by Ed Helenski
I slipped back into my house, eager to be warm and to see Maggie safe again. She was sitting in the kitchen where she had a pot of vegetable soup simmering. I kissed the top of her head and looked at the papers spread out in front of her. It was the folder Reggie had in his office.
“You got into Reggie’s office? How did you manage that?”
“It was snowing pretty hard, so I just wore one of your old coats and a ski hat and walked over to the municipal building. They must have been using Reggie’s office because it was open. There wasn’t a soul around so I just went in and looked around. I found this file folder on the desk. Right on top, in fact. Look at this.” I marveled at her brazen nonchalance as I looked where she pointed. It was the list of names from Tastler, the four cases of Chlamydia in town. Chuck Peters, Mac Taylor, those two I had already known. Next to Mac’s name had been written “Already know he was sleeping with the girl, wife pretty much alibi’s him during Sioban’s absence. Seemed horrified when she was found. Not likely.” And next to Chuck’s name was “Admits sleeping with girl, denies anything else. Hasn’t been around but a year or so, not likely to be our man”. The last two names were circled, and it was probably to them we needed to look to find Reggie. The names were Bertram and Barbara Barker.
“Bert Barker?” I said, aghast at the implication. “Could it be?”
Mags looked grim. “It looks like. And he gave it to his wife. Think how scandalized Barbara would have been, she is so tight-laced. Still, a woman will cover up for her husband, especially a woman who is so worried about what people think.”
I nodded. It was true. “So now what? Go tell the troopers?”
Maggie shook her head. “Tell ‘em what? That the constable, investigating a closed case, disappeared and we think a schoolteacher and the head of the PTA might have done something to him? Besides, my guess is he is out there now, in hiding, trying to catch Bert with Meg. Barbara might hide having VD, might even ignore her suspicions about her husband and a young girl, or might even be able to convince herself it’s the girl’s fault, you know how she is. But she couldn’t very well decide to be in on harming a law officer. Doesn’t make sense. We need to go out there, try and find Reggie. Find Meg. If Reggie is watching, maybe our showing up will make Bert bolt.”
What she said made sense. Sounded dangerous, but made sense. Still, Bert was plainly violent, what if something went badly wrong? I was still of a mind we should let the police in on this.
“In on what, Tom? It’s still the same stuff as this afternoon, nothing that a trooper is going to buy. The way folks have been leaving The Corners Reggie disappearing won’t seem all that odd to them. It’s not like they will take a constable seriously. And even if there is the possibility it’s all true, the town is dying. The problem will solve itself, now won’t it?”
“Reggie had friends in law enforcement. We must be able to find someone who will believe us.”
“And with the pressure on Bert, you think Meg will be safe till we do? We have to get that little girl, Tom.”
And with that I knew she was right. Still, our going there wasn’t smart, not while we were the only one’s who knew what was going on. I had an idea. “I’m gonna write an email to the State Police barracks. I’ll set it up to send at say, eight tomorrow morning. If we don’t get back here, at least someone will know where to start looking.”
Mags smiled. “That’s a great idea, Tom. We make a good team. Do it now, so we can get out there. Before…” She didn’t finish.
I booted up the PC and checked for any email, but it was just junk. After typing the note we both bundled up and headed out. It was a dark night, made more impenetrable by the falling and blowing snow. None the less, we entered the woods on the far side of Cleveland and headed out in the cover of the trees. Better safe than sorry. Mags had the gun in her coat pocket; all I had was my cell phone, in case we needed to call for help. It was hard going and we had to balance staying hidden against the very real possibility of getting lost.
As we got near the Barker place we could see it was lit up. There was clearly someone home. We made a large circle around the house, looking for anywhere Reggie might be staked out, and trying to get a peek inside. The windows all had mini-blinds and they were all drawn tightly shut. Of Reggie there was no sign. After a whispered discussion we decided the best bet was the direct approach. We would go up and knock on the door. Say we were still out looking for Meg; ask if they had seen anything. Hope to …well, we just didn’t know what to hope for at this point. I know it wasn’t much of a plan, but at the time it was the best we had. It kind of made trying to sneak up seem pointless.
We stepped up on the porch and went to knock on the front door. It was ajar, standing open a couple inches. Given the weather that wasn’t normal. Snow was piling up inside. We knocked on it, but there was no sound from within. I gave the door a push, but it didn’t budge. I shoved harder, and the block of snow dislodged. Yellow light spilled out onto the porch. The living room was lit, but empty. “Hello?” I yelled out.
“Anybody home?” Maggie added. She was wary as a cat, and her eyes kept darting behind us, as if this were a trap. “It’s Maggie Cowell. And Tom Tharon. We need to come in and warm up”.
I stepped across the threshold and into the house. It was much warmer inside, and the brightness stung my eyes. There was no sign of anyone. We crept together, side by side, into the room. I looked down the hall, and all the doors were open, all the lights on. We peeked into a bedroom, bed made, what appeared to be a den, lights ablaze but empty, and a bathroom, also vacant. We made our way back down the hall, and I was about to turn upstairs when Mags pointed to the kitchen. It had one of those two way swinging doors and so was the only room downstairs that was closed. We pushed open the door and looked in. Bertram Barker sat in one of the kitchen chairs. Reggie was in there with him.
Chapter 21
Reggie lay on the floor on his stomach. There was a large, dry pool of blood around him, and his clothes were crusted with blood. He was clearly dead. In the chair sat Bertram, a neat round hole in the center of his forehead. The wall behind him was splashed with gore, but it was all dry. If it had been summer the room would have been a cloud of flies, but it was the dead of winter, and not a creature was stirring.
Later I would decide that Reggie had probably made the mistake that big men often make. They think their size makes them invulnerable, and so they walk freely into danger, take risks they ought not take. I surmised Reggie had come, talked to Bertram, and confronted the man with his knowledge. Bertram drew on him, and the two exchanged this lethal fire. But when I said as much to Maggie she shook her head.
I was lightheaded and feeling ready to puke from the scene in the kitchen, but Mags was almost clinical about it. “That can’t be what happened, Tom. Look. First off, Reggie has three shots in him, at least that I can see. If he hit Bertram in the head, there is no way Bertram shot him three times. And if Reggie was hit three times, I don’t think it’s likely he hit Bertram in the head that neatly. It almost looks execution style.”
“Reggie is a big guy, “I stammered, wanting this to be over, “he could take those bullets and still shoot straight.”
“Maybe,” she conceded, “but look” She bent over Reggie, and the last thing I was going to do was look. “These are just little holes. Entry wounds. The exit wounds are in his chest. He was shot from behind. He didn’t shoot Bertram, Tom. Or even if he did, Bertram didn’t shoot him.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Reggie’s gun is missing. And I don’t see Bertram’s either. Where did the guns go?”
“Maybe Barbara took them in a panic. Can’t we call the police now, and get out of here?”
“Let’s look upstairs, then call the police. We still haven’t found Meg.”
I agreed, happy to do anything to get out of the kitchen. A survey of the upstairs showed us nothing. Not a pillow out of place, and not a sign of Meg. Or Barbara either, now that I tho
ught about it. We were making our way back down the stairs when a bang from the kitchen made me nearly jump out of my skin. We ran back in there, Maggie with the gun out, but found nothing more than the two corpses. The bang happened again, startling me once more, and we realized it came from the back porch. Going out the kitchen door we saw the storm door on the porch was ajar, and was banging in the wind. We walked over to it and looked out. There, in the deepening snow, were bootprints leading off into the field.
“We have to follow these, Tom.”
“Who could they belong to?” I was bewildered.
“The killer” was all Maggie would say.
“We should call the police”
Maggie nodded. “Call them. Tell them the bodies are here. And then let’s go. We can’t wait for them to come.” In the end I agreed with her, and dialed the municipal building. There was no answer. I got the operator and was connected with the State Police Barracks. I told them a constable and a local man were dead and gave them the address. They asked my name and I told it to them. They told me to stay put. I hung up, and shut the phone off. Then we went out into the blowing snow, following the tracks towards the woods.
The snow was falling so quickly, and the wind so harsh, that the tracks had to be fairly recent. Even so, they were filling in at an alarming rate, and if we didn’t hurry, they would disappear entirely. We followed them as they wound across the field, through the stand of trees, and then across another field, the one adjoining the old Tario farm. We were heading out of town, towards the old farms at the end of Cleveland.
Maggie and I clutched at each other as we struggled along, too breathless to say much over the whine of the wind, and in too much of a hurry to ponder where we were going or who we were chasing. If the past days events had been less hectic we might have found the time to watch the news or hear the radio, and we would have known that we were in more than a snowstorm, this was a full fledged blizzard, winds predicted to top out at 70 miles an hour. It already felt like that as we marched towards the next stand of trees, the ones that separated the Tario farm from those beyond.
In the trees the footprints were easier to see, the wind and snow not getting as much of a chance to erode them. They seemed small and insignificant amid the giant trunks of ash and pine. My breath was coming short, and Maggie was exhaling in great bursts of fog, but neither of us stopped for a moment. Despite the long time that had elapsed since first the idea of this villain was discussed, this night the urgency was palpable. It seemed like Meg’s life was clinging by moments now, don’t ask me how we knew that, or where the idea came from, but it seemed we both agreed. And Mags had kept one hand in her coat pocket all along that chase. At the time I thought she was holding the gun, reassuring herself that it was still in place. Later she admitted that wasn’t the case. She was clutching the little leather bag, the charm from Vera Carrone.
We entered the next field, and I realized it was the field where we had gone that night, the field where we had seen Meg’s bogeyman. I wondered if a bogeyman was what we were now chasing. If Maggie recognized the location, she said nothing. We hurried across the snow now, back out in the shear of the wind, huddled and hunched to keep our faces from freezing. My eyes mostly stayed focused on the spot of ground in front of my feet, and on the nearly filled in tracks we followed.
We had completely crossed the field, and were to the next stand of trees, when we realized we had lost the tracks. Somehow they had simply vanished, and we had gone past the point where they ended without seeing it. “I can’t see them” Mags shouted, and though she was screaming I could barely hear her.
“Me either.” I yelled back, and we turned and began searching the ground behind us, trying to find the tracks amid our own. Our flashlights wove to and fro, hardly able to penetrate more than a foot or two. We began to drift apart, I heading back along our path, Mags moving off to the west. I turned, and was no longer able see her. I heard a yelp, nearly lost in the scream of the wind, and then nothing. I took a step in the direction I thought the sound came from, there was a sharp crack, and then the world vanished from beneath my feet.
My back banged repeatedly against something as I fell. If I had not had a heavy parka on I would have been badly hurt. My butt made sharp contact with the ground and I bit my tongue as my descent stopped, but the pain did little to clear my head. The flashlight bounced out of my hands and pointed back at me, blinding me. I was in a dark hole, sitting on a dirt floor amidst a shower of snow I had brought down with me.
I turned my head and saw a broken and twisted wooden ladder along a stone wall behind me. That was what I had been hitting on the way down. I groped for the flashlight and managed to get my hands on it. My tongue was bleeding, leaving a slick and coppery taste in my mouth. My butt hurt, though I could still move everything so I didn’t think I had broken my back. I aimed the flashlight upward, and saw the broken remains of a sodden and rotted hatchway, set in the ceiling of this underground room. I was in a basement, one of the old farm basements. Of all the damned luck. I prayed I would be able to get back out and find my way to Mags. We were trying to help Meg, but the way the storm was getting we would be lucky not to be in danger ourselves.
I turned the flashlight on the rest of the room. There, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, was Meg. Her legs were bound with silver gray duct tape. Her hands were behind her back, and her mouth was taped over. Her eyes were wild, and she struggled against the bonds. I could hear her screaming behind the tape. As I fought my way to my feet the light wobbled around her, and I saw there was a doorway, and another room to this basement. There might be a way out through there. Hell, there had to be, the bastard had to get her down here somehow.
As I took a step towards Meg I said “Don’t worry, Meg, we are going to get you out of this.” The words caught in my throat as a glow emerged from the other room, and a figure came through the doorway. Furry, hulking, and carrying an automatic in its very human gloved hand. I shined the flashlight at it, and realized it was just a fur coat, once no doubt expensive, now ragged and filthy. The face was buried in the darkness of the hood. But the gun was clear as a bell. And as the figure came up alongside Meg it pressed the gun to her temple. The meaning was clear.
“Please,” I said, “Please. We can work this out. Just don’t hurt the girl. Don’t hurt any more people.”
“Why?” the figure asked, “how many lethal injections can they give me?” The voice was not what I expected, and was vaguely familiar. “Besides, there is nothing to work out. I just need to tie up a few loose ends and I am going to go. This town is done. All the little sluts are taken care of. Except this one,“ she said, jabbing the gun into Meg, “Too bad your little friend isn’t still around. It would have been fun to play with her, too. But I guess I took care of that.” I realized she meant Maggie.
The arm not holding the gun reached up and pulled down the hood. I was face to face with Barbara Barker.
“Surprise!” she cried out, and laughed, the gun wavering from side to side. If I was a character in a movie I would have leapt at her, timing my move so the gun would fire harmlessly into the wall. It was not a movie, though; I was six feet away, cold, scared, and worried to tears that I was going to watch Meg die. Meg seemed to be in a severe state of terror, but was still struggling mightily. And there were no tears on her face. “I always wanted to do that. Let someone in on my little crusade. I wanted to let that moron Bert in, even told him about it, but he didn’t take to the idea at all. I finally had to shut him up.” She whirled on Meg. “Like I have to shut you up!” I thought that was the end, that she was just going to kill Meg, right there in front of me. Instead she brought the butt of the gun down sharply on Meg's face, dead on the nose. Meg yelped, and a spray of blood gushed out and ran down her chin and onto her jacket. And then the most chilling, horrifying thing I had ever seen happened. A shudder ran through Barbara, for a moment her eyes fluttered, and again I toyed with the idea of jumping her. The she leaned dow
n to Meg, her face right against Megs, and licked blood from her. Again the shudder, and I realized she was enjoying hurting Meg, maybe even coming with the pleasure of it. She might say she had been on a crusade, ridding the world of sluts, but she was just satisfying her own bizarre needs. An image of Bert in that green jacket at Dewey's ran through my mind. I felt sympathy for him. Small wonder he had to look elsewhere.
Barbara recovered quickly, and any chance I might have had was gone. Given her speed and alertness it is best I didn’t try to become a hero, a dead hero. Meg had gone silent, realizing that she was not helping herself. A bright, mature kid. Even if she got out of this, how badly would this scar her? Had she really wanted to meet her bogeyman?
“What’s the matter, THOMAS,” she said, dragging out my name, “Cat got your tongue?”
My mouth began to work all on its own. “You sick, twisted fuck.” I said, and Meg’s eyes grew wide. Mine probably did too; I was as surprised as anyone there by my words.
Barbara’s mouth dropped open, the bloodstains on her lips a ghoulish parody of lipstick. “You shut up. You just shut up.” She pointed the gun at me, momentarily forgetting Meg.
Great, I thought, now instead of me having to watch her kill Meg, Meg is going to watch her kill me. I looked at the wild, insane, and now decidedly angry eyes on Barbara and realized I had no chance of getting us out of this. My shoulders sagged, and I felt the blackness starting to engulf my vision again, when something caught my eye. It was just a flicker, a flicker of whiter light in the doorway behind Barbara. Maggie! It had to be Maggie. She had found a way in. And Barbara didn’t know she was here. It was our ace in the hole. I straightened up and began to speak again, loudly.