None of this was real.
However he’d prepared to argue in court, he wasn’t sure he was really going to buy the outcome. There was something unnatural at work, here, he could feel it... like that damned past-life regression (translation: fantasy?)... it ate away at him with hungry little razor-sharp teeth. Whether or not he could prove any of this (of course he could—the evidence was all there), the more vexing problem was why. All those people descended upon this unsuspecting south Florida retirement community to slaughter residents—while leaving and ignoring any visitors who’d stayed at some of these homes—some even sleeping in the residents’ master bedrooms. Many of the residents’ pets—cats, dogs, and goldfish—had even been slaughtered, while those of the visitors had not. Not one family member nor visitor had ever been touched—nor awoken during the murder spree.
Explain that. Any of it.
It had clearly been an emotionally charged crime, a crime of passion, the rage was clear in the gruesome, unspeakable aftermath. Two sets of residents had been placed in tubs of boiling water, the only residents with the old-style claw-foot tubs. And what about the “carpeted” victims? Craziness didn’t begin to explain it. Most were killed before being rolled up into carpets, then further wailed upon.
Whatever motive there might be, whatever tie however illusive, all felt curiously irrelevant. Twenty-eight surviving suspects had committed murder most foul, and it was his job to prove that and convict them... in a fair trial. Which he could... short of a motive. Motives didn’t always matter, but actions did. The long and the short of it was that each of the defendants had killed every last resident in that community. Period. End of story. And that he could prove.
So, how could he actually feel any kind of sorrow for the suspects—which, dammit, he did. He’d read the transcripts and personally visited each of them. He’d never admitted it until now, but he honestly felt sorry that they’d probably never find out what motivated any of them, because he sincerely doubted they knew. It was all surreal—a freakish nightmare had taken over and brought everyone here, to this one moment, this one physical coordinate point in time and space.
But how do you prove any of it in a court of law?
They came, they murdered, they got caught—and now they were going to pay. They’d gone in together, and they were all going to go out together—and the sad part of it was that no one would probably ever find out what had driven them to do what they’d done. In the U.S. legal system, all that mattered was the end result. Crime and punishment. And which side had the most convincing argument.
Tomorrow. All this was going to be put to the test. Tomorrow.
But what about yesterday?
2
Howard Stoker sat in his study, pen paused above paper, beneath a small, illuminating desk lamp. It was nine-fifty-five p.m. Howard stared straight ahead unblinkingly at the richly paneled walls of his home office, his mind a jumbled blankness—but his pen continued to rapidly scrawl ancient characters across the sheet of paper before him. His pen, under unconscious direction, raced deftly across the paper until it had written all it had come to write.
Still entranced, Howard deliberately placed his pen down, picked up the sheets of paper, folded them neatly in half, then stapled them together. He got up from his desk, strode purposefully out of the study through the darkened interior of his home and into one of several guest rooms, where he went directly to a hanging oil depicting a Gulf Coast sunset his wife had painted. He lifted the painting away from the wall then tucked the miniature manuscript into the paper pouch on the back of it. He exited to his study, but was in the doorway when a mental switch suddenly clicked back on—and not losing a beat—exclaimed, “Ah-ha!—there’s my tea!” He retrieved it from his desk, taking a sip.
“Huh—cold. That was quick,” he said, curiously, looking to the tea and feeling the outside of the mug.
Howard returned to his highback leather chair and sat; took another sip of tea, then set it down on the table alongside him. He stared out across the study again, this time conscious of his actions.
What had he just been doing?
He felt he’d momentarily lost track of something... but, no matter. He had to get his mind prepared for tomorrow. The trial. The murder trial from up north. Thirty-seven people walked into a retirement community and killed all its residents. Some took their own lives. He was supposed to keep an open mind—innocent until proven guilty, a jury of peers, and all that—but his feelings said otherwise... he knew they did it, and that was the unsettling part. There was so much more to this trial. He tried not to tune into the crime, but kept catching threads of it. This one was very different. There was a metaphysical density, a weight to it he could feel in his marrow and had never before felt in any of his other proceedings over the years—but which he’d felt he’d been waiting for his entire life... and it upset him.
Howard took a final sip of cold tea, got up, and made his way to bed. Weary, feeling lifetimes older than his sixty-three years, he made his way toward the stairs and the bedroom. Something was very wrong... bizarre... and hung about this case like Scrooge’s undigested morsel.
Howard shuffled down the unlit hallway toward the stairs. As he approached the steps, he came to focus on his ticking Grandfather clock, which stood against the wall at the base of the stairs. Its ticking seemed louder, more concentrated. In fact, the entire house actually felt thicker. Like the house became each tick and tock. As he stared at the clock, what at first appeared to be a trick of light and shadow quickly took on a life of its own... he could have sworn the clock’s shadow appeared heavier... darker. As he focused on the clock and its shadow, he swore the shadow—was the clock’s shadow actually expanding?
Howard backed up a step or two; watched as the clock’s shadow indeed expanded, its ticking more pronounced... multidimensional. Felt his entire home and life waver in and out of reality. As the clock’s shadow expanded, a portion of it—a sliver—split away from the clock and stood off by itself.
Was he imagining this?
A blast of wind then shot through him, carrying with it the musty scent of grasslands and cattle, and before his eyes that sliver of shadow took form.
Howard found himself standing on those distant and barren grasslands...
3
“Tiger,” Dr. Preston began, sitting before Tiger in the Port Charlotte jail, “I’d like to ask you something off-subject for a moment.” It was late and she was exhausted.
Tiger kept shading in his picture without looking up. Preston had been continually impressed with the professional quality of his artwork, something that had always struck her as unusual for a homeless person.
“Tiger... you appear... you sound and handle yourself as if you’ve not been a street person forever. Your artwork. Your vocabulary. What happened? What brought you to where you are now?”
Tiger didn’t respond; didn’t look up nor stop drawing.
“What are you running away from? Are you a war veteran?”
Tiger ignored her. Preston thought she’d try the question one last time, but her query met with the same silence each and every time attempted. She just thought sooner or later he might drop his guard. But that hadn’t happened, and looked like it never would.
“Last attempt... what drove you to kill?”
Tiger fidgeted in his shackles at the table before Preston. Both his hands and feet were bound by the hardened case-steel restrictions. He shrugged, staring down at his drawings.
“The wind,” he said without looking up. “My answer hasn’t changed from the last hundred times you’ve asked. Believe me, I wish it had.”
“But, how can wind make you kill?”
He sighed, again shrugging. “Don’t know, it’s just wind... always there, in my head. Sometimes there’re voices, sometimes it’s just wind, but usually it’s a combination of both... whispering, screaming....”
“What do the voices tell you?”
“It’s not so much what they’re s
aying—which I can’t really make out, anyway—as how they’re saying it.”
Tiger picked up a different pencil and added more shading to his pictures. Preston was absolutely dumbfounded by his artistic ability. His work should be properly viewed in a gallery, not a police interrogation center.
“What do you mean?”
Tiger shook his head. “I don’t know how to define it, ma’am, we’ve been over and over this... emotional... lots of anger....”
Tiger remained focused on his ant drawing, then began scribbling a picture of a horse-drawn cart and rider alongside another rider on horseback. Preston homed in on the sketch.
“What are you drawing?”
“Something in my head.”
“What else do you see?”
“Riders. Coming for this woman,” he said, tapping the pencil point on the figure on the cart.
Preston stared at the picture. “You know,” she began, reaching down to the portfolio at her feet and removing several sheets of the same kind of drawing paper Tiger was using, “I have another drawing just like this one. A couple, actually.”
Finding what she was looking for, she laid one out on the table before them. It showed, in rudimentary stick-figure fashion, a wagon with a rider, another rider on horseback beside the wagon—three other riders on horses rode toward the two.
“It’s the same,” Tiger said.
“How do you know?”
“The same way I hear what I hear.”
“Did the wind tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Just like it told you to kill those others?”
“It didn’t tell me to kill anyone—”
“But—”
“It merely... I hear things... battles... death... screams and wailing....”
“Then what drove you to—”
“I don’t know... it was just... an urge. It’s hard to put into words....”
“Try. Your life depends on it.”
Tiger paused and looked up, not to Dr. Preston, but into space.
“Dr. Preston... what do you think happens when we die?”
Surprised, Preston paused. “Well, there are many trains of thought—”
“I don’t want any ‘train of thought,’ doctor—I want your belief.”
“This isn’t about me or my beliefs.”
“Isn’t it? How is it not?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Do you know that? Do you remember all your past lives—your future ones?”
“You’re going to invoke an insanity plea—”
“I’m not invoking anything. I’m trying to understand what’s happened to me... to all of us. Nothing is ever isolated, dear doctor... it’s all related. You and me... we’re related to each other. At the very least, in your clinical opinion, by this investigation of my supposedly deranged mind. I’m related to one Detective Tom Fisher by my having taken a few lives. But... but what if things ran deeper. What if... what if we had past lives together... you and me, me and Fisher, me and those I slaughtered—that’s what I’m asking. What would ‘murder’ mean under those circumstances? Wouldn’t it change how we viewed things—the world?”
Tiger put down his pencil and looked directly to Preston.
“What do you believe, doctor, because it’s going to be based on what we all believe, ultimately, isn’t it? I mean, if you don’t believe in something, you’re not going to give it the time of day... you’re going to ignore it... and, in this case, that might be the very wrong thing to do. A trial should involve all the evidence, don’t you think?
“What do you believe?”
4
Banner sat at The Rusty Anchor staring into his half-drained beer. This case had been the freakiest he’d ever dealt with. It was almost as if the crime itself was going to pale in comparison to the aftereffects of the trial: all these people murdered, no motive, they’re from different parts of the world... that reporter has disturbing dreams—and his Four Horsemen?
There just weren’t any answers.
Just months of disturbing dreams and crazy visions. They were going to trial in the morning, and no one had a clue about what had driven those people to do what they did. But they were going to prove in a court of law that, by God, they did it, and for that they were going to burn in hell. And rightly so.
Banner took another sip.
But, it wasn’t just the Four Horsemen. He’d seen... heard... other things. Like that Billy Williams character, as they’d rushed to Kacey’s aid when she’d gone catatonic. He’d seen, in his mind’s eye—felt—the thundering approach of horses and warriors, goddammit. Just like that Four Horsemen thing. Smelled them, this time, for chrissakes, like they’d actually charged in and around them. Felt the floor beneath his feet tremble with their hallucinatory charge.
All in a Florida county detention center cell.
How the hell does something like that happen? He never said anything, but had looked to Fisher and saw the same look in his eyes... that same confusion, that same terror.
He knew he’d experienced the very same thing. Maybe not everything he’d seen and felt and smelled, but something so similar, so unbelievable, it’d put the fear of God into his world, too.
And when he’d taken Kacey home, those same images continued to assail him. Volunteering to take her home hadn’t been so much chivalric, as it had been something to get him the hell out of there. He couldn’t get those images out of his head... which brought him to where he presently found himself. Drowning his fear in his favorite brew. Not much scared him, but the images had grown worse over the passing months. He wasn’t sure how much more his psyche could handle. He’d be glad when it was all over. Something wasn’t right, and this trial was just going to make things worse.
“Want another one?” a voice in front asked. Banner looked up—and jumped.
“Whoa, Banner, you okay, buddy?” the bartender asked. “Think you’ve had enough, big guy—”
Banner looked to the bartender, Rick, whom he’d known for years. Grunted a “sorry.”
“Want some coffee?”
“You know coffee don’t do a damned bit a good—why you guys ask that?”
Rick shrugged. “They do it in the movies.”
Rick smiled, then took away Banner’s empty glass and swiped his damp rag over where the glass had been.
“Hey,” he added, as Banner fished out the necessary change and tip, “good luck, huh! You’ll nail them bastards. Nuthin’s been right these days. Whole world’s going to hell in a handbasket.”
Banner slid off the stool, nodded, and made his exit.
There it was again... he couldn’t get away from it. When he’d looked up from his beer at the sound of Rick’s voice he could have sworn he’d seen an angry, indistinct, battle-scarred face before him. It was just one more creepy thing to add to a long list of creepy... he didn’t need to make out the face to know it had been another warrior. He simply knew.
This case was seriously fucked.
Chapter Eighteen
1
Mark lay back on the couch and flipped on the TV, turned it to NNC, then snatched up the newspaper from the coffee table. Emily was fed, changed, and asleep upstairs, and he could now unwind before also heading off to bed himself. He had a long day ahead of him tomorrow.
Shaking out the paper, the headlines immediately grabbed his attention: Bizarre Florida Mass Murder Trial Underway. Throwing his feet up on the coffee table, he periodically glanced to NNC as he read the syndicated article:
August 2nd
In the early morning hours of March 10th, thirty-seven people from around the globe walked into small-town Sunset Harbor, Florida and systematically murdered each and every sleeping resident of the Safe Harbor Retirement Community. No explanation has been offered by authorities, however unnamed sources cite total befuddlement. Special Operations Bureau crime scene investigator, Detective Thomas Fisher, of the Sunset Harbor Police Department, declined comment only to say that
“it’ll all come out in the trial.”
Opening statements were made today as the trial began in Fort Meyers, Florida. A change in venue was necessary, says Sunset Harbor prosecutor, Harry Gordon, because of the “backyard nature” of the crime in the town’s large retirement population. The prosecution is proceeding under the notion that the murders were cult motivated, under leadership of a man known only as “Tiger.” Testimony turned gruesome early on, as descriptions of dismemberment, suffocation, and other bizarre acts filled the court room—including two couples who’d been boiled in their own bathtubs—and the many victims who’d been duct-taped inside large throw rugs, then beaten with baseball bats or broken bed posts. “This expects to be a long, protracted trial,” said Mr. Gordon. “It’s one of the most shocking cases I’ve ever handled, or heard about... certainly the most bizarre.”
* * *
What was this world coming to?
Mark’s gaze fell to the byline. Two words.
Kacey. Miller.
He bolted upright.
Sat back down.
Stood.
Kacey?
There it was in half-toned black and white: Kacey Miller. Of the Sunset Harbor Gazette.
Mark’s hands shook uncontrollably.
After all his searching? All his anguish? Here she was?
Kacey Miller.
He’d finally found her, and, true to form, in the midst of some kind of out-of-the-ordinary, off-the-wall, escapade. Using her maiden name, no less. How totally like her. Always getting herself into one jam or the other, always the thrill seeker. In kind of a sad way it was comforting to know that some things never changed. He guessed she’d found herself in a good one, this time. A cultish mass murder, no less. And who’ve thought she’d be writing an article the whole country was reading? Guess she finally put that journalism degree to good use.
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