The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller (10 page)

She took a second to lean backwards on the plush softness of her bed, just enough to reach her cell phone from the place she‘s tossed it as she came in. She was certain that the wedding was over with, that Travis was on his way home or there already, and still there wasn’t so much as a text message from him. It made her wonder if this was the last time she would be forced to stand him up and be able to apologize to him later for it.

Travis sat behind the steering wheel of his police cruiser, waiting patiently for Louis to come out of the convenience store they were parked at. Given the fact that he was driving, he knew Louis hadn’t been that graceful at the wedding after he’d left it. They’d had a good chuckle about it, and even Louis admitted that once Cory had thrown herself into the fray of perturbed bridesmaids, that the whole ceremony had become something of a legend in Collie shindigs.

As usual, when he was left alone, his thoughts roamed back to Abby, about what she was doing at this precise moment, what emotions might be displayed on her face, and as usual he forced himself to think about something else. If she’d cared, if he was important, she would have called him by now. The fact that he felt like a girl hemming and hawing and chewing over whether or not the phone would ring made him want to rip the steering wheel right out of the cruiser’s console.

The passenger’s door opened and closed as Louis got into the cab. His arms were full of junk food, and Travis wondered how in the world the man looked as he did and put all that crap into his body. Junk food was the enemy of Lady Killers.

“What? Growing boy’s gotta eat.” Louis grinned as he pulled a wrapper halfway off of a Mars bar. As Travis watched, Louis opened his mouth and bit off a chunk.

Travis shook his head and lifted his hand to turn the ignition so that they could get to their rounds when a woman came running out of the convenience store, her arms waving wildly. Her face was contorted in alarm, and even before Travis could make out what the woman was shouting, his door was opening and he was getting out intercepting her.

“Mrs. Lawson collapsed in the store! She just fell right on over! Help her!”

Travis had kept his door open, and he glanced at Louis who had shoved his bounty to the floor of the cab and was on the radio calling an ambulance before the woman was even five feet away from them.

It was understandable that the woman was running to them for help; a lot of the local stores didn’t have their own landlines.

Travis nodded at Louis, who handed him a thumbs up as he put their station’s dispatch on the job of arranging for the paramedics, and as he bridged the gap between himself and the woman, he walked straight past her and made his way to her store to help the woman who was in trouble.

Mrs. Lawson lay on the floor of the store, her body quite still, her breathing very slow. If he hadn’t waited for her chest to rise, Travis would have been concerned that the woman had stopped breathing. He knelt to her and placed a hand to her neck to check her pulse. The rhythm of her heart was sketchy, and not very experienced with first-aid, even he could tell that the woman’s heart was in some serious trouble.

Gently, and because he figured it would help the paramedics when they arrived, Travis eased Mrs. Lawson on her back, watching her face to see if he was causing her pain. He knew the woman; even though she must now be nearing her early seventies.

Mrs. Lawson had been his third grade teacher once upon a time ago. She was kind and wise, and even as her chest struggled to rise, Travis knew he didn’t want to be the one person at her side when she died.

For the first time since he’d seen Mrs. Lawson on the floor, he noticed the perspiration dotting her forehead. Curious, Travis placed the back of his hand to her clammy skin and noticed that she felt warm as if she were a child who’s fever had just broken. Was she sick?

Travis was frowning when Louis came into the store with the paramedics, and as they carted their gear and began to swarm the kindly old lady, Travis had seconds to move before he would have been shoved out of the way. He watched as the nearest paramedic, Carl something-or-other-from-high-school, put a blood pressure cuff on Mrs. Lawson’s arm. Carl waited for the cuff to pressurize and then he eased it, gauging how Mrs. Lawson’s ticker was fairing, and when he got his answer, Carl’s face turned serious. He pressed a couple of fingers to the woman’s neck and then to the radial in her wrist. A shared look with his partner, whose name Travis didn’t know, had the pair of paramedics jumping into CPR.

Travis, as he watched in silence, hadn’t been aware that he’d gotten to his feet or that he was backing away from the scene. The second his back hit against a Little Debbie snack stand, reality threw into extremely sharp focus. Things seemed to speed up and slow down all at the same time.

“One, Two, Three!” Carl semi-shouted right as Mrs. Lawson’s tilted mouth connected with his. His partner was on top of the compressions to the woman’s chest and as Carl inflated Mrs. Lawson’s lungs with his own air three more times, Travis was certain that his old teacher’s chest was no longer rising on its own. He wasn’t certain when the change happened, only that now it was a fact. One more set of compressions, and Carl lifted from Mrs. Lawson’s body, his fingers pressed to her neck for the second time. He looked to his partner and they both seemed to nod, agreeing with each other.

“Does anyone know this woman?” Carl asked as he was packing equipment back into his bag.

“I can‘t say I knew her, not really,” the woman who had come running out to the police cruiser mumbled. Her eyes were full of tears, the tag on her shirt telling Travis that she’d been working the counter in the store when Mrs. Lawson collapsed. He moved forward, knowing that his eyes were looking anywhere else except for at the dead body at his feet.

“I knew her. Her name is Maudette Lawson, she lived off the main road. She’s a retired teacher and a widow. I think her son Ben still lives in town.”

Louis shook his head. “Ben Lawson went to live in Hadley when he got that job promotion. I can get someone in on getting a hold of him.” As Louis headed out of the store, he patted his partner on the back as if he was sorry that there wasn’t more that he could do.

********

Travis stayed at the convenience store until someone could take Mrs. Lawson’s body to the coroner. There was only the one guy in Collie that came to collect the dead, and he took his time because he knew everyone had to wait on him as there were no other options.

“You ready to pack up camp, Buddy? I had the Chief put Nate and Luke on our route, so if you want to wander home, you could.”

Travis stared at the back of the coroner’s van as Buck Davidson loaded Mrs. Lawson on a stretcher. Buck had zipped her up in a black bag and that was all there was to it, the end of his teacher’s story.

“Shit. Heads up pal.”

In the last second, Travis looked up and noticed what Louis was swearing over. It turned out it was a second he’d wish he had a chance to do over.

Abby was sliding out of her car, her blond hair tossed over a bare shoulder, her shorts riding high on her upper thighs to show off her legs. The tank top she was wearing was tastefully sexy, conforming to her body but not appearing as if she’d been poured into it. It was the perfect outfit for the evening, since it was summer in Collie and evenings were muggy and sweltering, like being imprisoned in the mouth of a giant.

Travis had to remember how to breathe. Whatever issues they had as a couple, most of them paled next to how drop dead incredible she was. She was the absolute personification of incredible.

Abby had gone to the convenience store to pick up something she needed, and it was the only stop on her way home from work. The last person she wanted to see was literally the first person her eyes locked gazes with as she got out of the car. Leaning against his patrol car, his uniform cut to fit his frame as if it
existed merely to make him look better was Travis and his million-yard stare. She saw, even from the eight foot or so distance they were from each other, that he was somewhere in between Happyland and Irritatedville. She couldn’t tell in which direction he was headed.

Abby decided to take the long way to the entrance to the store, and to take a deep breath and face Travis. She crossed the parking lot, her purse on her shoulder and her chin lifted. She hoped her brave face was working.

“Hi,” she said as she came within a foot of the patrol car.

Louis tilted his head toward the convenience store. “I’m going to walk in that direction until something gets in my way. Excuse me.”

Abby turned her attention away from Louis, smiled at Louis‘ weird sense of humor, and after he’d gone, dropped her head and sighed.

“You know you want to forgive me, so yell at me and get it over with and let’s be friends again.”

Despite his mood, Travis smiled. It was difficult to try and prove a point to someone that you couldn’t stay mad at. He crossed his arms to his chest, thinking of a hundred different things to say but then settling on just the one thing. It really was the last idea that should have come to him, and it certainly wasn’t going to win an illumination awards, but as far as solutions went, it had its upside.

“Move in with me.”

Abby, upon hearing such a ridiculous suggestion, began laughing. When she saw that Travis wasn’t laughing, she sobered.

“What?”

Travis looked over his shoulder as the coroner’s van started, and in the wake of what had gone on earlier, he didn’t want to have what should be a private conversation with a bunch of people wandering around come to see the spot on the floor where and old woman had died. He said, “After you get what you need out of the store, come find me at my place and we’ll talk.”

Abby let her eyes roam around Travis’ home, wondering not for the first time if there was any amount of feminine touches that could remove the absolute bachelor quality of the place. Socks, underwear, old wrappers from candy bars, and pretty much anything else that never made it to where it was supposed to go littered the floor. The only safe place in the whole of Travis’ living room was the couch.

As Travis made his way from his kitchen, drinking from a glass filled with soda, Abby decided to strike an offensive comment.

“What makes you think it is a good idea to move in together? Have you ever lived with a woman, Travis?”

Travis set his glass onto his coffee table and sighed as he plopped down on his love seat catty corner to Abby. He knew how things often went with them; the woman loved to solve their relationship problems by using his attraction of her to her advantage.

Travis replied, “Because I’m tired of having to deal with your father every time I want to see you. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up next to each other, share breakfast together or jus
t
hell, I’ve never even met the man and I dream about strangling him. I‘m tired of his crap, Abby.”

Abby frowned. “I care about you, Travis. I think there isn’t a woman in the whole of Collie that would have stuck with you longer than me, and that’s only because I care about you. You’re twenty four, I’m twenty tw
o
we’re not ready to live together yet. We’ve only been dating for seven months, that’s not a very long time.”

Travis relaxed deeper into his loveseat, and tilted his head upwards so that he could stare at his ceiling. “I know I did my share of wandering around, Abbs. I’m sick of people throwing that in my face. I want to be with you and just you. Sure, this might not be the brightest idea but I can’t understand, even if you won’t move in with me, why you just won’t move out on your own.”

Abby sighed. “He’s an old man, Travis. When my mother died, I told myself that I would take care of him for her. I can’t just leave him alone in that big house by himself.”

“Or leave his money alone, right?”

Abby’s lips thinned. “That was unfair, Travis.”

Travis let his eyes find Abby’s and he moved forward with his elbows on his knees. “Tell me right now that you could do without his money, Abby. As long as you put up with his bullshit, as long as you live your life the way he wants you to live it, he’ll give you anything you want. He’s the richest man in Collie; don’t tell me it isn’t about his money, or about the inheritance you’ll receive once he dies.”

Abby glared at Travis so fiercely that if her glance had been as heated as she’d wanted it to be, it would have melted Travis’ face clean down to the bone. She said, “How dare you talk to me like tha
t
like I’m some kind of brat. I have a job; everything I have is because
I
earned it. I wouldn’t touch a cent of his, and you damn well know it.”

Travis scoffed. “Then what is it? Why won’t you just be with me?”

Abby opened her mouth to answer, but didn’t get the chance to let any sound escape her, as she was cut off by a knock on Travis’ front door.

********

Travis got up from his sofa as the banging on his door continued. He bothered to look at the clock on the wall in the kitchen and thought to himself that whoever was thumping their fist like that had better have one good reason for doing it.

Travis opened his door and it flew out of his grip and swung wide, very wide, as his bountifully curved neighbor Norma Daniels barged into his house. She was in a huff about something, her round face reddened from the march from across the street. As she proceeded to continue her agitated waltz into his kitchen, Travis noticed that the big lady was out of breath not from her physical limitations as he would have suspected, but because she was very upset and close to hysteria.

“Norma? Are you okay, is there something wrong?”

“I have to use your phone, where’s your phone?” Norma’s eyes were wide, red from crying, and before either Travis or Abby could say anything, Norma continued, “I have to use your phone. Our phone isn’t working. Come on! Your phone, where is it!”

Travis pointed to a space on his kitchen counter where he kept his landline, and as Norma picked it up and began mashing buttons with her sausage fingers, Travis pulled out his cell phone and handed it to Abby. He knew in his gut that something had happened at the Daniels’ house, and if Norma was calling the emergency line for the paramedics, then there wouldn’t be enough time to find out from her what was going on.

“Try and calm Norma down and find out what’s happened. If there’s been a crime, call my brother and tell him to get his ass over here and quick.”

Abby palmed Travis’ cell phone and nodded as Travis made a move for the front door, it occurred to her that he was going across the street to walk into a mess he knew nothing about.

She said, “Where do you think you’re going? If someone’s broken in her house or something, then you shouldn’t be going over there.”

Travis pulled the sleeve of his shirt from Abby. “Look, Norma has two children who are at home by themselves at the moment. Norma doesn’t look to be in her right mind either, so I’m going over there to see if they’re okay. If her husband isn’t home, I’m bringing those kids back here to be looked after until their momma has her marbles put back in the bag. Get me?”

“Be careful, okay?” Abby wanted to say more, but knew that it was genetically impossible for Travis to change his mind.

Travis stepped through the frame of his front door. Before he took the first step through it, he said, “Don’t worry. I’m a police officer, I got this.”

********

Travis was across his lawn and over the road and into Norma’s front yard before he could reconsider his actions. He hadn’t lied to Abby. His first thought, his gut reaction, had been to see if Norma’s children were all right. Sam and Paula were sweet kids, who always hit up his house on Halloween for the ‘
bestest’ candy in the worl
d
according to them. Sam was nine, Paula was six, and the thought that they could be in danger was enough for him to run head first into any situation to help them; it’s what any real man would do.

Right away, Travis noted that the front door to the Daniels’ was wide open, and any creature with a mind to walk in there could, as if there was an open invitation. He reached for his sidearm before he remembered that he didn’t have it with him, that when he wasn’t on duty, he kept the weapon either in his car or in the gun safe in his bedroom. He doubted that someone had broken in, that it was possible that something else was wrong. Norma didn’t looked frightened to him.

Once inside Norma Daniels’ home, Travis let his eyes roam around the living room. It wasn’t what he would have called posh, not even remotely, but it had a kind of country charm that screamed disorganized family to him. Children’s toys were scattered here and there in random places on the floor or tucked into a corner of a chair or sofa and there was a T.V. dinner tray set in front of the biggest armchair complete with a half-eaten plate of fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Curious, he stuck his finger in the potatoes and discovered that they were still warm.

“Hello? Roger?” Nothing but the sound of a commercial on Norma’s television answered him. A light at the end of the hall connecting the kitchen and living room to the rest of the house caught his attention. Travis figured that Norma had been eating dinner while watching one of her programs on the picture tube when something from the other end of the house alarmed her. Whatever it was that was behind that door, lit up like a beacon from a lighthouse, was going to give him all the answers he needed. He prayed to any deity that was listening that he wasn’t going to find Norma’s children, splayed out like a macabre oil painting for his viewing displeasure.

********

Abby thought the idea of approaching the big woman in Travis’ kitchen was an even worse idea than the thought of moving in with him. The big lady looked as if she could take down a bus with her bare hands on a whim; there was no telling what she might do when agitated.

“Please, you have to get to my house as soon as possible,” Abby heard the woman plead into the phone she was gripping like a talisman. Tears were falling freely down her face, and Abby felt for the woman. She remembered that Travis mentioned that she had children, and she silently wished that they were safe.

“No I don’t know if he’s breathing! I had to run over to my neighbor’s house cause we don’t got a phone! Just get them damn paramedics over here as soon as possible! I ain’t calming down! Who the hell says that to someone?!”

Abby took a chair from Travis’ kitchen table and sat down, knowing that for now, she was going to stay quiet and keep out of Norma’s way. She recognized the signs of pain etched onto the woman’s face, the kind of edge awareness that a person has as they are experiencing an event that they just have to absorb and deal with. From the woman’s conversation on the phone, Abby knew someone close to this big gal was hurt, maybe even dead.

She witnessed as Travis’ unexpected house guest slammed the phone that she’d had previously to her ear down on the receiver. She burst into tears.

“Roger…”

Abby moved from her chair, not really thinking of the possible consequences and placed a hand to the woman’s shoulder. She jumped as if all this time she hadn’t noticed that there was another person in the room with her.

“Who are you? Where is Travis?” Norma said as she blinked through her waterworks, confused. “You look familiar, do I know you?”

Abby offered the woman a smile. “My name is Abigail Bradley. I’m Travis’ gir
l
”

“
You
!”

Norma Daniels suddenly grabbed for Abby, and the startled girl had just enough sense to get out of the way before the unusually rotund neighbor would have curled her meaty mitts around her throat.

“What the hell?!”

“This is your fault! You and your father! My Roger was just fine yesterday! I’ll kill you!”

Abby scrambled away from the woman turned homicidal elephant and held up her hands, thankful that there was a kitchen table between her and certain asphyxiation.

“Wait! What in the world are you talking about? I don’t even know who you are!”

Norma seemed to growl, her large puffy face was streaked with tears. “Like hell you don’t! My husband has been working for your father for five years!” Norma punctuated her words by attempting to lunge for Abby over the table. “He’s killed Roger and now I’m going to kill you! Hold still!”

Playing ring around the table while a charging bull was trying to end her existence was not how Abby envisioned the night ending. Was she serious?

“I’m sorry! I promise, I honestly don’t know who you are, and I swear, I’ve never hurt a soul in my life. Please, whatever that’s happened, let’s figure it out together. You don’t really want to kill me, do you?”

********

Travis hesitated a moment before he let himself turn the handle to the back bedroom door. The sound of the television in the living room seemed distant and drowned out compared to the noise of his heart thumping in his ears. He took just a second longer to prepare himself before he eased the door open.

Roger Daniels lay on the bed that he had shared with his wife, still as the surface of a lonely pond. His eyes were staring unblinking at the ceiling. Travis could see that he was dressed for bed; the only thing he had on among the tousled covers was a pair of boxer shorts that had red and pink hearts on them. His chest was wet with cooling perspiration, his hair matted to his face. Travis was reminded of Mrs. Lawson, of how she had seemed to be sweating right up until the moment her chest stopped rising.

Travis went to Roger and placed a couple of fingers to his chilled neck. When he felt nothing, he could feel as his heart sank through his body and hit the floor. He waited a full minute, his eyes on nothing but Roger’s chest and not once in the whole of those long seconds did anything in the entire room stir. Roger was dead.