A Troubling Turn of Events Read online

  Hal was the one who taught Tom how to make a “cigarette time bomb” on warm spring days when it was just too nice to be in school.

  “Just take a cigarette and poke a hole all the way through it, right above the filter.”

  He pilfered a cigarette from his dad’s Viceroys that day in 1960 so he could demonstrate.

  “Then take a smoke bomb and stick the fuse through the hole.

  “Tell the teacher you need to go to the restroom and before you leave the restroom stick your head out and make sure the hallway is empty.

  “Go back into the restroom to light the cigarette, then on the way back to class put the cigarette and smoke bomb underneath the radiator in the hallway.

  “The cigarette will take six minutes to burn down to the fuse and light it. By that time you’ll be back in class and you’ll have an alibi.”

  Tom was apprehensive the first time he tried the stunt, but the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and it was just too nice a day to be learning geometry.

  And it worked like a charm.

  The smoke bomb went off, the school was evacuated and Tom and his classmates got to go outside and play kickball for half an hour.

  Tom was a hero to his fifth grade classmates.

  He pulled the same stunt again a month later and twice the following year.

  He tried to pull it a third time, but had the lousiest luck.

  The hallway was clear the first time he opened the boys’ room door to check.

  But by the time he lit the cigarette and walked into the hall the principal, Mr. Catter, was headed down the hall to use the restroom.

  Still, it could have been worse.

  Tom ducked back into the boys’ room, removed the smoke bomb and jammed it into his pocket, and managed to flush the cigarette just as Mr. Catter was walking in.

  All he got was a lecture about smoking and a warning not to do it again.

  “You’re too young to sneak into the restroom to smoke,” Mr. Catter said as he winked at Tom and lit up his own cigarette. “If you don’t stop now you’ll be old like me and still doing the same thing.”

  When Tom needed vehicles, Hal was the logical one to turn to.

  The Silverado Sara was driving was Hal’s own vehicle. He was able to get it going again because it was like him. It was old school and had a good old fashioned carburetor. No electronic ignition either. He had to change some fried parts, but it was an easy project for a man who once used to brag he could fix anything with an engine.

  Just for uniformity’s sake he found two other 1975 Silverados, one at a local scrap yard and the other at the home of a man who couldn’t take it anymore and committed suicide.

  He rebuilt the starters and generators for both vehicles and got dry cell batteries from a local farm equipment company, then got them running as well.

  Lastly, he painted “Kerr County Sheriff” on all sides as neatly as he could.

  It wasn’t very neat. It turned out he was a better mechanic than a tagger.

  But it was okay.

  The deputies who would drive the new “patrol units” didn’t mind.

  They, like Sara, were glad to get off horseback.

  Sara turned onto Martin Road and turned off the toggle switch for the air conditioner.

  It was a moderately warm day, much too cool for “full Arctic” and she decided to roll the windows down.

  She was doing a morale call on a single woman named Katie who used to ride her bicycle to a neighbor’s house every Tuesday afternoon to play gin rummy.

  Now, it was ridiculously easy to lose a day in modern post-apocalyptic America, with no clocks or calendars to keep one straight.

  The neighbors assumed they got the day wrong and expected Katie to come the next afternoon instead.

  Now it was Thursday and the neighbors were concerned enough to walk to Katie’s house to check on her.

  Halfway there they happened across Sara, out doing a routine patrol of the area.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sara told the neighbors. “I’ll save you a walk up the mountain.”

  The neighbors smiled and thanked the deputy, then went back home.

  Sara drove onward, and halfway up the steep road she passed a man afoot, late twenties and Caucasian, on his way down.

  The two locked eyes and nodded at one another.

  Twenty minutes later, after she’d found Katie’s body, she began a desperate search for the man.

  But he’d disappeared into thin air.

  -3-

  Sara had seen some horrific things since the blackout.

  Everyone had.

  She’d passed by stalled cars on the highway with bodies inside.

  Heads blown apart by desperate people who’d given up and decided to end it all.

  She’d seen whole families dead, killed by the mother or father, who then turned the gun on themselves.

  Piles of bodies burned in the streets by a city trying to control the threat of disease.

  She’d seen things which turned her stomach and made her vomit.

  Things which made her cry.

  But this… this was one of the worst things she’d seen.

  This one left her stunned.

  Her hand trembled as she called on her radio to Tom.

  “Sheriff Haskins, are you still on duty?”

  Tom was running a sheriff’s department free of pretense or decorum. He wasn’t a man who saw a great need in formality.

  Normally he’d have answered, “Yep. I’m still here. Whatcha need, Sugar?”

  But he sensed something in her voice. Something he didn’t like. Something which required a more adult and professional response.

  “Affirmative. Is everything okay?”

  “Sheriff, I need you to come to 2315 Martin Road.”

  Her voice was shaking.

  “Are you in danger?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “It’ll take me twenty minutes, honey. I’m several miles away.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll wait for you.”

  There were no other deputies on duty. No backup available.

  It was just Tom and Sara.

  And as he sped toward the scene, he wondered about her choice of words. That she’d wait for him.

  He wondered what that meant exactly. That she’d wait to brief him about what he was about to see? Perhaps to steel him for something he’d certainly find traumatic?

  Was she going to wait for his arrival to do her job about… whatever it was she was working on? If so, why? Was someone giving her grief? Probably not. She said she was in no danger.

  He got his Ford Galaxie up to eighty miles an hour. Not bad for a vehicle more than fifty years old.

  As he closed the gap between them he continued to try to analyze her words and what they meant.

  The truth was she was waiting for him before she went back into that house because it was a nightmare.

  A nightmare she didn’t want to experience again without another person to strengthen her nerves.

  Tom Haskins fit the bill perfectly.

  For he was by far the toughest man Sara had ever met.

  She’d never call him old. He preferred the term “seasoned.”

  But he’d experienced more in his life than ten other men she knew.

  He’d had his share of heartaches, having lost not only his wife but also his only son and grandson.

  He’d been taken hostage by a group of brutal cowboys in south Texas and beaten so severely she sought a priest to administer last rites.

  It was of his own doing. He’d gone in to save Stacey, Sara’s mom, a woman he’d never even met. And he’d gone in with the full understanding it wouldn’t bode well for him.

  But he went in anyway.

  He’d ended up killing several of the bad guys to save Stacey and himself.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d killed. When a band of marauders attacked the Junction compound belonging to his best friend and neighbor Sco
tt Harter, he’d helped fend them off.

  Then he put the bodies of the dead bandits on display to send a message to others who might also try.

  Tom had been through an awful lot, both before and after the blackout.

  It had toughened him. Made him grizzled and hard.

  Though he still had a heart beating within him, and though it was a kind heart, his exterior was leathered and rough.

  If anyone could handle the scene within Katie’s house at 2315 Martin Road, it was Sheriff Tom.

  While she waited she cruised up and down Martin Road, and the several roads which crossed it. Looking for the man she’d seen on her way to the crime scene.

  On her lap, out of its holster and ready to fire, was her service weapon.

  She’d never fired it at anyone before.

  But she was locked and loaded and ready to use it today, should the need arise.

  As she slowly drove, scanning the shrubbery on both sides of the road, she tried to remember details of the man she’d seen.

  From the moment she’d see him she was laser-focused on his face, trying to recognize him. Trying to size him up, to evaluate him, to determine whether he belonged there or was out of place.

  As she drove past him, their eyes met. They nodded to one another.

  And she made a rookie mistake.

  By keeping eyes locked on his face she failed to examine the rest of him.

  Didn’t look at his body to see if his clothing was blood-spattered.

  Didn’t even check his hands to see if he was carrying a weapon.

  If he had been, she might be dead now.

  She was stupid.

  Rookies were allowed to make mistakes, and nobody ever trained her on the correct way to assess danger in a stranger. But at the time she saw him, she wasn’t aware a crime had been committed. Wasn’t aware he might trouble.

  She tried to forgive herself for not examining the man closer as she drove past him.

  But she screwed up and she knew it.

  The only consolation she gave herself was that by focusing so much on his face the way she did she’d burned the image into her memory.

  As long as she lived, she’d never forget what he looked like.

  -4-

  A familiar voice came over the radio.

  “I’m here, Sara. Where are you?”

  “I’m patrolling the area, Sheriff. I’ll be there in three, maybe four minutes.”

  “Ten four. Anybody inside the house needing assistance?”

  “No. Trust me, Tom. You don’t want to go in there.”

  Once again the grizzled sheriff of Kerr County was left to ponder her words.

  She’d intended them to be a warning. To stay out of the house until she arrived. So she could tell him in person what he was to expect, without sharing details over the radio where anyone with a working police scanner could hear them.

  She should have known that Tom would look upon her warning: that he didn’t want to go in the house, as a challenge rather than sound advice.

  Four minutes later she pulled up to the house at 2315 Martin Road and saw Tom’s vehicle unoccupied.

  He was already inside, surveying the worst crime scene either of them had ever seen.

  She walked in and joined him, trying her best not to retch.

  He was already in the bedroom, at the foot of the bed, looking over the carnage.

  “Do me a favor, hon. Open up those curtains so we have a little more light, would you?”

  The scene before them was like something from a bad slasher movie.

  Katie’s torso was gone, replaced by a monstrous amount of blood. So much blood the comforter on top of the bed, and no doubt the sheets beneath it, were soaked red.

  Bloody drag marks on the edge of the bed told a tale of the torso being dragged onto the floor.

  A bloody trail led out of the room and out the back door. From there the torso simply disappeared.

  The poor woman’s limbs were still intact and still on the bed.

  Two pieces of rope had been passed between the mattress and box spring, one at the head and one at the foot.

  On each side of the bed about three feet of each rope was exposed.

  Just enough to tie poor Katie, spread eagle, by the wrists and ankles.

  That would have been bad enough.

  But there was so much more.

  The wrists and ankles had been tied so tightly they were still full of blood despite being severed from the rest of the body.

  The ankles and feet were covered with dozens of cigarette burns.

  The toes on the left foot were burned black. Tom examined them closely and guessed a blow torch was used.

  Sara finally found her tongue and said in a timid and cracked voice, “Please tell me he did that after she died.”

  She knew better.

  She really didn’t want or need for Tom to give her a harsh dose of reality, but he did anyway.

  “The animal who did this wouldn’t waste his time torturing a corpse, honey. He did that to see the look of terror and agony on her face.”

  They found her head on the kitchen counter.

  Her eyeballs were missing. Not cut out, for there were no cut marks.

  Tom surmised they were ripped out with the killer’s thumbs.

  They’d search extensively in the hours ahead, but never would find Katie’s eyes.

  “They say the eyes are windows to the soul,” Tom told his young charge. “I’m guessing it wasn’t good enough for him to take her life. He wanted her soul as well.”

  The head was upright on the counter. The blood it left on the counter was smeared, as though he tried to sop it up with a towel.

  But there were no bloody towels nearby.

  Tom made an educated guess.

  “When you saw the man walking down the road, was his face covered with blood? Especially the area around the mouth?”

  “No. I got a good look at his face. It wasn’t bloody. Why?”

  “I don’t think he wiped the blood from the counter. I think he licked it up.”

  That was it. That was the last straw.

  That was what finally made Sara vomit.

  “Try to do that over there, so it doesn’t contaminate the crime scene,” Tom said.

  She complied, spewing vomit all over the dining room table on the other side of the room.

  “I’m sorry, Tom.”

  “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m fighting it myself. And I’m afraid I’m losing the battle.”

  Katie’s severed head, propped upright on the counter, was actually smiling.

  But it wasn’t of her doing, for she certainly had nothing to smile about in her last minutes of life.

  Rather, the killer placed the smile there himself after she died. By lifting up the sides of her face and using a staple gun to hold her stretched cheeks into place.

  They left the head there and went back to the bedroom. One of the basic tenets of police investigation is to have several sets of eyes examine the same crime scene. New eyes frequently catch things other eyes have missed.

  There wasn’t an option for new eyes in this case, since Tom and Sara were the only ones on duty.

  Under those circumstances Tom thought it wise to take a break, then to come back and examine the bedroom again.

  This time they noticed other things which had slipped by them the first time.

  -5-

  It was Sara who noticed her fingers because… well, women normally are more attentive when it comes to things like that.

  “Oh my God, Tom. Look at her fingernails.”

  Tom lifted each hand and examined the victim’s nails, one by one.

  In canary yellow fingernail polish someone had painted a letter on each nail.

  One by one, the letters had no particular significance.

  As a whole, though, they certainly did.

  A very ugly significance, and one which, more than anything, gave a bit of insight into the killer’s mind.
>
  Collectively, the letters spelled out the word “WHORE.”

  “He’s a woman hater,” Tom offered.

  “He’s a psychopathic son of a bitch,” Sara added.

  “Yeah. That too.”

  Tom looked closely at the bed, where the hands and feet had been separated from the rest of the body.

  The sheets, and the mattress beneath them, were badly shredded.

  “A regular saw wouldn’t cause this much damage,” he said.

  “Then what’s your best guess?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Go ahead and tell me. I don’t like any of this, so what do you have to lose?”

  “I’m guessing a chainsaw. And from the way the blood shot from her wrists all the way to the foot of the bed, I’m guessing she was still alive when he started cutting.”

  She ran out of the room and vomited again on the living room floor.

  When she returned she apologized.

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll be vomiting any more, if that’s what you mean. I’m pretty sure my stomach is empty now.”

  “Ever had the dry heaves, honey?”

  “No. What are the dry heaves?”

  “That’s when there’s nothing left in your stomach to vomit, but your body tries to puke anyway. Very painful, and not something you want to wish on your worst enemy.”

  He stood up and surveyed the crime scene, then continued.

  “Although I’d wish it on the bastard who did this in a heartbeat.”

  He looked back to Sara and said, “I don’t want you to experience the dry heaves. Why don’t you step outside and I’ll finish up in here.”

  “I’ll be okay, Tom. I wouldn’t be much of a deputy if I ran away from the bad stuff.”

  He smiled at her toughness.

  “Atta girl…”

  She looked beneath the bed and around the room.

  “You know what bothers me, Tom?”

  “Probably a lot of stuff. But what in particular?”

  “He had to have tools to do this. A chainsaw. A blowtorch. A staple gun. Have you seen any of that stuff?”