Authors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Tracking Evil, A Podcast: Part 5
Episode 1: "Mors certa, hora incerta."
*Death is certain, its hour is uncertain
Erica missed her family. She missed the awkward early morning conversations with her mom and the random hugs and unsought lectures on life from her dad. But not being able to see them or visit them wasn't the worst thing about her hiding out.
She missed her bed. Moving from motel to motel, town to town, county to county, state to state. It had worn thin by the second week. A parade of lumpy mattresses and less than clean bed linen made her appreciate her own bed all the more. But that wasn't the worst thing about hiding out.
Erica also missed the simple pleasure of a good night's sleep. Since she had gone on the run it had become a regular occurrence to wake up, shaken from her sleep by an unfamiliar sound. Sitting bolt upright in bed while straining to identify if the shadow at the window was a lamppost or a man intent on killing her. But even that wasn't the worst thing about hiding out.
The worst thing was that she and Arlene hadn't been able to attend Amos's funeral. Losing the chance to pay her respects to a brave man who had become a friend in a very short time was a big blow to Erica. He had deserved more, a better ending to a life packed with no regrets, than to be cut down by a coward. Erica knew that whatever pain she must be feeling was only a fraction compared to the hurt that Arlene would be going through.
They had spoken a few times since Arlene had called to warn Erica after Amos's murder but as yet neither had felt they should meet up. At this point, distance and anonymity were their best defence. Both of them had dumped their old phones as soon as they could get their hands on disposable cells. Erica felt secure enough that her email and notes had remained undisturbed by Butterman as neither her files or laptop had been in the motel room for him to find when he'd apparently snuck in there. Just to be safe, she had given Tiny a heads up on the danger. Predictably the big man had shown little concern for himself, confident in his own prowess. However, Erica had been able to persuade him to send his grandmother away for a few weeks to visit her sister, just to be safe.
Duncan refused to hide.
He had attended Amos's funeral heavily armed, hoping Butterman would be stupid enough to attend. Butterman hadn't complied with this wish, it wasn't his style to put himself in danger. After the funeral, Duncan had shared the suspicions as to who had killed Amos with some of Amos's nephews and cousins. From her last conversation with him, Erica had been led to believe that a small army of men were constantly on the watch for the suspected serial killer and that by living in their midst, Duncan was as safe as he could possibly be given the circumstances.
He was so confident in the security provided by his late friend's family that he had devoted an hour trying to persuade both Erica and Arlene to join him there for their own protection. Both women had refused his offer but for different reasons. Arlene felt that she had already cost Amos's family enough and she wasn't ready to face them, not with his killer at large. Instead, the deputy sheriff was relying on her own wits and skills to keep herself safe. She had taken a leave of absence from her job and like Erica, she was keeping on the move.
Erica didn't have the same training as Arlene, her only defence at this point was avoiding being found. Her reason for not wanting to stay with Duncan was not from a sense of shame like Arlene, it was from a growing realisation that she was becoming increasingly at the mercy of her own blossoming sexuality. The idea of being confined in a house with multiple black men for an unspecified length of time excited her and her level of excitement actually terrified her somewhat. So, using her head and not her body as the decision maker, she had politely but firmly rejected Duncan's offer.
The cheap motel just outside of Lewisburg West Virginia made Erica think that she should arrange for a tetanus shot the next morning. She peered at the mould growing in the corner of the shower stall and shuddered.
"Just one night, just one night. Keep it together." she muttered to herself. Still, she closed the bathroom door firmly behind her in case that fungal mess began releasing spores during the next twelve hours. The still unfamiliar ring from her new cell phone was a welcome distraction from the poor housekeeping in the motel and Erica crossed the room quickly to snatch up the phone from the table she'd set it down on.
Only two other people had this number so without even looking at the caller id she had a good idea who was calling. "Hey Arlene." she said as she answered.
"Just checking on you. How's the accommodation?" Arlene sounded tired on the phone, her words coming across with forced joviality.
"Same as yours I expect. Like a nature programme on the discovery channel whenever I turn off the lights... so I sleep with them on." Erica replied, her own light-hearted quip sounding wooden to her ears. "Actually, I'm glad you called. I've been thinking about something, I wanted to run it past you."
"Go ahead." Arlene said, "I need something to focus on."
Erica made herself as comfortable as possible and then launched into it.
"I kept going back to the fact that Butterman returned to the same town he killed his wife in. The same town he grew up in. It never made sense to me, even allowing for him being a fucking psycho. Then I thought to myself, this is a guy who ate at the same place every day, the same meal. He is a real creature of habit. He went back to his hometown because it was somewhere familiar, somewhere he knew. Now he has been forced to move, he isn't the type to do what we've done and live day to day in different locations. He especially wouldn't plan and execute a murder if he was feeling off kilter. So that means that wherever he has gone to, wherever he is hiding out, it's somewhere he knows, somewhere familiar."
There was a silence from Arlene's side, Erica knew she was mulling it over and so remained quiet herself, letting the professional work it through her mind.
"I like it. It makes perfect sense. Home run girl, fucking home run!" Arlene finally said, a trace of energy in her voice now. "Any other brilliant deductions?"
Erica colored in pleasure at the compliment and answered straight away. "I checked and he has no living relatives, nobody around who was close to him when he lived there as a young man. I figured if anyone might know where he might go, maybe it was someone he was stuck in a cell with for a long time. Even someone as cold as Butterman might get to talking when there is nothing else to do except stare at bars and a wall. I still have a copy of his record that you gave me and I looked through it. His longest cellmate was a guy called Cranston Haywood, they spent eight years in the same cell. I checked online and he was paroled just under a year ago. I haven't been able to find out where he is now."
