The May Day Murders (43 page)

“
Ann!” Sam shouted. “Are you
alright?”

Jenkins suddenly snatched up a coil of
picture hanging wire from the table and forced Ann up to a sitting
position. He knelt behind her and wrapped a length of the wire
around her neck.

“
No!” she cried.

Ann felt the wire cut into her flesh
and screamed hysterically.

“
Your wife’s life is quite
literally in my hands, Sam,” Jenkins shouted. “If you want her
alive, then I suggest that you, your sidekick and the rest of this
lynch mob back off now!”

There was an unintelligible mumbling of
voices for a moment, then Ann heard Roger Hagstrom say, “Don’t harm
her, Stanley. We’ll do whatever you say,”

Stanley chuckled nervously. “That’s
very prudent of you, Roger. I’ll tell you my demands in a moment,
but first I’ve got to know something. How in the fuck did you find
me out? I purposely left a couple of little clues for you to ponder
over but that was only to incriminate Stanley Jenkins, certainly
not his alias.”

“
The picture, Stanley,” Sam
said. You took a Polaroid of my daughter and she sent it to me.
Your prints were all over it.”

Stanley contemplated this for a moment,
then said. “I’ll buy that Sam, but what prompted you to check out
the prints in the first place?”

“
You should have sprung for
a new camera, Stanley. Your pinch rollers on that old relic are
about shot. You might say that they left an incriminating
trail.”

“
Fuck!”
Jenkins
gasped, realizing his folly. And with that, Stanley Jenkins
snapped.

Ann felt the wire tighten around her
neck and at the same time heard a rustling come from behind her. A
shot rang out and Stanley immediately released his grip.

Ann spun around just as a young officer
sprinted across the room from the balcony. He placed the barrel of
his service revolver against Jenkin’s temple.

“
Release her, Jenkins, or
the next one is for you.”

Ann watched as Stanley shut his eyes.
“Please don’t shoot me!” he whined. “I give up!”

“
Stand up and put your hands
behind your back,” the officer commanded.

After Jenkins complied, the officer
handcuffed him.

“
Got him, sir!” he hollered
in the direction of the door. “Are you all right, Ma’m?” he asked
Ann. The officer picked up a sheet draped over a chair and
sheepishly handed it to Ann.

“
Yes, thank-you,” Ann
replied gratefully. She covered herself up with the sheet and got
up onto her feet.

“
Open the door, Griggs,”
someone demanded from the other side of the door.

Keeping his pistol trained on Jenkins,
Officer Griggs went over and opened the hatch door. Sam was the
first man inside. He ran over and threw his arms around Ann as he
glanced at Stanley Jenkins and did a double take when he saw the
notorious Jerry Rankin for the first time.

“
God Sam, I’m so glad to see
you!” Ann cried as Sam held her tight.

“
Me too, honey,” he
replied.

Roger entered along with the officers
from the Hocking County Sheriff’s department. Ann saw the
astonished look on Roger’s face when he saw Stanley Jenkins, alias
Jerry Rankin.

“
Jesus Christ, Stanley! It
looks like you got a bit more than just a little nip and tuck from
your plastic surgeon!” he exclaimed.

Stanley frowned and looked
away.

Roger stepped over to Ann and gave her
a quick hug, winked at Sam and turned to face Jenkins.

“
Stanley Jenkins, you are
under arrest for the murder of Marsha Bradley. You have the right
to remain silent …”

Epilogue

A week later, Sam was sitting at his
desk when the telephone rang. He finished the sentence he was
typing, located the phone underneath the pile of wadded up papers
and picked up the receiver.

“
Hello?”

“
Have I caught you at a bad
time?” Ann asked.

“
No, not at all. How are you
doing?”

“
Okay,” she replied, not
sounding very convincing.

“
You’re lying,” Sam said.
“What’s wrong?”

There was a moment of silence before
Ann replied, “That kid of ours is going to put me into an early
grave …”

“
What did she do
now?”

“
It’s what she
didn’t
do! I reminded her three times to clean up her room before she left
to got out with Amanda, so I go to the grocery store and come back
and what do I find? Her room hasn’t been touched! What in the world
is wrong with her, Sam? Why won’t she ever mind me?”

Sam breathed a silent sigh of relief.
He was afraid that it was gong to be a little more serious than
this.

“
Well, Ann. Do you want my
honest opinion?”

“
Yes, please.”

“
She needs to be disciplined
a bit more convincingly. You are way too easy on her!”

“
But—”

“
Let me finish before you
get all defensive, okay? Although I think you’re being too easy on
her there’s such a thing as being too hard on her and that could be
even worse. My advice is to do as you’ve been doing, but with a
little more edge behind it. She’s a good kid, Ann. And she’s got a
good mom who loves her. She’ll be okay.”

“
She’s got a good dad, too,”
Ann declared.

“
True.”

“
She misses her dad and I
miss him, too.”

“
That could be fixed, you
know,” Sam challenged.

Ann sighed. “I know, Sam. And don’t
think I haven’t been giving that a lot of thought
lately.”

There was an uncomfortable pause and
Sam resumed typing, cradling the phone.

“
Why are you working at home
on a Saturday afternoon?” Ann asked, breaking the
silence.

“
I’m not working. Exactly…”

“
I can hear your
typewriter—wait a minute! What are you doing using the typewriter?
Sam, are you actually working on your manuscript?” she asked
excitedly.

“
Well, not exactly. I’m
working on a new one.”

“
Sam, that’s wonderful! What
are you writing about?”

“
A deranged
murderer.”

“
You mean Stanley, don’t
you?”

“
Sort of. A first I thought
of doing a true crime thing and writing a documentary of what
happened but I changed my mind. I mean, I spend day in and day out
writing about real things in the real world and I want to do
something different for a change. Something that I’ll enjoy doing.
So, I decided to make it a novel instead—based loosely on Stanley
Jenkins. I figured who in the hell would believe the truth anyway?
It’s rather ironic, in a sense.”

“
I think that’s great, Sam!
And I’ll be frank—I don’t think I’d want you to write about it. I
was such a fool, Sam. I can’t believe I let myself get sucked in by
him!”

Sam stopped typing. “Don’t be too hard
on yourself, Ann. Stanley Jenkins was a master manipulator. A
genius in his own demented way, when you really think about it. He
was cold and calculating, and knew how to play on people’s fears
and emotions. Had it down to an art, in fact. Just be thankful that
you’re still around to talk about it.”

“
Did he confess to killing
Cindy Fuller, too?” Ann asked.

“
Oh, yeah—he was more than
obliging to the police. He confessed everything. He gave Roger the
whole low-down, right down to the very last detail, to all three
murders. Roger said that Stanley was quite proud of his
accomplishments. That man is one sick son of a bitch, that’s for
sure.”

“
I still can’t get over how
stupid I was! If only I’d driven by his alleged home in Dublin, or
at least checked to see if he really was a member of that
neighborhood church. Then I would’ve known that something was wrong
and …”

Sam cut her off, “Ann, dear, listen to
me. Don’t blame yourself for what you could have done. Remember
that first of all, you had no reason to suspect Jerry Rankin of
anything. He was just some good looking guy who happened to meet
you at the supermarket and then one thing led to another until you
eventually went out with him. Stanley knew that the church story
and his falsified residence in Dublin was a gamble, but he was
banking on the hunch that you wouldn’t check up on him in the time
it would take him to accomplish what he’d set out to
do.”

Ann sighed. “I guess you’re right. But
how come I never once noticed that he’d been in the house, or that
he’d bugged the phones? How in the hell could he get away with all
of that and neither Amy nor I notice anything?”

Sam lit up a cigarette and replied,
“The guy was a fucking master sleuth—that’s all I can say. Roger
learned that Stanley had always been a spy freak—read every secret
agent book he could get his hands on when he was a kid. Used to
read them late at night while his parents were asleep. His parents
are yet another story altogether, by the way. It’s little wonder
why Stanley ended up being so psychotic and fucked up. Anyway,
James Bond was his hero and by the time Stanley was thirteen or so,
he’d become obsessed with agent 007 and started fantasizing about
being a spy. He used to sneak out of his house at night and go
peep-tomming all over town. Got pretty good at it apparently—he
never once got caught. Had he gotten caught, his mother probably
would have murdered him. He spent a great deal of time casing you
out back then, by the way.”

“
I know, he told me,” Ann
moaned.

“
Anyway, he told Roger that
this Larry Underwood kid peeping at Amy just about blew his cover.
Apparently, Stanley had been in the back of the house one night
screwing around with the telephone wires when he heard the
Underwood kid climbing over the fence. Stanley ran around the side
of the house just in time and hid in the bushes. Then he watched
the kid as he proceeded to peep into the bathroom window presumably
at Amy as she showered. Stanley realized that the boy could
eventually pose a problem for his own agenda but he wasn’t quite
sure how to deal with him. He couldn’t bust the kid, not then,
anyway, because the kid would most likely wonder what in the hell
Stanley was doing there in the backyard. So Stanley started keeping
a keen eye on the Underwood kid as he spied on Amy over the next
couple of weeks, trying to determine his routine. Then, once Rankin
had “accidentally” met you and became a legitimate presence in your
life, he struck. He had a hunch that Larry Underwood would come
around on the night of Amy’s homecoming dance so when he did,
Stanley was ready for him. Roger said that Stanley had wanted to,
quote, ‘murder the fucking amateur,’ but opted instead to merely
rough the boy up a bit.”

“
This is incredible!” Ann
shuddered, imagining two different deranged nut cases invading her
property.

“
Scary, isn’t it? The
Underwood kid may become another Stanley Jenkins some day, for all
we know. I’d be sure to tell Amy to keep a very close eye on that
one!”

“
God, Sam. What is the world
coming to?”

“
I don’t know, babe. I’m
starting to think that the parents are to blame for a lot of the
insanity that goes on anymore. Like I was saying before, parents
can push their kids too far and you end up with a case like Stanley
Jenkins. His parents, particularly his mother, apparently never
gave him any breathing room. They demanded too much of him and
wouldn’t let him have any kind of normal social life. Stanley
retaliated, became a total sociopath lost in his own little world
of perverse espionage. And the older he got, the more dangerous he
became.”

“
What’s to become of him,
you think?”

“
Roger thinks he’ll plead
insanity. Probably spend the rest of his life in an institution.
He’s got to face charges in New York and Colorado, too, keep in
mind. They’ll put him away for good, one way or another, you can
rest assured.”

“
No chance of the death
penalty?”

“
Nope, I don’t think so. The
guy’s a nut and they won’t hang a nut.”

“
God help us all if he
escapes!” Ann exclaimed.

“
Tell me about
it.”

“
One thing has really been
bothering me,” Ann said. “And that’s why Marsha never told me about
her and Sara’s little scheme at the basketball game. I remember
telling her about Stanley asking me out at the time and she just
chuckled and never said any more about it. That wasn’t like her, to
keep something from me like that.”

Sam heaved a sigh. “Do you suppose that
Sara Hunt may have had something to do with that? I mean, you and
Sara never got along and Marsha was hanging out with Sara around
that time. Maybe Marsha felt a little ashamed at herself having
been a part of the scheme and was simply too embarrassed to fess up
to it.”

“
You may be right, come to
think about it. I can see Marsha reacting that way.”

“
At any rate, It was a
deadly mistake on her part, in retrospect,” Sam added
grimly.