Room 23

By Pete Nunweiler

"Amazing premise, fantastically executed."

America's Justice system is severely restricted by bulleted definitions of awful crimes. Bad people have averted guilty pleas when the prosecution can prove all, but one, measly bullet point in the law. Not anymore.

When bodies are recovered from

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter J Nunweiler
• Release date: Feb 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532397752

Pete Nunweiler

Pete Nunweiler is an emerging multi-genre author and motivational speaker. "His books do what all books are supposed to do...draw you in, and make the characters real enough to the point of feeling like you're going through the events as they unfold."Pete is dedicated to building partnerships with independent bookstores. He's been the best selling author at one of his bookstore partners and best selling local author at another."Thank you for the amazing books. Keep writing, please. Patterson was my favorite writer, but I think you knocked him down to #2."Visit him at www.petenunweiler.com and sign up for email alerts to stay informed of upcoming releases and updates. email Pete at [e-mail]. Follow him on Facebook @authorpetenunweiler.

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Copyright

© 2020 Pete Nunweiler. All rights reserved

Published by As We See It

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Visit the author’s website at www.petenunweiler.com

First Edition

ISBN 978-1-5323-9775-2

Cover design by Pete Nunweiler

Author and his wife’s name used by permission; otherwise, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

For my wife.  No, really.  This is totally for you.  All these years of obsessing over serial killers and murderers have freaked me out enough.  Time to show you what I’ve learned from you making me watch it.



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Chapter 1

New Assignment

The actual number of missing persons in the US varies, depending on where the information comes from. The commonality between sources, as I’ve seen, is North of 600,000. Oh, make no mistake, I beg you. That figure isn’t accumulated year after year. What I’m saying is more than 600,000 people are reported missing every year. Can you believe it? Every damn year.

Now, I’ve never called in a person missing. I almost did once. I came close a few times when I hadn’t heard from my elderly parents a few times, but they always got the message or checked in before I got to that point. Although, I never reported any, I have, without a doubt, caused some of them. Their faces show up on saggy sheets of recycled paper hanging on a telephone pole on a street corner with the ink spread out from soaking into the parchment. The best part is; Nobody knows about me, and that’s just how I want it.

I write this with great caution. You see, I’m a member of an agency. One that you won’t find online, or anywhere else for that matter. If you did, the agency would be disbanded immediately and all its members would go back to their lives. The lives that the public sees. The lives that we only live for a short time in a typical day.

Want to know more about me? Sorry, that’s not going to happen. You’re probably as nosey as everyone else in this make-believe, bullshit world. If you have to know something, I can entertain you; you can call me—let’s see here—John Wolfe. What the hell. That’s as good a name as any. Better than my real name, that’s for damn sure. John, because it’s the most generic name I can come up with and Wolfe, because—well, it’s cool.

I have stories that will curdle your blood. I’ve seen evil in this world. I’m not talking about demons and shit. I’m talking about real evil. The kind that makes you stay up at night wondering how God allows it to happen. Free will, I guess. Sometimes, I wish God would just check in on occasion. There are monsters out there. Real monsters that should have their free will taken from them.

Laws that we create limit the free will of good people, but the free will of God doesn’t stop a monster. Jeffrey, Charlie, Ted, John, Jack, Eric and Dylan, Adam; the list goes on. All of them are notorious murderers; household names. My job, as long as I do it right, and I have so far, is to stop the monsters before somebody else does. You see, it’s far too expensive to hold these bastards for the rest of their lives over a bullshit plea deal and red tape to prove them guilty. Sometimes, the perpetrator is obvious, but the evidence is too circumstantial to be admissible in court.

Call me the judge and jury if you want. My real responsibility is to be the executioner when deemed absolutely necessary. Who deems it that way? I do—we do, but I’m not going to talk about the others. Couldn’t tell you anything about them anyway. You see, in this line of work, we don’t have motivational team meetings or conferences to reflect on the past fiscal year and forecast the challenges of the next. I’ve never met the others, but they’re out there. Believe me. We’re all out there. Hundreds of us.

Six hundred thousand missing persons in the United States every year. Kind of makes you want to shed a tear. But think of this. Should we really find all of them? I assure you, you’ll never find the ones that I’ve caused, and trust me when I say you’ll never shed a tear over them either.

The case I’m working now came in the same way as the others. Before I continue, let’s step back a minute. I said you won’t find us online or anywhere else. I didn’t say nobody could find us.

Tuesday a.m. July 10, 2018

My Uncle Samuel called me. That’s what we call our boss. The truth is; I don’t have uncles. Maybe some of the others do. As an organization, we like to keep things generic and ‘Uncle Sam’ seems to be about as general as it gets.

When my business phone rings, I answer it, but don’t say anything. There’s no, Hello, or Good Morning, this is John bullshit. When the phone stops ringing, Sam knows I’m there.

It was a Tuesday morning in early July. I was home by myself, as I usually am.

3:00 PM. This afternoon, his disguised voice said as if he was one of those protected witnesses.

Although I live alone, I stepped into the bathroom, dropped my drawers and sat on the throne. As usual, the text came across exactly one minute after the call ended.

38, -85, 13, 32, 34, 66, 23, 46

I can’t tell you how the coordinates are deciphered. It would be too risky. Less than thirty minutes later, I left and drove towards the destination. I can tell you it was East of San Francisco and West of Boston, somewhere between Twin Falls and Key West. When I got off the interstate and started driving back, country roads, I found a place I could pull off the road so I could download the encrypted podcast.

I looked in every direction as far as I could see to make sure I was alone. Cell signal didn’t matter. My corporate phone was a satellite phone with apps. When the download completed, I put in my ear buds and listened.

White male. Forty-nine years old. Three hundred eighty-two pounds. Motel innkeeper. Body count—six, unconfirmed. This one’s a real special piece of shit. The six consist of three couples over the span of a year. The most recent, found by local police, was in a field, two and a half miles away from the motel with no structures between the two. Two hundred and six lacerations were identified. The skin on the female’s legs was peeled off. Her eyelids were removed and tacked to her forehead with safety pins. The male was found in tact—mostly. His eyelids were also cut off, but weren’t found. His hands and feet were tied so tightly, the rope was fused to his wrists and ankles. He had only one single stab wound under his breast bone that pierced his heart. Her cause of death—heart attack. She was alive the whole time. No known accomplices—Good luck.

See what I mean? Monsters. Evil ass, heartless, no remorse monsters. Like I said, you won’t shed a tear over the missing person’s I’ve caused.

Ninety-two percent of the time, the people in the message I receive are accurate. The other eight percent—eight-point-one to be precise, that are reported to Sam are not the ones local law enforcement is looking for.

The things I have to watch are unimaginable, but absolutely necessary to remove any doubt that the person I’m about to eliminate is the one committing the unthinkable crimes. Just last month, there was a case I received the same way that fell into that category.

When I found a secluded place, I downloaded the podcast.

White male, it started.

Aren’t they all! I said out loud. Fuckin’ white people.

I’m not prejudice, by any means, but I do stereotype. It’s hard not to in this line of work. To some, that’s a version of prejudice and it’s okay to disagree with me. The difference, as I call it, is that a prejudice person judges a person based on their appearance. I don’t judge, but I’m never surprised when I hear that another middle-aged white dude became a serial killer. In a prejudice world, black people shoot other black people. Hispanics shoot other Hispanics and steal cars. White people—white men specifically, still think they’re untouchable, yet fear other races. Look at all the school shootings since Dylan and Eric at Columbine. Most are white males.

I understand that you can’t see me. This is just a story after all. Before you label me, let me tell you this—I’m also a middle-aged white male. Is it possible that a middle-aged white male can be prejudice of other middle-aged white males? Of course, it is. But that’s not me. I don’t walk down the streets and think every other middle-aged white male is a serial killer.

I served in the Army with some fine soldiers from every race, religion and belief, and I love every damn one of them. We’ll never get rid of prejudice until we get rid of labels. All of them. There will come a day when the programs for underprivileged children are because of their daily effort and low income instead of their race, but today is not that day. I’ve gotten off track again.

Forty-two years old, one hundred sixty pounds, brown hair, anesthesiologist. Body count: nine, over four and a half years. Sexual predator who targets women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six. Owns an elaborate river house which gives him easy access to dispose of the bodies.

I listened to the entire podcast as Sam described the disturbing details of the state of the bodies recovered from the river. He tied the bodies to cinder blocks with a short cable, like a thin dog’s lead with a plastic casing, and kept them submerged for two weeks. Just long enough for bits of them to start floating to the surface, then released them to be carried with the current. All of them were during a rainy season, which would allow the current to carry the bodies farther and faster.

I watched the man’s every move for more than five weeks. When another body was recovered after three days of upstream rain, I knew they reported the wrong guy. When he went to work one evening, I recovered all of my cameras and recorders from his property and went to the midway. The midway is a place that I go between a job and my home. The location and length of time I stay at a particular midway, changes by the job. Hell, the number of midways changes, too. After one assignment, I went to five midways, all in different states before I felt comfortable enough to go home.

Without any evidence of torturous actions or murder, I have no choice, but to leave. I don’t have time to dig around and find the right person. There are agencies that do that already. If another lead comes in on the river murders, I’ll return. Until then, all of my attention needs to be on this innkeeper.

I looked around again, deleted the podcast and pulled back out on the road. When I arrived near the coordinates that afternoon, I looked around for the closest town in which I could get a rental car. It was a few miles away so I continued past the place. The glimpse I got of the place was brief. There was a single sign by the road. It was plastic with neon lights behind it. Although it was the middle of the afternoon, I knew there were neon lights behind it, because I could see them through the space where the white plastic broke off of the rest of the sign. It had black letters that read, Motel. I couldn’t tell where the office was. I guessed it was likely the brick building closest to the sign. The single row of rooms was lined with woods in the back and was up a small hill. Small is up for interpretation. It was a fairly steep hill, but wasn’t very long. It didn’t look particularly dingy or rundown, but like I said, I only caught a glimpse.

I drove past and found tire tracks that lead up a hill into some woods. The grass competed with the rocks for domination of the space. What grew on the edges of the path and between the tire tracks was winning. The grass was starting to take over in the tire tracks, but they was still visible. That path wasn’t used much and, based on the weed and grass growth, it hadn’t been used in some time. I quickly scanned my surroundings. No one was around. I whipped the car to the right and sped up the path until I was far enough into the trees that additional passing vehicles wouldn’t notice my car anyway, then slowed. The car path was long and defined by the woods lining each side and tall grass growing straight up the middle. I could hear the tall grass tickle the underbody of my car as I crept further into the woods, then found a break in the trees. I was just under a half a mile away from the road when I pulled the car into an open area between trees on the right.

The engine ticked fast at first, then the ticking slowed. I observed my surroundings for the next ten minutes. The woods weren’t thick and there was little underbrush, but, nonetheless, it was a forest and provided enough cover to stay hidden. When I was certain no one was near, I got into my trunk to get the camouflage car cover. With my backpack secured, I covered the car and walked back towards the road. I navigated the three quarters of a mile to the car rental lot with my satellite phone and was greeted coldly by a thirty something thin woman with red curly hair chewing, what seemed like, an entire pack of gum.

You picking up or dropping off?

Picking up.

What’s your last name?

I told them the same name I use when I’m on an assignment and can back it up with identification and a credit card. You’d be surprised how easy it is to make up a human being.

Floyd.

I was listening to the second side of The Wall on cassette when I was first asked to choose an alias name.

She snapped her gum in her mouth several times as she chewed, then blew a small bubble that popped before it barely became anything.

Where are ya staying, Floyd?

Uh, the Motel up the street.

The Mountainview; I see.

She typed something into the computer occasionally, but didn’t say anything for nearly five minutes.

I don’t see a reservation here for you, Floyd.

I don’t have a reservation.

I think that pissed her off. She looked up at the ceiling and sighed heavily, then looked back at her computer and said, ID please.

I handed her my ID. I wanted to slap the shit out of her for being so damn rude, but in my line of work, it’s bad to make a scene. She typed slowly for a long time, chewing her watermelon gum. I knew it was watermelon when she sighed and the disgusting odor wafted into my face.

She stopped typing and asked, What kind of car do you want?

I’ll take a Ferrari.

All we have is a silver Veloster. It’s right there behind you in the front.

Then why the fuck did you ask what kind of car I want?

She stopped chewing her gum, looked up at me and said, To make you feel like you had a choice.

Well, your Momma didn’t have a choice when you were born and I’d bet nobody asked her what kind she wanted.

She wasn’t amused. She handed my ID back and reached the keys over the counter but never looked at me again. She didn’t stop the incessant chewing either.

I turned around to walk out and said, Thanks.

She grunted something under her breath as if she were a muffled boar.

The drive back to the vehicle path into the woods was so fast, I almost missed my left turn. I got up the hill where the ground was more level. I parked by my own car, opened the trunk and unsecured the wheel well cover to retrieve my tools. Tool, really. Just one; the AR-15 with a 9x magnification night vision scope on the railing and suppressor screwed onto the muzzle. If this fat ass is guilty—it’s game over.

With my rifle secured, I unzipped my backpack to take inventory. There was a small notebook, two pens, black leather gloves, a black bandana for my face, 6 ammo clips, full-cover rain gear, seven or eight packs of peanut butter-cheese crackers and two water bottles. I unzipped another pocket and counted ten miniature cameras. In the last main pocket was the NVGs; night vision goggles with a head strap.

My best estimate was that the motel was two miles North of my location. An easy pace through the woods would take me at least an hour to get there. I reached the full length of my arm in front of me and bent my wrist inwards to measure the gap between the sun and the horizon. It was more than four fingers, but not by much.

Good timing. About an hour until