They walked in silence, with Wilder taking the lead position, his gun out in front of him on stiff arms. It was obvious from the way he held the weapon that the sheriff had little, if any, tactical training, and would be of little use in an actual confrontation with anything larger than a squirrel.
But that was not the only reason Decker felt tense and on edge. The last time he’d dealt with a mysterious disappearance, he ended up face to face with a beast that should have been confined to movies and myths. He hoped that this time the furor would be unjustified, nothing more than a bunch of people living on the edge of the arctic letting their imaginations run away with them. Sure there had been some incidents, but this was a wild place. It could just be plain old animal attacks. Either way, he still got paid. In fact, he already had fifty percent of his consulting fee sitting in a bank account back in Wolf Haven. That was one of his stipulations for coming. Money had been tight over the last few months, ever since he lost his job, and he wanted to make sure Nancy had enough cash on hand to keep everything running while he was gone. It was a blessing that she had the diner, and he tried to help her out whenever possible, but the truth was that people didn’t linger when he was in there. They ate and left, if they even stayed that long. More than one town resident had turned back around and walked out without ordering. People forgot fast, and with Chad and the State sticking knives in, he lost a lot of friends in a hurry. He sighed and forced the thoughts to the back of his mind. There was a job to do here, and whether it turned out to be an angry bear or a three headed, fire breathing sea serpent, he would do his best to resolve the situation.
“There it is.” Hayley broke the silence. She played her flashlight beam across the wall they were now approaching.
Decker saw several metal boxes fixed to the concrete, with thick cables and conduits running upward from them. He walked up to one of the boxes and lifted the cover to reveal a large breaker. “Do you need to come down here often?”
“Not too often. Only when the power goes out or we need to run maintenance on the generators and other equipment,” Hayley said. “We also use some of the ancillary rooms for long term storage. Years ago the Navy had machine shops and parts stores down here. The place is a rabbit warren once you get out of the main cellar.”
“I see.” Decker scratched his chin. “Is it possible that your maintenance man just wandered off and got himself hurt in one of these rooms?”
“Possible.” Hayley didn’t look convinced. “But don’t forget the radio conversation. He was all the way back by the elevator, about to come back up, when he screamed.”
“Of course.” Decker nodded.
“And don’t forget, he actually said he thought something was down here with him,” Hayley said. “He was scared.”
“If there’s something down here, let it show itself.” The sheriff waved his gun in the air. “I’ll give anything that comes at us a belly full of lead.”
“Shut up, Wilder.” Hayley glared at him. “No one’s buying into your GI Joe routine.”
Decker ignored the squabble. “If we are to stand any chance of finding your missing worker we are going to have to search this entire place.”
“I was just about to suggest the same thing.” Wilder nodded. “The basement is big; lots of places to hide something like a body. We should split up. We’ll cover more ground that way.”
“I don’t like that idea.” Hayley shook her head. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with. I’m already one man down; I don’t want to make it two.”
“The sheriff is right,” Decker said, sensing an opportunity to get away from the brusque policeman. “The sooner we find your missing man, the better.”
“That’s settled then.” Wilder let a small smile of satisfaction cross his face. No doubt he was just as pleased to be rid of Decker, if only for a few minutes. “I’ll take the main basement and storage areas. That leaves the old machine shops and equipment stores for the two of you.”
“You’re the only one with a gun,” Decker said. “I think Hayley should stay with you.”
“Nonsense. Hayley knows this place like the back of her hand. She’ll make sure you don’t get lost.” Wilder reached into his bag and came out with a sleek black pistol and held it out. “Here, take this.”
Decker recognized it as a Glock 22, a gun he’d carried for many years on the job. He took the weapon and weighed it in his hand. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m just trying to cut down on paperwork.” Wilder chuckled. “It wouldn’t look good if the hired help got killed first day on the job, now, would it?”
“You’re a true hero.” Decker turned to Hayley. “Come on, let’s go.”
15
Decker walked with Hayley, keeping his eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. The Glock felt good in his hand. For the first time in a while he felt like he was in control.
Hayley led him past a generator and an old furnace before turning left toward an opening set into the wall. As soon as they were out of earshot of the sheriff, Decker spoke.
“Why do you put up with him?”
“Who, Wilder?”
“Yes.” Decker nodded. “He’s clearly not qualified for the job. He acts more like a mall security guard than a cop.”
“He tries.” Hayley’s voice was soft. “Most of the time the worst thing that happens around here is a kid shoplifting candy from the general store or a domestic that gets out of hand. We’re hardly a high crime town.”
“Even so…”
“The town needed a sheriff, and he was the only person to step up to the plate. I don’t like the man. Personally, I think he’s a vile human being who enjoys throwing his weight around a bit too much, but I have to work with what I’m given.”
“I understand.” They passed through the opening into a smaller room with several large boxes stacked on pallets. “Regardless, I’m certain he’s out of his depth right now.”
“That’s for sure.”
They entered a smaller chamber. Decker played his flashlight across the walls and over stacks of objects piled high that looked like they had been in the basement for many years. Some were parts for a generator, either waiting to be used or broken components pulled during a repair job. Others looked like pieces from a boat engine. Some were a complete mystery. Everything had a thin layer of dust and cobwebs covering it. The one thing he didn’t see was the missing maintenance man.
“How far back do these rooms go?”
“Pretty far.” Hayley was moving slow, checking everything as she went. “The basement extends under the entire building, and then some.”
“It’s bigger than the tower?”
“Yes. It seems that the Navy wanted secure storage away from prying eyes when they built this place.”
“For machine shops?” Decker said.
“I know. I’m only relaying what I was told,” Hayley replied. “Who knows what they really used these rooms for? No one currently living in the tower was here when this was an active base.”
They walked through two more rooms. Unlike the previous ones, these were empty except for several thick pipes running across the ceiling. More than once Decker ducked to avoid hitting his head. He realized that the ceilings here were lower than those in the main area. He wondered if they were no longer underneath the main building. Given the change in construction it was possible, but he could not visualize where they might be in relation to the tower above. He didn’t have a clue if they were moving away from, or toward, the second tower.
Their footsteps echoed as they pushed onward. Hayley grew more and more ill at ease the further they went. When they arrived at a dead end, the final room in the subterranean complex, she voiced those concerns.
“This is pointless.” She looked around, despondent. “There’s no sign of him anywhere.”
“Wilder might have found something.” Decker let his eyes roam over the piles of boxes that were stacked as high as the ceiling along two walls. They appeared
to be archived town records dating back years, at least if the scrawled notations on the boxes were to be believed.
“I hope so.” Hayley shone her flashlight around the room, clearly hoping that there would be some sign of her missing employee.
“We should head back and find out.” Decker said. “We’re not achieving anything here.”
“I agree.” Hayley turned back toward the opening through which they had just come. When she did so she froze, her eyes widening.
Decker followed her gaze, and what he saw sent a chill running through him. Garrett, or rather what was left of him, sat propped against the wall, half hidden by boxes. He looked like he might have just grown tired and sat down for a quick nap, only Decker knew he was never going to wake up from this sleep. His shirt was shredded and soaked with blood, the skin underneath torn down to the bone. A large gash opened up his throat, a deep wound that stretched from the left ear all the way to the collarbone. The rictus grimace on the dead man’s face mirrored the look of horror on Hayley’s as she opened her mouth to scream.
16
Sheriff Don Wilder looked down at the blood soaked, torn body of Garrett Evans and shook his head. “Ain’t that just a shame, this was the last thing I wanted to find. Garrett was a good man, salt of the earth. He didn’t deserve to go out like this, no sir.”
Behind the sheriff, Decker held Hayley’s arm. All the color had drained from her face and she looked like she might be about to throw up. “I think someone should escort Hayley back to her apartment,” he said. “I can’t see any reason for her to be here anymore.”
“I’ll decide who stays and who goes.” Wilder swiveled around to face Decker. After a moment his eyes fell to Hayley. “But perhaps you are right. No point in causing more distress than necessary.”
“Thank you.” Decker watched as a man dressed in a paramedic uniform took Hayley and led her off. In the hour since they had discovered the body, several people had arrived on the scene. First came the paramedics and the town doctor, all of whom agreed that Garrett was beyond help. After that a photographer showed up and took pictures of the body from every conceivable angle. Judging from the look of horror on his face, Decker surmised that the man spent more time taking yearbook photos for the town high school than he did photographing crime scenes. Now they were waiting for the mortuary assistant to show up with his gurney and remove the body.
No sooner had Haley been led from the basement than the sheriff fixed Decker with a cold stare. “So what do you think, does this look like your typical monster attack?”
“Excuse me?” Decker said, taken aback by the abrupt, and somewhat odd, question.
“I asked you if this is the work of a monster,” the sheriff replied, his gaze never wavering, a smirk cracking his face. “That is your area of expertise, is it not?”
“Solving crimes is my area of expertise.” Decker gritted his teeth and worked not to let the rising anger bubbling inside of him take hold. “And besides, you people asked me to come up here, not the other way around.”
“Not me.” The sheriff shook his head. “I’ve read your file. I know what you claimed went down in that school in Louisiana. What a crock of shit.”
“I really don’t care what you believe.” Decker took a deep breath. “What I do care about is finding out who, or what, tore this poor man to shreds.”
“I don’t think you are hearing me, son.” Wilder stepped closer, his face inches from Decker’s. ”I don’t want your help. You are a liability. Worse than that, you are a joke and a disgrace to everyone that wears the uniform.”
“Whether you want me around or not, I’m here,” Decker said, resisting the urge to bring his fist up and wipe the smug look of the sheriff’s face with his fist. “I work for the town council, not you, so unless they tell me to go home, I’m doing the job they brought me up here for.”
“Tell me something. Why did you resign your badge?” Wilder put his hand on his hips. “I want to know, I really do. If you were in the right, if everything you put in your report was true, why didn’t you fight for your job?”
“You say you’ve read my file,” Decker responded. “Then you know about the official inquiry. You know why I resigned. I couldn't win. It was a witch hunt.”
“Exactly.” Wilder seemed pleased. “You couldn't win. Well, guess what? You can’t win here either. The town council may have the authority to bring you in as a consultant, but that doesn’t mean I have to consult with you. This is my jurisdiction and the town council has no authority to intervene in official police business. Now I don’t know yet if it was man or beast that did this to poor Garrett, but I do know that it ain’t normal, and that makes this a crime scene, which places it squarely under my control.”
“Let me guess, you’re going to throw me out.”
“Nothing of the sort.” Wilder placed a hand on Decker’s arm. “I’m just going to ask you to leave, in a polite manner of course, and I would kindly ask that you steer clear of my investigation.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Well now, then I’d have to throw you out.” Wilder let his hand fall to the gun on his belt, his palm resting on the stock.
“Fine. I’m going.” Decker knew when to fight and when to back off. “But I’m still going to do the job I was brought up here for.”
“You do that, John. Just don’t do it anywhere near me or my crime scene,” Wilder said. He held his hand out. “And I’ll take my pistol back now if you don’t mind.”
17
Decker didn’t sleep well. His old friend the loup garou once again found its way into his nightmares, only this time it wasn’t stalking the good folk of a small Louisiana town, but rather slinking through the dank and fetid rooms beneath a repurposed Navy base on the edge of nowhere. It slashed and tore and killed with indiscriminate ease, and all the while it waited for him to make an appearance, because it knew that he surely would. And for his part, he hunted it, followed it, but in the end it stayed one step ahead of him, just like it always did. Until it wanted him to see it, wanted him to know that all the death, all the pain, was on his head. That it was his fault…
Decker sat upright in bed, dripping sweat. He took a deep breath, regaining his composure as the nightmare faded. When he glanced at the clock on the nightstand he saw that it was five-thirty in the morning. Only an hour had passed since he’d climbed, weary and depressed, between the sheets. He lay back down and closed his eyes, but when he did visions of the dead maintenance man floated there, his body torn and bloodied. He opened them again and stared up at the ceiling, wondering what he had gotten himself into. If he had any hope that this was just some form of mass hysteria, a rampant myth, it was blown out of the water by the condition and location of the body he’d just discovered. It was one thing to pin the death of a tunnel worker on a wild animal hiding in the tunnel – he hadn’t actually seen that body, only photographs – but there was no way an animal could have gotten into the sub-basement. There were only two ways in or out, the elevator or the back stairs. Neither was accessible to the local wildlife. That left two hypotheses. Either a human, a cold-blooded sadistic killer, committed the murder, or there was another way into that basement.
Decker didn’t believe for one moment that a regular human could have inflicted the wounds the maintenance man suffered. They looked too savage, too indiscriminate. Besides, an autopsy would quickly reveal if the slashes were caused by a man made object, a knife or some other instrument, or if they were organic in nature. He had a feeling he already knew the answer. He’d seen wounds like these before, and while he didn’t think that a loup garou was to blame, he did think that something large and predatory was behind the slayings. But why was it killing? It hadn’t eaten either victim, hadn’t tried to drag them back to its lair, so what motive did it have? In the case of Annie Doucet, the witch that summoned the loup garou, she wanted revenge. But there wasn’t any reason for that here, and besides, somehow he knew he wasn’t dealing with a supernatural c
reature this time around; things felt different. One thing was evident. He would need more than a small Glock pistol to bring the thing down if he ran across it.
Not that it mattered.
He didn’t even have that anymore.
But that didn’t mean he had to sit around doing nothing. Later, after he got a few more hours of sleep, he would track down the one person who actually believed him, the girl called Mina who’d paid him a visit the previous evening. She would surely know everything about the town, and that was something he could use. She would also be an invaluable source of information. She knew the residents, knew what they were like, who they were. These things were key factors in any investigation, and anything he could do to get up to speed would be of benefit.
Besides, he had the germ of a theory about how the killer could have gotten in and out of the basement without being detected, and he wanted to follow his hunch to make sure he was on the right track before taking his findings to Hayley. Still, given the hostile environment created by the sheriff, he would still need someone to cover his back, and Mina might just fit the bill.
Decker sighed and closed his eyes once more, calmer now that he knew what to do next, how to handle the situation. This time the demons stayed away. There were no images of torn up, mangled corpses, no monsters chasing him, and before long he drifted back into a deep and satisfying sleep.
18
Dominic Collins awoke feeling a sense of disorientation. This was not unusual. He always felt odd the first few days of a new assignment, like a fish out of water. In another life Dominic would have been a homebody, someone content to settle down and relax into the normalcy of routine. Instead he was a constant traveler, always on the move, living out of a suitcase. Not that he actually possessed a real suitcase. As always his personal effects, clothes, laptop, all the things he might need, had been sent separately, arriving the day before he did, transported under an assumed name different from his own false identity. This was company policy. Every precaution was taken to ensure complete secrecy.
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