The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (16 page)

“
Someone
wasn’t very popular.”

Louis let the comment slip as he looked down at the newest person to join the ranks of the dead in Collie. In the near year since Jon Harper reconnected with his ex-wife and since Cory’s little assistant Drew made confetti of some of the town folk, the crime rate in Collie seemed to be spiraling somewhere near the exponential.

The person at his feet was dismembered, his limbs scattered near him haphazardly as if the person who’d done the kindness of removing them for the guy hadn’t cared a bit where they’d landed, save for the man’s ring finger. That little digit, Louis knew, was something special to this passionate murderer. For some reason, they’d felt the need to keep it with them always.

“What do you think?”

Louis scowled at his boss and best friend’s older brother, Jon Harper, the Sheriff of Collie. He wasn’t ready to forgive him for partnering him with Rebecca. He let the expression fade as he looked at the body again.

“Whoever did this had the time to do it. It’s a fresh kill; maybe only nine hours or so.”

Jon scoffed, a sound he made whenever he was thinking and the motor in his brain was making smoke to catch up. He replied, “This looks like anger to me. You don’t go hacking someone to pieces like this unless you really have it in for them.”

Louis watched as Jon knelt next to the body. What was left of the face made Jon’s features
scrunch.

“I don’t think I recognize him, which is something
cause in Collie there isn’t a whole lot of room for strangers.”

Louis shrugged at the comment. Apart from the clothing and the obvious male distinction they’d found on the scene separate from the guy himself (a personal loss he was most sorry for and hoped could be reattached at the funeral home) there wasn’t much
to distinguish the man from a bludgeoned pile of mush. Decay hadn’t set in, but it had begun to discolor the skin, and he realized that you’d have to be some kind of magician to get a positive I.D. from the mess at his feet.

Louis said, “It’s a long shot, when you think about how many people in Collie go without health insurance, but maybe we can run his dental records or finger prints.”

Jon rose and dusted himself off. The body had been found in the hills where the grass didn’t grow nearly thick enough to keep the dry dirt from blowing all over you like a windy day at the beach, and even as short a time as he’d spent close to the ground, he had the stuff all over him. The body, naturally, was covered in it like it had been swaddled in a tan blanket.

Jon mused, “If the guy was killed out here, dismembered and all, then where’s the blood? You’d think if I cut off all your arms and legs and some other
appendages, that you’d bleed a bit.”

Louis smirked. “If I cut someone up, and I had a bunch of people pieces to get rid of, this is the place I’d put them. No one comes out here and you don’t
have to be a local to know it. Everything worth anything is in town.” He tilted his head. “This guy bled like a fountain unless someone knew what they were doing. Where ever our scene is, it’s gotta look like the Chainsaw Massacre.”

“Yeah.” Jon smiled. “You and the new girl get to looking then. Whatever you can find, find it and then get back to me. Let’s get this cleared up before the town gets wind; the least we need is another scare.”

Louis looked away from Jon and the crime scene before he said something he’d regret and noticed that the coroner was here to take the body away to the medical examiner. Cory Harper was the best at the job than any of her predecessors, including the one that died of unnatural causes, and since she was married to the Sheriff, they’d know who their little Humpty Dumpty was in no time and possibly save him from spending too much time with Officer Tabb. And, as he walked away from the scene and joined Rebecca back at his cruiser, he hoped that it would be extremely soon, there was only so much temptation a man could endure.

Rebecca looked as she should, beautiful as a painting. He supposed that someone like her never had a bad hair day even when as they’d gotten a look at a dead guy and turned eight shades of green, that it had been near impossible to keep her from tossing cookies and ruining evidence.

“What’s going on?”

Louis ran a hand through his hair, closing his eyes as he stepped up to the driver’s side of the cruiser. Since Travis’ departure and him being promoted to deputy, there wasn’t a soul alive that could get him to ride shotgun again. As he opened his door, he replied, “Out to find some blood.”
 

*******
 

“You haven’t said anything about last night at the bar.”

Louis clicked the blinker on his steering wheel so that he could turn left. He’d decided that he was going to ignore the situation with Reyna as long as he could, possibly until it just went away on its own. Therefore, answering questions about the girl in question handing him his anus on a platter didn’t fall into the category of things he planned to get done.

“Drop it, okay? Do me a favor and just keep your head on work. What happened last night doesn’t matter.”

“It does if I’m still interested.”

Louis came to a stop at a red light and had to blink several times. What was it about him and women? When he wanted their attention they slapped his features into next week, when he wanted them to disappear off the planet they wanted to rub against him like cats in heat.

“What are you talking about? You saw what happened, you know I have a girlfriend.”

Rebecca was looking out of her window as she replied, “Not much of one if you can’t take your eyes off of me.” A long pause broke the comment and then she added, “She must not realize what a catch you are if she can let you go over a near kiss.”

“You don’t know a thing about her.” The irritation in his voice, whether or not he meant to put it there made his statement burn his lips. Even if Reyna wasn’t returning his calls the three of them he’d placed to her once he wasn’t inebriated, she didn’t deserve to be talked about behind her back. The woman was a saint; her heart big enough to carry the entire world.

“There I go again, huh? Saying things I have no business saying. It’s difficult to keep my mouth shut when things are obvious.”

“Just keep your mouth shut where it concerns Reyna and we won’t have a problem.” To take the sting off the comment, he stuck his tongue out at her and offered her a wink. He wasn’t a harsh man, especially to women, and whenever possible, he’d apologize faster than argue. Though, Reyna was proving to be the exception.

As soon as the comment was out of him, Louis realized that he was more upset about the whole situation than he thought he was, at least if he got angry over the simplest comments concerning Reyna that there was some emotion for her left behind. Just
what it was he didn’t know. Once women left him he didn’t chase after them, that was the rule. What did he care about Reyna now? He was, once again, a free man.

Louis pulled into a parking lot in front of a rather dilapidated gas station. The place hadn’t served actual gas in over a decade and a half, but the old man who owned the place who always sat out front and never moved seemed to know everything about everything. If he wanted to get a lead on a crime scene Barrel was the guy to hit up.

Before he got out of the cruiser, Louis said with a slight smile, “Forget about everything for now. Let’s just find out what we can and do our damn job.”

********

Reyna eyed the mouth of one of her patients, and as the old woman stretched wide, she went into a yawn. If anyone that ever lived deserved to yawn, if would be her. In fact, she envied the old woman for her ability to go to sleep whenever she pleased, since if truth be told, knowing that she’d lost her chance with Louis made for a sever case of insomnia. She kept mulling over what she could have done differently, or what might have gone wrong and she kept arguing with herself that trying to kiss another woman and being unsuccessful at it was such a bad thing.

“But it is a bad thing,” Reyna mumbled as she put her thermometer on a nightstand next to her patient’s bed.

“Pardon?”

Reyna shook her head at Mrs.
Buttleby, and offered her a smile. “I was just talking out loud.”

“Oh, well don’t forget to feed Tucker.”

Reyna looked over her shoulder at Mrs. Buttleby’s stuffed orange tabby cat. The poor cat had last been among the living nearly thirty years ago, but because of Mrs. Buttleby’s condition, to her the little tabby was still alive; there were days she’d visit the old woman and see her talking to Tucker, her hand stroking his tired old fur.

Reyna smiled, and as she collected her equipment so that she could move on to the next patient, she gave Mrs.
Buttleby a soft hug and whispered, “Sure thing, don’t worry.”

Once she was out in the hall, after first placing a small dish of cat food out for Tucker, Reyna rested her back against a wall out in the hallway. Louis had been the kind of man that would have pretended Tucker was alive just as she had only so Mrs.
Buttleby wouldn’t be upset by the news that her beloved tabby was dead. He had, on several occasions kept conversation with many of the patients first in an effort to win her affection and then out of genuine affection. Her heart hurt thinking of the patients that would look forward to seeing Louis and who would never see him again because of her.

Reyna shook her head. None of this was her fault, and beating herself up over something that she had no control over wasn’t going to improve the situation. She knew that Louis had tried to call her, perhaps try to make light of the situation she’d walked into. Maybe it was time to call him and clear the air. At least, if she settled things between them, one way or the other she would be able to let him go.

“Oh, look what the nice lady gave you, Tucker! Next time we see her we’ll have to thank her, won’t we? I think we will, yes we will. Oh, you’re so precious Tucker.”

Reyna smiled as she heard Mrs.
Buttleby through the door to her room. Even though the woman was mad as hatter most of the time, in her soul she was a kind person who deserved everything she could be given. Just as she moved to head down the hall, Reyna decided that the feelings still lurking in her heart were worth keeping, that she couldn’t give up on Louis just because he’d made a mistake, or like Mrs. Buttleby, had been temporarily out of touch with his brain, at least she hoped it was a mistake. If Louis really wanted someone else, she wasn’t going to stop him. Probably.

I don’t know nuthin ‘bout no guy getting’ chopped up.”

Louis stared at Barrel’s grizzled visage, noting that his beard was longer than the last time he’d seen it and that as normal it had flecks of whatever the man had eaten for breakfast resting in it. They were his ‘snacks’ for later as he called them.

Louis ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I’m not asking about our dead body, Barrel, I’m talking about what you might have heard in town. Was there anything strange that went on last night? Did anyone new come by the gas station?”

It was a
well known fact that often when Collie got a visitor to her narrow streets, that more often than not, they stopped in by Barrel’s gas station looking for a deal only to be told that the man could barely tell the difference between gas and water let alone have it stored out in the tanks out front for sale.

Barrel, his round and wrinkled body
squinching up as he shrugged, replied, “Alls I know is that old Pearson heard some screaming round back near her place last night but thought it was just a couple of the youngins having themselves a good time.” He smiled. “Not much to do here but listen to other people having fun, you know?” As he finished his last sentence, he lit a hand rolled cigarette and took a long drag from it, his beard parted to make way for it.

“Did Mrs. Pearson see anyone in particular, anyone we could question?” Rebecca asked. She had been staring at Barrel as if he was something to be afraid of, as if she might catch a disease from him. Louis couldn’t blame her for the reaction, particularly since Rebecca hadn’t been born and raised in Collie and couldn’t know that Barrel was just as much a fixture in Collie as the street lights.

“Little lady, if she saw anything she’d had to have coke bottles fixed to her eyes. The poor old gal is blind, like skinny fellow in love with a plump, one-legged beauty queen.” He paused a moment, pulled his cigarette from his mouth and whistled. “Good lord, sweetheart, you’re good for the soul.”

Louis coughed into his hand. It was either that, or let Rebecca fly with what she was about to retort to Barrel. Apparently wolf whistles offended her. “Is that all you have for us Barrel?”

“Last night was kinda slow for the ears, Deputy Kale. If I hear anything more, you’ll be the first to know ‘bout it, promise.”

Louis dipped into the pocket of his uniform pants and pulled out a twenty dollar bill he’d set aside just for Barrel. After he’d handed the man the money, Barrel tipped a pretend hat his way and flicked his cigarette. He nodded in Barrel’s direction to return the gesture and headed for the cruiser.

“Is that how it always goes? You just gave him twenty dollars for information about two kids having sex.”

Before he got into the cruiser, Louis said, “Nothing is as it seems in Collie. Barrel never says what he means to say. If Mrs. Pearson saw something, I’d wager it was more than a couple of amorous adolescents discovering the birds and bees.”
 

********
 

“This place is scary, and not in the horror movie kind of way but in
the I might get tetanus kind of way. I don‘t think I‘ll ever get the grim off of my skin. How in the world can anyone live like this?”

Louis chuckled as the moved past Old Pearson’s hoarded out back yard and set to make their way to what looked like an abandoned home just at the edge of property. It was hard to imagine that anyone could have dragged a man through the stacks of junk that surrounded them like vultures looking down waiting to devour them, let alone how Mrs. Pearson would have seen anything through it. The stuff she’d collected for the majority of her eighty-nine years had last seen new before he’d even existed.

“I doubt highly that anyone was murdered back here. Who in their right mind would go back here willingly?”

Louis looked at Rebecca, saw how her hair shone in the light, how her perfectly her body swayed as she walked and thought that if someone like her had asked him back here on the promise of greater things
to come that he would have been most willing. He opened his mouth to tell her his reflection but closed it as he thought the comment might not be appropriate. Still, it had a sort of logic to it and therefore, compelled him to keep going. If anything, they could discount the place and call it a loss and look for another lead.

Louis held up his hand as they came to the broken door of the old house and said, “Let me go in first, all right?”

“Don’t patronize me.”

Louis faced her and raised an eyebrow. “
Darlin, I couldn’t care less about who goes in there first. I have you out here in case there’s some deranged hillbilly in there with a shotgun. If I get my ass blown off, I’ll rest better as I bleed to death knowing you’re out here to call for back up, got it?”

Not bothering to wait for her answer, even though he knew it would have amused him, Louis stepped through the broken door of the house, surprised that it hadn’t fallen apart when he’d touched it to move it out of his way.

As soon as he was inside, he didn’t need his eyes to let him know that something horrific had taken place inside. For one thing, the place reeked, the smell reminiscent of hot garbage and fish guts, and even when he put a hand to his face to prevent himself from gagging on the smell he couldn’t manage to keep the putrid stink out of his nostrils.

Since it was dark in the house due to lack of windows to allow sunlight, the most he could do was to shine his job issued pen light on his surroundings. What the light illuminated was more than he knew he could handle.

Body parts, more than he could count, littered the one roomed home, thrown haphazardly in the same fashion as the man out in the dirt. The mangled bodies of the victims; two to be certain of if you counted the separate torsos; one male and one female, were not recognizable as once having been people. Their faces had been brutally smashed in with a blunt object.

“Oh, God.”
 

********
 

“I’ve never seen murders with this much anger behind it. As long as I’ve been working as an examiner, I’ve not seen anything like this. And why the ring fingers? What significance does that have?”

Louis watched as Jon Harper shook his head. Jon’s face, though scrunched in concentration and worry, was handsome to most women’s standards as it was cut in severe angles that made the man look as if he had once been a statue and was granted life.

Jon looked to his wife, the lovely and now happily married Cory Harper, and replied, “I have no idea why someone would sever a ring finger and then cart it home as if it was a prize from Chuck-E-Cheese. All I can get into my brain right now is how badly we need to catch this
s.o.b. before he decides to chop up another one of Collie’s citizens.

Is there anything you can tell us?”

Louis watched Cory shrug, her pretty hair falling from around her shoulders to rest at her back. It was a strange time to think how Jon had it made with his wife and how happy they were together, but even as they discussed the victims, he had to think about it. Had he been happy with Reyna? Their relationship had been undefined at best, and at worst, she’d been a friend he liked to be sweet on.

“With so much carnage, I didn’t manage to find much of anything, though I can tell you that the two victims you found this afternoon were killed at least a full twenty-four hours prior to the man you found out near the highway. That, and from the blood samples you gave me, I can tell you that your first victim wasn’t murdered in that house.”

Jon folded his arms to his chest and frowned so deeply that his frown had a frown. “The mayor is going to be breathing down my spine, and if he hasn’t called in the auxiliary, he’s going to notify the FBI.”

Louis scoffed, his head clearing from the thoughts he had been entertaining. “Are you kidding? The FBI didn’t bother to visit us the last time we had a serial killer, what makes you think they’re going to this time?”
 

********
 

Louis couldn’t remember the last time he felt so tired from a shift, and after a shower that took him nearly two hours to get through, he dragged himself to his living room so that he could vegetate on his sofa and fall into a coma.

If the day had been any indication of what was going to come, he knew that sleep was something he was going to need in spades. He tried not to remind himself that this was just such an occasion where Travis would have come in handy. As soon as he had the thought, he jingled the handle of his mental toilet and let it disappear down the drain. Travis was gone, apparently for a good reason, and there wasn’t a thing that was going to change the fact.

The image of Rebecca flitted into his mind and he did an equally decent job of flushing her out as well. All day she’d made comments about how well they’d look together and how much she was beginning to like him. The idea of subtlety was foreign to her, as well
as the fact that he didn’t nearly return her level of flirting; especially as most of her remarks had been done on a job where three people hadn’t even had the decency to be butchered like animals. Either the woman didn’t have a single ounce of sympathy for the victims, or she was lonely of the kind of caliber that called for that kind of naked desperation. While flattering, he didn’t find it attractive, in fact he was beginning to think the woman was attractive only in appearance.

Even before his eyes could close, before the television could lull him to a much needed REM cycle, the knock at his door jarred him from his relaxation and induced a stream of silent swearing that would have made his grandmother faint.

“I don’t know who the hell you are, but get the hell off of my lawn and leave me alone!” A few other choice phrases wanted to escape him, but irritation didn’t call for that kind of language. He closed his eyes, thinking that he’d handled his unknown visitor when there was another knock at the door.

“Louis? Are you there?”

He swore, even though he knew the voice on the other side of the door. He swore because he knew if he wasn’t so tired that he would have never yelled at a woman. His father had been an abusive lowlife alcoholic and once his mother had the sense enough to leave the bastard, he’d been taught since he could understand the meaning that women were to be respected; especially when they inspired you to spout expletives.

Louis lifted himself from his sofa as if he weighed a million tons and he dragged himself to his front door. When he had it open and he saw Reyna’s face, the ache in his muscles seemed to vanish. Her eyes were red and swollen with tears.