Stutter Creek

by Ann Swann

  If he hadn’t been so deep in thought, John might have noticed that the fireflies were still with him, and that they came in quite a variety of colors.

  All at once, something convinced John to change his course. The more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed for Turk to return to this cabin each night. The fact that he alerted at something just now was very odd, too.

  John had been doing his best not to see bad guys at every turn. But his military training was so well ingrained that he had convinced himself that he would have to start making a conscious effort to relax and not be on guard all the time.

  Nevertheless, Turk was acting too strange.

  And the fact that they were in the forest didn’t mean they were completely safe. No matter how much he’d thought that it would.

  He decided they should keep a watch at the cabin overnight, just in case. He wasn’t sure why, but he chalked it up to intuition. Big John was a firm believer in listening to that inner voice. Especially at night, in the middle of the woods.

  He swatted at the fireflies again, but he wasn’t really seeing them. Mostly, they were just a colorful nuisance.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “A flat?” Janie could not believe it. For a moment, she suspected Ray of concocting the story just to get her in trouble. He was always teasing her about being a “goody two shoes,” and then he would threaten to keep her out past her curfew just to see how much trouble she would really be in. Janie wondered if this was what her mom had meant about “resisting the lure of bad boys.” She just hoped he would get her home soon so she could tell him she never wanted to see him again. She was beginning to think this was the night he was going to make good on his silly teasing threats.

  When she heard him coming back, Janie glanced up, angry, disbelieving. Ray was such a throwback. He was almost ridiculously good looking, the quintessential tall dark and handsome player. When he popped open the door latch and plopped back down in the driver’s seat to light a cigarette, Janie wondered, not for the first time, why he was even with her. He was already out of school with a full time job in his uncle’s garage, and here she was, just a sophomore band geek. So far, he had treated her with grudging respect, but now . . . a flat tire on a deserted back road? Wasn’t that just a little bit too cliché?

  She watched as he inhaled and exhaled lazily. “Shouldn’t you be changing the tire?” she finally asked.

  Ray smiled and let the smoke curl out of his lips and upward into his nostrils before he spoke. “Spare’s flat, too.”

  Janie felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Without thinking, she opened the passenger door and stepped out into the night. They were on some rural road south of Pine River. She wasn’t really sure where they were. They had just gone for a drive, listening to music. Wasting gas, Ray called it, as in, “Hey Baby, wanna go waste some gasoline?” He’d said that to her the first time she met him at a party in Yellow Bend. She wasn’t supposed to be there, and he knew it. She had talked her older cousin into inviting her. Ray had taken her away before she’d finished her first beer.

  Surprisingly, he had been a perfect, albeit wiseass, gentleman. And she’d gotten home on time, and in one piece. But this was their third “date.” Perhaps he was tired of playing nice with Little Miss Goody-two-shoes.

  Janie stood beside the Mustang for a few seconds trying to decide what she should do. She needed a cell phone. Her parents wouldn’t let her have one because some kids at school had created a big stir when they were caught sexting. Besides, Ray was her first “real” boyfriend. All the others had been just friends, or group things. And someone in the group always had a phone. I’ll have one after this, she promised herself as she stomped around trying to decide what to do. One way or another!

  “Finally alone . . .” Ray said as he stepped out of the driver’s door and started around the front of the car. “Time to ravish the fair maiden!” He laughed evilly, like the bad guy in a cartoon. “Muahahaha!”

  Janie panicked. She had intended to simply start walking back toward town, but once her feet were in motion, they took over and she began to run. All at once, the road curved and she didn’t. As she stumbled down into the bar ditch, she glanced back. That’s when she noticed the red flashers on the Mustang. Would he have turned those on if he had planned something terrible? Was he really just teasing? Her inexperienced brain told her it was a distinct possibility, but by then, she was scrambling up the other side of the ditch, and she didn’t have the breath to ask.

  “Janie!” he called. “What the hell?” His boots clunked across the pavement and then thunked when they hit the hard packed earth of the shoulder.

  That sound meant he was coming for her. Janie began to run again. She couldn’t seem to help herself. Mesquite thorns grabbed at her jeans, and she prayed she wouldn’t fall into a clump of prickly pear. It grew so low to the ground it was almost impossible to see, even with the half-light of the moon. In the back of her mind, a thought was forming. Wasn’t it illegal to go off and leave a car with the engine running? Hadn’t she heard that somewhere? Or was it just another one of those fallacies like not driving barefoot or you could get arrested for prostitution. And what did it matter? Then it hit her—he had the flashers on so people could see them. If he was going to do anything bad he definitely wouldn’t have put on the flash—

  Janie’s thoughts were abruptly cut off as the earth dropped out from under her. “Ooofff,” she said as the breath whooshed out of her lungs without warning.

  Ray, a few steps behind her, immediately realized what had spooked her. He’d clowned around too many times about ravishing her and then sending her home to daddy. It was all a joke. He was only showing off, delighting in the way her eyes would get big and she would giggle girlishly. Sometimes he forgot what a kid she really was. He was just so damned infatuated with her.

  “Janie” His voice held an edge of panic. She had disappeared right under his nose. “Janie! Answer me dammit!”

  When the toe of his boot met thin air and he had to pinwheel his arms to keep from falling into the void, Ray knew what had happened. Even as his thoughts caught up with his feet, a blood freezing scream split the night wide open.

  Ray didn’t hesitate; his cowboy boots slipped and slid as his hands grabbed for something, anything, on the loose-rock slope of the arroyo. All the way down he was muttering, “I’m coming. Hold on, I’m coming.” Horrific images were rotating through his mind as he slid and tumbled to the bottom of the steep ravine: mountain lion, cactus, mountain lion, cactus, mountain lion, bear? Could a bear have gotten this far from the mountains? “Janie!” he bellowed again when his feet hit level ground. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” she whispered. “I’m over here, Ray.”

  That’s when he saw her.

  The other girl.

  She was at the bottom of the arroyo, her legs and arms all akimbo as if she had slid down the slope and come to rest with her neck bent at an angle that denied the possibility of life. Her clothes were also askew—blouse hiked up, pants all twisted. It was the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen. Even in the scant light of the moon, they could see the unnatural bloat and color of the young woman’s face.

  He looked at Janie. She was simply staring. Pointing and staring. Her beautiful auburn hair hung in messy strands about her face, her jeans were torn on both knees, and her hand was simply hanging there in space, pointing at the dead girl on the ground.

  Ray grabbed her and spun her around so she couldn’t look anymore. He pulled her to his side and started slowly back up the slope. He would have given anything if Janie hadn’t seen that. She was too young. Hell, he was too young; in fact, no one was old enough to see something like that. He wondered if the killer was still in the area. His macho side half-wished he was. Wouldn’t he like to have a go at the monster that did that? On the other hand, he would be lucky if he could get Janie back to the car before one of them started bawling, or worse yet, barfing.

  ***r />
  Kurt sat, shivering, in the mouth of the cave. His anger was a live thing pounding inside his skull, trying to hammer its way out. He was soaking wet, colder than ever, and his plan was getting all screwed up. Something had to give. For one brief second, he thought of abandoning the plan and pitching Danny into the dark abyss at the rear of the cave. He was pretty sure no one would ever find him; in fact, that abyss was where he intended to dispose of the old bitch down there in the cabin. It was pitch black and so deep it was practically bottomless.

  But if he gave up and abandoned the plan . . . what would he do? He had nothing else to do, no place to go. The plan was his life. He had to get back to it. His blonde girls were waiting. He put his hand inside his coat pocket and felt for the list of names. Just touching them made him feel better. Everything was not lost.

  “Tomorrow,” he muttered. I get her tomorrow or I get the hell out. The plan was all that he had been living for; but now, in this cold, wet cave, he was remembering how sweet that Mexican brown had looked going into Dave’s arm. And the expression on Dave’s face, well, it had been a long time since Kurt had felt that way—wasted and floating—and now he was beginning to remember. He was beginning to long for the blank feeling of euphoria.

  As he sat just inside the cave’s entrance, cursing his luck, Kurt recalled how a counselor in prison had said one of the main reasons heroin was so addictive was that no matter how much a person used, it was impossible to replicate that first time. He said junkies would keep trying for that feeling—using more and more and more—until the drug killed them. Or until someone locked them up and made them quit against their will, Kurt thought. Then it occurred to him that since it had been so long since he’d used, the next time he “imbibed” would be just like the first. Maybe even better.

  And in his wonderland of drug-dreams, he must have dozed, for the next thing he knew; he was gazing out at the light of day. He could hear Danny in the corner. His breathing was ragged and thick. It has to be today or tonight. He knew this would be the last job he did with his son. Kurt hoped the little brat could even hold on that long—he knew the woman wouldn’t turn down the kid again, especially when she saw how sick he was.

  He stood and stretched the kinks out of his joints. He needed dry clothes or he would soon be in the same shape Danny was in. There are lots of empty summer cabins around here, he thought. Just have to stay on this side of the mountain, near the road. That’s where most people settled. Very few wanted to really walk on the wild side; they just liked to pretend.

  Kurt left the cave and made his way down the mountain at a leisurely pace. He prided himself on his ability to move stealthily through the forest.

  Within minutes he was in sight of the road leading to the village of Stutter Creek. Of course he knew the name of the town; it was the place where his next victim lived. This one he had found on Facebook. She wasn’t really from Stutter Creek, but her update said she was going to be “spending the summer helping out at the Drugstore in Stutter Creek.”

  Bingo! He had accepted the “invitation” gladly. There was only one drugstore in Stutter Creek. And from the Google maps he had spent so much time studying, he figured there were bound to be some still-empty vacation houses there. Or there could be someone with laundry hanging on a clothesline; he’d seen more and more of that the closer he got to the woods and the lake. Kurt wasn’t picky. It didn’t have to fit like a glove; it just had to be dry.

  Nope, his plan wasn’t dead, it was just on hold. In fact, if Fate was still with him, he might be able to follow the plan and take care of the other, too. It would be click, click, click, like dominos falling one after the other. He didn’t care which came first, the old broad with the Camaro, or the pretty little blonde at the drugstore. Afterward, he’d dispose of Danny, too.

  It would all be solved tonight. He’d gotten bogged down when he’d varied from the plan the night he’d first watched the Camaro judder to a stop beside the highway. Never should have sent Danny over—got caught up in the possibility of an unscheduled high—but it didn’t matter now. Soon, all his problems would be solved, and he’d be back on track.

  He continued tramping along the road toward Stutter Creek, stepping behind a tree if he heard a car coming. Kurt had hidden Dave’s car in the forest, he was certain old Dave would be missing it by now. Best to leave it parked where it was. Sure couldn’t risk some countie-mountie seeing it if Dave had reported it stolen.

  As luck would have it, he stumbled upon a nice little cabin just on the outskirts of town. The cabin itself appeared to be protected by a Sentinel Security system, but the detached garage was not. There were no vehicles in the garage, not even the customary 4-wheel drive Mule or Gator that most summer people favored; but lo and behold, there were some clothes hanging on a hook just inside the unlocked door. Apparently someone had hung them there to dry and then forgot about them. Maybe they, too, had taken an unexpected dip in the creek.

  Judging by the Rolling Stones logo on the t-shirt, that someone was probably a teenager just about his size, or a middle-aged man who refused to grow up. Could even be a woman for all he knew. Men’s and women’s jeans and t-shirts were pretty much interchangeable, and Kurt wasn’t a large man.

  He stripped quickly and pulled on the dry clothing. The idea that it could belong to a woman, or girl, excited him. The clothes were a perfect fit. The word Fate flashed through his mind, but he didn’t say it out loud for fear of jinxing the whole thing. He zipped his jacket up to cover the big red mouth and tongue logo on the t-shirt, and then he hung his own wet pants and shirt on the hook. He was glad his jacket was waterproof. For a moment he wished he could be a fly on the wall when the previous owner of the Stones tee went back to retrieve it and found Kurt’s old thrift store shirt in its place.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Allie flipped the radio to the local top-forty station and turned it up. Kings of Leon, her favorite band. She loved their energy, and the way they could make the strangest words sound so . . . melodic. Her Uncle Joe said she was going to ruin her hearing if she wasn’t careful. But like most teens, Allie thought he worried just a little too much. Reaching over to crank it up another notch, she flew around the hairpin turns with ease. She’d been driving these roads every summer since the day she got her license.

  When she reached the drugstore, she noticed a slender man lounging near the light pole at the corner of the building. He was leaned forward a bit at the waist, and he seemed to be studying the Missing Girl poster on the front door of the Drugstore. His face was in shadow, his eyes nothing more than dark wells in a slightly lighter plane of flesh. He stood with one leg cocked so that the foot on that side rested flat against the wall behind him. Apparently, he didn’t have a care in the world, just reading the poster as a way to pass the time.

  Allie watched him for a second before turning off the street and into the parking area behind the drugstore. Just reading the poster. Probably a tourist waiting for someone. That wouldn’t be unusual; lots of folks used the Drugstore as a meeting place. It was only one of two businesses open this early in the morning. The other being The Corner Store. And since Martha put up the poster, lots of folks had stopped for a second and sometimes a third look before going on about their business.

  She parked her uncle’s faded blue Chevy Lumina in the alley space behind the store and got out to unlock the drugstore’s rear entrance. The silence after the loud music was deafening. Allie smiled, glad that her Aunt had trusted her enough to get things ready to open for the day. Her Uncle Joe’s emphysema had seemed worse this morning, and she was glad she could be there to help.

  At noon, Martha drove up to the drugstore in her little Toyota Celica. She was so thankful that Allie was staying with them to help out. Martha had no idea what she would do when the girl decided she’d had enough of small town life and was ready to tackle college. Best not to think of that now. One day at a time, that’s what she would concentrate on. One day at a time.

  After
the lunch run, Martha helped Allie clean up. Then she told the girl to take the rest of the day off. “You’ve been here since seven a.m.,” she said. “It’s time you go out and have some fun. You’re only supposed to be part time anyhow.” She clucked her tongue. “Go on, now. Skedaddle!” The older woman slapped a rolled up cup towel at her behind jokingly.

  Allie smiled. She knew her Aunt was serious, as if she could just run out and start having fun because her aunt told her to. In Stutter Creek, there wasn’t much to do between the seasons. It wasn’t like in a city where one could visit a mall or take in an afternoon matinee. Nope, ski season was over, and it would be a few more weeks before families would start arriving in droves with their shiny new tents and canoes strapped to the tops of their SUVs.

  However, there were a couple things she’d not had time for lately. One was trying on new clothes. Summer was just around the corner and all her shorts were raggedy, skin tight, or just downright ugly. She also wanted a new bathing suit. It seemed premature to be thinking of a swimsuit with patches of snow still on the ground, but she’d visited Stutter Creek every summer since she could remember. She knew what spring was like in the mountains; freezing cold one day with snow spitting angrily at the greenery brave enough to show its new colors, then the next day might climb to 75 or 80 degrees before noon. After that, swimming weather would be upon them without warning. Besides, roasting marshmallows over a campfire didn’t always entail actually getting in the water.

  In the summer she practically lived at the lake, and last year’s suit was so . . . childish. This year, she felt brave enough for a bikini, or at least one of those tankini things. She could even see herself toasting marshmallows at the lake in a new suit with one of those colorful sarongs to wrap up in when she felt too self-conscious.