October's Children: A Marlowe Gentry Thriller

by Dallas Mullican

  When the phone rang, Amanda ignored it, her gaze fixed on the altar and the myriad faces staring back at her. She did not notice the answering machine click on. Not until a frantic voice emanated from the device did her head rotate toward the sound.

  “He’s going to kill me. Please, Amanda. He’s going to kill me…” April screamed, panicked.

  “You calling the cops on me, bitch? Gimme the fucking phone.” A male voice, harsh and unforgiving.

  “Please, help me, Amanda.” A thud, glass breaking, and the line went dead.

  Though she claimed otherwise, Amanda kept tabs on April, and usually knew where she was staying. For the past few months, April and her latest delinquent boyfriend had shacked up in a cheap motel on the south side of Tuscaloosa—a good half-hour away. Taking nothing with her, she raced through the night oblivious to speed limits or road conditions.

  When she left the rural interstate and entered the city proper, a gateway into a dissolute past opened. Dilapidated buildings and houses barely erect lined the road. Only the homeless, prostitutes, and the ever-present criminal element prowled the streets this time of night. A pervasive stench hung over the area, pungent odors typical of refuse, both the inorganic and human varieties. Those who preferred to remain ignorant and blessed with the illusion of safety would skirt this section, keeping their eyes shut to its influence and incursion toward more affluent neighborhoods.

  Emotions eddied as the miles ticked by, images unbidden came to accost and torment. First one scene, then another, flew past her mind’s eye, flashes of days gone by…

  “Hold out your arms.” Her father eased the newborn onto her lap. “Don’t worry, you won’t break her. Unless you drop her.” He smiled and winked.

  While her mother slept, after seven hours in labor, Amanda and her father visited with the newest member of the Woods’ family. Six pounds and fifteen ounces, the chubby little bundle looked like a pink cherub. April yawned, her hands making tiny fists. The gesture made Amanda giggle.

  “Hey, this is serious business.” Ken Woods tried to maintain his stern expression, but failed, and ended up laughing along with Amanda. “Really though, you’re a big sister now. That’s a huge responsibility.” He sat down beside her and snugged the wrap around April’s body. “You have to watch out for her. She’s going to try everything you do and want to be just like you. Sometimes she’ll fall, and you’ll need to pick her up. You’ll need to be patient with her, okay?”

  “I will.” Amanda twirled her index finger over her sister’s head and made cooing sounds.

  “And you won’t always do the right thing. Sometimes you’ll fall, too, and need to be just as patient with yourself.”

  She glanced up at her father, confused, but he did not elaborate. Instead, he hugged her and ushered them back to the room where April took her place in her mother’s arms. Amanda knew she was going to make a great big sister. More than just sisters, they would become best friends. She would teach April everything. She would always protect her, and nothing would ever harm her as long as Amanda was around.

  The image changed.

  April grew—one year, two, three-years-old—Amanda chased her across the yard, both girls laughing, trailing balloons behind them, rainbows drifting like kites in the breeze. April’s birthday and all the other children had gone home, but the sisters continued to play. In truth, they would rather be alone, just the two of them.

  At the edge of the yard, beneath Mr. Swindle’s fence, April stumbled and fell. Her knees landed in a tuft of grass and weeds. Unhurt, she giggled and stood. Buzz. April’s smiled shifted, worry, and now fear. The buzzing increased, audible across the yard where Amanda turned lazy circles, dancing with her balloons. She paused, her expression mimicking her sister’s.

  A swarm of yellow jackets shot out of the ground from their disturbed nest. Blooms of nasty red rose on April’s face, neck, arms, and legs, in an instant. Her screams and flailing arms ceased as her throat and tongue swelled. She collapsed, gasping for air.

  Amanda rushed into the house and yelled for mother and father. Ken collected April in his arms and ran with her to the truck, his wife fighting hysterics at his side. Amanda could not stop crying. She stared at her baby sister—the purple hue to her skin, the stillness of her little body. She listened to the shallow breaths and knew April would die.

  At the hospital, April disappeared into the ER. Amanda leaned into her mother, racked with sobs. Hours later, her father emerged, a smile on his face. Amanda’s mother threw her hands into the air and thanked God for saving her baby. Amanda, however, continued to cry.

  “Sweetie, it’s okay. April’s going to be fine,” said her father.

  “It’s my fault. My fault,” said Amanda, tears rolling down her cheeks, her nose and eyes red.

  “What? No, honey, it was an accident.”

  “I have to protect her. I’m the big sister.” She pressed her face into her father’s chest as he wrapped his arms tight around her.

  Amanda shook the memories away as she pulled into Cozy Motel parking lot and slammed on the brakes in front of Room 14. She rapped on the door. No response. Again, louder, banging her fist against the wood. Someone shuffled about inside, and perhaps a moan?

  “You did call ‘em, you fucking bitch.” Smack. “Stay put, I’ll handle this.”

  The knob rotated to the right. Once a few inches ajar, Amanda put her foot into the door with all her strength. Wood splintered, the door crashed inward.

  “Goddamn it.” A young man with something like a mohawk for hair, shaved sides, long down his back, stood inside the room holding his broken and bloodied nose. “What the fuck?” He staggered. “I know you. The cop sister, right? I’m going to sue your ass.”

  Amanda bounded forward, jerked away the hand covering his nose, and brought the heel of her palm down on the bridge between his eyes. He collapsed to the floor and shook his head. With blood filling his eyes and running down his face, he tried to crawl out of her reach. He pushed onto his knees and finally made it to his feet.

  “Okay, bitch, you asked for it. You’re fucking dead.” He pulled a large buck knife from his back pocket and flicked it open. A dash forward, the blade extended straight-arm, the intent to pierce Amanda’s throat.

  She stepped to the side, caught his arm, one hand clutching his wrist, the other at his bicep, ratcheted the arm backward and broke it with a sickening crack at the shoulder. The man screamed, and the knife fell to the floor. In pain, but not done, he charged, his uninjured arm reaching forward. Amanda let him come and grabbed his forearm. Using his weight against him, she spun and flung him out the door, sprawling onto the gravel parking lot.

  A pile of bricks lay next to the motel façade. Amanda picked one up, hurried to the downed man and straddled him. She lifted the brick high overhead and readied to crush his skull.

  The man covered his head in a protective manner, struggling to raise his fractured arm. “Wait, don’t. I’m sorry, goddamn it.”

  His plea only incensed Amanda and increased her desire to see the brick collide with his temple. Her arm went taut, her grip tightened.

  “Amanda, don’t. Please don’t.” April stood in the doorway, hair disheveled, clothes torn, and bruises visible on her face.

  The sight of her sister, beaten by this piece of shit, maddened Amanda. What little restraint remained slipped away with blinding anger. She screamed, a sound like a wounded, defensive animal, and brought the brick down.

  Time slowed. The brick destined for the man’s head. He cowered beneath her, his eyes filled with fear. Her sister yelled, ‘please, let him go. He’s not worth it. Not worth your life, Amanda.’

  The brick crashed onto the pavement, inches from his head, and exploded into fragments and dust. The man cried liked a baby and scampered away from her.

  “You’re crazy. You’re both fucking crazy. Stay the hell away from me.” He struggled to his feet, backpedaled, and ran off into the night.

  April placed an arm
around Amanda’s shoulder and helped her inside. They collapsed on the only piece of furniture in the room, a futon covered in sullied stains. Amanda tried to ignore her disgust and avoid taking in the squalor and filth permeating the apartment where her baby sister lived. Soiled clothes and food-encrusted dishes lay on the floor and counters, drug paraphernalia on the coffee table. A crack ran diagonally across the TV, the whisky bottle that smashed it still lying on the floor beneath the screen.

  Neither sister spoke for a time. In the dark and quiet, they sat close, shoulder to shoulder, but remained so far apart.

  “Why? Why do you do this to yourself? Allow assholes to treat you like this? Do you want to die?” Normally such questions from Amanda came with condemnation and spite, but not now. Instead, the question carried only a sincere, and very tired, desire to comprehend what motivated these self-destructive tendencies in her sister. “Help me understand.”

  “I don’t want to die.” April’s voice, timid and defeated, sounded childlike. “I have to live. I have to pay for what I did. I have to be punished.”

  “What do you mean? Punished for what?”

  “I did it. I killed Tommy.” Tears filmed April’s eyes, and her hands trembled against her thighs.

  Amanda could not find a single word to say. Reassurance would sound like a lie, any comfort she offered, forced.

  “I loved him so much. I miss him.” The tears tumbled down April’s cheeks. “He was my responsibility. I was the big sister.”

  The words hit Amanda like a punch to the gut. She could not move, paralyzed by an onslaught of feelings. Emotions she thought forever dead, resurrected by Sam Ewing and now April.

  “I’m so sorry. I know you won’t forgive me, but I am so sorry.” April, bawling now, fell onto Amanda’s lap, her body quaking with sobs.

  Amanda’s hand lay on her sister’s back, but she could not compel the fingers to curve against the skin, or the hand to caress and console. She closed her eyes and an image took form. From her altar, Sam, her former god, stared back at her. A flash and the photo transformed. Now Gary glared down. Now April. And Amanda. Each took their turn. Over and over. Faster and faster. Until finally, the sequence stopped and the image froze.

  Blank. A featureless photo, absent any likeness.

  Amanda’s hand pressed lightly against April’s back, her opposite hand taking her sister by the shoulder and easing her into a sitting position. She took in the full scope of her sister’s deterioration—eyes encircled in black and blue, emaciated body, protruding ribs and hollow cheeks—a corrosive descent of mind, body, and spirit inflicted from within and without. And though Amanda might not show outwardly the internal disintegration of her own spirit, she mirrored her sister like a twin more than an elder. Twin Hells, each suffering their own version, complete with its own devils and torments.

  Amanda focused on the blank photo, on the absent god. On the pain, loss, and grief. The anguish and fury. Waves of emotions rising and falling, crashing against rocky cliffs, splintering into dissolution. She wanted to die, to explode. For these feelings to fly into the cosmos and to feel no more.

  “I-it wasn’t your fault.” The words shocked her, coming unbidden and unexpected. Yet, she knew them as true. “An accident.” She took April’s face in her hands. “I-it was an accident.”

  The pain inside her intensified, an agonizing birth, and then released. A hideous thing, corrupted, bled out in rancid afterbirth. A thing held inside far too long. So long that it transformed not into a child, but into a roiling cauldron of maggots and worms, of every squirming, crawling thing, of devastating feelings and tormenting thoughts. For the first time in four years, Amanda allowed herself to feel. To feel it all.

  The dam, so long maintained with denial and anger, broke. And the tears came.

  She clutched her sister in a suffocating embrace, holding on as if the slightest slackening would allow the moment to escape and the pain to return. They wept for hours, unable to speak what swelled within them. No words could convey the oceans of drought and rain they had known. Only this embrace, this kiss, this love expressed in tears, freed them from their self-imposed Hells, and at long last granted…forgiveness.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Almost twenty years after her father beat him to within an inch of his life, Lori had one last chance encounter with Uncle Joe. New to her position as an agent with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, she accompanied her partner to Holman Correctional Facility for an interview with one Ed Lewis, aka Weasel. The ABI arrested an associate of Lewis’ hijacking a semi loaded down with high-end electronics. The associate claimed he worked alone and refused to give up his cohorts, the ring that had been hitting transports coming in and out of the state for months.

  They located Lewis in the infirmary recovering from an appendectomy. The residue of anesthetics in his system and a promise from her partner, Agent Jason Morton, to shave some time off his sentence, loosened Ed up, and he rolled on his former pals quick as a hiccup. Not the first time law enforcement had used him as a snitch, Ed always looked out for himself, hence the nickname Weasel.

  While Morton finished up with Lewis, Lori wandered about the infirmary. The area was surprisingly large, closer to a clinic or hospital in scope, with two floors containing twelve beds, two operating rooms, x-ray, and an isolation room. A sizeable contingent of doctors, nurses, and orderlies bustled from one patient to another. Housing fifteen hundred inmates, any number of which suffered some ailment or a nasty wound inflicted by a fellow convict at any time, the staff stayed busy.

  Lori peeked in on a code blue, the unmistakable alarm sounding throughout the infirmary. Nurses flooded into the room, shoving Lori out of the way. Through the throng of personnel attaching electrodes and IVs, she could make out some old-timer lying stone still on a gurney, likely coming to the end of a life sentence the hard way.

  “Excuse me. I’m going to have to ask you to step into the hall.” A man with wavy dark hair and bright green eyes took her by the shoulder and gently nudged her to the side.

  Obviously, the doctor in charge, Lori offered no protest, but took one last look at the dying man, and another at the handsome doctor, and backed into the corridor. Motion in her periphery drew her attention away from the medical drama. At the far end of the main floor, Lori noticed a familiar figure. He had changed. His body emaciated, his face gaunt, and his head shaved bare of the long, beautiful locks she remembered, but even so, she knew with certainty…Uncle Joe.

  “What’s that guy’s story?” asked Lori.

  The alarm ceased and several of those attending to the emergency filed out of the room. One of the staff halted and his eyes followed to where Lori pointed. “That’s Joe.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Some of his fellow inmates damn near killed him, tried to anyway. Took a steel dumbbell upside the noggin’.” The orderly, a scrawny man, roughly fifty, with oily hair plastered to his forehead, indicated an old wound just above Joe’s left ear and sunken into this skull, the size of a softball and resembling one of the moon’s craters. “Seems child molesters are scum even amongst murders and rapists.”

  “Looks like.” Lori watched Joe sweep the floor—robotic, with shallow steps and timid movements, seemingly little awareness in his lifeless eyes. “They didn’t transfer him out of maximum security?”

  The orderly chuckled. “Hell no. This is Alabama. You serve your time. Ain’t no head bashing gonna get you out of it. They did put him in a cell close to the infirmary, and he works in here mostly. Doubtful the inmates’ll get another run at him. I think they lost interest anyway. He’s been like that for years.”

  Joe, as if feeling her scrutiny, glanced up, his gaze finding his long lost niece. Her breath caught in the back of her throat, and her heartbeat quickened. He showed no signs of recognizing her, but simply stood with a blank expression on his face for a moment before returning to his chores.

  A sad, pathetic man wandering zombie-like throug
h what remained of his life, Lori could not quite tell if she pitied or hated him more. In truth, she felt nothing toward Uncle Joe, not anymore. Shame and humiliation, anger and hurt, emotions faded and finally disappeared long ago. Lori had not forgiven him, so much as forgotten him.

  Her father’s timely arrival all those years ago spared Lori the most horrific violation, and likely enabled her to move past the events undamaged. This, more than her relationship with Joe, haunted her. After exiling him from their lives, Lori and her family turned a blind eye, simply wanting to erase the whole ugly experience. Their neglect, their need to move on, allowed a monster to roam free. For every child he preyed upon afterwards, they bore some responsibility.

  Seeing Uncle Joe locked away and no longer a threat brought some relief, but Lori could not ignore the reason for his incarceration. For each count in his conviction, how many more went unknown? How many children had he defiled? How many could she have saved if not content in her ignorance?

  * * *

  “Detectives. This is becoming a habit.” Buddy’s voice, deep timbered and coarse, suggested someone woken from sleep, and his puffy eyes lent further evidence to the fact. “I have a guest room if you want to move in.”

  “Sorry to wake you, Mr. Harmon” said Spence.

  “No worries. I needed to get my lazy butt out of bed. I’m burning daylight. Darn cars won’t sell themselves, you know.” He laughed, the sincerity questionable and more likely an attempt to cover a bite of sarcasm. “Come on in. I’ve got a fresh pot brewing.”

  Lori and Spence followed him into the kitchen where he offered each a piping hot cup of coffee, which they were grateful for with the chill outside’s nip especially vicious this morning. They sat around a lovely marble countertop, pearl with deep blue and silver veins, Buddy never one to skimp when ostentation was possible, and sipped their coffee while listening to him ramble on about nothing in particular. Finally, he placed his mug on the table and leaned back in his chair.