Hollingsworth

by Tom Bont

  “Can you show me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The muddy trail brought her up short. She had her street shoes on, black with thick, rubber soles. They were as comfortable as tennis shoes, but they also suited the FBI’s dress code. Unfortunately, they weren’t designed to slog through the woods.

  Jim dropped a pair of big-man-sized hunting boots at her feet. “These should do the trick.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “My field kit includes a pair, but it’s all in the trunk of my car.” As she put them on, she glanced at Hobe and his son’s feet. Their boots were mud-free.

  They came upon the body right where Hobe said it was. What they hadn’t mentioned was the condition of the corpse. Angela wasn’t a forensic pathologist, but it was clear to her large carnivores had chewed on the body. She crouched down next to it for a closer look. “Chief,” she continued, “y’all got critter problems around these parts?”

  Critter problems? Ugh!

  Her country roots were sneaking back into her speech the longer she spent in Hicksville.

  The chief looked up from writing in his notebook. “Not that I’ve heard.”

  “Looks like you got one now,” she mumbled as she scanned the landscape of the surrounding woods.

  “This Ambrose?” He took his hat off and wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. “Face looks kinda tore up.”

  “It’s him. I recognize the tattoos on his arms. Three little, pink hearts. One for each of his victims.”

  Angela leaned back against a rather old, but still functional autopsy table. At the request of the FBI—well, she’s in the FBI, right? —and in the spirit of interagency cooperation—she really needed their cooperation—the local coroner, Dr. Albert Monroe, moved the Ambrose autopsy to the top of the stack—a stack of one. He’d called her and Chief Wilcox to his office to discuss his findings the next day.

  When they’d first brought the body to the coroner’s office, the chief had suggested she head back to Fort Worth. “I’ll forward the results to you once we’ve got ‘em,” he said, flashing a wide, white smile at her.

  “I appreciate that, Chief, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to hang around and see it to its end.”

  He’d bristled. “Suit yourself. Mary-Beth’s there next to the diner usually has a room available.”

  She’d taken his advice, but the room was barely two-star, and she was glad she only had to spend one night there. The air conditioner rattled, and the shower mold looked like it needed a proper, wire brushing. She didn’t consider herself Susie Homemaker, but she did like a clean bathroom.

  “Without getting into the medical details,” Dr. Monroe began, “he died from an acute myocardial infarction brought on by severe cardiorespiratory exertion.” At hers and Jim’s confused looks, he translated. “He died from a heart attack due to long-term exertion.”

  “What about the mutilations?” she asked.

  “Sharp tooth trauma. Ha! Get it? Sharp tooth trauma?” Neither she nor Jim laughed. “Ahem. Pack of dogs got him after he died. It’s all in the file. Here’s your copy. I’ve already forwarded one to your office.”

  She looked at Jim. “Dogs.”

  “I guess you were right,” he said. “Sounds like we do have an animal problem. Al, any idea how many, breeds, anything?”

  “At least three. Probably the size of German Shepherds.”

  Jim rubbed his chin. “So, Ambrose ditches his truck, runs into the woods, panics about something, either gets lost or is chased by dogs, and dies from a heart attack. Then some dogs, maybe the ones chasing him, chew on his body.”

  “That’s the only explanation I can come up with,” Albert said.

  Angela tensed up. “I don’t buy it. He was ready to turn himself in! And he was only thirty-five years old. A little young for a heart attack.”

  Jim shrugged. “Maybe he changed his mind.”

  “And his truck,” she said. “Why burn his truck?”

  “Setup?” he offered.

  “Setup? How?”

  “He calls you and says someone’s after him. Then, lo and behold, his truck is found torched, and he’s gone. You stop looking because you think whoever was chasing him, got him. Only instead of being gone on his terms, he stumbles on a pack of wild dogs. I have an official category for those types of situations.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “A win!” He shined his wide smile again. “This is a win, Angela. Take it and run.”

  Angela shook her head. “Eaten by dogs.” She thumbed the coroner’s report. “Thanks, gentlemen. I guess I’m done here. Could you ship the body to Fort Worth for burial? COD.”

  “We can cremate it here,” the doctor offered. “It’d be easier.”

  “No, it’s our responsibility,” Angela replied. “Thanks anyway.”

  She called Evan as soon as she got on the road and filled him in. “It’s all bullshit. I ran deerhounds with my older brothers. I’ve seen what meat looks like after large breed dogs have had their way with it. The teeth marks on Ambrose were twice that size. The hunters didn’t have mud on their boots. What, did they change boots before I got to the scene? Something’s not right here.”

  “Does it matter?” he asked. “We’ve got a child killer off the streets. The chief’s right. This is a win, case closed. You’ve earned a notch in your belt even if you didn’t personally collar him.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she conceded. To her eyes in the mirror, she argued, “No fuckin’ way.”

  As soon as she pulled onto Interstate 20, her mother called. “How are you doing, Angela?”

  “Great! How are you, Mom?”

  “Lonely. You know. What are you doing right now?”

  Angela set the cruise control. “Driving back to Fort Worth. Working a case in East Texas.” She refused to take the ‘lonely’ bait.

  “Oh. Never mind.”

  Sigh. Hook, line, and sinker. “What’s the problem, Mom?”

  “Have you visited Chris this week?”

  “Yes. You know I have. We always get there at the same time. Is everything okay?”

  “I was supposed to get a call from him today but didn’t.”

  “Maybe he didn’t earn the privilege.” It started to rain, so she turned the wipers on.

  “Since when does a boy have to earn the privilege to call his mother?”

  Here we go.

  “Since he went to prison, Mom.”

  “You mean since you sent him there,” she cried. “Can’t you do something about this? You’re the responsible one. They’ll listen to you.”

  Angela wanted to tell her that Chris was getting the help he needed but knew her mother didn’t want to hear that. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you.” Sniff. “You coming over for dinner Wednesday night?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay. Bye. Love you.”

  “I love you, too, Mom. Tell Dad hi for me.”

  Angela dreaded dinners with her parents these days. No matter how well she behaved herself, they always ended up giving her the Look. Betrayal. Remorse. Disbelief. Hate.

  The first time she got it was the day she stepped down from the witness stand. Expecting heart-broken, she got shattered instead. Her mother’s face had been the worst. Testifying against her twin brother had been the hardest thing Angela ever had to do. And the jury saw it. The prosecutor crowed about her tears being magical deal-closers, but they might as well have been battery acid for the sting still ripping through her soul. Chris wouldn’t be able to hurt their dad again, though, at least for the next year. After that? Who knows? You can’t trust a junkie. They’d sell their own kid for a fix.

  Their whole life, Chris had always been the one scratching up trouble where there shouldn’t have been any. And it had always been her getting him out of it. Like their seven-year-old Christmas. She’d caught him standing on the TV trying to reach the lighted Rudolph on the wall. He wanted the blinking nose.

>   “I’m scared, Kis!” she hissed, using her toddler name for him because she’d had a hard time with ‘r’s when they were kids. “I won’t be able to catch you if you fall!”

  He ignored her. He tumbled off the side. She tried to catch him. She broke her arm when they hit the floor. She’d convinced her parents she was the one who’d wanted the nose, and Chris had gone after it for her.

  Angela cursed the wipers for not doing their job until she realized it was her eyes that were blurry and not the windshield.

  Angela pulled a stick of gum from her pocket and shoved it into her mouth. The Tarrant County Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Fred Sherman, was laughing at Dr. Monroe’s report. “Oh, yeah, Ambrose was definitely chewed on by something, but he was alive when it happened. Dr. Monroe is either incompetent, or he’s blind. Every test shows Ambrose died from blood loss. And my professional opinion is it was not a dog. I don’t even think it was a wolf.”

  Around a stream of nervous gum chewing, Angela asked, “What was it then?”

  “I have absolutely no clue. DNA says Canidae, though.

  “Cana-what?”

  “Canids. Dog, wolf, fox. You know. Can’t narrow it down further than that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Either the DNA has degraded too much to get a decent reading, or we have a prehistoric proto-wolf roaming around East Texas.”

  Angela stopped chewing. “Proto-wolf? What kind of critt…animal is that?”

  “Something that was around before modern wolves evolved.” He threw the pictures on his desk next to comparisons from other wolf and large dog attacks. “You were right about one thing; the fangs and claws that cut up Ambrose were larger than those on a large breed dog. In fact, they’re larger than those found on the wolf skeletons from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. That’s what I’m saying. I’m not sure what killed him, but it wasn’t anything in my taxonomical textbooks, and it damned sure wasn’t a heart attack.”

  “I can’t believe you managed to get time off tonight,” Angela said as she swirled a large mass of spaghetti noodles onto her fork. She put the noodle ball into her mouth and sliced a giant meatball in half. The meatballs at Don Genti’s were works of art.

  “Got a new resident,” Heather said. “He’s taking Thursdays.”

  “Cute?”

  “Yeah, in a kid brother kinda way.” Heather stabbed a chicken piece with her fork and swished it around in the tomato sauce. “The nurses are all fawning over him.” She chewed on the chicken and looked at Angela’s bowl of noodles. “It doesn’t even look like you’ve taken a bite yet.”

  “I know, right?” Angela said. “The noodles seem to multiply the more I eat.” She raised her fork to her mouth, stopped, and put it back down. She tilted her head to the side, stared at her bowl, and whispered, “Noodles.”

  “Huh?” Heather asked, interrupting her.

  Angela shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” But she continued to gaze at the noodles. They reminded her of the old woman from the Lucky Star. Ma Haster.

  She’d said, “Bad folk don’t last long ‘round here,” before turning back to her lunch—a large plate of spaghetti and meat sauce.

  And the look on Danny’s face when she’d spoken. In her mind’s eye, he…grimaced? No. Wrong word.

  Wince? Yes. He winced.

  What am I missing?

  Sticks and stones break bones, but words reveal secrets. Angela’s Interrogation Tome, page 1.

  With an inward groan and an outward sigh, she sat back in her chair.

  “What’s up?” Heather asked.

  “Nothing. Really!”

  “Angela, I’ve known you since college. You aren’t going to be good company tonight until you solve that puzzle. I got the check, now get!”

  Angela stood up and hugged her friend. “Thanks, Heather. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  It was past ten by the time Angela got to the federal building. She went straight downstairs to Archives. The hallways were empty. The only people left were guards and workaholics like her. She sat down at one of the terminals and typed “Redstick, Texas.”

  The results appeared on her screen. Three pages of events around that half-horse town? It was going to be a long night.

  Most of the references on the screen were for boxes of files not yet digitized. She sent it all to the printer and spent the next three hours roaming the Lumber Yard, the Bureau’s slang for the non-digitized warehouse of paper files. By 4:00 am and three large, unsweet teas later, she’d put together a brief history of the town based on newspaper articles, Texas Ranger archives, and FBI reports.

  Jeremiah McIver, a preacher from New England and immigrant from Scotland, founded Redstick, Texas in 1843. An ancestor of Officer Danny, I bet.

  The population doubled when the railroad put a train stop there about ten years later.

  She could have put together a thorough history of the town, but she was more interested in the crime reports. For instance, back in the 1800s, a Texas Ranger chased a gang of train robbers into the area. No one heard from the gang again. The Rangers surmised they’d had a run in with the Baker Gang and lost. It wasn’t until after the turn of the century the reports increased in frequency. She suspected there were more in the 19th century, but not reported.

  The more interesting ones were the disappearances. In 1905, a snake oil salesman on the run from authorities in Shreveport was last seen headed into the woods to the east of town. No one heard from him again, either. Part of the Bonnie and Clyde Gang hid out in the area. When Clyde Barrow went to join them, they were nowhere to be found. According to one James Carter, a pianist at a downtown Dallas speakeasy, Mr. Barrow said, “That town scared the willies out of me, and I ain’t going back.”

  During World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, most of the draftees from the area skipped out. The government never found them. A couple of oil and gas companies tried to drill in the area, and most of their crews quit within days of arriving. They said the townsfolk scared the bejesus out of them. Those who didn’t formally quit, skipped town, and never picked up their last paycheck. The companies finally gave up.

  And the latest: Ambrose turns up chewed to death in the woods outside of town by a prehistoric proto-wolf, the only victim she can find in the area who didn’t disappear outright.

  She sat back in her chair and reviewed the different reports. Disappearances happen all the time, especially during the time frames they were reported. I’m missing something.

  She decided to look through the reports, not as individual events, but as incidents in a larger pattern. She sat up in her chair as she read the name of the police chief during two of the instances. The name pulled at her.

  Conrad Welch. As in Evan Welch?

  Her trance broke at the sound of a door closing and the lights going out.

  “Hello? I’m still here,” she yelled.

  No one answered back.

  She used her cell phone light to make her way through the aisles of shelved cardboard boxes to the door to turn the lights back on. When she got back to her terminal, someone had rifled through her notes and the neat pile of ancient records she’d collected. She twisted her head and looked around. “Hello? Who’s here?”

  Evan’s voice echoed back at her from her left. “You should’ve taken my advice, Ang! Should’ve taken the win!”

  “Evan?” She drew her Glock and gripped it in the two-handed style she’d been trained to use. “You’re from Redstick?”

  “Yes.” This time his voice was from behind.

  Keep him talking. “Why didn’t you tell me?” No answer. She pulled her phone from her pocket, set it on the table, and pushed record. “Did you have anything to do with Ambrose’s death, Evan?”

  “Does it matter how he died?”

  Angela spun around. His voice was close. To her right.

  “Right to a trial, Evan. We arrest them. We don’t try them.” She cre
pt down the aisles closest to her terminal. “We’re not vigilantes.”

  “He was a child killer!” His voice sounded like he was back on her left again.

  He’s traveling in a circle around the room. He’s stalking me!

  “Why don’t you come out? Let’s talk.” She peeked over her shoulder. “Maybe you have a point. You did save the courts a bunch of time.” That last sentence sat on her tongue like sour milk.

  He laughed with a low grumble. The laughter turned into a growl. “Don’t patronize me!” he yelled. His voice had changed timbre. It now sounded like he was talking through an empty paper towel tube. But there was something else there. Pain. He whimpered in pain. But it was deep, guttural. Primal.

  The logical part of her mind told her she was in danger, and the other part confirmed it by telling her to hide. She turned to make a mad dash for the door, but her feet rooted to the floor in primitive fear as a howl pierced the air. It grabbed hold of her soul and made her wish for daylight, warmth and peaceful ignorance.

  She stood in a shooter’s pose, afraid to move, and continued to stare down the aisle.

  Be small. Be insignificant. Hide!

  A shadow stretched around the corner, and a monster from forgotten nightmares followed it.

  The creature crouched but was rangy. No clothing, though coarse, short, brown fur covered it. Huge teeth protruded down the sides of its blunt snout.

  It rose to its full height when it finished rounding the corner and casually walked towards her, as if coming to ask for directions.

  It dragged its paw along the boxes on the shelves. When the claws scraped across the metal framings, they dug in, leaving furrows as if they’d plowed through warm butter. She risked a look into its eyes.

  Inhuman and pale blue, they glared back. The word “werewolf” jumped into her mind.

  This is what killed Daryl Ambrose.

  And it was coming for her.

  She wanted to yell, “Freeze! FBI! You’re under arrest,” but her training and self-discipline failed her. She tilted the barrel of her Glock upwards a smidgen. The monster’s eyes caught the movement and widened in surprise as she pulled the trigger.