“So you say you’ve seen him with your own eyes,” the man said, smiling, his deep, guttural voice filling the room.
“Let’s start from the beginning, Mr. Trottier,” Harry said, the old recording stealing years from his voice. “First off, can you please state your name for the camera.”
He grinned, removing his hands from the table and leaning back in the chair, relacing his fingers behind his head.
“Leroy Francis Trottier,” he said, cocking his head. “Welcome to the Canyon City Correctional Facility, where friends and good times come together every single day behind bars.”
He laughed.
“It’s important that you take this seriously, Mr. Trottier—”
“Call me LeRoy.”
“I’d appreciate it if we could keep this interview formal.”
Smirking, he nodded, placing a hairy, bare foot on the table in front of him.
“Now Mr. Trottier,” Harry continued, “Would you please state for me why exactly you are in prison.”
“You already know.”
“Please, Mr. Trottier, I need you to be cooperative. I can always just use your file.”
“You need my words. You’ve already read my file. You’re looking for something that’s not in there.”
“Granted, but I’m also giving you the opportunity to tell things in your own words for posterity.”
His mouth slowly parted as he ran his tongue over his front teeth, staring down into his lap only momentarily before turning back into the camera and nodding.
“Okay,” he said, dryly. “Let’s start from the top. My name is LeRoy Francis Trottier and I am serving four consecutive life terms in the Canyon City Correctional Facility for murder. I was convicted in front of a jury of your peers, on four counts of first degree murder for the slayings of my wives and a police officer.”
“Your wives?”
He smiled.
“I initially had four of them, but one ran off during the night, taking my children with her. The other three pretended that they had no knowledge of what happened to the children, but I knew better. They were all in on it. They lied right to my face, so I was forced to try to get the information out of them using what I call ‘special tactics.’”
“Special tactics?”
“Yes,” he said, dropping his foot back to the floor and leaning all the way forward, the shackles on his wrists glimmering from the light of the camera. “I took a knife, a long, hand crafted blade with a jagged, serrated edge, and forced it into their lower stomachs, just to the inside of the hip bone. Slowly, I dragged it inward and downward, careful not to nick the intestines. You should have seen the way the blood spilled out from down there, covering their legs and staining the hairs of their privates. I gave them every opportunity to talk, to tell me themselves what they had done with the kids, but damned if the first one didn’t lie to me right from the start, telling me they’d taken them to live with her sister in Montana.”
“But they didn’t?”
“She didn’t even have a sister. Can you believe that? I’d have almost believed her if she’d told me they crawled away themselves to join the circus. But no, she had to lie straight to my face. So, I had no choice but to finish the incision and drag her intestines out around the room, draping them over the furniture and around the table. She got to watch for a while, well, until finally she coughed up what looked like a gallon of blood. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she was gone.”
“So you moved on to the other two?”
“Hell, they’d been in the room watching me with the first one. They told me right away what happened to them, squealing like little pigs. They cried and cried and told me how sorry they were that they had conspired against me, told me they’d make it up to me any way that I wanted.”
“But you killed them, too.”
“Of course. They took my children from me. So I gutted them just for fun.”
“Jesus…”
“Listen to me, college boy. My daddy used to say if you’ve got a cow that don’t give milk, it’s called a steak. Same thing applies here. I’ve got three wives who give away my children, knowing that was the only reason that they were brought there in the first place. That means that they’d outlived their usefulness.”
“I don’t understand why the other two just sat there watching as you tortured the first.”
“They were shackled to the wall.”
“Oh.”
“Look, it’s not like I dated these women for years, taking them to the opera and shit like that. I met these chicks on the streets, junkies, whores, what not. They were more than happy to come back to my place. I took care of them. I made sure they had whatever they needed. They just had to do the one little thing for me in the process, and they could live out their lives like they wanted to.”
“And that one little thing was to bear your children.”
He smiled and settled back in the chair, scratching his neck. He stared through the lens.
“You’ve asked enough questions for now,” LeRoy said. “Now, it’s my turn to ask a few.”
“If you will please, Mr. Trottier—”
“If you want me to answer the questions that you’re really looking for the answers to, then you’re going to have to answer mine, or this interview is over. You and I both know that you have no business here. I’ve already been tried and convicted, and since I killed a cop, it’s only a matter of time before I get myself killed in here as well. So if it’s answers that you want, then you just shut your damn mouth and listen!”
His eyes blazed in their darkened sockets. He leapt to his feet and pointed with both fingers directly into the camera. There was a moment of silence as the camera shook. Slowly, LeRoy collected himself and slunk into his seat, staring off to the left before returning his stare to the screen.
“I have two simple questions. You answer them both honestly, and I’ll tell you what you came here to find out.”
He pulled a cigarette from the breast pocket of his orange jumper suit. Forcing the pack back into the pocket, he produced a pack of matches and lit it, tossing the empty book onto the floor. Dragging deeply, he exhaled a large plume of gray smoke and then rubbed his eyes. He began speaking, his voice low and cracking.
“I know you’re not a lawyer or a filmmaker. I can see in your eyes that you know a whole lot more than you’re letting on. Judging from your pretty little hands, I would guess that you’ve never had to work an honest day in your life, but you have soft eyes, which means you were never meant to. My money says that you’re here because you’ve seen the children, helped them in some way, but you saw something that isn’t quite sitting right with you. And from the look in your eyes, I can tell… you saw him.”
Harry sighed from behind the camera.
“Mr. Trottier,” he said slowly. “Who—”
“My questions first!” he shouted, leaping to his feet.
A guard walked in from the left side of the camera, gripped LeRoy tightly by the shoulders and forced him back down into his chair. Seizing him tightly by the neck, he squeezed, the tendons popping out in his arms as he leaned down and whispered something into LeRoy’s ear.
LeRoy looked into the camera, and nodded, the guard slinking back into the corner of the room out of view of the camera.
“As I was saying,” LeRoy said calmly, glancing back into the corner of the room where the guard leaned against the door, holding his baton across his folded arms. “Tell me, where are the children?”
“I don’t know.”
LeRoy looked him up and down, his bottom lip protruding as his dark eyes narrowed.
“You’re lying to me,” he whispered, leaning forward. “Thing is, I already know what happened to those kids, but for some reason, it’s important that I hear it from your lips. I need you to tell me your part in all of this.”
“I found three of them dead,” Harry said, his voice trembling. “I ran off with the fourth and turned it in to the county. For
close to a week, they were unable to track down the original parents of the child, but by the time they did, well, you obviously know the rest from that end.”
“So where is my son now?”
“He was placed with an adoptive family.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“That’s how it needs to be done.”
“What do you mean?”
“My second question. What did he look like?”
“Who?”
“You know… him.”
“I guess I’m not sure who—”
“Listen,” LeRoy said, focused intently on the camera. “I’ve felt his presence. I’ve tasted his breath in the darkness. I’ve heard him in my house in the middle of the night. I’ve fallen asleep to the screams of my wives as he raped them. But I’ve never seen him. Do you know how I know that you have?”
“How?”
“It’s in your eyes. The same emptiness that I recognized in those of my wives after they first saw him. It’s unmistakable. Almost like the light in your eyes burns out.”
“Those were his children?”
“My question first.”
“Are you saying that those children are the spawn of—”
“My question first!” LeRoy shouted, leaping from the table and slamming both fists down.
Immediately he looked to the corner to the guard, raising both palms in front of him as he slowly eased back into the chair. His hands shook as he coaxed the guard into remaining in the corner with a look. Turning back to Harry, he lowered his head, looking straight up from beneath his brow.
“Please?”
“All right,” Harry started, resetting the camera on his shoulder. “It was very dark and I was about fifty yards away. I saw him first, kneeling beside the house, barely more than a dark shape against the moonlit snow. Then he rose to his feet. He was tall, very tall. He stood straight, you know, his posture. He wore a long cloak or something along those lines, frayed at the end, the tattered edges flowing in the wind. He walked up the front stairs of the house, onto the porch, where he stopped and looked over at me. His face was dark, but I could feel his eyes on me. I could feel him smiling at me even though I couldn’t see a damned thing other than his shape. He turned and walked into the house, and that was when I ran off.”
LeRoy sat there with his eyes closed, soaking every detail into his mind like a sponge. His lips curled at the corners with a grin and he looked peaceful, if only for the moment.
“Thank you,” he whispered, inhaling deeply. Rubbing his thumbs together, he slowly opened his lids and stared right into the camera. “Now, I’d answer your question, but I believe you already know the answer.”
Silence filled the room.
“Know this,” LeRoy whispered, leaning in close. “That child, wherever he is, will be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. That is his sole purpose.”
“Time’s up,” the guard said from the corner of the room, once again appearing in the center of the frame. He raised LeRoy to his feet by the back of his shirt, turning him with a shove and leading him out of the room.
The camera ran on for a moment, filming the empty seat across the table before the screen finally went white.
“I don’t understand,” Scott said, turning to Harry, who was already rewinding the film through the camera.
“There’s something else I need to show you,” he said, stopping the film and flipping the switch so that it showed each frame one by one like a slide projector. “Every tenth frame, not so often that you can truly see it while it’s playing, but if you slow it down…”
Scott turned back to the screen and watched the image of LeRoy as he moved just the smallest fraction from one frame to the next. It was the portion of the interview where he leapt to his feet, his face slowly reddening from one frame to the next until…
“Holy shit,” Scott whispered.
This frame was different. It followed the others in their progression, but this one was dramatically different. The skin had disappeared from LeRoy’s face, leaving only the image of his skull; the eyes vanished into the hollow black holes.
The next frame was back to normal, as was the next series in the progression, until he finally sat back down in the chair and stared at the camera, the flesh falling from his face to reveal the skull once again. Harry left the projector on that one image.
“I need to go now,” Scott said, rising from the chair and opening the door, the image of the skeletal LeRoy projected on the back of his coat. He walked out into the hallway.
Passing through the kitchen and into the living room, he headed straight toward the front door, throwing it wide and stepping out into the blowing snow. He bounded down the steps and around the car, hopping into the driver’s side door and shoving the key into the ignition. Bringing the Jeep roaring to life, he glanced back at the house. Harry was standing in the doorway, just staring at him. He dropped the car into drive and headed down the gravel driveway.
VIII
Sunday. November 13th
10 p.m.
Scott stared up at the ceiling in the darkened bedroom, the ceiling fan casting long shadows like arms from the blades. In his mind, he recounted the day’s events starting with the hat he had found in the kitchen. It all seemed surreal, as though he had seen it in a movie. He was distanced from it, somehow. The entire morning was enveloped by some sort of fog, some element that made it all seem as though it had never happened, yet the memories were still there. And they were definitely real.
After he had left Harry’s little house, he had driven straight down through the hills, focused intently on the road ahead, not even glancing to either side of the road for fear of what he might see. Deciding to spend the rest of the day trying to deal with the everyday aspects of real life, the things that he could control, he had stopped by the model home at the front of the development.
There had been a handful of cars parked out front, and he had parked about a half block down the street. He had walked across the street, ascending the front steps of the house and walked right in. He recognized three real estate agents right away, each guiding a couple through the main level. The living room—which had been converted to a sales office, complete with a desk for the agents, and one for the mortgage broker who sat there filling out paperwork with a younger couple, in the center of the room—was nearly shoulder to shoulder with people.
Passing through, he stopped in the kitchen, peering down the stairs in hopes of finding the senior partner in the agency. But, of course, he wasn’t there, most likely vacationing somewhere in the Caribbean or something. His stress level rising through the roof, Scott had decided to try to sell some himself, following the groups around as they were led through the house, pointing out the small details that no one would ever have noticed.
It turns out they had already sold four that morning, so the magic number was down to two. Feeling the smallest bit of relief, he had headed home, settling into the couch to watch the Avalanche take on the Red Wings. The game had gone into double overtime before Yelle had clinched it with a beautiful backhand that slipped past Osgood, right through the Five Hole. It had been incredibly nice, to have lost himself in the game for more than four hours, forgetting, for the most part, about everything that had transpired during the day. But as soon as the goal had hit the net, it had all come flooding back to him, overwhelming him as he sat in the conspicuously silent and empty room.
He walked to the kitchen, pacing back and forth as he stared at the telephone on top of the counter. There was one way to determine for sure whether this whole episode was real, or if it was all just in his head. He had to call Tim Williams’s wife. Surely, if he were, indeed, dead, then they would at least be looking for him.
Everything had just seemed so insane. Was it even possible that he had seen what he thought he saw? He had barely slept a wink over the course of the last week, and he knew that it was all-too-possible that his mind was just playing tricks on him. The
old man he had run into out in the woods could just as easily have been some crazed, bordering on lunatic, psycho, but there was definitely a part of him that had been sucked in, mesmerized, by the old man’s story.
Grabbing the phone from the receiver, he stared at the number pad, waiting for the light green glowing numbers to form some sort of pattern in his brain. It had been close to five years since he had called Tim, and he hadn’t actually seen him since the wedding. He had always been far too busy to join the old crew for their Saturday morning golf games, and, truth be told, he wasn’t really a big fan of golf in the first place.
Opening the top drawer beneath the counter, he pulled out a phone book, dropping it onto the table with a loud thud that echoed through the kitchen. Thumbing through the pages, he stopped at the long line of Williams, his index finger tracing down the column of first names until he reached Timothy. There were two of them, but only one that actually lived in the city. Rehearsing the number in his head, he dialed, the phone ringing dully in his ear.
“Hello?” a female voice answered on the other line.
“Hi. This is Scott Ramsey, I was wondering if Tim was around?”
“No,” the voice said, an underriding level of hostility coming through loud and clear.
“Do you know when he might be back?”
“He’s not coming back.”
“Oh… um…”
“Coward just left. He went out for his morning jog, and just never came back. At first, I was really worried. I drove around the neighborhood looking for him, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. It wasn’t until after I called the police that I started looking around in the bedroom. Would you like me to tell you what I found?”
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