Black Forest, Denver Cereal Volume 5 Read online

“Do you have the necklace with you?” Seth asked Aden.

  Aden flushed, nodded, and pulled it from his pocket. Seth took an evidence bag from his desk and held it open. Aden set the chain and pendant into the bag. Seth sealed the bag. He took a Sharpie from his pocket and filled out the evidence label. He walked into the main room where Ava signed for the envelope. She looked at the chain and pendant through the plastic envelope.

  “Give me an hour, maybe more,” she said. “Then we wait for DNA.”

  “Is this the same pendant?” Seth asked.

  “It looks identical,” she said. “But looks can deceive.”

  Seth nodded. She smiled and walked away from him. He turned toward his office and stopped.

  “I’m sorry but we’ll need to go into an interview room,” Seth said. “It’s not warm or friendly. But I need this recorded for evidence.”

  Aden nodded. The men walked out into the hall toward the interview room.

  “I’ve arranged for you to get immunity from any crime you bring up, mention, or otherwise disclose with the exception of murder,” Seth said. “I have that in writing.”

  He held an envelope out to Aden. Aden opened it, read the letter, and stuffed it into his pocket.

  “When is Ms. Hargreaves coming to join us?” Seth asked.

  “She’s right behind you,” Samantha Hargreaves said. She thanked the Sergeant who escorted her back. “May I see that?”

  Aden gave Samantha the letter. She read it and nodded.

  “I must protest your interview with my client,” Samantha said.

  “I agree, Ms. Hargreaves,” Seth said. “Aden, I can’t interview you. I’m too close to you and this is too big a case to make any mistakes. I have two very capable Sergeants waiting to speak with you. I will be behind the glass the entire time. If you get into any trouble, I’ll interrupt the interview. I’m willing to allow you to have Bob with you during the interview if that helps.”

  Aden nodded.

  “Ms. Hargreaves?” Seth asked.

  “That will be fine,” Samantha said.

  Seth opened an interview room where two police detectives waited for them. The younger detective was blonde and seemed unsure of himself. The older detective had a muscular body and the tan skin and sharp nose of the Cheyenne. Nervous, Aden looked at Seth and into the room.

  “Come on,” Bob said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Aden followed Bob into the room. The police detectives stood to introduce themselves.

  “I’ll be right there,” Samantha said. She closed the door to the interview room. “What do you hope to get from him?”

  “Answers,” Seth said. “We need someone who was there twenty years ago. Thirty would be better but we don’t have that.”

  “He’s a good man, Seth,” Samantha said. “He’s had a hell of a year. With the baby and Sandy, he’s…”

  “I’m hoping that good man will be able to help me find the trail of a monster,” Seth said. “We have nothing, Samantha, nothing to identify this guy. Anything Norsen says or knows will be one hundred percent more than we know right now.”

  Samantha nodded. She opened the door and went into the room. Seth went around to the other side of the glass. He wasn’t surprised to find the head of CBI, the Chief of Police and his Captain waiting for him there.

  “You’re sure,” the Chief of Police said.

  Seth nodded. They settled in for what was bound to be a long night.

  ~~~~~~~~

  Sunday night — 8:40 P.M.

  “Sir, we have a copy of a detailed background check done by Detective O’Malley last year,” the young blonde detective said. “The background goes back to 1987 and stops.”

  Aden nodded.

  “Detective O’Malley found no record of you prior to 1987,” the older detective said. “Why is that?”

  “I took the name Aden Norsen in 1987,” Aden said.

  “What is your birth name?” the blonde detective asked.

  “Gary Gilmore, Jr.”

  The detectives flinched.

  “Gary Gilmore? As in the Gary Gilmore?” the older detective said. “Utah. Firing Squad.”

  “Gary Gilmore was my father’s favorite cousin,” Aden said. “He was executed in 1977. January. I was five.”

  “How…?” the young detective started. The older man cleared his throat.

  “Maybe you should tell us your story,” the older detective leaned back in his chair as if he was waiting for a long story. “We have time. Start at the beginning. We’ll interrupt if we need to.”

  Aden looked at Bob then at Samantha. She smiled at him. He looked back at Bob who nodded.

  “I don’t know where I was born,” Aden started. He swallowed hard.

  “We’ve looked but we’ve never been able to find a birth certificate for him,” Bob said.

  “After Gary’s… trouble, my parents changed their name every six months or so,” Aden said. “I was enrolled in school under a lot of different names. The last name I used was Mark Smith. We moved all over the West. I wasn’t their oldest or the youngest child. I was somewhere in the middle but I’m not really sure where.”

  “Your parents had a lot of kids?” the older detective said.

  “I guess so,” Aden said. “They had adult kids and little kids like me. Or something like that. I never knew if some of them were their kids or cousins or just around. There were a lot of people around all the time.”

  “Ok, go on,” the older detective said.

  “I tell people that I came home from school one day and my family had moved,” Aden said. “That’s not exactly true.”

  “What is true?” the young detective asked. The older man gave him a stern look and he shrugged.

  “I was released from juvie.”

  “For?”

  “Breaking and entering. Robbery. Bob was my probation officer,” Aden said. “Bob was going downtown so he agreed to take me to my parent’s apartment. They were gone.”

  “Had that happened before?” the older man asked.

  “Sure,” Aden said. “But I always knew where to catch up with them. I didn’t this time. Or maybe I didn’t want to. That last time in juvie, I… got interested in other things. I read Tom Sawyer and The Hobbit. I had some therapy. I had the sense that life could be… different than the way we lived. I… let myself drift away from my family.”

  “We arrived at their last residence and they weren’t there,” Bob said. “I let him stay on my couch that night and then set him up at a halfway house.”

  “I changed my name to Aden Norsen,” he said. “Aden means fire. I wanted to burn up the past, my past. Norsen… well it seemed to fit.”

  “Since there were no records, it was pretty easy to enter him into the system as Aden Norsen,” Bob said. “His last conviction was under the name Mark Smith. Mark Smith was listed as an alias for Aden.”

  “It’s not here now,” the young detective said.

  “I have a copy of the file at home if you need it.”

  “We may,” the young detective said. “Please continue Mr. Gilmore.”

  “Please,” Aden said. “My name is Aden Norsen.”

  There was a tap on the glass of the window and the Sergeants looked at the glass.

  “Norsen, sorry,” the young man said.

  “Now you know who he is,” Samantha said. “Why don’t you cut to the chase? It’s late and the man has a lot of other things on his mind.”

  “Where did you get the pendant and necklace?” the older detective asked.

  “After I stayed with Bob, I was placed in foster care,” Aden said. “I didn’t like my first house, so I left. I had enough experience being homeless as a kid and it wasn’t that big of a deal. I stayed out a couple of years until one January.”

  “One January?” the older detective said.

  “I don’t remember the year. I had a bunch of friends,” Aden said. “We stayed under the Speer Bridge mostly. Did drugs, drank, begged for change, stuff
like that. It wasn’t bad until January, maybe two or three years after I’d been out.”

  “What happened?” the older detective asked.

  “One of the guys got really drunk and froze to death,” Aden said. “We were all picked up and locked up for a while. I saw Bob again. He reminded me about the new life I’d said I wanted. And he was right. I got a new placement and a job at a grocery store. I stayed there until I got my GED.”

  “How does this relate to the pendant?” the younger detective asked.

  “When we were under the Speer Bridge, a guy would come and bring us food,” Aden said. “He’d bring pots of soup, sandwiches, stuff like that. Sometimes, when the guys weren’t doing well, he’d take one of us with him.”

  “Did they make it back?” the older detective asked.

  Aden nodded.

  “But?”

  “The guy had regulars, favorites,” Aden said. “They never talked about what happened while they were with him. They just said he was weird but gave them money and drugs. Sometimes we’d pressure a guy to go with him so we could have more drugs.”

  Flushing, Aden dropped his head in his hand. Bob put a hand on his back for support.

  “It wasn’t my finest moment,” Aden said.

  “Did you ever go with the guy?” the older detective asked.

  “No,” Aden said. “He seemed to know I was a Gilmore. He called me Gilmore, in fact. He was terrified of my family. Rightly so. I was terrified of my family.”

  “How did you get the necklace?” the older detective asked.

  “The guy who froze to death?” Aden asked. “He was my best friend. I met him in juvie. I took the pendant from him after he died.”

  “Why?” the younger detective asked.

  “I wanted to remember my friend,” Aden said. “He was the only family I’d really ever had.”

  “This friend. Did he have a name?” the younger detective asked.

  “I called him ‘Daf’ because he did a great Daffy the Duck impression,” Aden said. “He was one of Bob’s too.”

  He looked at Bob.

  “His name was Wilson Zacarian,” Bob said. “He was found dead in January, 1990. Froze outside on one of those record cold days. The police rousted all the bridges to get the homeless out of the cold. They picked up about ten homeless boys. They were high and drunk so they put them in lock-up.”

  “Family?” the young detective asked.

  “His family picked up his body,” Bob said.

  “Did they ask about the pendant?” the older detective asked.

  “The necklaces were given out by the creepy guy,” Aden said. “All of his favorites had one. If the necklaces were gone, the guys got in trouble. Bad. Daf lost his one time and we looked for it for days. We finally found it under a rock or something. He’d put it there when he was high.”

  “Did this guy know you had one?”

  “No, I don’t think the guy ever knew I had a pendant.”

  “Does the creepy guy have a name?” the older detective asked.

  “Not that I remember,” Aden shook his head.

  “You boys didn’t call him anything?” the young detective asked.

  “Jude,” Aden said. “We called him Saint Jude.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY-FIVE

  The Entity

  “This Saint Jude,” the older detective paused for effect. “You’d recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “I’ve seen him off and on through the years,” Aden said.

  “When was the last time?” the older detective asked.

  Aden fell silent. He rubbed his forehead then his face.

  “Sir?” the younger detective asked.

  “Sorry, I’m sure you think I’m stalling,” Aden said. “I got knocked around in prison. I’m mostly all right but sometimes my brain kind of seizes when I’m anxious or upset. Saint Jude is not my favorite topic.”

  “You have in your records that Mr. Norsen received a brutal beating from his brother, a violent serial felon who was mistakenly assigned to the minimum security facility where Mr. Norsen was sentenced,” Samantha said. “Give the man a minute to think.”

  “I don’t think time will help,” Aden said. “I don’t know when I saw him last or where. I’m sorry. I never like seeing him. If I saw him yesterday, I’d forget it.”

  “Did you see him yesterday?” the older detective asked.

  “No. I was at the hospital all day yesterday,” Aden smiled. “That I’m sure of.”

  “But you’d recognize him if you saw him again,” the older detective said.

  Aden nodded.

  “I need you to speak,” the older detective said. “For the record.”

  “Yes,” Aden said.

  “Would you be willing to go on record with this information?” the younger detective asked.

  “Yes,” Aden said.

  “Let’s move on,” the older detective said. “Did he ever take you anywhere?”

  Aden shook his head. He dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes.

  “Sorry, I haven’t had a lot of sleep lately and I need to get back to my wife,” Aden said. “You said something about going somewhere?”

  The younger detective looked at his partner. The older detective nodded and the younger man left the room.

  “You’ve heard that Detective O’Malley found Jeffy before he died,” the older detective said.

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t heard anything,” Aden said. “My wife was in and out of the hospital all last week. She had our daughter almost two months early on Friday. I’ve either been at the hospital or taking care of my kids, her siblings…”

  “Aden’s been out of the loop, Detective,” Samantha said.

  The younger Detective returned with a stack of photographs. He laid out a picture of the large house on the Barn’s property.

  “Have you ever seen this house?” the young detective asked.

  “May I?” Aden asked.

  He picked up the photo to get a closer look.

  “Sure, I’ve been there,” Aden said. “I lived there for a while. I moved out around the time I met Nuala. My band used to practice there.”

  “Would you mind going there tonight?” the younger detective asked.

  “Tonight?” Aden asked. He shifted uncomfortably. Not sure what to say, he repeated, “Tonight?”

  “We need to move fast,” the older detective said. “According to the coroner, the serial killer will pick another victim in the new few hours. We think the house plays an integral role in the killer’s rituals.”

  “Did you check the crypt?” Aden asked.

  “Crypt?” the younger detective said.

  “In the basement chapel,” Aden said.

  “The killer won’t be able to use the barn…” the older detective started.

  “The barn?” Aden’s eyebrows shot up with anxiety.

  “What is it, son?” Bob asked.

  “The house… that barn… They’re haunted,” Aden stumbled on his words. “Horrifying. Especially at night.”

  “But you lived there…” the young detective said.

  “Doesn’t mean I want to go back,” Aden said. “Ever.”

  ~~~~~~~~

  Sunday night — 9:40 P.M.

  Seth looked up when Ava came into the room. He instinctively smiled at her. She flushed a little. The Chief of Police cleared his throat.

  “Technician Alvin,” he said. “We’re in the middle of…”

  “Detective O’Malley asked me to inform him when we’ve finished our analysis of the pendant,” Ava walked toward Seth. “The pendants are similar enough to be made by the same company but different enough to be made decades apart.”

  “So Norsen’s story fits,” Seth’s Captain said.

  “Yes sir,” Ava said. “The Jeffy pendant is newer and made out of pewter. It’ has ‘Made in China’ stamped on the back. The pewter is consistent with Asian pewter with a higher percentage of tin. Say ninety-se
ven percent or so. The Norsen pendant is also pewter, but was made in the US. The pewter is consistent with European pewter with less tin, say between ninety-two and ninety-four percent. The Jeffy pendant is a little softer, more malleable so it bears a few wear marks. Norsen’s pendant is undamaged after all these years.”

  “Different factories, same pendant? Or different pendants?” Seth asked.

  “The pendants were made on, if not the same mold, a similar mold,” Ava said. “You can’t see it in this light but there’s a small defect in the mold. A crack or possibly some design flaw. We believe the mold is either exactly the same mold that made the Norsen pendant or a mold made from the original mold.”

  “We’re looking at the same company making similar products?” Seth asked.

  “Right,” Ava said. “We believe it’s the same company making the same product. They are not produced off shored in China. We looked online and found these pendants with these same steel chains for nine dollars.”

  “Cheap pendants,” the head of CBI said. “I wonder how many he bought.”

  “We have a person working on that, sir,” Ava said. “We were able to contact the factory in China. They’re sending us information about the company they make these pendants for. We’ll know tomorrow who sells them in Denver.”

  “Good work,” Seth said.

  Ava blushed in response to his praise.

  “We were able to collect DNA from both chains,” Ava said. “It sounds gross but these chains are very hard to clean. They’re collectors of DNA. If we’re lucky, we’ll get DNA from the killer on both chains.”

  “You sent the DNA to us?” the head of CBI asked.

  “Yes sir,” Ava said.

  “I’ll personally expedite this,” the head of CBI said.

  Surprised that the cash strapped CBI would take on the expense, the men looked at him.

  “You have to ask yourself: How did this Saint Jude know Norsen was a Gilmore?” the head of CBI said.

  “Gary Gilmore was incarcerated eighteen of his last twenty years,” Seth said. “I wondered about that too.”

  “What?” his Captain asked.

  “The killer must have met Gary Gilmore, Sr. in prison,” the head of CBI said. “Must have known him well enough to know how volatile he was.”