Heads Will Roll – Chapter Twenty-Five

NOT EDITED

By the time Jeff and Bridget heard the voicemail on Rick’s work phone, he’d already received a call on his cell. Now, he stood in the entryway of an empty farmhouse on the outskirts of Ellepath, hands held up by his head, eyes trained on the gun pointed at his face. It had been quite some time since he’d come face-to-face with the business end of someone else’s weapon. That kind of thing didn’t really happen in Ellepath. It had been the whole damn point of moving there, of getting the hell out of California.

He forced his gaze past the gun and to the Black man’s face. “Caleb.”

Caleb’s expression changed entirely, shifting from that almost nervous false stoicism to surprise. “You… How do you know who I am?”

“I’ve never forgotten a victim’s face. That includes the faces of their family.”

Caleb’s breath hitched. He shook his head. “No. He must’ve told you when he called.”

“She was right in front of me, Caleb. She was… she was right there. There has not been a single night that has gone by since that one where I haven’t seen her face when I close my eyes. Not a night goes by where I don’t see a replay of those damn reporters shoving their microphones and cameras in your face to ask how it ‘feels’ to find out your daughter was murdered. I’ll never be able to just walk away from all of that. To forget it. To forget her. To forget you.”

“Their names,” Caleb demanded with a shake of his gun. “What were their names?”

“Gabby. Your little girl’s name was Gabby. She loved horses and her favorite color was teal. She wanted to play the clarinet when she was finally old enough to be in band instead of choir. Your little boy, his name was Dwayne. I… I heard about what happened with him and your wife, and I am… so incredibly sorry for your losses. I know—”

“Don’t,” Caleb whispered. “Please don’t.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry.”

Caleb closed his eyes, the gun still aimed at Rick. Rick chose to hold his ground. Going for the gun and missing meant losing any progress he’d made with Caleb, any progress his appeal to the man’s humanity had made. Caleb wasn’t the ring leader. He was just one part of the ring leader’s twisted, manipulative scheme. There was still a chance for Caleb, and Rick had no intention of fucking that up.

“If you had saved Gabby, Laura wouldn’t have… have done that. But she thought it was the only way to keep Dwayne safe from the same fate Gabby met. Sh-she was just sick. Sick with loss and grief, y-you know?” Caleb asked, opening his eyes again to meet Rick’s gaze.

Rick nodded. “She didn’t see another way through it. She thought taking him with her was better than whatever might happen to him in the hands of someone else. She was just… an ill woman trying to do what she thought was right for her little boy.”

“And she left me behind to pick up whatever busted pieces were left. For… a long time, I wondered why. I wondered why she believed Dwayne deserved the peace that came with death but I didn’t. But I finally figured it out, Deputy. Zak helped make sure of that. It was for this. It was to make sure our little girl finally got the justice she deserved.”

“Zak,” Rick echoed. “Zak Harding?”

“Who else?”

Rick’s brow furrowed. Zak Harding was the father of the second girl who had been murdered that day, Ella. The ring leader, the one who had called him, had sounded nothing like Zak. Rick was certain he would never be able to forget the man’s voice. How the hell could he? The news interviews of both men were permanently etched into every inch of his brain. The gut-wrenching voicemails he’d woken up to post-surgery from both men after their daughters’ deaths played in his head every damn day. How could he possibly forget what he sounded like?

“Did you ever meet Zak? Back in the day, I mean, when the original investigation was ongoing?”

“I know what you’re trying to do, Rick. Zak already told me you’d try to turn us against each other. I’m not stupid enough to fall for that.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid. But I do think someone is weaponizing your grief against you, using it to manipulate you,” Rick said.

“Yeah. You. Do you think I’m blind? That I don’t see what all this is about for you? Do you really think I don’t know that every damn word out of your mouth is just a ploy to get me to put the gun down?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Rick repeated. He lowered his hands slightly, holding them out in front of his chest rather than above his head. “If you truly believe he’s definitely Zak Harding, if you truly believe he suffered the same loss you did, shoot me. Right now. You’ve already got the gun. You’ve already got the aim locked down. Pull the trigger. But if you think there’s even a chance that he’s just some sick son of a bitch taking advantage of another person’s grief and hardships, lower the gun instead. Help me get real justice for your daughter, not justice in whatever sick way he’s twisted it to.”

For a moment, Caleb simply stared at him. Finally, he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I believe, Deputy. My job isn’t to kill you. It’s to hold you here until Zak is ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“The finale. What else?”

“The finale,” Rick whispered. “Is that my death, or my boy’s?”

Caleb’s jaw hardened a little, but the gun still didn’t waver off of Rick. “Both.”

***

When neither Rick nor Heidi answered their phones, the four split up to cover the most ground possible. Jeff had gone out to Gerry Schutt’s, Bo and Dallas had gone to the lake, and the sheriff had given Bridget the keys to a cruiser so she could head out to Rick and Heidi’s house.

At the Downs residence, Bridget had to knock on the front door six separate times before Heidi finally answered it. “I need to speak to your husband,” Bridget said.

Heidi stared at her, one hand wrapped around the door, the other clutching her robe at her chest. “He’s at the station.”

“You and I both know that’s not true, Mrs. Downs,” Bridget said, doing her best to keep her voice soft. “I need to know where he went.”

“I don’t know,” Heidi whispered.

“Did he receive a call?” Bridget asked. Heidi nodded. “Did you hear any of it?”

“He told Rick to take him off speaker.”

“Okay. After the call ended, did Rick tell you anything that was said?”

“No. I mean, he… No. He told me no cops. That the guy said… no cops. A-and Rick said that when he comes back, it’ll be with Logan and Bonnie. That’s all I know, I swear.”

“I believe you,” Bridget said quietly. “Did he take his phone?”

“He left it in the kitchen.”

Bridget nodded. “I noticed his cruiser is out front. What’d he take? Does it have a LoJack on it?”

“My car. It doesn’t.”

“What kind of car is it?”

“He said no cops,” Heidi said through her teeth, though she sounded like she was holding back tears rather than anger.
“This is going to be incredibly hard to hear, but that man wants to kill Rick. There is absolutely no talking him down from that revenge. He wants to kill Logan, see Rick’s face when he does it, and then he wants to kill Rick. That is not going to change just because Rick didn’t tell anyone where he was going. I need you to tell me what kind of car to look for. Now.”

***

Bo and Dallas arrived to an empty lake. No body, no Gerry, no sidekick, no Rick. Just ice. Bo couldn’t quite decide if that felt like a good thing or not, if it meant Rick and the kids were still alive or if it simply meant Gerry hadn’t displayed them yet.

“I don’t think they’re dead yet,” Dallas said, eyes scanning the lake. “With the show this guy has put on, I just don’t see him going out with… a whimper instead of a bang. The displays have been public. You don’t decapitate someone and display their head at a separate crime scene than the body if you don’t want attention.”

“You think he’ll want to kill Rick with more eyes on him,” Bo said.

“It seems like that’d sorta be right up his alley.”

“Is that a gut feeling or… a voiced instinct?”

“Both,” Dallas said after a moment.

“What does the voice have to say about it?”

“You don’t want to know”

“Dallas.”

Dallas let out a harsh breath, brow furrowed as he crossed his arms over his chest. “A public execution for a guy like Rick — well-liked, family man, cop — is the kind of the kind of thing most killers can only dream about. This guy intends to live it, and he’s tired of waiting for his time in the spotlight.”

***

Jeff pulled into Gerry Schutt’s driveway just as the man began to open his garage door. Gerry turned enough to meet his eyes through the windshield before slamming the door back toward the ground, pushing on the handle to make sure it locked back into place. Jeff shut off the engine and pocketed his keys before climbing out of the cruiser. “Hey, Ger. Enjoying your weekend?”

“Oh, sure. Not too bad.”

Jeff nodded, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. “Headin’ somewhere?”

“Just got some errands to run. Groceries, car wash… Nothing that can’t wait.” Gerry crossed his arms over his chest. “You here to do some more accusing? What’s next? You think I took Rick’s boy?”

“Word travels fast, huh?”

“It’s to be expected, don’t you think? Small town, under four hundred people with nothing to do but gossip or drive around on the gravel roads.”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s true.” Jeff cleared his throat, pulling his hands from his pockets long enough to adjust his tactical belt. “Say, Ger, I’d really appreciate it if you could show me what you’ve got hiding behind door number one, there.”

“You got a warrant?”

“I don’t, but if I find anything along the lines of what I’m expecting to, I don’t much care.”

Gerry snorted. “You find what you’re ‘expecting’ to, and you’ll have nothing to present in a court of law. That whole warrant thing and chain of custody stuff isn’t something they play around with, Jeff.”

“I think that if you open that door, you’ll be dead long before I have to worry about what I need to present to a judge.”

Gerry laughed, genuinely laughed. “Well, a threat like that is a hell of a way to make sure you bastards can’t keep harassing me like this. When I call my lawyer—”

“Call whoever the fuck you want, Gerry. Open the door, or I’ll open it myself.”

Gerry stared at him for a moment before simply stepping to the side and gesturing to the door. “Go ahead and see for yourself, Deputy.”

“Turn around. I’m going to pat you down.” Gerry, suspiciously obedient, turned around, his hands locked behind his head. Jeff kicked his feet apart and patted him down. Nothing but his car keys. “You’re good.”

Gerry dropped his hands, turning back toward Jeff as he stepped up to the garage door. “What is it that you think you’re gonna find in there, Dep? Huh? I mean, really? In a fucking garage?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some body-sized chest freezers.”

Gerry snorted. “Yeah, maybe.”

Jeff twisted the handle and lifted the garage door. He caught a glimpse of Logan staring at him through the back window of Bonnie’s car for all of half a second before Gerry sideswiped him, knocking him to the ground. The door slammed down on Jeff’s ankle. Jeff cried out, doing his best to knee Gerry with his free leg.

Gerry knocked Jeff’s gun from his hand as soon as he unholstered it. Jeff’s leg still trapped beneath the door, Gerry beat him to it with ease. He stood above Jeff, pistol pointed at Jeff’s face.

Jeff held up his hands, chest heaving. “Please,” he whispered. “Gerry—”

“Please.” Gerry laughed. “Begging for your life after threatening mine. A turn you weren’t expecting, hmm, Jeffrey?”

Jeff winced, wrapping a hand around his leg, the other still extended toward Gerry. “The kids. Please, Gerry. I-I know Rick hurt you. I know losing your son that way was hard. But don’t take it out on those kids. They did nothing to you. H-how does killing them make you any better than Rick? Huh? How?”

“Rick set off a chain of events, Jeffrey, whether he knew it or not. The lives I take are simply resetting the balance that Rick disrupted when he ripped my son from this world. When he decided that his life mattered more than the life of my son. When he chose himself over all others. I’m… resetting.”

Jeff grunted, digging his fingers into his thigh. “Gerry, we can reset the balance some other way. W-we can take Rick back to California. H-he can pay for what he did. I’ll help you myself, I promise. We can do it without taking anyone else out of this world.”

“You all had plenty of time to make Rick pay for his crimes. You all chose complacency. You were all… complicit. That has no place in the reset.”

“No, no, no, wait—”

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Jeff let out a strangled breath, hand moving to the warmth pooling on his stomach.

Gerry clicked his tongue at him, shaking his head. “You had many chances to choose a side, Jeffrey. You chose wrong.” He lifted the garage door, freeing Jeff’s mangled ankle. In between the high-pitched ringing in his ears, Jeff heard Bonnie scream from the garage. From inside the car.

“It’s a shame that Rick will probably be dead by the time they find out about you, that I won’t get to see his face when the reporters thrust a camera in it to ask how he feels about his responsibility in all this. I suppose I’ll have to tell him myself. A close second in how it will feel, but… good enough for me.” He patted Jeff’s leg twice, hard, drawing a pained groan out of the deputy. “I’ve got places to be, Dep. I’ll see ya in Hell. You can settle your score then.”

Jeff dropped his bloody hand from his stomach, wrapping it around Gerry’s ankle as the man started to step over him.

Gerry laughed. “Tenacious, I’ll give you that. But if tenacity saved lives, my son would be alive, and none of this would have ever had to happen.” He kicked Jeff’s hand away and walked over him and into the garage.

Jeff’s eyes drifted up toward the sky as Gerry climbed into Bonnie’s car and turned over the engine. Jeff watched him back out of the drive, watched the tires track through the blood running down the concrete.

He closed his eyes, hoping desperately that the delay in Gerry’s little drive was enough to save Rick and the kids.

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