Chapter Thirteen
Sebastian and Jesse turned to see Tucker crumple to the ground. He had let Wyatt go and had fallen on top of the boy.
Sebastian scrambled over to them. He pushed Tucker’s body off his son and pulled Wyatt into his arms. Wyatt was crying and Sebastian grabbed the knife from Tucker’s dead hand. He used it to cut through the tape that bound Wyatt’s hands.
Wyatt threw his arms around his dad’s neck and Sebastian’s arms went around his son’s body. Lifting him away from Tucker, he carried the boy over to where Ethan was helping to free Jesse and Kelly.
Ethan stared at his son and shook his head. Tears were running down his weathered cheeks as he stared at the man who was his son. “I had to put an end to this madness. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. That monster wasn’t the son I raised. I loved him once, I guess a part of me still does, but I couldn’t let him go free. I couldn’t let you allow him to escape with the boy. God knows, he would have murdered that boy just like he did with all the others.”
Jesse reached out to his uncle. “I’m sorry, Uncle Ethan. I don’t think he wanted to escape this time. He chose the place and he knew in his heart that he wasn’t going to get out of here alive.” He pulled his girl Kelly close to him and looked thankful she was still alive.
Ethan looked at Jesse. “Did he really mean all those awful things he said? About how he enjoyed killing all those people?”
Jesse nodded as he glanced over at his cousin’s body. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine anyone enjoying something like that.”
Ethan shook his head. “I always knew there was something wrong with Tucker but I never imagined anything like this.”
Ethan and Jesse paused to gaze at Tucker one last time.
Tucker lay sprawled out on the hay. His life was ended, as was his need for killing. The world wouldn’t miss him, but Jesse knew he would. He would miss the man Tucker could have been, not the man he let himself become.
They all joined the rest of Ethan’s family outside the barn. Joyce and the boys were glad to see Jesse and the others but Joyce was looking for the one person that was missing. She looked at her husband and when he shook his head, she turned away and began crying. She knew that her oldest son was dead.
Sebastian felt relief for the first time in weeks. He had his son back and the killer was dead. He reached for his phone and dialed 911. He spoke to the operator and asked that the nearest police department be dispatched to the farm. Then he looked at his son.
Wyatt peered up at his dad and smiled.
Sebastian picked him up and held him close. The worry he’d felt for so long just melted away as his son’s arms reached around his neck. He felt almost whole again and he knew he never wanted to be apart from his son again.
Jesse watched the reunion and smiled. “Uh, Sebastian, what did you do with my parents?”
Sebastian tossed him the phone. “I called the local cop shop, they should be here any time now.”
Jesse grinned when he heard the first of the sirens wailing in the distance. His parents were on their way back and this mess was finally over. He looked down at Kelly and found her looking back. She smiled and his day just got a whole lot better. Jesse smiled back.
Joyce stood in Ethan’s arms, her tears were drying and when she saw Jesse join them, she didn’t know what to say. “I’m so sorry.”
Jesse shook his head. “Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Joyce closed her eyes. “He was still my son. I heard some of what he said up there. I couldn’t believe it but I know it was true.”
“You can’t blame yourself for what he did. Tucker chose his own path in life. You had nothing to do with what he became any more than I did.”
They all turned their attention to the front of the yard as several police cars pulled into the driveway. With their lights flashing and sirens wailing, the noise was overwhelming for a few minutes. One by one the sirens died but the lights were left on as the police officers joined the small group.
One officer introduced himself as John Sanders.
Sebastian stepped forward to handle any questions. “I’m Detective Sebastian Sandstone from New Orleans.”
John Sanders held out his hand and as they shook, he said, “You’re kind of a long ways from home aren’t you Mr. Sandstone.”
Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “We were trailing a serial killer and this is where he brought us.”
John Sanders looked around at the sheer number of people all sporting bruises and dried blood. “What happened here today?” he finally asked.
Sebastian didn’t like the other man’s attitude. He seemed more put out about being called out to the farm rather than interested in the events that had just taken place. “Tucker Briggs kidnapped his parents, my son, a woman from New Orleans and his own cousin then brought them here to kill them. I’ve been following him for a week after he kidnapped my son and murdered several other people including three police officers in Louisiana.”
John raised an eyebrow. “And where exactly is Tucker Briggs right now?”
Sebastian nodded toward the barn. “His body is up in the hay loft. You’ll find a bullet in his chest.”
John called out to one of the others cops standing in the yard. He told him to go check out the barn loft for a dead body. Turning back to Sebastian he asked, “Who shot him?”
Ethan took a step forward and said, “I did.”
John looked at Sebastian for a long minute and then turned to Ethan. “And you are?”
“I’m Tucker’s father. I shot him before he could hurt anyone else.” Ethan acknowledged.
“Sir, you are aware that you just admitted to murdering someone don’t you? And that as an officer of the law I could arrest you for that crime?” John asked Ethan.
Sebastian couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He considered what Ethan did as a service to everyone, not a crime.
Before he could comment, John was called to the barn door by the officer he’s sent in to find the body. They talked for a few minutes then John rejoined the group. He was looking at Sebastian when he asked, “What the hell is going on here?”
Sebastian frowned. “What are you talking about?”
John looked back at the barn. “There is no dead body in that hay loft. The barn is empty. I’ll ask you again, what the hell is going on here?”
Sebastian looked at Jesse and Jesse returned the look. Fear and dread filled them both. Sebastian turned to Ethan, “Keep Wyatt with you and stay here. Don’t leave or wander away from the lights.”
“What do you think you’re doing? I’m not through talking to you yet!” John stated as he tried to stop Sebastian. He reached out and grabbed Sebastian’s arm.
Sebastian jerked his arm of the grasp and turned around to head for the barn. He glared at the other man. He was about to give him a piece of his mind when Ethan interrupted him.
“What’s going on?” Ethan asked.
Sebastian glared at the other officer for a moment then he turned to look at the barn. Glancing back to Ethan, he informed him, “They can’t find Tucker’s body.”
“What?” Ethan called out shaken. He too, stared at the barn. “But I saw him fall after I shot him. He has to be there.”
Sebastian didn’t say anything. Ignoring John’s frown, he and Jesse headed for the barn. They slowly climbed the ladder to the loft. They both had their guns ready for anything but when they peeked over the top of the ladder they found the hayloft empty. Sebastian scrambled over the top of the ladder and walked over to where Tucker’s body had fallen. He pushed the hay around and couldn’t even find a blood stain.
Jesse was moving around the perimeter of the loft looking for any sign of disturbance. He didn’t find any. He rejoined Sebastian. “What do you think happened?”
Sebastian looked at the spot where he’d last seen Tucker. “I think your cousin is a very clever man.”
“What are you talking about?” Jesse asked.
Sebastian stared at Jesse. “He was counting on one of us shooting him. A cop shoots for the heart, nine times out of ten. Tucker was counting on that. He wasn’t expecting his own father to shoot him, but lucky for him, Ethan took a chest shot.”
“How was that lucky? It killed him didn’t it?” Jesse surmised.
Sebastian shook his head and squatted down to pick up a piece of link out of the hay. He held it up for Jesse to see. “Not if he was wearing a vest, it didn’t. He may be hurting like hell but he isn’t dead. He isn’t here is he?” Sebastian stated the obvious. “Tucker was wearing a vest. The bullet Ethan shot him with only stunned him. After we left, he just got up and walked away. Damn him anyway.”
“Now what do we do?” Jesse was frustrated. “I’m fresh out of ideas as to where he’ll go next.”
Sebastian walked over to the double wide window at the end of the loft. Looking out at the scene below him, he thought for a moment. Turning back to Jesse he said, “He’s still here. He hasn’t had time enough to get too far away. We have to find him before he gets away.”
“Where do we look?” Jesse asked.
“First, we have to get everyone else out of here. I won’t put them in danger,” Sebastian said as his mind was busy formulating a plan.
Jesse nodded and headed for the ladder.
When they joined the others Jesse found his parents had joined the group.
Ethan looked at them and asked, “Well, what did you find?”
Sebastian looked at him and stated, “He’s alive and he’s out there somewhere, hiding.”
Ethan shook his head. “But I shot him. I saw him fall.” Tears of regret welled in his eyes. This whole affair had left him befuddled and bewildered.
“He was wearing a bullet proof vest. He waited until we were gone and then he just got up and walked away.” Sebastian told them. He looked at John Sanders. “I need you and your people to leave. Jesse and I will look for Tucker and try to bring him in, but I want all the unnecessary police and civilian personnel to get out of harms’ way.”
“Nobody is going anywhere until I get some answers,” John Sanders told them.
Sebastian gritted his teeth. Time was of the essence here and this stubborn fool was wasting it. “Tucker Briggs is a serial killer on the run. He’s responsible for several murders and he’s running for his very life right now. He’s somewhere on this farm and he needs to get away. He will kill anyone that tries to stop him and he doesn’t care who that person is. We thought we’d stopped him but we were wrong.”
“I got all of that, but we can help you search the farm for him.” John glared Sebastian. “You don’t have any jurisdiction here. This is a matter for the local police to handle.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Mr. Sanders, how many officers do you have here?”
John looked around. “Maybe around a dozen, why?”
“Then you’d better order your coroner to bring about a dozen body bags. You have no idea what this man is like. He’ll kill each and every one of your men without hesitation if you put them in his way.” Sebastian words slammed his message home to everyone in the group. Joyce and Kelly groaned in fear and Sebastian turned to the others. “I’m sorry but this idiot is wasting precious minutes. Roger, I need you to get everyone you can on your boat and take them out to the middle of the river, where they’ll be safe. Don’t bring them back here until this is all over. Do you hear me?”
Roger nodded and herded the group toward the river and the safety of his boat.
Sebastian turned to John Sanders. “Are you going to give me any more problems or are you going to do as I ask and get your men away from here?”
“I’ll go but I don’t like it. We are police officers you know. Maybe we could help you apprehend him.” John glared back at him. “You and I will have a talk about this when this is over.”
“I don’t care whether you like it or not. All you would do is give him more targets and I don’t want that. Get your men out of here and let us do our job.” Sebastian turned to Jesse and asked him, “Are you ready?”
Jesse pulled out his gun and nodded.
They began at the barn. Sebastian hoped to pick up Tucker’s trail but if he left one, it wasn’t in the tall grass around the barn. They couldn’t even find any footprints. Sebastian turned to Jesse and asked, “Is there any other way out of the barn?”
Jesse thought for a moment but shook his head. “Not one that I know of but then I haven’t been back here in years.”
“Let’s go back up to the loft. Maybe we’ll find one,” Sebastian suggested. Making their way back up into the loft Sebastian looked around. The area didn’t look disturbed but they had to be overlooking something. He took one side and motioned for Jesse to take the other.
Moving the hay around here and there was tedious but Sebastian wasn’t leaving this barn until he found out how Tucker got out. He moved the loose hay with his foot and checked everywhere he could.
Jesse was doing the same on the other side of the room. “Sebastian, I found it!” Jesse shouted.
Sebastian turned and rushed over to where Jesse was standing. Hidden by the loose hay, Jesse had uncovered a trap door.
Sebastian reached down, grabbed the metal ring and pulled the door up. It led to another part of the lower barn. Sebastian looked at Jesse. “I’m going down. You go around by the ladder and come down that way. I’ll meet you there. If Tucker is still in the barn I don’t want to miss him.”
Jesse nodded and turned to leave.
Sebastian looked down at the darkness below him. He wasn’t sure what if anything was down there but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
He lowered himself down and jumped the last few feet. He tried to land quietly but the dust he raised when he jumped made him sneeze.
He crouched low and looked around. This part of the barn was in shadows as all the windows and the big double doors were closed. When it had been a working barn this was where the cows would have come to be milked. Sebastian eased himself over to the wall and began circling around the wall. He couldn’t see very well in the dim light but by the time he came full circle, he was sure that if Tucker had been here, he wasn’t anymore.
He joined Jesse in the main part of the barn. “Did you find anything?”
Jesse shook his head. “I checked the other room and there was nothing there.”
“Then I guess the only other way he got out was through the back door. Come on.” Sebastian motioned for Jesse to follow him.
Sebastian and Jesse went to the door in the back of the barn. With their guns ready, they slid the door open. The door protested with a loud screech. Sebastian winced at the sound but kept on going. There had been no loud sound after Tucker disappeared, so he must have found a different way out of the barn. At last, they found what they were looking for and there was a trail they could follow. Someone had forced their way through the tall grass. Following the trail, they found a bullet proof vest about fifty feet from the barn. As Sebastian picked up the vest, he looked for a bullet. He found one.
Sebastian looked at Jesse and pointed out the bullet hole. Jesse looked away. Tucker had outwitted them every step of the way, until now. He hoped they would find him before he got away from the farm.
They followed the trail up to the back door of the farmhouse. Sebastian opened the back door and as they made their way inside each took a side of the room and they began to search the house. Room by room they searched until they met at the steps going upstairs.
Sebastian led the way upstairs. When they reached the top of the steps again, they separated and each took a side of the hall. Opening every door, they found no sign of Tucker. The room he had been in earlier was empty. The room looked undisturbed from the last time they were here, so they knew Tucker hadn’t been back.
Jesse led the way back downstairs. They had one more place to look. In the sitting room, Jesse lifted the trap door to the caves. Before they descended, Jesse warned Sebastian, “Be careful, we can’t use any lights, so the tunnels will be dark.”
Sebastian nodded and waited until Jesse disappeared, then he too disappeared into the darkness. They waited until their eyes adjusted to the darker surroundings before they started down the tunnel to the cave beyond. It was slow going but they finally entered the larger cavern.
Sebastian went to the smaller room where they had found the camping gear. The suitcase that had been there earlier was gone. Sebastian rejoined Jesse and together, they made their way to the cave opening.
The brightness of the sun hurt their eyes as they left the cave. Sebastian shaded his eyes and looked around. “How do we get back to the inlet?”
Jesse pointed out the path they needed to take. “What makes you think he’ll be in the inlet?”
“His boat was there earlier. You dad showed it to me,” Sebastian told him as they followed the path.
Jesse grabbed Sebastian’s arm, “The inlet is just up around the next corner.”
Sebastian nodded and edged his way to where the path turned right.
Down below them they could see the boats, Tucker’s houseboat, as well as Jasper’s black houseboat. They didn’t know which boat Tucker would be on, so they would have to approach them carefully.
Sebastian ducked back behind the curve of the path.
“So how are we going to do this?” Jesse asked.
Sebastian peeked back around the bend and watched the boats for a few minutes. He still couldn’t tell which boat Tucker was on. He turned back to Jesse. “You’ll have to take one boat and I’ll take the other.”
Jesse nodded. “We should have called the river patrol. They could have blocked the entrance to the inlet.”
“Good idea, call your dad and have him call them in,” Sebastian suggested as he handed his cell phone to Jesse. “Have them stop any boat that comes out of this cove.”
Jesse placed the call while Sebastian kept an eye on the boats. He couldn’t see movement on either boat but that didn’t mean Tucker wasn’t on one of them. He had to be there, they hadn’t found him at the house or the cave.
“Dad said he would call them right away. He said to hold off boarding either boat for about fifteen minutes. That would give the patrol time to get here.” Jesse handed the phone back to him.
“I guess I can wait that long. He doesn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to leave anyway,” Sebastian said.
“One thing he isn’t… is stupid,” Jesse remarked. “He wouldn’t have lived this long doing what he’s been doing if he was.” “He thinks he’s safe, tucked away here. Not very many people know about this spot. I’m surprised my dad knew about it.”
“I think your dad knows a great deal more than you give him credit for,” Sebastian said.
“I never had time to thank you for saving my life back there in the barn. I was sure Tucker was going to start the whole place on fire,” Jesse said.
“I think that was his intention all along. He isn’t crazy you know” Sebastian informed him. He had recognized the look in Tucker’s eyes. Very few men had it but Sebastian knew what that look meant. It meant nothing but pure evil.
Jesse shook his head. “I’m not so sure about that. Did you see the way he looked when he said that he began enjoying the killing part of what he did to all those women? I’ve never seen anyone look like that or tell in detail what Tucker told us today.”
Sebastian nodded. “I have. We had a case once, where we went up against a serial killer. Dan Thompson was his name. We found his latest victim burning in a pile of trash. Someone called in a tip that Dan had been burning trash for the last three days in a dry season. When we responded, we found he was burning a body. We didn’t have a whole lot left to process but we did identify the body. It was Mrs. Thompson. When we asked him why he killed her, at first he said it was because he couldn’t stand her nagging him all the time. After we questioned him some more he broke down and told us the truth. He just enjoyed killing. We found out later that he had killed seven other people over as many years and he burned their bodies as well. He had that same look in his eyes that Tucker does.”
Jesse shook his head. “I never knew he hated me as much as he does or that he blamed me for Lady’s death. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Sebastian shook his head. “That was the excuse he used to pin his problems on someone else. He wasn’t sincere. He was playing you and you fell for it.”
“How do you know that?”
“I was listening to what he wasn’t saying. His reasons didn’t make any sense to me and the gleam in his eye told me he wasn’t telling the truth. When he started talking about why he killed that’s when he was telling the actual truth.” Sebastian didn’t know if he was explaining this right or not. “There was a different gleam in his eyes when he talked about the murders. That was the real truth speaking.”
Jesse looked confused.
Sebastian shrugged. “He just likes to kill. Sometimes it’s nothing more than that. He used your guilt to make you think differently but he just likes to kill. Did you notice how excited he got when he said he liked to listen to them scream when he cut into their flesh? That’s what really got him off. For some men, it’s better than a sexual high.” Sebastian paused to look over at Jesse. “Before we go, I have something to ask you. Can you kill him? Can you forget that you’re his cousin and kill him if you have to?”
Jesse nodded. “I know I can. After hearing him I don’t think that will be a problem. Like I said earlier, he stopped being my cousin a long time ago, and yes, I tried to save him. But now I realize almost too late that he isn’t even human. He won’t get past me this time.”
Sebastian nodded. “Okay, it’s been about fifteen minutes let’s go. I’ll take Jasper’s houseboat and you take the other one. Be quiet and be careful. If he’s not on Jasper’s boat, I’ll meet you on board the other boat.”
“Same here, if he’s not on his boat I’ll meet you on the other one,” Jesse agreed.
Keeping to the brush as long as they could, Sebastian and Jesse made their way to the dock. The black houseboat was on the left and Tucker’s boat was on the right. Crouching low, Sebastian broke cover and made his way to the black boat. Jesse did the same as he made his way to Tucker’s boat.
Each man quietly boarded his boat. Sebastian hoped Tucker would be aboard his boat. He was looking for a chance to confront the man that killed his wife and took his son hostage for almost a week. He reached out and grabbed the handle for the door that led below deck.
Turning the handle, he opened the door slowly.