She didn’t feel any pain at first, until she heard the echoing crack of Mark’s hand as it made contact with the side of her face.

Tears welled in her eyes while white-hot pain shot through her cheekbone. Biting her lip, she struggled to keep from crying out.

Through a haze of tears, Kelly watched Mark pick up his overturned chair and calmly sit back down. He picked up his fork and pushed another mouthful inside. Between chews he said, “I told you, you spent too much.”

He forked more egg into his mouth and chewed before calmly adding, “I’m gonna take some of that fund money and buy me a boat.”

The pit of Kelly’s stomach twisted. She gripped her coffee cup so hard she thought she’d break it into pieces. Anger built up inside of her and pushed its way out. A part of her mind insisted that she stay quiet and mind her own business. It would be less painful that way. But she couldn’t keep her anger in. How selfish could this man be?

In a hesitant voice, Kelly said, “I—I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to use that money for.” Her words grew stronger and faster. “I didn’t say anything when you wouldn’t let me spend any money on Logan’s funeral. You even told me to…to cremate him because it would be cheaper.”

Kelly took a deep breath. Then continued. “I even let you talk me into using some of that money on the truck because in a way it benefited the family. But I can’t just sit here while you use those people’s hard earned money, money that they donated in the name of your son, and buy a boat.”

Pushing herself back from the table, Kelly stood and faced Mark. She knew what was coming and braced herself for it.

Mark stood and swung.

Stars burst before Kelly’s eyes and intense, searing pain radiated from her jaw. She blinked quickly, holding back the tears. She refused to let him see how much he hurt her.

It didn’t matter. Mark didn’t look at her again. He stomped past her and grabbed his cooler with his lunch and slammed his way out of the house yelling that he was going to buy a boat and no one was going to stop him not her, not those damn people down at the bank. With the roar of the truck’s engine fading in the distance, Kelly finally made a move from where she’d rooted herself and took a stand.

Automatically, she pulled open a kitchen drawer and pulled out a dishtowel. With practice, she folded it, filled it with ice, and folded it again. All the time she thought of how selfish her husband was. How could he only think of himself?

Lightly, with gentle fingers, Kelly prodded at the side of her face. Pain raced from the lower part of her jaw to right behind her left eye. She opened and closed her mouth carefully. Finding nothing broken, she heaved a sigh of relief.

Wincing, she held the towel with ice to her cheek. The entire left side of her face felt like it was on fire. The intense pain spread from her eye socket to the left side of her mouth. It hurt too much even to have the towel touching her face.

She knew better than to contradict Mark when he was talking this morning, but she went and did it anyway. What was wrong with her? She had an opportunity to keep her mouth shut, but she didn’t. It wasn’t like her. What had gotten into her?

Kelly looked at the telephone against the wall. Moving her head sent startling pain ripping through her face and was an aching reminder that she needed to keep the ice on her bruised face before it swelled any further. Biting her lip, she fought back the tears and placed the towel once again against her cheek.

She considered calling her mother, and then dismissed the idea before it fully formed. What would she tell her? That she talked back to her husband and he hit her? What would her mother say then? “Darling, how many times do I have to tell you that your husband is the man of the house and what he says goes?” Her mother would tell her Mark didn’t mean it and she was making a big deal out of nothing. She would get no sympathy from her mother. She never had.

This was her life. The life she’d chosen when she married Mark Hunt. She had to live with her choice. No matter what happened. Her mother said that God gave all of us a choice in life, and we had to live with the choice we made. Kelly sighed. She wondered how other women were able to handle their choices in life and if they had the same kind of husband as she did.

Often times while she bought food in the grocery store or looked for clothes at Wal-Mart, she watched the other women as they shopped. She’d even follow them through the store, mimicking their mannerisms. While doing so, she’d fantasize that she had a husband waiting at home who was loving and attentive. She’d pretend that her husband wanted her to spend whatever she wanted on clothes for herself. She’d look through the racks of clothing picking out a blouse here, or a skirt there. She’d pile the clothes into her shopping cart and wander the store. But she always put the clothes back before she checked out. She didn’t have a husband who wanted her to spend money on herself. Kelly knew the real price she’d pay if she wanted to buy a new blouse.

Sighing again, Kelly picked up her cold coffee cup. With one hand, she rinsed the cup out in the sink and placed it in the top rack of the dishwasher. She held the ice wrapped in a towel gently on her cheek flinching from the fresh burst of pain that shot through the side of her face.

She opened the top cabinet above the sink and pulled out the bottle of aspirin. She swallowed two, thought for a moment, then swallowed another one. It was going to be rough going today, trying to get the laundry washed, dried, and folded with the pounding in her head. Putting the aspirin back, she made her way into the bathroom. Mark always left it a mess when he was finished in the morning. Kelly bent over to pick up the wet towel on the floor and gasped at the intensity of pain that shot through her head. The pounding doubled in strength. She stood up slowly, holding on to the sink vanity with both hands.

Gritting her teeth, biting back the groan, she avoided looking in the mirror above the sink. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d seen it before. Kelly took a deep breath and with more caution, bent down and picked up the rest of the wet towels and dirty clothes that were strewn about on the bathroom floor. The gnawing anger in the pit of her stomach grew.