Never Coming Home Read online

THE CRIME

  Ten years ago, two 13-year-old children, Betty Kline and Devin Harcourt, disappeared on their way home from school. Police discovered evidence of a struggle and one of Betty Kline’s shoes near a stream along the path the children walked to get home, but there were no other clues, and no one reported seeing anything unusual.

  Betty Kline and Devin Harcourt were missing for three weeks before a hiker discovered a horrific scene in the foothills near Boulder, Colorado. Police found what appeared to be evidence of a satanic ritual, and enough blood to lead them to believe at least one of the missing children had been murdered there. When DNA tests came back, the blood was revealed to belong to Devin Harcourt, and shortly after he was declared dead, despite the lack of a body. Forensic evidence suggested the boy had been strung up in the shed, bled, and then cut into pieces to be disposed of.

  Betty Kline was never found, although most people assumed she was murdered along with Devin. The evidence of a satanic cult was overwhelming, and Betty’s older brother, Trent, was the main suspect, although police struggled to pin him to the crime.

  Local churches worked with the media to bring attention to what they insisted was a dangerous rise in occultism in the Boulder area. Trent Kline’s fascination with vampirism and his bizarre lifestyle were scrutinized, leading many to assume he was responsible despite his alibi. The case received national attention, and the media descended upon Boulder. Despite the Kline family’s pleas to be left alone, the police acquired a search warrant for their home, and a box containing what police called ‘keepsakes’ was found buried in the backyard. Trent had kept Betty’s other shoe as a token along with the murder weapon.

  Despite the lack of bodies, Trent Kline was tried as an adult and convicted of the murders of Devin Harcourt and Betty Kline, but he continued to plead innocence. He committed suicide in prison, and used his own blood to write the word ‘Innocent’ on the wall.

  The murders of Betty Kline and Devin Harcourt were officially solved, and the case closed, but new evidence has appeared that might exonerate Trent. Which could mean the murderer is still at large.

  The site featured a picture of the shed where Devin’s blood was found. Hector had pixelated the photo due to its graphic nature, but it could be clicked on to reveal the details. The shed, which had formerly been part of an abandoned home on private property near a hiking trail, was splattered with a shocking amount of blood. The floor was soaked, and the walls were covered with graffiti drawn with blood. A variety of satanic symbols covered the walls, and there was a nylon rope dangling from a hole that’d been drilled in a joist above. Police theorized that Devin Harcourt had been dismembered in the shed, and that the killer had performed some sort of ritual sacrifice there.

  The next section was preceded by a picture of Trent Kline dressed in orange prison garb. His formerly long, black hair had been cut short. He looked scared, weary, and pale.

  Darcy grimaced at the sight of Trent Kline and said, “Why don’t we find a picture of him that doesn’t make him look like a serial killer in training?”

  “That’s the best picture I could find,” said Bentley.

  “It’s a mugshot. Everyone looks bad in a mugshot,” said Lincoln.

  “But any support you’re going to get from crowdfunding is going to come from people who think Trent’s innocent. You’re not doing yourself any favors by using photos that make him look bad.”

  “The guy didn’t take very many good pictures,” said Bentley. “You should see some of the crazy stuff he stuck up on social media sites. He used to drip blood out of the corner of his mouth in most of his pictures. I guess it was some sort of prank he liked to pull. There’re even some family photos like that. He must’ve snuck a blood capsule in his mouth or something.”

  “This picture’s fine,” said Lincoln as he pointed at the screen. “Our goal isn’t to prove he’s innocent. Our goal is to find out the truth.” He scrolled down to read the next section.

  THE CASE AGAINST TRENT KLINE

  The accused killer of Betty Kline and Devin Harcourt earned infamy for more than the crime. Trent was well-known by his peers for his alternative lifestyle. He referred to himself as a real-life vampire, and bragged about drinking blood and participating in pagan rituals. He wore dark clothes, dyed his hair black, and clashed with authority figures.

  Families were already on edge following a deadly school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, less than an hour drive from Boulder, and Trent Kline’s odd nature caused alarm even before his sister’s disappearance. Trent’s principal and counselor met with his parents to discuss his behavior, and his parents agreed to take him to a psychiatrist. This was one week before Betty and Devin disappeared.

  On the day of the disappearance, Trent claimed he’d met a friend at a local mall, and video surveillance corroborated his story. Police weren’t sure about the exact time Betty and Devin were abducted, but the last witness to see them alive said they’d left school grounds at around 3:45. Devin’s house was approximately a thirty minute walk from school, and his mother went searching for him when he didn’t arrive home, leading investigators to assume the abduction occurred sometime between 3:45 and 4:15.

  The high school that Trent attended let out students at the same time as his sister’s middle school, but Trent ditched his last class on the day in question, giving him time to go to the mall before heading home. Security footage caught Trent entering the mall at 3:36 and leaving at 4:47. There were no records of him purchasing anything. Trent claimed he met his drug dealer at the mall to buy marijuana, and that they went through an ‘employee only’ exit to smoke outside. The dealer in question refuted the claim.

  The prosecutor in the case developed a theory that Trent knew where the cameras in the mall were, and that he hoped to use the time-stamped video as an alibi. After arriving at the mall, he went immediately to the unrecorded employee-only exit and then ran through an adjacent neighborhood to intercept his sister and Devin Harcourt on their way home from school. Trent supposedly murdered them both at the scene and hid their bodies so that he could collect them later.

  During the trial, the prosecutor introduced a video he’d made of a teenager running the same route, proving that Trent could’ve made it from the mall to his sister’s middle school and then back before 4:47, and that it wouldn’t draw attention from possible witnesses to see a teenager running around at that time of day. This, combined with the discovery of the shoe and murder weapon buried in the Kline’s backyard, sealed Trent’s fate. Despite a flimsy motive (the prosecutor claimed Trent was angry over his parent’s insistence that he meet with a psychiatrist), Trent Kline was convicted of the first-degree murder of his sister and Devin Harcourt. The prosecutor sought life without parole due to the aggravating factor that Trent had laid in wait and ambushed his victims, but the defense attorney successfully got that charge knocked down due to a lack of proof and because the timeline of events presented by the prosecutor didn’t allow the defendant time to wait in ambush.

  Trent Kline was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. No aggravating factors were included, and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison with no possibility of parole. He committed suicide three months into his sentence, and never learned about the evidence that surfaced years later that might’ve exonerated him.

  For many, Trent Kline’s case was an example of the court and local law enforcement rushing to judgment in an attempt to close a case that’d brought negative attention to the area. For others, Trent Kline was a monster, and potential serial killer, who was stopped early in what might’ve become a deadly legacy.

  Hector and Bentley included a photograph of the Boulder Valley Mall, and a map that detailed the route Trent supposedly ran the day of the crime. There was also an excerpt from Trent’s journal that showed drawings of satanic symbols. Beside the journal was a police photograph of similar symbols drawn in blood on the walls of the shack where it was believed Devin Harcourt was slaughtered.

  EXO
NERATION OF TRENT KLINE

  Two years after Trent Kline was convicted of the murders of Betty Kline and Devin Harcourt, new evidence came to light that corroborated Trent’s claim that he’d met a drug dealer at the Boulder Valley Mall on the day of the incident. The man he said he met, Grant Hedland, was caught and convicted for dealing methamphetamine at the mall, in the same spot that Trent had accused him of dealing two years earlier.

  During Trent Kline’s trial, Grant denied meeting the accused on the day of the disappearances. The defense argued that Grant was lying to protect himself, but the dealer’s refusal to corroborate Trent’s alibi was damning, and made the prosecution’s timeline plausible.

  After Grant’s conviction (in which he pled down to misdemeanor charges and received six months in prison), he continued to deny meeting with Trent Kline on the day in question, although he did admit to dealing marijuana to him multiple times, refuting his statement to the contrary during Trent’s trial. This reinvigorated interest in the murders, and members of the Kline family sought to reopen the case in an attempt to clear Trent’s name.

  Devin Harcourt’s family maintained their belief that Trent was responsible for the murders. They refused to cooperate with the Kline family, and requested that details about Devin’s death be kept out of the material being produced to bolster interest in the campaign. The Kline family obliged, and the majority of the literature they produced focused on the abduction and murder of their daughter, Betty, as well as the rushed conviction of their son.

  The case again earned national attention, but this time from the music community rather than mainstream news outlets. Heavy metal and punk bands united to bring awareness to the case, claiming that Trent Kline’s unusual lifestyle was what ultimately led to his conviction.

  However, the fact that a knife with traces of Devin Harcourt’s blood on it and Betty’s shoe had been found buried in Trent Kline’s backyard was impossible to overlook. This led many to believe that Trent took part in the murders of Devin and Betty, but someone else assisted in the abduction of the children. The possibility that Trent had an accomplice has become a widely believed theory, but with no evidence to back it up the police have been reticent to reopen the case.

  The real killer could still be out there. Our goal is to discover the truth, once and for all, and give Betty Kline and Devin Harcourt the justice they deserve.

  “Wow,” said Lincoln. “You got all that done this morning?”

  “Hector did most of the work.”

  “Like always,” said Hector as he reclined in his leather seat, smiling as he rested his oversized coffee cup on his belly.

  “What’s the next step before we launch?” asked Lincoln.

  “We could launch right now if we wanted,” said Hector. “We’ve got to decide on our donor levels, and maybe dress up the site a bit, but that’s just cosmetic. I was thinking of getting photos of the scene of the crime as it looks today.”

  Bentley navigated to a new section of the site showing different amounts of money. “You can donate anywhere from five dollars to as much as we want to charge, and for each level a donor reaches they’ll get the items in that section and all the ones below it. For what we’re doing, we don’t really have a lot to offer people. Hector said that it’s not important for the lower levels, because we can just say that we’ll put the donor’s name on the site and give them access to our blog, easy stuff like that, but once we get into the higher tiers we need to come up with something good to offer people.”

  “I could help with that,” said Darcy.

  Lincoln looked over at his daughter, surprised and intrigued. “How so?”

  “When The Murder Betties played that gig in Denver, we met all sorts of bands who were interested in the case.”

  “The Murder Betties?” asked Bentley.

  “That’s a band I’m in,” said Darcy. “We got our name from this case. We started out with the name, ‘Who Murdered Betty’, but eventually it morphed into ‘The Murder Betties’. We played a show in Denver with a bunch of other bands who wanted to bring awareness to the case. I’m sure I could make a few phone calls and get some of those bands to donate stuff.”

  “You’re in a band?” asked Bentley with a bit more interest than Lincoln was comfortable with. “What do you play?”

  “The bass,” said Darcy with a bashful smile. “And I do some back-up singing.”

  “Really? Do you ever play around here?”

  “All the time,” said Darcy. “If you want I can…”

  “All right, all right,” said Lincoln, interrupting them. “Back on target. We can take any help we can get, but I think it’s important that we keep the investigation as neutral as possible. Everyone agree?”

  “Of course,” said Bentley.

  Hector nodded and then took a drink of coffee, but it was clear that Darcy had reservations. She looked at the others and then said, “Trent got railroaded. He was innocent. You guys know that, right?”

  “We’re going into this like we aren’t sure of anything,” said Lincoln. “We’re starting from zero and adding it up from there.”

  “Then there’s no way I can get those bands to send you free stuff for the donors,” said Darcy. “Not if there’s a chance you’re going to come out saying that Trent was guilty. That’s bullshit.”

  “We’re going to be fair and honest, no matter what,” said Lincoln. “If that means your friends won’t support us, then that’s on them.”

  “They’re not going to want anything to do with a site that’s trying to pin the crime on Trent.”

  “Were you his friend?” asked Bentley.

  “No. I met him once or twice, but I didn’t know him. He was a freak, there’s no doubt about that, but the way the Eversprings Church got the media and the police to focus only on him is a joke. The whole ‘Satanic Panic’ thing, and how people blamed the music he listened to…” it was clear she was frustrated as she scowled and shook her head. “It was bullshit. His dealer even admitted that he lied. There’s no way that Trent could’ve gotten from the mall to the scene of the murder and then back again while also meeting with his dealer. Boulder Valley Mall is pretty far from the middle school. Have you guys made the walk?”

  “That’s the sort of thing we want to try,” said Lincoln. “But we’re going at this the wrong way if we’re not at least open to the possibility that Trent did it.”

  “As long as you’re not convicting him just because he was a weird kid,” said Darcy.

  “Of course not.” Lincoln returned his attention to Bentley and the computer as he asked, “What’s the next step to get the ball rolling.”

  “I have to call my uncle to get a credit card from him that we can use to set up the site and the accounts associated with it.”

  Lincoln took out his money clip, removed a credit card, and tossed it on the table. “Here, use this one. I don’t want your uncle’s name on this campaign. This is our thing for now. And use my cell number as a tip line until I can set up something better. Or better yet, use an online phone service and have it routed to my cell. Hector, do you know if we can get crime scene photographs and that sort of stuff?”

  “Sure,” said Hector as he sat upright, causing his reclining office chair to snap up again. “That shouldn’t be hard.” He scrolled the mouse and brought the page back to the picture of Betty Kline, a youthful 13-year-old with a dimpled smile and auburn hair. “We can put more pictures on this page, or we could set up a whole other part of the site with all the photos.”

  “Darcy and I can take a drive over to the mall and look around. Then we can try and take a trip back and forth between there and the middle school.”

  “All right,” said Bentley as he held Lincoln’s credit card and tapped it on the edge of the table. “I’ve got to stay here to wait for the office equipment to get delivered, but I can work on figuring out some things to offer our donors. I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  Lincoln looked around at their group a
nd smiled. The office space was unpainted and bare, and the only light came in from the windows and a bulb hanging from a loose wire high above, but he felt the burgeoning of a long forgotten excitement that starting a business gave him. “I can’t wait to see if the four of us can figure out what really happened to Betty and Darrin.”

  His daughter corrected him, “Devin.”

  “Right, Devin. Sorry. Anyhow, I’m looking forward to what we can accomplish.”

  “It should be interesting,” said Bentley.

  “Think about it this way,” said Lincoln, changing his tone as the project began to excite him. “Every single day there’re people who get up and go to a soul-numbing job they hate, where they work their butts off for a corporation that looks at them as nothing more than cogs in a machine. We all know people like that. Hell, some of us used to be people like that.”

  “Amen,” said Hector. “I used to work for a health insurance company. You want to talk about sucking the joy out of life, try that out for a while.”

  “But the four of us have the chance to do something that could impact people for the better. However long it takes us, we should look at this as a gift. If we come in each day with that in mind, then there’s no telling what we can achieve. Trust me, guys, we could be on the brink of something really big right now.”

  Darcy chuckled and put her arm around her father’s waist. “You sound like a motivational speaker again.”

  “Is that what he was like back then?” asked Bentley. “I’ve gotten used to him being a grumpy old man.”

  “I’ll send you over some of his old videos,” said Darcy. “You’ll get a kick out of them.”

  “Yeah, do that,” said Bentley. “I’ll give you my email.”

  Lincoln begrudgingly waited as his daughter and Bentley exchanged information, and then he said, “Come on, let’s go. We’re wasting daylight. I’d like to find these places and get some pictures before it gets dark.”

  “Give me your phone,” said Hector. “I can geotrack the spots for you. I’ve got the coordinates already. I’ll install the app on your phone and it’ll map where you walk. Then we can upload it to the site.”

  “Really?” asked Lincoln, impressed. “Technology today, huh? Pretty incredible.”

  “I’ve got that program on my phone too,” said Darcy. “Some of my friends and I use it to figure out where everyone’s at in the city.”

  “We can time your trip from the mall to the middle school,” said Hector as he worked with Lincoln’s phone. “The stream where they think it happened isn’t far from the school and Devin’s house.”

  “Maybe we can try and talk with Devin’s parents while we’re there,” said Lincoln.

  “They don’t live there anymore,” said Bentley. “His parents were already divorced when he went missing. He lived with his mother. Since then she moved. We haven’t been able to find her address yet, and his Dad disappeared a few years back. I haven’t been able to track him down either.”

  “That’s okay. I think it’s better to lay the groundwork before we approach anyone involved,” said Darcy.

  “You’re probably right,” said Lincoln.

  “Here you go,” said Hector as he handed back the phone. “You’re all set. Just open the app and click the timer when you’re about to start walking from point ‘A’ to ‘B’. That’ll make the program automatically upload the data to the site.”

  “I’ll show him how to use it,” said Darcy. “He’s useless with that sort of stuff.”

  “Ready to go?” asked Lincoln of Darcy.

  “Ready when you are.”

  Arthur

  Colorado’s a beautiful state. The wealth of nature awaiting anyone willing to look for it is astounding. In a single day, Arthur drove along winding roads that carved through the Rockies, hiked beside flowing streams of crystal clear water that frothed against the banks, and then made it down to the eastern half of the state that featured flatlands as far as the eye could see.

  All along the way he’d peppered the pieces of his latest victim.

  The prostitute was in the back of his truck, cut into pieces, wrapped in cellophane, and stuffed into coolers. Her mashed up hands, feet, and head were in weighted bags that he kept together for now, chilled in melting ice, and he’d mapped out the locations where he would dump them.

  His first stop was about fifty miles from home, almost to Winter Park. He’d taken a long, winding road that led to a hiking trail, and then walked off the path a good ways before depositing her forearm in a rocky pit where he was certain no one would travel. He felt good about it, and smiled as he watched the indecipherable fleshy lump tumble down and lodge between a few jagged stones. Before long a scavenger would find it, and the first piece of the puzzle that’d been his latest victim would be lost.

  One of her hands was dropped in the Yarborough Reservoir, a secluded, man-made body of water that was stocked with fish that would devour the fleshy pulp like chum. Those bits of bone might wash up on shore one day, but no one was likely to think they were anything but pieces of a dead fish. And even if it was discovered to be human remains, it would just be one piece of a puzzle no one would ever be able to put together.

  Over the course of his trip, Arthur deposited the remains while taking the opportunity to listen to an audiobook between stops. He was treating this as a well-deserved vacation.

  He was down near Pueblo when he decided to stop somewhere to eat. There were still pieces of the girl in the coolers tied down in the back of his truck, but he was willing to risk a stop somewhere in the city to get a bite to eat. When he set out that morning he thought he’d packed enough food to last until he made it home, but he was sick of eating beef jerky and soggy sandwiches that’d been sitting in the cooler all day. He craved good food.

  Arthur pulled into a barbeque restaurant, enticed by the smell of smoke wafting up from their chimney. He got out of his truck and went to check on the oversized igloo coolers in the back when he noticed liquid dripping to the pavement. He knelt to inspect it, and saw the reddish fluid coming out of a rusted hole in the bed.

  His heart raced when he realized what it was. On his last stop, when he chucked the woman’s right thigh down to a ravine near the Pueblo Reservoir, he’d also taken the opportunity to drain water from one of his coolers. Despite his attempt to bleed the meat, the hunks still seeped, and now that the ice had melted it left a disgusting soup of humanity. Unfortunately, when he loaded the cooler back up in his truck he’d forgotten to replace the plug to keep any more ice melt from leaking.

  Arthur hoisted himself up onto the rear tire of his truck to look inside and saw that his suspicion was correct. The slats in the bottom of the bed were filled with the faint red water. He went around to the back and saw water dripping down from the rear gate, over his bumper, and down to the hot pavement.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said as he tried to decide how to handle the situation. He had to get somewhere out of sight where he could plug the cooler up and then mop out the bed. He hurried back to the cab of the truck and was about to start it when he heard sirens.

  Arthur looked around, and then spotted the telltale red and blue flashing lights in his rearview.

  This was it. They were coming for him.

  Arthur ducked down and reached under the passenger side seat, scrambling for the Beretta hidden there. He wouldn’t go to prison. He’d rather die.

  He got on his back and pressed his shoulders against the passenger side door with the gun pointed up at the driver’s side window. He was ready to shoot the first officer who dared peek in.

  Arthur cursed his sloppiness. He knew he shouldn’t dump part of his victim at the Pueblo Reservoir. It wasn’t as secluded as the other spots. One of the campers there must’ve seen him and called the police, and he’d left a trail of bloody water leading right to him.

  A squad car’s tires squealed as they came to a sudden stop, and the flashing lights illuminated the truck. The cop car was parked right behi
nd him.

  The gun trembled and he tried to keep it steady as he pointed at the window. He wanted to survive, and began to plan his escape. He would shoot the first officer who looked in the truck, and then he would dive out the passenger side door. He was near the highway, and he could run out into traffic in a desperate attempt to stop someone. He would carjack an unlucky motorist, and then speed away.

  It was a longshot, but it was the only chance he had.

  The wait was excruciating. What was taking them so long? Were they waiting for backup?

  There were more sirens, but these sounded different. Arthur continued to wait, but eventually his curiosity began to nag at him. He adjusted his position, lowered his gun, and then dared to peek over the back of the seat.

  An ambulance had arrived, and was parked closer to the restaurant than the squad cars. An EMT opened the back doors and pulled out a stretcher.

  Arthur gasped in relief. He calmed himself down, took several deep breaths, and sat up to watch the activity behind him. Someone in the restaurant had been placed on the stretcher and was being taken out to the parking lot. Worried family members followed quickly behind, asking questions Arthur couldn’t hear.

  One of the officers saw Arthur, and walked over to speak to him. Arthur tucked the pistol under his leg and then rolled down his window as the burly officer approached.

  “Sorry if we’ve got you blocked in,” said the gruff, square-jawed man.

  “Not a problem,” said Arthur in a tremulous voice. He cleared his throat and asked, “Everything all right?”

  “I’m sure it’s fine. Someone inside was complaining about chest pains, and you know how that goes. You can’t mess around with chest pains at a barbeque joint.” He laughed, but Arthur didn’t respond in kind.

  “Right.”

  “We’ll be out of your way in just a minute so you can get back to your day.”

  “Thanks.” Arthur watched through his side view mirror as the officer walked away, his shoe splashing in the pool of bloody water that’d dripped out of the back of the truck.

  What if this had been it? What if he’d been forced to kill the officer and then flee to the highway?

  The officer stopped and looked down at the liquid dripping from the truck. Arthur ceased breathing as he looked at the cop’s reflection in his side mirror. The officer knelt down and looked under the truck, and then turned to walk back to the door.

  Arthur gripped the Beretta’s handle as the officer came back and rapped his knuckle on the window.

  “Just wanted to let you know that you’ve got a leak back here. Looks like one of those coolers.”

  “Oh, right, yeah,” said Arthur. “It’s fish. Just a bunch of fish.”

  “All right then,” said the officer, suspicious. The officer eyed Arthur, and then glanced into the back of the truck. Finally, thankfully, the cop said, “Well, you have yourself a good day. We’ll be out of your way in a minute. And do me a favor and fix that cooler. No one wants a bunch of fish blood stinking up their parking lot.”

  “Right, right. No problem. Will do.”

  Arthur watched as the officer walked back towards his squad car, avoiding the trickling water as he went. Somehow or another Arthur had avoided capture. It was almost as if the universe wanted him to succeed; as if it was ready to unleash the predator that’d been caged for too long.

  He was happy to oblige.