Chapter 35
“Drop the weapon!” I shouted.
I had dead aim on Coker.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He remained coiled, looking ready to swing on Enfield.
A foul, putrid smell filled my nose—I knew what it was immediately but had more pressing matters. Wherever the stench was coming from, it wasn’t going anywhere. “I will put you down if you don’t drop that weapon,” I said.
Coker slowly stood up straight as he opened a left hand and showed it to me. He raised his right arm but kept a grip on the weapon, which I’d identified as a collapsible baton and figured to be our murder weapon from the Minter and Russell homicides.
“Drop the weapon,” I said again with a few colorful words added to ensure he knew that I wasn’t screwing around.
He didn’t. Coker remained still. His squinting eyes looked as if he was in thought. Either that or he had blood in his eyes, as his face was covered in blood spatter.
“I am not a threat,” he said. “Don’t shoot me.”
I repeated the order a third time and took a couple of steps forward.
“I’ll set it down as soon as you tell me something,” he said. “What did I do wrong? Where did I screw up?”
“I’m not playing around,” I snapped.
“Neither am I,” he said. “I think he’s still alive right now, so he could be saved. But I need answers.”
“You don’t need anything but to put that weapon down.”
“If I hit this guy again, he’ll be dead. And then you’ll shoot me, and he and I will both be dead.” Coker jabbed his chin toward Enfield on the word “he.” “Or you can tell me what I did wrong and how you found me, and then I’ll set the baton down and go quietly. Probably.”
I was certain that I could and would get a shot off—multiple shots, in fact—before the baton ever got within a foot of Enfield. And with backup less than a minute or two away, I would call his bluff of going quietly.
“Your letter,” I said. “You used a training manual from Alton’s Furniture. Where you worked. And then you happened to find John Russell’s body at your new job. You brought suspicion onto yourself.”
“But how did you find out that I used the training manual? That’s not something that’s available to the public. It was just letters. Out of how many billions and billions of possible letters, how could you have pinpointed it to Alton’s?”
“There was a price and a name of a living room set on the back of a couple of the letters. We searched for it. Found a living room set from Alton’s furniture.
I went there looking around, and the manager gave me the training manual.
” My eyes darted around the kitchen and living room.
Trash was everywhere—empty pizza boxes, dishes, clothing, and black bags of garbage. The place was a hoarder’s paradise.
“But you can’t prove that it was me that made the letter. I didn’t leave any prints on it. You can’t match up any handwriting. The paper is common. Your evidence is circumstantial at best.”
“Yeah, well, it sounds like you just confessed. And this sure as hell doesn’t look very circumstantial to me,” I said, taking one hand from my weapon to point at Enfield. “Now toss the weapon. Get on your knees and clasp your hands behind your head.”
“How long have you been a detective?” Coker asked.
“Because you didn’t even recognize me from when I was at the storage unit.
I was standing there at the front counter talking to the manager when you came in and asked the guy to get the gate for you.
I looked right at you, and you looked right at me.
You don’t remember that? Because when you walked into the office at Newman’s when I was giving my statement about finding the body, I for sure remembered you. ”
My mind went back to the moment, and while I did remember that there seemed to be someone else in the storage facility’s main office, I damn well couldn’t put a face on the guy.
“Do you want to know why I killed those two guys? The guy at the storage unit and the guy who lived a neighborhood over?”
Sirens wailed in the distance. Before I could respond to his question, he started talking again.
“I never wanted to kill anyone,” Coker said. “That was all Steven.”
“Who is Steven?” I asked.
He didn’t answer but kept talking. “And the killing of the people was just kind of a means to an end. I’ve been thinking about it. See, I never really had much feeling toward anything but the thought of being caught. The thought of being chased. I guess I liked it. It seemed like I mattered.”
“You don’t,” I interrupted. “You’re just another killer. And now you’re going to prison for it just like all the others that have been put away before you.”
“I have a mental problem,” Coker said. “I think I might actually be insane.”
“You can save it for the trial,” I said.
Coker shook his head. “I want you to know that sometimes I go to a different place. Someplace where I just don’t care and do strange things.
My mother used to call it a funk. I’ve been fed every pill and medication imaginable to try to fix it, but nothing worked.
Nothing ever worked. Yet after all the doctors and pills and everything else, all it took was me killing someone.
And then I cared. Not about the killing.
I cared about what the cops would do. How they would try to catch me.
I admit, I think I enjoyed the media coverage.
I liked that I was being talked about. But then the feelings faded.
The press stopped reporting on the killing.
I’d basically gotten away with it. So I decided to kill someone else to get it all back.
And I figured I’d try to ramp it up with the letter and everything.
Dumping the guy where I worked gave me a way to watch what was going on.
Or at least, that’s what I thought. I guess it didn’t really work out that way. ”
“Are you done?” I asked.
He continued again, apparently not done.
“You know, I noticed that you didn’t release my name to the press like I asked.”
“The Steven name? Who cares? That isn’t you, anyway.”
“Sometimes it is,” he said. “But that’s an even longer conversation. Anyway. You didn’t tell them that I was responsible for both murders. I said I was going to kill more people if you didn’t. Did you not think I was serious?”
Feeling like I was wasting my breath, I again gave my order for him to drop the weapon.
“You know, like I said, I admittedly have problems. But one problem I don’t have is telling the truth.
I am, character flaws aside, a man of my word.
Now, I said that I was going to kill someone else tonight if you didn’t tell the press about me.
” He clicked his tongue. “And you didn’t tell the press about me. ”
In a flash, he hunched, regripped the baton in both hands, and reared back.
“No!” I shouted.
He looked at me and smiled. And I saw the swing begin.
My ears rang. Smoke hung in the air. I’d fired four or five shots center mass.
The baton got about halfway toward Enfield’s head before my rounds sent Coker stumbling backward.
The sliding patio door shattered, and the glass hit the ground about the same time as Coker’s body.
I rushed to him, rolled him over, and linked him up.
There was no resistance. I went to Enfield and pulled the bloody tape away from his mouth. He looked like he was in rough shape.
“Enfield,” I said. I tried to give him a little shake, but there was no response.
“Enfield!” I barked.
I jammed two fingers against his throat, but I couldn’t tell whether I was feeling his pulse or my own as my heart banged against the inside of my ribs after discharging my weapon.
I heard the cars arriving outside—sirens blaring and tires screeching. Footsteps pounded the ground behind me as officers rushed into the town house.
“We need paramedics!” I said. “And now!”
Officers rushed over. Another of the Midwest guys went to Coker, who hadn’t moved since I’d linked him up.
“We have a pulse,” one of the officers said.
“Is something dead in here?” another asked.
“The place hasn’t been cleared,” I said. “And yeah, something, somewhere is dead.”
I heard another officer mention the smell.
“Come on,” I said to one of the uniforms nearest me. “We need to clear this place and find out where that smell is coming from.”
The officer, a night shift guy that I wasn’t familiar with, didn’t look especially eager to find the source of the smell but followed me. His name badge read Rogers.
We went room to room, finding nothing but endless garbage and filth. The living room seemed to be the cleanest of any room I’d been in. The rest of the rooms in the property just had small, foot-wide walkways through mounds of clothing, trash bags, and who knew what else.
“This is some serious hoarder stuff,” Rogers said.
We entered what I determined to be the master bedroom, but by the looks of it, nobody had slept in the room in years.
The bed was a mound of trash bags, empty food containers, and part of a tent or tarp by the look of it.
An overflowing cat box in the corner added to the stink but wasn’t the main source of the foul odor.
My weapon still at the ready, I stepped into the master bathroom. The smell seemed to get worse, and an abundance of flies buzzed around behind a dingy-looking shower curtain hanging in front of the tub.
“Is it just rotting garbage in here that’s stinking?” Rogers asked behind me.
“No,” I said.
With the barrel of my gun, I moved the shower curtain to the side to see the source of our smell.
“Jesus.” I turned away and walked out of the bathroom.
“What is it?” Rogers asked.
“There’s a damn dead cat lying in there.”