Chapter 5: They Will Take Anybody, Almost

Roxie completed her application to the State Police Academy, and was accepted. She figured they were desperate if she got in. Roxie was a tough woman though, and wouldn't take grief from anyone. The night after the incident, she went with Tim and Marie to the hospital to see Officer Langley. He was still in serious condition, and barely recognized them.

"Now I know why you were standing over the SOB like that," Langley croaked. "My Captain told me that he raped one of you, and he had another 14-year-old girl in his plane, ready to do her too. I'm sorry, I thought he was one of your husbands when I heard that a woman hit someone with a car at the airport."

"Yeah, that kind of thing has happened lately," agreed Tim. "The important thing is that you get back on the job. We did get him before he got away."

"I hope he goes away for good," said Marie.

Langley started to laugh, but winced from the pain. The ASP had the suspect for four prior rapes, two murders, a kidnapping, two witness ID's, and now Anchorage had him on the attempted murder of a Policeman. That made three witnesses against him. Tim assured Marie the only place Duncan was headed was to Hell.

Patrolman Langley felt uplifted knowing the guy who shot him was denied bail, and would definitely never see the outside of a prison again. His mistake was a rookie mistake, and if his partner hadn't been sick, it never would have happened. The example of the event would be used to teach cadets what not to do when coming in contact with an unknown person.

Just after Marie and Tim's shifts began, a 9-1-1 call came in about an armed robbery and carjacking at the Begich-Boggs Visitor Center at Portage. The Girdwood officers were already on the scene of an armed man holed up at Crow Creek Gold Mine, with hostages. Tim and Collins headed out to Portage to investigate, while a helicopter was dispatched to find the car, possibly tied in with the hostage taker at Crow Creek.

The Crow Creek Mine episode began when a man pulled a gun on the manager, and demanded all of his gold. An off duty Anchorage cop there with his in-laws, called it in on his cell phone, and exchanged shots with a second suspect, before he disappeared in the woods. Moments later, a dark blue 1999 Toyota Camry was seen peeling out of the parking lot. Nobody got the license number, but they had to assume it was the same one they found abandoned near where the 2003 Ford Explorer was taken at gunpoint.

The SUV had an anti-theft kill switch, and died on the thief two miles from Portage. The suspect then took off into the woods, abandoning the Explorer. As if to exemplify the stupidity of most criminals, this one ran almost a mile into the woods before he realized that every twist and turn that he made to evade anyone following him was pointed out by the tracks in the snow. The then began to carefully step into his footprints backing up. He figure that he would backtrack this way fro a couple of hundred yard, climb a tree and then when they walked past following his tracks, climb down and make good his escape.

Watching the men who had passed under the tree, the accomplice carefully stepped back into his footprints until he felt something hard in his back. Thinking it was a branch, he reached behind to feel it, and felt instead his left arm being grabbed.

"Where did you learn that trick?" asked Lt. Collins. "No, let me guess, watching cartoons. The other hand now, slowly please?"

(State Police Academy, Sitka, Alaska)

Joining the State Troopers was a big step for Roxie. Darrell was staying with Lt. Collins' younger brother, who was a Minister at a small church in Palmer while Roxie was at the Academy. While she was being issued her cadet uniform and gear

a sergeant took note of her name and recalled a message he received that morning.

Sgt Ellis remarked, "There is a note here from Capt Clark of the Criminal Investigations Bureau that says that you have been living in the bush for the last several years. When you graduate, we could use you teaching at the Wilderness Survival School. Would you be interested?"

Roxie thought a moment and blushed, "I couldn't be a teacher. I only lived that way because I had to."

"The point is that you had to survive," replied Ellis, "and in an emergency in the bush like that, days away from any outside help, you have to survive. Your actual experience in finding food, foraging, or however you did so, could save lives some day, possibly even those in your class."

"I am no hero," Roxie argued weakly, "I just did what I had to do, and it wasn't always willingly."

"One of my classmates from when I went here, seems to think otherwise," Ellis countered. "When you get close to the end, we can talk again. I hope that you will reconsider."

Roxie considered how everything that had worked out where she helped someone, they had all but stumbled into her lap. Had Darla/Marie and Tim had that much of an influence on her and the change she felt? She went on to her dorm room to meet her roommate, a young lady from Ketchikan named Sally Clinger. The two were nothing alike, yet they had to get along.

(Ingram residence, Anchorage)

Jerry Ingram had finished his shift as an elementary school custodian an hour earlier, and after showering, booted his computer while his TV dinner cooked in the microwave. Logging into the Internet, Jerry first checked his e-mail and finding nothing but spam from sexually explicit sites and promises of enhancing his manhood, he rolled his eyes and wondered, "If this is spam control, then I hate to see what they caught!"

He paused and read the news from the Daily News site, retrieving his microwaved meal in between. He started to log onto one of his adult sites, and instead went to one about UFO's and Extra Terrestrial Abductions. There were some new stories there and they kept him occupied for a couple of hours. One of the stories he read from the legitimate news was about a pornography crackdown and someone in Seattle that was arrested for what he had on his computer.

This was in the back of Jerry's mind as he logged into his favorite story site, and began to browse the new ones and what they were about. His mouse seemed to move almost independently, clicking on one that told of a janitor in a middle school and how he supplied the young girls with drugs, in exchange for sexual favors. The review scores showed it to be well liked, and Jerry clicked on it and began to read about how nobody ever missed the girls from class, since the janitor always had a book of passes. Nobody ever questioned how everyone's signature looked like the same person signed it. Hey, it was just a story and Jerry wasn't reading it for the details.

Not those details anyway. The details he was after were explicitly described. He shuddered to think of his girlfriend's little redheaded daughter in the fifth grade that always smiled and greeted, "How are you today, Mr. Ingram?" He trembled at the thought of luring her into the supply closet, even just for a few minutes. That though aroused him uncontrollably.

He scanned her school yearbook photo from the 4^th grade, and with his Photo Editor software, put Marilyn Butcher's head on that of a naked young girl that he found on a newsgroup. Then he copied it to a floppy disk with pictures he had downloaded of a dozen other young girls, and some of his own niece, that he actually had pose, before fondling her, when she was eight, and bribed her with candy not to tell. Kylie died two weeks later in an accident along with his brother, and his sister-in-law.

"God, I have got to get help," Jerry thought. If he turned to anyone, he would have to admit that his sexual preferences, even though they were mere fantasies, except for his niece. After reading the story through two orgasms, he shut off the computer and went to bed. There the second trap lay, for as he felt under his pillow he felt a Ziploc bag. He threw it across the room, away from him, but then the phone rang.

"Jerry," his girlfriend Cheryl asked, "Why didn't you call me?"

"Long day," Jerry lied. "I just had some stuff to sort out afterwards."

"Well don't forget tomorrow afternoon," reminded Cheryl, "It's Crystal's eighth birthday, and you know how she and Marilyn want you to come. I hired a clown, and I would feel so much better if you were there, since you never know what kind of sick predator these guys are."

"Cheryl," Jerry protested, scrambling to find the sealed bag of panties and gather the others from his drawer, "those kids know me from school as the janitor. I am embarrassed."

"Nonsense, Jerry," argued Cheryl Butcher, "at least you have an honest job. It may not pay as much as your last one, but at least it is a job until you find another you like better."

"I will if you really want me to," Jerry replied, knowing he was incredibly aroused just thinking about it. It would give him a chance to take some real pictures of the girls with his digital camera, and to grab a fresh pair of their underwear. "No, I can't," Jerry thought, as he fought the image in his mind.

"Afterwards, they are going over to my sister's for the night, and we can have the house all to ourselves," offered Cheryl.

Jerry agreed, and said, "That would be great, Cheryl. I'll see you tomorrow."

Jerry Ingram quit his previous job as a computer systems analyst when one of the lady security officers found his hidden cameras in two of the women's restrooms. She probably wouldn't have looked if not for something similar on one of the network news programs. There was talk of fingerprinting all of the employees to find out who did the deed. That is when Jerry quit and went to work as a janitor.

Jerry lay in bed and tossed fitfully thinking about those little girls the next day. He didn't like having those thoughts, and truly tried to resist. Winning over the addiction was all but hopeless, unless he was imprisoned. Even then, prison never cured habitual molesters.

Across town another predator, who went by Bilbo the Clown was finishing the latest installment of his story about the "Janitor in the Broom Closet" that had Jerry thinking about following his leads. As he finished the last paragraph, he ran the spell checker and uploaded it before going off to bed. He had a birthday party to work in the morning, and all of his gimmicks had to be placed in his outfit. That required Bilbo, or Beezle, the pseudonym for Lester Cane's stories, to get up by 6:30 to make the 11:00 party.

Lester wasn't a school janitor. Rather he worked for the cable company as an installer and technician. He had worked as a janitor in the Voorheesville, New York School System just ten years before and had barely escaped getting caught when a twelve-year-old girl that he had sex with, turned up missing. It spurred an area wide search for her, and two other girls that he had fondled accused him of it when their parents asked them if they knew anyone acting strange. He was lucky it was only two, because there had been dozens over the years.

Tina Dunn was the only one that he actually had a relationship, and she planned to run off with Lester before she disappeared. When Tina disappeared, Lester was one of those questioned by the police, although he was innocent of her disappearance. He was supposed to meet her at Thatcher Park by the falls one day, the day before she was reported missing and she never showed up.

Tina actually had, but Lester was over an hour late and learning from a home pregnancy test that she was probably three months pregnant with his child, the girl thought that he stood her up, and threw herself off the cliff and into the thicket below the falls. The park was a popular place for the kids to meet and Tina had hitched a ride with the brother of her friend. Tina was not the first suicide off the cliff.