by J K Ellem
“What about the religious commune you mentioned?” Shaw asked. “You said there’s some sort of church or cult up in the hills?”
“Like old Al Beckett, they keep to themselves. Sometimes they come into town.”
“But surely they have followers who come and go. Like I said, I think your dead girl and the body you haven’t found yet are people who aren’t local. They could be part of the congregation up there.”
It was a valid lead that should be followed up. She knew the church had a number of people who came and went, drifters looking for spiritual enlightenment. She had spoken to some of them a few months ago when they were in town. They would stay for a few weeks then move on.
“Who runs the place?”
“A man called Carl Jessup, like a self-anointed minister. I haven’t been up there in a while but apparently it’s been expanded. They own the land so they can do what they like.” Clare had met Carl Jessup a few months after she arrived in town. He had invited her up there to visit and then tried to get her to take part in a “cleansing session” as he put it. He made her feel uncomfortable so she declined.
“What’s he like?” Shaw asked.
“Like most self-appointed prophets, up himself. He seems to think he’s a preacher or is going to save the world. A lot of the people follow him around all doe-eyed.”
“I’d like to take a look up there, unannounced.” Shaw said. “We should both go.”
“Maybe after I go back to where the body was found. I don’t have to go, but I just want to keep an eye on the Denver police. It’s my turf after all. I won’t be long.”
Clare switched the subject, she didn’t want the evening to be all about work. “What about you? I’ve told you a lot of things I probably shouldn’t have. So now it’s your turn.”
Shaw gave a weary look. She had told him a lot of detailed police information that she shouldn’t have. “OK, what do you want to know?”
“Has anyone got close, you know, while you were protecting the Vice-President?” She respected his privacy but wanted to know—without sounding like some eager school girl. It was more of a professional curiosity. They were in the same industry so she felt that common bond with other law enforcement agencies even if the US Secret Service considered itself to be something more than that.
“Yes, once, with me.”
Clare looked shocked. “What happened?”
“Someone died,” he said flatly.
“What? The person who tried to assassinate the Vice-President?”
“Them too, but my partner was killed.”
Clare said nothing for a few minutes, content just to let Shaw decide if he wanted to say any more.
Finally he spoke. “We were following up on a threat, just one of many that we get. It wasn’t supposed to be anything but a routine call to a house in Maryland just out of D.C.”
Clare nodded, urging him to continue.
“The usual social media rants, but then we were alerted to one particular guy. His rants were just a little too threatening. So we ran a search on him, but the guy had only a few parking violations, and had once threatened his ex-wife. Just misdemeanours, nothing too serious.” Shaw went on to explain that the man was called Frank Pollard. He was a janitor at a local university. His wife had left him six months previous and she had full custody of their two children. “I guess he had a beef against the system,” Shaw said quietly, his eyes flickering in the flames of the wood stove. Pollard had left some threatening posts on social media. At first they were low-level and hence assessed as low risk. Gradually over the months the threats of violence escalated into what he would do to politicians. Eventually the threats were enough that the Secret Service decided that Frank Pollard should be paid a visit. Typically, Secret Service agents would pay a house call and have a talk to a person of interest. Pollard had made no actual attempt on the President or Vice-President. So when Shaw and his partner, Dean Miller, pulled up outside the small run-down house in Maryland they both thought it was going to be a routine warning. It is a felony to threaten the President of the United States.
Pollard was waiting for them. And when Shaw’s partner walked up the driveway to Pollard’s house and knocked on his door, Pollard shot him through the door with a twelve gauge shotgun. Miller died right there on the porch, half his insides spilling down the front steps.
Pollard died instantly when Shaw kicked in what remained of the door and put three rounds in him: two in the chest, one in the head.
“I’m sorry,” Clare said. She was almost brought to tears.
Shaw took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Worst day of my life.”
“But you killed him.”
“I didn’t have to though,” Shaw said.
“He was armed, the man had a shotgun. He had just shot your partner.” Clare leaned forward and placed her hand on Shaw’s knee. “You did the right thing.”
Shaw slowly shook his head. “No.”
“No?” Clare was confused. “He would have killed you too. I would have shot him.” She looked deep into his eyes and saw turmoil below the surface, a dark bottomless pool where demons swam.
“When I broke through the front door, he had dropped the shotgun. He had his hands in the air. He had surrendered.”
The room went very quiet except for the crackling of the logs in the fire and the wind that rattled the windows.
“I shot him anyway.” Shaw’s voice was almost a whisper.
Clare edged closer, taking his hand in hers.
He looked straight at her, their faces only inches apart. “And it felt good. I wanted retribution.”
Clare could feel her heart beating in her chest.
“Miller had a wife and two young kids at home. One was eight, the other was five. His wife was pregnant with their third child. I was over at their home not two weeks before. Now he was gone.”
Clare touched Shaw’s face and felt her insides tear apart.
Shaw’s jaw tightened, an unseen anger boiling to the surface. “Someone was going to pay for that.”
18
“I’m not like most men,” Shaw replied looking straight at Clare. “I couldn’t just let it go. Pollard had destroyed an entire family’s future in a split second, then he decided to surrender?”
Clare smiled. She didn’t know what to think. Was it right that he had killed an unarmed man? It wasn’t for her to judge. She wasn’t there. But one thing she knew for sure was that she was drawn even more towards him, and before she realized what she was doing, she straddled him where his legs crossed and kissed him hungrily.
Her teeth bit his lips, her tongue plunged into his mouth, hot and thick. She wanted to eat him alive. She longed to have him inside her, to fill the void that had been unfilled for so long.
He responded instantly, like an atomic bomb detonating, molecules of sexual energy colliding together, bonding then bursting apart in an earthquake that swamped her, the likes she had never seen or felt before. His hands slid under the back of her sweatshirt, fingers clawed at her back, digging into her spine and ribs, pulling her closer, flattening her breasts against his chest, hard flanks of muscle that crushed the wind from her lungs.
He bit her back, like a ravenous animal feeding as though it was his last meal, his teeth catching her tongue in his mouth. One hand shifted to her front, lifting the fabric over one of her breasts, it hung, heavy and swollen. He pulled back from her kiss as his hand clamped under her breast lifting it to his mouth. He sucked her nipple, teasing it out with clenched teeth, squeezing hard with his hand, her flesh bulging between his fingers.
Clare tossed her head back, tears almost in her eyes. Not tears of pain, but a sweet release of exquisite pleasure.
Then his hand undid the draw-string of her pants, expertly not fumbling, but urgently. She gasped as rough fingers blazed a trail downwards through a sea of soft curls, reaching the top of the furrow of skin, before one finger slid inwards on a thick viscous trail into her dilated hollow.
>
Pin-pricks of light burst behind Clare’s closed eyelids, the reverberations of his fingers swirling over that tiny nodule of flesh and nerve endings, sending shock waves through her entire body.
* * *
She felt herself leave the ground, and the tremors subsided for a moment as he lifted her. She wrapped her legs firmly around his waist as his mouth found hers again and powerful arms held her safely to him.
Locked together like a primate clinging to a solid oak tree, he carried her into the darkness of her bedroom.
19
The house slowly came into view as Shaw made his way up a dirt road that wound itself through the trees then along the edge of the ridge overlooking the town. The house, if you could call it that, was a carcass of recycled timber, tin sheeting on a base of stained cinderblock. It was an assortment of building materials collected, scavenger or borrowed but never returned, fashioned into a haphazard but solid-looking structure. The only sign of life was the spiral of smoke from a crooked chimney stack on the roof.
Shaw paused when he was fifty yards away, assessing the terrain and the house, making sure no huge guard dog came bounding out to attack him. Nothing moved.
He couldn’t see where the actual front door was amongst the jigsaw of materials used to skin the outside walls. The windows were an assortment of shapes and textures of glass, some clear, others frosted, no two the same in color and size. A veranda of raw timber, dark with age, wrapped around one side of the house. It sagged in places and had no hand railing. A set of old stairs led up to a collection of doors stacked against one wall that gave the illusion of an entrance, but there was none.
Despite its appearance, Shaw liked it. It represented a lifetime of work by someone making the best use of what they had, who maybe had limited resources but unlimited resourcefulness.
Snowflakes drifted down again and settled on his head and blistered on his snow jacket as he pulled it closer around him. Clare had dropped Shaw at the bottom of the road before she headed back to the forest. She told Shaw she would be back in about an hour, she just wanted to check on the forensic team who had texted her a little after 7:00 a.m. letting her know they had arrived on site again. It was their crime scene and Denver’s investigation, but Clare was still sheriff of the town. She wanted to be sure they didn’t forget that fact. In a town like Lacy, when the cavalry arrived from the city, the local sheriff tended to get pushed aside. She was determined not to let that happen.
An assortment of machinery, seized and rusted, topped with snow, hunkered like dead animals around the house. The solid boxy shapes of metal and steel would provide good cover if his arrival was met with an unwelcoming volley of shots. But Clare had phoned ahead and told Alfred Beckett she was sending someone up to see him.
Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe the old man was senile and had imagined the ghost sighting around the town. But the walk back into town was too far and even though the weather was holding off, it could turn very nasty in minutes.
Shaw pressed on and cautiously climbed the steps, gingerly testing each tread under his weight, convinced that one would collapse and he would end up on his ass in the snow. Great first impression.
“Hello? Mr Beckett?” Shaw stood at the top step.
The veranda floorboards creaked as he made his way around the outside of the house searching for a door. As he turned the corner the land fell away and below the panoramic view of the town came into view. It was bitterly cold up here, colder than in the town that lay nestled, picturesque, amongst the rugged mountain slopes and snow-covered pine trees. What Clare had said was correct, Alfred Beckett’s house was perched on the edge of the ridge and had an almost 180 degree view of Lacy. Despite the inclement weather, cars pushed slowly downtown and lights twinkled in the distance reminding Shaw of a snow globe that someone had shaken.
The clouds seemed lower up on the ridge. Towards the east a billowing mass of thick darker cloud lumbered slowly towards the town.
“Mr Beckett? It’s Ben Shaw. Sheriff Decker sent me. It’s about calls you have made.” Shaw edged his way further along the veranda, searching for the front door.
“In here, boy!” A door opened that looked like part of the wall, and a figure painted in shadow beckoned him forward. “Wondering when someone was going to pay me the decency of replying to my calls.”
The man disappeared inside and Shaw followed.
Despite the dilapidated exterior, the inside of the house was a picture of order and meticulous care. Shaw found himself in a large open room lined with floor to ceiling shelves crammed full of books, file boxes, maps rolled into scrolls, old digging tools, and a collection of rocks scattered amongst brass instruments. A large steamer trunk stacked with books and magazines sat in the centre of the room sandwiched between two buttoned leather couches, the worn hide rich and lustrous, lovingly rubbed and conditioned. The floor was sealed timber covered with threadbare rugs, perfectly aligned at right angles. Against one wall was a large fireplace, the brickwork blackened and cracked from many cold winters. The room was warm and cozy, the air thick with the smell of polished timber, old leather and wood smoke.
“Take a seat, boy,” Beckett said. He hobbled and sat down in a rocking chair, his face catching the glow of the fireplace. He was seventy, wiry, hardened like a ranch fence post. His thin gray hair and skin were parched and weathered from a lifetime spent outdoors in the sun, rain and cold.
Shaw sat down on one of the couches opposite him.
Two sharp and vibrant eyes focused on Shaw. “About time someone showed up. I’ve only rung the sheriff’s office five times.” He fixed Shaw with a quizzical stare. “Funny. You don’t look like the police, son.”
Shaw was glad he had progressed from ‘boy’ to ‘son.’
“Mr Beckett, I am in law enforcement.” Shaw lied. “I’m just helping the sheriff at the moment. Things have been pretty hectic in the last few days for her and she’s down one deputy.”
Beckett leaned forward, the rocking chair tilting under him. “I bet it has been hectic in town.” He nodded towards the brass telescope on a tripod setup behind a window that faced the town. “I’ve seen a lot in the last few days too,” he said with a thin smile. “A lot of strange things. People coming and going. Strange things indeed.”
“Like what Mr Beckett?”
“Not so fast, son. I want to see some I.D. Don’t really know who the hell you are.”
Distrusting old buzzard.
Shaw noticed a shotgun propped up against a bookshelf next to the rocking chair, within easy reach of Beckett. Shaw searched in his pocket of his jacket and pulled out a sheriff star that Clare had given him. If he was going to help her then she insisted she deputise him. Shaw held it up and Beckett squinted at it. “I’m just a temporary deputy. As I said, Clare asked me to come and talk to you about your sightings.”
“Good enough for me, son.” Beckett seemed pleased that someone official was sitting across from him in his home.
Shaw returned the star and pulled out the bunch of message slips Clare had given him when they stopped by her office on the way. “Mr Beckett, can you tell me about these?” He waved them in front of Beckett. “You’ve called the sheriff’s office a few times.” Shaw didn’t quite know how to say it so he just came out with it. “About seeing a ghost?”
Beckett settled back in his chair and slowly rocked back and forth, a wry smile on his face, a twinkle in his dark eyes. “You think I’m crazy, son?”
“No, Mr Beckett. I don’t think you’re crazy. If I did I wouldn’t be here.”
The rocking chair creaked over a pair of well-worn grooves in the floorboards, a lifetime of silent contemplation.
“You know I used to be a surveyor,” Beckett said. “Travelled a lot, been all over the world when I was younger,” he chuckled. “South America, Australia, Canada, Russia.”
Shaw just nodded, letting the man reminisce. Beckett probably didn’t get many visitors and it would be a lonely existence up here on
the ridge.
“I’m retired now, bought all this land up here when the town was just one street and a few stores. Now look at the place. Built this house too.”
“You must have lived here for a while,” Shaw replied.
“You never really give up a profession do you?”
Shaw nodded, “I agree.”
“A job you give up or retire from. But a profession, like what you do, law enforcement, it’s in your blood, you never give it up.”
Shaw looked at the streamer trunk. It was covered with stacks of recent surveying magazines and beautiful brass instruments used by Beckett when he was working.
“I take a keen interest in everything. Prevents my mind from turning to mush,” he tapped the side of his head.
Shaw resisted the temptation to look at his watch. “I’m glad, Mr Beckett.”
The rocking chair stopped.
As if noticing Shaw’s impatience Alfred Beckett leaned forward again. “You see that telescope over there?”
Shaw nodded.
“Go take a look, son.”
Shaw got up. The telescope was tilted at the town.
Behind the tripod was a comfortable worn chair, threadbare thick armrests and a seat permanently indented, the springs long since given out from the countless hours Alfred Beckett had spent sitting, peering into the private lives of the residents and visitors of the town.
Snow drifted outside the window and from where Shaw stood he already had a perfect view of the town. But with the telescope, Alfred Beckett could almost see the number plates of each car as they drove downtown. Shaw resisted the urge to look through the eye-piece or even touch the polished instrument.
“I’ve seen a lot in my day. It helps pass the loneliness.” Beckett said from behind Shaw’s back, confirming what Shaw had gathered. Loneliness turned Beckett into a voyeur.
Shaw turned. “You told Mrs Munroe at the sheriff’s office that you think you saw a ghost?”