"Didn’t need to. It was locked up tight when we got here, and it didn’t look like anything was out of place, so we locked it back up," she answered, whipping off her glasses and polishing them on her untucked shirttail. "Why?"
Hodel just shook his head.
VIII.
Hodel caught a ride back to the station with Dave Parker. The duty sergeant, a gruff old bulldog of a cop named Blanchard, flagged Hodel down as he walked past the front desk.
"You catch a ride with Parker?" Blanchard asked. His lower lip bulged with a wad of chew in blatant disregard for the building’s new No Tobacco policy.
"Yeah, I know I shouldn’t accept rides from his type, but I made sure he didn’t get too fresh for a first date," Hodel answered.
Parker laughed his braying jackass laugh and shouldered past Hodel. "Don’t flatter yourself, Hodel. You’re too damn old and worn out for me."
"Like wine, some things improve with age, Parker," Hodel shot back, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Blanchard snorted. "Because that means we’re short a squad car. Your buddy Hawkins ain’t checked in yet. I thought you were with him, so I didn’t think much about it. But now you’re here and he ain’t."
Hodel considered. This didn’t sound much like Hawkins. Sure, he was known to have a liberal interpretation of patrol, occasionally confining most of his shift to the truck stop and the Waffle House, but he wasn’t one to just ignore the radio.
Hodel checked his watch. The sun would be up soon. He wasn’t going to get much sleep anyway.
"I’ll swing by Thelma Thompson’s house on my way home," Hodel said. He forced a chuckle. It sounded dry and old. "See if that old bird hasn’t got him held hostage."
Blanchard nodded and spit into his cup.
IX.
Hodel found Hawkins’ squad car parked in driveway of 2303 Johnson Hollow, the residence of Thelma Thompson. It was one of those houses that were probably on the cutting edge of home architecture when it was built a half century ago but was now sagging and cracking at every conceivable place. The yard was a riot of weeds. Hodel radioed back to the station and told Blanchard that he could rest easy, his precious squad car had been located.
Thelma Thompson answered the front door after one knock. She was a large woman in her mid seventies with a head full of iron grey curly hair. She wore a bright yellow sweatsuit, the shirt bearing a cartoon drawing of a cat chasing a butterfly. Her feet were jammed into fuzzy pink slippers made to look like bunnies.
"Oh, you must be that other police officer," she said in a voice full of forced congeniality. "Your friend said you’d be along sooner or later."
Hodel raised an eyebrow. "He did?"
"Oh, he sure did. Why don’t you come inside and have a cup of coffee?" Mrs. Thompson answered. "It’s too cold to stand out there."
Hodel slipped inside the door and followed Mrs. Thompson into the kitchen. She poured two cups of coffee from an ancient percolator and handed one over. "Why don’t you sit down?"
"No, thank you," Hodel answered. "Where is Officer Hawkins?"
Mrs. Thompson smiled and sipped her coffee. "I think he’s still in the bathroom. He didn’t seem well."
Hodel set his cup down on the counter. "Where’s the bathroom? Maybe I should go check on him."
Mrs. Thompson shook her head. "Oh, I think you’d better not. He didn’t seem well. I think he’d like to have his privacy."
Hodel put his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. He was on the verge of losing it with the old woman. It had been a long night, and he didn’t need some old biddy in bunny slippers telling him that it was impolite to interrupt Joe Hawkins while he was squatting on the throne.
"Where’s the bathroom?" Hodel repeated as evenly as he could manage.
Mrs. Thompson responded by humming tunelessly and smiling. She had a mouthful of bright white teeth that Hodel supposed were dentures, and they clicked together as she beamed. She paused, took a sip of coffee, and said, "I told those bad boys. I warned them, but they just never listen to me. Now they know."
Abruptly, she stood and flung her steaming cup at Hodel. She fled the room, screaming wildly as she disappeared around the corner. Hodel may have been a few years past his prime and carrying an extra twenty pounds, but his reflexes were sharp enough that he was able to get his hands in front of his face and block the scalding liquid. The cup fell spinning to the floor and shattered into thick pieces.
"Shit!" he screamed. He threw back his jacket and pulled his gun from its holster. "Hawkins! Hawkins!"
Mrs. Thompson had killed the lights in the living room as she’d fled, and Hodel found the rest of the house in darkness. He had a small flashlight in his jacket pocket, and he went into the living room with both his arms outstretched, the flashlight in one hand, the Glock in the other. The flashlight’s beam was small and cut a tiny, yellow sliver into the shadows. Hodel moved out of the living room into a long hallway that made up most of the house. The first door on his left was a closet full of mothball-reeking coats covered in the thin plastic sheaths used by dry cleaners. Hodel checked the door on the right and found Hawkins, or at least what was left of him.
"Jesus Christ," Hodel breathed as he shone the flashlight beam over Hawkins’ remains.
The floor was wet and sticky with blood. Hawkins’ jaw was torn away from his face, leaving a tongue that dangled obscenely across his shredded neck. His abdomen was a gaping hole which offered a glimpse of spine and ribs through the scattered and torn organs. Hawkins’ eyes were wide open.
Hodel backed out of the room, coughing and swallowing back the urge to vomit. He continued down the hallway, sweeping his flashlight and slow arcs over the two empty bedrooms he encountered. The hallway terminated in a master bedroom. Hodel approached the door warily, tiptoeing despite the thick pile of the carpet beneath his feet. The doorknob turned silently in his hand. Hodel breathed in slowly and kicked open the door.
Mrs. Thompson was seated on the bed. She was smiling and clicking her slick, bright teeth together. Around her, crammed into every available space in the room, oozed and flitted the dark forms of the Midnight Librarians, their pallid faces and long arms protruding from the frayed seams of their rough garments. Mrs. Thompson reached out and idly stroked one of the creatures, which writhed and mewled with pleasure at her touch. Others pressed in close, presenting their bald heads to her caressing hands. She shivered with obvious delight as their long, bony fingers traced delicately across her body.
She nodded toward Hodel. "I called them forth from those realms that Edmund Tattersail described in his book, and I bent them to my will. Dirty boys poking their noses where they don’t belong will always meet with a bad end."
Hodel stepped into the room and raised his gun. As abruptly as if a switch was thrown, Thelma Thompson’s bedroom disappeared, leaving Hodel in total darkness. He spun around, looking for the door and finding only infinite darkness in every direction. The flashlight’s beam cut a pathetic sliver in the blackness. Hodel spun about again, completely disoriented. The cathedral quiet was pierced by a low howling. Hodel ground his teeth together as the sound swelled to eardrum-shattering intensity. He snapped off a series of useless gunshots as the cacophony swelled. The muzzle flash revealed the fiery eyes of the countless long-limbed forms that surrounded him.
X.
Across town, Terry Jervis awoke in his bed screaming, unsure if the shadows in the corners of his room moved with the first rays of the breaking dawn or some hideous, unseen force that called them to life.
THE TROLL THAT JACK BUILT
Kathryn Board
Katy--as her friends call her--once gave me a handful of scalpel blades while critiquing a story of mine. This was years ago and while the story was eventually abandoned, my friendship with Katy wasn't. She's one of my first readers and I look forward to her opinions eagerly because she's a clear, logical writer in her own right, appearing in places like Electric Spec and Triangulation: Dark Glass. When I asked her for
a story, what I got wasn't what I expected, but it was exactly what I wanted.
They called him a troll. Jack had always hated the term, like he was some mountain-dwelling, dull-witted lump instead of the director of research and development at Kissler Pharmaceuticals. Lately, it wasn't just the strange Internet terminology that he had been hating; it was himself as well. He wasn't this person; he wasn't a bully.
Jack told himself that if it hadn't been for the chat rooms there was a fair chance that he would have killed someone. Starting with that little prick Phil Hollis whose ass he had to kiss because his uncle was the VP of the company, and ending with his neighbor who insisted on mowing the damn lawn every Saturday morning at eight-thirty. His anger had to go somewhere.
The ice cubes melted into his scotch on the desk as he watched the JavaScript fly by:
ChadOverTheMoon: The best job I can get is manager of fast food.
LisaLane123: I was out of work for six months. SUX!
ChadOverTheMoon: Can't feed my family at a burger joint.
Jack felt the familiar sensation: the pounding heart, the jolt of excitement, the dark satisfaction that he knew exactly how to respond to their bullshit complaints. His fingers paused over the keyboard. After months of pouring all of his negativity into the Internet ether, it was hard to deny himself the release. His fingers twitched to type. He knew exactly what he'd say. Poor Chad. Too good to work fast food. Sure. Let the rest of US work to support your family. Deadbeat.
But it went unsaid. There was a grim satisfaction. Jack leaned back in his chair and sipped at his drink. The JavaScript slowed. People encouraged ChadOverTheMoon. Jack's lips twisted into a grin. He could almost see the idiots hunched over their computers, typing madly.
There was a faint knock on Jack's office door. He glanced up as Anna poked her head in. "What are you doing so late?" she asked. Her tone was light but it had that edge of suspicion he had grown to hate.
"Work."
She let herself into his office without asking. "Are you coming to bed any time soon?" she asked. Her eyes flickered towards his computer. He was grateful that his computer screen was faced away from the door. He didn't do it specifically for his chat room extracurriculars, but it had come in handy more than once on that score.
"Maybe another half an hour," he said looking back to his computer screen.
She didn't move.
It took another second or two before Jack bothered to acknowledge her. She was still watching him.
"I'm going to bed," she said, giving him an expectant smile. He stifled a sigh, got up, and crossed the room to her. She was as slim as she has been in high school. And as simple. He folded her in his arms and she melted against him. "Come to bed soon," she cooed, her hands stroking his chest.
"As soon as I can."
He watched her go out and then went back to his desk. He would give her a half an hour to fall asleep and then he would follow her to bed. He'd had just about enough watching for one day. Much more watching and he would just be too tempted to participate. Maybe tomorrow he would take the real plunge and cancel his account. Move on to more productive things with his time. Hang up his troll hat.....
An instant message popped up on his screen:
Jack's heart gave a hard, painful thud. How the hell did someone know his real name? His privacy settings were so tight, the casual chat room user shouldn't even be able to tell if he was male or female. He even had this account attached to a separate e-mail with a fake name and false information. He didn't want there to be any chance that any of the things he said could be attached to him.
His hands shook as he checked his settings again. And his mind rolled over some of the conversations he had in the last weeks. The one with a woman who enjoyed anonymous sex with strangers. How he had taunted her. And the young man who had a betting addiction. Jack had told him that the next bet could be the "big one". And the one with the man who had this obsessive attraction for his teenaged daughter's best friend. That one was particularly cringe-worthy.
Jack couldn't find anything wrong with his profile or settings. He was up for one hour and then two, trying to figure out how someone had gotten his real name and what else they might know about him. When, at two-thirty in the morning, his dry eyes forced him to go to bed, he disconnected his computer from the Internet and unplugged it. And he tried to convince himself that calling him Jack was just a lucky guess based on his moniker. Still, he didn't sleep well.
*****
The next day, at work, Jack got an email to his work account. The sender was [email protected] and there wasn’t a subject line. His heart started to pound in an uncomfortable way. A cold sweat misted his forehead. He wanted to just delete the thing.
Two minutes later, an infinite amount of time in his fevered brain, he still stared at the unopened email. He chided himself. This was so stupid. It probably didn't have any relation to the strange instant message from the night before. Still, his hands shook when he clicked on the message.
Jack, Beautiful job. Inspiring. You can't stop now. Keep up the good work.
There was a link below the message to a Florida newspaper. Jack's gut twisted in a sick way, but he clicked on it anyway. An article opened and the headline read, "Man Charged in Sexual Assault of Fourteen-Year-Old".
He glanced at his open closed office door and back at the computer screen. He quickly stood up, closed the door, came back to his desk. Then, he skimmed the article.
A Tampa man was arrested this morning in the rape of a fourteen year old girl. Authorities report that the girl's parents noticed "suspicious bruises" on their daughter's legs after a sleep-over with the suspect's daughter. An anonymous source at the police indicated that in a preliminary investigation, child pornography was found on the suspect's computer. Authorities hope to trace his on-line activities to determine if more children were involved.
Sweat spread under Jack's arms. It trickled down his back. He desperately tried to remember what he had said to the person in the chat room who had lusted after the teenage friend of his daughter. Jack had been particularly angry that night. Even though he couldn't remember the details, he was pretty sure that he hadn't discouraged the affair. It seemed like something he would do just to get under the skin of the other people in the chat room.
Jack's skin went cold. Could he get into any trouble for the things he had written? Would the police be able to find evidence of the conversation? Was this even the same man?
Jack's secretary rapped at his door. "Come in," he said. He had to clear his throat and say it again because his mouth was suddenly dry.
"I have those figures for you, Mr. Delane. And Ms. Fernadi asked if we could move the meeting scheduled for this afternoon to tomorrow morning." The secretary glanced up from the paperwork she carried and stopped for a moment. "Are you all right?"
Ordinarily, Jack would have chatted with her a few minutes. Nothing incriminating; just small talk that would keep the sultry brunette in his office a few minutes longer so he could admire her legs. "I'm fine," he said in a short, clipped sentence.
Her eyebrows furrowed. "Are you sure? You look like you just got bad news."
Jack felt sweat roll down his back. "I don't think my breakfast agreed with me.."
"Can I bring you anything?"
"No thank you, Beth."
She gave him one more worried look and left the room. But, she left the door open and Jack resisted the urge to close it. He went back to his email and stared at the message from his mysterious stalker. He could only think of one thing to do: he hit the reply button. After a moment, he started to type.
I don't know who you are and I don't know why you've sent me this article. If you don't stop contacting me, you'll hear from my lawyer.
Jack hit the send button. He turned to the figures that Beth had brought for him to review. It wasn't more than five minutes before his email notified him that his reply had gone un
delivered.
*****
"You're tense," Anna told him at dinner. "Is something going on at work?"
"No," Jack said. "Actually, that's not true. I'm behind on one of my big projects and I had to bring some work home with me." He gave her a sheepish smile and hoped that she couldn't see through it. "I'm going to be kind of busy tonight." He hoped that Anna wouldn't question him any further.
"Poor thing," she said. "Maybe we should take a vacation after this project-thing is over. Somewhere with a beach and fruity drinks. Just the two of us."
"Sure." He didn't look up because he didn't want to see her hurt expression. He knew she needed him to be more enthusiastic. He just didn't have it.
The more that Jack thought about his activity in the chat room, the more he was convinced that he hadn't done anything really illegal. It wasn't against the law to encourage someone else to break the law, was it? He wished that he dared ask the legal department at work, but he was too nervous.
No, the biggest thing that concerned him was the fact that someone had figured out who he was. Someone who had also accessed his work email. Someone who also felt free to contact him. That was the biggest problem and the issue he intended to rectify that night.
*****
He had a little bit of trouble shaking Anna off that evening, but he managed it. Finally, he cloistered himself in his office and accessed his chat. He was going to put an end to on-line venting. If he cancelled his account, that would be the end of it. Maybe he would take up kickboxing to release his negativity. Or, he could ramp his sex-life up a notch and put his energy into that.
He went into his profile and clicked the button that read, "Permanently delete my account". A window popped up that asked, "Are you sure, BlackJax66?". He confirmed and sat back. After this, he would close his e-mail that went with this account. He wasn't sure what to do yet about his mysterious stalker, but hopefully, without any stimulation, the asshole would just stop.
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