Head Shot (A Thriller): A Crime and Suspense Thriller (8 page)

Twenty-Three

Ralph Aaron, news director for Channel 6, looked up from his desk as his door burst open and Nancy Bishop stormed in, her face set as if ready for a battle.

"Sure, come on in," he called out sarcastically, as she was already standing in front of his desk.

His eyes drifted over her shoulder to the fly fishing calendar he had put on the far wall.  When a highly unpleasant task was facing him, it had become habit for Aaron to look longingly at the fisherman captured in brilliant four-color, casting a dry fly under a thick stand of mangroves in hopes of snagging a snook.

Ralph Aaron was a year and a half away from retirement when he would at last make the move to Southwest Florida, to fish everyday in the fabled Ten Thousand Islands.  Soon, deciding which species of fish to pursue would be the weightiest thing on his mind, that, and what kind of beer to start drinking on the way back to the boat landing after a hard day of fishing under the hot Florida sun.

"I know where Ferkovich is," she said.

Aaron waited.

"Here's what the cops know.  Ferkovich killed Lisa Young, Harriet Bednarski and he tried to kill Bednarski's friend but she got away and was able to give a good physical description, enough for the cops to come up with his name."

Aaron waited, and she went on.

"In each of the murders, he pulled the victim's teeth before he strangled them."

She sat down in one of the chair's facing Aaron's desk, and pulled it closer.

"They suspect Ferkovich has killed before.  There was a girl and a woman, separate incidents, in or near Detroit.  Both of them also had their teeth pulled and were asphyxiated.  I've got Hopkins working on that."

Hopkins was Susan Hopkins, a junior reporter who Aaron had assigned to assist Bishop in the Ferkovich story.

"But here's the thing:  we know Ferkovich had a traumatic childhood, mainly at the hands of his father.  He went through it all with his sister Mary, who now lives in Rodgers Bay in the U.P."

"So you think that just because they went through a hellish childhood together that he's going to run to her?"  Aaron asked. He shook his head.  "Come on Nancy, that's way too thin."

"The cops also know that when Ferkovich was in prison in Michigan, he kept in close contact with only one person."

Aaron forced himself to take his eyes off the calendar.

"Let me guess, his sister," he said, shaking his head.  "It's not enough, so they were pen pals when he needed someone, anyone to help him deal with prison, so what?  What does she do for a living?"

"She's a schoolteacher," Nancy replied.

"An educator for Christ's sake, of course she's going to write her brother, she probably thought he was capable of rehabilitation, it's her job to think people can be changed.  Come on Nancy, this is bullshit.  Cancel your trip up north and stay here where the story is, Hopkins can't handle this end of the story alone."

"With all due respect, sir, you're fucked in the head,"  Bishop said, her voice matter-of-fact.

"This guy is from Michigan and Wisconsin, he's gone up north fishing with one of his few, if not only, friends. His sister lives in the U.P.  He's got nowhere else to go."

She was jabbing her finger in the general direction of her boss with each emphatic point.

"The U.P. is a place you can get lost.  The Porcupine Mountains are almost completely uninhabited.  There are areas along the Lake Superior shoreline that are as rugged and brutal as Northern Canada, and the whole area is full of people who live there because they don't like people, especially authority, and they prefer to live with a beer in one hand and a rifle in the other."

She sat back in her chair.

"It's the perfect place for him to go, and I guarantee," she said quietly, "some hillbilly television station in the U.P. is going to cover the capture of Joseph P. Ferkovich while I'm stuck in Milwaukee interviewing some distant cousin of his who remembers Cousin Joe seemed like a nice boy."

Nancy Bishop stood.

"You can sit in here and look at your motherfucking fishing calendar, but I'm walking out this door right now, and I'm grabbing the first camera man and truck I see, and I'm going to Rodgers Bay, Michigan to wait for a serial killer, I'll come back with the story that no one else in this city had the foresight to chase down."

She headed for the door.

"You can fire me when I get back," she said, and slammed the door behind her.

Aaron looked at the back of his door, then slowly his eyes drifted up to the picture of the fisherman knee-deep in a beautiful, twinkling stream.

He would re-assign a more senior reporter to help Hopkins cover the smaller stories down here and hope with all his might that Bishop was right and that Ferkovich was heading up north, where he'd run smack dab into the cops and Nancy would be there to scoop every other reporter in the state, hell, the nation.

He would do it not because he gave a shit about journalism or his standing at the station, or even the station's standing in the community.

No, he would do it because if she succeeded, their ratings would go up, the station would make more money, and he'd get a bigger chunk of profit sharing dumped into his retirement fund.

Which meant that he could say good-bye to his job and Nasty Bitch Nancy Bishop all that much sooner.

Twenty-Four

Time was always the question.  How long before someone tries to contact Jimmy?  How long before they decide something is wrong?  And then how long does it take for their worry to grow strong enough to merit breaking into his house and finding the body?

Time.  It was almost always working against him.

He drove Jimmy’s pickup truck north on a country road that ran roughly parallel to the main highway.  He was far enough away from Jimmy’s house to avoid having the truck recognized by a local cop, and it was much safer than the main highway where state troopers might be on the lookout for him.

Joe’s thoughts on the drive had mostly been devoted to how much time he had.

Factored into those considerations, of course, was how long he could go before he needed to satisfy himself again.  He felt his heart lighten at the thought, a flood of adrenaline roused his libido.

It was shocking how much more quickly he was becoming ready.

Joe weighed his options.  What he really wanted to do was go to Canada.  He’d never been across the border but he pictured Canada to be something like the United States but fifty years earlier.  In other words, more innocent, naïve and unsuspecting.

Which was perfect for him.

He’d find a medium sized city or large town, get some menial job and then find a few women that needed his special services.

Joe smiled at the thought.

Yep, a few in one town, then move on.  It would take awhile for the Canadian cops to realize that Joe Ferkovich from the U.S. was now up in their country having his way with Canadian bitches.  and by the time they did figure it out, he’d just keep moving west and north.  Canada was a huge country, after all.  He could get lost up there forever.

But how to get there?

That was the goddamn question, Joe thought.

No doubt he would have to sneak in illegally.  He didn’t even own a passport.  So if he got caught going in, it would be all over.

No, he would have to put off Canada for now.  Let some of the heat blow over.

He needed a safe spot where he could hide out for awhile, try to avoid his urges, even though he knew that was next to impossible.

If he couldn’t resist he would just have to be smart about it.

And the smartest thing he could do was to stash himself where no one would think to look for him.

He had just the place in mind.

Twenty-Five

The town of Rodgers Bay sat along two curving strips of land that served to encircle the small body of Lake Superior water known as Rodgers Bay.

A burgeoning shipping industry had built the majority of the town at the turn of the century, but after the industry dropped off in the 1950s, tourism became the number one game in town.

Although its charter fishing fleet was small and there was no forecast for a large increase, the harbor had undergone a comprehensive, eleven million dollar rehabilitation, designed to lure more boats from the bigger towns downstate, as well as bring in more tourists.

It was an expense residents griped about, mainly because their taxes went way up, and no one seemed to think tourists would pour into town to see their new harbor.

  But, their opinions were ignored and new, wider sidewalks had been completed, a huge play structure resembling a ship was installed, and the harbor's main complex was also home to the new Great Lakes Museum which featured memorabilia from the turn-of-the-century shipping yards located in Rodgers Bay.

The harbor had slips for three hundred boats, although less than half of them were currently occupied.

In Slip 31, a light flickered on in the cabin of the twenty-three foot Sea Ray as Sarah Ross put a pot of coffee on the stove.  Her husband, Rocco, was still snoring soundly and she'd let him get another fifteen minutes in before she woke him up.

She enjoyed this part of the morning, before serious preparations would begin in anticipation of the clients, who would be arriving at approximately six a.m.

Sarah savored her cup of coffee and sitting on the pier to the left of their slip, listening to the waves lap against the boats, and watching dawn break out over the big lake.

She and Rocco had worked all their lives to get to this point.  They had built a catering service from the ground up and put their hearts and souls into the business.  It was a success, and after twenty years of throwing parties for everyone else, they threw one for themselves and promptly turned the business over to their two daughters.

They then bought the boat and launched, quite literally, their second dream, that of starting a charter fishing service, to fish for the bountiful lake trout in the cold blue waters of Lake Superior.  They took clients out sporadically, never booking more than two or three outings a week.  They were, after all, supposed to be semi-retired.

This morning, a thin blanket of flog had settled in and a few seagulls had already begun the day's work, soaring high over the boats, patiently waiting for the inevitable bait to be spilled before the fishermen set out for their fishing quests.

Sarah sat on the edge of the pier, her feet dangling above the water, and she heard the gentle rattle of fishing poles as a man emerged from the fog at the other end of the harbor.

Sarah thought it a bit early for fishermen to be arriving, she was always the first one up around here, but he seemed to know where he was going so there probably wasn't a mistake.

She watched him slow down around the corner of the horseshoe and she realized he was looking at the names of the boats.  Finally, he stopped at one and very purposely climbed on board, stowed his gear and disappeared below decks.

Sarah thought it odd that the man would be invited to a fishing boat so early in the morning and then the person who had most likely invited him wasn't here yet.  But, the man seemed to have no problem making himself at home.

He must be good friends with whoever owns that boat, she thought to herself.

She squinted her eyes and could just make out the name of the boat.

Teacher's Pet
.

Sarah downed the last of her coffee and her old joints creaked as she stood up.  Time to get the old man up and get ready for a day of fishing.

He'd slept long enough.

Twenty-Six

In 1975, in the Rodgers Bay Elementary School, there was one classroom that had blue carpet.  It was the only room in the entire school system with carpet of this color.

It was here, in this room, that the children labeled “developmentally disabled” were taught. 

There was one row of desks for the students, two bookcases, and a corner chest with toys designed to teach the children basic lessons as well as simple motor skills.  The children ranged in age as well as size, as many of the students who were ten to twelve years old had the minds of five to six year olds.

Nothing in the room was breakable or presented a choking hazard.

To the rest of the student body, the children assigned to this room were known as “blue roomers,” a name the other students would often chant in ridicule at the “intellectually challenged.”

It was to this room that a young boy named Hank Campbell was sent.  Just ten years old, Hank was close to six feet tall and weighed nearly one hundred and sixty pounds, much of the weight coming from his deep chest and incredibly muscular arms and shoulders.

Both of his parents had been killed in an auto accident, later reports showed the father to be drunk while driving.

At that time, the teacher assigned to the Blue Room was Anita Karpinsky, a cute, perky blonde with octagonal glasses and large breasts, who seemed to attract scores of admiring glances from the school's many male teachers. 

A graduate of Northern Michigan University, she had studied education and graduated at the top her class.  Upon receiving her degree, she quickly achieved her dream of becoming an elementary school teacher, working with special needs children was a job she found both challenging and rewarding.

At first, she was intimidated by Hank Campbell.  Once, when the children were reading a lesson, Miss Karpinski took the time to rearrange her filing cabinets.  When she tried to move one, she found it was much too heavy for her.  Without having been asked, Hank walked over and lifted the file cabinet, as well as the one stacked on top of it, and carried it across the room.  It was a feat she later described to the physical education teacher, Mr. Hauser, who tried to repeat the process, but only managed to lift the cabinets off the ground several inches before dropping them back onto the floor.

Anita Karpinski was petite, but also possessed an inner strength that few people glimpsed.  It was a trait that was put to the test the day Hank Campbell came to class at the ripe old age of eleven, reeking of alcohol.

His foster parents kept a well-stocked bar in the basement rec room.  It had been off-limits to their five adopted children until Hank broke the lock off the cabinet and had his first drink of the tonic that he instantly realized he could never live without.

That weekend, Hank took two bottles of whiskey and went out to the woods where he promptly drank one and passed out.  When he woke up the next morning, he sneaked back into his bedroom where his parents had not missed him.

On Monday, Hank dressed for school as he normally did, but this time a slight bulge protruded from beneath his jacket.  On the way to school, he stopped inside the garage of a classmate, Greg Metzker, and drank half of the remaining bottle.  It was enough.

The first thing Anita Karpinsky noticed about her student was that Hank, unlike his usual plodding self, seemed to be far more energized and active than normal.  She began class by writing the day’s lessons on the chalkboard, but was interrupted by a squeal.  She turned in time to see Hank’s hand grasping Lynn Dailey’s right breast.

Stunned, Miss Karpinsky rushed in, and yanked Hank’s hand away.  Without a second’s hesitation, Hank stood and punched his teacher with everything his overly developed body had.

The perky blonde fell backwards, her jaw cracked in three places.  She struggled to her feet and made it to the principal's office, where the secretaries called the police.

It took five police offers to subdue Hank and his fists, and by the time he was safely locked inside a squad car, Miss Karpinsky was joined by a fellow teacher with broken ribs and a police officer with a hairline fracture of the skull.

It had been Hank Campbell's first brush with the law, but it would not be the last.  Over the years, as Hank's body continued to grow, so did his transgressions.

Of course, no one, not even Anita Karpinsky, could have predicted the infamy Hank Campbell, the King Blue Roomer of them all, would help bring to the good people of Rodgers Bay.