“What?” Ward asked, surprised.
“You heard me right. We have another body.”
“And you think that it’s related somehow to our case?”
“Well, it was found in the same fountain we found the first body in. I was going to call you, but I didn’t want to pester you. I sent the body to the coroner, and he confirmed that the man had been drowned. I’m certain it’s related to our case.”
“In any case, that’s irrelevant now. What were you able to get on Tom Huffman?”
“I was able to get a warrant to search his home for clues relating to the murders. We need to get on it fast.”
“Just out of curiosity, how old was the man who died?”
“He was about your age, and I believe he was your peer when you were a senior in high school.”
“Not surprised. Who called the station to inform you of the body?”
“We don’t know, it was an anonymous call. Again.”
“I’m aware that I’m pointing out the obvious here, but all of this is clearly not a coincidence. I’d really like to know who that caller was. He might be Tom, or he might be someone else that we’re not aware of but who might be the actual killer.”
“We’ve tried to tracking the calls down, but have come up with nothing. At any rate, our top priority is to search through Tom Huffman’s apartment. Meet me at his apartment in one hour, I’ll email the address to you.” He hung up.
They needed to find Huffman quickly; more bodies were sure to come. He already knew Huffman was after the bullies who had tormented him in high school. There had been countless numbers of bullies, and Scott knew that Huffman’s job wouldn’t be over until he had had his revenge on the last of them.
He checked his email, found the one sent by the colonel, and wrote the address down on a slip of paper. After doing this, he went outside, got in his car, and drove off quickly. The address was of an apartment somewhere around Maryland, about an hour’s drive from where Scott lived.
While he drove, he was thinking of who else had bullied Huffman in high school. He was remembering some of the things they had done to him; at times the pranks had been mild, but others they had been much worse. He remembered that there were times they made him drink water out of toilets in the boys’ bathroom, or when they devised small plans to try to break his arm, leg, foot, and so on. Many times the bullies had actually gone through with said plans, and Tom had come out with broken bones. His parents hadn’t helped him at all; Scott knew that they had divorced long ago and had gone their separate ways, leaving Tom alone to live with his grandparents, who hadn’t tried to help either. The school had never realized how bad the situation was, and oftentimes the bullies would get away with their pranks.
Of course, Scott could relate to Huffman; both of their childhoods had been very lonely. However, while Scott had never had any actual friends, he remembered that in high school Huffman had had one friend. His friend hadn’t tried stopping the bullies from harassing Tom, as he too was very small and couldn’t do anything about it, but Scott recalled seeing him by his side in times of need. He couldn’t remember his name.
Before he knew it, he was arriving at Tom Huffman’s address. After waiting for about five minutes, the superintendent showed up and greeted him.
“Hello, Scott.” They shook hands.
Without saying a word, they went inside the building and walked upstairs to Huffman’s apartment. Ward knocked on the door. There was no response. He knocked again. Still no response. One of the policemen they were being accompanied by kicked the door down and they went inside.
The apartment was small and had little furniture in any of the rooms. The crew searched thoroughly through everything. They turned over the chairs, the tables, took out the drawers, searched through his closet, through his kitchen, but found nothing. This went on for several minutes until Scott found something quite peculiar in the Huffman’s bedroom.
It was a yearbook, laying open haphazardly on Huffman’s bed. In it the page was turned to the senior class. Scott looked through the pages, and he noticed that on some of them, several names were circled with a red marker. There were three names that had already been crossed out in big X’s, and there were many more names that were circled. Scott knew what this meant. He continued flipping through the pages; there were over thirty names he came across that were also circled. They were all the names of Huffman’s former tormentors.
As he continued flipping through the pages, he came across something that made him stop dead in his tracks
The name Scott Ward was circled.
No comments:
Post a Comment