Filed to story: The Mindf*ck Series Read Online Free
I get dressed quickly and meet Donny outside. Then I walk back in just as Lana stands, the sheet strapped around her, and I pull her to me, kissing her long and hard.
She moans against my lips, and Donny loudly clears his throat.
“I’ll be back soon,” I tell her, then walk out, ignoring the laugh Donny lets go as I step out.
“Gotta say, never thought you’d fall so hard,” he quips. “Company men like you usually end up a ride-and-die bachelor type.”
“Things change,” I tell him as I take the driver’s seat. “Where’re we going?”
“Craig called and said a guy came up to him and told him we needed to speak to Diana Barnes. He wouldn’t say anything else, but Johnson is on a rampage. Says we’re inciting terror by posting those flyers, and demanded we tear them all down. Elise and Lisa are putting up more, while the deputies are tearing them down.”
“Unreal,” I say on long breath. “He’s not even trying to be discreet about this.”
“Just makes me wonder what we’re going to find.”
“The cryptic messages the unsub is leaving us to terrorize the town isn’t helping matters. They’re all sure a spirit has risen, but no one will speak a name aloud,” I point out.
“The Evans kids? Or Evans himself? They definitely aren’t speaking about it,” Donny says in his own unique way of agreeing.
“It’s what he wants. He wants to incite terror. He wants them huddled in a corner. The question is why? We know they were raped, but the hospital couldn’t give us anything more than that. The kids were too scared to speak.” I’m mostly just speaking aloud, hoping that hearing the words will offer something more than just knowing them.
“The whole town is too scared to speak,” Donny says, watching as people read the message on the street and walk away, their steps hurrying like they’re going to carry home a piece of devil if they dawdle too long.
Donny gestures to the road we need to turn on, and stops me when we’re in front of a small, white house. It even has a fucking white picket fence.
“Cross your fingers this one doesn’t slam the door on our faces too,” Donny says as he climbs out.
I hop out as well, straightening my tie, and we walk up the cracked sidewalk to the house. The blinds by the front window crack open, and all I get is a glimpse of an eye before they seal shut again.
Donny raises his hand to knock, but the woman opens the door, staring at us like she’s been expecting us all day.
“You the FBI?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re here to-“
“I know what you’re here for. You work for that Johnson guy?”
My lips twitch. “We have different agendas. Mine includes getting the truth about what happened here ten years ago. We may be able to save lives if we know more.”
Her lips tense. “Ain’t a life you can save that needs saving,” she says bitterly. “This whole town needs to burn. Only reason I’m still here is because I knew this day would eventually come. One day, someone would want to hear them babies’ story, and finally give them justice.”
Donny swallows hard as the woman wipes her tears away.
“Come on,” she says, gesturing us in.
Donny shuts the door behind him, and Diana points to the couch where she apparently wants us to sit.
“I can’t tell you everything. You’ll need to learn about Robert from someone who knows all those details. But I can tell you about my babies. They were good to my son. Always good.”
She takes a seat in her chair, and she pulls out her phone.
“Any information you could give us at all would be helpful,” I tell her, my gut tensing at the prospect of finally having answers and wondering just how fucked up things are about to get.
We wait patiently while she calls someone.
“Hey, baby. Nah, I’m fine,” she says to…her boyfriend? Her kid? No wedding ring or men’s belongings around, so not a husband.
“You still dating that pretty lawyer lady? The one with all the security at her apartment building?”
She eyes us, as she listens to the person on the other line.
“Good. Go stay with her until I tell you otherwise. Momma’s about to tell a story that’s been burning a hole for over ten years.”
End of Book 3
Chapter 1
To the living, we owe respect, but to the dead, we owe only the truth.
-Voltaire
LOGAN
“Marcus Evans…that boy was a handful when he was a child, but such a sweetheart. And Victoria…she was always his shadow. Wherever Marcus and Jacob went, she followed. They let her. Just a year separated Victoria in age from the boys. And Robert, well, he did all he could to make sure those kids were loved. Jacob spent more time at his house than he did his own, because Robert was made of a sort of strength and compassion you can’t find just anywhere.”
Diana Barnes clears her throat, and I watch as she stands to get a glass of water.
“You boys want anything to drink?”
“No ma’am,” we both say in unison.
Her chocolate skin is a stark contrast to her ivory dress that hangs to her knees. She’s a regal, timeless sort of woman, with haunted eyes. Haunted eyes like my Lana.
Only there’s a sense of guilt there as well, unlike Lana’s. There’s a jaded harshness to the way she carries herself, as though she’s forcing herself to make it through each day.
“You have kids?” she asks us as she returns, sitting down with her water, drawing out the suspense.
“No, ma’am,” we both say again.
“I’ll bet you both enjoy being bachelors and thinking time will never catch up with you.”
Donny shifts in his seat uncomfortably, but I just smile.
“I’m not married, but I’m not a bachelor.”
She studies me intently for a moment. “Victoria would have liked you. She was mostly raised by her father after her mother died when she was ten. She shared a house with two men, so she was more comfortable making friends with boys than girls. She was selective with her friends more than her boyfriends. Not that anyone could have known.”
I inch forward. “Known what?”
“Nah. I’m getting ahead of myself. You need to know first that Robert died in lockup the night he was convicted of crimes he couldn’t commit. They threw every shoe and the kitchen sink at him to make him the murderer, as though that would somehow make the killings just disappear and everyone could go on with their lives.”
She sips her water again, and I refrain from demanding she get to the point.
“Robert was with his kids every night. My boy was even over there a lot of those nights. Jacob Denver, of course, was there most nights as well. Robert cooked, he cleaned, he cared for his children, and he usually had others come over and hang out as well. Such a good soul and a good home, people couldn’t stay away. My boy’s daddy left when he was a tiny little thing. Robert always talked to my boy as if he was his own, and as a single working mother, I appreciated all the help I could get. I returned the favor when I could.”
She pauses, swallowing down emotion that I didn’t detect in her voice. Her eyes grow dimmer.
“He never could have raped and killed those women. He couldn’t even raise his hand to his own kids. My boy saw him. Jacob saw him. Several of those nights, he was home with his kids and two extra. Didn’t matter. They wouldn’t allow the eye witness testimonies or admit them as alibies in the courtroom.”
“What? Why?” Donny asks, confused.
“Because then they couldn’t convict him of murders he didn’t commit,” she says as though it’s obvious and he’s stupid for even asking.
Donny leans back, annoyed. Not at her, but at the situation. He knows how Johnson is. He’ll make something stick, and he’ll cut all the corners to lock his suspect away.
“And the court backed this?”
“The court. The sheriff. Everyone. They held him in interrogation for five straight days. Locked him in that box with no right. Wouldn’t let his lawyer in. Then lied and said he never evoked council. It was a witch hunt from the get-go. It was easier to pin it on the school janitor with no other family than his kids in this town. That Johnson fellow pegged it to be him, and from then on, they made it happen. The sheriff was right beside him.”
The original profile was a sexual sadist. They don’t have kids too often, and if they do, they’re distant from those kids. Not loving and doting. He profiled the unsub as a loner, but he wouldn’t have been.
No signs of forced entry means he was charming and approachable, likely someone they trusted. Hence the reason it was someone in the town who did it. His ability to frame a man makes him a narcissist, and this town played right into his hand, giving him the power that really got him off.
And fooling the world was the ultimate high.
“Did anyone have any grudges against Evans before that night?”
“No,” she says, laughing under her breath. “That man was a saint. If a kid had an accident at school, he cleaned it up and told them to run along before someone saw it. He didn’t want them to be embarrassed, and knew kids could be cruel. His own kids were mercilessly mocked for being the janitor’s kids.”