two days before, smiling at him and telling him to be careful and stay awake. He finally reached the back door. It seemed as if it took an eternity to get there. The door was locked.
“Danni, Danni!” he yelled as he banged.
When nobody answered, he took the heel of the gun and prepared to break the closest window. Just as he was about to swing his arm, the door opened and Danni stepped out.
“What’s going on, Jack? I was sleeping and thought I heard a gunshot. Are you okay?”
Jack’s face broke into the biggest smile.
“I couldn’t be better now that I see you standing there.”
“Was that a gunshot I heard?”
“Yeah. It was Felton. I shot him. I thought he was leaving your house. He’s in the woods out there.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. I came to see about you.”
“Don’t tell me you left him there without making sure he was dead.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not going anywhere,” Jack said.
“Wait here. I’m going to go get my gun,” she said as she retreated back into the house.
It was ten o’clock on Sunday morning when Sam Jeffries started into the woods to do his first walkabout of the day. Normally he was out earlier, but he’d had a few too many the night before and decided to sleep in. His walks into the woods were getting to be a routine and Sam was focused on negotiating through the trees and the brush rather than doing any observational investigative work. Then he heard voices and a shot directly ahead. Sam took off like the high-school running back he had once been. Branches were scratching his face and his body as he ran along but he hardly noticed. Felton was out there and Felton had killed his wife and daughter. He was so focused that he almost tripped over Felton’s body, stopping at the last minute. Felton was lying on his back. Sam could see blood flowing from a bullet hole almost dead center in his chest. The face was untouched, but it was bearded and filthy and it took Sam a few minutes to realize who it was.
“Shit!” he said aloud to the trees and the wind. He was too late. Felton was dead. He’d been robbed of the opportunity to kill the man who had murdered his wife and daughter. Danni had to be the one who did this. But where is she? First things first. He called the station and made his report. He wanted a forensic team out there on the double along with a team of homicide detectives. Now that Felton was dead, he wanted to make sure his department handled everything efficiently.
After he made the call, he started looking at the scene and the surrounding terrain in greater detail. He removed a small pair of binoculars from his pants pocket and focused them on Danni’s backyard. If Danni had done the killing, as he suspected, why had she left the scene? He caught a glimpse of someone banging on Danni’s door. It was a man, a fairly tall man, with speckled gray hair.
Who is that? he asked himself, unable to pinpoint the man’s identity through the small field glasses. Maybe he’s the shooter. Then he saw the man take something out of his pants pocket—it looked like a gun, but he couldn’t be sure—and reach his arm back as if he were going to break one of the back windows. Just then Danni came out of the house and started talking to the man. She knows him! Sam said to himself. Who the fuck is it?
He could have continued to watch them, or even better, he could have walked toward them and maybe gotten some answers, but he decided against it. His people would be there soon and he wanted to do his own investigation before they arrived. Danni and her friend weren’t going to get far in the next few minutes. Besides, he couldn’t have chased them if he’d wanted to. The old tank was empty.
He hesitated to move the body but he saw that Felton had a small backpack on. Putting his rubber gloves on first, he rolled Felton over rather easily and opened the backpack. Inside were some clothes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some papers. Nice to know a serial killer brushes his teeth, Sam thought. He perused the papers. One set was a document called a claims bill that had a lot of legal language in it and another set was a document called