Darker Still (10 page)

Trevor rubbed his smooth baby looking face as if willing the damn facial hair to grow in. He hated being small for his age; not only did he get his ass beat at home but he took more than his fair share of bullying at school too. The other kids knew that he was poor and that his folks were alcoholics and they never let him live it down.

But he had finally found a group of older outcast friends who hung out down by Cayman Bridge and smoked pot. His buddy Roy had introduced him because his sister Janice was part of that group. They didn’t judge him and they took him right in. Roy had bugged his sister for over a year to get the chance to hang out with the gang and she had finally relented, probably because old Roy had been piecing together enough evidence of Janice’s unsavory acts that he had the best and longest blackmail case in the world. And then Roy had demanded that Janice let Trevor hang too.

The gang had been very accepting of them right away even though they were at least two years younger than the rest of them. They kind of mentored them through the process. First it had been pot and alcohol and then Trevor had graduated to harder stuff.

On this particular morning he had made up his mind to go to the movies and sneak in. He had a certified system in place because of Rachel—the ticket girl—who let Trevor in for free and pretended to take his ticket when it was really just a fake stub. She had been doing this for about a month and a half. Trevor hooked her up with some killer weed. It was a good arrangement.

Trevor wanted to see the new Conjuring movie. He loved horror and there weren’t many that truly scared him, but the first one had terrified him. It was so sweet. Plus that one ghost hunter chick was foxy as hell.

He had just crossed out of the woods onto Grove St. when he saw it. At first he just saw something white and red. From the distance he was at it appeared to be a really nice coat, but it was covered up with some high grass by the woods entrance. Even though it was summer he was always on the lookout for a nice coat or some cool threads. His coat that he relied on to keep him warm all winter was little more than a wind breaker full of holes that he didn’t make on purpose. He was tired of freezing for five months of the year.

He jogged over to the coat quickly, hoping to just grab it and still make the movie on time.

That was when he realized that he was not looking at any coat. He was staring at a dead girl. Her flesh was snow white as if she had been outside for a while and her whole body was covered with long red gashes with heavily caked dried blood surrounding them.

He wanted to scream but he could not find his voice. It would not make a sound. He looked around quickly hoping that no one else was around and he was not being watched by anybody. He was not actually holding at the moment, but he might be later. He was going to have to pay Rachel for this week’s movie someway, which he usually did the day after when she got off work.

Trevor saw that no one was around and started to back away from the body. He could barely take his eyes off the dead girl at his feet. She had been violated and butchered beyond recognition. But he knew who she was.

She was Holly Janson. That was her name. Her dad was a doctor. She had dated his brother Johnny briefly until her old man forbid them to see each other. Trevor remembered that she had always been really sweet and nice to him. She had overlooked so many things about their messed up family. She was from the upper crust with houses in the hills and stepdad’s who were doctors. Although if he remembered correctly her stepdad was a bit of a hard ass and a total cheap skate. He fretted over every single
penny spent. The house was the only semi luxurious thing they had and it was the smallest, least luxurious of their neighborhood. Holy didn’t seem to get along with her step dad too well. She was always complaining about him, but Trevor had always wondered how much she actually hated the guy or if she was just a girl who liked to complain a lot.

It might have also been because Johnny complained about their loser dad all the time. Johnny called him the “welfare maestro” because the man had learned to scam every single type of benefit and compensation from the government that any able bodied American could squeeze. And then had the nerve to complain about rich people being crooked cheats and swindlers. “The whole lot of them!” he would say to close out his rant always.

Trevor knew that he had to tell somebody about this. Normally he did not want anything to do with the cops and he tried to stay as much off their radar as possible, but he was more afraid of being found out that he was there and he knew about the dead body but not saying nothing. If they found it out some way he knew he was going to go to Juvenile Hall for a few years. As bad as home was Juvenile Hall was way worse. He knew that. At least at home he could leave most of the time.

He took off running as fast as he could. He didn’t stop running until he got to the police station.

It had been about an hour and he had finished telling the detective –Anderson he said his name was—all about what he had found. The detective had sent some cops out to the area to work the crime scene and he would follow out shortly he said, but first he wanted to pick Trevor’s brain a bit.

He was a nice guy and as far as cops go Trevor actually would have trusted this guy. He seemed like a semi decent dude who truly just wanted to help people.

“So, you didn’t see anything else around that you remember? Did you see anyone?”

“No. There was no one there. It was just the opening to the woods,” Trevor said.

“But that comes out on Grove St. which leads right into Main. Sometimes that can be a busy place depending on the time of day,” John said.

“I didn’t see anyone.”

“When was the last time you saw Holly Janson?”

“It’s been a while. She is in college now. She used to date my older brother about a year and a half ago.”

“Ok, I see. You weren’t doing anything that you shouldn’t have out in the woods were you?”

Trevor couldn’t hide his annoyance. Here he was coming clean to a cop to report a crime and the guy thought that he was high and had not seen quite what he said.

“Man, I know it’s that guy. I know the news. You all try to hide it and keep people in the dark but we got some sicko going around out there killing young women. Holly is the newest one.”

John smiled. “You are a smart kid, Trevor. I’m sorry if I jumped the gun and assumed that you weren’t telling the entire truth.”

There was a newspaper lying on John’s desk. Trevor noticed it mostly because of the fact that someone was reading a real paper newspaper and also the front page article was about the last murder. His eyes had somehow independently just landed on one particular spot. Asked to explain this later he was unable to. It didn’t make any sense to him either, but there were stranger things happening in the universe.

Under the headline of the paper which read “Valley Ripper apprehended? Or still at large?” there was a big picture of a crowd of people standing there and most of them were taking pictures. In the back of the crowd was a very tall man with a big camera. He looked like he might be a freelance photographer or photo journalist by the type of camera he had. He was snapping a picture and the look on his face with the camera that he had reminded Trevor of something very interesting.

He had seen the man before. Three nights ago actually. And he had seen Holly Janson.

“I’ve seen that guy before,” Trevor said.

“What guy? With the camera?”

“Yea. It was Monday night. He was taking pictures of Holly.”

“Whoa, wait a minute. I thought you said you hadn’t really seen Holly in like a year and a half.”

“I haven’t until three nights ago. I forgot because I only caught a glimpse of her and I barely remember that I recognized seeing Holly.”

“Where?”

“She was coming out of that diner on Fourth Street. It was about eight at night. She is a hot girl and I was checking her out before I recognized it was her. And that was when I saw a flash in the dark from about half a block away. I recognized that it was coming from a car. I was heading in that direction and as I walked past the car I caught a glimpse of the guy’s face. I don’t think he even noticed me. He seemed like he was so fixated on Holly. And then as soon as she drove off he drove off after her.”

“Her parents reported her missing when she didn’t come home from class that night,” John said as he pulled up the information about Holly Janson to see if they had anything on her in the computer.

“That guy did it didn’t he?” Trevor asked. “He killed Holly!”

“Well, we don’t know for sure, but this might be very helpful information.”

John patted Trevor lightly on the back. He hit a sore spot where Trevor had recently become acquainted with the stairs yet again; courtesy of his drunk dad and his anger at being woken up because Trevor coughed too loudly.

Trevor winced as the pain shot through his back.

“Trevor, are you alright?” John asked.

“Yea, just an injury from gym class.”

John appeared to be looking down the back of Trevor’s shirt. Trevor pulled the slack of his shirt tight and tried to ignore what had just happened.

“So, what happens now?” Trevor asked.

“Well, we will investigate this and I will call you with any new developments.”

*

“Did you get anything from the kid?” Michaels asked as John joined the group at the crime scene.

“You bet. Not only does he know this girl, but he saw her a few nights ago and he ID’d a guy who was taking strange photos of her with a zoom lens and an expensive camera when it was practically dark. Then the guy drove off after her. That was the night she disappeared too.”

“Holy shit. This might be the break we need.”

“I thought that you were so sure that the good professor was the break we needed?” John loved to rub it in when he could.

“Don’t be a damn smartass. I’m starting to have my doubts about him too. Call it police instinct,” Michaels said with a smile.

“So, this kid Trevor—picked the photographer out of the crowd of the last crime scene. The guy was standing in the back—has to be six foot five or six—he was taking pictures of that too with that same camera.”

“Ok. Let’s pull the footage from surveillance cameras in that area and see if we can get a positive ID on the car and a license plate number.”

“Already ahead of you. I’ve got the geeks getting that footage as we speak,” John said.

His mind was spinning quite a bit. For the Ripper to be this careful after all of these years and he misses the fact that a kid saw him stalking a girl who ended up dead. Guess it was a bit unlikely that the kid knew the girl, especially since she was older than him and he did not engage her in conversation. According to Trevor she didn’t even see him at all.

Plus if you factor in that the man was in his fifties and his eyesight was probably not what it used to be. He might not have even noticed that Trevor had seen him. Or he might have just had that momentary lapse in judgement as he became twisted and focused on his target like any skilled hunter out there. When you were focused one hundred percent on the target you did not let anyone interfere with your concentration.

The body of Holly Janson was horribly mangled, possibly worse than anybody they had seen so far. She was basically hollowed out with her internal organs removed from her chest and abdominal cavity. Her body was covered in blood, but John knew that they would not get a damn drop of the Ripper’s blood. No way, no how.

The Ripper was still careful and methodical, but he was making mistakes. It was possible that he was unravelling. That was what happened to all serial killers. There was no retirement. There had been cases in the past of serial killers like BTK who went underground for many years, before deciding to reemerge and make their presence known, and then they had been caught. The technology had finally caught up to their old ways and the old tricks did not work as well for them anymore.

But the Ripper had continued to kill. John was certain of it. He had just gone back to doing what he had done before. There had been nothing at his original house of horrors to link who he was to the crimes. So he had gotten away free and clear. What was to stop him from doing the same thing and just starting over? John believed he did do that, but something set him off and left him wanting attention. So he had begun to lash out. Now he was going to pay the ultimate price. John had no doubt in his mind.

*

Listening to the girl’s screams had been one of the most fulfilling things that he had experienced in a while. Every now and then he picked a girl who was truly worthy of him. Holly Janson had put up a brilliant fight. She was sexy and smart and tough. He could tell that she was scared to death and she was doing everything in her power not to break. Her pride would never let her show him the fear that he craved, but he knew that eventually he would break her. She had no idea of the adversary she was dealing with. He had been doing this for a very long time and he was better at it than she was.

She had started by being defiant and spitting in his face every time he came near her. She was not the first to try that tactic and he had shown her what happens to bad girls who spit at Daddy. His trusty pair of pliers did a nice job of silencing her sweet tongue. The look on her face when he yanked it out was priceless.

There had been no more spitting after that. But there had been an awful lot of choking, which he enjoyed.

After the lesson with the pliers she had been dutiful for about half a day and then she had grown defiant again when he asked her to pose for him for his camera. So he had to show her once again what happens when you don’t pose for your master.

She had found it more difficult to pose with broken ribs, but she had managed just fine. He smiled as he watched the video. It never got old. He would sit and watch these videos for hours on end. He had spent a fortune on this expensive video equipment and he had damn sure gotten his use out of it. One day when he was dead and gone someone would find all of this per his instructions and then he would forever be the most famous mass murderer in history. And he had evaded detection his whole life. That was the greatest thing that had ever been done.