by Bob Avey
“Did this guy give you a name?”
Jake shook his head. “He seemed to buy my story, so I did what he said and took to the road. ‘Get the hell out and don’t come back’ was how he put it. If he’d known what I was really up to, I might not have made it out of there so easily. I figured it was Stephens, the property owner.”
Elliot wondered if that could be the case. It seemed unlikely. “Could you describe him?”
“He was kind of big, like you, but a little older.”
“Greying blond hair and blue eyes?”
“That’s the guy. You know him?”
“It wasn’t Stephens.”
“How do you know?”
“I was a student at the university when he was teaching there, had a couple of run-ins with him. David Stephens is about five foot six, with dark hair and dark eyes.”
Jake shook his head. “Maybe this guy works for Stephens?”
“Maybe,” Elliot said. “Anything’s possible.”
“He might have been with him,” Jake said. “He’d parked on the road about 400 feet ahead of me. I thought I saw somebody in his car.”
“Are you a Christian, Jake?”
The biker’s face went blank. “I guess so. I mean, I’m not anything else. Why do you ask?”
“Before my mother lost her soul to drugs, she read scripture to me, told me everybody had a role to play, a purpose if you will. This is mine, Jake. It’s what I do. I appreciate your help, but this is the part where I tell you to drop the investigation and go on back home.”
“You’re creeping me out.”
“I hope I’m getting my point across. I’ve been on some strange cases, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Yeah, it’s strange, all right,” Jake said. “So give it to me straight. Is there any chance my brother could still be alive?”
Elliot leaned against the truck. He’d begun to like this guy, and he knew what it was like to be alone. He doubted after eight years there would be much hope, but he said, “Anything’s possible. I’ll do what I can to find out.”
Elliot watched Jake Sherman climb into his car and drive out of the parking lot. He hoped the biker would leave this thing alone, but he didn’t think it would play out that way. He hadn’t told Jake, but he knew who’d run him off Stephens’ property. Greying blond hair, blue eyes. It was Ryan, and he worked for the Stillwater Police Department.
Elliot climbed into his truck and rummaged through the glove compartment until he found Ryan’s business card. When he dialed the number, he reached a Sergeant Westlake.
“Detective William Ryan, please.”
“He’s out of the office right now. Could I take a message?”
Elliot loosened his grip on the phone. Westlake’s voice sounded tentative. “Do you know where I can find him? It’s pretty important.”
“I could be of more help if I knew who I was speaking with.”
Elliot stared through the window into the nearly empty parking lot. “The name’s Elliot, Tulsa Police Department.”
“Tulsa? You guys working on something together?”
“You could say that, but it’s kind of unofficial.”
“That’s our boy,” Westlake said. “Or at least it used to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“He turned in his badge this morning and walked out. I haven’t seen him since.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish I was. He won’t answer his phone either. I went by his house twice, but he’s not there.”
Elliot squeezed the phone. The tone of Westlake’s voice said this thing was bothering him. “Why would he do something like that?”
“I can’t figure it. He’s a different sort all right, but I’ve never known him to pull anything like this.”
“Do you have any idea where I might find him?”
After a pause, Westlake said, “I wouldn’t ordinarily give out personal information, but I’m really worried about the guy. I was going to swing by there after work anyway, to check on him, and make sure he’s okay.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
A few miles west of Stillwater, somewhere near Lake Carl Blackwell, Elliot turned off of Highway 51 and headed north. Following the instructions Sergeant Westlake had given him, he found Ryan’s cabin sitting about one hundred feet from the roadway on a wooded lot.
About five hundred feet up, another house peeked around the corner. The noticeable lack of noise played around the edges of Elliot’s nerves. The smell of burning wood wafted through the air, but no smoke came from the chimney.
A thick layer of oak leaves announced Elliot’s progress as he made his way around the house toward the back of the cabin where he found Detective Ryan sitting in a lawn chair with his feet propped against the railing of a wooden deck. He had a breakfast sandwich in one hand and a Styrofoam container of coffee sat within reach on the side railing. The smoke came from a campfire where Ryan had constructed a ring of sandstones on the ground in front of the deck.
“Nice place,” Elliot said.
A blank expression came over Ryan’s face. He’d taken a bite of sandwich and he forced the food down his throat, grabbing the coffee to wash it down, all the while keeping his gaze fixed on Elliot. He began to laugh, not an expression of humor but an outpouring of cynicism. Regaining control, he said, “The harbinger of death arrives at my doorstep.”
Ryan didn’t appear to be drunk or under the influence of drugs, but he trembled, barely able to drink his coffee without spilling it.
“You could be right,” Elliot said, “if you don’t start playing it straight with me.”
“Big city cop, you think you know it all. You know nothing.”
“You’ve been uncooperative, even defensive. What would you think if you were me?”
“Good point,” he said. “I guess I’d look suspicious, maybe even guilty.”
“Are you?”
“Not really. Not in the way you think, anyway.”
“If you’re telling me the truth, what are you afraid of?”
“I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
Elliot climbed onto the deck, stopping near Ryan’s chair. “Why didn’t you tell me about Corey Sherman?”
“How do you know about Sherman?”
“Big city cop, remember. I’ll tell you something else. Corey didn’t disappear and neither did the people he was with. They’re dead and buried on the commune where they lived on property owned by David Stephens. Somebody killed them. Where do you fit in, Ryan, murderer or accomplice?”
Ryan removed his feet from the railing and put them on the deck. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Why are you protecting Stephens?”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve been a cop for a long time. That’s not something you just walk away from. Your connection must be pretty deep for you to turn in your badge over it.”
Ryan tried to stand but his trembling legs wouldn’t allow it. Halfway through the maneuver, he gave up and dropped back into the chair. “For God’s sake, Elliot, can’t you see what this has done to me? Leave it alone.”
“People are dying. I want to know why.”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Seen anything outside your windows lately, shadowy forms hiding in the darkness?”
Elliot thought about what he’d seen moving past the patio door in his backyard. “Funny you should ask. Was it you?”
“It only gets worse. Soon you’ll begin to hear things, sounds coming from inside your house, an intruder, but one you’ll never catch. God help you if you do.”
“Come on, Ryan. You’re talking crazy.”
An expression somewhere between worry and sympathy crawled across Ryan’s face. He pulled a small black book from his shirt pocket and held it out.
Elliot took the book and glanced through it. It was an address book, though the pages were empty except for one, which contained a string of numbers wri
tten in black ink.
“You will begin to feel it in the night,” Ryan said, “hovering in the darkness just inches from your bed. There might still be time for you to stop it, but you have to drop the investigation, and you have to do it now.”
Ryan continued to speak but his words softened, fading to background noise as the campfire again drew Elliot’s attention.
The fire had grown, the circle of its heat stretching out to include the deck where Elliot stood. The warmth fell across his skin, scattering his thoughts in multiple directions.
As if she were a neighbor come to visit, Elliot’s mother appeared from around the cabin and climbed onto the deck. She kneeled in front of Elliot, and using blood that’d fallen from the syringe in her hand, she traced designs across the floor of her room, misplaced emotions embedded in her stare as she squiggled out the word, sustenance.
A soft voice came from somewhere, and Elliot accepted the embrace of a young girl, a disturbing version of Cyndi Bannister, a woman he had once loved, the child, in fact, from the photograph in her father’s study. She reached into her pocket and when her hand was once again revealed to Elliot it held a note, its diction scribbled in pencil, from which came a message: I love you. The girl stood on her toes, bringing her face close to Elliot’s and she kissed him, the soft touch of her lips brushing against his until he pushed her away.
Elliot was alone in the room and when he turned to see his reflection in the mirror above his mother’s vanity, he saw that he, too, was a child.
A chill ran through him, and he realized the fire had gone out, and he was once again standing on the deck of Ryan’s cabin.
He quickly surveyed the premises, studying the trees with their absence of birds and sounds, but in particular he became aware of no ring of stones, no smoldering wood, and no ashes. If there had been a campfire, no indication of it now existed. Also, Detective Ryan was gone, as was the lawn chair where he’d sat and the cup of coffee he’d placed on the railing.
Elliot walked across the deck toward the cabin and tried the door.
He found it locked. He thought about the front entrance but suspected it would be secured as well. He pressed his face against the small rectangle of glass on the backdoor.
Worn, comfortable-looking furniture occupied the room. Pinewood paneling covered the walls, stained in a few areas by smoke that’d come from the fireplace: A Norman Rockwell scene, its picturesque essence obliterated by the corpse of Detective William Ryan, which appeared to levitate above the floor.
Elliot kicked in the door, but as soon as he confirmed what he’d suspected, that what had happened was long past his being able to do anything about it, he pulled his phone and punched in the number for the Stillwater Police Department.
Westlake answered.
Elliot had hoped he would. “You need to get out here,” he said. “Ryan’s dead. He hanged himself.”
Elliot broke the connection with Westlake. Some paperwork scattered across the floor of the cabin caught his attention.
Being inside Ryan’s place, let alone sifting through his personal belongings, put a knot in Elliot’s stomach, but he pulled a pen from his pocket and shuffled through the papers, reading enough to get the gist of it. The documents amounted to a recent transaction between Ryan and the Trustee Department of the Bank of Oklahoma. The business acted to transfer, to the bank, Ryan’s power of attorney over the estate of David Stephens. The professor, if the documentation was accurate, now resided at Woodland Estates, an upscale senior living center in South Tulsa.
Elliot stood and walked outside. Money had been involved, but from the look of things, Ryan hadn’t taken any of it. He’d used the funds to care for Stephens and nothing else.
Elliot used his phone to find the address of Woodland Estates and as the number appeared on the screen, his mouth went dry. It was the same number that had been written across the pages of the address book Ryan had handed him as they’d talked on the deck of the cabin.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Several hours after he found Ryan hanging from the ceiling of his cabin, Elliot stood in a common area at Woodland Estates, the senior living center indicated in Ryan’s paperwork. The receptionist had sent him to the skilled nursing wing where he found a trembling and frail man slumped in a wheelchair. The invalid was not alone. An attendant, a slender man of African descent, sat beside him.
The invalid in the wheelchair was David Stephens.
“Can he get out of the chair,” Elliot asked, “walk around if he needs to?”
“Oh no, sir, nothing like that,” the attendant said. He leaned over and stared into Stephens’ face. “Most times, he don’t know where he is, much less what he’s doing. It kind of comes and goes. Won’t let nobody but me help him. Don’t know why.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“Ever since I’ve been here, going on seven years now would be about right. Are you family or something?”
“No, just an old acquaintance.”
As if acknowledging Elliot’s presence, Stephens raised one of his hands slightly from the arm of the chair.
“The way I understand it,” the attendant said, “I’m the closest thing he’s got to family. Like I said, he comes around, not so much anymore, but we talk now and then, he tells me things.”
“What kind of things?”
Stephens made an effort to move, his actions becoming somewhat successful as he reached from the wheelchair and grasped his attendant’s hand.
“Would you look at that,” the man said. He leaned close to Stephens. “He wants to know who you are. I understand you told me already, but he wasn’t listening, know what I’m saying?”
“The name’s Elliot. I attended school at the university while you were teaching there.”
“Student?”
Surprise showed on the aide’s face. The word had come from Stephens.
“Not exactly,” Elliot said. Of course he’d been a student at the university, but Stephens was talking about students who had taken his classes. “I knew Angela Gardner,” Elliot continued. “She told me about your classes.”
Stephens raised his head, some of the haze clearing from his eyes, his recognition of Elliot now showing on his face.
“What happened to Corey Sherman, Professor Stephens, and the rest of those people who lived on your property?”
Elliot didn’t like being so blunt, but it was why he’d come to Woodland Estates, and the question needed to be asked.
A tremor started in Stephens’ neck and worked its way to his feet. He freed his hand from the attendant’s and began to slap the arm of the wheelchair. “Don’t touch the knife. Don’t touch the knife.”
The man rubbed Stephens’ shoulders. “It’s all right, now. Everything’s all right.” To Elliot he said, “Maybe you ought to get on out of here. It ain’t good for the Professor to get all worked up.”
The attendant seemed like a good man and Elliot didn’t want to make life hard for him, but he had a job to do. “You’ve shouldered the burden long enough, Professor Stephens. Tell me what happened while you were teaching at the university.”
The aide came from behind the wheelchair and started toward Elliot, shaking his head.
Elliot showed his badge. It seemed the only way.
The man examined the identification and backed away.
Elliot unbuttoned his jacket exposing the Glock hanging in the shoulder holster, an old interrogation habit. It was possible Stephens had something to do with the missing drifters in Stillwater, but it was a pretty sure bet he hadn’t killed anybody in Tulsa. “Whatever you let loose eight years ago has found a way to come back, Stephens. If you know how to stop it, or corral it in anyway, please tell me.”
Stephens opened and closed his mouth, like some kind of demented fish, though he could not speak, and when he’d managed to regain a small amount of control, he squeezed out one word and said “Reynolds.”
Elliot leaned closer to Professor Stephens. “Are
you talking about Stanley Gerald Reynolds who wrote for the school newspaper?”
Stephens slumped over, his head hanging nearly to his chest. The nurse shook his head. “The professor’s gone back to wherever it is he goes.”
“How long will it last?”
“Hard to say. Could be hours, could be days. The fellow he mentioned, though, I’m pretty sure he’s some kind of kin. He talks about him. I gather there was some kind of dispute, something bad enough to tear the family apart. That’s why nobody comes to see him, the way I see it. This Reynolds he keeps talking about, you know the man?”
“He was Stephens’ nephew.”
“I see. You know I hate to pry into other people’s business, but with Mr. Stephens being under my care and all, I’d sure appreciate knowing what brought you here.”
Elliot glanced at the floor. The man had been cooperative, allowing the questioning of his patient. Answering his question was only fair. “Something odd went down a few years ago in Stillwater while Stephens was teaching at the university, people gone missing, that sort of thing. I suspect Stephens knows something about it.”
“I’m not an educated man,” the attendant said, “but I know people. It’s something God gave me. The professor here, he’s sure enough got some problems, but he’s not a bad person. No, sir, I can’t see him killing nobody. You find this Reynolds fellow he keeps talking about and maybe you get some answers.”
Elliot thanked the attendant for his time and cooperation then turned and walked away. The man’s advice carried an element of logic, but as Elliot left the senior living center, he began to entertain a line of reasoning. The commonality linking the murders was not the killer himself, or herself, but the type of victim and the manner in which their lives had been taken. Laura Bradford had known that as well, and her understanding of the problem had drawn her to Stillwater.
Elliot grabbed his phone. He had a hard time understanding how someone like Detective Ryan, who had been, at least on some level, a kind and caring person, could have taken his own life. However, suicide by its nature would involve some level of premeditation. Ryan had made sure David Stephens would be taken care of. It was possible, after Elliot had showed him the remains that he’d done the right thing and contacted Laura Bradford’s next of kin as well.