Here it is Sunday again. And look! Here is a nice fresh chapter. Hope you all like it. I spend a couple of hours at work, not working LOL, on it last night. No Natalie in this one ( a first for me you know! An all John chapter!) But I felt it was necessary that we understand how John sees things, How he works. Again comments, comments, comments!!! Did I mention I would love some reviews…. LOL
Disclaimer: I don't own John, though it's a real shame cause I have some GREAT ideas for what I could use him for... I don't own any of the OLTL characters but I do own the storyline, I own my brain which I used to create this story and for the right price I would rent it to ABC since they are clearly in need of fresh talent...
Chapter 3
Paula Henderson went about the day like it was just any other day. She took a shower, washed her hair, fed her fish. She did all the things a normal single woman of 45 would do as she got ready to start her day. She didn't know that this day was anything but normal. It was in fact the last day of her life. If she had known she might have done things differently. Maybe she wouldn't have decided to walk home after work that night, then again being a woman of exceptional physical condition and of much arrogance she might have gone through that dark alley thinking that she could take care of her self.
But she didn't know and she did walk home. So it was with great surprise that she started out walking down the street, a street light at the end of the alley like the light at the end of a tunnel and then woke up in total suffocating darkness and silence. She reached out in the darkness only to be stopped by something hard and unmovable, no matter how much she pushed and pounded. Her heart raced and her mouth opened with a terrified scream of both denial and mind numbing terror. Minute after minute, scream after scream, the time ticked by. Though she measured it not, someone far more sinister did.
He counted off the minutes until she fell silent. His smile was the only indication he gave that he heard her at all. This was after all work, his life's work. He needed to be serious about it. Not giddy like a little boy about to kiss his first girl. After she fell silent he waited, first for her to start pounding or screaming again. He continued to wait, frowning when nothing happened. He walked over to the freshly filled in shallow grave and listened. No screaming at all. That was disappointing. He had thought, given Paula's excellent physical condition that she would have given more of a fight. But it seemed she had given up...
If he had bothered to check at all he would have known that Paula's heart had given out because of her debilitating fear of enclosed spaces. If he had done his research he would have know that when she was a child her step mother had locked her in a closet for days at a time because she was 'bad' resulting in a life long phobia of small dark spaces. But he didn't check, he just marked down the time and reaction and left.
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Death, it was a take no prisoners, all or nothing, enemy of the living. John McBain saw many forms of death in his line of work. As the FBI's top agent with a specialty in dealing with serial killers he saw death every day, knew it like one might know a lover, intimate and personal. Every day that he arrived too late to prevent what was before him, all he could do was study the scene and try to get into the head of the killer who have made it his business to leave another human being an empty vessel, broken and bare.
The scene before him was, unfortunately, one that he had seen before. A freshly dug grave around a cheap casket, buried only a foot below ground in an isolated Pennsylvania state forest. No one around to hear anything, to see anything. No tire tracks were visible anywhere around the grave at all even though the killer must have made his way to this spot by car. Always an anonymous tip led them to the scene, and though they had their best tech men try, the caller could never be found. The caller never said more than just a location and a name. That was all. The first call had been ignored until a man hunting found the casket. His dog had dug it up, probably smelling the rotting flesh of what had been a beautiful young woman. Now when the calls came in, one every few months now, the FBI didn't bother to wait for some hapless hunter to stumble on to the scene.
As he waited for forensics to uncover and reveal whomever was inside he wondered why the killer went to so much trouble to conceal what he was doing only to simply call the FBI after he had done it. If not for his calls many of his victims would not have been found. Disgust ate at him as well as fatigue, he had been up for over 36 hours and it didn't look like he was going to get a break any time soon. He wanted to catch this guy, bad. Every body that they found just made the burning lump of determination inside him flare hotter, burn higher with the need to put this guy behind bars.
Birds sang in the distance, unaware of the horrifying events that had gone on. They had no care for the affairs of men, only worms and other things they might eat or be eaten by caused them to take interest. The tranquil setting somehow gave further affront to Paula Henderson. A woman who had arguably been in the prime of her life, though now was in the prime of her death. A life cut short by needless and obviously terrible circumstances.
John had known what he would see, he had thought he was prepared for it but every so often he would be struck anew with shock and horror at what he saw. What struck that shock and horror in John today was the face of his victim, of Paula Henderson. The twisted grimace of shock and terror was emblazoned on her face for all to see. Her eyes open even in death stared out at him unseeingly, wide with such an expression of blank fright that John thought for a split second, one moment that seemed to last a thousand years to him, that she was alive. His sense returned when one of the newer agents stumbled toward the tree line to throw up his lunch.
He too felt his stomach revolt at the sight but he clamped down and pushed it away. He had a job to do, there would be time later to reel at the horror of it but now he would do his job. He observed the body, how Paula's hand and fingers were bloody and bruised, though not as much as previous victims. Clearly she had been buried alive in the coffin. He noted that unlike the others this coffin was poorly made and was probably constructed by an amateur. Perhaps even by the killer himself.
"Agent McBain?" John started at the question, pulled from his inner thoughts. He looked up to see one of the younger agents off to the side of the small clearing. He was kneeling down and poking at something. He went over to the man to see what he had found.
"Got something?"
"Look at this.. It looks like someone was hear, standing for a while. The grass is all flattened, like someone was pacing. I found a candy wrapper over there as well." The agent told him, pointing about 3 feet away where he had found the candy wrapper.
John nodded at the information. This pretty much confirmed his theory that the killer lingered over his victims waiting while they suffered and died. "Thanks. At least now we know that he stays while they die. Make sure forensics checks over here for any trace evidence." The agent nodded and began taping off the areas where he had found the evidence.
Later that day, John sat in his hotel room going over the blown up crime scene photos, trying to understand what the killer was thinking, what he was feeling. His theory that the killer didn't know the victims, hadn't had any contact before he had taken them seemed to be confirmed by their profile of the killer. A profile made by their best criminal psychologist. The profile estimated the killers age at between 35 and 50, most likely a white male who was probably average looking ( a fact seemingly confirmed by his ability to stay out of peoples notice)
But those facts didn't make it any easier to find him. He was meticulous, almost obsessive compulsive, about leaving evidence behind. That suggested that he had been either practicing before starting his killing spree.
He didn't think the candy wrapper would lead them anywhere but then again, when killers got comfortable, when they had been killing as long as this one they got cocky. And in his experience that meant they got careless, sloppy. They made mistakes and that might happen today, or even tomorrow so he treated every scrap of evidence no matter how small as though it could break the case wide open.
To be continued...
