Stolen Innocents (The Shadow Series Book 2) (33 page)

***

“Pick up the goddamn phone!” Liam yelled as he tried to get DiNolfo on her cell phone again. He had been trying to get a hold of her all day long, but once again, she wasn’t picking up.

“Shit!” Liam complained as he slammed his desk phone down.

Liam re-read the contents of the fax again, stunned by what he was reading. Words stuck out on the page that served as an eerie reminder of just how twisted this case really was. The killer was a sociopath with a long disturbing history of severe mental disease and psychosis. They had killed Jeremy Macklon along with his feline friend, Nan in a most brutal manner and left them to rot in an abandoned apartment. The very thought sent chills up Liam’s spine. Suddenly the front door of the Elkhart Police Station slammed open as a haggard looking Sergeant DiNolfo walked through.

“I know who it is. Let’s go.”

“Finally! You need to see this!”

“It’s not important.”

“It is, though! She killed her husband!”

“How did you find out?”

“Seattle faxed us over all the details.”

“We need to go now.”

As the watch on his wrist ticked the seconds off to midnight, Adam raced after Liam and Sergeant DiNolfo out to patrol car E5.

***

Angie’s lips curled into a malicious smile as the first strand of hair fell to the floor. The buzz of the hair clipper masked her quiet laughter. Chunks of blonde hair fell to the floor but Angie’s eyes did not move from her reflection. She was fixated on her likeness in the mirror as she transformed before her own eyes. Everyone told her what a beauty she was. Now her outside would mirror the contents of her heart. She knew the mirror would soon strip her of her outward beauty and show her for what she really was. A ravenous lion in sheep’s clothing. A monster under the guise of a damsel in distress. A killer hiding as a victim. She was bad to her core; as sick and twisted as they come. Bernard Kendricks had taken a sick and confused little girl and turned her into a monster.

***

The hideous stench of Angie’s bedroom caused Felix’s eyes to burn. He closed his eyes tight, but opened them again once he had grown more accustomed to the smell.

Swarms of flies buzzed around his head. There had to be hundreds of them in the room. As the swarm cleared, Felix had to adjust his eyes. The queen sized bed was covered with documents; all scattered about in the messiest of ways. Medical records and doctors notes, court orders and court summons covered the bed from foot to head. It looked as if someone was looking for something of great importance, and then just gave up. Felix’s eyes wandered to the floor where he saw the unmistakable trail of blood on the cream carpet. On the opposite side of the room beside Angie’s queen size bed, Felix could see a pale leg sticking out, bare and bloody.

“Angie!” Felix yelled as he tried to get to the body on the floor, but when he reached the body, it wasn’t Angie.

Jeremy Macklon lie dead on the floor with multiple gunshot wounds to his head and chest. To his right, in a puddle of her own blood, Angie’s cat Nan lay dead, savagely destroyed at close range by a barrage of bullets. Felix felt the blood rush to his head as he tried to get out as fast as he could.

“Oh my God…” Felix whispered as his emotions got the best of him.

He repeated the phrase over and over again as he tried to make sense of what was happening. Jeremy Macklon was dead and Felix had a feeling he knew who was responsible. A train of thoughts entered Felix’s mind:

Did she know that I would come?

My fingerprints are now all over the apartment. On the front door handle, on the bedroom door handle, on several of the prescription bottles in the kitchen…

Had she known?

His breathing intensified as he hurtled himself towards the front door. Felix clambered over the laundry in the hall, skidded on an empty pill container, and finally as he made it to the front door of the apartment he bolted down the stairs and out the front door. As he crashed into the hard brownstone exterior of 2423 Mariner Avenue, rage poured from his body and tears burned from his eyes.

In a heavy voice full of emotion and infliction, Felix said aloud, “Oh, my God, Angie… What have you done?”

***

Angie was happy with what she saw. Her smile grew wide as her teeth bared at her reflection. She ran her bony hand over her bald head as a chill ran up her spine. It was time to finish what she had set out to do. She pulled on Tommy Morrow’s black hoodie, laced his hiking boots tightly over her size nine feet and crossed the room with a fuming vengeance. As she threw the window open, she gave the room one last glance.

She didn’t plan to ever see it again.

***

“I don’t know why I do the things I do,” said Angie from under her black hood.

Tommy Morrow’s hiking books cloaked her tiny feet perfectly as she trudged loudly on the roof of Gwen and Roger O’Mara’s kitchen. Angie’s feet stood precariously close to the edge of the roof. It would only take one false step to send her falling to her death. A gentle breeze blew westward, gracing over Angie’s body. She dropped her hood and let it flow over her closely-shaved head. For a moment, Angie closed her eyes to try to find the calm she needed to prevent herself from causing further bloodshed. She breathed in and out, again and again. Her lungs rasped as the sickness within consumed her. When she opened her eyes again, there was only bitter contempt, hostile depravity, and evil disdain lingering in the pools of her eyes. The monster had taken over again.

As a strange smile curled from her lips, Angie whispered into the night, “I’m not sorry for what I’ve done. Remorse is a foreign emotion to me. Where was
his
emotion when he left me bereft of my innocence? I won’t run this time. I won’t stop. The animal that Bernard awoke in me has come to devour those who stand in my way. No one can stop me. Not even myself.”

As the cool breeze came to a sudden halt, Angie jumped from the kitchen roof to the dirt below. As she ran down Caribou Road in the dark of night, Angie whispered, “It all ends tonight.”

***

June 20, 1980

Kendricks Residence

9 Barn Owl Road

Shephard’s Grove, PA

After Midnight

Bernard Kendricks sat in the dark dim of his bedroom which was illuminated by the light of a candle. The burning flame danced in the darkness and grew more wild and impassioned with each passing moment. The candle illuminated Bernard’s face in a sickly glow as he poured himself over his “work.” A photograph of a young Catherine Morrow sat in a bronze frame on his desk. Her dark hair cascaded over her bare shoulder and her beautiful smile was certainly meant for another man other than Bernard. Bernard liked to imagine that Catherine was staring at him as he wrote a letter to her; his one-hundredth letter this month. A bang from the opposite side of his bedroom door jarred Bernard’s concentration. His eyes perked up as a dangerous mood overcame him. He didn’t like interruptions when he was writing his letters to Catherine. It was their only time together.

“Bernard,” called Bernard’s aging mother Dorothy, “You have a visitor.”

“Mother, I thought I said no guests tonight?!” snapped Bernard at his frail mother.

“Bernard, be nice!” she sweetly encouraged.

“We had such a wonderful time on vacation, didn’t we?”

“Yes, mother. It was a nice escape.”

“Such a shame we had to come home early. Now be nice to your guest,” said Dorothy.

Mrs. Kendricks made way for Bernard’s visitor and closed the door behind her as she went back down the hall to her bedroom.  When Bernard turned around, he was not surprised to see his Cousin Angela standing in the doorway. Angela hoped that he had finally returned home from Maine. She had something important to share with him.

“I’ve asked you countless times to leave me alone at home, Angela,” Bernard said in a bored tone. His eyes changed suddenly when he saw Angie’s appearance. Her prom dress was torn above her knees, she had scrapes on her face and legs, her hair was a disheveled mess and her eyes were in a wild frenzy.

“Has someone touched you?!” Bernard yelled in fury. “If anyone has touched you, I’ll kill them myself!”

Angie ignored Bernard’s questions and rushed to him with a jubilant smile.

“I did it, Bernard! Just like you said to!” Angie exclaimed manically.

Bernard’s eyes went wide.

“What did you do?!” asked Bernard in a horrified voice.

“I did what you said. You said to remove the obstacles from my path and I did it! She’s gone!”

Bernard’s eyes raged with anger.

“Stupid girl!”

“What? Why are you angry?” Angie asked sweetly.

“I meant better yourself. Not kill your sister!”

“But you said-“

“I know what I said!”

“Bernard, it’s over now…”

“You must go…” Bernard said sternly as he turned back to his desk to finish his letter.

“And you must come,” said Angie alluringly.

But before Bernard could respond, Angie encroached upon his work space.

“What’s this?!” yelled Angie as she grabbed the letter.

“Are you
still
obsessed with Mrs. Morrow?!”

“Don’t call her that!”

“Her name is
not
and will
never
be Catherine Kendricks!”

Angie ripped the letter into tiny pieces and threw them into the air. They fell to the floor like confetti. Bernard sped across the room as fury seeped from his skin.  His hand gripped Angie’s neck as a devious smile grew across her face. The tighter he squeezed, the wider she smiled. Her lips curled until nearly all of her teeth were bared back at Bernard. Bernard’s face morphed from an expression of relentless anger to one of uncontrollable fear.

“She will be your undoing, Bernard,” said Angie slyly as she slithered out of Bernard’s hold.

Bernard grabbed Angie and pushed her to the floor as he pinned his knees on her arms. He lowered himself to within an inch of Angie’s face and barked, “And I will be the one who unravels you to your wicked core.”

An evil smile spread across Angie’s face.

“Oh, Bernard, we all know how you like to unravel teenage girls,” said Angie in nothing more than a whisper.

Bernard looked down at Angie with a contemptible glare. His eyes grazed over her bare shoulders, her slender neck, and the bird pendant that he had given her just months prior.

“What would Catherine think of a man who takes advantage of teenage girls?”

“Stop! I told you it was a one-time thing. It was a mistake!”

“It happened twenty-seven times!”

“It was a mistake!”

“I wonder what your mother would think. A 28-year old man with his 16-year old cousin. You are a sick, sick man, Bernard.”

Tears began to flood Bernard’s eyes as he held his head with both hands in an attempt to stop the mental anguish that was now ridiculing him.

He screamed, “Oh, my God! What a monster I’ve created!”

“Yes, created and out of your control. You don’t like our little game now that you’re not in control?
Pity
.”