She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  The pain Stack felt in his chest now felt no better than that day nearly seventy years earlier, and when the deep, burning ache had a good foothold in his chest, it began exploring, edging down his left arm all the way down to his fingers, still wrapped around the railing.

  Stack didn’t want to die. He was too fucking stubborn to die, and he sure as shit wasn’t about to fall down his own stairs and end up spooning the shitknocker occupying that space now.

  Pain or no pain, Stack tightened his grip on the railing and gave a good, solid tug. His legs kicked like pistons, and he shot up two steps, just like that. The pain in his chest fired back a ball of heat in protest, but before that could sink in and really deliver the hurt, Stack yanked at the railing again and made the last two steps. He collapsed on the floor of the narrow hallway at the top, his breathing ragged and drool leaving the corner of his mouth.

  Someone walked up to him, came out into the hallway from the middle bedroom, the one with the expanded Wall of Weird. That someone stopped a few feet from his head. Stack tried to look up and get a better look at the person—all he could see were white shoes, white pants, and the bottom of a white coat much like the one worn by the man at the bottom of the stairs. Stack’s head wouldn’t move, though. His eyes barely wanted to move. He tried to swing his right arm around, the one holding the magnum, but as he did, he realized he was no longer holding the magnum. The gun might be on the floor beside him, or more likely he dropped it somewhere on the stairs. Either way, it wasn’t in his hand, and it did little good somewhere else.

  The person standing beside him knelt down, got a little too close, and whispered in his ear. “That’s an interesting room you got there. My boss is gonna want to talk to you about that.”

  Stack tried to tell the guy that he wasn’t about to talk to him, his boss, or the President of the United States, and if he did, he’d tell all of them fuckwad-nothing, but when he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out but more drool, the pain in his chest and arm dialed up to eleven, and consciousness fell away.

  27

  Six minutes.

  That’s how much time passed from the moment the white Ford Expeditions arrived at 803 Windmore Road, until Latrese Oliver and David Pickford climbed into the back seat of the middle vehicle, the cleanup complete.

  The crew worked with practiced speed. The bodies of the dead were placed inside the two disabled vehicles and set ablaze with handheld TPA canister grenades. David had no idea where Charter obtained such toys, but he sure enjoyed instructing his subordinates to use them. He had been told they contained thickened triethylaluminium, a napalm-like substance that ignites when exposed to air. They made very little noise, just a simple pop!, followed by a puff of blue smoke, then a rush of flames that quickly engulfed the interiors before lapping out through the opened windows and over the roof, hood, and sides.

  The interior of the house was photographed and videoed in under two minutes. The pictures and footage would be examined later by a team of specialists. If there was something worthwhile to find, they would find it. At the end of those two minutes, TPAs were placed in the house and ignited.

  Burning the dead was nothing more than a precaution. Charter employees were not permitted to carry identification, nor did they appear in any government database. Criminal records, social security, birth, DMV—all were purged upon employment.

  A single neighbor emerged once the gunfire stopped, running from the house two doors down at 807 Windmore when he saw David standing in the street, directing the team. The man was in his mid-fifties, with thin hair combed back over a rather small head. He wore a white tank-top undershirt, jeans, and no shoes. He held a .22 in his hand. By the look of the rust on the barrel, the weapon hadn’t been fired or cleaned in a long time. He ran at David, shouting that he called the cops, they were on their way.

  “When did you call them?” David asked.

  “Five minutes ago! You okay? You hit?”

  “I’m not even here,” David replied. “How could I get hit?”

  The man appeared puzzled for a moment, then nodded. “I suppose not. That would be tough, wouldn’t it?”

  “What did you see?”

  The man told him, and he had seen plenty. He told David how it all started shortly after that Ford Bronco down the street showed up. He told him about the man who got out—some homeless-looking mountain man. Walked right into Faye’s place like he owned it.

  “Did Faye Mauck have a kid?”

  “I never saw one, but she kept to herself, mostly.”

  They had learned Faye Mauck was the latest in a long string of identities used by Cammie Brotherton in the two decades she’d been running. Most likely, that’s the name that would appear on her tombstone, if her body ended up in a marked grave. David followed the man’s gaze to the gray Ford parked a half block before 803, partially on the street, partially on the sidewalk.

  Hobson.

  Following instructions, like a good little soldier.

  David nodded at one of the crew and pointed at the Bronco. “Take whatever’s inside, then wash it like the others.” The man understood, moving quickly.

  He returned his focus back on the nosy neighbor in the tank top. “You started all these fires, right?”

  “I started the fires?”

  “Yep. The cars, the house. All you. You like fire. You started them all. Killed these people, too.”

  “Okay. I guess I did.”

  “When the police arrive, you’re going to tell them what you did, how much you enjoyed it. Then, as soon as you finish, after they write it all down, you know what you’re going to do next?”

  The man’s face was blank.

  “You’re going to walk right into that burning house and sit down in the living room. Get right up in the thick of it and pop a squat,” David told him. “You like fire.”

  “Okay. I like fire.”

  “Before that, though, when I leave,” David went on, “I want you to shoot that little gun of yours—shoot the bodies in the SUV, get every shot off, then toss the gun in the bushes over there. Not too deep, though. We don’t want to make this hard on the locals.”

  “That wouldn’t be nice.”

  “No, sir, it wouldn’t.”

  David saw a woman peeking out from behind the curtain of an upstairs room next door. He waved at her. It didn’t matter if she saw him. Nobody would believe her. He turned back to the man in the tank top. “One other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think I’m a good-looking guy?”

  The man tilted his head, his stringy hair catching the night breeze. “You might be the ugliest man I’ve ever met.”

  “You’re not very smart, are you?”

  “No, not really.”

  “I’m the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.”

  The man considered this, then said, “Yeah, I guess you are.”

  David left him there, standing in the street, before climbing into the back seat of the middle Ford Expedition beside Latrese Oliver. She was picking at a flakey black spot on her bad arm. He shook his head and looked back out the window as they began to pull away. “There’s a room in the house, freshly painted pink. We found a doll.”

  “Another child?” Oliver said.

  “Maybe,” David looked over at the house, “Cammie Brotherton might have given birth after all.”

  “I wonder what she can do.”

  “I wonder,” David said.

  28

  “Anyone behind us?”

  The ringing in my ears was still there but subsiding, the pain just a dull ache.

  Stella unsnapped her seat belt and swiveled in the passenger seat, peering out the back window. “I can’t tell. Traffic is too heavy. I see three white cars, but I don’t recognize the drivers. I think we’re okay.”

  The light in front of us turned red, I made a quick right turn to keep moving. We were somewhere in downtown Carmel. The traffic grew thick as morning commuters filled the stree
ts. “I need to get us to the highway. Or maybe find another car.”

  “Jack, we need to look at his shoulder.”

  “We need to keep driving.”

  “There’s blood all over the seat.”

  “It’s leather. Blood wipes right off. We need to keep moving.”

  “I’m not concerned with upholstery. He could die.”

  I made a left turn onto 17 Mile Drive. “Is there anything in back we can use to tie him up? Is he awake?”

  Stella snapped her fingers in front of Dewey Hobson’s eyes. “He’s awake, but he’s not very responsive. Mr. Hobson, can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  “Maybe there’s rope or something we can use in the trunk.”

  “I don’t think he’ll hurt us.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  Stella said, “Dewey, do you plan to hurt Jack Thatch?”

  Silence.

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  Silence.

  “What about Cammie Brotherton?”

  “I’m going to tell her David says hello, then kill her.” Hobson raised his hand and made a gun gesture again. “Pop, pop. Double tap to the head.”

  “Do you plan to hurt anyone else?”

  Silence.

  I frowned. “When David told me to point the rifle at Hobson, I did. I couldn’t help myself. I would have shot him if he told me to do that, too. You knew. That’s why you fired the shotgun, to make sure I didn’t hear him say the words. What the hell was that?”

  Stella turned back around and settled into her seat. “David can be very persuasive.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That’s all they told me,” she replied. “Ms. Oliver said he was special, like me, and he could be very persuasive, so they monitored everything he said to me, everything I said to him. It was horrible. They kept him in this little room, all alone. We couldn’t really talk. We were like lab mice under a bright light, all these eyes and ears on us. I felt sorry for him, so I went.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I was always blindfolded or made to wear a hood. When I was young, Ms. Oliver said it was all a big game. When he came to see me, they made him wear a mask. That was part of the game, too, but I knew it was to keep him from talking to me when they couldn’t listen. As I grew older, she told me it was best I didn’t know where he lived, for my own safety. The drive always took a long time—four or five hours. I have no idea where we actually went. They might have circled the block, for all I knew, back then. I never thought he’d get out of that place.”

  “They used you and your ability to kill people. Maybe they’re using him, too.”

  “Make a left up there,” Stella said, pointing toward a sign.

  “Toward the beach?”

  She nodded. “It will be quiet this time of day.”

  Stella was right about that. We found only three other cars in the lot (green, red, silver). Only two early-morning sunbathers and a jogger on the sand. We pulled into a spot at the far end, and I shut off the engine. After donning a fresh pair of latex gloves from the box she had “borrowed” from Cammie’s house, Stella rummaged through her duffle, took out a first-aid kit, and went to work on Hobson’s shoulder. She unbuttoned his shirt and gingerly pulled the material away from the wound before removing it altogether. He continued to stare blankly ahead, oblivious to what she was doing.

  “The bullet went straight through,” she said, dabbing with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. “That’s a good thing. He’ll have a scar, but it should heal without stitches. The bleeding nearly stopped.” She placed bandages on both sides and secured them with white surgical tape.

  I fished a cotton dress shirt from my backpack—the only shirt I owned with buttons—and together we got it on Hobson. His arms were limp, like a big rag doll. He didn’t fight us, but his state made the task no easier.

  When I waved my hand in front of his face, he didn’t blink. He didn’t react at all. “It’s like he’s been hypnotized.”

  “I think he’s stuck,” Stella said. “He was told to kill Cammie Brotherton, and he’s in some kind of holding pattern until that happens.”

  “We should tie him up.”

  “Cammie is the only person who needs to worry about this man right now.”

  Stella seemed sure of this, so I didn’t press the issue. She was sweating again, a thin sheen across her forehead. She looked pale, too. This is how she looked before the lake, and that was less than a day ago.

  I glanced around the parking lot. “We’re not going to find a car here.”

  “What about that one?”

  She was pointing at a four-door black Honda Accord parked on the corner across the street, a red and white FOR SALE sign in in the window.

  We found the keys under the passenger seat. I told myself we weren’t stealing it. We were just taking it on an extended test drive.

  We managed to work our way through the traffic and get to US-101, then followed the California coast north.

  We considered heading inland to one of the interstates, like I-5, but we figured that was where they’d expect us to go. US-101 was older and slower, passing from one seaside town to the next in leisure. Restaurants, tourist attractions, and strip malls lined both sides of the road, and here we blended with the locals—the pond was bigger, and we needed a big pond.

  Hobson sat silently in the back seat, his gaze focused on the road ahead, looking at everything and nothing in particular. At one point, he started mumbling softly to himself, incoherent, jumbled sounds more than words, and then he went quiet again. Stella had tried speaking to him, and although he would sometimes glance back at her, he didn’t answer. She had given up after about an hour, fished out both copies of Great Expectations, and began randomly flipping through the pages, insisting my father left the book for a reason, and growing increasingly frustrated when she couldn’t find it.

  I continually scanned the cars around us. Whenever a white vehicle appeared in our rearview mirror, I’d tense and slow down, my breath catching until they finally rolled past us, my eyes drifting over the driver, finding relief when I confirmed they weren’t wearing white.

  Stella had grown increasingly pale over the hours, and I tried to calculate how much time had gone by since yesterday when she had first began showing signs of her hunger, until we finally pulled over at that lake. Six or seven hours at best, from what I remembered. It seemed to be progressing slower this time. Maybe the lake had bought more time. How much was anyone’s guess. Something bad was coming, though.

  “The gas light is on.”

  The car had grown so quiet her voice startled me. “I know.”

  We had been driving for nearly five hours. The tank had been full when we borrowed the Honda, but we’d been running on fumes for the past ten miles. “We’re coming up on Manchester. We can stop there.”

  “Jack, there’s something else I need to tell you. Something important.”

  “What is it?”

  “It has to do with my condition.”

  “You can tell me.”

  “Even I don’t completely understand it,” Stella said. “I know when I touch something, I take the life from whatever that something is, I drain it, but it doesn’t always end the hunger. Some things work better than others.”

  “I get that. The fish in the lake, the tree back in Nevada. That cornfield a few years ago. They helped a little, but you need a person, you need to—”

  “Jack,” she interrupted. “Not every person works, either. That’s what I’m trying to explain. Some are better than others. I don’t understand what the difference is, but some people buy me a few months, others put the illness at bay for a full year. Ms. Oliver, somehow she knew which would work the longest. The people she brought me always quenched the hunger, always for a full year.”

  “August 8 to August 8.”

  She nodded.

  “And back at Cammie’s house, she said she had someon
e ‘picked out.’”

  Stella nodded again. “Bad people, that seems to be the key. They’re the ones who work the best. She may have already taken someone.”

  A small gas station came up on the right—Manchester Fill ’n Go. I pulled in and eased up to one of the pumps. Shutting off the engine, I turned to Stella. “We’ll solve this, I promise you. We’ll find a way.”

  Again, she nodded, but there was doubt behind her eyes, a growing sadness.

  You’ll lose her soon. This is her saying good-bye.

  The thought came into my head, and I forced it back out.

  We’ll find a way.

  But even I was beginning to doubt that.

  Three cars in the parking lot—a green Ford, red Dodge, and a white Toyota. The driver of the Toyota was a teenage girl wearing a loose N’Sync tank top over a pink bikini, no doubt skipping school for the beach.

  “We should get some snacks, something to eat.” I handed her a twenty and she took it from me without another word, climbed out of the car, and went into the small gas station.

  I was back in the car, nearly ready to go in after her, when she finally returned with an armful of items—potato chips, three sandwiches, three bottles of water, and a road map. She dumped all but the map on the floor at her feet.

  I eyed the discarded food. “Sure, I’ll take a sandwich. Thank you, Stella.”

  “Manchester,” she mumbled, spreading the map out on the dashboard. “Manchester.”

  “Stella? What’s going on?”

  “Manchester is a city in England,” she muttered, studying the map.

  “And a city here in California, Illinois, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana…probably all over the world. It’s a common name.”

  She reached for her copy of Great Expectations and opened it to the map on the inside cover, studied it for a moment, then opened the copy I had found in my Father’s grave beside it, also to the interior flap. “These are both the same editions. Your father’s copy and the one I got from my parents.”