Darker Still (6 page)

“I could have sworn I locked it. I feel stupid,” Cheryl said.

“Nonsense. This gave me something to do anyway. I was bored out of my mind at the station,” John said.

“You were at the station this late?”

“Yea, I’ve been working on your sister’s case. Nothing has turned up yet and we have no breaks, but we will keep searching. There is always something somewhere that is waiting to break a case open. I have always believed that.”

“Thanks,” Cheryl said. “Would you like to stay for a while? I really don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Sure, I’d be happy to.”

“So, you didn’t always want to be a cop?” Cheryl asked. She was definitely feeling much more relaxed, which John hoped was attributed to him, but might have been to do with the rum and coke she was drinking.

“No, like all little kids I wanted to be a baseball player.”

“That sounds like a cool dream to have,” Cheryl said.

“Yeah, it is. I was actually getting close to the dream, but I blew my shoulder out when I was college and that was pretty much the end of that.”

“Ouch. That sucks.”

“Yea, but I enjoy what I do. I mean it has its ups and downs just like everything else, but there is just not anything else that I could ever picture myself doing on a regular basis,” John said.

“I can hear that. Would you say that catching bad guys is more than a job for you?”

“What? Like it’s my passion?” John laughed.

“Yea,” Cheryl replied with a sexy smile.

“I know it sounds stupid, but it really is like a passion. There is something that gives me a rush like nothing else in the world when I close a case. I just love knowing that I helped put a bad person behind bars where they can’t hurt any other innocent people.”

Cheryl touched his hand right then. “That is very sweet,” she said. It almost sounded flirtatious but he didn’t think she meant it in that way.

“So, how are you holding up with everything?” John asked.

“I’m doing about as well as I can,” Cheryl replied. “I feel so sorry for my parents. They have just been destroyed by what happened to Theresa. Mom has hardly left the house since it happened. I was going to have them stay with me for a bit while everything is going on, but they decided that they wanted to bury Theresa back in Lancaster. So I’ll be going up there for the funeral.”

“I’m so sorry,” John said. He looked deep into Cheryl’s eyes and hoped that she was as strong as he thought she was. He admired strength in a beautiful woman and he could tell that Cheryl was one of the strongest women he had ever met.

“So, you don’t have any leads about this guy at all?” Cheryl asked. A solitary tear rolled down her face and John brushed it away. He took a deep breath and thought about telling her who the killer was and about what had happened to him. He decided that she needed to know. The Chief had told him to keep it all under wraps, and he had fully intended to do that, but with Cheryl that didn’t seem at all important.

John told her everything. From what happened when he was a kid to the letter he had just received. When he was done it felt like a big weight had been lifted off his chest. He had tried not to get too caught up in Cheryl’s response to this, but she was obviously becoming very emotional. It had to be a huge thing to hear and now that it was out John was not so sure that he should have told her.

“Oh, my God. So, this guy is a serial killer? He is going to keep doing this? You guys haven’t been able to catch him for thirty years?”

“It isn’t quite as cut and dry as that, “John started. He wanted to calm her down. She was getting a bit hysterical and he poured her a glass of water, which she gulped down quickly.

“What is it then? You don’t have the faintest idea who this man is? He killed your sister and God knows how many other people since then. Now he killed my sister. Did he kill my sister as a message to you?”

John looked at Cheryl right then and stared deeply into her eyes. He had actually not thought of that before now, but he didn’t think so.

“No, he is driven to kill. That is all this man does. He takes and takes and takes. The fact that he is now playing games with me is just something he is doing because I’m back in town and he is bored.”

John hoped that Cheryl bought his reply. It would be terrible for her to think that her sister was killed just to send a message to him as part of some sick game this guy was playing. Although he was playing a very twisted game. That was what all serial killers did. They played games and screwed over people’s lives. It stretched so far beyond just the killing of the victim. That was just the beginning of a chain reaction that would terrorize an entire family and even a community. It was all part of their grandiosity and narcissism.

“I can’t imagine how scared you must be,” Cheryl said. “I’m terrified, but if this guy was actually after me I would change my identity and move to the Antarctica or something.”

John smiled. He liked that she was feeling up to cracking jokes and having an easy conversation, but she did prove a valid point. He was terrified, but he was used to it. You had to get used to dealing with fear or else it would paralyze you at exactly the wrong moment.

“I am scared. I’m not going to do the macho thing and I say that I’m not afraid of anything. I’m a little beyond that age, but the fear is a good thing.”

“How is that good?”

“Well, it is a powerful motivator if you use it the way it is supposed to be used. I used the fear that I feel to move me to action, instead of letting it cripple me to inaction,” John said. He hoped that made sense. The rum and cokes were starting to give him a rocking good buzz also.

“I can see that. I never really looked at it that way,” Cheryl said.

“Well, most people don’t because they don’t have to deal with the levels of fear that someone in my line of work has had to. But people who have very dangerous jobs where their lives are on the line on a regular basis have to develop that sort of edge. It’s the edge our ancestors had in caveman times because there was possible death around every corner, every tree, cave, or blade of grass. There was something somewhere that could kill you. We have evolved away from that in recent years I think,” John said.

He was aware that he was starting to wax way too intellectual and made a mental note to try to reign that back a little bit before he started to sound stupid.

“You are incredibly insightful John Anderson,” Cheryl said. The way she said his name like that sent chills up his spine. He was starting to like this girl a lot and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It felt like it should have been great and he was a bit excited, but he was afraid for her to get too close to him since he had a psychopathic serial killer targeting him for sport.

“I have my moments,” he said and before he realized what was happening he was kissing her. All of the memories of what it was like to be with a great woman came back to him all at once. It was an odd mix of newfound excitement and nostalgia. She was soft and sweet. Her lips were moist and sensuous, the way they caressed against his sent sensations of lust rolling through his body. He needed this, but he could not shake the feeling that he was doing something terrible by placing her in danger. He had to back off.

He pulled away and took a drink.

“What’s wrong?” Cheryl asked.

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” John said.

“Why?”

“I find you unbelievably attractive Cheryl but with the way things are right now I feel like I would be putting you in danger by getting too close to you,” John said.

Cheryl nodded as if she had already weighed the pros and cons of this. “I understand, but I really don’t care.”

“Well, you should care. I do care.”

“I know you want to protect me, but honestly I would feel better protected by having you by my side than being left alone. Right now I just feel like the world is coming down on me and I have no one to lean on. You are so sweet and I can tell that you are a vessel of hope in a world that is totally devoid of it,” Cheryl said. A tear fell from her eye.

John felt his heart melt a bit at the sentiments she had just expressed so poetically. She was speaking from her sweet heart and he knew that she really wanted to be with him. He understood that she did not feel safe and it was possible that she wasn’t, but by being with him it would place her in direct danger. He wasn’t sure he could live with himself if something happened to her because she was with him.

“That was beautiful, sweetie. But I’m not sure I can be that selfish to put you in harm’s way because I want to be with you.”

“You aren’t. I’m putting myself there because I want to be with you. This is not on you; it is my decision. I know what I want.”

John smiled and kissed her sweetly.

After they finished making love John slept better than he had slept in months. He felt peaceful at last.

The scream shattered his dreams and threw him from the comfort of sleep. His eyes were instantly open and his body was rushing out of the bed before his mind had even made a connection to it. He stumbled several times before finding his footing and running towards the screaming.

It was Cheryl. She was screaming at the top of her lungs. A million insane images filled his mind as he rushed towards the kitchen of what he might find when he got there. He could see the killer standing over her with a large knife gutting her with glee while she screamed her final breaths and left her entrails splattered all over the floor.

He would not lose someone else he cared about to the hands of this bastard. It probably only took him about five seconds to run from the bedroom to the kitchen but it felt like he was running around the block. It was taking forever to get to where he needed to be. She needed him and he was not there. Why was he not there? Because he had fallen asleep. He had allowed himself to fall asleep. Why would he do that? Why? He had no time to sleep when this psycho was on the loose. He knew better than that.

A million idiotic thoughts raced through his mind as he wanted to blame himself for every little thing that he was or was not doing right. That was not helpful, but for some reason his mind always went there first. It was stupid; plain and simple. He needed to calm down and assess the situation like the John of old would have done. Somewhere along the line he had allowed himself to become so numb to it all that he had ignored his basic conditioning and his fundamental instincts on everything in life. He had become completely desensitized. He had to find a way to bring himself back.

As he entered the kitchen he saw Cheryl on the floor backing up as far as she could. Her back was pushing against the table and chairs behind her and she was still trying to back up faster and faster. Her face was a total look of sheer terror as she continued to scream. Her eyes were filled with panic. John had seen that look too many times over the years as people arrived at crime scenes to see their loved ones who had been viciously killed by someone else’s depravity. He would never get used to seeing that look on people’s faces.

John grabbed Cheryl and tried to hold her tight to him, but she was ignoring him completely. She was lost in the trance of total terror as she continued to space out and stare at the open refrigerator.

John almost didn’t dare follow her gaze. He was afraid that he would see what she was seeing and he would break apart much the same way that she was. He had to be strong for her. She was relying on him and his protection. She was counting on him to know what to do and to do the right thing no matter what and he was damned if he was going to shatter that illusion and let her down.

He willed his head to turn towards the fridge. What he saw churned his stomach and he felt his whole body lurch in a mini spasm as he fought back the urge to vomit.

There sitting on the top shelf of the fridge on a fancy plate were a pair of eyeballs.

John knew who they belonged to. He knew it without calling it in and without waiting on the lab to analyze the DNA. He knew it.

He knew they were Theresa’s eyes.

He wanted to calm Cheryl down. He wanted to tell her everything would be ok and that it was not as bad as it seemed, but everything that popped into his head sounded totally ludicrous. So he said nothing. He just held her tight and tried to get her to her feet and away from the kitchen.

As soon as he had her somewhat stable he called it in.

“I don’t believe this,” Chief Michaels said.

He rubbed his eyes and tried to get rid of the image that was burned into his brain. John knew the procedure because he had tried to do the same thing. It was to no avail. In fact it was downright stupid.

John told the chief the whole story and waited for his reaction that never really came. The chief just stared into space in that way of his that said he had seen too much in this world to really be affected by much and it was time for him to move on and see if he could salvage just a little bit of the human being that he used to be. But that day was not coming any time soon apparently.

John watched as the techs took the eyeballs and placed them in a secure evidence bag and put that on ice. He hoped that they were still able to get a positive ID on them since they had been above temperature for a while. Cheryl had wanted to go to a friend’s house so she had called her girlfriend who picked her up about an hour ago. John had been reluctant to let her go, but they sent a couple of officers to keep an eye on the girls. It made John feel a little better, but not much.

“I can’t figure out how he got in. There was no sign of forced entry,” John said.

“And you checked the entire house before you entered with her last night, right?” Michaels asked.

“Yea. I did. I searched it top to bottom; there was no one here.”

“Did either of you use the refrigerator last night?”

“Yea. I saw her open the fridge several times. There was nothing there. He did it in the middle of the night.”

“Do you think this is a message to you or to her?”

“It would appear to be both,” John said.