The Four Before Me

by E H Night

  “It’s not like they’ll go bad or something. I’m sure we’ll want to drink them eventually. Does that stuff even expire anyway?”

  Alice stretched her arms out in front of her and tapped on the bar-top for a moment. She inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh of defeat. “Fine. You’re right. I guess it wouldn’t hurt us to have a little fun...”

  “That’s the spirit!” Tiffany hollered back while clapping enthusiastically.

  “...As long as I’m home before midnight. I still have to work in the morning,” Alice finished her reply.

  “We have a deal then. I have to open tomorrow at the diner too, so I can’t be out all night anyway.”

  The pair turned back to face Kirt. He was rolling his eyes in the direction of a few drunken mid-fifties women who had been trying to turn a support beam into a stripper pole. They were succeeding. “What’ll it be, girls? Are you eating here, or what?” he asked.

  “We’ll eat here, I guess,” Alice said. “And we’ll take a pitcher of whatever light beer you have on tap.”

  “Mm-hmm, okay. I’ll be right back.” He waltzed into the kitchen, grabbed the food, and turned back around almost as quickly as he had left. The large cardboard box of pizza rested on top of his palm, and he presented it in front of them as if it were much higher quality than it actually had been. He sat a few paper plates and napkins down next to the box, and filled a pitcher.

  “Here you go. Let me know if you need anything else,” he said as he sat the beer down, along with a couple of plastic cups.

  “Thanks, Kirt. It looks delicious!”

  Tiffany nodded at Alice’s remark and smiled very appreciatively while she lifted a huge cheesy slice to her mouth. Grease dripped down her hand and onto wrist, but she didn’t seem very bothered by the messiness. She blotted it all away with little care or strategy between slices.

  Alice’s appetite was much more suppressed than Tiffany’s had been that night. She took significantly smaller, fewer bites from her portion, and focused the majority of her attention on the beer instead. Even though she was supposed to be having a carefree fun time, she couldn’t help but to reflect repeatedly on all of the things that had been happening since she moved to that town. She wasn’t bitter. She was just overwhelmed, tired, and confused. Just like the multiple times she’d spent thinking about the town’s events before, she couldn’t help but to feel as if she were actually the bad omen. While the women had all gone missing before she’d ever even thought to show up in town, none of the bodies had been found until her arrival. People were still in a state of blissful denial until the gruesome truth had been dug up from those shallow graves.

  Alice thought of the four women. Two were still in or on the earth somewhere, just waiting to be found. And, there were two others who had become nothing more than the small stacks of bones that were being passed back and forth between the hands of crime experts. After spending their entire lives dreaming, growing, and loving, the women had been left to rot alone in the mud that they’d once spent their childhood summers playing in. Only now, their mothers weren’t able to rinse the grime away and tuck them into bed. They could only cry at the loss of life as they lifted dusty white sheets across the adult-sized skulls that had once formed so carefully in their wombs. There were no beds waiting for their daughters — just cold evidence cabinets and flower-adorned graves.

  “Um, are you okay, Alice?” Tiffany asked, chewing on the end of a pizza crust. “You’re more quiet than usual tonight.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just been a little distracted, I guess.”

  Alice swirled the plastic cup of beer around in her hand, as if it were a glass of fine wine. She stared into the bubbles, getting lost momentarily in the beautiful light amber color. It reminded her of her grandmother’s eyes. She could almost see them staring back at her from the depths of the drink.

  “Yeah, I can see that…” Tiffany said, grabbing her by the hand as she hopped off of the bar stool. She yanked playfully at Alice’s arm, and started to drag her toward the makeshift dance floor. “Come on. Let’s stop sitting around.” She said to Alice. Then she nodded to Kirt, and shouted, “Two shots of whiskey, my man. Two each, I mean!”

  A smiled spread across his face, as if he were surprised by the situation unfolding in front of him.

  Alice, while not shy, was fairly reserved when it came to the bar. She didn’t really dance or mingle with anyone during the times that she’d visited before. It had mainly just been a local pizza place in her mind.

  Kirt stared on, excitedly. He occasionally allowed his eyes to wander over to the handsome regular who was chugging beers like some sort of a frat boy, admiring his strong jaw as he guzzled. Mostly, though, he kept his attention on Alice and Tiffany, waiting for something amusing to happen.

  The girls danced around, slowly becoming less and less tense in their movements as the shots medicated their inhibitions. They had needed a night like this — a night without worry, a night without fear.

  Chapter 14

  “Tainted Love”

  Detective Darrow got dressed for the day, and slid on a pair of comfortable shoes. He had decided to walk over to Alice’s house to talk to her in person about the voicemail that he’d left for her on the answering machine the day before. He wondered if she hadn’t been easy to reach lately, or if he’d actually been the busy one. With such chaos going on in the town, he’d been heavily focused on trying to find a suspect, a motive, or a link of some kind, any kind. The Clay County Sheriff’s deputies were already in town, canoeing across the lake, looking for any and every speck of evidence that they could find around the water.

  He didn’t trust the deputies much more than he trusted whoever was out there killing people. He felt like the case needed to be handled quietly, and with much less of a scene, but his hands were tied. Since the new bones had been found, this was no longer a case for the Wintersburg police to handle alone. Their station needed the county’s resources.

  Detective Darrow knocked on Alice’s door and paced back and forth while waiting, just as usual.

  “Coming! Just a second!” her voice called out to him.

  He saw her head peak through the blinds in the living room, and then the door knob rattled for a brief moment.

  “Blake! I’ve been meaning to call you back again. I tried to call yesterday, but you didn’t answer. I figured that you were working or something.” She shifted around for a moment, debating on whether to invite him inside or not. Her hair was up in a towel, freshly washed, and she felt a little insecure about her bare face. After all, he had just interrupted her shower, so she was in her most natural state. As soon as she had heard someone knocking at the door, she’d turned the water off and threw on the nearest bathrobe. This definitely didn’t seem like a good time for her to be having any company, at least, not in her mind.

  Detective Darrow stared at her for a few seconds. Sure, he’d always thought that she was a pretty girl, but she seemed even more beautiful without all of the usual glitz and glam. He wondered why she even bothered painting her face with all of those colorful eye shadows and lipsticks each morning. He saw beauty in her bare face — something that was almost a sin to cover up. His eyes wandered to her bare lips, and he admired their soft tones.

  “Uh, I’m sorry,” he said, without even thinking about his words or whether he even needed to apologize for something in the first place. “You’re right. I’ve been tied up at work a lot this week.” He lifted his wrist and glanced quickly at his thick black watch. It was a little too stylish for his casual outfit, but it was the only one he owned that hadn’t been completely ruined yet. “I don’t have a lot of time right now to talk about this, but I wanted to let you in on some things — if you’re interested, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I’d like that a lot. Do you want to come in, or…?” she asked, her voice trailing off as she pointed behind her.

  “I wish I could, but I can’t risk getting too comfortable and losing any more time
. Actually, I have to meet someone at the diner in about twenty more minutes.”

  “Oh, okay,” she replied, confused and curious. “Well then, what’s going on?” She knew that it was odd for Detective Darrow to be on-duty while in plain clothes, but she figured that he’d provide an explanation without any further prodding. She was right.

  “When I called you, I had just heard that one of the server’s from Kirt’s Pub had been pulled into a car while she was leaving work. At the time, we had been interviewing her at the station and thought that we had a pretty good description of the guy. She said that the man was bald, middle-aged, and was driving an old beat up silver truck. She also seemed to fit the type of the other girls enough — brunette, a little wild, so we thought that this was going to lead us right to him.”

  Alice gasped at the idea of another girl possibly being taken and killed somewhere. She noticed that Detective Darrow was pushing his short dark hair back and away from his forehead — something that he often did when he was uncomfortable or lost in thought. “So, what happened then? Is she okay? Do you know who the guy is?” she asked, flustered from the pause.

  “Well, the problem is...” he mumbled while readjusting his posture to look more confident and less fidgety. “She made the whole thing up.”

  “What?” Alice interrupted. “Why in the world would anyone make something like that up?”

  “That’s what we were all asking ourselves too. Sheriff Gray and his deputies were having a pretty big laugh at our expense when they heard about the whole thing. You see, she finally gave us an explanation after we’d threatened her with more jail time. I’m sure you remember the girl, actually. She’s the one that Kirt was yelling at about the chips when we went in there together. Brooke… She’s not a new face around the station — that’s for sure.” He chuckled a little at that thought, but quickly composed himself again when Alice nodded. “After some convincing, she explained that she had really been cheating on her boyfriend, Eric, that night with some random guy from the bar. I guess she had been gone for the entire evening. She told us that she had passed out and needed a little alibi. She’s not the brightest girl, so she thought it would be a great idea to just fake a kidnapping. She’d even gone as far as to describe the room that the man had kept her in and everything. Really sick stuff.”

  Alice was confused, but very interested. “So, why didn’t she just tell her boyfriend that she’d gone to a friend’s house for the night? It seems like that would have caused a lot less trouble than getting the cops involved. I mean, what did she think was going to happen?”

  Detective Darrow shook his head and grinned. He’d been just as entertained while this whole situation was happening, despite the embarrassment, and he still held onto a bit of that amusement. “Eric had already called all of her friends to see if she was with any of them. I guess no one wanted to get involved, so they all threw her under the bus to deal with the situation herself. From my understanding, this wasn’t the first time she’d stayed out all night with another man. Eric actually pieced everything together before we even could.”

  “How’d he find out?” she said, leaning in a little closer, as if her ears would be able to catch the words faster that way.

  “Kirt,” he said, laughing as he spoke the name. “Kirt told him everything that he’d seen from start to finish when he had been calling around looking for her that night. The second that Eric had heard that Brooke was at the police station saying that she’d been forced into some man’s truck, he came in and let us know that she was lying.”

  “Oh my God, that is absolutely insane!” her voice burst out with excitement. She was confused by Detective Darrow’s sudden interest in gossip, but she definitely wasn’t intending on complaining about it. This was the most entertaining thing she’d heard in a while. She felt like she was listening in on one of those wild day-time talk shows, where everyone was sleeping around with each other’s partners. She loved it.

  “Wait a minute. It gets even crazier,” he said, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck. He didn’t do well in the heat. “They started arguing really loud right in the station, to the point that an officer had to step in to remove Brooke from the room. While she was being restrained, Eric ended up admitting that she hadn’t been the only person cheating in the relationship. He had been cheating on her for a long time too. Anyway, I know we’re both rushed so I’ll just get to the point of this whole thing.”

  Alice waited eagerly for more words to leave his lips. She was still confused about where he was going with this whole story, and why it was so important to explain during such a time crunch, but she figured that it must have been significant in some way. Her heart fluttered painfully when she heard the explanation, as if it were being squeezed by someone’s hand.

  “Eric had been cheating on her with Jessica Roberts a few years ago.”

  Alice immediately thought of Tiffany, and how frightened she seemed underneath her tough exterior after finding Jessica’s body. “Do — do you think he had something to do with —” she asked, practically choking on her words.

  “I really don’t think so, but I’ve been surprised before. But, I actually have to get out of here now. He’s the person I’m meeting up with.”

  Alice nodded and looked into Detective Darrow’s eyes. She was suddenly very nervous for him. “Please be safe… and keep in touch. You can’t just tell me all of this and then leave me hanging, okay?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, resting his hands gently across her robe-covered shoulders. “Everything will be fine, and I’ll fill you in on the details later. I’d just like to interview Eric before Sheriff Gray gets to him. Things like this need to be looked into on a personal level. I’m going to try to talk to him man to man instead of man to monster. For all we know, he’s innocent. It’s best to treat him like he is for now. Anyway, I just want you to worry about being cautious. I’ll give you a call later.” He stepped back and waved, coyly. Not only was he short on time, but he was also only seconds away from showing more affection than what was appropriate. He collected himself and hopped into his car.

  ◆

  The diner was fairly empty. The early morning rush had already calmed down, and lunch was still a few hours away. Detective Darrow scanned the tables, looking for a familiar face. As he reached the far corner of the restaurant, he saw Eric sitting in a booth alone, staring down at the menu in front of him. The man kept his back to the entrance, but he was still easy to identify due to the brown leather jacket and ball cap that he always wore, regardless of the weather. Detective Darrow had assumed that there was something he was hiding underneath the sleeves — either tattoos, or something else he didn’t want anyone to know about.

  He sat down across from Eric, and gave a friendly nod. Eric pushed the menu toward him, and smiled slightly in return. The man was visibly uncomfortable and scared, but Detective Darrow had no intentions of intimidating him any further.

  Footsteps approached the pair, but stopped before they reached the table.

  Tiffany gasped slightly, but then continued walking.“What is Darrow doing with that guy,” she wondered, recognizing the man as the one who had frightened her with his weird mannerisms back in April. She cleared her throat, trying to steady the surprise in her voice, and pulled out a pen and notepad. “What can I get for you this morning?” she asked, trying not to make eye contact.

  “Hey Tiffany. How’s your day going so far?” Detective Darrow interjected.

  “Um, well, it’s goin’ I guess. Can I get some coffee for you?”

  “Actually,” he looked over to Eric to see if he had any suggestions. He didn’t. “Just bring us out a fresh pot of the strong stuff, and a stack of creamers, if you could.”

  She nodded and stared at the pad of paper in her hand. “Anything to eat?” she asked.

  Eric shook his head.

  “I think we’ll be fine with just the coffee, Tiff, but thanks.” Detective Darrow replied for the both of them.
r />   “Alright. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Tiffany walked away and made a new pot of coffee. She added an extra scoop of coffee grounds into the filter to make sure it was nice and strong. After scooping several little creamers into her apron, she took it all over to the table, along with two mugs. “Let me know if you need anything else. The place is pretty empty, so feel free to yell if you can’t see me.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Detective Darrow replied.

  Tiffany walked over to the same table that she had hid behind the first time Eric had shown up. Just as she had done before, she pretended to clean it by wiping the same spot over and over again. She felt guilty for spying last time, but she was even more interested now than she had been before. This definitely didn’t seem like the type of company that Detective Darrow would typically keep, but he was acting casually, and even having coffee with the guy like they were old pals.

  She watched as they talked for a while. Eric eventually reached into his jacket. He pulled out the same folded piece of paper that he had been staring at the last time Tiffany had been spying on him. She squinted to see what it said as he passed it over to Detective Darrow.