Killing David McAllister

By L. V. Gaudet

Sometimes the only way to stop a monster is to kill it. He has gone by many names, but he was raised as David McAllister, and finding what he is looking for is not enough to quiet the darkness inside him.

David McAllister must die.

While the McAllisters move into hiding, Detective Jim McNelly and his reporter friend, Lawrence Hawkwor

• Language: English
• Publisher: L. V. Gaudet
• Release date: Oct 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781999282370

L. V. Gaudet

L.V. Gaudet is a Canadian author of dark fiction.

Book preview

Part One

Safety

1      Promises

Did you mean what you said? That you are going to kill him? Kathy asks, looking at Cassie.

Kathy still feels the shock. It fills every fiber of her being, numbing her and pushing the world away to some distant place. She feels like she is trapped in a bad movie.

Did I mean what? Cassie does not look at her. She can’t. Every time she looks at Kathy she is filled with anger.

At the farm; you said you are going to kill him. Did you mean it?

I meant it. Cassie glances at her and quickly looks away.

Kathy swallows, thinking.

Do I ask? What will she do, kill me? Isn’t that what I want? To die? To get this all over with? The only way out of this is death.

Who did you mean? she asks, hesitating. Which one of them are you going to kill?

Does it matter?

Kathy feels nauseas. I don’t know who I want it to be, she thinks.

I feel like this is unreal, Kathy says. I thought you were dead.

I’m not. No thanks to you.

That’s harsh.

You deserve it.

Kathy’s throat constricts and her eyes burn with the tears that threaten to come.

It’s time to go. The voice has the raspy tremor of age.

They look up at Anderson’s intrusion. Kathy is anxious he somehow knows what they are talking about.

Cassie gets up and walks away without looking back.

Kathy watches her go. She hates me, she says softly.

She has good reason to, Anderson says.

He reaches one age-gnarled hand down to help her up.

She reaches up, taking his hand and letting him help her up, surprised at the strength in his withered muscles.

They walk to the vehicles together, where everyone is waiting.

Anderson moves to walk next to William.

We have to drop off your Mrs. Bheals somewhere at the first chance, Anderson whispers to him. We have too many people involved in this already. I don’t think I can do anything for that woman David brought, but we can get rid of the old woman before it’s too late for her.

William nods.

I couldn’t leave her there. You saw the place. What it’s like; the patients. She doesn’t belong there. There is nothing wrong with that woman’s mind. I don’t know why she was in that place.

Family probably wanted to put her where she can’t trouble them, Anderson says. It happens when you get old.

What about the kid? William asks, his eyes shifting to look at the kid following Jason.

I don’t know. I have to find out. Anderson’s face is grim.

I don’t want to tell them the kid is probably going to have to be disposed of, he thinks. But, William probably already knows that.

2      Open Doors

Jim McNelly is sitting at a small battered table in a very unpleasant run-down motel room. The ugly wallpaper has stains he would rather not try to identify. The carpet is a worn down shag that never should have happened, and the décor a nineteen thirties thrift store match. The room has a decidedly disagreeable odor reminiscent of the curious stink of death.

His cell phone rings.

McNelly, he gruffs into the phone.

I pulled some strings and got those DNA samples pushed through."

Even distorted by the bad connection, Beth’s voice is a ray of sunshine in the dreary room.

Beth, I could kiss you right now.

Jim, that’s sexual harassment.

She is teasing, of course. Beth knows he does not mean it as anything more than a metaphor to express his thrill at the news.

Save it for internal, he jokes back. What are the results?

We have confirmation, Beth says. The match came back. There is a ninety-nine point six percent chance Donald Downey is the father of the Jane Doe.

Jim blinks back the tears that suddenly come to his eyes. He feels stupid for it, even with no one here to witness it. He swallows. His voice has just the hint of a tremor when he speaks again.

What about the other one?

The silence waiting for Beth to respond is torture. Finally she speaks, hesitantly.

Michael Underwood is Donald Downey’s son.

The rest of her words come from far away, hollow and empty while Jim’s world drops out from under him and he stiffens with a slow smoldering anger. Her voice grows more distant with each word.

Michael is Brian Downey. Jim, you did it. You solved the cold case of the disappearance of Brian and Stephanie Downey. I don’t know if we will find anything confirming if they are also David and Cassie McAllister.

When he does not respond, she says his name into the silence of the phone, waits, and repeats his name.

Jim.

Jim.

Jim.

He snaps out of it, shaking off the shock enveloping him to focus on the phone call again. The shock is as pointless as the crimes he investigates. He knew it was coming, the DNA would confirm what they already know, but hearing that confirmation is still jarring.

It’s not closure, he thinks. There will be no closure. Not until I find Michael Underwood and take him down.

Beth, he manages into the phone.

Jim, if you can find Jason McAllister and get him to confess, or get Michael to give you a statement, you will have this. You will have Jason McAllister on kidnapping Madelaine Downey and her children, and the murder of Madelaine Downey.

Have you had any luck tracing any of them? Jim’s voice still has an edge to it.

No. Sophie and William McAllister have vanished off the grid. There has been no action on their bank accounts and credit cards.

You aren’t telling me something. I can hear it in your voice. What are you leaving out, Beth?

Jim is met by silence.

On the other end, sitting at her desk in their shared office at the small precinct, Beth’s red-nailed fingertips go nervously to her mouth. She starts chewing her lacquered nails, a habit she never had before.

The discovery of a massive multi-generational hidden graveyard in the woods brought out a host of new nervous ticks for her as new revelations are revealed.

I can’t tell him, Beth thinks. He will completely lose it. He already lost it over finding out Michael played him; that his partner, Michael Underwood, is a fictitious identity; a clever con.

Beth, don’t hide it from me. There is more. What is it?

Jim, her voice is hesitant, her mouth open to make herself keep breathing, and her eyes anxious.

Marjory McAllister vanished.

What do you mean she vanished?

She is missing from the nursing home.

How? What happened?

There was a commotion at the nursing home. One of the patients got up and pressed the emergency release on a fire exit in the lockdown wing for Alzheimer patients. When the alarm sounded it was chaos. The alarm sent an automatic signal to emergency and fire trucks were dispatched. There were fire crews coming in and out of every door clearing the building. When they finally sorted the patients all out and put them back to bed two patients were missing.

Marjory. Jim’s voice is definitive. He pauses. It’s probably irrelevant, he thinks. Who else?

A Mrs. Rose Bheals. She has no relation to the McAllisters.

Probably an accident or a diversion, Jim decides.

You don’t think Marjory vanishing is an accident, do you? Beth asks.

No. William visited his wife very day. He is not going to vanish without taking her with him.

He kidnapped his wife. Beth’s voice still holds the strain of the shock she felt when everything fell in her lap.

She taps her gnawed on red-painted fingernails on a thin closed file on her desk.

He broke her out, Jim says.

Jim remembers the care home with its very un-charming attempted false Southern charm. The frightening Miss Krueger, Director of the Bayburry Street Geriatric Home, and the cold mental ward hospital feel of the lockdown ward with the moaning and wailing patients wandering in states of confusion and distress.

Beth, remind me to never get old.

What?

Never mind.

Jim, Beth’s voice is hesitant again, unsure.

What is it?

There is something else.

The line goes silent. Jim is just about to speak when Beth’s voice comes back. She speaks quickly, in a hurry to get the words out before she changes her mind.

I ran the DNA through some database searches with other departments in other jurisdictions.

I don’t like where this is going, Jim thinks.

Jim, I got multiple hits.

Lawrence Hawkworth scans the dark alley. The two streetlights in the long alley are not working. One shows the jagged teeth of broken glass, the other looks burned out. Litter is strewn haphazardly, spilled from an open refuse bin nestled against the back of one building.

Old brick buildings back onto both sides of the alley like mismatched brick segments of tunnel walls. Their back doors are solid steel and windowless, leaving no windows to be broken. There are no windows on ground level, and those in the second and third floors above are reinforced with wire mesh.

Some of the doors have doorknobs, and others have only the steel reinforced plate meant to prevent the door from being pried open, making them accessible only from inside.

One building, taller than the others, has a fire escape that zigzags down the windows of the sixth to fourth floors. These dirty windows are missing the mesh reinforcement. The fire escape ladder hangs from the fourth floor landing, above the heads of anyone walking below.

Lawrence steps into the alley, walking down it to the soft sound of his shoes. His posture reveals his lack of confidence.

He stops below the fire escape ladder looking up at it, judging the height he would have to jump to grab the bottom rung and pull it down. He might almost be able to make it with his height and the long reach of his arms.

A breeze gusts down the alley, picking up a discarded page of newspaper and skimming it along the concrete with a soft rattle that whispers to him.

Lawrence goes to the back door of the building.

The doorknob is slightly off kilter. The strike plate protecting the door frame is bent with the telltale mark of a pry bar.

He steps closer, studying it. He reaches out and grasps the knob. It turns. The lock is broken. He frowns at it.

Someone got in.

Entering the building, Lawrence walks down the poorly lit hallway into the interior in search of the elevator.

Taking the elevator up, he gets off and walks down the hallway. The sounds of life that never totally sleeps in an apartment building echoes down the hall.

Lawrence stops at a door that has multiple locks and glances up and down the hallway. Fishing in his pocket, he produces a ring of keys and starts unlocking them one at a time in an order that matters only to him. He uses the same order every time, reversing it to lock them when he leaves.

Opening the door, Lawrence quickly glances up and down the hallway, steps inside, and closes the door, locking only one lock to secure the door for a faster exit. He starts his search of his apartment to make sure there are no intruders hiding inside.

The apartment is not large, consisting of a single bedroom, bathroom, living room, and a small kitchen. It is tidy except for the banker boxes in the living room with some of their contents laid out on the floor. More stacks of files and papers fill the coffee table and the floor around it. Piles have slumped over on both ends of the sofa, leaving a space in the middle for someone to sit.

Satisfied the apartment is clean, Lawrence starts securing the locks on the door in his particular order.

Inside the door is a stack of three more banker boxes with fat large manila envelopes piled on top. Each box and envelope is carefully sealed with tape. The envelopes are unremarkable; however the boxes are yellowed and stained with age and water damage. The bottoms and sides are reinforced with more tape to hold them together. The cardboard looks rotten with age and is splitting apart. They are older than the other boxes stacked in the apartment.

Minutes before, when he arrived at his apartment door to find the three boxes and fat manila envelopes sitting outside it, Lawrence was sure he felt that unnerving sense of being watched as he stood in the hallway looking down at them. Looking up and down the hallway for any sign of who might have delivered them, he had thought he heard the quiet dull thud of the stairwell door.

That is what prompted him to leave and circle the apartment building, searching for how an intruder got in and re-entering through the broken back door after depositing the boxes inside.

Lawrence goes to the window and looks down. Headlights move along the street in the darkness below. Somewhere a dog is barking. A couple walks arm in arm down the sidewalk.

He returns to the door, looking down at the boxes. Picking up one of the fat manila envelopes, he looks at the address.  The handwriting is identical to the labels on the other banker boxes whose lids are set aside and contents are pulled out, and the others filling his closet.

I know you are dead. So, why are you playing this game? Who do you have sending me these files and why a few boxes at a time? They are labelled by your hand. You planned to send these to me. You knew you were going to die.

He looks at the opened boxes, the files piled around them.

It’s time to get back to work.

Lawrence gets a sharp knife from the kitchen, sets the envelopes aside, and cuts the tape sealing the first box, removing the lid. It is filled with files, their edges age-stained to match the box.

Pulling out a file, he flips through it, scanning its pages. The type is old manual typewriter. The kind you had to press each key with enough force to swing the arm up to strike the symbol on its end hard enough against the ribbon on paper sandwiched with carbon paper and additional sheets of paper to create duplicates, leaving imperfect ink and carbon imprints.

He scans the clunky lettering of the old manual typewriter used to print the report; the Ks only half there, each faded on the right to make them look like Ls wearing a small faded bowtie.

The photo of a middle-aged man clipped to the first page is small, sepia-tinted, and not well focused. The fading of the photo shows it is as old as the typewritten pages.

Placing the folder on top, Lawrence picks up the box and plunks it on top of the papers on the coffee table.

He goes to the closet and pulls out a laptop bag, pulling the laptop out and setting it on the papers next to the box before sitting down.

Lawrence frowns at the laptop, picking up one end and tipping it. Then he remembers and lays it down again, opening the lid and pressing the power button.

After a moment struggling to use the unfamiliar device, he gets his file open and picks up the file off the box, reading it.

What is special about you, Mr. Grant Cormer? Why are you in these files? You have been missing for a very long time. Everything about your file is unremarkable.

Holding the file in one hand, he starts one-finger typing information into the database file, struggling to figure it out.

Beth, you probably saved me a lot of work making this database for me, but I wish you were here to tell me how it works.

Lawrence’s cell phone warbles. He answers.

Hawkworth, InterCity Voice. You bury ‘em, I dig ‘em up.

Lawrence, I have a story for you.

The voice on the line is his editor, Paul Giovanni.

I don’t know Paul; I’m really busy on this big story I’m working on.

Don’t give me that. I know you are still trying to dig up those bodies in the woods. That’s old news. This is new. A nursing home lost two Alzheimer’s patients. I want you to go talk to the staff.

Lawrence groans.

I’m an investigative reporter, Paul. You have other reporters for that kind of story.

I wouldn’t be giving this to you, except I know it’s right up your alley. Another nursing home lost a patient the same night.

What’s the angle? Nursing homes lose elderly patients? Aliens are abducting our old and infirm? Infirmaries go nuts, patients on the lam?

Very funny, Hawkworth. Just check it out.

Why me? This is not investigative journalism.

Like I said, it’s right up your alley, literally. There is a possible witness right around the corner from you.

Lawrence sighs.

There is no way I can get out of this, is there?

Not if you don’t want me to fire you.

You threaten me with that at least once a week. When are you going to get on with it?

Next week. I’ll fire you next week, after you bring this story home.

What are the nursing homes? Lawrence sighs, unhappy.

Bayburry Street Geriatric Home and Cranbrook Nursing Home.

A sudden chill goes through Lawrence.

What are the names of the missing patients? he asks stiffly.

There is a pause before Paul speaks again.

Mr. Richard Andrews, Mrs. Rose Bheals, he pauses again, and Marjory McAllister.

Lawrence almost drops the phone.

I’m on it.

I thought so. I’ll send you the information on the informant. Paul hangs up, leaving Lawrence staring ahead with the dead phone still to his ear.

Lawrence lowers the phone slowly. He looks at the open file box on his coffee table.

I will find you. I will find you and I will discover what you were looking for.

3      DNA and Fingerprints

You got multiple hits. Jim’s grip on the phone tightens. Which DNA sample?

Michael’s.

He hears Beth’s voice, that single word, but feels like he did not hear it. The name is a whisper in his head; a foul utterance coming from someplace that is not here.

It feels like Jim’s world is turning slowly off kilter. So slowly you sense it, but are not sure it is real.

Jim? Did you hear me?

Yes. Beth. Jim pauses, still trying to figure out what to say, what he wants to know. His mind is blank. The unending questions filling it before about who Michael is and where he came from are gone.

He says the only thing he can manage.

Tell me.

He’s good, Beth says, realizing as she is saying it that Jim won’t take the compliment well. I mean, he’s good but-.

You are better, Jim finishes for her.

You are not the first in the force he duped.

That doesn’t make me feel any better.

"Michael seems to have a preference for rescue services. I got some of the requests for prints back too. He comes up in a few different police forces, firefighter, search and rescue. There is a stint in the military too.

Any thoughts to why he likes the rescue services? Jim asks.

At first I thought that maybe he likes the sense of power. But then I thought there has to be more to it. It’s about access.

Access to what?

Information. He knows what the first responders know. He has access to do background checks and to question people. What better way to know when to cut and run?

Jim is silent.

Jim; what better position to be in to make people disappear?

What else do you know?

Beth is hesitant. Oh God, I really liked Michael, she thinks miserably. Of all the people to work with, he was just so darned likeable.

Beth had no romantic notions towards Michael. He was too smooth for her. He is the kind of guy every girl falls for. Not her kind of guy. He was just a genuinely likeable person.

Tell me more about the DNA hits, Jim says.

He can hear her breathing into the phone.

Beth takes a moment, expecting Jim to explode with the information she is about to give him.

Michael has been busy. I got multiple fingerprint and DNA hits on Michael placing him as the unknown person of interest in a number of missing women cases. His description matches persons of interest too, although the witness accounts were all sketchy. The descriptions also are vague enough to be almost any man in the age range and a spectrum of physical characteristics. I’ll send you a list.

Jim’s hand starts to shake with the surge of anger.

Get me everything you can on him and every instance he shows up, no matter how irrelevant.

The cold tone of his voice sends a chill down Beth’s spine.

She hangs up the phone, looking down at the file on her desk.

There is also this, but I don’t think you are ready for it yet Jim.

4      Motel One

The extended cab pickup truck and car pull into the lot of an old out of the way motel, parking out front. Both vehicles are full with five adults, four elderly people, three kids, and one medium sized brown dog.

Stay in the vehicle, I’ll rent the rooms, Anderson says, getting out of the driver’s seat of the car.

He motions Sophie to stay when she moves to exit the truck, and she settles back to wait.

Minutes later he returns from the motel office.

Behind the wheel of the truck, Sophie rolls down her window.

Park around back, Anderson says, motioning to go around.

He gets back in and they both drive to the back of the motel.

Getting out, he starts handing out room keys.

We are going to have to double up some. We were not expecting the extra bodies. He gives Jason and David a sour look.

He gives one key to David and Kathy, the two youngest adults except for David’s younger sister Cassie.

You are bunking with them, he tells Jason.

A look of fear flashes in Kathy’s eyes and she glances quickly at David, avoiding looking at Jason.

Billy looks at them uncertainly.

You are with us, kid, Jason says, motioning Billy to come.

Relieved to not be getting separated from the person he is most familiar with, Billy saunters after them, trying to look as if it is all completely irrelevant to him.

Anderson gives a key to Sophie.

You and Cassie and the kids are together.

She nods and they start collecting their bags from the truck, the two younger kids looking around in bewilderment at the less than ideal motel.

This place doesn’t even have a pool, Ethan complains, looking at his mother sulkily.

Younger, his sister Lauren just follows their mother, Sophie, as if it is all very ordinary.

Get the dog, Ethan, Sophie says.

Ethan sullenly moves to do as told.

Marjory is standing around looking at their new surroundings and William is still helping Rose out of the car.

That leaves us old farts sticking together in the last room, Anderson says.

How long are we here? William asks.

Two days and we move on and swap the truck. Next stop after that we trade in the car.

Why are we here? Marjory asks. Are we on vacation? Her eyes are still clouded with the drugs in her system from the home.

Yes Marjory, we are on vacation, William says.

He takes her hand, leading her to their room.

Their rooms are all in the front of the motel.

Why did we park all the way in the back? Ethan complains.

Billy glances at Jason.

So nobody knows we’re here, Billy says.

Help Mrs. Bheals, William says to Anderson.

Anderson scowls.

I don’t need your help, Rose grumbles, waving him off. Get the bags.

Anderson unhappily goes to get the bags.

Tomorrow we have to get some proper clothes, Rose complains. And some wigs. We need disguises.

Moving more slowly than the younger people, the four geriatrics follow the others to the front of the motel.

Kathy feels like screaming. She feels like bolting out the motel room door and running as far away as she can. She is filled with the unsettling urge to look at Jason, but she is trying to hide it. It fills her with desperation.

I can’t do this, she thinks. I just can’t. How can I go with these people? With him?

She is pulled back in time to the memory of the first time she saw Jason McAllister.

I did not see Jason that first time he came to the farm. Cassie did. Cassie was looking out the window while I was trapped in a fresh moment of hell. He . . . Michael, David, he didn’t even have a name then . . ., brought another woman home. Connie. I was furious. I was heart sick. He didn’t need anyone else. He already had me. He had her. He believed Jane Doe, was his sister Cassie. He had no reason to kidnap and torment, kill, another woman looking for her.

I snuck a peak when he came back. After Cassie and Connie ran away, Michael came back after searching for them, and then he was there; this man, Jason McAllister. Michael was slipping into one of his black rages. He was talking to him for so long and I could tell from his posture he was ready to tear him apart, to beat him to death.

The next time I saw him was when they brought me in for a police line-up. I was so confused. He was there, the man who kidnapped me, only he was pretending to be a police detective, Michael Underwood. I was expected to point to Jason McAllister and say he kidnapped me, but that was a lie. I could tell; they both expected it, Michael and that other police detective, Jim McNelly.

They grilled me for hours about Jason McAllister, the farm house Michael kept us in, and about Michael’s other victims. They kept calling them Jason McAllister’s victims. The police, psychologists, psychiatrists; they all wanted me to say Jason did it. I couldn’t, and I couldn’t tell them the truth either. I said nothing. Then I saw Jason McAllister in court when they brought me in and put me in the witness stand. They said he killed so many people. It was more than the women Michael killed that they were blaming him for, hundreds of bodies. How can one man kill so many?

The things they said he did, Jason is a monster. He terrifies me.

Kathy feels sick with it, memories also filling her of being Michael’s prisoner in the root cellar, starving and cold and terrified.

He made Michael what he is. He raised Michael to be a killer just like him. Michael did those things, to me, Connie, Cassie, others. I don’t know how many others, but I know there are more. I am sure he was kidnapping and killing girls, teens, women, over the years he searched for Cassie.

Michael is crazy. Scary crazy. He talks to someone who is not there and I think he is talking to Cassie, the ghost of the little girl he lost. I am afraid. I have a feeling Jason came to kill Michael.

Michael. Should I call him Michael or David? He said to call him Michael, but they all call him David.

I am afraid of Michael, Jason, and of these other people. They must know that Michael, or David, and Jason are killers. Who can these people be that they would protect them? Family? Jason’s maybe. Not Michael’s. Would family protect someone who killed so many?

Hey, are you all right? David asks.

Kathy starts, looking up at him with a startled look.

I’m fine, she manages.

Jason is not oblivious to the tension filling the room. It is not coming off just her. David has been pacing the room with it. It is fraying on everyone’s nerves.

He sits there, flipping through channels, none of which are coming in very well, and finally gives up.

I’m going to find something for us to eat, Jason says, getting up. Kid, are you coming?

Eager to escape the confines of the room and the stress oozing out of every person in it, Billy is at the door faster than he can answer.

Coming.

As soon as they are gone and the door is closed, David stops pacing and looks at Kathy.

I know this isn’t ideal, he starts.

Not ideal? Kathy’s voice is high with a tremor. He’s a serial killer. I don’t care if he raised you. I don’t feel safe here with him.

Standing up to him like this, at this moment when she is feeling so uncertain about him, fills her with a cold dread sitting hard in her stomach she has not had since she was a prisoner in the root cellar under the McAllister farmhouse.

Do you feel safe with me? David’s voice is cautious.

Kathy looks away quickly. She is afraid he will see what she is feeling in her eyes.

David sees the uncertainty and fear in her eyes before she can look away. It slices him through like a knife to the heart. It is the same fear he saw in her eyes when she stared up at him from the darkness of the open trap door to the root cellar he kept her in.

Are you saying I shouldn’t feel safe with you? Kathy’s voice is small.

No. Of course you are safe with me. You are safe here, with him, with all of us. Jason is . . . like my father. He is the only father I remember.

A small voice whispers in David’s mind. A voice only he can hear. Distant. Small. Little Cassie.

He kidnapped your mother and murdered her. He kept you and your sister. You grew up in fear of him. You hate him.

David ignores the voice, although he cannot make it silence.

I am just saying that he won’t hurt you, David says.

He might hurt me, he thinks. Jason might kill me. He found me to kill me.

Kathy looks at him