========================================================================= Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 20:43:54 -0400 Reply-To: LNagy10434@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: "Lawrence E. Nagy" Subject: THE JOURNEY OF JEREMY KELLER Part 11 Following is part 11 of my story _The Journey Of Jeremy Keller_. If anybody has missed the first parts drop me a line and I will them out to you. Let me know what you think. I am very interested in any and all comments, discussion and critique. enjoy Larry THE JOURNEY OF JEREMY KELLER "The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday" Part 11 Officers Bob Jacobs and Ryan Woods had been back at the station for about an hour when Berry from the garage came up to see them. Berry was a short skinny man, very fastidious and neat. He was like no other mechanic they had ever met, he kept the garages and vehicles impeccably clean. The man even wore a white lab coat instead of the industry standard coveralls. "I wish you guys would tell me when you've been at a crime scene." He said as he approached them in the hall. Bob and Ryan exchanged looks "What are you talking about." "If you had told me about the blood you had tracked into your cars, I would have been able to get to it when it was fresh, it's a lot easier to clean that way." Berry had a way of making something that irritated him greatly sound like it was just part of a normal conversation. "Blood?" the two officers looked at each other. "We've both done nothing today but write speeding tickets." Bob said. "Well," Berry replied "you both found some blood to walk in some where." "The only place we were both at today was the Neon Moon." Berry said. "and there was nothing going on there, just a few bikers sitting around." "Come to think of it." Bob continued as the fog lifted from his over worked mind. "Fred the bartender was acting really weird, barley said a word the whole time." Both men came to the same conclusion at the same time. "Shit!" Officer Jacobs said as the two headed for the door. "Try to get Fred on the phone." tell him we're on our way out if you can." In the early morning mist, Anita Ropper pulled her rental car over to the side of the road behind several state police vehicles. They were all parked on the road since the bar's whole parking lot had been cordoned off. Luckily, this area was the jurisdiction of State police and not some local good'ole boys. Several state troopers approached Anita as soon as she got out of her car and inspected her ID very carefully. When they were satisfied, they escorted her to the detective in charge. Anita was lead to the only other woman on the site who greeted her with a smile. "Agent Ropper, its nice to meet you, I'm Detective Mary Janoitz. I hear you may be looking for the man who did this?" Looking over the empty parking lot with its burnt up motor cycle Anita said "Perhaps, what do we have?" Janoitz lifted the yellow tape that surrounded the lot and let Anita under then followed her. "We have a mess, two bodies, two missing bodies, a witness who is talking non-sense and four other witnesses that we'll probably never be able to find." Their first stop was the remains of a motorcycle. A forensics' team had surround the site and was just finishing its search. "What do you have for me?" Detective Janoitz asked as they approached. "Well, ma'am," one of the men said. "We do have samples of blood and tissue on the remains of the seat and bike. I would say somebody was sitting on this thing when it exploded but we have no idea where the body is. The explosion would not have been great enough to throw a man more then ten feet." "Could a man have survived and been able to walk away?" Agent Ropper asked. The man looked at detective Janoitz who nodded permission for him to answer. "Who ever was sitting on this thing when it blew up was shredded and burned, very ugly and painful way to die." The two women then approached the building. In front was a marked spot next to a pool of dried blood where the first body was found. Anita was handed Polaroid's of the body found there. It was stripped and rolled wearing only a blood soaked T-shirt and filthy brown underwear. Next to it was a pile of burnt cloth. "Who moved the body before these pictures were taken?" Anita asked. "That's the way we found him." Anita pointed to the pile of cloth in the picture. "Can I see this?" Detective Janoitz motioned to an aid who quickly produced a large clear plastic bag. Agent Ropper put on a pair of latex gloves and pulled some of the things out. In it was a set of burned and shredded clothing, including a pair of pants, leather jacket and some kind of shirt. The stuff smelled of smoke, gas and burnt flesh. Anita dropped the everything back into the bag without saying a word. The next stop was the bar. Portable lights had been set up to highlight the areas of interest, including a pool of blood in the middle of the room, a marked spot against the far wall where another body had been found and a large knife imbedded nearly to its hilt in the bar. "What happened in here?" Antia said trying to take in the scene. "Best we can tell," Janoitz said "two people must have been attacked here in the middle of the room then dragged into the back and left for dead. Apparently one of them survived, because he came back fighting." Mary then indicated the bar "He impaled someone's hand to the bar. They would of had to cut the hand all the way through to get away." "Why do you think two people were attacked?" "We followed the trail of blood into the store room where there is another pool of blood. You can see the marks of blood and foot prints as someone pulled them selves up and walked back out. There had to have been two victims because there is no way someone could have lost that much blood and came back fighting." The detective then indicated a path around the bar. "He came out and immediately stabbed the person here at the bar. He then walked into the middle of the room, where he probably shot the man over there. It then looks like he walked around the bar several times, even stopping behind it to eat a burger. We have some very good bloody finger prints from the store room and the plate the burger was on, we've already matched them to your Jeremy Keller." "Did you find anything that may have belonged to Keller?" Ropper asked "Besides empty shot gun shells? Well, we did find a blood soaked shirt that doesn't match any of the wounds of the bodies we have, it must be from the second victim." Anita examined the shirt they produced. The blood it was soaked in had come from a large gash in the back. "Why would he switch clothes on the other victim?" "I don't know, perhaps so it wouldn't look like a body." Anita dropped the bag on a table and said "What if there was one man attacked here?" "What?" the surprise in Detective Janoitz's face was forced. Her two victim theory was obviously devised to explain the impossible. "If it was just one man who was attacked, it would explain why there is no body in back, and why he changed clothes." Anita said as she paced about the room once. "That's not possible," Janoitz whispered "The wound in that shirt is fatal, and the blood in here proves it." Anita frowned "Lieutenant Keller has a knack for walking away from deadly encounters. That's what makes him so damned hard to catch. Now you said there was a witness." "He's down at the station, but nobody's been able to get through to him." "Mind if I had a chat with him?" "Not at all." to be continued..............