Behind him, Ben Rein kept the pistol pressed firm and tight to the police chief’s neck while he reached around, unsnapped Walt’s revolver from its holster, and pulled it free. He stepped to the side, coming between them both, aiming the police revolver at Wombat, and the biker’s gun at Walt. Walt let out a muted cry in his throat, like a man choking at the dinner table.
Wombat was too far gone to notice. He was white as a sheet. Blood was seeping through the wound now.
“I caught the men who killed my brother, Chief,” Ben said. He fired a shot through the side of Wombat’s head with Auburn’s gun, knocking the man’s brains out and splattering them across the wall.
He turned with the gun, firing into the dead bodies of the other bikers, one bullet each, making their bodies smoke, filling the cabin with such deafening noise and light that Auburn squirmed, looking away and trying to tuck his head down into his shoulders like a turtle.
The bodies flopped over on top of one another, their arms and legs akimbo, leaking whatever fluids remained inside them onto the floor.
Ben turned to face Walt, aiming the biker’s gun at the center of Walt’s forehead. “Now listen,” Walt said, raising his hands. “I don’t know what that piece of shit told you, but I didn’t have anything to do with your brother’s murder.”
“Is that right?”
“You’re goddamn right, that’s right! They told me they found him out in the woods, and when I got there, it looked like exactly what they said. I guess those bastards staged it to look like a suicide. Now, maybe,” Walt said, getting himself worked up, really pouring it on thick, “maybe I should have paid a little more attention. Maybe I was too overcome with emotions looking at your brother. He and I were friends, Ben! We knew each other for years. When he was laying there dead, I guess I just bought whatever they were selling.” Walt even managed to work up some tears, letting them dribble down his face. “I swear on my little boy, I would never, ever, do anything to hurt you or your family. Now listen, here’s what I’m willing to do to make up for it. I have a lot of power around here. More than you know. I can make things happen for you, Ben. First thing I’m gonna do is make all this go away. That’s right. Neither one of us were ever here. Nobody is going to ever ask any questions! By the time someone realizes they’re dead, I’ll make sure it’s all chalked up to some quarrel over drugs. Then, I’m going to get you a job with the borough. A good job, Ben. Something easy with good pay. I owe you that much. You and Ollie. What do you say?” Walt said. He took a chance and extended his right hand toward Ben, hoping he’d take it. “I can be a better friend to you than you can imagine.”
Ben raised the biker’s pistol and leveled it at the gold star on his hat, which said Chief.
“Now listen to me a goddamn fucking minute!” Walt said. “I am the chief of police! You can’t point a gun at me like that! Put that weapon down right now, do you understand me, you drunk? You schizoid. You goddamn loser, you think you can just stand there pointing a gun at me? Put it down! I am the chief of police!”
“And here, I thought you said we were going to be friends,” Ben said, and pulled the trigger.
The shot doubled Walt Auburn over backward like a gymnast trying to do a back handspring, except he fell straight and hard on the floor. His legs and arms shot out and retracted, scraping the wood. His mouth gaped wide, while blood filled the inside of his hat like a boat taking water.
Ben walked into the rear bedroom for the rest of the guns, collected them, and carried them into the main room. Walt Auburn was taking his time in dying. He’d managed to flop over on one side, slithering in his own filth like a worm. Ben cradled the guns in his left arm, several pistols and a shotgun. After selecting one of the pistols near the top of the pile, he fired it at Walt’s back.
Walt cried out, jerking back and forth. Ben tossed the pistol into the lap of one of the burnt-up biker corpses. He grabbed the next one, shot Walt in the leg, and tossed it near the next biker. He took the next pistol and fired it at the wall and door where Walt had been standing, blowing holes through its surface. The pistol went empty and he tossed that one onto the pile of bodies as well. Walt was still moving, but not much. He’d flipped over on his back, moaning for Ben to stop.
Ben racked the shotgun slide, aimed the gun at the place on Walt’s chest where his chief’s badge was pinned, and fired. Walt’s chest exploded in a volcanic eruption of red pulp, bringing a halt to the man’s pleas.
Ben tossed the shotgun and positioned Walt’s revolver so it was lying near him, then went outside to grab the bucket from around the corner. A few good scoops of napalm jelly remained at the bottom, along with the saturated gloves. He went back inside the cabin, stepped over Walt’s ruined corpse, and used the gloves to smear the rest of the jelly on the walls and floor. Whatever towels remained on the windows, he made sure to get some on them too. Once the bucket was empty, Ben tossed it into the kitchen, threw one glove in there, and the other into the back bedroom. He stood at the doorway, looking at his handiwork.
Six human beings, who’d been alive and breathing just a short time ago, were now nothing more than clumps of waste. Ben struck a match and tossed it on the floor, where it set the smear of jelly alight. He threw the box of matches in after it and stepped back, watching the walls ignite. He watched until the glass windows shattered, the roof caught flame, and black smoke grew too thick to see through.
The cabin was cheaply made. It wasn’t long before the walls buckled and the roof collapsed on one side. Soon, the bodies would be burned and buried beneath it, leaving nothing more than a smoldering pile of ash.
* * *
It was after midnight before J.D. saw the headlights of his uncle’s truck coming up the street. He leapt to the door, threw it open, and waited. The truck swerved as Ben steered it toward the driveway, leaving it several feet from the curb. He stumbled out, clutching the half-empty whisky bottle he’d hidden under the front seat and started drinking along the way. He stood in the road, chugging, and J.D. realized he was covered in blood. It was smeared across his pants and shirt, even on his neck and face and in his hair.
Ben came up the stairs, barreled past his son through the door, and collapsed on the couch. He raised the bottle to his lips and drank again, not bothering to wipe away whatever dribbled down his face.
“What happened?” J.D. asked.
Ben laughed and took another drink.
“Dad? Are they all dead?”
Ben looked at him, eyes bleary, like he was trying to focus. A car turned down the street, coming toward them. Ben watched it, staring through his front window. It would be a police car, or a series of police cars, coming to kill him for what he’d done. Or maybe it would be other bikers. It could be anyone, really, and when they came, he would let them come.
The car turned into the driveway of one of the nearby houses instead, and the driver got out. One of the neighbors, back home late from work. It didn’t matter. If not this time, the next, or the next after that. Ben took another swig. He waved his hand for the boy to sit down on the low table in front of him. J.D. did as he was told.
Ben could smell the blood on his clothes and skin, like rusted iron. It was sticky and dry, matted in the hair running along his arms. “Listen to me, J.D.,” Ben said, and the boy leaned forward.
“You don’t mean shit to me,” Ben continued. “I don’t want you. I never did. I kept you around because the government sends me extra money to take care of you, and because your uncle agreed to take you as much as he could, so I didn’t cut your throat in the middle of the night. Do you understand?”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears, but he didn’t speak.
“Ollie truly cared about you, and maybe you should have been his son instead of mine, but too bad. Ollie is dead, and that’s that. You’re nothing to me, and I’m tired of looking at you. I don’t want you anymore. Do you hear what I’m telling you? I don’t want you. I’m throwing you away. You need to go, while you still can. I don’
t love you. Never have. Never will.”
Ben took another drink, nearly emptying the bottle. When he finished, the boy was still sitting there, staring at him, eyes and face wet, lower lip quivering. Ben kicked the table under him, screaming, “Get out! Get out and don’t ever come back!”
The boy jumped out of the way and ran up the stairs. Ben could hear him rummaging through his belongings. The bottle was empty with one last drink. Ben threw it across the room, smashing it to pieces. “You have thirty seconds!” Ben shouted.
J.D. came racing back down the stairs with his schoolbag slung over his shoulder. It was stuffed with clothes now. He grabbed his coat from his chair, looking back at his father one last time. It was all a bad dream. J.D. was about to plead with him to change his mind. Ben leapt up from the couch and lunged at the boy, who threw the front door open and ran down the steps, sneakers slapping the concrete as he fled.
Ben watched him go, then sat down in the doorway, looking past Ollie’s truck, at the empty road. He rocked back and forth, saying, “Okay, you motherfuckers. Now come and get me. Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
The lights on the bus were turned down low so the passengers in the back could sleep, but one of the few sitting near the front had his overhead light on, using it to read. The driver looked at him through the wide rearview mirror over his head and said, “Must be a good book if you’d rather read it than go to sleep.”
J.D. closed the book and covered the title with his arm, not wanting the driver to see the words The Criminal Mind printed on the cover. “It’s okay,” he said. He pulled a half-eaten candy bar out of his sweatshirt pocket, unwrapped it the rest of the way, and took a bite.
“You traveling alone?” the driver asked.
“Yes, sir,” J.D. said.
“Shoot, when I was your age, my folks would never have let me go anywhere alone. They knew I’d get in a world of trouble.”
“Mine don’t mind,” J.D. said. He slid the book back inside one of his three bags, on top of the other books he’d taken from Ollie’s house. Buried under them, carefully hidden, were all of the thick bundles of cash that he didn’t have stuffed in his pockets or hidden in his socks.
“It’s a long way to where we’re going,” the driver said. When the boy didn’t answer, he added, “Go a lot faster if we talked. You got a name?”
“My name?” The boy watched the driver through the mirror. The bus rocked as they drove. The highway was empty, with nothing but the lights of oncoming cars and the reflectors of mile markers set in the distance. He turned and looked back, seeing that all the rest of the passengers were asleep, and too far away to be disturbed by them talking.
Who was this man, and why was he so interested? Maybe he was on the lookout for runaways. Maybe the police posted bulletins of missing children like they did for wanted criminals. Or maybe there was another reason. Maybe this man was looking for children traveling by themselves for something else.
The driver’s eyes flicked back and forth from the road to the mirror, both his hands wrapped firm around the bus’s wide steering wheel. The boy knew he should be afraid, but he wasn’t. He should blurt out that he’d left everything and everyone he knew behind and was vulnerable to the world and men like the bus driver, but he didn’t. Something had changed. Down deep inside of him. Something that had peered through the crack in his childhood and seen into the shadows, and it wasn’t afraid. It was angry. And it was hungry.
The driver had spoken true. Whatever was coming, and where they were going, was a long way away. There were ways to tell what was in a man’s mind, even if he did not want you to know, and there was plenty of time to observe and find the right questions that would reveal it. The world, the boy now knew, was filled with real monsters. Not the imaginary kind he’d fantasized about all those times. Real monsters, who preyed on the innocent, and were disguised as ordinary people. He would find a way to uncover them.
And then, they would know how it felt to be hunted.
“My name is Jacob,” he said.
V
SENECA FALLS
CHAPTER 26
A police car was parked in the chief’s spot. Carrie parked in front of it, blocking it in. The station’s cruddy yellow windows were even uglier in the morning light. Carrie juggled a box of donuts, a tray of coffees, and the Hope Pugh case file in one hand as she pulled the station door open with the other, not bothering to knock.
“Hi, Lou!” she called out, walking past the filing room.
“Who’s that?” the clerk shouted from within. He poked his head out, magnified eyes squinting at her from behind his glasses.
Carrie passed him a coffee and flipped the donut box’s lid open. “Is the chief in?”
Lou glanced at the office behind her, looking past the framed portrait of Walt Auburn. “I don’t think so,” Lou said, projecting his voice. He plucked a cream donut from inside the box and pointed toward the office, adding, “I haven’t seen him around.”
Carrie spun and headed for the office, using her shoulder to stop the door just as it was about to close. “Hey, Steve. Nice to see you.”
Steve Auburn groaned and sat back down in the chair behind his desk. “What are you doing here?”
“I brought coffee and donuts. The universal peace offering among all law enforcement.” She flipped the lid open, holding it out in front of him. “The ones on the left have jelly.”
Auburn picked up one of the sugar-crusted jelly ones and said, “Great. Now you’re not only ruining my day, you’re wrecking my diet.”
Carrie laid the case file open on the desk in front of him. “All I’m asking is you hear me out,” she said. “If you listen to what I have to say, and you still don’t want to pursue this, I’ll leave and never bother you again.”
Auburn swiped a smear of jelly from the corner of his mouth with his thumb and stuck it between his lips. “You’ll leave?”
“That’s right.”
Auburn sat back in his chair, taking a sip from his coffee. “You’ve got yourself a deal. Lay it on me.”
She held up the black-and-white photograph she’d found of the crime scene in one hand, and a report from the Pennsylvania State Police serology lab in the other. “This is a photograph taken by Chief Oliver Rein behind the Pughs’ house. He believed this was the site Hope was abducted from on the night she went missing.” Carrie showed him the blanket and sock in the photograph. “These items were inside that lockbox we found. I was able to get them tested.”
Auburn took the State Police lab report from her as she passed it across the desk. He looked down at it, read it, and said, “Semen?”
“That’s right,” Carrie said.
“Did it match anyone in the system?”
“No,” Carrie said. “But they have enough to do a match if we can find a suspect.”
Auburn laid the report down. “How can we even prove it has anything to do with the Pugh girl?”
“This sock,” Carrie said, tapping the picture once more. “It matches the one found on the remains in the woods.”
Auburn half smiled as he opened the drawer next to his desk and pulled out a large case file, filled with 8 × 10 photographs. They were color images of Hope’s skeleton. Auburn thumbed through them, finding the ones of her feet, and said, “Sorry to tell you this, but there was no sock. Thanks for the coffee. Have a safe trip home.”
Carrie pulled another photograph out of her case file and laid it down on the desk. It was the one she’d taken with her phone, at the scene. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Chief, but there was. I removed it from her foot to have it analyzed.”
Auburn’s face flushed, and simmered with anger. “Lady, you got some balls waltzing in here telling me you tampered with one of my crime scenes. I should lock your ass up right now.”
“First off, it was my crime scene too,” Carrie said. “And not to pull rank on you, but I’m here as the representative of the district attorney, the highest-ranking law
enforcement entity in this region. At that moment, you were in danger of wrecking the investigation because of a prematurely formed opinion that she went missing. I was protecting the integrity of the case.” Carrie tapped the lab report. “As it turns out, I was right.”
Auburn ran his hand over the top of his head, then folded his hands in front of his face, collecting himself.
“Steve, listen,” Carrie said. “I don’t want to fight. Let’s work this together. Somebody did something bad to a little girl in this town and they got away with it. As a matter of fact,” she said, “this would have been your father’s last big case, right? When Ollie Rein died, your dad took over as chief, and that makes the Hope Pugh investigation his final responsibility. And we’ve let it sit all these years. What do you say we go close it for him?”
Auburn picked up the lab report again, biting his lower lip. “Semen. Son of a bitch. And we had that in the basement all this time. My God.” He looked up at Carrie. “What do you propose we do?”
“We need to interview anyone who might have seen her on that last day. Any of her friends who might still live around here.”
“I didn’t know her,” Auburn said. “We went to school together, but she was a couple years ahead of me. I have no idea who she hung out with.”
“Did you know Jacob Rein? He was friends with her. Anyone he might have hung out with?”
“No, thank God. Him and his whole family have been nothing but a disgrace to this town. I wouldn’t piss on him if his guts were on fire.” Auburn snapped his fingers and said, “We used to keep a collection of yearbooks, just in case we had to identify someone, before anyone had computers.” Auburn held his hand to the side of his mouth and called, “Hey, Lou. We still have those copies of the yearbooks from back in the day?”
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