Блейк Пирс - Before He Preys

“Yeah,” Tate said with a nervous smile. “You could say that. Three years ago, six people killed themselves by jumping off of this fucking bridge. It was some kind of record per location for the state of Virginia. The year after that, there were three. Last year, it was five.”

“Were they all locals?” Mackenzie asked.

“No. Out of those fourteen people, only four living within a fifty-mile radius.”

“And to your knowledge, is there maybe some sort of urban legend or reasoning behind these people taking their lives off of this bridge?”

“There’s ghost stories, sure,” Tate said. “But there’s a ghost story tied to just about every decommissioned bridge in the country. I don’t know. I blame these screwed up generation gaps. Kids these days get their feelings hurt and think offing themselves is the answer. It’s pretty sad.”

“How about homicides?” Mackenzie asked. “What’s the rate like in Kingsville?”

“There were two last year. And so far, only one this year. It’s a quiet town. Everyone knows everyone else and if you don’t like someone, you just stay away from them. Why do you ask? You leaning towards murder for this one?”

“I don’t know yet,” Mackenzie said. “Two bodies in the span of four days, at the same location. I think it’s worth looking into. Do you happen to know if Kenny Skinner and Malory Thomas knew one another?”

“Probably. But I don’t know how well. Like I said…everyone knows everyone in Kingsville. But if you’re asking if maybe Kenny killed himself because Malory did, I doubt it. There’s a five-year difference in age and they didn’t really hang with the same crowds from what I know.”

“Mind if I have a look?” Mackenzie asked.

“Be my guest,” Tate said, instantly walking away from her to join the other officers who were scouring the scene.

Mackenzie approached the boulder and the body of Kenny Skinner apprehensively. The closer she got to the body, the more aware she became of just how much damage had been done. She’d seen some pretty grisly things in her line of work, but this was among the worst.

The stream of blood was coming from an area where it appeared Kenny’s head had smashed against the rock. She didn’t bother examining it closely because the black and red illuminated in the spotlights wasn’t something she wanted popping back into her head later in the night. The massive facture in the back of his head affected the rest of the skull, distorting the facial features. She also saw where his chest and stomach looked as if they had been puffed out from within.

She did her best to look past all of this, checking over Kenny’s clothes and exposed skin for any signs of foul play. In the harsh yet inefficient beam of the spotlights, it was hard to be sure but after several minutes, Mackenzie could find nothing. When she stepped away, she felt herself start to relax. Apparently, she’d been tensed up while observing the body.

She went back to Sheriff Tate, who was speaking with another officer. They sounded as if they were making plans about notifying the family.

“Sheriff, do you think you could have someone pull the records for me on those fourteen suicides over the last three years?”

“Yeah, I can do that. I’ll make a call here in a second and make sure they’re waiting for you at the station. And you know…there’s someone you might want to call. There’s a lady in town, works out of her home as a psychiatrist and special needs teacher. She’s been on my ass for the last year or so about how all of the suicides in Kingsville can’t just be suicides. She might be able to offer something you might not find in the reports.”

“That would be great.”

“I’ll have someone include her information with the reports. You good here?”

“For now, yes. Could I please have your number for easier contact?”

“Sure. But the damned thing is glitchy. Need to upgrade. Should have done it about five months back. So if you call me and it goes to voicemail right away, I’m not ignoring you. I’ll call you right back. Some stupid thing with the phone. I hate cell phones anyway.”

After his rant on modern technology, Tate gave her his cell number and she saved it into her phone.

“I’ll see you around,” Tate said. “For now, the coroner is on the way. I’ll be damn glad when we can move this body.”

It seemed like an insensitive thing to say but when Mackenzie looked back at it and saw the gore and broken state of the body, she couldn’t help but agree.

It was 10:10 when she walked into the police station. The place was absolutely dead, the only movement coming from a bored-looking woman sitting behind a desk – what Mackenzie assumed served as dispatch at the Kingsville Police Department – and two officers talking animatedly about politics in a hallway behind the dispatch desk.

Despite the lackluster feel of the place, it was apparently very well run. The woman at the dispatch desk had already copied all of the records Sheriff Tate had mentioned and had them waiting in a file folder when Mackenzie arrived. Mackenzie thanked her and then asked for a motel recommendation in the area. As it turned out, Kingsville only had a single motel, less than two miles away from the police department.

Ten minutes later, Mackenzie was unlocking the door to her room at a Motel 6. She’d certainly stayed in worse places during her tenure with the bureau, but it wasn’t likely to get any glowing Yelp or Google reviews. She paid little attention to the lacking state of the room, setting the files down on the little table by the single bed and wasting no time in diving into them.

She took some notes of her own while she read through the files. The first and perhaps most alarming thing she discovered was that of the fourteen suicides that had occurred in the last three years, eleven of them had been from the Miller Moon Bridge. The other three included two gun-related suicides and a single hanging from an attic beam.

Mackenzie knew enough about small towns to understand the allure of a rural marker like the Miller Moon Bridge. The history and the overall neglected creepiness of it was appealing, especially to teens. And, as the records in front of her showed, six of the fourteen suicides had been under twenty-one years of age.

She pored over the records; while they weren’t as explicitly detailed as she would have liked, they were above par for what she had seen from most small-town police departments. She jotted down note after note, coming up with a comprehensive list of details to help her better get to the bottom of the multiple deaths that were linked to the Miller Moon Bridge. After an hour or so, she had enough to base a few rough opinions.

First, of the fourteen suicides, exactly half had left notes. The notes made it clear that they had made the decision to end their lives. Each record had a photocopy of the letter and all of them expressed regret of some form or another. They told loved ones they cherished them and expressed pains that they could not overcome.

The other seven could almost be looked at as typical suspected murder cases: bodies discovered out of nowhere, in rough shape. One of the suicides, a seventeen-year-old female, had shown evidence of recent sexual activity. When the DNA of her partner had been found on and in her body, he had provided evidence in the form of text messages that she had come to his house, they’d had sex, and then she’d left. And from the way it looked, she had launched herself off of the Miller Moon Bridge about three hours later.

The only case out of the fourteen that she could see that would have warranted any sort of closer look was the sad and unfortunate suicide of a sixteen-year-old male. When he had been discovered on those bloodied rocks beneath the bridge, there had been bruises on his chest and arms that did not line up with any of the injuries he had suffered from the fall itself. Within a few days, police had discovered that the boy had been routinely beaten by an alcoholic father who, sadly enough, attempted suicide three days after the discovery of his son’s body.