Fearless

by Mike Dellosso

  Charlie pointed a finger at Jim and shook it. “You got no right, Spencer.”

  “No right at all,” Reed said. He was a big guy with thick arms and a deep chest. Jim hoped that if things went bad, Reed stayed out of it.

  At the road two more cars pulled up, parked, and shut off their lights. Overhead the storm clouds continued to flash and rumble. Inside the house the living room lights switched off. Amy wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Bring her out so we can all get our healin’,” Charlie hollered. “Don’t make us come in there and get her.”

  Jim put both his hands in front of him. “Settle down, Charlie. You don’t want to do anything like that and have the police here making a bunch of arrests.”

  Two other families joined the group on Jim’s front lawn and murmured amongst themselves.

  A truck arrived in a hurry and pulled into Jim’s driveway. Jim recognized it as Jake Tucker’s pickup. Jake climbed out and hustled to the porch. “What’s going on here?”

  “You stay out of this, Jake,” Charlie said.

  “Charlie, what are you doin’? What’s gotten into you?”

  Charlie turned on Jake and shook a finger at his old friend. In his eyes was the daze of desperation and lunacy. “I said stay out of this. You got your miracle; why shouldn’t the rest of us get ours? Huh?”

  “Is that what this’s come to?” Jake said. “Treating this girl like she’s handin’ out free soda pops? Go home, Charlie.” Then he turned to the assembly on the lawn. “All of you, just go on home. Leave this family be.”

  “You go home, Tucker,” someone hollered.

  And then it started. The crowd crawled closer, moving as a many-eyed, thousand-legged organism, hollering and shouting. As they approached, three more cars arrived, and more townsfolk looking for a healing poured out and onto Jim’s lawn.

  Jake stepped up onto the porch with Jim and waved his arms like he was flagging down an aircraft. “Folks. Folks,” he hollered. Finally they quieted down enough that he could speak. “People, I know you’re hurting, all of you, but this ain’t the way. Not at all. Look at yourselves. You—”

  “No!” A woman’s voice rang out from the back of the crowd. Voices hushed and heads turned. “No.” Ruth Stitely, the daughter of Bishop Stitely, pastor of the Shekinah Tabernacle outside of town, made her way through the throng of people who had gathered. Back straight as if someone nailed a board to it, chin high, hands clasped in front of her at the waist, she strode right up to Jim as if she owned the very porch on which he stood. Her hair was gathered behind her head in a tight bun, and she wore a plain gray dress that went all the way to her ankles. No more than twenty-five, Ruth had been touted as a prophetess by her father since she was seven. Most of the townspeople made light of his claims but secretly feared her.

  She turned and faced the crowd. “Dear ones, that child is a gift to our town, a blessing from God. She is the bringer of healing and salvation. God loves us and wants us to have this blessing. We have gathered here tonight to claim her as our own.” She turned to Jim and lifted her chin high. “Bring her out.”

  “No. No way.”

  “Bring out the child.”

  “Go home, all of you,” Jake hollered.

  “Bring her out.” Ruth raised her voice and stomped her foot. She wasn’t used to being defied. “I speak the will of God!”

  “If you all don’t leave now,” Jim said, “I’ll call the police.” He should have earlier, as soon as the group entered his yard.

  Ruth swiveled around and faced the crowd again. “If they won’t bring her out, then we must get her. No man shall stand in the way of God’s will. Today is the day of salvation.”

  The crowd cheered and rumbled and inched closer.

  Two things happened then that stopped their progress. One, the sky opened and the water came. Great drops fell from above, exploding like water bombs. And two, the wail of a siren sounded in the distance, and soon after, the flash of blue and red and white lights appeared against the surrounding trees. Amy must have made the call. The crowd, now half-drenched, turned toward the street. A police cruiser pulled up, lights still strobing. The siren died with a whine. An officer stepped out and crossed the lawn, heading right up to the front porch. He nodded at Jim then Jake. “I’m Officer Peevey. Looks like you could use some help.”

  “Thanks for coming,” Jim said.

  “Why don’t you go inside and let me take care of this.”

  The crowd on the lawn, now over fifty strong, huddled closer and throbbed with pent-up frustration.

  “You cannot thwart the will of God, young man,” Ruth said, her voice muffled by the rain. Her hair was plastered to her head and her dress clung to her body. Water dripped off her long, thin nose and chin and ran into her eyes.

  Peevey put a hand on Jim’s chest. “Go inside. I got this. Backup is on the way.”

  Jim and Jake opened the door and slipped inside. Amy and Louisa were in the kitchen. Jim went to a window and pulled back the blinds. The crowd had moved closer again, feeling bolder with the numbers they possessed. Someone cried out, “Give us the girl.”

  Peevey reached to his side and rested his hand on his canister of pepper spray. Rain continued to fall in great sheets, blurring Jim’s view of the entire lawn. He couldn’t see beyond the light of the lamppost.

  “Back up and go home, folks,” Peevey said. “More officers are en route, and we won’t hesitate to make arrests.”

  “You can’t arrest us all,” Reed Teal hollered. “There’s too many of us.”

  And then everything broke lose. A flash of lightning struck somewhere nearby, followed immediately by a clap of thunder so jarring it seemed to shake the house from the very foundation to the roof joists. The window Jim was standing near exploded in a spray of glass, and a brick landed on the living room carpet. Stunned, Jim stared at it. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. His mind told him lightning had struck the house and knocked a brick loose, tossing it like a baseball. But even as his mind tried to accept that, he knew it was untrue. The lightning was close but not that close. Someone had thrown a brick through his window.

  Something hard landed on the porch and thudded against the outside wall of the house. Peevey hollered something unintelligible. More sirens sounded in the distance, growing louder. The crowd screamed and cursed.

  Jake grabbed Jim by the arm and pulled him away from the window just as another brick broke through and took what little glass was left with it. Outside, the sirens continued for a moment then stopped. Voices, strong and decisive, rose above the hum of the throng. And then there was a sickening thud, right outside the door, and an awful thump against the side of the house.

  The crowd went quiet, and all that was heard was the thrum of rain on the porch roof.

  A man’s voice finally broke the silence. “Officer down!”

  Chapter 47

  JIM THREW THE door open and found Officer Peevey on his back on the porch, a puddle of bright red growing around his head. The left side was already swelling, and his hair was matted thick with blood. A few feet away lay a brick.

  Two other officers bent over him; one hollered details into his radio. Peevey’s eyes were open but glazed, one appeared slightly off center as if it had suddenly gotten bored and decided to focus on something other than the porch ceiling.

  The crowd retreated, like high tide pulling back into the ocean. A few of them talked in hushed tones and wagged their heads. Others kept to themselves and made a line to their cars. Within seconds the lawn was clear and the last of the cars was pulling away.

  One of the officers, a middle-aged man whose nameplate read Lorenzo, felt Peevey’s neck for a pulse. “He’s got one,” he said. “Barely. We’re losing him.”

  Louisa appeared beside Jim, leaned against his side, and took his hand.

  The other officer, a young guy, early twenties, paced the porch. “Where are they?” He spoke into his radio again. “Is the bus en route?”

/>   The dispatcher said it was.

  Officer Lorenzo groped Peevey’s neck. “We lost him, Evans. He’s gone.”

  In a hurry he clasped his hands together and began compressing the fallen officer’s chest.

  Lightning crackled across the sky and thunder boomed, a long, moaning rumble.

  Evans put the radio to his mouth. “We lost his pulse. Get that bus here now!”

  While Lorenzo performed CPR, Louisa released Jim’s hand and left his side. She knelt beside Peevey and placed her hand on his forehead.

  Lorenzo kept up with his compressions. “Stay away, kid.” He glanced at Jim.

  Jake came through the doorway and put a hand on Lorenzo’s shoulder. “Let her be. She’s the only one who can help him now.”

  The rain continued to fall in waves, pummeling the ground with great droplets. The clouds blinked bright again and thunder rolled through them.

  Hesitantly Lorenzo slowed his compressions then stopped altogether. He was breathing heavy, and his hands trembled when he lifted them.

  Louisa placed her other hand on Peevey’s chest and closed her eyes. Her lips moved slowly with an inaudible conversation.

  She began to shake. Quickly, as if Peevey’s body had suddenly turned scalding hot, she pulled her hands away. Her eyes went wide and mouth dropped open. She fell back and pushed herself to Jim’s feet.

  A second ticked by and nothing happened. Then two.

  Louisa climbed to her feet and dashed inside the house.

  Another second passed, and another. In the far-off distance a siren sounded, like the wail of a woman who’d just lost her only child. Lorenzo locked his hands together and was about to resume his compressions when Peevey’s eyes focused and he gasped for breath.

  Peevey sat up and lifted his hand to his head. The bleeding had stopped, and the swelling was already visibly decreasing. He pulled his hand away, blotched with clotting blood. His eyes found the brick on the porch. “I never saw it coming.”

  Lorenzo turned Peevey’s head and inspected where the gash had been. “You okay, Peeve? You feel okay?”

  Peevey nodded. “Yeah. I think so. Who threw it?”

  Another lightning flash lit up the sky, the yard, the cruisers jutting into Jim’s lawn, lights still dancing.

  “Beats me,” Evans said. “Came out of nowhere. Several of ’em did.”

  “Lucky hit,” Peevey said. “Help me up.”

  Lorenzo grasped Peevey’s hand and hoisted him to his feet. “Lucky is right. We lost you, you know.”

  Peevey studied the blood on his hand and touched the side of his head again. “Am I still bleeding?”

  “Nope,” Lorenzo said.

  “Lost me how?”

  “You coded on us, pulse was gone.”

  An ambulance arrived and pulled into the driveway, behind Jake’s truck. Two paramedics jumped out and ran to the porch.

  “Who brought me back?” Peevey said.

  Evans motioned toward the doorway. “The girl did.”

  One of the paramedics, a short guy, thick around the middle, jumped up onto the porch. “What happened, Peevey?”

  “Mears, why are you here? I’m fine. I don’t need a bus.”

  Mears looked to Lorenzo, then Evans. “I thought you said he kicked it.”

  “He did,” Lorenzo said.

  The paramedic looked Peevey up and down. “He don’t look dead.”

  “He don’t?” Lorenzo said. “Maybe it’s because he isn’t.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We’re not really sure, okay? He was a goner one second, then the girl comes out, puts her hands on him, and he’s alive, talking like he was just taking a snooze or something.”

  “Yeah,” Evans said. “I think the whole thing spooked her as much as it did us. You shoulda seen the look on her face, like she’d seen the devil.”

  Peevey glanced around the porch and wiped his hands on his pants. “Hey, guys, I have to go.”

  “What?” Mears said. “You’re not goin’ anywhere. We gotta take you in so the docs can check you out, make sure you got all your parts in place. You might feel fine now, but that’s the adrenaline. Once that wears off, you’re gonna be feelin’ like a truck ran over you then backed up again.”

  “No. I have to go.”

  Mears grabbed Peevey’s arm. “At least let us check you here.”

  But Peevey was having none of it. He looked back at Jim in the doorway, then past him and into the house. There was fear in his eyes, real fear. He pulled away from Mears. “Not tonight. I’m okay. I’m leaving.”

  “C’mon, Peevey, you ain’t in any shape—”

  “Mears, I said not today. I’m leaving. I’m refusing your care, okay? Write that down.” He shoved his way past Lorenzo and the other paramedic. They all watched as he crossed the lawn, got in his car, and tore off in a spray of grass and dirt.

  “He’s nuts,” Mears said. “He’s gonna get himself killed.”

  Chapter 48

  THE DEPARTMENT WAS quiet this late at night. Chief Doug Miller sat at his desk and rubbed his temples. He still had a nagging headache, and the pills he’d taken an hour ago weren’t even touching it. The lights were off in his office; the only illumination came from the computer monitor and the small desk lamp. Behind him and beyond the light of the lamp the darkness seemed to encroach like a horde of malevolent spirits intent on perpetrating some hideous crime under the cover of lightlessness.

  Outside, rain tapped on the window, the drum of fingers counting off a disjointed beat. Occasionally a volley of thunder would ripple through the night, but it was distant now. The fury of the storm had passed, leaving behind a steady rain to soak the earth.

  After the meltdown at the Spencer place Peevey had returned to the office to clean up and change his uniform. Doug checked him over and found nothing that would keep the young officer off his beat. The gash had stopped bleeding, his skull was in one piece, and cognitively he seemed as lucid as ever, albeit a bit irritated, which was to be expected after what he’d been through. Doug suggested he go to the hospital just as a precaution, get checked for a concussion or internal bleeding, but Peevey insisted he was okay to get behind the wheel of his cruiser. In fact, he’d even volunteered to go and sit in front of the Spencer place, keep an eye on it for the night in case any of the rowdies returned looking to chuck more bricks. But Doug denied his request and insisted he at least take the rest of the shift off.

  Now Doug sat in his office with the door closed and sifted through what little evidence they’d collected on the six murders thus far. Earlier he’d interrogated Jude Fabry and placed him in a holding cell. Fabry didn’t offer anything new to the investigation but was cooperative, even agreeing to stay the night, just to clear his name. Now the real test awaited: with Fabry behind bars for the night, would there be a seventh murder?

  For the third time this evening Doug scrolled through the cases, one at a time, scanning the reports to see if anything had been missed, any other connecting factor overlooked. The first three victims were similar but didn’t fit any obvious pattern. What did a mill worker have in common with a truck driver or a tree trimmer? Blue-collar workers. The county was full of white, male blue-collar types. Hardly a pattern. And that didn’t fit with the Harmans anyway. If Fabry turned out to be innocent, a victim of coincidence, then it seemed the deceased were chosen at random, picked out of a crowd or maybe the phone book.

  Doug slapped the desk with an open palm, rattling his coffee mug and the penholder the department had given him for his sixtieth birthday.

  He scrolled down a few pages in Buck Petrosky’s chart, not really focusing on anything, just letting his eyes move over the words. He’d read over these so many—

  Wait. What was this? He thought . . .

  Doug brought up each chart then minimized it. One by one he scrolled through them until he found it. Every victim had come in contact with the same person, and it wasn’t Jude Fabry.

  Heat climbe
d up the back of his neck, and his hands began to tremble. It couldn’t be, though. It was impossible. Why hadn’t he noticed it before? He checked each chart again just to be certain. Surely it was a coincidence.

  Doug picked up the phone. He had to call Lorenzo; there were more questions he needed answers to.

  Alicia awoke in a cold sweat and sat straight up in bed. The sheet, soaked through, fell off her shoulders, and she shivered in the cool air of the bedroom. The clock said it was 11:22.

  She panted like she’d just run a mile in work boots. Grabbing the sheet, she wiped the sweat from her face and chest. Her mouth was as dry as bone. She needed a drink of water.

  Alicia pushed her legs over the edge of the bed and sat there in the darkness trying to collect her thoughts, the images that swirled in her brain as if tossed by a tempest at sea. The nightmare had included her vision of Derek and the shooter, but it was so much more than that. So much more gruesome and violent. How had her brain concocted such awful images? She hadn’t watched a horror movie since she saw that exorcism flick as a kid. She’d slept with the bedroom lights on for weeks after that. But this was different, so much more real and vivid than any movie could be. Derek, stabbing victims. Slitting throats. Derek, doing disgusting things, vile acts of violence and murder.

  The shadows in the room seemed to move and shift suddenly. Alicia froze, and the hair on her arms stood on end. Panic put a vise on her chest. Quickly she reached for the lamp on the bed table and switched it on. Light flooded the room but did not push back her fears.

  Rising from the bed, Alicia made her way down the short hallway and into the living room. There she checked the locks on the front door, the chain lock and the dead bolt. Both were engaged and secure. She then headed into the kitchen, turned on the light, and retrieved a glass from the cupboard. She filled it with water, downed the entire thing, then filled it a second time. Her hand shook uncontrollably each time she put the glass to her mouth, and the edge rattled against her teeth. She had to call someone and tell them about her dream, warn them. They’d think she was nuts, but she had to try. She’d seen what Derek was capable of firsthand, the rage and violence, and if what she’d seen in her nightmare was a warning, he was capable of so much more.