by Dan O'Brien
Moving out into the back porch, a mesh enclosure with a single chair that overlooked the backyard and the surrounding property, he contemplated the world around him. There was a rifle on the ground just beside the chair and a wastebasket with torn off days of a calendar. Each had a circled day; every marking was a shrouded secret.
He stood looking out upon the wilderness, knowing its mysteries. The murders had already spread through town. The word was panic. He knew more than he could possibly tell them.
Lauren Westlake: her name intrigued him. Born to the west of a great lake, her ancestors must have been hunters or river folk. There had been something intoxicating about her. He walked her home, made sure she made it through the night.
Things would get worse.
The whistle of the iron kettle made him turn. He stalked back into the house. The heavy muscles of his arms flexed. Veins formed an interspersed roadmap down his bicep and into his forearm as he lifted the kettle free.
The tea was poured. He carried the simple mug with him as he returned to the porch, looking out upon the still woods. He knew that they would not be still that night. Things would get much worse. But what could he do? What could be said that would not cast doubt upon his guise? He had come for a reason, for a purpose. That is what had to remain most important. He would have to be vigilant.
LAUREN SMOOTHED OUT THE MAP on the wall behind the sheriff’s desk. It was littered with light blue lines and no script save for some cardinal directions. The deputy leaned against the long counter of the station. The sheriff sat back in his in chair, arms laced behind his head.
“You think there is a pattern to the attacks? I thought we needed three points to make a line. We ain’t got but two yet,” spoke the deputy as he took a drink of the stale, tasteless coffee.
Lauren placed the last tack into the map and stepped back. “Three points would make a perfect line. But we are not looking for a line. We are looking for a connection, deputy. Until we get those toxin and particulates screens back, which by the way, I managed to shave off some time. We should have them in a couple of days. But until then, we need to see if we can’t figure out what we have here.”
“You think there is going to be another murder, Agent Westlake?” said the sheriff, emotionless.
“I believe there will be many more before all of this is said and done.”
The deputy placed down his coffee and folded his arms. “What exactly do you think is going to happen?”
“It starts out as a single murder. Looks like an animal attack. And then another. And another. A pattern emerges. Women and small children attacked, maimed in a fashion meant to look like an animal.”
Mrs. Meadows and the deputy covered their mouths, eyes wide. Lauren touched the map, spreading out the wrinkles and folds from years in a desk drawer. “Then it stops. As quickly as it came, it disappears. We have had at least three instances similar to what you have had here. The second victim is missing flesh, which is disturbing and new. We have not seen that before. In the past, there were missing organs, purposeful disfigurement.”
“You think it is the same person?” queried the sheriff, his monotone voice skeptical.
Lauren leaned against the wall. “Doubtful. If it is, we are talking about someone who has been killing for thirty or forty plus years, a serial situation. When I took over the investigation, it had been sitting for near a decade.”
The sheriff switched feet on the desk: dirty soles, filthy souls. “I thought you were talking about a recent case. This sounds as if it might be unrelated.”
Lauren frowned.
She had anticipated this doubt. “When I resuscitated the file from deep storage, it was because there were some strange killings in a rural area outside of a Chicago suburb. There was talk of animal attacks. Investigations produced bodies not just similar to what you have here in your sleepy town, but identical to what was sitting in those dusty case files.”
She placed her hands on the sheriff’s desk. He looked at her hands grimly. “There is a connection,” she finished. Returning to the map, she pointed at a garish red pin marked with white speckles. And then tracing a line to another tack, this one a green best suited for Christmas decorations. “We have two attacks separated by a mile, mile and a half maximum.”
“That’s a lot of woods, Agent Westlake,” whined the deputy. She did not bother to turn around. Montgomery chastised him with a reproachful glare.
“Agreed, deputy. We need more people to cover the area effectively.”
The sheriff coughed. “What you see is what you get. I could, if it was an emergency mind you, get some extra deputies from Pine County or from over in Laketown. But that would be a while and would require an emergency.”
Lauren glared at him, her wide eyes squinting to angry spheres. “Murder is not serious enough for you?”
Montgomery grimaced, his kind of smile. “Murder is most serious, even to us country folk. But, the fact remains that Collins could not identify the weapon used in the attacks. If there was such an explanation or a connection, it would be that both looked like animal attacks.”
Lauren touched her head.
The hangover had subsided to a dull throbbing, an angry itch that scratched at her last nerve. “What about the existing case files? What about my sudden presence here in Locke? Are these not sufficient to cause alarm? Certainly a hysterical woman would be enough.”
The sheriff looked at her with a crooked grin. “I would hardly call you hysterical, Agent Westlake,” he spoke with a slight ruffle.
“What about canvassing the area between the two murders with the personnel you have?”
“Seems reasonable, but I am not ready to call in reinforcements. I think that you might be overshooting your mark.”
“Can we at least have a look at the Leftwich house and then patrol the area tonight?”
The sheriff stood slowly.
He stretched out his legs as he did so.
Lifting the mug beside him, he grinned.
“You can ride with us.”
She thought to argue the point, ask for separate cars, one for each of them to better scout the area. Nodding with a tight smile, she motioned with her hand that she would follow. As they exited the station out into the cold open air of Locke, she realized the day had already begun to shrink away from the coming night. The feeling deep in her gut told her that the night would be a long one.
Chapter V
The Leftwich house was on the far side of Locke, near the Canadian border. Lauren sat in the passenger seat of the cruiser, a hand on her face as she watched the town of Locke pass around her. The police station gave way to wide open roads of unending gray skies and green, muted tree lines. As they moved past the rundown residential district at the north end of town, it became many miles of nothing.
The deputy followed behind in a tall truck.
His headlights were obscured by dirt lying over top. A windshield caked in mud prevented Lauren from being able to see the toothy grin the boyish deputy frequently sported.
A factory came into view.
The majority of the town worked there or was married to someone who worked there; or was a child of someone who worked there. There was little in the frozen little town that was not associated with the heavy equipment manufacturer that employed several thousand employees from not only Locke, but neighboring towns and cities.
Some drove as many as three hours for a shift.
The building was imposing.
Heavy stacks of smoke filtered into the gray, listless sky. The parking lot, rife with dirty piles of snow, was filled with a portrait of American wealth. Some spent on vehicles, brand new trucks and off-road vehicles, and others on their lives and families with cars older than the youthful deputy.
“Did either of the victims work there?”
The sheriff did not take his eyes off the road. His hands were fitted in heavy brown gloves with dirty scratches and visible holes that spilled forth a slew of fabric and hide
.
“At Erikson’s?”
“Is that the factory to our right?”
He nodded.
A heavy wool cap covered his graying hair.
Dark eyes watched the road carefully.
It was difficult to tell the time of day. Darkness spread across the flat, forested landscape, but it could be because it was night or simply because the inhibiting cloud cover strangled away the sunlight.
“Madeline Leftwich had a brother. Worked there a few years. Lost him last year, drunk driving.”
Lauren nodded solemnly.
“Sad thing.”
Montgomery nodded as well.
They rode in silence for some time.
Death had a way of sobering discussions.
Lauren felt exhausted. The stress of the trip on top of the initial resistance was suffocating, yet there was one strange ray of light. That man in the bar, Dominic. It took almost an hour of twisting, uneven warped roads before the farmhouse came into view.
It was surrounded by dirt fields with sprouts of somber brushes and sprawling weeds that survived the bitter cold of the winter. A large patch just in front of the house was dark green, saturated from water deep within the ground.
Ice waited to thaw and flood in the spring.
The patrol car slowed. Montgomery shifted the old car into park and gripped the steering wheel thoughtfully with his gloved hands. He wiped a hand over the foggy windshield so he could see.
With a shove of her shoulder, Lauren exited the car.
She slammed the door.
“So this is the Leftwich house?”
The sheriff stood beside her.
His bowed head made his voice drift. “Been in the family since the 40s or 50s. There was talk of selling after all the floods in North Dakota. See enough winters in this part of the country, you think twice about living here.”
“I’m already thinking twice,” she grumbled, her hands deep in the pockets of the heavy black coat she wore. The cold steel of her service revolver was an annoyance at her hip. At that moment, she thought very seriously about getting a shoulder harness.
Montgomery walked toward the front steps.
Puddles of darkened earth had formed near the steps, where there were no doubt frozen puddles just waiting for the beginnings of a warm spell to burst loose, turning the hard earth into tumultuous clay. He kicked his boots against the first step, walking heavy to clear anything from his feet.
Lauren smiled. There was some gentlemen in the old cop. “You think stomping in is a good idea?” she called playfully as she caught up to him.
Farther in the distance, the old truck rolled up. The deputy bounded from his vehicle like a puppy. His wide wool hat covered his ears and made his official hat look quite comical. He carried a shotgun over his shoulder like he was Huck Finn out for a grand adventure.
“You expecting some play, Agent Westlake?” said the sheriff, his head turning slightly to grin at her.
“Always.”
A knock on the door was received with hollow ears. The sheriff waited, his hands laced with one another. His head bowed, he listened closely. Lauren moved around the front of the porch, peering in the front windows.
“Looks like its empty,” she mused.
“Did you expect otherwise?”
Lauren looked at him with a smile. “If you didn’t think anyone was in there, why knock?”
He turned the door handle, allowing the cold air to greet the shadowed interior of the Leftwich house. “It’s polite.”
Lauren moved through the door, her hand on her gun all the same. The interior was as one expected from a middle-aged single woman, cramped and reeking of cat urine; ugly furniture and drapes that could only be described as last century lined dirty, foggy windows. The floor was wood, as were most places this far north, and there was the steady hiss of a running heater somewhere in the house.
And then, of course, there were the footsteps.
The sheriff paused, drawing his weapon.
“Did you hear that?”
Lauren nodded, her weapon already drawn and held against her side with both hands. Her eyes were penetrating as she surveyed the room. She looked to the sheriff and pointed to herself and then down a hallway that led deeper into the house.
He nodded, mirroring the gesture except in the opposite direction toward the kitchen. The heavy footfalls returned, this time sprinting across the house, echoing. Lauren looked at the ceiling, her eyes swiveling, monitoring the movement.
She placed a black boot on the first faded paint-chipped step of the stairs that led upstairs. Each step was a pronounced squeak, the aged wood giving way to the elements and the light step of the agent. She chanced a look over her shoulder at the hallway she had just come through: no sheriff.
She extended her weapon out. Shoulders tense, but ready. There was relaxation in anticipation, a giddy feeling in her stomach. She rounded the midpoint of the stairs, looking up into the half-light of the second floor; again the footsteps, they were definitely just ahead. Taking another step forward, her gun remained leveled forward like a caricature of a video game heroine.
“Federal Agent,” she spoke clearly, confidently.
The footfalls moved across one side of the house to the far right of where Lauren stood. Moving quickly, she was between the door frames: weapon extended, eyes hard.
“Come out. Reveal yourself.”
It was a small room with four walls of miserable paintings, water-damaged and crooked in their placement. There was a closet on the far end of the rom. The doors were slightly ajar; bent forever in a kind of limbo that never allowed it to close quite right. Magazines and clothes scattered across the floor, creating a kind of quilt of dull, earthen colors.
“If you are in the closet, I am not up for fucking surprises. Throw out any weapon you are carrying and place your hands behind your head and walk toward me.”
She crossed the room, watching the weird shapes that erupted as shadows on the walls. Through the half-light of Minnesota winter, there were strange lines carved of geometric patterns.
The closet shifted and the agent held her breath. Fingers tightened around the handle of her service weapon. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered.
The closet door opened suddenly, a flutter of motion. Musty clothes swung on hangers. An avalanche of shoes with laces that were angry passengers on a train of fabric collided with the cold ground.
There were flashes of orange and tan: whiskers.
Lauren wheeled, bringing her weapon around, following the shadow that had exploded from the darkened interior. The winter solstice had brought with her shorter days. The translucent sun, hidden behind a veil of soupy clouds, seemed to have all but disappeared as the agent held her breath. She followed the shadow through the stacks of antiques and heirlooms of the throwaway sort.
Her eyes narrowed as she watched the corner of the room. She knew it wasn’t human. A stack of old books: yellow and brittle, they tumbled to the ground drawing her attention. It was a cat. Tan and orange with long whiskers and a ruffled coat, it looked at Lauren with suspicious eyes.
Agent Westlake replaced her weapon and knelt slowly, hoping to not scare the feline. “Hey there,” she spoke in a form of anthropomorphic motherese. The cat sauntered close, walking in a wide arc, feet scurrying and reconsidering the strange human in front of it.
“Agent?” called the sheriff’s heavy voice.
The cat looked in the direction of the voice, startled. Lauren moved closer, extending out a hand. And in perfect form, it moved away, no longer interested in the affections of a human. Shaking her head, she stood and looked back into the hallway from which she had come.
“Agent Westlake?” called the sheriff once more.
The footfalls came before Lauren could respond. This time there was no disguising their origin. Her gun was in her hand in a smooth movement. Sure feet beneath her, she was in the hallway again, gun leveled. Eyes steeled. The wood planks creaked and echoed as
she shuffled across them with a purposeful precision.
There were only three rooms on the floor. And only one still looked as if it had previously been used. Lauren moved toward it, licking the grim line of her slender lips. There was a knot in her stomach, not from fear, but from a sense of necessity. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. Transient wisps fell across her face, itching her eyes and cheeks.
Her foot collided with the door.
She entered, gun moving one direction and then another, taking in the empty room. There was not even a shelf. A cold draft slapped her in the face. The window was open, broken panes spider-webbed from frozen fingers and mismanagement.
Looking down onto the back field of the property, she saw the heavy black jacket and churning legs of a fleeing suspect. Her voice echoed in the cold empty house. “Montgomery, we have a runner.”
She bounded down the stairs, taking them four at a time. As she reached the bottom of the steps, she heard the front door bang open and then the volumetric reverberations of a shotgun blast echoing in the silent country. Crows and carrion birds fled their perches in the spindly and horrific trees that overlooked the Leftwich property. As she ran out onto the porch, she saw the deputy in the distance, shotgun over his shoulder. The sheriff lingered over the bearer of the heavy coat, his features hidden.
Lauren ran toward them, heavy coat flapping in the wind. The current of air made her feel that much colder. The ground was hard, nearly concrete. She felt the impact of the frozen earth.
The sheriff had already cuffed him, his voice was weary. “Do you understand your rights as I have explained them?” he finished.
The man looked forlorn.
An uneven beard, the hair sticking up in some places and pushed flat in others, and wild eyes looked down toward the earth. The coat he wore was too large for him. His thin face matched his wiry frame accented by ribs exposed through his shirt. His voice was raspy as he spoke. “Sheep. Prey. Ants crawling in the frozen earth, but they can’t find their way home,” he mumbled, not meeting the eyes of the sheriff.