BUILD A BETTER BOY TRUSIM #6: Treasure your son. He is more valuable than any worldly good could ever possibly be.


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Last Time: The Orderly took the card and placed it in his shirt pocket. As they stood up, Darden felt like he bore an iron yoke. Brownlee possessed a heavy burden too. A bond between the two men had been formed.


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Darden inserted the key into the ignition and brought his cruiser to life. He pulled out from under the portico where he had parked while interviewing Drew Larsen at the hospital. The vehicle had power controls and he drove about five miles west on Highway 99.

As was his custom after an interview, he stopped the vehicle in a rural area. His reason for doing so was to think about what he'd been told. Open meadows of colorful monkeyflowers were on his left and right sides. Off in the distance was a stand of fir trees. Between the shoulder of the road and the meadow was a steel guard rail.

Collecting his thoughts, the scenic countryside melted into a nebulous dream. His mind began to formulate a theory. Facts garnished from Drew Larsen became the building blocks. With the details of the Larsen family murders, as the boy had described them, fresh in his mind, Darden was determined to see if any new information he had gleaned meshed with old certainties he knew before the interview occurred.

He pulled his laptop out, opened it up, and placed it on the passenger seat. Twenty years earlier, another family had been brutally murdered in their home. The Lancaster Family. Darden punched a few keys and the data related to that crime appeared on the screen.

The Lancasters had resided three-quarters of a mile down the road from where Darden lived. He knew them well. Jennifer Lancaster was his sweetheart at the time.

Darden recalled how Molly Lancaster, her mother, was stabbed to death with a serrated butcher knife. Emily Larsen, Drew Larsen's mother, had been killed with a butcher knife as well. Crime scene investigators at the time discovered her body laying face down on the kitchen floor, just like Emily Larsen's had been found.

Her husband, Arnold Lancaster, had been savagely bludgeoned to death with a crowbar while watching a movie on TV in his living room. Mark Larsen had been battered with a baseball bat while watching a DVD on TV in his den. Arnold Lancaster's wheelchair-bound sister, Marlene Mapleton, had been sliced to death with a box cutter, and with such ferociousness the cut ran deep in her throat. Peggy Morrison, Drew Larsen's grandmother, had been massacred in her wheelchair as well.

Twelve-year-old Doris Lancaster had been raped and stabbed to death. Forensics established this assault occurred with the same knife her mother had been slaughtered with. This was eerily similar to Drew Larsen's baby sister, Dorothy's fate. The comparisons between the two crimes alarmed the Detective.

Darden's laptop contained a file entitled "Lancaster - Larsen". This file contained the analogies between the murders of the two families. Cocooned in his cruiser, a semi-truck and trailer zoomed by him on the road at a high rate of speed. As it raced out of sight, Darden considered the particulars of the two murders.

Drew Larsen, the handsome honor student, with smooth and innocent features, had ravaged his family. The killer of the Lancaster family had been a prowler named Otis Jackson. The vagrant met an untimely death at the hands of the law enforcement officers attempting to apprehend him. The fatal shot being fired by Rookie Police Officer Sean Darden. Some reports called it suicide by cop.

A journal Jackson maintained was uncovered during the course of the investigation. On several pages of the chronicle, he considered himself to be the Son of Kronos, the Greek equivalent of the Grim Reaper.

An admirer of his atrocities, Otis Jackson was a traveling vagabond. Stolen vehicles became his main means of transportation. His shelter included abandoned buildings, scrapyard automobiles, and viaducts. Jackson wasn't particular. He'd even spent more than one night inside culverts and unlocked sheds. Anywhere he could obtain solitude.

Rail-thin, Jackson stood 6 feet 2 inches tall. His wrists were ample and boney. His shoulder blades were distorted. After he butchered the Lancasters, Jackson dialed 9-1-1. He demanded the fresh bodies be located before rigor mortis set in, the corpses stiffened, and decomposition began.

Jackson's telephoned message to the Police upon murdering his victims rang disconcertingly comparable to that of Drew Larsen's. Darden had the recording loaded into his laptop. Alone in the silence of the cruiser on the side of the road, he streamed it again.

"I killed the Lancasters. They are at 4673 Martens Road. What I've done is such a marvelous sight. Revenge is so sweet!"

Darden understood the relative resemblances between the two gruesome murder scenes. They could easily insinuate Drew Larsen imitated Otis Jackson as homage to the vicious monster. However, the boy had not mentioned Jackson's name at all. The only motive he offered was revenge. There was that word again.

Darden had an appointment to keep before he headed home. He closed his personal computer and placed it on the floorboard of the cruiser. He did not want to think the thought that crossed his mind, but he could not push it aside.

An ominous voice warned him his wife and children were in grave danger from someone, or even worse, something. Of that, he was certain. The lingering question that ran through his mind was could he save them from whatever evil haunted them?



Cast of Characters:

Detective Sean Darden - Lead Investigator of the Larsen family murders.

Arnold Lancaster - Patriarch of the slaughtered Lancaster Family.

Molly Lancaster - His wife.

Jennifer Lancaster - His oldest daughter.

Doris Lancaster - His youngest daughter.

Marlene Mapleton - His sister.

Otis Jackson - Vagrant who slaughtered the Lancaster family.

Mark Larsen - Drew Larsen's father.

Emily Larsen - Drew Larsen's mother.

Dorothy Larsen - Drew Larsen's younger sister. He raped her before he murdered her.

Peggy Morrison - Drew Larsen's grandmother.

Drew Larsen- Thirteen-year-old boy who confessed to the brutal slayings of his family members.