Chapter One: Part Three

Before I knew it there were two things I'd found. The first being I was up way past my bedtime thanks to Tiffany's introducing me to the triple murder mystery. I looked over at the wall clock to find it was 4 in the morning and I had to be up at 6. That meant two things of course. One: that I would get to suck down loads of quad mocha breves and two: my concentration ability would be nil. Obsolete.

The second "thing" that I'd found in my all-nighter was that there were strings of the same such murders happening all over this side of the Mississippi. One detective in Arizona also pointed out that even though it was some kind of serial killing that came and went, the murders seemed to have come and gone over the last 100 or more years. Nice. Copycats, literally, from hell. There was also a detective handling cold cases in Nevada that was overjoyed in a sad sort of way to find out that he had a lead here. Meaning the murderer from a case in the 80's he had just reopened had a resounding flag in the Great Falls deaths.

Detective Hart in Arizona was an old school cop, retired, doing the occasional PI gig. Hart retired in 2006 when he was 50. Kind of young but the pension was good and the blood pressure wasn't. At times, I hated that people just told me randomness out of the blue. He asked if he could message me via MSN. So we talked for an hour and a half.

In the two hour MSN session I heard about his daughter joining the force, his wife being perfection and his drinking habit that he battled. I also learned from Det. Hart that these murders he'd looked into, that resembled the latest in Great Falls, usually involved the same facts (lending to the serial killer or killers theory). Single males and females both. No families. Some homeless, most just hermits with no friends or family to miss them. Neighbors didn't even know them.

The same over and over for more than a hundred years, in different states for about five months then nothing for a five or more years. The bodies were all mutilated. Some people looked at as the aliens dissecting the people; Hart and I agreed that aliens just probed people and dissected the cows.There was the usual of the government doing experiments and covering it up with the mutilations. The police from Washington to Texas had everything from secret satanic societies to a Hills Have Eyes type family that travelled.Much like a freaky circus where the clowns ate the spectators. Hart was a bounty of information.

RetDetHart: Miss Wright, you need to know that this won't last much longer and no one will be caught. And you should stay out of the investigation.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I'll take that into consideration, detective, but I doubt anyone will know beyond us on the forum. No worries.

RetDetHart: There aren't always just the good guys on the forums, darlin. There are some not so good guys hangin around there.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I know.

RetDetHart: Lately I've gotten some pretty cryptic shit in my inbox from those not so good guys. Warnings to let these cases die.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: How long have you been snooping in these cases?

RetDetHart: Since '92. I'm in for the long haul. I made promises.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: To who? You said most of these people didn't have any social links of any type.

RetDetHart: I said most. Not all. The third one down here was a girl in her teens. She wasn't real pretty, didn't have any friends to speak of but she had a mother.

LawLuvn_Harley_Babe: I'm sorry. How's the mother now?

RetDetHart: Disappeared about five years after her daughter's death. She packed up and left. Neighbors didn't even know she left.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Probably heartbroken over her daughter's death and when no one was brought up on charges, couldn't take the pain and took off. I could speculate all night but I would never be able to pinpoint what parents think when they lose a child.

RetDetHart: No. We couldn't. Miss Wright, I can send the information I have to your local PD as a favor to you but you need to let the law handle it.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I am the law. Sort of. Come on, Detective, I can take care of myself. Besides, I don't fit. I have a life.

I paused in the conversation there. I had a life in more than one way. I was alive.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Sorry, I wasn't thinking.

RetDetHart: Who do I send this to?

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Detective Mike Timothy the fax is: 406-555-8383 You want his email or his direct number?

RetDetHart: Probably the direct number. So he doesn't get a pile of papers that he has no idea what he's looking at other than a pile of headache. lol

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: lol True. Mike would definitely not be too happy with that. His number is: 406-555-1181 ext 131. He works from 7am to when he decides to go home. I've given him some information here and there when I visit the forums. He doesn't have a whole lot of time to be surfin the net.

RetDetHart: Oh I remember what it was like. I'm not that out of touch with the long hours and the dinners away from home. You going to take my advice and just go to work and stay safe?

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I said I'll take that into consideration. Detective, has there ever been a decent lead in this freakish mess? How many files will Mike be getting?

RetDetHart: All of them. From as far back as I could go. I think the first one was in 1891. There are over 200 cases. I stopped counting at 220. I've just kept compiling, collecting and reading.

Over 220 cases, unsolved, serial killer type murders for over a hundred years. Unbelievable. I wondered how pissed Detective Timothy and Detective Hart would be when they found out the fax was going to my office? Guess I'd find out later.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: It was nice to meet you. Terrible circumstances, but still, I hope we can talk in the future. Maybe in happier times. =)

RetDetHart: Me too. You better be getting to bed young lady.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Hey now, I'm not that much younger than you. lol Night, Hart.

RetDetHart: Night, Wright. lol Great I'm a poet and I didn't even know it. lol

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Ha ha.

I closed the chat window and shut down for what was left of the night. I stared at the page in front of me. Over a hundred years of mutilations and no one had put it together besides Detective Hart and now a detective in Nevada. I think he said by Reno somewhere. I'd given him Mike's actual fax. Of course, I hoped that Hart would fax the papers then call for Mike or Mike wouldn't answer his desk phone. Maybe Hart wouldn't wonder why I didn't give him the cell.

Detective Mike Timothy and I went to high school together. He was on the Track and Field team, I wasn't. We barely noticed each other in the halls even, that is, until I graduated from law school and moved home. I went to one of Tiffany's dinners and that's where Mike and I were formally introduced for the first time in almost twenty years. He was one of the types (not sure what the type is exactly) that just let me have his life history. Glad it wasn't boring.

He told me how he decided to be a cop and his dad was not happy that he didn't want to take over the construction company which was the family business. Montana has a lot of blue collar family businesses that were passed down to the sons or daughters to carry on more than the family name. Proud families. I can imagine how pissed his dad must have been. As the night progressed, Mike's drinking did too. Pretty soon he was trying to talk me into coming back and checking out his cuffs at his house. I opted to drop him off. Nice guy, just not my type of nice guy. That and he was way too drunk to stand up. Now him and I are just friends with him staring now and then or being bitchy when I can't go bowling.

I did a few more searches and ended up leaving a message for an ex one night friend at the Dark Knights website. Gotta love the 21st century. Even motorcycle clubs had a WWW. I asked James if he'd heard anything about some debts needing to be paid. He knew I wouldn't say anything because for one he never gave me more than a hypothetical and two this was the first time there were dead people involved. Usually the guilty bill evader just got his ass handed to him and he paid up. This bloody mess didn't even fit that MO.

That's when I looked up and saw the clock glaringly showing me how bad I'd screwed up. I shut the computer off, turned on the nightlight in the bathroom and padded off for an hour, maybe I'd luck out and get an hour and a half, nap. I was looking forward to my fax. Not so much the ass-reaming from Mike, but he'd live another day to love me. Unrequited love. Ew. Maybe I could set him up with that weird secretary at work. My thoughts seemed to jumble the more tired I became. When I finally passed out, I knew the next day, after my slight joke of a nap, would be the least fun I'd had in a long time but it was Friday. Which meant I could cuddle up on the sofa on Saturday, watch some movies and read through files I had no intention of handing over to Mile until I was through with them while I slept now and then. That's what I get for doing my own thinking. Saturday was going to turn out worse than Friday's hell.