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haddonfieldproject · 4 years

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<<PREVIOUS⏺<<CONTENTS>>

1.2.3 HALLOWEEN NIGHT/NOVEMBER 1st 2:10 AM

Haddonfield, Illinois

As the Tate family continued eastward through Missouri in the rain, Officer J.T. Swain pulled his police cruiser into the parking lot of the Warren County Sherrif's Office. Swain jerked the hood of his rain slicker up, took a long and shaking breath, and braced himself for the deluge from above as he gripped his door handle. He quickly exited, shutting the door with his hip, and sprinted toward the doors, kicking up large splashes as he sloshed through the puddles in the parking lot---a parking lot that had been empty a few hours before when Samantha Nguyen had entered it.

It was now full.

His fellow officer, and friend, Greg Mullenix, met him at the front entrance, and held the door open for him as he stepped inside. “Where the hell have you been man?”

Swain threw his hood back, “I had to escort the Tramer's from the police station to the park.”

Mullenix winced as he opened the glass door on the inside annex.

“It was horrible,” Swain continued, “that boy's mom kept crying and crying, and I had to hold an umbrella over her while they ID'd their son.”

Mullenix put a hand on his friend's back. “I'm sorry man.

“What did I miss?” Swain asked as they headed through the lobby, passed the plastic chairs, and to the right of the front counter with it's frosted glass window...still shut. They could hear Officer Williams and another voice, a female voice, talking away from behind the glass. The phone still rang incessantly.

“It's a shit show.” Mullenix replied, pulling his wallet out of his pocket and tapping it to the little white square beside the large metal door that read: AUTHORIZED PERSONELL ONLY. His little plastic keycard inside reacted to the pad and a light at the top of the square went from red to green. He jerked the door open.

A cacophany of voices hit them immediately. The first door on the left gave way to a large conference room. The overlapping conversations were emanating from there. Six or seven Officers sat about the large mahogany table and about the same number stood in various places around the room. As Officer Mullenix and Officer Swain entered the doorway, they were bumped from behind by two other men. Deputy Sheriff Ben Meeker had exited his office from across the hall and pushed through the crowd. He was holding a manilla file folder in his hand. Another man, with a receding hairline and smart black and white business attire, followed him.

“Feds?” J.T. Mouthed to Mullenix as they moved to get out of the way of the two men.

Greg shrugged.

“Alright everyone!” Meeker rose his voice to a level that could be heard over the other conversation. “Everyone shut up!”

The conversations ceased.

“So as you know, Sheriff Brackett is of course in the hospital with his daughter so all operations has been handed over to me.”

He looked around the room, took a deep breath and then said, “Look---I know tonight has been,” he stopped for a moment, looking down at the desk, trying to fight the urge to get emotional. “Well,” he continued, “let's just say it, tonight's been really shitty. I know and you know we're stretched to the breaking point right now as it is, but US Marshals have something else we need to pay attention to, so this is Deputy McGrath out of the Springfield outfit, I need you to give him your full attention.”

The room was dead quiet, save for a solitary cough from the back corner of the room. Meeker switched places with the man who had come in with him. He cleared his throat and when he spoke, a sharp New England accent came through,

“Hello,” he said, pausing for a moment, thinking about what to say. “Deputy Meeker here has been telling me about the clusterfuck of a night you guys have had,” he looked around the room at the tired faces of the officers, “and I want you to know that the last thing I want to do is add to the little shitstorm you guys got going on in this little town tonight, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to.”

Meeker handed the file folder to the officer next to him, a fat, snow white young looking kid with pink cheeks and frosty blonde curls all over his head. The kid's name was Kip Kinnerly, but all the other guys called him “Doughboy.”

“Kip, look at this and then pass it.”

“Yes sir.” Doughboy replied curtly as he took the folder.

Meeker raised his voice. “I want everyone to take a good look at this!”

The man in the suit cleared his throat again. “As he told you, I am Deputy Mark McGrath from US Marshals, and as most of you have no doubt already heard, we have been hunting two extremely dangerous persons and we believe they may have just arrived in your back yard, that is, in the general area of Warren County.”

“Are you fucking serious?” An Officer who stood in the corner of the room spat. “Are you talking about those two shits from Mississippi?”

“Let's watch the language Spaulding.” Meeker snapped.

“It's alright Sherrif Meeker,” McGrath smiled. “Two little shits are exactly what they are. Their names are Lloyd and Lee Chumway of Biloxi Mississippi. And we are requesting---hell we are begging—for your assistance so we can nab these sonsabitches and at least give y'all a silver lining to this terrible night.”

“Oh fuck.” Officer Malcom Donald breathed as he looked into the file folder. “I thought I'd seen enough of this kind of shit tonight.”

The photograph of the Chumway brothers had reached Mullenix and Swain. They had already seen their faces on the television the days before. Hell, all of America had.

“Someone snap pics of that with their cellphone and text it out to everyone. I want everyone to have those two faces burned in their brains.” Meeker said.

“I got you boss.” Swain replied. He passed the picture back to Mullenix and began to dig in his pocket for his cellphone. “Here, hold this.”

“Who is this chick?” Spaulding asked, taking another pic from Doughboy and handing it to Officer Emrah Lagenbruner next to him who had just squeezed himself into the circle that was forming around the conference room. .

“Whoa,” The young African American officer said upon seeing the picture, “Gonna be a closed casket for sure.”

McGrath pointed to the photograph in his hand.

“Her name was Marina Madden, Lee Chumway's brother...he's the younger of the two. On Thursday afternoon, around 13:30 Central Time, these two upstanding citizens apparently brutally raped this woman, and then pummeled her with a bedside lamp.”

Mullenix took the picture from Lagenbrunner. The aforementioned Marina Madden was sprawled out on burgundy carpet, near the foot of a bed-frame, her lifeless eyes gazing upward at a ceiling that was out of view of the camera. Blood was congealed on the side of her head, a broken bedside lamp lay beside her, a dark spot in the carpet spread out from beside her head. The darkened puddle was flecked with bits of brain matter.

Mullenix passed the picture to Swain.

“Who's this?” Spaulding asked, holding up another picture before passing it to Lagenbruner. “Whoa, hello sexy!” Lagenbruner quipped again upon seeing the picture and passing it to Mullenix. It was a circa 1977 Olan Mills portrait of a woman, wearing a bright floral print dress, cat-eye tinted glasses and a large brown bee-hive hairdo in front of a tacky painted background with a sunset, trees, and ducks. Two young boys in white suits and red ties sat on her knee.

McGrath answered, “That is the mother of these two fine citizens. Melba Jean Chumway. Aparently they grew bored of Miss Madden and decided to drive over to their mommy's house. They beat her to death with a hammer.”

Lagenbruner whistled as he saw the next photo. “Good night,” he breathed as he passed it to his left.

Mullenix's stomach tightened as he saw it. Even though she was face down on a linoleum floor, you could tell it was the same woman. Her dress was different, but an equally as offensive floral print. Her bee-hive was gray now, and a different, more modern pair of glasses lay broken beside her. The side of her head was split open, and old darkened blood was pooled on the tile beside her. Large shoe tracks were printed in blood all around her as well. A blood soaked hammer lay just beyond her elbow.

For not the first time tonight, Mullenix was feeling nauseated. As the wave of sickness washed over him and through him, he closed his eyes, gulped and opened them again to receive another photo. The time, a pretty but a little chunky woman in a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt and camouflage pants was sitting atop a tractor. A field of snowy white cotton gleamed in the background. An older gentleman stood beside the tractor with a cigarette handing out of his mouth and a battered confederate battle-flag hat laying crooked on his head. He wore a simple blue shirt with the words TRUMP in bold white letters, along with the tag-line in red below it: Make America Great Again.

“I'm guessing this one is their engagement photo?” Swain tried to quip as he took the picture from Mullenix. It came out hollow as his voice cracked.

McGrath guestered to him. “They then left for Lloyd's apartment where Lloyd's unfortunate girlfriend Kelly Willis-Ross was living. They nearly decapitated her with a kitchen knife.”

Another grizzly crime photo was passed over. Poor Miss Willis-Ross lay in a bathtub, soaked red. Her head lay disjointed on her shoulders, her chin impossibly almost touching her right breast. Swain felt another surge in his stomach. He tried to focus on something in the picture so that he would appear to be looking at the slide, but not really looking at the carnage itself. His eyes fixed on a blue bottle which sat on the side of the tub next to the unfortunate carcass of Lloyd's now ex-girlfriend. HERBAL ESSENCES CONDITIONER. BLUE RASPBERRY.

“Jesus Christ,” Mullenix breathed.

Swain shot him a glance. His friend and partner's face was caught in a grimace.

“I know,” Swain whispered, “good luck sleeping tonight.”

“I don't think I'm ever going to sleep again,” Mullenix mumbled.

McGrath continued, as more horrific scenes of gore was paraded down the line.

“They then drove to their place of employment: a Papagayos Mexican Restaurant. These two star employees were on the clock for only 53 minutes before they murdered their boss and everyone in the store with kitchen knives. They have been on the run every since.”

“How do we know they're coming here?” Meeker asked, taking a seat on the edge of the conference table.

McGrath answered, “On Thursday night around 20:00, 911 operators at a Southern Star Gas Station near Oxford Mississippi were alerted to a robbery and homicide, and closed circuit cameras in the store captured the Chumway brothers. Two of the men they beat to death inside the store were concealed carry operators who were overwhelmed before they were able to withdraw their weapons. The Chumways stole the weapons and are now considered armed and dangerous....well...more dangerous.”

A few more cops trickled into the conference room from outside, looking pale and cold, shaking off the rain. McGrath paused as they took their place around the room, then continued, “Early Friday morning, around 02:30 we got a bead on to what direction they were heading in when 911 dispatch got word of a robbery at a Dixie Donuts outside Memphis Tennessee. Again surveillance at the location confirmed that the Chumway brothers were perpetrators of the crime. They were tracked to a strip club in the area and then to a motel, but apparently just missed the grasp of Memphis police. Their pursuit was also put off by trick or treating traffic, something I heard you guys had trouble with as well as you were tracking your own psychopath through the town.”

A few of the cops nodded and murmuring in agreement. Agent McGrath paused , rubbing his chin, his eyes clouded over, as if he were lost in his thoughts. After a moment he said, “We have every reason to assume they continued north, and would be entering this vicinity very soon if they continued at their assumed rate of speed. Unfortunately we have no idea what they could be driving now, they keep switching vehicles, but we just need you boys to keep an eye out.”

There was another cough and a few moments of heavy silence. Then Doughboy snapped to attention, his blue eyes wet, and barked: “Sir yes sir.”

The others officers followed suit, but all were less exuberant and most were merely mumbling. Deputy-Sheriff Meeker sat up from the edge of the table and approached Agent McGrath, and placing a hand on the shorter man's shoulder. McGrath gave a half smile, shooting a glance to Meeker and then back to the assembled officers. “Well okay then, we know what to look for, and we'll do our best to nab these sonsabitches.” Meeker extended his hand and McGrath took it.

Officer Mullenix yawned. Officer Ted Mitchum came in to the room with a large WANTED poster of the Chumway brothers. He lifted a stapler and stapled it to the wall next to the whiteboard at the far end of the conference room. Mullenix fixated on their face.

They look so normal, he thought, like just two simple men....two...really normal simple men.

NEXT>>

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