Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“What happened?”
Gentry gestured for us to follow him.
“Crime scene has already been processed,” he said. “Feel free to step anywhere.”
So we did, and I crouched down next to Dr. Pendelton’s body and gave him a quick once-over.
“It’s the same way that Errol was killed.”
“Not quite.” Gentry crouched down. “This one was done with a twenty-two. Errol was done with a forty-five. Pendelton doesn’t have any other guns but a twenty-two. His wife let us check the safe. And she gave us full permission to question her son in any way we saw fit.”
Speaking of his son, Eustace was in the kitchen handcuffed to the table with his mother crying her eyes out next to him.
When we got there, his mother got up and left. But she stopped at the door and said, “Answer all of their questions, Eustace.”
Eustace stayed stubbornly silent.
Gentry crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall.
I took up post on the other side, and Black took up the remaining seat that his mother had just vacated.
Black studied the kid for a long while before he said, “We have you tied to five murders.”
Eustace’s eyes widened, but he didn’t break.
“Your friends had some snake bites on them,” he said. “What’d they do? Hurt you?”
Silence.
“Then there was your dad,” Black said quietly. “Did he hurt you in some way? You can tell me.”
Eustace rolled his eyes. “My dad was Mr. Perfect.”
Definitely some resentment there.
“He had to have done something for you to hurt him,” Black said.
“I want a lawyer.”
“Your mother waived your right to a lawyer,” Gentry pointed out.
Eustace snorted. “I’ve taken political science and government. I know what my rights are. I want a lawyer.”
Black stood up and turned to Gentry. “You read him his rights?”
Gentry nodded. “I did.”
“Then take him to Jesper County B&B.”
“What’s that?” Eustace looked worried.
“That’s the jail, kid.” I rolled my eyes. “Hope you enjoy long stays. You’ll be there until Tuesday.”
“What??” he asked. “Why?”
“Because Monday is a holiday, and the government doesn’t work on national holidays.”
Eustace made a sound in his throat.
“Looks like you’ll get to hang out with Paco and Burt.” Gentry walked toward Eustace and reached for his cuffed arm.
“Wait…”
A door slammed, and then Eustace’s mother was barreling through the kitchen, heading right for her son.
None of us made a move to stop her as she took the book in her hands and slammed it against the side of Eustace’s face. “What did you do?”
Her hysterical cries would haunt me.
She sounded ravaged.
“Why did you do it?”
Something slipped from the pages, and I bent down to pick it up.
A Polaroid.
My stomach soured as I saw the same photo that I’d seen once before, though done by a much more professional lens.
The first kid that I’d done an autopsy on hanging from a tree.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, handing it to Black.
Black took it and glanced at it.
He placed it gently on the table, then said, “Mrs. Pendelton, let me have the book and step away from him.”
She didn’t listen.
Not until Black bodily picked her up and walked her out of the room.
I caught all the photos that trailed behind him.
All of them were of the teenage victims.
All of them but one.
The last one was of Pendelton.
Dead in the middle of his living room floor.
Black scanned through the book while Mrs. Pendelton sobbed on the couch right next to the sheet-covered body of her husband.
She sobbed.
And it hurt my heart to see.
I turned back to the kitchen and handed the photos to Gentry.
He took one look at them, then laid them on the table to show the kid.
“Start talking.”
Eustace swallowed as he looked at the photos.
“They were mean to me.”
I shook my head.
“Mean?” Gentry asked. “Mean how?”
“They made fun of me all the time. And my dad said to suck it up. That I was going to suck at life if I couldn’t handle a little meanness every now and then.”
I tended to agree with his father.
The world was a hard place.
Not everyone was going to be nice to you all the time.
“So I killed them,” he said. “Made it look like a suicide.”
“You killed who?” Gentry asked.
He named all three of the teenage boys, as well as his father.
“And Errol Fuller?”
The kid all of a sudden looked even more guilty.
“I didn’t kill him. I stole his credit cards,” he answered. “I hit a limit on them, and I’d go back to steal another one. That’s why you caught me there today. I didn’t kill him.”
“That’s where you got the idea, though. On how to kill your dad.”
Eustace swallowed hard. So hard that I heard him gulp.
“Yeah.”
“And the dogs?” I asked.
Eustace’s eyes came to me. “She was nice to me.”
I blinked. “Who was?”
“Mrs. Pratt.”
“And?” I asked.
“She heals dogs. They were…not good. I messed them up.”
“Why?” Gentry asked.
“They tried to hurt me. When I k-killed them.” He shrugged. “I took them. Tried to get them to like me. They never would.”