Emma lifted her leg and tried to kick Bill, who sidestepped and hid behind Gabriel. She ran him around Gabriel, who had his arms raised in neutrality, while Bill laughed like a jackass and circled him.
“Remind me to whoop your ass when I’m done eating.” She finally gave up the chase.
They picked a table overlooking the green valleys and wind gaps below. Their sandwiches were fresh and mouthwatering. When they finished, they ordered another set to go.
Twenty minutes after resuming the drive, they passed over I-64, where Blue Ridge Parkway began. At the end of this five-hour stretch, they stopped at the Grandfather Mountains to eat the food.
Sandwich in one hand and phone in the other, Emma said, “Google Maps says from here we can take another detour southwest to Tennessee, and see the Great Smokies. Or we can cut east through North Carolina and go straight to Apex. What do you suggest?”
The sun had disappeared long ago, and streetlights were nonexistent. It wouldn’t make sense to camp. Not that they had packed for it, anyway. And the thought of spending a night with Beast scared Gabriel more than digging a poop-hole.
He told Emma to hand the keys over to Bill, but she shook her head, like the last two times he had suggested it.
“I’m serious, Em. You’ve been at the wheel for more than twelve hours. You look exhausted. You’re gonna careen the car over and take us all down the woods with you.”
“Come on. You know I won’t—”
Bill snatched the keys from her.
When the car started, the ignition was so loud it echoed in the steep drop under them. Now covered in darkness, the wilderness didn’t look inviting anymore. All that pressing blackness, and the stars above, put things in perspective, reminding Gabriel how inconsequentially ephemeral our existence was in the universe.
The Camaro sped along, the last of the black Appalachian Mountains sinking into the rearview mirror.
* * *
Apex was neither on the mountains, nor in the coastal plains. It sat in between, looking like a ghost town. But perhaps Gabriel’s vision was prejudice, because the town birthed a serial killer that Noah was besties with. Even Staten Island would look like Apex at this time of the night.
They located four hotels with the help of the GPS. One of them refused to allow Beast in because they had a no-pets policy, and the next two didn’t have vacancies. Supposedly April to July was tourist season in Apex.
As they parked the Camaro on North Salem Street, in front of the fourth and last hotel in town, all three were mentally prepared to sleep in the car. It was past 1:00 a.m., and they needed rest to be able to function later that morning.
But to their surprise, the ROOMS AVAILABLE sign was lit.
The receptionist, an overweight man in his late forties, eyed Emma’s breasts as he greeted the three of them, sleepily. But once he read her ID, he avoided looking their way until the conclusion of business.
“W-we got just one free room,” he muttered.
“Huh!” Emma barked.
“April to June is our—”
“Tourist season,” she said. “Yeah, yeah, so we’ve heard.”
“But that room has a double bed. I’ll wake Kenny up, and he will arrange for a third.”
Emma turned to Gabriel. “Another slumber party okay with you?”
He shrugged. He didn’t care. With the number of cramps in his body, he would agree to sleep on the floor right there if they gave him a blanket.
“All right.” She turned back to the receptionist. “We’ll take it, perv.”
Emma collected the keys from the sweaty guy, lifted her bag off the floor, and marched toward the elevator. The other two followed suit.
* * *
Kenny laid down a mattress, and then dropped two pillows and a fresh-smelling comforter on it. Gabriel paid him a nice tip, and off he went with a sleepy but happy grin. Once he was out of the door, Emma rushed to the closet, recovered Bill’s duffel from it, and placed it on the bed. She pulled open the zipper, and Beast peeked through the gap and licked her nose.
Gabriel was allowed to use the bathroom first. Unsure if it was his seniority that earned him the privilege, or his stench, he went in and took a shower. The water tasted sweet and felt as if it had less viscosity than New York’s. Opposed to his usual method of drying under a fan, he toweled himself and changed into nightwear.
When Gabriel came out, Bill was already asleep on the mattress Kenny had put on the floor. Shit. Gabriel should have called dibs. Now that Bill was snoring lightly, Gabriel decided, after a scuffle of indecision, not to wake him up.
Emma was rummaging through her bag on the dresser, for toiletries.
“Em?” Gabriel climbed onto his side of the bed and lay back.
“Yeah?” Emma peered at him in the mirror.
“You were the best in your batch at firearms training, weren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’ve told me you keep your gun on the bedside table when you sleep.”
“Doesn’t every cop do that?” She finally turned and looked at him. “What’s up, Gabe?”
“Um… you know my condition with scary dreams.” Gabriel scratched the back of his head. “If you hear me screaming awake, please don’t shoot me.”
“Will try not to.” Emma headed to the bathroom.
As he listened to the running water from the shower, waiting for her to return so they could revisit the conversation, he slipped into the realm of nightmares.
Chapter 31
April 11, 2019. 09:16 A.M.
Gabriel stood in front of a grave marked by an algae-spotted headstone tilted to the right. SANDY was inscribed on it, with ?–12/15/1991 written underneath. Beside it was a small shed of some kind. Its roof had caved in, and the walls collapsed, covering the floor with debris. He tromped back to the house, a mushy patch of weeds swallowing his feet.
What was that about?
As he walked along the musty hallway, Emma stepped out of a door on the right and intercepted him.
“You may wanna see this.” She turned back and walked in.
It was a semi-dark, medium-sized room. Dust mites floated in the sunlight beaming from a window on the far side. It made him want to sneeze. He covered his nose with the crook of his arm and followed her in.
Dry leaves were scattered under the open window, and a yellow fungal patch crept down from the lower edge of the windowsill. Shattered wooden dummies—like the ones Gabriel had seen in old martial arts movies—leaned on each corner of the room. Their arms were broken or ripped out of their sockets. Also strewn on the floor, among the dead leaves, were several man-sized punch bags.
It was a gym.
Tyrel must have left the unusable equipment behind when he fled town. Although the punch bags were mangled—even the duct tape covering their midsections was torn to shreds—there wasn’t a single boxing glove there, just lengths and lengths of threadbare hand wraps. One more reason why Gabriel wouldn’t want to encounter this guy alone in a dark alley.
With this room, Gabriel and Emma had finished searching their sections of the house, but obtained zero results. He had known they wouldn’t get anything here, not after Noah’s coaching of Tyrel. But he wanted to visit his lair.
They both walked out of the house.
There was an SUV parked up front, and an old man was leaning on its side. Partially hidden by his heavyset body were the words WAKE COUNTY SHERIFF.
“Top of the morning to you.” He offered his hand as they approached him. “Sheriff McCune. Heard y’all visited the station earlier and one of my deputies brought you here. So y’all from New York?”
“We are. 122nd precinct,” Gabriel replied.
They both shook his hand. The pudgy fingers enveloped Emma’s hand.
McCune was stocky, not pot-bellied or flabby-arms stocky, but beefy all around like a retired weightlifter who had let himself go. If not for the avuncular smile under his handlebar mustache, he would appear intimidating.
“I knew that Boone kid’s father, Benjamin,” McCune said. “He had gumption. Was well respected back in the day. Shame what happened to him.” After reading their exchange of confused looks, he said, “Stomach cancer. God rest his soul. But his boy is trouble. Too big for his britches.”
“So it was just Tyrel and his mother?” Gabriel said.
“Yeah. I knew Tyrel was up to no good.” McCune shook his head. “Always fixing to hurt someone. Knew it the day I arrested that sumbitch twenty years ago.”
“You arrested him?” Gabriel said.
“Yes, sir.” McCune hooked his thumbs on his belt loops.
“What for?” Gabriel held his breath.
McCune probably wouldn’t know Tyrel’s records were expunged and would most likely spill the story. Gabriel felt a pang of guilt for playing it this way, but it was for the greater good.
“Because he beat up some kids,” McCune said. “But beat up don’t quite do it justice. You’d have had to have been there to see the damage he did to truly comprehend what he’s capable of. He put them all in the hospital for days. I still remember it because one of the kids he beat up owns a bar I go to every night.” The sheriff let out a long sigh that reeked of disfavor. “That boy’s got a severe speech impediment because his tongue’s tip is cut off.”
“Where is Tyrel now?” Gabriel pulled the inhaler from his pocket.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” McCune shrugged. “What’d he do up there? Wait, don’t tell me. He put a few more in the hospital?”
“A little more serious than that,” Emma said.
McCune searched her eyes, and by an almost imperceptible rise of his eyebrows, he let them know he understood what Emma meant.
“Well, I declare! He’s a real animal, that one. Hot-headed and troubled. I knew it was just a matter of time before he’d gone and killed someone.” He let out another exasperated breath. “But I thought he got his act together when he was released from juvie and found himself a little homo—sorry, a boyfriend?—and settled.”
“What?” Emma said. “Tyrel is gay?”
Gabriel couldn’t care less. Sexual orientation didn’t have anything to do with sadistic tendencies.
“One hundred percent a rainbow.” McCune smirked. “Not that anyone would say it to his face. He lived with another man, who still resides here. I can point y’all to him if that’s going to be of any use.”
“That’d be really helpful, sir,” Emma said. “Thank you.”
Gabriel felt a movement to his left and turned. Bill and the deputy who had accompanied them there, exited the house. Bill shook his head when they neared him, meaning he had found nothing interesting.
“Morning, Sheriff.” The deputy lifted her hat.
McCune returned the greeting. “So I see you took it upon yourself to show our guests around. I say you extend our southern hospitality and take them over yonder toward Knollwood, and introduce them to Tyrel’s… ex-husband?”
* * *
“He killedh Dhickey. He tholdh me that,” Jerry pouted. “I’ve been thelling ith for yeath.”
They were in a bar known locally as Willy’s. During their five-minute transit, the deputy had informed them that the bar had been owned by Jerry’s father, who had passed away recently, and Jerry had taken over since then.
“Why’d he kill Ricky?” Gabriel said.
“I dhon’th know,” Jerry said, but Gabriel smelled it was a lie.
It wasn’t the only thing he smelled. Though the table separated them by two feet, Gabriel could tell Jerry was suffering from a case of halitosis. Did it hurt to brush his teeth?
“Come on, Jerry,” the deputy said. “You know you’ve been telling that story around as long as I remember. Now all of a sudden you get amnesia?”
“Noth like dhath, Lautha.”
“Then indulge our blue friends here. You hate that creep. The sheriff hates that creep. And for whatever reason, NYPD’s finest hates that creep, too.” Deputy Laura lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “It’d be well-advised of us to set them on his trail. I reckon it’s tantamount to getting back at him for what he’s done to you.”
Jerry hesitated, but finally said, “Fine, fine.” Then he told them the story about a handhicappedh dog and what they did to it when they were drunk. The gang’s leader, Ricky, disappeared five years after that incident, and Tyrel kindh of impliedh that he had killed him.
“Hold on, hold on, hold on.” Emma lifted a hand and stopped him. “You motherfuckers killed a disabled dog? A dog that learned to walk on two legs?”
Gabriel shared her resentment. Now he understood the motive. Tyrel must picture himself as a swashbuckling knight in a big bad world, ignorant that he’d turned into the very thing he’d set out to fight.
“I’m sodhy,” Jerry said, and he really did look like it.
But they hadn’t just killed a dog. They had indirectly contributed to the deaths of more than thirty people.
“Is that the boyfriend?” Emma asked Laura, and tipped her head at a lone man nursing a glass of brown liquid.
When Laura affirmed, the man’s shoulders stiffened.
Gabriel began walking toward him, but Emma held his arm and pulled him back. She shook her head and took the lead instead, placing a hand on her hip where her holster was.
Damn it!
Gabriel had forgotten he didn’t carry a gun anymore, the worst thing not to have when approaching a probable threat. The situation became more dangerous when the threat was drinking at ten in the morning.
When Emma stepped around the table, her arm loosened and face softened, but only for an instant. Then she put on her sensitive cop persona.
“Why are you crying, Mister?”
Shane took the glass and knocked it back. “Another large, Jerry!”
Emma and Gabriel sat across from him, while Bill and Laura stood guard on his side and back. Shane’s clothes were frowsy as if he had been sleeping in them. Maybe he had. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the hair on the left side of his head was ruffled. It didn’t take a psychologist to extrapolate that the man had fallen into a permanent state of disrepair.
“I told him the cops would find it all out,” Shane said, in a feeble voice. “But he just wouldn’t listen.”
“It’s all right, Shane,” Gabriel said. “We’re here to help. Even if we can’t help him, we will help a lot of people who may be in danger right now.”
He knew the difference between people who cried from guilt and people who did out of self-preservation. Shane belonged to the former.
“He ruined me.” Shane sniffled and wiped snot on his sleeve. “Is it weird that I still love him and want to ask you guys not to hurt him?”
Jerry brought the drink and stood outside the threshold. Gabriel signaled him to serve, which he did promptly and disappeared.
“We won’t hurt him if we don’t have to,” Emma said. “Tell us where he is.”
Shane scrunched his face. “I-I don’t know.”
“Tyrel has killed three people that we know of, after torturing them first.” Gabriel pulled his phone out and showed Shane the picture of Gerald with javelins protruding from his back.
Then he swiped to Mila, whose skinned body was red except her head, breasts, and crotch. At last, he showed him the picture of Woo, which was just a heap of chopped meat with a human head in its center.
Shane’s cheeks inflated. Gabriel thought that he was fighting down a projectile, but that wasn’t it. He just blew out air as if seeing these horrific images was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. What had Tyrel done to him?
“See what he is doing out there?” Emma said. “Tell us where he is.”
“You don’t understand, Detectives. I really don’t know where he is.”
“We need your help, Shane,” Gabriel said. “I’ve come across some bad people in my career, and he is the most dangerous I’ve ever seen. He is pure evil. No, scratch that. He is the definition of evil.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Shane snapped, his eyes watery again. “You think what you’ve shown me is shocking? Let me tell you something. A disfigured and disemboweled guy—a poor fellow Tyrel had been torturing for god knows how long—died in front of me. Died holding my hand!”
He looked down at his fists on the table, which he slowly unfurled and cupped together. He buried his face in his hands and screamed.
Everyone waited it out, and it was a whole minute before he stopped bawling and let go of his wet face.
“I have a big box full of…” Shane’s hoarse voice failed him.
“What?” Gabriel said, but he already had an idea.
The hearts.
“I have a box full of colorful skulls that belonged to that… that thing. Human skulls you wouldn’t have seen since your high school biology class.”
Skulls? That was a curveball. It didn’t make sense. But in his high of having found so much that morning, Gabriel didn’t ponder over it. All that mattered was that Tyrel was a trophy hunter, which would be useful in the court.
But wait.
“Only the skulls?” Gabriel said.
If he discovered the bodies, ID’d them and connected them to NamUs—the national missing persons database—he could build an even more solid case.
“What happened to the rest?” he said.
Shane’s hand shook as he picked up the glass and emptied it in a sip. He looked up at the ceiling fan and started to mutter something while he interlaced his trembling fingers on the table.
“Shane?” Gabriel said, but got only the chant of a miserable drunk as a reply.
“The families of the victims would need them to say their goodbyes,” Emma said.
“No can do.” Shane began crying again.
“Why not?” she said.
Shane tightened his fingers, and the muttering got louder. Gabriel could have sworn he heard Father and deliver.
Shane was praying.
“Come on, Shane,” Gabriel said. “Why can’t we get the bodies? Did he throw them in the woods to wild animals?”
“Worse.” Shane finally brought his head down and looked into Gabriel’s eyes. “He ate them.”
Inhuman: Detective Chase hunts an animal who protects his own Page 19