Chapter 17: Four Boys

 The Dusty Diner sat on the edge of Main Street; its windows fogged with warmth and the smell of grilled onions drifting into the cold night. A neon OPEN sign flickered as Andrea pushed the door open, boots thudding against scarred linoleum. Kyle escorted Andrea to a corner booth and called the waitress over. They slide into the seats as the waitress approaches. Kyle ordered the Dusty Burger and a cup of coffee, and Andrea ordered the same.

“So,” she said, pulling off her gloves. “Entertain me.”

“You ever hear of Pickering?” he asked.

Andrea shook her head. “Where the hell is that?”

“Small farming town, Northwestern Missouri. About fifteen minutes from a college town called Maryville.”

Andrea looked unimpressed.

Kyle continued. “I grew up in the area. It was your normal small rural town mentality. Everyone knew everyone and what everyone was doing and didn’t approve of none of it.” Andrea had been to a thousand places like that and it must of showed on her face. “Patience. Over a decade, four boys of varying ages were found dead and three were ruled as accidents and one was rule as a suicide. And I think.” he pauses “I know they were murdered.”

Andrea crossed her arms. “Why didn’t you bring it to your sheriff?”

“In my twenties, I worked for the sheriff’s department and I did bring it up to him.” Kyle’s jaw tightened. “Sheriff Jessup told me to leave it alone. He was old and about to retire in a few years and sure didn’t need this dead weight around his neck”

Andrea shook her head, “He was more concerned about his reputation and legacy than catching a killer.” Kyle nodded. “Start from the beginning for me. Who was the first boy?”

“I was about fifteen or sixteen. Terry Ferguson was about seven or eight. He had left his friend’s house around dusk and had to walk about two miles to get home. He never showed up. He had to pass two farms and a small forest before arriving home.” He paused slightly, “They found him in the pond not far from his family’s home. The Sheriff called it an accidental drowning because he got turned around and fell into the pond.”

“Seems plausible” Andrea expressed.

“According to Sue, Terry’s sister, Terry was like a fish in the water, and they swam in that pond every summer.” Andrea was thinking and Kyle continued. “The next was about two years later. His name was Irwin Fanning. He loved riding his bike all over the county. The bike was his prize possession and just loved riding it. Some of the kids bullied him for various reasons mainly because he was very poor. He left his house one afternoon and told his dad he would be back and never came home.”

“Another pond?” Andrea asked.

“This time they found his mangled body in the ditch along Highway 46. The police said it was hit-and-run. Except” Kyle glanced toward the kitchen to make sure no staff were listening, then lowered his voice. “His pants were torn, but not like a car did it. More like someone cut them. Clean. Precise. Along with precise lacerations on inner thighs and groin area and the bicycle laid neatly next to him not like it was hit at all.”

Andrea felt a cold knot forming in her stomach.

Kyle continued. “Next one was two years later from a neighboring town. Skidmore.”

Andrea’s eyebrow rose. “Skidmore? As in… the Skidmore? And McElroy?”

Kyle nodded grimly. “A kid named Oliver Hicks. Another who got bullied, but he was bullied for suspicions of being gay. He vanished. Three days later his body was found in a barn, hanging.”

“Suicide?”

“That’s what the sheriff claimed. But there was a knife at his feet. Blood on it. Coroner said he stabbed himself in the groin before hanging himself out of guilt.’

Andrea nearly gagged. “And you believed that?” she asked.

“No,” Kyle said. “But in Skidmore? People kept quiet. Always have.” The waitress arrived with their food. Andrea didn’t touch hers. Kyle wrapped both hands around his coffee cup. “Then came the last one. The one that still keeps me up.”

Andrea leaned in.

Kyle’s voice dropped. “Jack Geary.” Kyle set his coffee down. “I knew him because I was the same age as his older brother, Dustin. We weren’t friends or anything, but we knew each other. The whole town knew the family, and some felt sorry for Jack and other could care less, but no one did anything to stop his outcome.”

Andrea took a bite of her burger and swallowed hard.

“He was sixteen and been bullied worse than any kid I have ever seen. The way Dustin talked about him, I am sure Dustin bullied him as well, but Dustin had left home a couple of years before their father went to prison when Jack was twelve.” Kyle took a sip of coffee. “I had just started in law enforcement and one of my first details was to process Martin after being picked up. I remember seeing Jack sitting on a bench looking lost, scared, and alone. It was heartbreaking.”

Andrea had to fight from feeling emotion for this kid and took another bite of her burger which she hated to admit was pretty damn good.  She swallowed and just stated, “So he runs away?”

“Not that night. He lasts four years in a house with his selfish unloving mother, Frances, and her new husband, Wade Hardy, who had been her lover before Martin went to prison. We were called to the house several times because of noise complaints and other disruptions, but we didn’t offer any help.” Kyle pulls himself together. “Apparently, Jack had enough one night beat the hell out of Wade and then disappears. Storm rolls through town. An officer dies in a traffic incident taking our focus off of Jack. Three days later, a body shows up in a field near Burlington Junction. Sheriff says a tractor ran over him while he was sleeping in the tall corn.”

Andrea stopped drinking her coffee and stared at him. “That doesn’t happen.”

“No,” Kyle said quietly. “It doesn’t.”

Andrea tapped a fingernail against her coffee mug. “You were twenty-seven then.”

“Yeah. Young deputy. Thought I could change the world.” His expression darkened. “When I got to that field, the body… wasn’t right. Skin torn. Cuts too clean. Even wearing pants and boots, certain parts of him were exposed.”

“Meaning someone staged it.”

“Meaning he was dead before the tractor got anywhere near him.”

Andrea exhaled. “And why didn’t anyone listen to you?”

Kyle laughed bitterly. “Sheriff wanted quiet. Town wanted normal. Reporter who tried asking questions got run out. Parents didn’t want to believe their neighbors murdered their sons.”

Andrea leaned back in the booth, thinking. “And why come to me?”

Kyle stared at her in a way that made her feel suddenly, painfully seen. “Because you go after what everyone else ignores. And because somewhere someone else is dead—another runaway, another drifter, another kid—and I think whoever killed those boys back then…” He paused. “…never stopped.”

Andrea didn’t speak for a long moment.

Finally, she asked: “What town?”

Kyle answered in a whisper, though no one was listening. “Maryville.”

Andrea felt a shiver crawl across her skin—not from the cold, but from the certainty that her life had just changed direction.

© 2025 James William Jackson III. All rights reserved. “Jaxson Lee” and all related content are original fictional works created by James William Jackson III. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locations is purely coincidental.