and had begun discussing marriage. She lived close to the base he was stationed at in North Carolina. She was a waitress at one of the bars Mark would frequent from time to time. They were a thing almost immediately.
Mark was on a mission to some foreign place with zero communication. Katie, his girlfriend, was used to guys hitting on her and always handled it quickly. One night a guy was persistent, and she began to get uncomfortable. She told the manager, and he angrily told the guy to leave. Katie finished the shift, and one of the guys walked her to her car. She never noticed the guy following her as she left the parking lot. Video surveillance showed the truck leave behind her but didn’t catch the tag number.
Mark came home to multiple messages from the police and several from the owner of the bar. Katie never made it home that night. Her car was found off a stretch of dark highway down in the ditch. Keys in the ignition with a damaged rear end. The police report stated that it was a kidnapping by a staged rear end collision and forced crash into the ditch. Mark went insane with rage.
He immediately went to the police station, and they had no leads. He made them show him the video coverage of the parking lot and the cameras along the route. Not one got a usable image of the guy’s tag.
The police, after a month, had moved on to newer cases, and Katie missing was determined to be an unsolved case. Mark had been there many times and had torn the place up twice in fits of rage at the cops’ lack of care for his girlfriend’s life. At the two-month mark, Katie’s body was found in one of the local rivers. Her head was missing, and she had been mutilated. Mark ended up in the hospital that night getting stiches after putting his fist through the window of a cop car at the scene.
The murder was unsolved, and Mark decided to take the investigation into his own hands. He began to interview witnesses and track down leads to this guy in the bar that night. Mark used his contacts at the CIA and FBI to find every truck in the area that matched the description of his truck. He interviewed everyone that was in the bar that night to try to find anyone that knew the guy. The owner one night gave him a copy of the surveillance tape he had saved, knowing it was important. Mark took it to the base and ran facial recognition software for every guy on the tape.
Slowly, he began to track down every person there that night. One year into the search, he got a break. A guy in the video was married, and the same guy had hit on his wife that night. The two men had got into it, but the bouncer broke it up quickly. The guy remembered the guy saying his name was Leo. Mark thanked the couple and went back to his list of owners of trucks. Of all the guys owning Ford F150s, year model 1990 to 1995, there were three with versions of that name. A Leo Cantrell, age twenty-eight. A Leon Riken, age sixty-two, and Leo Sparks, age forty-one. Leo Sparks had two prior arrests. One for assault and one for rape. He had served one month for the assault charge and beat the rape charge. Mark knew this was the guy.
He searched the database and found the truck now registered in Georgia. Mark took the information to the detective in charge of the case. The information died in procedure and jurisdiction. After many phone calls back and forth, Mark took matters into his own hands. He went and found Leo Sparks.
He was in a bar, still driving the 1993 blue F150. Mark followed him and watched him go into the bar. He waited twenty minutes and went in after him. He sat twenty feet away and watched the guy hit on every girl that came near him. Mark could feel the rage building inside him. He paid the check and went outside. He had parked behind the guy several rows away so that he could watch him leave. An hour later, Leo stumbled out of the bar and got in his truck. Mark watched him fumble with the keys, and he finally started the truck. Mark had already looked at the front of his truck and saw damage to the bumper that matched Katie’s car. This was the guy, and Mark knew it.
He followed the guy for ten minutes until he pulled into a trailer a few hundred feet back off the road. Mark went by and found a place to hide his own truck. Mark got out, tucking his Kimber 9 mm in his waist and his tactical knife in his boot.
Mark came through the woods up behind the trailer. As he approached a small shed behind the house, the smell was awful. He pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket. It put enough light out to see without being noticed. He eased the door to the shed open and immediately lost it. In the shed was a decomposing body of a young girl handcuffed to the wall. She was naked and gagged. To Mark, it was clear she was dead.
Mark came out of the shed and was staring at Leo and the business end of a .357 Magnum. Mark moved as the gun went off. Mark hit the guy so hard he went down and the gun flew. He dragged Leo into the shed and tied him right next to the girl. As he did, Leo woke and began to fight. Mark hit him three quick hits to help him understand who was in charge.
Leo spit blood and looked to his right. “What the fuck? Where am I?”
Marked grabbed him by the throat. “You know exactly where you are, you sick fuck. Tell me about the girl you killed in North Carolina.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t kill anyone.”
“This is your house. You killed my girlfriend and dumped her in a creek. You’ve killed this girl, just like her.” Pointing at the girl next to him.
“I didn’t. This ain’t even my house. It’s my brother’s.”
“Oh yeah, where’s your brother? That’s your truck though right.”
“He’s out of town.”
Just then Mark could hear the sirens approaching. He looked around at the situation. He thought about how the cops would see it. He grabbed the rope holding Leo’s hands and cut it. Dragging him out of the shed and into the woods behind it. Leo started screaming, and Mark turned and hit him hard in the face. His knees buckled, and he went down. Mark picked him up and threw him over his shoulder. He carried the guy through the woods and dumped him in the front seat. He tied his hands to the grab bar and checked him for any other weapons. Mark grabbed his keys and took off. He could hear the sirens through the trees in the yard of the trailer.
As he pulled away with lights off, Leo woke again. “What the fuck, dude. Where are you taking me? I told you I didn’t kill that waitress.”
Mark looked over as he turned the lights on. “Who said anything about a waitress?”
Leo cringed, knowing he just screwed up. “Take me to the cops. I’ll confess.”
Mark shook his head. “No cops for you. I want to know exactly what you did to Katie. What she went through. The sooner you tell me, the better it will be for you.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. Just take me to the cops and I’ll tell it all.”
Mark pulled the knife from his boot and, with a flash, stabbed the guy in the leg. Leo screamed and then began to cry and beg.
“I ran her off the road. I grabbed her and took her to my place. She wanted me, I could tell.”
Mark stabbed him again in the leg a little harder and deeper this time. “You son of a bitch, she was gonna be my wife. She didn’t want you. She was friendly because that was her job as a waitress. What the fuck is wrong with you? Tell me what you did next.”
“I got her inside, and she fought me. I hit her hard, and she went down.”
“And then what?”
“I raped her.”
Mark screamed and stabbed him twice more. Once in the arm and then in the back as he turned away. He pulled into a field and drove about
