Chapter 20

Detective Gayle Adams was sitting at her desk when she got a text from her mystery man. The text simply said “It is time.”

Gayle deleted the message and then went back to work. She finished up the reports she was working on then left the precinct. Her monthly volunteer work was handing out bags for homeless youth. Once a month she and her volunteer partner Levon, spent a few hours ensuring these teens got new clean clothes, doctors and medication vouchers, restaurant vouchers and someone checking up on them. Gayle and Levon had 55 kids, for Gayle, this was some of the most rewarding yet thankless jobs she did.

Driving home after her volunteer work she thought she would drive by the industrial park where the recent victims had all been dumped. As Gayle slowly drove by, she thought she saw something move in the bushes where the footprints had been found. Gayle stopped, took her flashlight out of the glove compartment and went to investigate. Walking towards the bushes she unclipped the holster of her .45 caliber pistol. As she got closer and closer to the bushes she realized that what she had seen moving was a den of fox kits. Giggling as she looked around she realized that this case was starting to sink into her every thought. Gayle walked back to her car and decided it was time to go home, have a cup of tea and then relax in a hot bath. She heard someone talking. Slowly and quietly Gayle turned around and saw Randy Collins, the industrial park owner, walking across the empty field towards one of the newly constructed buildings. It sounded as though he was arguing with someone, so as quietly as she could, Gayle followed him. As she got closer she could hear parts of the conversation. She heard Mr. Collins arguing with someone on his phone. He kept yelling “No” and “You aren’t listening” as well as “You don’t know what you are asking me to do!” These key phrases made Gayle all the more suspicious. She followed Mr. Collins keeping a decent space between them and went into the building. She followed the sound of Randy Collins’ voice through the deserted building. When she couldn’t hear him anymore she stopped dead and waited to hear a door open or close. She didn’t hear anything. Gayle tip toed through the building waiting to see or hear her target. She heard a ding and realized that she was around the corner from the elevators. She heard the doors open then close and she ran around the corner and waited until she saw what floor the elevator stopped on. Finally after what seemed like hours the elevator stopped on the sixth floor. Gayle bolted toward the stairs and ran up taking two stairs at a time. Gayle took a moment to slow her breathing when she got to the desired floor. Taking a deep breath she opened the door to the hallway and saw the last door on the right closing. As she slowly and quietly walked toward the door Gayle watched her own reflection in the glass walls. The thought occurred to her that if she could see herself, Randy could see her too. She decided to stay where she was and keep watching from there, see what she could see from her perspective. She could see Randy at a desk, sitting with his head in his hands. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions however things weren’t looking good. As she watched her suspect for the better part of an hour, she noticed that he started pushing papers around on his desk and would occasionally look across to a chair that was empty and then shake his head. Finally as the next hour came to a close, Randy Collins stacked his papers and put them in a folder. Then he got up, slid the chair into the desk, turned off the lamp and then walked out of the office, locking the door behind him. Randy walked the opposite way from where Gayle was and walked down a long ramp towards the front doors of the building. After she was sure she was alone, Gayle left the way she had come in and ran to her car. She wanted to find out where this man was heading next. When she got in her car, her phone buzzed and scared her half to death.

It was her alarm to get up and go to the gym. Three in the morning was the perfect time to work out. None of the Barbie girls trying to stay thin were there at that time, and not a single super jock was around to get in her way with the weights. “Not today Fantastic Gym!” she spoke as she turned the alarm off and started her car.

Gayle spoke to herself as she turned around and followed Randy Collins’ car. She stayed three or four cars behind him and didn’t use her turn signal until it was almost the last minute. When Randy parked his car she continued past him as if she hadn’t noticed him. She watched in the rear view mirror and then made a U turn at the next intersection. Just before she turned, she turned off her lights and glided slowly across the street from where Randy had parked his car.

She watched him slowly fumble with keys then walk up to the house and open the door, go in and turn off the porch light. She watched from her car for another 45 minutes and then she decided that she had better go home, catch some sleep and start fresh again tomorrow. Just as Gayle went to start the car she noticed the curtains at the Collins house open slightly. She froze as she watched what was going on. It was an older woman, possibly old enough to be the matriarch of the Collins family. She saw Randy look out next to the woman and then close the curtains. Gayle started her car and left to go home.

Randy Collins paced in his room after he put his mother to bed. When he left his office he had seen the reflection of that cop who questioned him about those murdered girls. He watched as she followed him home and then watched from the bathroom window when she parked across from his house. He wasn’t sure if he was going to call her captain about this, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it go. He looked out the living room window again and saw that she was gone. He went to the kitchen poured himself a scotch, drank it down and then checked on his mother. Once he was sure his mom was in bed for the night, he put the rails on her bed up and then he hit the sack. He would deal with that bitch detective in the morning once he had a decent night’s sleep.

When Gayle had gotten got home, she went to her refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of water, chugged it down and then went to her bedroom. As usual, she placed her gun with the safety off in her night side table.

She put on her night shirt then climbed into bed, turned out the light and breathed. As she closed her eyes she let herself think back to when she was a teenager, seventeen to be exact. She had gathered the courage to tell her mother that her new husband of five years had been sexually assaulting her from the moment they married. But instead of believing Gayle, her mother had slapped her across the face and called her a jealous whore. At that moment, Bethany Cross packed her things, and left the house. From that day forward she finished high school and changed her name to Gayle Adams. Two years later she was accepted to College for the Police Foundations program. She graduated with top marks and started with Police force six weeks later. Gayle had spent the next five years working her way up to Sergeant all the while keeping tabs on her mother and step father. When Gayle applied to Organized Crimes her superiors saw no issues and gave her the post she wanted. Gayle had decided that she was going to get on the inside track so she could be the most effective. As the years went by Gayle was known for being at the right place at the right time for big busts.

After about four years in Organized Crimes, Gayle needed to deal with her past; she had a feeling that if she kept on the path she was on, that her past would come up and bite her in the butt. Gayle took her yearly vacation and during that time she drove to the Podunk town she had lived in as a kid. She stopped twelve blocks away from the trailer park she grew up in. Gayle put her hair in a hat, then put coveralls on over top of her street clothes, duct tape around the wrists and ankles and then put a black hoody and black track pants on. She grabbed the gun from the back seat and walked into the trailer park her past lived in.

As she got to the trailer, she took a deep breath, centered her thoughts and then kicked the door open, her step father stood up and without any hesitation she put a bullet into the middle of his forehead. In that moment Gayle smiled. Then she heard her mother yell and stomp out of the back bedroom. The woman stopped dead in her tracks as she looked at her husband and then the person who was standing in the middle of the living room. Gayle instantly remembered her entire youth in this trailer. Gayle pointed the gun at her mother and spoke in a hushed voice “Hello Mother.”

The woman’s mouth opened in shock “Bethany?”

“Yes Mother, surprised?” the woman nodded. Gayle walked slowly up to her mother and with her gloved left hand turned the woman around and pistol whipped her in the head. Her mother went down like a sack of potatoes. Gayle turned her mother over and started hitting and punching her. She placed the stolen gun she got from an old pal in the mob into her mother’s hand, stood her up and as Gayle stood behind her, she pulled the trigger with her mother’s finger and shot her step father again in the head. She let her mother fall back down to the floor and then took the hunting knife from the now dead man’s pants pocket. He always had the knife on him; it was never out of his reach. She then plunged it deep into her mothers’ chest cavity. It wasn’t an instantaneous fatality but she would die before she could get to the hospital that was thirty five minutes away at top speeds. Bethany’s past was now forgotten, and Gayle was free to live her life. Gayle heard police sirens and knew she had two minutes at the most. She trashed the kitchen and living room and made her way out the back of the trailer and disappeared into the night, never to be seen again.

When Gayle returned home from her vacation she looked into the crime blotter, like she did everyday she was at work, and saw that there was a domestic violence call and the wife had killed her abusive husband after he pistol whipped her and stabbed her in the chest but unfortunately the woman bled out before she could get to the hospital. The case was closed and Gayle was free and Bethany was dead.

The next nine years went by with the usual flare dealing with Organized Crime. Gayle was in autopsy with a myriad of personnel after a major mob boss was found stuffed into a steamer trunk and left on the porch of his house. That is where Gayle and the Whisperer met and started their symbiotic relationship. The first person Gayle killed for pleasure was a woman that looked and smelled like her mother. The Whisperer had taken Gayle ‘hunting’ for her first victim. When the two of them got the woman to the seedy hotel room they had rented, Gayle tied the woman to the bed and with zeal and pleasure, raped and tortured the woman for over nine hours. Gayle had saved the dirty condoms from the low life mobster she slept with that morning so he would go down for the kill.

When Gayle had finished torturing the woman, the Whisperer taught Gayle how to kill with the most pleasure. Gayle woke the beaten half alive woman up and asked her if she knew why she had endured the torture. The woman shook her head no and Gayle smiled. She looked at the Whisperer and he nodded his head.

“You are a dirty skanky bitch whore who is no better than the lowest pond scum there is. You are going to die because you deserve it and we want you too.” Gayle smiled as she dragged the knife up and down the woman’s face. The woman was sobbing but had no physical strength left to fight. Gayle took her instruction from the Whisperer and when they were done there was blood everywhere. The Whisperer instructed Gayle on how to leave a dirty room clean as they both had forensic backgrounds they could easily disguise what they couldn’t take with them. While cleaning Gayle had told the Whisperer how she always had a penchant for dead things. She loved watching how animals and bugs helped dispose of a body. In her pre-teen years, she had captured a neighborhood stray cat and tortured and slowly killed it. She found the experience exhilarating. When her step-father started abusing her she would think of all the ways she could kill him. Finally with time Gayle’s wish came true.

Gayle opened her eyes, smiled and pulled the covers up on her bed. She looked at the clock on her nightstand. Ten minutes had passed and Gayle had relived two of the best days of her life. She closed her eyes again and thought of the girls in the case she was working on now with Darrell. She thought of him as a simpleton, and watching him try to figure out what was going on was incredibly pleasing to her. Gayle had helped the Whisperer with all of the deaths of the girls. What no one else knew was that there were two other girls that the Whisperer had killed, her parents and the woman that they hunted for together. All in all she was responsible for ten deaths. Between the two of them: twelve. And neither of them are ready to stop any time soon.