Enough-Pt. 4 (finale)

Part 4: Hero

           Jenner pushed her office door open and was greeted with an overwhelming stack of files on her desk. The stack was starting to slide off the side and Jenner hurried into her office to catch them before the files landed in the trash.  Easing down into her chair, she started to look through the files. She didn’t glance at the words written in a clipped hand on the cover, but when she reached the last one, she did. Nadine Beckett. It had taken two weeks. From the moment the Beckett girl was kidnapped, it had taken two weeks to find her, or at least, what was left of her.

            Jenner placed the file face down on her desk and after a few moments of staring at its back, she flipped it open and started pawing through the pages, her eyes scanning over every sentence.

The tragedy that was Nadine Beckett came down to one thing and one thing only. That “thing” was called trust. Nadine Beckett, the girl next door, was the person no one could say anything bad about. Straight-A student, honor roll, good stable home environment and just an all-around studious kid. It was sad that her demise had come in the shape of the town golden boy, Kenton Fuller, leading Nadine to her death with the promise of a date on his lips.

Kenton Fuller, good kid. Whole town adored him. Good grades, good looks, kid had a future, Jenner remembered Linden saying. When she had burst into the interrogation room with Linden at her heels, the whole office basically behind the glass, she was finally seeing the Fuller boy for what he was. A liar. The boy that Nadine had trusted up until her final breaths, the boy who had probably come to her mind in those final moments was part of the last happy moment Becket probably had. How many times had she fantasized about escaping? How many times had Nadine envisioned seeing her loved ones again? Envisioned the Fuller kid?

During the first interrogation that had Jenner bolting from her house, Kenton had remained silent for much it. He mumbled about a lawyer and though they had been forced to let him go that first time because of the lack of evidence against him, Jenner theorized it was only a matter of time until he would come back to them. And he did. Less than a day later the car Jenner had ordered to follow Kenton around had caught him hanging out with a junkie girl and found that his actions were similar to the theatre incident. The girl had held him with a star-quality gaze and there was Kenton jogging back into the diner they had just had dinner in and sure enough there was the van pulling up to try and take her. The cops sprung to action and with the kidnap attempt foiled, the van sped off and the girl screamed at Kenton for leaving her. The cops on the scene recalled how shocked he had been to see her.

“It was like a deer caught in headlights!” Officer Brady, one of the cops in the watch car laughed. “I’ve never seen someone so confused before.” It was his expression that gave him away. Finally.

When he was brought in the second time around, Jenner had been pleased but her happiness was short-lived. Four hours into their interrogation, Jenner found herself bringing Kenton to his knees. She could see it in his glistening eyes, he was going to crack, she was going to get him and then The Chief walked into the room. “New evidence” had come to light and Jenner and Linden were brought into the other room to view it.

What Jenner stared at in the small, dim office was the end of a once live broadcast. What lie in the middle of the floor was a dark mass and under it was an even darker puddle. The Chief, who had tears lighting his eyes hit the back arrow and there was Nadine Beckett’s face. Then the video was playing and there was Beckett, her tear stained cheeks, her bloody and broken nose, her bruised and cut cheek. There were those eyes of hers, her busted lips forming words, pleading, pleading.

Sonofabitch, Linden had muttered under his breath. Going by her gut feeling, Jenner yanked the laptop out of its plug and went back into the interrogation room. With Linden at her heels, her Chief shouting at her to stop, Jenner kicked open the interrogation room door and placed the laptop firmly in front of Kenton. It was the middle of the video, after Nadine had been caught mid-plead. What followed was more gruesome than her devastating appearance. What followed was her death. Kenton turned green, tears in his eyes.

It only took minutes to get Fuller to crack after the video. He had been caught simply because he had been sloppy. Before Beckett all the kids Kenton had picked up had been nobodies, like the runaway junkie, the kind that no one cared for, that no one knew. But people knew Beckett and they remembered Kenton asking her out in the hallway before seventh period. They remembered her cheeks going aflame and they remembered his perfect, trademark smile breaking out across his lips.

Kenton knew who had killed Beckett. He knew who had savagely ended her life on camera; the video streaming on the internet. A video that had been live only after the fact and ended with the killer stepping in front of the camera drenched in Beckett’s blood before ripping it from its place and crushing it in his fist. Kenton’s parents were in shock that their son was even capable of such a heinous crime but their shock didn’t stop the department from slapping him with a future crushing sentence.

Jenner hadn’t allowed herself to think about Fuller’s reasons why he had done what he did. It was only after the kid was slapped with a heavy sentence that she stopped and thought about it. Running her fingers over the paper, she remembered all the rumors that trickled out around the office.

The Fuller’s, old money, fairly good people. It was all a disguise. Behind closed doors they were something else. The need to be perfect, to be the All-American family was what was driving this family to the ground. Kenton grew up in an alien house that though it instilled independence, it didn’t give him love. His mother was too caught up in being a socialite, only babying her son in times of company. His father, a bold businessman was a firm believer in tough love, in manly love. Men didn’t need reassurance. Men always knew what was right and wrong. Men didn’t need love. He was a man instilled with old ideas, the wife should be at home keeping house and having a big meal at the end of a long hard day at work. Kenton had spent his whole life looking for someone to fill that void in him and though the attention from girls was working, it wasn’t enough.

Then one day Kenton met a drifter who had been watching him talk to girls and expressed in Kenton a sort of partnership. The man, big and burly was the exact opposite of a loving bear, but he needed Kenton. For once Kenton didn’t have to kill himself in sports, or kill himself with studying, or kill himself pretending to be something he wasn’t. He was good with girls, he was good with making them comfortable. He didn’t have to try, all he had to do was do. This drifter needed someone like him and Jenner wondered then if maybe that’s what it was all along. Maybe Kenton needed to be needed.

Either way he gave Jenner and Linden the address of the killer, said that he had visited the man just a few days before, said that he had seen Beckett too.

A team led by Linden ran out quickly soon after. At this point in the week, it had been about twelve days going on thirteen since the Becket girl was taken. But Jenner had stayed behind, retreating to her office where she watched the video again. She had seen enough dead bodies in her lifetime, more than she had ever cared to. If she went to the scene and saw Beckett’s body, Jenner wasn’t sure how she’d take it but she knew it wouldn’t be good. There are some sick, sick people in this world, Linden had huffed. Over ten million views? You should see the disgusting crap the world writes about this kid. She’s a hero dammit. A hero!

            Was Beckett a hero? That was the burning question, a question that Jenner herself felt unable to answer. The video of the fair-skinned sixteen year old brunette pleading to be saved only ended with the girl being brutally murdered on video. A video that was broadcast on the web, a video that took exactly two hours to be reported, and a video whose existence had been brought to the attention of police a whole four hours after. Linden was right. There were sick people in the world.

In the beginning of the video, there was a badly beaten Beckett, standing in front of the camera begging her followers to help her. Who knew if she had meant to make the broadcast live or not; Jenner could only imagine how the girl felt in that moment, how fast her fingers would move, how many mistakes she would make. The fact that she had even gotten the camera to record alone spoke volumes. On camera, Beckett said it wasn’t a joke. She said she needed help, that she was serious. It was heartbreaking to watch, heartbreaking to see her probably aching and cracked lips beg and whisper. She was reaching out to the world, letting it know that she was still alive and through it all there was something shining in her eyes. At the last minute, amidst her stuttering and pleas, the basement door had burst open. The shaken girl managed to turn off the screen before whipping her head around just as a tall shadow appeared at the top of the stairs.

“What are you doing?” The killer growled and took long strides toward her. Within seconds, he was pulling Nadine back by her hair, unaware that it was recording.

            Then the blows began. His fist connected with the full front of Nadine’s face and the poor girl, frail from weeks of being tied up, weeks of mistreatment and an improper diet, could barely defend herself. All she could do was take it. Just as the blood started to puddle under Nadine’s face and the killer finally dropped her, he started to pull his leg back, preparing himself for a kick when Jenner’s office door swung open.

            Jenner had been watching the video again, the hairs on her arm rising. When the door swung open, her heart had leapt to her throat and her hand shot forward, turning the monitor off. Looking up, she saw Linden hovering by her door, sweat dotting his forehead.

            “We caught him.” Linden breathed.

            Jenner raised an eyebrow, but tied to appear calm even though her heart was racing in her throat.

            Linden fought an eye roll and gripped the knob with his hand. He seemed rushed as he looked over his shoulder and then back at Jenner. “Who the fuck else, Jenner? The modern day Jack the Ripper. The sick bastard abducting girls in town. We fucking caught that son of a bitch.”

            Jenner stood up abruptly, nearly sending her files onto the floor and Linden grinned.

            “Interrogation room.” Linden said. “That sack of shit is ours.”

            With that, Linden turned and raced down the hall. He looked like a kid rushing to the tree on Christmas and Jenner was soon running after him. She longed to see the true face of the blurry image on her screen. She longed to see the face of the man who could kidnap and then sadistically bludgeon over eight teenage girls. But her desire, she swore as she ran, wasn’t that of some sick fanatic. It was about seeing the face of a man, of a human being, capable of killing children.

            The hallways leading to the interrogation room were packed with officers buzzing about the new arrest. A few of them clapped Jenner on her back muttering congratulations, but Jenner didn’t return their kindness with smiles. Outside by the entrance, every time the doors slid open, Jenner caught the sound of flickering cameras, reporters shouting at the incoming cops. It was a miracle, She thought, they hadn’t broken through the glass.

            Catching sight of a small struggle ahead, Jenner slowed her pace and found it was just Linden pushing a few officers trying to sneak a peek at the killer back.

“He looks like a psycho.” Chief Duncan muttered, rubbing the ends of his moustache. Jenner looked up at her rundown Chief, pressing her lips into a tight line. The Beckett case had driven the entire station into complete chaos and the more bodies found the more the hysteria grew. Angry parents practically lived in their waiting room and when the Beckett girl went viral, if it wasn’t for the capture of the alleged killer, Jenner knew the station would probably be burned down.

“I want you and Linden in there. Talk to the bastard. Get him to crack.” Chief mumbled. Jenner nodded and watched her Chief walk down the hall before stepping closer to Linden.  Outside the door Linden was peering into the room like a giddy school girl.

            “Can you believe that sick bastard was trying to kill himself? Fucking kill himself? After all he’s fucking done? And you know what he had the nerve to say? You know what he had the nerve to say after we fucking pried his ass from the car?” The last question was enough to make Linden angry all over again and with a throbbing temple, he pulled the interrogation room door wide open and stepped inside.

            Jenner followed. They sat on the opposite side of the table, Linden first and then pulled out Jenner’s. On the other side, as Jenner eased down into the offered seat, sat the killer himself, the infamous dark shadow in the video.

            He was ragged, a wild mountain-type looking man with bloodshot eyes. There was a musty smell emanating off of his ragged jumpsuit-clad self and it made Jenner’s stomach bubble. The killer sat calmly across from them, his expression hidden behind his thick beard.

            Jenner folded her hands and Linden sat beside her, his knee bouncing rapidly under the table. Looking down at the files on the table before her, Jenner flipped to the first page and looked at the killer’s name. Gregory Samson. Jenner twisted her lips. It sounded so proper and not at all fitting for the man sitting across from her.

            “Mr. Samson—”

            “Please, call me Greg.” The man replied almost instantly. Jenner blinked a few times and then looked down at the file again while Linden balled his hands into tight fists.

            Clearing her throat, Jenner nodded and looked through the file. “Up until this point, looks like you’ve had no record.”

            Samson nodded, his eyes closing. “Yes, that sounds about right.”

            Linden pressed his lips into a tight line and Jenner looked up at Samson.

            “For someone accused of such heinous crimes, you’re taking this all very calmly.”

            “I know what I’ve done and I’m not ashamed.”

            For a brief moment there was silence. Linden sat stunned and Jenner could not form words. This gruesome child-killer had such a cool demeanor it was maddening. Then Linden reached across the table and smashed Samson’s face down onto it. With blood starting to trickle down his nose, Samson blinked his big brown eyes at the two detectives, confusion surrounding them.

            “You sick bastard!” Linden snapped, still holding Samson by the collar of his shirt. “You kill all those girls and you have the balls to sit there, to sit there and say shit like that?!”

            Jenner placed an arm on Linden’s and very slowly, he started to relax. He released Samson and eased back into his seat, still huffing under his breath.

            Samson remained just as calm and merely sniffed, but the blood continued to trickle out from h