3 TERRIFYING THRILLERS

by Jude Hardin

  He had expected Richardson to call. Instead, at 2:05 a maroon sedan pulled into the library’s parking lot. It was an unmarked police car. John Rock could spot them a mile away. The driver’s side door opened and Richardson got out. Mirrored sunglasses. His uniform still looked outstanding. He motioned for John to come that way.

  John climbed into the passenger’s seat and closed the door. The car was air conditioned. It felt good in there and it smelled good. There were a stack of uniforms sheathed in plastic on the backseat. Richardson’s to-do list was on the center console.

  “I guess I owe you an apology,” Richardson said.

  “Not necessary. We just need to find this thing and put a stop to it.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I don’t know. I got an email from her.”

  “From who?”

  “The entity.”

  “You got an email from a ghost?”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s genuine. She knew about the nurse today. She knew her name was Jeri.”

  “Nobody could have known that,” Richardson said. “We haven’t released the victims’ names to the press yet.”

  “Like I said, I’m pretty sure it’s genuine.”

  “What did this email say?”

  John told him.

  “We need to find out what all these victims have in common,” Richardson said.

  “I thought you would have been on that already.”

  “It never occurred to me that Colin Smith’s parents might have been murdered, or that their deaths were somehow connected to Colin’s death. Until today. Now there’s five dead.”

  “There’s going to be more,” John said. “Have you arrested the truck driver yet?”

  “He’s long haul. We’re trying to track him down. I don’t have anything to charge him with. All I can do is bring him in for questioning.”

  “I would like to talk to the security guard who killed the nurse and the cop this morning,” John said.

  “He’s lawyered-up already. But we can try.”

  Richardson pulled a pencil out of his pocket and scratched a line through one of the items on his to-do list. He put the car in gear and headed toward the station.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jana Lorry closed her biology textbook and stared out her bedroom window. There was a swing set in the back yard, a nice wooden one with a slide and a jungle gym, and there was a playhouse with a pink door and pink shutters that her daddy had built for her when she was four. What fun she’d had in that little house, playing Barbies with her friends and having tea parties. How they would laugh!

  Life was so much simpler back then.

  When Jana was eleven or twelve, she and her friends would hang out in the playhouse with a portable CD player and a bag of Doritos and talk about who had or hadn’t gotten their period yet and which boys in class were the cutest.

  Colin Smith was one of those boys. Colin was a grade ahead of Jana in school, and he was one of those guys who just seemed to have it all. Looks, brains, personality, clothes, talent. In high school he was captain of the football team, first seed on the tennis team, and vice president of the student council. And he always smelled great. Every time Jana passed him in the hallway she wanted to tackle him and fuck his brains out.

  A few years later she finally got her chance.

  Colin was a sophomore in college at the time. He had a steady girlfriend, a sweet and lovely girl named Samantha West, but she was out of town for the holidays. When the cat’s away and all. Colin and Jana went out on January 1, exactly one week before Jana’s nineteenth birthday.

  They went to the movies and ate hotdogs from a street vendor. After the hotdogs they strolled hand-in-hand toward Colin’s car. It was still early and Jana didn’t want the night to end.

  “What do you want to do now?” Jana asked.

  “Let’s go for a drive,” Colin said.

  “Where?”

  “Want to go to the park?”

  “The park?” she said. “What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  “The fun kind?”

  Jana giggled. “All right. The park.”

  The park was on a big hill with winding roads. It had snowed a few days before, leaving intermittent slick spots, and there weren’t any guardrails to keep a car from careening a hundred feet off a cliff if it went into a skid. Colin drove slowly and carefully. He passed several lookouts where young people parked and made out, but he must have wanted more privacy than those provided. He finally pulled off and stopped at a secluded spot under an oak tree.

  He killed the engine.

  It was very dark and quiet.

  He turned the radio on.

  Soft jazz.

  He put his arm around Jana and pulled her close and kissed her. This was going to be one blissful night, Jana thought. A night to remember. She was finally going to get what she had wanted all these years.

  The windows fogged from all the heavy breathing. Colin brushed his palm against Jana’s breast. Oh. My. God. Her clit felt as big as a golf ball. She put her hand on his thigh.

  “You got something?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You know.”

  Colin sighed.

  “I think you better drive me home,” Jana said.

  Damn. What kind of red-blooded American boy didn’t carry a condom in his wallet?

  “It’s okay,” Colin said. “We’ll just run to the store.”

  There was a Walgreens two miles away and a CVS across the street from that. Both open twenty-four hours. Colin steered into Walgreens. There were only a couple of other cars in the parking lot.

  “Be right back,” he said.

  “You’re going to leave me alone out here?”

  “All right. Come on.”

  They sauntered inside. The place was deserted. They walked the aisles, looking for what they’d come for, couldn’t find them anywhere. A silver-haired lady with thick glasses stood at the register, following them with her eyes.

  Excuse me, ma’am, but could you please direct us to the rubber department?

  Wasn’t going to happen.

  They exited the store, climbed back into Colin’s car.

  “We’ll try CVS,” Colin said.

  At CVS there was a Family Planning aisle clearly marked with a sign hanging from the ceiling on a chain. They walked straight to it. Unfortunately, the prophylactics were in a locked glass case.

  They walked to the register. There was a line.

  “Could you open a case back there for me?” Colin said.

  “I can in a minute,” the clerk said.

  They went back to the glass case and waited. A few customers milled around, reading the labels on laxatives and checking their blood pressures with the automatic machine. Colin pretended to be interested in the Foster Grant rack. Jana figured he didn’t want anyone to know he was standing around on New Years Day waiting for a fat store clerk to unlock the condom case. She didn’t blame him.

  The clerk finally waddled down the aisle carrying a big brass ring with about a million jingling keys on it. Of course everyone in the vicinity had to turn and look. Jana was thankful she didn’t know any of them.

  “Those,” Colin said.

  The clerk grabbed the box he gestured toward and handed them to him.

  “Will there be anything else?”

  “That’s all.”

  Colin paid and they left the store. They drove back to the same spot at the park and went at it like gangbusters.

  Then the condom broke. After all that trouble, the damn thing broke.

  Colin and Jana didn’t say much to each other on the way home.

  Seven weeks later, Jana called and told him the news.

  Colin freaked. He said his parents would pay to have it taken care of.

  Jana said she would think about it.

  A few weeks later, she made an appointment. She never told her parents she was pregnant. No reason for them to know. Colin went to the clinic with
her, and he paid for the procedure with cash.

  And that was that. Jana hadn’t heard from Colin in over two years.

  Now he was dead. And his parents were dead.

  And for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, Jana Lorry had the distinct feeling her time might be coming soon.

  CHAPTER TEN

  John Rock followed Sergeant Richardson to a room with a three on the door. Two small video cameras hung from opposite corners of the ceiling, and there was a table with a reel-to-reel tape recorder on it. Four chairs surrounded the table, and Sam Keller, the security guard who had killed Jeri Dawson the nurse and Tyler Berry the cop, sat in the one furthest from the door. Sam wore an orange jumpsuit and a shiny chrome set of shackles. Sergeant Richardson took a seat at the table and motioned for John to do the same. John still wasn’t picking up any blips on his CR.

  Richardson switched on the tape recorder and spoke to Sam in a casual tone: “I’m Sergeant Richardson, and this is John Rock. You might remember John from his TV show back in the eighties.”

  “I was a kid back then,” Sam said. “But I remember the show. My mom used to watch it all the time. You talk to dead people, right?”

  “They talk to me,” John said. “Sometimes.”

  “John would like to ask you some questions,” Richardson said.

  “Ask away. I ain’t talking to nobody but my lawyer.”

  “What happened this morning wasn’t your fault,” John said. “A female entity invaded your consciousness and started controlling your actions. She’s mad as hell about something. I need to know what she’s mad about.”

  “I ain’t talking to nobody but my lawyer,” Sam said.

  “This is important,” John said. “If I can learn the source of her anger, I might be able to stop her from killing again.”

  A stench filled the room. It smelled like a combination of urine and dead fish. The tape recorder shut off by itself, and the red L.E.D. indicators on the video cameras went black. The overhead light flickered. Sam’s expression went flat and his bloodshot eyes bulged wildly. He spoke with a deep amplified voice that seemed to be coming from the walls and ceiling. “Nobody’s going to stop me until I’m finished,” he said.

  “Are you Lori Lorry?” John asked. His CR was firing like a flare gun now. There was definitely an entity in the room.

  “Fuck you,” Sam said.

  “Talk to me. What’s your name?”

  “Puddin’ Tame. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”

  “You need to find peace and move on, Lori.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Why are you so angry? Why are you killing people?”

  Sam bared his teeth and growled viciously. He barked like a dog, and then snorted like a pig. It seemed he couldn’t make up his mind which animal he wanted to be. He went back and forth for a couple of minutes, and then he spoke with the voice of a little girl: “They killed me first,” he said.

  “Who killed you?” John asked.

  Sam barked and snorted and whinnied like a horse. He gestured toward Sergeant Richardson. “Get rid of him.”

  John turned to his left. Richardson’s hands were trembling.

  “Can I have a few minutes alone with him?” John asked.

  “The cameras shut down,” Richardson said. “I got no way to monitor the room. Can’t do it. If something happens—”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Look, I’m very close to getting to the bottom of this. The entity wants to speak to me, and only me. If I lose her now, I might never get her back again. More people will die.”

  Richardson kneaded his eyebrows with his fingers. “I’m going to be right outside that door,” he said. “If you need me, I want you to shout. Loud. You understand? I’ll be back in here in a heartbeat.”

  “If I need you, I’ll shout,” John said.

  Richardson got up and walked out. He closed the door behind him.

  “Who killed you?” John asked.

  “You were once a wealthy man,” Sam said. The deep amplified voice again. “Look at you now. You’re a pauper. How did that happen?”

  “This isn’t about me,” John Rock said. “Please answer my question. Who killed you?”

  “You caught your wife fucking another man,” Sam said. “And then she took you to the cleaners in divorce court. Now she’s living in your mansion in Beverly Hills and you’re living on the street. Ha! What a sucker.”

  Sam whinnied like a horse again.

  “I got rid of the cop for you,” John said. “Now talk to me.”

  “Actually, I need to be running along. Bye now.”

  “Wait,” John said. “Just answer one question. Who killed you?”

  The little girl voice again: “All of them.”

  “In the email you said the doctor is next—unless. What doctor? Unless what?”

  “He ripped me to pieces with steel forceps,” the girl voice said.

  Now John knew. This was the ghost of an aborted fetus. He had read folklore from a variety of cultures about such hauntings, although he had never been directly involved with one himself. As the stories went, everyone who had anything to do with terminating the pregnancy came to an untimely and violent demise.

  “What is it you want?” John asked.

  “I want him to stop.”

  “You want the doctor to stop performing abortions?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bratcher,” the deep voice said.

  And with that, Sam Keller collapsed facedown on the table.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dr. Theodore Bratcher, Ted to his friends, scrubbed his hands over the deep sink on the west wall of his procedure room. It was going on six o’clock, and he had finished with his final patient for the day. Time to drive home and change clothes and hit the tennis court.

  He said goodbye to the girls in the front office, walked to the parking lot and fired up his BMW 6 Series Convertible. The weather was perfect, clear and in the mid seventies, so he decided put the top down. He took a left out of the parking lot and quickly accelerated to sixty miles per hour, enjoying the horsepower at his foot and the wind in his hair. He was thirty-five years old and single and a millionaire. Blue eyes, sandy blond hair, body like a Greek statue. He was a handsome devil, all right. All the women said so.

  His cell phone trilled. He picked it up and looked at the caller ID. Sergeant Bryan Richardson, MPD. A cop? Why would a cop be calling him? Then he remembered the speeding ticket he’d gotten several months ago. Did he ever pay that thing? No, it was in a desk drawer at home. Damn. Would a police sergeant be calling him about that? Must be a slow day.

  He let the call go to voicemail, and then retrieved the message: Dr. Bratcher, this is Sergeant Bryan Richardson, metro police. It’s urgent that I talk to you tonight. Please return this call as soon as possible. Thank you.

  Dr. Bratcher had been looking forward to his tennis match all week, and now some stupid cop was going to start harassing him about a delinquent speeding ticket. Twenty over in a school zone. So what? He’d been in a hurry that day. The buses were lined up to leave the school parking lot, and he didn’t want to be stuck behind them. He was a man on the go, a mover and a shaker. He was a doctor. He didn’t have time for that bullshit.

  He’d sped through the school zone, and then half a mile down the road saw the flashing blue lights of a police cruiser in the rearview. Stupid fucking cop. Dr. Theodore Bratcher could have bought the little smartass douche bag a thousand times over. Loser. Did he even know who he was fucking with?

  Or maybe it wasn’t the speeding ticket. Maybe Sergeant Bryan Richardson was calling about something else. One of Dr. Bratcher’s colleagues had recently been accused of sexual abuse by one of his minor patients. The charges were totally false—at least Ted believed they were—but it still cost his friend a lot of time and a lot of money. A fifteen-year-old girl with an axe to
grind could fuck your life up good and proper if she wanted to. Ted was always careful to have a female nurse present in the exam room and the procedure room, but nothing could stop one of those little cunts from making an accusation if she set her mind to it. Being falsely accused of sexual assault was Dr. Theodore Bratcher’s worst nightmare.

  Thinking about it made him nervous. He punched the button to return Sergeant Richardson’s call.

  “Richardson.”

  “Hello. This is Dr. Theodore Bratcher returning your call.”

  “Yes, Dr. Bratcher. I’m glad you called. We’re going to need you to come down to the station this evening. As soon as possible.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I need to talk with you. There’s a possibility your life might be in danger.”

  “Has someone threatened me?”

  “It’s complicated. If you’ll just meet me at the station, I’ll explain everything.”

  “I have a tennis match. Would it be all right to come after?”

  “I think you better come now.”

  What a load of crap. Ted wasn’t about to allow a perfectly good evening to be ruined because some cowardly anonymous rightwing right-to-life religious zealot had called in a death threat. He’d had run-ins with those kooks before. They didn’t scare Dr. Theodore Bratcher.

  “I can’t come right now,” Ted said. “In fact, I won’t be able to make it tonight at all. I’ll stop by there in the morning, and you can tell me what you need to tell me. That’s the best I can do.”

  There was a pause. “Dr. Bratcher, I strongly urge to come to the station immediately.”