Read Relentless (Elisabeth Reinhardt Book 1) Online
Authors: Nancy Alexander
No doubt about it. They were hurting. They’d been outmaneuvered and the killers had disappeared. Chester and Lou sat across from each other in Gus’s Diner. The body count kept mounting.
The recently discovered victims had been identified as:
They stared wearily at
the names in front of them, thinking as they waited for their order. These victims had been dead and buried on the Raines Family Farm for years undiscovered. Apparently Jake and his buddies felt safe to roam around the farm doing whatever they did without fear of being caught. That was puzzling. There were people living on the farm. Earl and Hattie were there but so were their daughters, who had not yet married. Plus Clint and Dale lived there for several years before moving away. In addition Earl had several neighbor boys working the fields with him and roaming the woods at will. It didn’t make sense. It was hard to imagine that these three women could have been captured, tortured, killed and buried with so many people wandering around. That raised several questions:
-Why weren’t they discovered? If they were discovered why wasn’t it reported? If someone knew what Jake was up to why didn’t they do something to stop him?
-Why did the killers move their base of operations when they did? Apparently these early kills were all buried in this section of the Raines Farm and then suddenly they moved their base of operations to the parks and random burial sites. Why?
Raylene Michaels was murdered about 4 months prior to the time that Jake attacked Reggie
and she fled the family farm. That challenged the theory that Jake was killing Reggie substitutes, if Raylene was killed before Reggie what was his motive in killing her? They would have to search every inch of that farm thoroughly as soon as possible. In the meantime, there were some idiosyncrasies to consider. One was that each of these bodies was wrapped in cloth of some type. That would indicate a level of caring or remorse. This was uncharacteristic of the later bodies. They were unsure if it represented a shift in thinking or perhaps a different person buried these women. Then there was the manner of death which was inconsistent between the earlier and the later groups and yet the other injuries were entirely consistent with the Parkland Killers profile. It raised a plethora of questions. They hoped forensics would resolve them.
A
nd then an added wrinkle presented itself in the form of Special Agent Marie Del Monte who rushed into Gus’s Diner red-cheeked and breathless. “OK” she said sitting down and motioning Star for a cup of coffee. She had been at the hospital with the Raines children on and off since the crisis at the farm. Now she said “Listen up, you guys, I’ve just learned something that will put a whole different spin on things. Our probable first victim, Raylene Michaels is not a random victim. She is not only Mary Beth Raines’ older sister but she and Clint were engaged to be married when she disappeared in 1994. Clint Raines and Mary Beth Michaels grew close while they were struggling with Raylene’s disappearance. Once they finally accepted she was probably dead, they were married three years later.” The men stared at her unsure where this information would lead them.
“There had been 3 girls in the Michael’s family,
” Marie continued, “Raylene, Mary Beth, Sara Jane. Both of the Michaels parents worked full time so Raylene pretty much raised her younger sisters. After Raylene went missing Mrs. Michaels went into a severe depression and ended up being confined to a psychiatric facility. Mr. Michaels started drinking heavily and ended up in a car accident that left him wheel-chair bound. Losing Raylene destroyed the Michaels family and it nearly destroyed Mary Beth and Clint, too. Since their marriage, they have been burdened with caring for the youngest sister, Sara Jane and later both of her parents moved in with them. Her parents still live there. Clint and Mary Beth are responsible for them as well as for their own three children. Now here’s the interesting part. I saw some photos of Raylene and she does not fit Jake’s profile. She was short and a bit over-weight with curly red hair. Also there were no evident signs of sexual abuse. It looks like she was killed for another reason entirely, like to play out a vendetta against Clint or perhaps she was killed by another killer entirely, someone who is not in the gang now.”
Lou reflecting on this suggested, “
This is a game changer. It’s the first kill and it varies with everything else we’ve got. But it has to be related somehow to Jake cause the rest of the bodies in that little graveyard are definitely his and that’s not a coincidence. Two different killers don’t just happen to bury their victims in the same location.” Reflecting on her visit with Clint and Mary Beth at their home on the eve of the Raines Farm catastrophe, Marie recalled feeling Clint and his wife had been hiding something, but in the rush of events that immediately followed that idea was pushed aside.
“
I was just on the phone with Mary Beth,” Marie reported, “and here’s another bit. I described a piece of jewelry Hattie had kept for Jake. Clint had a strange reaction when he saw that photo and when I described it to Mary Beth she told me it sounded like her sister’s cross. So we have another clear connection between Raylene’s death and the Parkland Killers and it looks like Raylene may have been Jake’s first victim, perhaps killed before the victim profile pattern was established with Reggie. Mary Beth said they had always worried that whatever happened to Raylene had also happened to Reggie Lee. But they never knew what happened to either of them. This necklace draws a clear connection between those killings and the Raines family. Jake probably killed Raylene and is certainly responsible for whatever happened to Reggie Lee, he killed his father and put his mother in the ICU; she thinks Clint just might ‘go off the deep end and go after him.’ Mary Beth told me Clint said Jake destroyed our families. He’s over at the hospital talking to Dale and he looks like he wants to punch holes in walls. We have to make sure the two of them don’t go running off and complicate the crime spree we already have.”
As the team discussed this newest development, c
offee arrived fresh and steaming. They looked at the evidence before them: crime scene photos in one pile, national police crime reports in another pile, witness reports in another pile, road maps of the USA in another pile and discussed the most recent information about the Raines family history. Chester picked through the witness reports and reviewed them again. The biggest lead is that phone call the killers made from the church. The priest’s cell phone had been dumped but it turned out that the number was a dead end. The call was placed to a two year old burner phone that was bought somewhere in western PA.
“There’s that Pennsylvania connection again,” Chester said.
He was re-reading Father Wallington’s report for the 3
rd
time. “I want to talk to that priest again,” he said, picking up his phone.
They were mopping egg yolk from their plates when
Father Wallington entered the diner, stomping snow off his boots on the doormat. ‘Sis’ a new waitress was at his elbow the moment he sat down asking what she could get for him. “Just coffee please, Sis,” he said settling himself down at the table.
“Thank you for coming in, Father,” Chester began, “we have a few follow up questions that may be important.”
“Of course,” the priest answered, “anything I can do to help. They are troubled souls with violence on their minds.”
“Father, we’re particularly interested in the phone call one of the men made while you were in the church. What can you tell us about that?”
“Well, it was the man called Jake who made that call. I was in my study sitting at my desk. He ordered me to stay put and not move or he’d shoot me then he stepped out into the community room and made this call. I heard nearly every word he said.” “That’s great, Father,” Lou said, “Can you tell us whatever you can remember. Anything you remember could be important.”
Father Wallington
nodded and said “His first words were ‘Hey, Ruff n Ready old buddy’ then he said something like, ‘It’s me… right! I need you to check something for me.’ He was watching his friends who were in the garage and got the idea he had to hurry up I think and said ‘No, listen Buddy I have to make this quick. I need you to find this gal. Yea…’ then I missed some words because he was whispering, then he said ‘Think maybe so.’ Then something like ‘I’m in a load of shit ….” Then the priest shrugged “Excuse my language officers, but that’s what he said.”
“Of course Father,” Chester said, “please go ahead.”
The priest nodded, he said “…‘Ready,’ my friend.’ Ready was like a name not meaning are you ready,” the priest clarified. “Then he listened for a while, rubbing his chin and nodding, uh, uh’s into the phone and then he said, ‘I need it quick, Man. If all goes well, I’ll see you or meet you
something something
‘Sit in.’” Then the priest reported that Jake listened some more and added, “‘That’s a plan, I’ll hold onto this one. Thanks buddy, I owe you one!’ then he hung up.”
“Father that was terrific you have perfect recall!” Marie was impressed.
“Well,” Father Wallington said modestly, “I spend a lot of time listening.”
Chester had written down the priest’s report of the conversation and was reading his notes. “Father, can you remember anything else about that greeting? Was it the man’s name?”
“I think ‘Ruff n Ready’ was a long nickname. Like calling someone ‘peaches and cream’ or something,” the priest said.
Chester made a note. “And the part about meeting him… you said something like meet you …‘sit in?’ was that like a place or more like we’ll sit in somewhere.
The priest thought for a while, “I think it sounded like a place. I’ll meet you at something like Sit Inn, not like we’ll drive through rather than sitting inside.”
“Ok good,” Chester said moving through his notes “and one more thing, that part about hanging onto something... what was that about?”
“I’m not completely sure, but from the tone it was that he would hang onto
this
one, meaning what he already had or was holding. The emphasis was on the word ‘this.’ That would make it something like the phone he had, which was mine or the number, like my phone number. So this ‘Ready’ person would be able to contact him at that number. That’s what I got out of it,” said the priest.
Chester
, Marie and Lou continued to talk with the priest for another 20 minutes, writing down every detail of his contact with Jake, their conversation and his impression of the man and his mind-set. The Father was not a trained psychologist, but he was an experienced counselor. His parishioners had come to him for years asking his help and he was a wise and good observer of human behavior. His conversation with Jake provided keen insights into the man’s psyche and into the group dynamics. He observed that the gang was fractured, the leader insecure and paranoid and that the two followers seemed bound to the leader by fear.
Within the hour,
Will had tracked down the name and address of Teddy Ruff, his old cellmate, a computer genius now living in Pennsylvania. Coordinating with the Pennsylvania State Police and the Pennsylvania Branch of the FBI, they found a bar called ‘The Sit In’ not far from Teddy Ruff’s apartment; witnesses at the bar were able to describe the threesome in detail including their conversation with their waitress, their order, and their questions about Teddy Ruff. Squad cars raced to Ruff’s address to find the apartment door broken and hanging open. No one was there. They assumed that both Ruff and the killers were in the wind. After talking to neighbors they learned that Ruff was seen loading things into his car and had left the parking lot before three men were seen walking toward his apartment. From evidence in the apartment it was determined that Ruff had shut down his computer operation and had packed some suitcases with possessions. Fingerprint analysis revealed that the breakage had come from the gang not from Teddy Ruff and that helped them conclude that they were likely going after Ruff. They decided that Jake saw Ruff as his ‘ace’ and was depending on him to help. Jake would be infuriated if someone he counted on let him down like this. During the search a photograph of a young, blonde woman was found its frame broken. A shard of glass had been used to cut a line down the side of the woman’s face. Jake had found another target. Grimly they realized Ruff’s girlfriend, who they found was named Monica French, had become Jake’s newest target. If they hadn’t been sure the killers were on his trail before they were certain now. They tracked down Monica’s employer who reported that Ruff had picked her up that afternoon after work and the car was seen heading west.