Husk

by Hults, Matt

  Melissa flinched and drew her weapon—

  The shape dodged out of the light’s beam.

  —then sidestepped away, moving out of the window’s line of sight.

  She gasped. Crouching, she craned her head to see around the bushes now blocking her view, trying to find a way to approach the window without exposing herself.

  She replayed the moment in her mind, trying to pull details from her memory. There hadn’t been much to see other than a head, but the look of the person’s face—the sight that prompted her to draw her gun—stood out clearest in her brain.

  Maybe it had been a trick of the light reflecting off the glass, maybe a shadow cast by one of the bushes, but what she saw looked like the face of a dead person.

  Melissa shuddered when she recalled it. She’d seen enough lifeless bodies in her time to recognize the difference between the real thing and a mask: the waxy skin; the depthless eyes; the frozen muscles. Death had its own face, and she knew it well.

  But if the person in the window had been a corpse …

  Who the hell was holding it?

  She knew all too well her suspect liked displays.

  Weapon ready, she ducked around the nearest bush and tried to see if anyone had returned to the window. They hadn’t.

  “Crap!” Now the person could be anywhere in or out of the house.

  First thing you have to do is get out of this open yard, she thought.

  But against her better judgment, she found herself creeping closer to the window, staying at an angle, her Smith & Wesson held forward. She eased up within mere feet of the glass, then clicked on the flashlight and pointed it into the basement.

  She crouched low and peered inside.

  The space looked like either a basement storage room or a laundry area of some type. Exposed cinderblocks and dark-gray concrete made up the walls and floor. She panned her light around and spotted a large white box-freezer positioned against the far wall.

  She immediately recalled a portion of Frank’s book that detailed the finding of similar freezers in Kale Kane’s barn—eight, to be exact—each of which had been found to contain dozens of body parts, depending on how they’d been butchered.

  She aimed her light at the floor. A mess of store-bought meats, plastic-wrapped fish, bagged vegetables, and canned juice mixes were strewn around the cooler’s base, all sitting in a puddle of water. Judging by the food’s condition, the pile had lain unattended for hours.

  She swallowed hard, attempting to gulp down her fear.

  Bringing the light up again, she centered its beam on an odd mark left near the freezer’s lid.

  A handprint.

  A bloody handprint.

  There’s the probable cause you were looking for.

  Melissa withdrew from the window, retracing her steps around the house—keeping watch for movement in any of the other windows, taking it slow around the corners—and hurried to her car. She opened the driver’s side door and squatted down behind it for cover. She pulled out her cell phone.

  The small phone beeped to life with one touch, but when she pressed the first number, its light-up display responded with a flicker, flashing a horde of electronic gibberish across its screen. A second later, it went blank.

  Oh, that’s terrific, Melissa’s brain screamed. Now what? I don’t have a radio in my car, and the nearest phone must be at least a five-minute drive away. There and back, the person will surely be gone by the time I return. So, what are my options? The nearest phone is the one inside—

  She looked up from behind the car.

  The Damerow house. The front door.

  It stood open.

  CHAPTER 27

  Frank’s flashlight beam cut through the moist night air like the Reaper’s scythe, illuminating the names of the dead in the Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery outside the town of Loretto.

  He’d already swept the light across the small graveyard twice, yet not one plot of land below any of the tombstones appeared recently filled.

  Kane isn’t here.

  Abandoning the night for the lit interior of his Blazer, he climbed behind the wheel and studied each of the three outdated maps of Minnesota he’d brought, crosschecking them with the newer ones on his computer. Even with the global positioning system on his laptop and other technical equipment he’d installed in the vehicle, his quarry eluded him.

  “Where are you, dammit?”

  He’d already checked three local burial grounds, and not one held a plot for anyone named Kale Kane. Even if Catherine had gone to the extent of having him buried beneath a marker declaring him as someone else, there still hadn’t been any new burials in any of the local cemeteries. Not in this area, at least. He hadn’t spoken with anyone to confirm the fact, but each of the cemeteries he’d inspected had been small enough so a simple check of the ground sufficed.

  But it has to be here.

  Frank knew it the moment he arrived in Judge Anderson’s neighborhood. His previous bout of déjà vu had proven correct, and when the cluster of newer homes came within sight, he realized the second of Melissa’s two crime scenes sat atop the same land Kale Kane had grown up on.

  Frank had been there before, when he questioned Kane’s parents about a rusted orange van registered in their name. The van had been spotted outside a small pawnshop in White Bear Lake, where someone sold a silver pendant that belonged to one of the missing women. A description of the victim’s jewelry comprised one of the few details Frank had released to the press, and the shop’s owner phoned in his discovery the moment the seller left the store.

  Frank remembered the sense of high-octane anticipation he experienced on the drive to the business—and the feeling of defeat when he discovered the pawnshop’s security camera had failed to record the transaction, capturing only static for the duration of the seller’s visit. He’d gathered other bits of information to investigate, namely the ID the seller used to pawn the pendant, but the real break came when he stepped outside to leave and noticed a drive-up bank across the street.

  The bank had an ATM machine that faced the pawnshop.

  The ATM machine had a camera.

  And that camera succeeded where the shop’s camera failed, recording both the suspect’s departure from the store and the rear end of his vehicle when he pulled away from the curb.

  But his excitement soon crumbled beneath dueling emotions of elation and anger when the bank manager printed out the four still shots and handed them over. After all his hard work, after facing the victims’ families and promising them he’d bring the killer to justice, he finally had a photographic glimpse of the mystery man who’d evaded capturer over the last seven months. But because the camera’s lens worked best at taking close-up shots, not one of those pictures revealed the man’s identity, or even the license number on his van.

  The wheel-cover over the spare tire attached to the rear lift gate of Frank’s Blazer still showed the dent where he’d vented his frustration.

  Nevertheless, two eyewitness descriptions of the van, a data link to the Department of Motor Vehicles, and a pot of coffee started him on the kidnapper’s trail. And that trail had led here, to this area, where Kale Kane’s creepy alliance first began sometime in the past.

  Now, he searched the night again, knowing Kane’s remains had to be here, somewhere close to home.

  And if he could locate them, he’d find the accomplice.

  CHAPTER 28

  The Damerow house.

  Melissa edged toward the open door, firearm ready.

  She came out from behind her car and navigated the path from the driveway to the house like a predatory cat on the hunt.

  It’s your duty, she told herself, but guessed that any other officer would’ve labeled her insane for entering a situation with so many unknowns. After her bizarre phone incident earlier, she wondered if they’d be wrong.

  With her back to the outside frame, she paused in the doorway.

  Had the prowler remained in the
house, or had he already snuck outside?

  She glanced toward the vast front yard and frowned at how little she could see of it. Verdant trees lined the far borders of the property, decorative boulders clustered near the walk, and terraced flowerbeds broke up the land’s level surface, totaling dozens of places for someone to hide.

  Cursing, she turned away from the night and pivoted in through the entry.

  On a good note, the foyer’s design worked to her advantage. A half-wall partition separated the greeting area from the living room, permitting her a fair view of the home’s open forward rooms while providing some protection.

  No lights shone in this part of the house, but a vaulted ceiling allowed for the front-facing windows to reach two stories high. The ambient light from outside illuminated a great deal of the room, reflecting off white leather furniture and glass tables like moonlight on freshly fallen snow. In that pallid gloom, Melissa spotted the much darker, two-foot wide discoloration of dried blood that covered one of the couch cushions and part of the floor. Her gaze traced a trail of crimson splashes that led out of the room, toward a hallway entrance on her side of the dining room archway.

  She didn’t move to follow the gory trail right off, however. Instead, she remained statue-still, listening for the sound of someone treading across the carpet or releasing a breath from around a corner. She didn’t know how many people could be in the house, or even if the one person she’d seen had stayed in the basement, and she didn’t like the idea of putting her back to an adversary while investigating where the blood went.

  Something clattered to the floor in another room. Something metal. Downstairs.

  Melissa froze. The prowler was still in the basement.

  She moved from her crouched position and hurried to the hallway, crossing the distance with her back against the wall. She peeked around the corner, finding a hallway short enough to see into the four open doors it contained. She spotted a bedroom, a bathroom, a den, and a staircase.

  The basement. She knew that’s where she needed to go, but leaving two unchecked floors above her had the same appeal of playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver.

  The faint squeak of a hinge issued from below, there and gone, like a swooping bat.

  The window, she thought.

  With no time to debate, she dodged across the basement entry and flattened herself against the wall, checking the steps with a quick glance. Finding the steps clear, she began her descent with the stealthy grace of a shadow, gun poised for action.

  The smell of minerals hung in the air, earthy scents from the concrete walls of the house’s foundation mixed with the odors of bleach and laundry detergent. From where she stood, she spotted a washer and dryer opposite the unlit landing, flanked by clothesbaskets and a double basin scrub sink. A stack of uncompleted wash lay on the floor, but darkness obscured the rest of the room.

  She reached the bottom.

  Steeling herself, Melissa flipped on a trio of switches she located at the landing and fluorescent light flooded the room.

  “Police officer,” she shouted.

  She stepped forward with her gun leading the way.

  Checking left and right, she discovered the basement encircled the stairwell, making the room all the more advantageous for anyone lurking near the back.

  She went left and crept along the lengthy foundation, passing a workbench, boxed belongings, empty picture frames, and an old coffee table due for refinishing. Soon, she found herself standing amongst the heap of defrosted food before the freezer. The machine itself was positioned with its back to a cinderblock foundation wall on the underside of the steps.

  On the opposite wall, she spotted the narrow window through which she’d first spotted the hideous face.

  It stood open.

  She remembered the squeaking-hinge sound. Shit.

  Moving faster, she checked the rest of the room to verify it was empty, only finding stacked items patiently awaiting a garage sale. She returned to the freezer area and peered out the open window, guessing it had become the prowler’s escape after he opened the front door to find her at her car.

  Melissa glanced to the ceiling, thinking of the other unseen rooms she had yet to inspect. Then she looked at the box freezer.

  Someone had fitted the cover with an additional metal fastener, having screwed it in place over the seam of the container’s lid and body. A medium-size padlock dangled from the latch.

  In her mind she saw the corpse-like face gazing at her through the window, mouth slack, eyes glazed over.

  She knew that tampering with the freezer could destroy valuable evidence. But the bloody handprint not six inches from the lock provoked her into picking up a pry-bar from the workbench and motivated her into breaking it free.

  The metal cracked. The door flew open.

  And she found her corpse.

  Melissa stared at the grisly contents lying inside the box freezer, alternating her gaze between the two bodies in the main storage compartment and the familiar double K symbol drawn in blood on the cover’s inner paneling.

  She resisted the desire to close her eyes.

  The killer had stacked the Damerow woman on top of what must’ve been her husband, turning the freezer into a frost-lined casket built for two. The fluorescent lighting caused crystalline flakes on her bluish-gray skin to shimmer and take on a luminescent quality. The rigor mortis of her facial features matched the expression Melissa had seen in the window.

  Her killer had been here. And gotten away.

  “Dammit,” she cried.

  She pushed away to run for her car when the lights flickered.

  Melissa tensed.

  The effect had been minor at first, but when it happened again. This time the whole basement became awash in deep two-dimensional waves of light and darkness. The overhead bulbs didn’t just flicker, they flashed on and off like the emergency strobes of a squad car blinking out of sequence.

  Melissa leveled her weapon. She edged to the right, looking to the opposite end of the room.

  Where a figure stood by the stairs.

  “Freeze,” she shouted, transforming her cry of surprise into a demand. She put the person in her gun sight. “I’m a police officer and I’m armed. Put your hands above your head.”

  The lights continued to flash in erratic bursts, shrouding the person in the pulsing display. She couldn’t tell if he—the shape looked like a man—had a weapon or not, but now that she looked for his hands, she noticed his arms hung at his sides, unmoving.

  So, who’s working the lights?

  The bulbs over the suspect burst, hailing sparks and shards of glass. The suspect instantly vanished in the darkness.

  Melissa flinched, her eyes wide.

  More bulbs exploded: two went out over the garage sale boxes, three others ruptured from behind her.

  She opened her mouth to shout a warning at the person when the sound of crackling glass emanated to her left. She pivoted toward the noise, and two powerful hands clamped down on her shoulders. They pushed her away, shoving her off her feet and into a metal storage shelf.

  The impact jarred her to the bone. She spilled to the floor with half the items on the shelves, hearing dozens of things clatter and break.

  She slumped to her knees, only to be seized by her clothing and hauled upward again. Her attacker spun her around, hurling her with unimaginable strength into the cinderblock wall opposite the freezer. She hit shoulder-first, saving her from a skull fracture. Bright fairies of light capered across her vision.

  She fired her weapon blind, having somehow held onto it, but only wounded the floor.

  Something flew out of the flickering darkness and clubbed her arm, striking the gun out of her grasp. She tried to stand and defend herself, but another blow caught her jaw and whirled her back into the wall. Hands of ice clamped down on the back of her neck and the waist of her pants. A frantic scream escaped from her throat, then choked off to a gasp when the attacker lifted he
r off her feet and over his head, ramming her into the lights. Glass shattered. Jagged metal corners tore through her clothes, raking flesh. Then down she went, body-slammed face-first onto something hard and cold. An icy chill molested her body.

  Oh, God. The freezer!

  She struggled to get up before another assault caught her in the back. Revulsion gave her the strength to ignore the pain in her limbs and push away from the frozen cadaver, but as she did, the barrel of a gun pressed against the base of her skull.

  She went rigid, not moving a muscle. She clenched her eyes shut, saving herself from having to stare into the face of a corpse.

  The attacker remained silent and slowly pushed her head down with the gun.

  “Don’t do this,” Melissa finally said. Her voice cracked from lack of saliva. When no reprisal followed her remark, she added, “Like I said, I’m a cop. If you let me, I can help you. You’re only making things worse for yourself by doing this.”

  “Need you,” a voice replied.

  The sound of it spilled into her ears like poison from an assassin’s flask. Her body went rigid, paralyzed with the comprehension that her future now lay in the hands of someone who’d patterned their life after the atrocities of a madman.

  “Y-yes,” she answered, choking on her aversion. “I can help—”

  But before she could finish, the gun withdrew and the freezer’s lid slammed down over her head, covering her in absolute darkness.

  She pushed off the shoulders of the frozen body beneath her, trying to force the freezer’s top open with her back.

  The cover wouldn’t budge.

  A grating sound penetrated the compartment, first at her feet, then again, closer to her head. It sounded like a power drill … or a screw gun.

  He’s sealing me in!

  She pushed up again and again, straining every muscle, but the cover wouldn’t give.

  Silence enveloped her, broken only by her labored breathing.

  She had to stop, had to calm down before she used up all her air.

  Her mind hunted for a way to break free, but the more she thought about it, the worse her predicament appeared. She didn’t have her gun, so she couldn’t shoot an air hole through the cover. How long would the air last: ten, fifteen minutes? Sandwiched atop the dead body, with the freezer door at her back, she obviously didn’t have enough leverage to break whatever appliance her attacker had sealed her in with. Her only other hope, her phone, had died. No one would even know she was missing until she failed to show up for work the next morning.