The Charity

by Connie Johnson Hambley

  Both hands wrapped around her mouth to gag herself. Immediately she felt the emotions of a ten-year-old girl, helpless and panicked at the sight of the stranger. Get out! Get help! The seconds ticked away like hours as she tried to control herself. Frozen in terror, her mind began a slow slide over the mental precipice which she had painstakingly erected over the years. She clawed for the safety net she hoped would be there, but never was.

  Suddenly she was a little girl without a voice. She was trying to scream, to warn everyone of the danger, but the sounds never escaped from her. If only they would listen! If only they would just stop and listen to what she was saying! To what she saw! They would all be alive now if she had just made them listen. But Gus believed her and she’s alive, but no one else believed her and they are all dead.

  It’s all her fault that they died. She did not try hard enough. The animal that was hiding in their car was now in front of her and she had to tell Gus! She had to make sure he was going to be safe. That animal was going to do something to Gus and she had to stop it!

  Clouds swirled all around her and the horses were laughing. It was loud, too loud. STOP IT!

  Screams came from outside of her. Shrill, primal, animal-like screams pierced the night. Now she would be discovered, shrieks acting like a beacon to her hiding place. But the sounds were not coming from her and they drew her back to the present. The panic cleared and again she locked on the sight in front of her. The world reeled around her and her head pounded. She could not be sure that what she was seeing was real, but the hardness of the ground beneath her and the constant wail in her ears convinced her of its reality.

  The younger man’s shirt was covered with red, shiny blood. The stone of his face was cracked with a slanted smile pulled tight by a red scar and flecked with blood. A long knife was poised for another thrust into the body hanging before him from the barn’s crossties. The killer’s eyes shone with the heat and thrill of his sport. Jessica’s ears rang with his inhuman laughter mixed with the wail of a man who knew he was dying.

  The pain and anguish of the body in front of the killer animated him. His eyes bulged and lips protruded. The smears of blood on his face served to accentuate the effect of crevasses and the smooth scar which ran up his cheek.

  The older man dusted himself off and held his hat with two hands in front of him. His head was slightly bowed, perhaps thinking about what he had to do next. The brutality did not faze him. The old man took a careful step or two back from the site of the killing, avoiding the blotches of goo dotting the barn’s dirt corridor. His hands absently prepared a burled wood pipe with shreds of fine tobacco. He tamped down the contents and the sound of his hands gently patting his pockets was swallowed by the hollow barn. Finally victorious, a flame flicked to life from a silver lighter. Soft curls of bluish smoke drifted upward, curling around his bushy eyebrows. Dim light reflected off of the lighter’s smooth metal sides. The aroma of the fine tobacco and the glow of the pipe stood in contrast to the dead body. The lighter flashed once as it slipped away from his grasp toward the waiting pocket.

  The old man watched as the killer wiped the blade of the knife on a nearby cloth and refastened the blade into its sheath on his leg. Then he released Gus’ body from the ropes and stepped aside as it crumpled to the ground. He patted his aide on the back and spoke in approving and sympathetic tones. The killer picked up his neatly folded jacket and the two men walked out of the barn into the night.

  Jessica sat frozen in panic and disbelief. The realities of her past and present collided in her head, making it impossible to move, or even to think. Eventually, her breathing deepened and her thoughts slowed. She could no longer see the connection. She did not want to. Questions stung, with answers biting to chilling conclusions. Lips and knuckles bled from efforts to choke her screams. Slowly she raised her stiffened frame from her hiding place and walked into the barn.

  The scene had taken on a surreal quality. The barn was filled with nervous shufflings and snorts of animals trapped in their stalls, terrified by the smell of death. Nothing was out of place. Everything was as she had left it just a few hours earlier. In the middle of the corridor next to neatly stacked bales of hay lay the oozing body of Gus. He had fallen into a fetal position almost seeming to protect himself from further slashings. She crept over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. Death was obvious, but she had to look at his face one more time.

  The weight of her hand made Gus roll over onto his back, causing the blood-filled contents of his last breath to spew out, splattering her with glistening mire. Jessica could not bear the overload to her senses any longer. She staggered to the door and vomited. Her head throbbed with its attempt to comprehend what it had witnessed while still trying to stifle the terror locked inside of it.

  Fragments of past memories and present visions blended together, creating a fear far larger than the one just experienced. Jessica’s mind, isolated in its attempt to make sense of the chaos, began to systematically lock away the pieces it could not readily deal with. The memories were hidden, suppressed. Her mind’s foremost mission became to protect its carrier. Slowly, methodically, it began to shut down. Its benefactor eventually breathed more easily as it began its journey away from all that was once home.

  When the sun finally warmed the morning mist enough to clear it from the fields, the farm was filled with sights and sounds it had never before experienced. A police cruiser from the town of Hamilton was pulled up in front of the barn and was joined by a State Trooper cruiser and other unmarked cars. Men in police uniforms and suits stood in a small cluster talking with one visibly shaken stable hand. Yellow police tape marked “crime scene” was already strung and the air was filled with bursts of static and indistinct transmissions from various radios.

  Trooper First Class Owen Shea listened intently to the conversations. A former police patrolman, Shea joined the Massachusetts State Police six years before because the assignments he was getting as a cop in a small municipality weren’t enough to support his ambitions. He had worked in MSP’s gang and drug then fugitive apprehension units and had only just started in his new role with the detective unit stationed out of Danvers. This was his first murder and he hated to admit how excited he was. He was still crisp in his freshly issued uniform of dark blue trousers with a lighter blue stripe up the side, belted slate blue jacket with pointed dark blue cuffs and epaulets and a broad brimmed hat with rope trim. The brass buttons on his cuffs and coat still gleamed from their morning polishing. As he listened, he jabbed the toe of his knee-high black boot under a rock, flicked it aside and watched an earthworm writhe in discovery.

  Shea’s facility for remembering people’s names and faces and being alert for the smallest details paid off again and again. He was good at what he did and looked for opportunities to hone his skills even off duty. His professional abilities were matched with a hardscrabble charm and he quickly networked his way into a beautiful wife and an unobstructed career path. His current appointment was like doing the crossword puzzles in the Boston Sunday Globe, an interesting exercise of little consequence. But it would help him to build the reputation he needed.

  Trooper Shea dreamed of a position in Boston with the Organized Crimes Strike Force. Once there, elected offices were not far off. He was almost finished taking night classes at Suffolk Law School as part of his dogged determination to leave his working class world behind. Skills counted, but to advance up the ranks you had to know the right people or you were sunk. He looked around at the small group of men and his instincts were telling him that not all of them wanted him to succeed.

  He watched as one man consciously and slowly checked out his reflection in the rearview mirror of the police-issued Ford Crown Victoria Interceptor and methodically donned his cap. Patrolman Bass, the only Hamilton officer on duty at that hour, was a large man. Shea had only heard him referred to once before by his nickname, “Constable Bass” for the affected airs
the big man had when interacting with townspeople, and this was not a compliment. He had a thick neck and swollen features. Bass jammed his thumbs into his belt and hoisted his solid navy blue trousers up over his burgeoning belly. He did so as he filled his lungs through flared nostrils. All the while Constable’s gaze never wavered from the stable hand’s face. Shea took an instant dislike to him.

  “Okay now, boy. Tell me everything you know and start from the beginning.” Constable Bass focused intently on the slight figure of the groom before him. He listened to the jabbering of the young man as he slowly led him back into the barn. Shea followed. Flies hummed around their heads and landed in clusters on the gaping wounds of the corpse. The unsettled dust kicked up by their steps flickered in the sunlight and came to rest in soft layers making everything it touched dull and gray. Shea noted that Constable Bass shooed flies away from his own face and used the motion to glimpse the dial of his watch.

  “AAWWH! Jesus Christ! You’d think an animal did this, I mean with his belly just open like that. Whoever did this must be a monstah. I mean no one could just rip someone else open like that unless he was a huge monstah.” Jason Cressup, one of Gus’ favorite grooms, remained transfixed on his own panic. “Oh Gawd, Gawd! It’s just terrible! I couldn’t imagine why he was just laying there. I just went over to ‘im and was about to nudge ‘im when I took a bettah look at ‘im. And I couldn’t believe it! That’s when I saw ‘is blood everywhere, and—look for yahself!”

  Constable looked down then quickly away. “Did you hear or see anything unusual last night? Who was here?” Shea watched the charade of him getting only enough information from the groom to appear competent.

  “Oh my Gawd! Nope. Nope. I didn’t see anythin’ different this mornin’ from any other mornin’. I jest saw Miss Jessica checkin’ on da hosses last night. That’s all.”

  Shea became more interested. “You did?”

  Jason wrung his hat in his hands. “Yessir. I jest saw Miss Jessica walkin’ back to ‘er house is all.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Really early. Like five AM or somethin’ when I just got here. Then I was in the big barn and exercised some of the hosses before I came over here and saw... and saw...” Jason’s words caught in his throat as the horror of the moment was relived.

  “Anything unusual or different about her?”

  Jason thought for a moment before he replied. “She just looked kinda unsteady is all, like she mighta been drunk ‘er something. One a’ the other guys told me this mornin’ that she had a pisser of ale last night at the pub.”

  Shea wrote down the details on a small pad of paper. “That’s it?”

  “Yessir,” Jason said. “That’s it.”

  Shea continued writing on the pad making detailed notes of each conversation he heard and the description of the premises. He looked up and down the barn’s corridor, noting which of the ten stalls were open and what horses were inside. Feed buckets and hay bales were scattered about at the opposite end of the barn from where Gus lay. This might have been a crime scene, but the animals still had to be tended. Not a horseman himself, he did not have many occasions to be in a barn and the small details fascinated him. He watched with detached interest as another groom clicked a horse into two ropes and began crisply running a brush over its copper colored coat.

  His attention returned to Constable Bass just as the man’s eyes rested once more on his watch. The Constable then scuffed his way over to his cruiser and reached for his radio. Before he could make a transmission, another man took the radio mouthpiece and tossed it on the driver seat.

  Shea took in details of the encounter. The contrast in the two men was striking. As rumpled and inept as the Constable appeared, the other man was hyper vigilant with quick movements and a don’t-mess-with-me manner. The gray suit he wore was the high quality, hand tailored stuff that was too expensive for most cops. Shea listened as the Constable was verbally dressed down for breaching protocol of an investigation by attempting to provide details to personnel outside of the core investigative team. It was obvious that this man was in control of everyone and everything and was not going to let some hack leverage knowledge of this murder into some fifteen-minutes-of-fame-beers-at-the-pub celebrity.

  Shea was resigned to working with Detective Terrance Coogan for only as long as the mentorship of a junior detective was required. He checked himself, concerned that somehow his thoughts would show. Coogan remained rigid, eyes focused on the large cop who stood at least a head taller than him. If only that brick wall wasn’t his assigned mentor, Shea thought. Coogan choked him. A real control freak. Nothing ever surprised or impressed Coogan. No crime seemed to occur without Coogan knowing something or someone connected with it. It was like he knew it all even before it happened.

  Shea was determined to show his stuff to this stiff detective and this murder was the perfect opportunity. His mind raced in overdrive preparing the right questions to obtain information he needed. Words. Actions. Scene. Tone. He was exhilarated.

  The pounding was far off down the tunnel. It grew louder as its steady beat peeled away layers of deep sleep until it could no longer be ignored. Jessica rolled her legs onto the bare wood floor of her room and forced herself into a sitting position. Hunched over, she tried to open her eyes. They were dry, gritty against her lids and sealed shut. Something was wrong. What was it? Damn. Can’t think.

  Her hand shook free of her shirt cuff and rubbed her eyes. Strands of hair entangled in her fingers. She threw her head back to allow her hair to find its own place out of her face, but the sudden motion made the room spin and her stomach turn. Rubbing her temples in time with the pounding, she raised her eyebrows hoping that they would pull her sagging lids off pumiced eyes. Sunlight and dappled shadows swirled across her ceiling.

  It was bright. Too bright. Waves of sleep and dizziness washed over her, pulling her back down through layers of a brain still half-asleep. She braced herself. The pounding steadily meshed with the throbbing between her temples. Shit. Too many beers. It offered only slight relief that some of the pounding was coming from someone at the front door. What’s Gus so fired up about?

  The room vexed her with a vicious swirl when she finally pulled herself to her feet. She grabbed her night table to steady herself. A small porcelain lamp of a girl in a hoop skirt that once belonged to Bridget crashed to the floor. Damn it, she thought. I really liked that light.

  The pounding stopped at the sound of the crash. Deep voices and the crackle of a radio sifted up to her. Swaying slightly, she made her way out of her bedroom, carefully balancing herself down the stairs and into the main hallway. She steadied herself against the doorjamb with her shoulder. Thick fingers fumbled with the latch. With one great heave the thick wooden door swung open.

  Reflexively, her hand shielded her shut eyes from the onslaught. The images before her were blobs of luminous red surrounded by the searing light of the late morning sun. Her hands covered her face as she tried to wean her eyes back into the day lit world.

  “Jessica Wyeth? Are you Miss Jessica Wyeth?”

  “Hum? Wh-What?”

  “Are you Miss Jessica Wyeth?” The voice was more insistent.

  Jessica lowered one hand. The fingers of the other rubbed her temple. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the glare. The blobs darkened into figures.

  “Cut the crap, Gus. What do you want?”

  “Miss Wyeth? I’m Detective Coogan and this is Trooper Shea. Did you know a Gus Adams?”

  Jessica’s eyes were finally winning their battle against glare. The black figures further sharpened into two men. One wore a new police uniform. The other wore an expensive suit and asked a lot of stupid questions. A police radio crackled to life then spit itself silent.

  “Hum? Wh-what? Yeah. I know Gus Adams.” Jessica’s eyes locked and focused on the face in front of her. It had small eyes and angular f
eatures. “What kind of stunt is Gus up to this time, guys? You can tell him for me I don’t like his humor.”

  “Miss Wyeth, Gus Adams is dead. He was murdered last night here on your farm. Jason Cressup found his body this morning.”

  “Jason? Oh, yeah right. Jason.” Jessica remembered the black haired Jason as the groom Gus relied upon to ready the horses for their morning workouts. “Jason’s dead?”

  “No Miss. Gus Adams was stabbed to death last night. I would like to ask you some questions.”

  “Gus is dead? What are you talking a—” Shadows from last night jumped to the surface. She gasped and staggered backwards under their force. Blood rushed from her face and the pounding in her temples grew. Rubbery knees gave under her weight and she grabbed the doorjamb for support.

  “Miss Wyeth? Are you all right? Would you like to sit down?” It was a different voice asking these questions. Younger. Nicer. The detective blocked his way.

  “Where were you last night, Miss Wyeth?”

  It was the detective’s voice again. Jessica decided she didn’t like him.

  “I was with Gus. We had dinner together and... and... Oh, God! Gus!” The last words came out as a moan. Jessica had trouble thinking. “I do need to sit down.” She stumbled for the thickly padded armchair closest to the door. Her hand motioned the men toward the living room.

  The two men looked at one another. Detective Coogan paused in the entryway and looked around.

  It seemed like he nodded a silent approval of the finely appointed home. The detective walked across a worn oriental rug and absently fingered the cut glass vase which sat empty upon a small table. Eventually, he returned his attention to the girl.