Confession by Gary Whitmore - HTML preview

Chapter 1

It was a peaceful, clear night under a beautiful full moon in Phoenix, Arizona, in July 1995. However, for Sam Woods, it was anything but peaceful. He tossed and turned, drenched in sweat beneath his bed sheets, tormented by a nightmare that had haunted him for nearly thirty years.

This was Sam’s nightmare.

In the Deep South, the field crickets chirped in the night air, creating a feeling like autumn in the cool evening breeze. Sam prowled among the tall pine trees, the sound of twigs and small branches cracking beneath his shoes.

The full moon provided enough light for him to navigate without crashing into a tree, but he still used a flashlight for additional illumination. Sam looked determined as he shone the beam of light among the trees, searching for something he had been seeking for over thirty years.

His flashlight finally found the object of his hunt: a beautiful young woman with shoulder-length blonde hair.

She was tied to the trunk of a pine tree.

She was naked and dead. Hundreds of flies buzzed around her rotting and stinking flesh.

Sam’s eyes welled up while he slowly walked closer to her, keeping her body illuminated with his flashlight.

“I’m so sorry!” he told the dead girl while staring at her closed eyes. He reached out and touched her cold cheek. The girl’s eyes suddenly opened and gave Sam a blank zombie stare.

He jumped back, tripping over a small tree branch and falling on his ass in the dirt. “Please forgive me!” Sam cried out, standing up with extreme guilt, then inched closer to the girl.

She gave Sam a loving smile.

He noticed a blunt object smashed in all of her front teeth.

She gave Sam a blank, lifeless stare, then screamed a blood-curdling scream that echoed in the woods.

Sam jumped back, scared to death.

The woods were an eerie quiet.

There were a few seconds of her blank stare at Sam. Her eyes flooded with tears. “Why didn’t you catch him? It hurt so much. I can’t rest until you catch him! You owe me!” the girl sobbed.

She immediately stopped sobbing and stared at Sam with a zombie stare. Her head dropped, and she remained motionless.

Her skin slowly dissolved, along with all of her organs. She was nothing but a skeleton tied to the trunk of that tree.

Sam opened his mouth to speak.

Back to reality in Sam’s bedroom, he bolted up in a panic from his bed. “I’m so sorry!” he pleaded while beads of sweat poured down his face. He frantically glanced around his room for the dead girl, but she was not in sight. He wanted to cry, knowing he had another nightmare.

Sam held back his tears while staring at the bare spot where his wife once slept, then recalled those sweet days when he married Vicky. But that stopped eight years ago when she divorced him after twenty-eight years of marriage. Heavy drinking and nightmares were intolerable, and she could not stand it any longer.

He sat on the edge of his bed and ran his right hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, silently praying these nightmares would cease forever.

Sam reached the bedside table and grabbed a quarter bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey. As soon as the bottle was opened, he gulped down the booze and then dropped the bottle to the floor.

Sam stood up and staggered to his bathroom at the other end of his bedroom.

When he was four feet from the bathroom door, his right foot rolled on another empty whiskey bottle on the floor. He started to tumble but quickly grabbed the dresser. Sam did not fall, but the dresser shook, knocking down a framed picture to the floor.

This picture was of his son Charles Woods, a Major in the U.S. Marine Corps Major, with his wife, Beth, and eight-year-old daughter, Mindy. Sam’s proud of Charles and his accomplishments in the Marine Corps.

He picked the picture off the floor and set it back on the top of the dresser.

He staggered into the bathroom.

After shaving and taking a hot shower, Sam ate his typical breakfast of Cocoa Krispies and coffee alone in his kitchen.

After he cleaned up his dishes, Sam put on his black suit, white shirt, and red tie.

This morning’s drive through the streets of Phoenix was the drive Sam had dreamt about for years.

Sam entered the FBI building where he worked for the past twenty-eight years.

He walked through a maze of cubicles, a beehive of activity with agents keeping America safe from criminals.

“Good morning, Sam. Are you happy this day finally arrived?” an FBI agent called out from his cubicle when he spotted Sam.

“Yeah. It’s hard to believe it’s finally here,” Sam smiled while walking past the agent.

Sam entered his cubicle and stared at it for a few seconds. On his one cubicle wall hung a few pictures of Sam, George Williams, and Peter Bronson during their annual fishing trips to northern California and other old pictures of a younger Sam and Charles.

Sam grabbed his coffee cup off his desk and left his cubicle.

He came back five minutes later and sat down. He kicked his shoes up on his desk and sipped his morning cup of Java.

Peter Bronson walked up to the entrance to Sam’s cubicle. Peter was Sam’s chief, but Sam remembered the day Peter joined the agency in the early 1970s.

“Sam, they’re ready for you.”

Sam got up with his coffee cup in hand and walked out of his cubicle with Peter.

He followed Peter through the maze of cubicles, and Sam rolled his eyes when he noticed the area was void of his fellow agents.

They walked by the coffee pot table, where Sam quickly filled his cup.

They headed down the hallway.

The conference room was packed with fifty agents. On the one end of the room hung a “Happy Retirement Sam Woods” banner on the wall above a table.

On the table was a cake decorated with a fishing boat in

the water and “Good Luck Sam” above it.

Harry Charles and Nick Wilson, the office’s top dogs, stood at one end of the table.

“Is he on his way?” Harry asked Nick.

” I heard Peter is rounding him up.”

Sam entered the room with Peter.

Everybody stood up and clapped to honor Sam.

Sam said hello to everybody with his coffee cup as he walked up to the table. He placed his cup by the cake and shook hands with Harry and Nick.

Nick motioned for everybody to sit down and be quiet.

They obeyed.

“Thank you all for attending this special occasion, the retirement of one of the best agents the bureau has had the pleasure of paying. Mister Sam Woods,” Nick addressed the crowd.

“And I would like to say that America has been safer with Sam putting criminals behind bars,” Harry added.

Nick looked over at Sam. “And now, if Sam wants to say a few words.”

Sam reached down, picked up his coffee cup, took a sip, and paused for a few seconds. “I can’t believe I started with the bureau forty years ago. It was a great ride. It was an interesting ride,” he said, then took another sip of coffee and paused for a few seconds.

“Harry said that America was safer with me putting criminals behind bars.” He took another sip of coffee and paused for a few seconds.

“That’s true, but there was one criminal I couldn’t place behind bars.” Sam took another sip of coffee and paused for a few seconds.

“I have regrets over my failure with not catching this sicko,” Sam finished, then took a long drink of coffee and paused for a few seconds.

In the back of the conference room, Trevor rolled his eyes and leaned over to Wilfred. “I’m going to puke if I hear that nineteen-sixties October Slayer sob story again,” Trevor whispered.

“Tell me about it! That’s all I heard during my first week here at the bureau. I never caught the killer, whine whine whine,” Wilfred returned in a whisper.

“I know. Sometimes, killers get away. Get over it,” Trevor returned in a whisper.

Wilfred nodded in agreement with everybody around them who had heard their whispering.

Sam looked ashamed when he remembered his past failures. “I promised someone that I would solve that case. I broke that promise, and that frustrated me so much that it cost me a divorce.” Sam looked remorseful. “And then Bo Smithson from Atlanta took over the case,” Sam added and looked pissed. “Why they stuck the dumbest agent in the bureau's history on that case, I’ll never know.”

Everybody in the room was sick of hearing his whiny story again but was glad it would be for the last time.

“Thank you, Sam; now, if I can get someone to cut the cake, we can proceed,” Nick asked the audience. Laurie, an administrative assistant, walked up to the table from the other wall. “I’ll cut it,” she volunteered with a smile.

An hour later, Sam’s party was over. Sam was glad, as he hated being the center of attention. But he had to play the game since everybody who retired was thrown a party.

Sam poured another cup of coffee at the coffee table.

He returned to his cubicle, where Laurie placed a cardboard box on his desk.

He looked around to make sure his eyes were not watching. He opened up a bottom desk drawer, then discreetly removed five folders that were rubber-banded together. They were copies of the case files on the five girls killed by the October Slayer. Sam quickly dropped the five folders into his box.

George Williamson entered Sam’s cubicle and startled him.

“George, you scared me,” said Sam while he glanced back at the box, ensuring the file folders were safely tucked away.

“Sorry about that, my friend,” George said while he watched Sam remove all the pictures from his cubicle wall. I’m sorry I missed your retirement party. I was out checking a lead on a bank robbery case.”

“I understand. So, when do you plan on retiring?” Sam replied while he dropped his pictures into his box.

“Hopefully, in two years. My bother-in-law said he could get me a job with security at Warner Brothers,” George replied with a gleam in his eyes, thinking about hanging around with famous movie stars.

“Warner Brothers? That sounds like a sweet gig.”

“Oh, it is. What are your plans for retirement? Do you plan on getting another job?”

“I’m finished working, so I plan to relax and fish,” Sam replied.

“Good. Maybe if you finally let go of that old case, those nightmares will cease.”

“I had another one last night.”

“You need to find a sweet woman in Florida to take care of you in your golden years,” George added with hopeful eyes.

Sam glanced down at his bare ring finger, thinking about Vicky. “That would be nice.”

“Hey, George, you have a call about that bank robbery,” another FBI agent yelled across the cubicles.

“I’ll be there in a second,” George yelled back.

“Well, Sam, keep in touch, and maybe we can fish out in the Atlantic this time.”

“I would like that very much,” Sam replied while they shook hands.

George rushed out of Sam’s cubicle.

Peter entered Sam’s cubicle. ” I guess this is it, Sam.”

“Yep, the final day,” Sam replied while he glanced around his cubicle.

“Listen, I’m working on a transfer to the Tampa office. If that happens, I’ll let you know, and we can get together for some more fishing.”

“That would be grand.”

Peter stuck out his hand, and Sam shook it. “I’ll be in touch soon.”

Sam picked up his box and left his cubicle for the last time.

Two months later, Sam packed up his house in Phoenix to move to Florida to finish his golden years.

Outside Sam’s house, he was being stalked. Billy Stein was stalking Sam, and Billy was a bully of a man with a temper to match. He sat inside his new 1995 Chevy Impala, with Mississippi plates, a few houses down from Sam’s house.

Billy watched while Sam chatted with the Allied moving men outside their van backed into Sam’s driveway.

“It’s about fucking time,” Billy mumbled to himself as he was relieved Sam finally retired from the FBI.

He waited and sipped on his third bottle of Budweiser while he eyed Sam’s house. He lit a Marlboro cigarette, smoked and drank beer while watching the moving men load Sam’s furniture into the moving van.

Two hours later, the men closed and locked the rear doors of the Allied trailer.

They got inside the truck cab, started, and drove off down the street.

Billy started up his Impala and drove off after the moving van.

Then, for some bizarre reason, Billy followed the moving van to Florida.

He drove back to Mississippi when he got Sam’s new address in Daytona Beach.