Eyes of the Predator: The Pickham County Murders (The Hunters) Read online

  Title Page

  Eyes of the Predator

  The Pickham County Murders

  A Novel by

  Glenn Trust

  The Hunters Series

  Volume 1

  Copyright © 2012

  By Glenn S. Trust as “The Hunt”

  All Rights Reserved

  The characters, events, locations and plot in this work are purely fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons is completely coincidental and unintentional. If you think otherwise, get over it. I made it all up and have the hangover to prove it.

  Dedication

  To the innocent victims of abuse, torment and negligence, living in silence and fear, blaming themselves for the sins of the abusers and wondering if anyone hears or cares.

  We care, we hear and we remember you.

  Acknowledgement

  This work would not have come to fruition without the efforts of my wife Julie and my sister-in-law Deborah Griffith. Without their tireless reviews of my sloppy manuscript, editorial comments and corrections it would likely remain an unfinished document saved in a lost file in the bowels of my computer.

  Thank you both. Now, let’s have a beer.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright © 2012

  Dedication

  Acknowledgement

  1. The Predator

  2. The Girl

  3. The Stalk

  4. The Hunter

  5. He Hated Them

  6. He Just Was

  7. The Closest Bug Lost

  8. She Didn’t Go Home

  9. Just Away

  10. He Was Hungry

  11. Rocking on the Porch

  12. Appetizer

  13. A Walk in the Woods

  14. Ambush

  15. Backup

  16. Goddammit

  17. A Search

  18. Roydon

  19. Driving Miss Lyn

  20. Crime Scene

  21. Way to Go George

  22. Blank Eyes

  23. Canada, Really

  24. A Thud

  25. A Sense of Well-being

  26. The Crack

  27. Lylee

  28. Too Complicated

  29. Things Less Clear

  30. Gassing Up

  31. Plenty of time.

  32. Runaround

  33. “Son of a bitch and Goddammit”

  34. Crime Wave

  35. Awakening George

  36. Other Plans

  37. “Jesus, Mary and all the Saints”

  38. Ride This

  39. Confession

  40. Lions and Jackals

  41. Orders

  42. The Brothers

  43. Clever Tommy

  44. “Don’t do it son.”

  45. Beth

  46. No Place for the Girl

  47. A Visit to Roydon

  48. Coming of Age

  49. Evidence and Guilt

  50. Alone

  51. Vernon’s Dilemma

  52. Regrouping

  53. “I’ll call you later”

  54. Delicious

  55. A Chance in Hell

  56. Meeting of the Minds

  57. Just His Day

  58. The Hunt Begins

  59. Pit Stop

  60. Limit to a Brother’s Patience

  61. Day’s End

  62. Traffic Stop

  63. Another Wake Up

  64. Uncertain Status

  65. California or Bust

  66. Waiting

  67. Someplace, Away

  68. Taste of the Kill

  69. Cy Would be Pissed

  70. Soon

  71. Getting Lucky

  72. “Honey, we’re home.”

  73. A Plan Materializes

  74. Away In the Pines

  75. The Plan Worked

  76. Lunch Break

  77. The Break

  78. No Need to Complicate it

  79. Not Yet

  80. What the Hell

  81. Confronting the Beast

  82. To Hurt or Not to Hurt

  83. Silence in the Woods

  84. Done

  85. Epilogue

  More Books by Glenn Trust

  Term Limits - Chapter 1 - The Speed of Light

  About the Author

  Contact Glenn Trust

  1. The Predator

  The gray eyes blinked and moved in a head that remained motionless. Sweeping the area, scanning rhythmically, they were alert, intense, and searching. They were the eyes of a predator.

  The only other movements were the slight turns and adjustments of the steering wheel as he guided the car through the parking lot to a space at the far edge. There was just the smallest of squeaks as the brakes brought the vehicle to a complete stop.

  The eyes followed an older, Japanese make car as it moved briskly between rows of cars and whipped into a space under a light pole in the parking lot. The security camera mounted at the top of the pole would not be able to angle down enough to see the car. Good.

  A pretty and petite brunette exited the car and began walking to the mall. She would not be picked up on the camera until she was at least five cars down the parking lot row. Anyone approaching her in that bit of space would be invisible to the watchers or the recording devices.

  He watched, evaluating and assessing. She was right. Her hips swayed in a way that made his breath quicken. The familiar urge began to grow into a burning need. There was a momentary impulse to spring now, and for one instant, there was a small flicker in his fingers as his arm tensed, much like the twitch of the lion’s tail when the prey is close but not quite close enough, and then the lion settles back into its stalking, crouching stillness.

  A predator was in their midst and they were oblivious. It is always that way. The herd never wants to know the danger that surrounds it. It only wants to avoid it.

  The car was nondescript and could have been one of any number of makes and models manufactured in the early nineties. They were all alike. Ford or Mercury. Chevrolet or Pontiac. This one was, in fact, a Chevrolet.

  The extraordinary blandness of that era in the automotive industry made the vehicle perfect for his purposes. Fading red paint on the hood and roof might have made it somewhat more distinguishable if not for the fact that virtually every other car made in the United States during the period had the same fading paint job. Manufacturers had been required to remove lead from paint formulas causing the exterior paint to fade away to the primer. It was a common sight on cars from that era. It still is on the ones that survive.

  Sitting quietly in a space at the edge of a large parking lot in a medium sized town on the outskirts of a very large city in northern Florida, the car was half a continent away from home.

  The dark silhouette of the driver was barely visible behind the wheel. Completely still, he blended into the dark interior of the car. Had anyone noticed the car across the parking lot, they would have thought that the silhouette was just the high-backed headrest of the seat. His stillness was his camouflage.

  But there was, in fact, a person in the car. Like the car, he was nondescript and unremarkable in appearance. Of medium build, somewhat thin in the face, light brown hair neatly trimmed, no facial hair, there was nothing remarkable in his appearance. Some might have found him attractive. Most would simply have found him - not ugly. Average. If he had been the kind of person that attracted the gaze of others, you might have become aware of his uncanny stillness. But he attracted no one’s gaze.

  He was aware that human bei
ngs are always moving, even when they think they are not. They cough, fidget, turn their heads, eyes move to follow something of interest, yawn, scratch, take a deep breath, sigh, burp, fart, stretch. People do a thousand things when they think they are doing nothing, when they think they are quiet. He knew that in the midst of the constant movement he was invisible.

  He watched those others, the herd. His absolute stillness would have been unnerving to them if they had noticed him or been aware of his presence. They were not.

  2. The Girl

  The house was old, a small two bedroom frame house that had not seen paint in decades. Its weathered gray boards and panes of cracked glass gave it the air of a house much older. But a couple of windows with no glass at all, just a piece of plywood nailed over the openings to try and keep the cold and wet out, showed that its appearance was more from neglect than the number of years it had squatted beside the dirt road.

  The girl’s bedroom had a small window in it, with glass. The wood frame around the glass was old and dry-rotted, and the glazing was falling out from around the glass panes. As the wind blew, the glass rattled in the weathered wood frames. It was an empty, hollow sound echoing in the room and then out into the bleak night.

  Headlights from her father’s pickup cast a moving patch of light across the wall of her dark room. The lights went out, and she heard the door of the old truck squeak and slam. Like everything else around the place, it was worn out. The truck was tired. The land was tired. The old house was tired. She was tired.

  The dog her father kept, it had no name, barked as her father walked towards the house. It yelped suddenly, and she knew that he had taken a kick in the side for the bark. He was a stupid dog. He always barked and Daddy always kicked him. You would think he would learn. Maybe he was just tired too, hoping in his old dog way that tonight might be different from every other night.

  Stupid dog. Tonight would be like every other night.

  There was silence and the girl, Lyn, knew that her father had stopped to take a piss on her mother’s withered, scrawny rosebush beside the front porch. In her mind, she could see her father lean back, taking a long pull from a beer can, with his privates hanging out spattering pee on the poor rosebush and the porch.

  There in her dark room, a look of weary disgust crossed her face. It wasn’t the peeing outside that bothered her. This was rural farm country, and like as not, everyone did that. She had even been known to squat behind a bush when out and about.

  No, it wasn’t his peeing outside that bothered her; it was the meanness of the act, the way her father did it, peeing on a rose that her Mama had dug the hole for and watered everyday throughout the summer, rinsing the spattered piss off every morning. It was his challenge to them. He might be a nothing dirt farmer and day laborer, but when he was here, by God, he was the king—the boss—and they better not forget it. Fuck the rosebush and what it represented; the wishful hope of something better, something pretty and soft, something different from the hardscrabble, mean life that he gave his wife and children. “Roses my ass,” he would mutter as he shook off the last drops of piss. “I got your roses right here.”

  3. The Stalk

  He waited patiently, a lion in the grass at the edge of the herd. The herd grazed and moved around him and copulated and birthed and played and fought, and was completely unaware of his presence.

  When the moment came, he would spring into relentless, merciless, brutal action. He would be filled. For his prey, it would be terrible.

  After a long time, his eyes moved again. She emerged from the bowels of the mall through the bank of double glass doors she had entered an hour earlier. Others passed her going in and coming out. They took no notice of the girl, nor she of them. He noticed them all, alert for any sign that he might lose his prey to some chance encounter she might have.

  Moving from one circle of light thrown off by the streetlights to the next, she was careful to stay out of the shadows, as a young girl alone should be. It would not help her.

  Coming to the pole beneath which her car was parked, she opened the car door, threw the small bag she now carried into the back seat, and slid behind the steering wheel. A moment later, the car started and the headlights came on. It backed slowly from the space. He could see her twisting in the seat to peer around a truck parked next to her, making sure the way was clear. Careful and attentive to her driving, she was completely oblivious to his presence.

  He was unknown and unseen, and she was just one small part, an insignificant member, of the herd flowing through the parking lot and into and out of the mall. Her insignificance made her vulnerable.

  They would not be there when she cried out in agony and terror, but they would become aware of her absence, eventually. There would be a search. The herd would ripple with fear, and at the same time, sigh deeply with relief that they had not been the ones taken. Soon the predator and the prey would be forgotten, and the herd would return to its random, frenetic movement grateful that they had not been seen by the predator. What they would not comprehend was that, in fact, they were seen. They had not been selected. That was the difference, the only difference.

  4. The Hunter

  George Mackey rolled his window down in the cool night air and shot a quick stream of tobacco juice between his teeth and out into the dark. The wind from the county sheriff’s pickup rushing through the night air caused the mix of spittle and tobacco juice to spray back against the door and side of the truck. In the light of day, it shown as a brownish dried stain covering the door and side and was a matter of some discussion and disgust by other deputies who refused to retrieve any item from Mackey’s vehicle by going through the driver’s door. They were not about to touch the brown stained door handle.

  The interior of the pickup’s cab was a different matter. It was neat and organized. Deputy Mackey kept a small briefcase with reports, pens, flashlight, notepads, extra handcuffs, extra ammunition for his Beretta Model 92F military version nine millimeter pistol, and other essential items seat-belted in on the passenger seat. These were his tools, and even though some of Deputy Mackey’s personal habits were suspect, even ridiculed by his peers, his law enforcement instincts and abilities were not. Like any good tradesman, he kept his tools clean and in order.

  In fact, his only real detractor was the person ultimately responsible for his continued presence with the sheriff’s department. Pickham County Sheriff, Richard Klineman, himself had taken a disliking to Deputy Mackey. Retired from a big-city police department, and resettling in rural Georgia, he had felt it his civic duty to run for sheriff so that he might bring enlightened law enforcement to his rustic and clearly unsophisticated neighbors. Klineman had convinced a wealthy and politically connected county commission chairman to support him as a progressive who would usher the County sheriff’s office into the twenty-first century. Old-timers and old money had bought into the idea, mostly because the sitting sheriff had been a non-political straight arrow unwilling to grant favors to the good ole boys. Klineman, an outsider, but willing to play the game with them, won in a close election.

  Not too much had changed under Sheriff Klineman. As it turned out, Mackey and the other Pickham County deputies were pretty good at their jobs and as dedicated as their seasoned, big-city detective cousins; maybe more so, since most of them had lived in Pickham County all of their lives. It was their county.

  So the deputies patiently worked their jobs, attended to their duties, and waited. Sheriffs were elected. They came and they went. The deputies would bide their time until the political tides would sweep Klineman out of their lives and bring in the next candidate.

  Frustrated, Sheriff Klineman’s cleanup of the county was mostly aimed at George Mackey and the few other deputies like him. The reason wasn’t entirely clear to the deputies. They worked hard, solved cases and helped out around the county. No one really complained about them. They were pretty much just average members of the community who happened to be deputies.

  And,
in fact, that was the problem, although George and his fellow deputies did not understand it. They were like the rest of the community. Country. Rednecks. Simple. In Sheriff Klineman’s eyes, they were hicks. Their general lack of sophistication was embarrassing to him. Tobacco-spitting, good ole boys in scuffed boots could not be true law enforcement professionals. He was going to change things.

  But on this clear autumn night, the world seemed right to George Mackey and worries about his sheriff were far from his mind as he whipped the county pickup into the gravel lot of an old country store–gas station. The building was an old frame structure with faded white paint on the wood siding. It had been standing since the 1920’s and had been operated by a succession of owners. Some had made a go of it, some had not. It had sat empty for a number of years before the current owners bought it as a family retirement business. They were making a go of it, sort of. The fact that old man Cutchins and his wife were retired and had most everything paid off made it a little easier for them; otherwise, their continued occupation of the old building would be a doubtful thing.

  The Cutchins place was one of a number of small isolated establishments scattered around the county. George usually tried to stop by and check on the secluded businesses around closing time. Half way through his twelve-hour shift, the visits to the isolated stores broke up the monotony of the night.

  From his pickup, he could see short, white-haired Mrs. Cutchins standing behind the counter counting out a stack of bills. Two local boys, sixteen or seventeen years old, were standing outside beside a beat up old farm truck watching through the window. One nudged the other as they muttered back and forth.

  George stepped out onto the gravel, closing the door loudly. The boys’ heads snapped around in unison while their arms dropped to their sides in an effort to conceal the cans they were holding behind their legs.

  “How you boys doin’ tonight?” George’s tone was firm, the look on his face a stern warning to the young men.