Chapter Nine #5
Her back hit the cold granite, and all breath was stolen from her as she felt that bone-crushing pain rush through her body. Everything froze in her from that wash of pain that jarred through her whole body.
And then, it got weird.
That’s when Raphael charged into the opening to help them, and slammed into Jeffrey.
He took him down with a yelp.
The man screeched like they’d broken him in pieces, instead of just taking him to the ground. He actually began sobbing like a baby.
Even Raphael looked surprised when he didn’t even put up a fight.
“Don’t hurt him,” Elizabeth said, as Ethan got off of her body. She practically had to crawl her way toward them because she couldn’t quite breathe yet.
That’s when it all changed again.
The Devil got into him, and suddenly, Jeffrey began putting up one hell of a fight.
That caught the Marine off guard again, and Raphael was fighting for his life.
He took a hit to the groin, and then was shoved so hard, propelling him into the flowers.
Which only pissed Jeffrey off more.
“THE FLOWERS!” he screamed, and charged at him.
It was when Ivan tried to take him down at the legs, that the man sucker punched him in the face.
And broke his nose.
Holy.
Shit.
Ivan went down.
Elizabeth rolled, moved past Ethan, and ran at a tombstone, getting on it, and then leaping onto the man. She used her elbow to slam down onto his thick neck to hit that one pressure point to knock him out before he got to Raphael.
And he went down.
HARD.
She had seconds to get out of the way before the goliath hit the ground.
And none of them moved.
Ivan was stunned, Raphael was in a patch of Johnny Jump Ups, not jumping up, and Elizabeth was flat on her back, staring up at the trees overhead.
Well, shit.
Today had started pretty good, but it wasn’t progressing that way.
For.
Freaking.
Sure.
“Backup,” Ivan said, and none of them moved as the big man was still out.
It didn’t take long before they heard running coming their way.
Gene and Callen appeared, Uriel with them.
“Oh, what the fuck?” Uriel asked, surveying whatever had happened there.
Elizabeth was on her back, her back and chest were on fire as she felt like all the air was gone from the earth.
Ethan was shaking out his hand, the one he’d landed on as he sat beside his wife, trying to help her, and Raphael was still curled up from the blow to the family jewels.
And Ivan was bleeding everywhere.
“Are you okay?” Gene said. “What happened?”
They all pointed at the man on the ground who was out cold.
Unfortunately, he was what happened to them.
“Cuff him,” Elizabeth said.
Well, it took three sets of handcuffs to connect his arms behind his back, and when he came to, he was back to crying.
Again.
Oh, someone was NOT right in the head. He was like a bipolar trip to unpredictable-ville.
He snapped on a dime.
In the process, he knocked the stuffing out of two marines and two feds, and luckily, he couldn’t see the flowers that got stomped in the melee.
Callen was by his wife, and Gene was taking care of his husband.
“I’m good,” Ethan said. “I just landed on my hand wrong. Elizabeth took my body weight and protected my back with hers. She took the full hit.”
Jesus.
Gene wanted to freak out.
They all knew that one hit to his back, and bad shit could happen. They also knew that one hit to her head, and bad shit could happen, too.
Elizabeth wasn’t a linebacker. She was thin, and only had body armor protecting her torso.
“You’re getting checked out,” he said. “And so is Ivan, and Elizabeth,” Gene added. “Apparently, Raph won’t be having sex tonight. I’ll let you tell Saint that one.”
He flipped him off.
Then, warned him.
“He rag-dolled the shit out of me. Don’t let him up, or you’re going to be feeling this too.”
Ethan was to the point.
“He needs a psych eval,” he said. “No one should be that triggered that quickly.”
On that, she agreed.
Limping over, she crouched down. Jeffrey was crying, and she didn’t want to hurt him. Clearly, he had some developmental issues.
He was staring at her and looked terrified.
“I’m going to lose my job. It’s all I have!” he said. “I just wanted to protect the graves and flowers!”
She stopped him.
Yeah, Ethan wanted a psych evaluation, but she didn’t need one. Crazy showed itself, and this wasn’t crazy. This was a man who likely had a lower IQ, and some fetal alcohol syndrome from his birth.
She’d seen it before.
Dogs resource-guarded, and damaged adults with mental disabilities had triggers too.
His job and the flowers were the big two.
The last thing she wanted was to take away his only income if he was taking care of his mother. Honestly, unless he was the killer, he would be safest here alone with the dead and flowers.
“Here’s the deal, Jeffrey. If we uncuff you, and you promise to go home for a few days, we won’t tell your boss.”
Ivan gasped.
“Uh, HULK SMASHED!” he said, pointing at his nose, Raphael’s body, and her, too.
This would have been funny, but one man took out four of them.
Only, she was likely going to have to come back here later, at night, and she did NOT want to re-encounter the man. Sending him to jail sounded cruel.
If this was his job, and the only one he could get, the mother in her wouldn’t let them take that away, specifically if he hadn’t done anything.
“Ivan, he’s not the one doing this.”
Oh, he didn’t buy that.
He’d just broken his goddamn nose, kicked the crap out of an Archangel, and tossed Elizabeth and Ethan around all within twenty seconds.
He moved fast, and he hit with one hell of a punch.
Ethan chimed in, seeing his wife was planning something. She didn’t like being tossed around, but there was always compassion there.
“He’s not. The person doing this has finesse. Jeffrey doesn’t have it,” he said, siding with his wife.
Then, he signed so they could know what he was thinking, but it didn’t clue the handcuffed man in.
He’s got developmental issues. Fetal alcohol syndrome, likely. The person we’re looking for is a sexual deviant. He’s not going to be the one, he said.
And that helped Elizabeth out because she’d called it.
Elizabeth focused on the man who looked empty behind his eyes. The lights were on, but NO ONE was home, and she wasn’t going to ride ass if someone was innocent.
With those meat-hook hands, how was he removing eyeballs? Then again, he handled delicate flowers.
She was going with her gut on this one.
The person doing this is going to be highly intelligent with a history of deviant behavior.
They’ll have lived, breathed, and fantasized about doing this to women.
He’s not a good fit—unless we find something more, Elizabeth is right, Ethan signed.
While to me he appears to have women issues, and an attachment to his mother, I may be wrong on that one—not that I can tell yet.
Well, there they had it.
The profiler had spoken, and given her a good chunk of his profile. They all hoped he didn’t get the last part too late.
“What do you say, Jeffrey? If we don’t arrest you, which will cost you your job, can you go home this week, and let us check on your flowers for you?”
At her words, he got calmer.
“You won’t wreck them?” he asked. “Do you promise that they’ll be okay?”
Yeah, not a killer.
To keep him calm, she shook her head.
“No, we’ll fix the ones that got damaged from my friend falling in them. I promise we’ll respect the graves, too.”
Oh, well, they were doing neither of those things. What she suspected was they were going to be playing in that cemetery a lot in the next couple of days.
Call it a hunch.
Her talking calmly seemed to help him stay calm, and make him agreeable.
“Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. They are all I have. I have to protect them. I promised I would keep all of them safe.”
She pointed at Gene, who had his gun pulled and in his hand as he was watching the man carefully.
It was time to see if he’d calmed down enough.
“If you come for one of us again, Jeffrey, my friend here will shoot you. Then, who will take care of your mom, the flowers, and the dead?”
Clearly, that resonated with him.
He had tears in his eyes.
When Raphael undid the cuffs, the man slowly got up. The whole time, he was wiping his eyes.
“I’m going to go.”
Oh, that was the best idea.
Really.
And just like that, he turned, and lumbered back across the cemetery toward the caretaker’s shack.
Oh, and they regrouped.
As soon as they were safely out of his range, Callen did triage on the situation, seeing how bad they all were.
They were more than a few scrapes.
Well, two of them were definitely in far worse shape.
“I’m calling Chris. He needs to meet us at the hotel. We’re checking in, and getting you four checked out. What the bloody hell? What set him off?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure.
She’d been calmly talking to him, but she suspected it was when she told him that it seemed like the graves had been fucked with by someone.
“He’s really protective of the graves. I don’t think he’s collecting eyeballs,” she said. “He wouldn’t defile the victims they belonged to, and I don’t think he’d abuse their skulls.”
Again, Ethan agreed.
“That’s my point. He’s definitely got some issues,” he admitted. “But he’s not skull fucking anything. I wouldn’t be shocked if he was impotent with mommy issues.”
She wasn’t sure where he fit into this, but she didn’t want to meet Jeffrey Von Gunter in a dark cemetery.
Elizabeth was to the point.
“So if we’re right, someone started on those graves that are closest to the trees, to practice. Then, it escalated. We need ID on those eyeballs because that’s our next step.”
Well, Callen could push that too.
Pulling out his phone, he called his other spouse, who answered rather quickly.
“Hey, handsome. I don’t have anything else for the wife, so if she’s making you call so you can sweet talk me, she’s out of luck. I know her game.”
Oh, he wished.
Instead, he went there.
“Have Saint get you to the hotel. We need some medical care.”