Page 44 of Retribution
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she whispers, stroking the belt looping through my jeans. Leaning down, she kisses it.
“What’s her name?” I murmur back.
Her eyes lift to mine, the joy clear even through the haze of her dreams.
“Rachel.”
Chapter 25
Special Agent
Susannah Gerhardt
Holding my head in my hands, I knead my scalp, frustration coursing through me. It’s been three weeks since the House of Horrors was discovered, followed by the grim discovery of the graveyard, and the information is finally starting to trickle in.
This is so much bigger than I could have imagined when I first flew out here. We’re now working permanently with Detective Kim Latham, along with the rest of the Flagstaff agents on this. Agent Cooper, or Calamity Cooper as he’s secretly called amongst the team, is constantly strutting around, blowing out orders like he’s going to solve this case single-handedly. He forgets that it’s me and Dutch who are the lead agents.
Then there’s the whole mole situation. As the days go by, I’m more and more convinced that it could be Cooper. There’s just somethingoffabout that man. The way he keeps trying to insert himself, or how I caught him going through some files the other day. Well, that wouldn’t have been so odd, but the way he jumped backward when I entered the room certainly was.
To cope with the mountain of evidence, the FBI has brought in six portable offices, lining them up just beside the Flagstaff building. It’s going to be a bitch when winter comes, and I’m hoping that they’ll bring in portable heaters to handle the cold.
One of the first pieces of evidence to come back was a jacket that was found next to the headless body on the dining room table. Covered in semen, it’s the only evidence so far of this person’s presence in the house. DNA states that it belongs to a male of African descent. But what’s more interesting, is that when it was placed into CODIS, it was a familial match to two missing persons’ cases in Chicago.
Aniyah and Treyvonne Williams, a married couple from the South Side, disappeared from their homes a little over twenty years ago. As Treyvonne was the superintendent of the apartment building they lived in, when he stopped showing up for work, he was eventually reported missing, along with his wife.
Members of their congregation at Saint Perpetua’s RC Church claimed they were honest, good, God-fearing people. Evidence found hidden behind a false panel in the couple’s closet spoke a very different, darker story.
In the mid-90s, there had been a spate of disappearances in the neighborhood but as most were black, homeless, or addicts, many either weren’t widely reported, or were largely ignored by the police.
It makes me ashamed that law enforcement ignored things like this—and still do—just because of the color of someone’s skin. We are all human, all one race. What part of the planet we come from or what shade our skin is shouldn’t matter. Everyone deserves equal treatment, everyone deserves to feel safe, and everyone deserves justice.
It seems that Mr. Williams had a penchant for keeping souvenirs—over thirty of them were found. The police did the bare minimum during their investigation, but without bodies or any further evidence, the best that they could surmise was that the Williams were disposing of the bodies in the large furnace found in the basement.
Bone fragments were indeed discovered in it, but no viable DNA remained. The case was shelved as a cold case since there wasn’t enough evidence to go by. They never bothered doing a search for the couple’s son, Trey Williams.
I find it incredible that someone from my neck of the woods shows up in Arizona when I’m here and is tied to this investigation. What are the chances? Is he the one doing the killings? But if so, why would semen be found at the house? The semen was relatively fresh compared to the bodies found in the house—bar the deceased body at the table—and the fingerprints found on the table didn’t match the ones found on the wire cutter used to kill him.
Dutch and I have been throwing around theories that there are two killers, possibly a man and a woman. It feels more than probable that the woman was one of the victims that lived in the house. That supposition feels right, and I’ve learned over the years to trust my gut.
There were five bedrooms for the girls in the house, and four bodies found. The fifth is missing, or perhaps isn’t, and was sold—but I’ll wager she’s our killer. The computer techs are working on the computers found in the office, and more and more evidence and DNA is trickling in every day. It won’t be long before we know more.
In the meantime, more bodies are being discovered, and yet, we can’t get a lead on them. Two weeks ago, the body of Earl Johnson was found in a vacation rental not too far out of Flagstaff. The cabin had been leased to a black man by the name of John Smith. Dutch and I had rolled our eyes at each other over that one—he could have been a little more creative with his alias. The manner of his death was shocking; hung on a cross, his anus torn open with a broken broom handle, penis cut off, and his chest and abdominal cavity opened.Murderer, Rapist, Pedophilewere written in blood across the wall, and I found a small part of me cheering on the people responsible for this.
The fact that Earl was a cop was damning. Detective Latham turned white when she saw the body and the incriminating words etched upon the walls. One final word was scrawled across his forehead: Retribution.
She and a few other trusted police officers combed through his computer, both at work and at home. His work computer showed that he had been “misplacing” evidence and trying to cover up the murders. At first, we wondered why he had been doing this, but when his DNA came in from the House of Horrors, and then his body was found—it became clear. He most definitely knew who the killer was, and he was trying to cover up his involvement the only way he could.
It’s too bad for him that he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box. Stopping the police from locating the killer wasn’t going to prevent us from finding his DNA at the scene. I’ll never know what was going through his mind—I can’t ask him now—but I’m guessing he thought he could steer the investigation away from himself, or that he could make his DNA evidence go missing.
His home computer let us know that the killer, or killers as I suspect may be the case, didn’t have the wrong man. There were thousands of indecent images of children found, many of which match the rooms found in the house, and one of the children in particular.
His death was followed by the famous NBA coach Ernesto Diaz, and the media is now in a frenzy, nicknaming the killer the Retribution Killer. At the moment, we’re keeping quiet, not wanting to inform them of what exactly is going on. Until we have the bigger picture, I don’t want to give them anything that might impede the investigation. We’ve had to get more of Flagstaff PD involved in keeping them at bay.
Chase is sitting across from me, hyper focused on the files in front of him. I’ve decided I’m going to make my move sooner rather than later. I could use a good stress reliever, and that tall, blonde, delicious specimen should do the trick.
Just as I’m about to open my mouth, Dutch comes racing in, blasting the door open with a wild look in her eyes. My gut clenches, throat going dry as premonition chills my blood.
She looks around the room and then glides towards me, her gaze locked onto mine. Grabbing my arm, she pulls me up with a whispered, “Come with me, now.”
