The House on Mercer Lane

Dr. Ross L. Riggs

Description

If you remember stories of the Night Stalker, this killer has hunted the grounds of small state school. One of his victims didn't die and now an FBI profiler, she is on amacagre case that will bring them face to face.
A crime scene in a small town brings together a Christian cop, two veteran forensic investigators, and a police chaplain. One of the investigators is battling his own internal spiritual warfare from horrific crime scenes of his past. This seemingly impossible challenge brings this quartet face to face with evil as they try to stop a sociopathic homicidal maniac with ties to the small town before he kills again. Their investigation helps them understand God’s ways in dealing with evil and bringing justice to what is an overwhelming injustice. Lives hanging in the balance to the very end, international intrigue, and the dogged determination of the investigators entice the reader on to each next page.

Sujets

• Religious
• FBI National Academy
• Behavioral Science Unit
• University of Findlay
• BCI
• E
• Ohio
• The Open Door
• Fiction
• Madison

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 11 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664296305
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE HOUSE ON MERCER LANE
 
 
 
DR. ROSS L. RIGGS
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2023 Dr. Ross L. Riggs.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scripture taken from the American Standard Version of the Bible.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9629-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9631-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-9630-5 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023905834
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 04/11/2023
CONTENTS
Chapter 1The Disco very
Chapter 2Cindy and Mac
Chapter 3Jerry J ames
Chapter 4Chief Ho lmes
Chapter 5D evon
Chapter 6E
Chapter 7U of F
Chapter 8Jo siah
Chapter 9Hunting Mac
Chapter 10Charm Es cape
Chapter 11“…Or She Dies”
Chapter 12Chaplain Chris tian
Chapter 13“Confiden tial”
Chapter 14the T hird
Chapter 15 Evil
Chapter 16First Class Psychop aths
Chapter 17Shadow on the Lake
Chapter 18“Se e Us!”
Chapter 19Water Tower Road
Chapter 20Barista Katy and a Note
Chapter 21One Week
Chapter 22Demon Abduc tion
Chapter 23Hogback Connec tion
Chapter 24The Search i s On
Chapter 25Josiah’s Eyes
Chapter 26The Bone Collector & Dark Wing
Chapter 27“Dear Je sus … ”
Chapter 28Two and One – a Godly Combina tion
Chapter 29“What Do You Mean Both?”
Special Thanks
End Notes

CHAPTER 1 THE DISCOVERY
T he patrol car turned slowly over the hard snow. The long desolate road on the edge of town was one Sgt. McCauley knew well. Ever since he was a small boy, patrol sergeant Mike ‘Mac’ McCauley had heard stories about the old buildings that used to fill Mercer Lane. Every building seemed to have some strange happening the locals never could explain. Most of those buildings were gone now except for a long weather-beaten barn, a run-down storage shed, and the old family mansion known by the kids growing up as “ the house on Mercer Lane.” A regular enough sounding statement without its context; but, with it, the same five words had a sinister eeriness to them.
It was a great place for the kind of ghost stories and legends of bloody corpses and moving furniture kids love to conjure up on a warm summer’s night when the parents let the kids sleep out in their tents. They would sit up half the night trying to scare each other or dare their friends into doing something which, by the time it was daylight, they would have wished they hadn’t. Sometimes, Mac’s older brother Dan and his friends would come by where the guys were sitting up and tell them even more ghost stories trying to scare them into going home. Mac remembered one time when Dan had them absolutely convinced there was an escaped axe-murderer hiding in the neighbor’s garage inside his car. Every time Dan shined his flashlight toward the car, the taillights would go on. Mac was sure Dan was right. The murderer had to be in the car! Why else would those taillights keep comin g on?
When Mac was older, he was ashamed he had fallen for such a cheap trick; but he made sure he tried the same thing on his youngest brother Randy who had such a crush on Cindy next door, he’d try to impress her with his bravery. That was until Mac showed him the taillights coming on in the car across the lane! Randy made it home that night before Cindy and his house was farther down the street than hers! Mac kind of hated telling Randy the truth because he liked that Randy had looked up to him, even confided to him about his crush on Cindy. Still, it was what brothers did to each other and he figured that sooner or later, Randy would forgive him! It took a little longer than Mac thought though. Amazingly, it had been fifteen or more years ago. Mac couldn’t believe Randy could hold a grudge that long! It probably hadn’t helped that in high school Mac and Cindy started dating and just after he got on the police department, he and Cindy got married. That probably had something to do with Randy still being a bit sore at his brother fo r it!
If the creepy architecture, the dilapidated buildings nearby on a deserted stretch of road wasn’t enough to make the house on Mercer Lane the center for all that was ghostly in the small town of Madison, Ohio; it had its own family cemetery in the yard adjacent to the old house. The cemetery hadn’t been kept up for years, though the local historical society had tried to raise funds for it back during the time Mac was off at college. He wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. Not only did they not raise enough money to refurbish the old cemetery; but some obscure relative of the Mercer family had hired an attorney to stop anyone from even going into the small cemetery. Now, it was cordoned off with an old single link of chain going around it about three feet off the ground. The chain was attached to small, spiked posts identical to those that lined the battlements along the roof’s edge of the old house. Not exactly a fortress. Now, though, the old family cemetery had a very official ‘No Trespassing’ sign posted with the local police chief’s name scrawled across the bottom. Whenever Mac passed by it, he shook his head in disbelief. Why would some relative, who apparently had never even been to Madison, care about whether the local historical society and garden club wanted to fix up the place a little? You’d think, if he had any financial interest in the old place, he’d welcome someone giving it a face lift!
The patrol car hit the rough snow piles that had hardened with the most recent freeze. He hit hard enough to slosh Mac’s coffee from his cup onto the front of his jacket and he let out a soft curse! The coffee was just hot enough to sting his hand when it splashed across the back of it. Mac flapped his hand to get the excess coffee off then ran the back of his hand across his pant leg. One advantage to black tactical pants and night shift was that there was little chance anyone would notice a small coffee spill on it before he was back home at dawn. If he knew Cindy, she’d have the pants in the wash before she left for her job at the local OB’s office, which, by then Mac would already be fast as leep.
There had been other calls of suspicious lights around the old house, barn, and storage buildings. This was the third night in a row that such a call had come in. Every night the location of the lights was different and every night the times changed. Not by much, usually between 0130 and 0300; but the lights were seen the first night inside the old barn. When Mac and his back-up unit, Steve Franks arrived that first night there were no lights to be seen and every door on the barn was padlocked. Steve was a career patrolman who held neither the desire nor the personality to be a shift supervisor. As usual, they found a couple of the windows were cracked; but, not enough to let anyone through and the cobwebs hadn’t been disturbed probably since Mac was in Junior High. As they expected, there were no tracks visible in the hardened snow. The second night, the caller, who had refused a name each time and the cellphone numbers were blocked, claimed the lights were on the second floor of the old house. Again, no lights on when Mac and Franks arrived and no signs of forced entry to the house. By the third night, Franks radioed to Mac that he was out at the local all-night convenience store for coffee and just to radio him if he needed him for anyt hing.
On this night, the caller, always the same male voice that sounded like it should have been on an old-time radio broadcast for a mystery theater, claimed he saw a light up on the very pinnacle of the roof of the old house on Mercer Lane, as if it were outside on the widow’s walk. Mac thought it strange that the caller would use the term widow’s walk because that was a term usually meant for the railed platforms on houses along the coast where supposedly the wife of a fisherman would watch for her husband’s ship to come back to port and, if he died in a sea-faring accident, the widow would walk a lonely vigil on the platform waiting for a husband who would never return. Madison, Ohio was a long way from the sea, but not far from Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes and sea-faring ships travelled the dangerous waters regul arly.
As he pulled onto Mercer Lane, Mac killed his headlights and stopped, hoping to get a view of the house before coming in and perhaps scaring the trespassers, if there were any, into dousing their lights and hiding from him. What Mac saw from seventy-five yards or more, visible with the bright moon, was a macabre sight that sent a chill down Mac’s spine and he felt the hair go up on the back of his neck. Mac imagined it would be the worst he would ever see. One thing was certain, if the house on Mercer Lane wasn’t a source for ghost stories before, it would be after this n ight!

CHAPTER 2 CINDY AND MAC
I t was nearly