Chapter 6
Observation Psychology 264
AT THE RISK OF BEING LATE FOR CLASS, Denton took the long way to campus. His route would take him through downtown and right past the Moss Hollow Gallery.
There would be no time to stop in to see Linda, but he was compelled to take this small step to be near her, no matter how briefly or how imagined. He needed some kind of reassurance that she was okay. A glance through the window of her shop would be enough.
He knew he was being irrational, but that knowledge didn’t help. The events of the morning had left him with an unshakable sense of impending doom. The streets may have been filled with sunlight, but it felt as if there were a shroud over the town.
None of it seemed real. It was more like a dream, or a movie, he had somehow stumbled into. Denton Reed should not be tracking down missing girls, in real life. He should not be standing around police stations or examining police reports on homicides.
The unopened blue file—he could smack himself. The lead on the girl’s abduction had distracted him, and he hadn’t gone back to read it.
Unlike the vagrant, the police had actually investigated that case. The contents of the thick folder tantalized him with its mysteries. Could there be a key clue in it? Would it lead to whatever or whoever was behind the strange influence that gripped all the victims? He would need to call Bill up and ask to see it.
Tomorrow, he thought. Today Bill was questioning witnesses and working the case. Hopefully, things would settle down by tomorrow. Hopefully by tomorrow, the madman would be behind bars and there would be no need to call.
He turned onto 5th Avenue and got stuck at the light. The gallery where Linda worked was six storefronts up ahead. His pulse rose as he noticed a white van parked right across the street. Its roofline rose above the other cars parked down the side of the road.
Denton chewed on his thumbnail, waiting for the light to turn green. Through the gaps in passing traffic, he peered at the truck, telling himself there was nothing sinister about it.
The second the light changed, he hit the gas so hard that the Mercedes squealed forward. Almost immediately, he stepped on the brake and slowed down to a crawl, as he passed the shop.
The van belonged to a plumbing company. The rear doors were wide-open, and Denton watched a middle-aged man in overalls store his tools away.
When he looked over at the gallery, two women were walking out, smiling and chatting. The glare on the windows was too bright to see inside, but it was clear that for everyone else, it was just a normal day in Bexhill.
The car behind him honked, and Denton sped up.
He cursed his foolishness. He hated how paranoid he was acting.
The sign outside the Savings & Loan told him it was thirty-eight degrees outside, and he switched on the stereo and turned up the volume. Funky Hammond organ notes filled the interior of the car. Jimmy Smith laid down a blues riff as deep and flowing as a river, only to be met by Stanley Turrentine’s tenor sax, echoing the notes back like a gospel choir. Denton hoped the soothing, familiar sounds would drown out the thoughts in his head the same way it drowned out the world around him.
He wasn’t remotely successful.
For the rest of the drive, he tried to ignore the eights that popped out at him from license plates, mail boxes, and gas station prices. Worse still were the vans on the road. He refused to take any notice of them, not the five panel vans and not the fourteen mini-vans that crossed his path.
By the time he reached campus, his world had become a fragile place.
He parked in his usual spot at the back of the lot, by a row of poplar trees. No matter how late he was, there was always still some spaces back there. Most people didn’t want to walk so far.
He crossed the campus to Gutterson Hall, unhurried but purposefully, and got to class just as the clock was hitting 10:00 a.m. The students settled in, talking loudly and slowly taking their seats, while he scanned over his lesson plan. Today, he was supposed to cover problems with erroneous assumptions. The central example of the lecture was misleading evidence on a subject’s bookcase. During the course of the lesson, he would demonstrate the importance of not taking books in a person’s possession as a direct representation of their personality. All too often any item purposely put on display hinted more at how a person wanted to be perceived, rather than who they were. The same principle applied to art on the wall.
Denton went through the lecture by rote. He didn’t calculate it, but if he had done the math, he would have realized that he had given the same lesson exactly twenty-one times, twice a semester, for five and a half years. And tomorrow, he would give it again, to his second Observation Psychology 264 class.
After it was over, everyone filed out faster and less talkative than when they had entered. A few unstifled yawns could be clearly heard over the commotion. Denton took his time packing up his briefcase, letting them all leave before him. He hoped to get out without having to talk to anyone. Unfortunately, Monica Rainville came over to him.
“Here are the conference notes from the last two weeks,” she said, handing over the bundle of paper.
Denton made a show of looking through the sheaf of handwritten pages. Monica’s overly tidy script filling page after page with information he wasn’t terribly interested in. The students were required to attend conferences, the teaching assistants were required to rank them, and Denton was required to pretend it was important to his curriculum.
“Very good,” he said and slipped it in with his other course notes.
“I filled out my time sheet for last week. You’ll approve it before the deadline, right?”
“Yes, Monica.” For three semesters she’d been one of his TAs. He had never once failed to okay her hours on time, yet she reminded him every week. At first, he assumed it was because she’d had problems with other professors she’d worked for. There were some horror stories around Milton about it taking months for assistants to get paid. But as he got to know her, he realized it was something more serious.
The woman clearly had a moderate anxiety disorder. He had tried to steer her to Health Services with no success. He’d also tried to get her to self-diagnose and had even gone so far as to subtly slip her a GAD-7 questionnaire, but she failed to take his hints. The one thing he had not done was confront her with it. In the psychology department, diagnosing colleagues was a very touchy subject. He had once joked to Linda that it was like a mental institution where all the patients had degrees.
“Anything else?” A glance at his watch told him that the next class would be starting soon. They were the last two in the lecture hall. When she didn’t answer right away, he headed for the door.
“I got a call from Stephen Kaling this morning,” she said, following him.
Denton stopped and looked at her, waiting to hear what she thought was important about it.
“He called to let me know he wouldn’t be in class today. I thought it strange. He doesn’t normally make excuses when he skips.”
“What was his excuse?”
“Get this, he said he had to file a missing person’s report with the police. I’ll give him points for originality.” She rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Did he say who was missing?”
“Claimed it was his girlfriend. If I was dating him, I’d go missing too.” She snorted, laughing at her own joke.
Concern showing across her face, as she noticed Denton’s expression. “What?”
“Nothing.” He bit back on the admonishment that formed on his tongue, as he turned and walked out into the corridor. She had no idea what she was saying. Best to keep it that way. Best not to worry her. Besides, he was in no position to tell her what was going on.
On the way to his office, that question bothered him: what was going on? Nothing added up. He ran through the evidence again in his head. Meyers had changed before
he had been killed and so had the girl before she had been abducted—if she had in fact been abducted. The first victim was still an unknown. But what about the man known as Ray, how had he changed? He stayed in town longer than normal. Did that count? The homeless man should have left by the end of September at the latest. He was killed in the middle of November. If that marked an alteration, then the change happened months before his murder, not days.
Denton tried to remember the photos of the campsite. Other than the graffiti, was there anything else? Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary to him when he’d looked at them. But the pictures weren’t very detailed; there were no close-ups of any of his possessions.
“Foley’s gone too far this time.” Cole Radnor walked up behind Denton and started complaining without any other greeting.
“What is it now?” Denton slowed down but continued toward his office door. He found it impossible to take Radnor very seriously. The man barely spoke outside of his classes, unless it was to moan or criticize. And he was in no mood to get dragged into Radnor’s latest catastrophe.
“He sent me an e-mail telling me I’d have to share my office with the new guy. Can you believe it?” He kept pace with Denton.
“Didn’t you use to share it with Pat?”
“Yeah, but it’s been mine since he left in May. I tell you, he has it out for me. Why doesn’t he stick him in with Yu?”
Denton’s eyes went wide in disbelief, thinking that Radnor wanted him to share his cramped office with the new professor, but then he realized that he had meant Jon Yu. Jon had one of the largest offices in the department, mainly because he brought in a fortune in research grants for the college. He also had full tenure and had been there for over twenty years. Radnor, on the other hand, wasn’t even halfway through his tenure requirements, despite teaching at Milton for seven years.
“I read that paper he did in Psychology Interest,” Denton said, referring to the new professor. He was young and eager, publishing every chance he got. He would be a welcome addition to the team when he started in January. So of course, Radnor saw him as a threat. “He had some interesting ideas on reinterpreting Hegel’s dialectical method… seems like you two would have a lot in common.”
He unlocked his door but didn’t open it out of fear that Radnor would follow him inside.
“That’s not the point. It’s the principle.” It felt like the tense whine of Radnor’s voice should be accompanied by a childish foot stamp. “Three-oh-eight is my office, I’ve earned it.”
Denton’s grip on the door knob tightened.
“Foley’s trying to force me out. But it won’t work. I’m not going to let that bastard get away with it.”
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Denton said brusquely, trying to get away. “Excuse me, but I have to prepare for a meeting.”
“I’m telling you, he has it in for me. If he had his way I’d be meeting my students out in the street, or by some dumpster in an alley, or—”
“Under the train bridge.” A gear slid into place in Denton’s head and his voice came out barely a whisper.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Denton locked his door.
“Where are you going?” Cole Radnor said to Denton’s back, as he marched back down the hallway.
Chapter 7
The Giant Red Eight
THE PARKING LOT next to the water treatment plant was almost empty. There was room for at least a hundred vehicles, but there were only about a dozen, all of them parked close to the door of the low brick structure.
Denton swung his car around and into a spot right next to the gate that he had just come through.
The moment he pushed open the door, he wished for a heavier jacket. It felt colder out here with less trees and buildings around. Making do with what he had, he fastened both buttons of his sport coat and pulled up the collar.
The tall grass crunched beneath the leather soles of his shoes as he followed the outside of the chain-link fence to the field at the far side. The ground was slightly muddy but growing hard in the cold. The bright sun of the morning had been replaced by a sky of moist gray. It looked as if there soon would be more rain and perhaps even snow.
Out in the open field, the narrow snake-like river could barely be heard over the harsh wind that grabbed at his tie and waved it in the air like a streamer. On his second grab, he caught it and tucked it into his shirt. The grass hid small pits and hollows, and he worried a wrong step would turn his ankle. From the car, the train bridge hadn’t looked far, but after ten minutes, he was only halfway there.
The railway track split up a large empty patch of scrubland. The ground rose artificially, creating a gentle hill leading to the iron bridge. Somewhere down the track, before the rise, was the town proper with the college, the stores, and the old homes. Alfred Reynolds had picked a remote spot to set up camp, but it hadn’t stopped someone from trekking out there and killing him. To walk out to his camp would have taken determination. But what would it take to drive there?
Denton stopped and looked around. There didn’t appear to be any dirt roads. The ground was too uneven to drive across in a regular car, but there were plenty of off-road vehicles around Bexhill that could do it. Jacked-up pickup trucks and 4X4s were fairly common, and the locals enjoyed hitting trails in their ATVs on weekends. Or at least, the news reported on accidents involving them so often, it would seem to be a common thing.
Tire tracks were something the police would have been looking for, if he had been a resident, if he had been someone deserving of their time. But if there had been any tracks around the area, they were long gone. The rain and the elements had taken care of that.
If only they had suspected that the man they had called The Troll was part of a bigger pattern, they might have done a proper investigation, and maybe, the girl wouldn’t be missing.
As Denton got closer to the bridge, where Alfred Reynolds had been dismembered and burned, he breathed slowly in through his nose and out from his mouth. It was a relaxation exercise he had read about long ago and often used. The technique helped steady his nerves, while he tried to keep his eyes focused forward.
But he need not have worried. There was no trace of the crime.
The black circle from the photos was gone, washed away despite the shelter of the overpass. There wasn’t much left of the camp either. Although, Denton suspected the culprits were people, rather than the weather. Most likely kids, he thought, after a quick look at the ground.
It was littered with broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, the remnants of joints, and even a condom. Someone had turned the dead man’s camp into a party spot. He wondered whether they knew someone had been killed there…that a horribly violent act had taken place there. Were they simply ignorant of it and were looking for an out of the way spot for a good time? Or did they know and were attracted there precisely because of it? Their enjoyment heightened by danger and morbid curiosity.
Possibly it was some Milton students, but more likely it was some local teenagers. They would be more familiar with the area and have fewer places to go and drink. There certainly was no shortage of places around campus for the underage to go and binge.
Under the bridge the air was different. The wind was slightly hushed, but noises echoed softly off of the concrete structure. A dank smell of wet earth and urine filled his nose.
The blue tarp was still there, tied to a wooden post by one corner. It was torn to the point of being shredded. The wind stretched it out and it fluttered with a staccato buzzing. Most of the other items from the photos were simply gone.
There had been a fire—recent too, from the looks of it. Ashes were in a fire pit built with stones and old bricks. And the eights were still there, mostly.
They covered both of the bridge struts that formed the only two walls of the man’s home. Countless figure eights were spray-painted from about
three feet off the ground to as high as the tramp had been able to reach—higher, in fact. He must have stood on something to gain extra height.
Denton stared at the giant red eight from the picture. Already someone had covered part of it with a fresh tag. A stylized “LCA” now covered the middle section of the numeral. The letters were yellow with a white and black border. How much longer before there was nothing left to show that the man had ever been there?
He turned his attention to the tarp. There had been more posts securing the plastic sheet at one time, but there was no sign of them now. Even under all that cement, there was only minimal shelter. He had still needed a makeshift tent to stay warm and dry.
Someone may have made off with the posts, but the remnants of a nest were still there. Sheets of cardboard, old blankets, and god-knows-what-else formed the man’s bed. The weekend’s heavy rain had left it a soggy mess, which Denton refused to touch. He crouched down in front of it and examined it as close as he dared. There was nothing of note, but when he glanced over his shoulder, he grasped the significance of the red eight.
It was directly behind him. The man would have been able to sit on the bed and stare at it. It would have been the last thing he saw when he went to sleep at night and the first thing he saw when he woke up.
Denton stood up and went over to it. The paint looked slick against the older, faded graffiti. The picture in the file must have been taken with a flash to reveal its true bright shade. In the sunless gloom, the red was darker and deeper.
On an impulse, he pressed his palm up against the surface. It was smooth and cold. Just as he was about to draw his hand away, there was a strange sensation: a slight vibration rippled through his fingers. He took a couple of steps backwards, staring at the enormous numeral.
Slowly, he started to detect a noise over the wind—a roar like the sound of distant thunder, but it didn’t stop. It just grew louder. He took another step away from the wall and his foot stumbled on some trash. He glanced down at a brown glass bottle. It jittered on the ground, rocking back and forth on its own. The earth was shaking beneath him.
Mr. 8 Page 4