Season of Fear

by Brain Freeman

  ‘I’ll be there in less than an hour,’ he told her. Before he hung up, he added: ‘Mother, I don’t say this often, but be careful. If anything at all unusual happens, call 911, and then call me.’

  ‘You are so dramatic. I really wish you’d gone into acting.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  She lowered her voice. ‘I know you are, darling. I hear you. Get here soon.’

  She hung up. Diane was watching her. ‘What did he say?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s on his way.’

  Diane nodded. She took her empty champagne glass to the table and refilled it from a pitcher of mimosas. As she sipped the glass, she looked around the sunroom, and she seemed to notice for the first time that it was just the three women keeping vigil against the storm.

  ‘Where’s Garth?’ she asked.

  *

  Cab put down the phone. ‘There are no problems at Diane’s place for now,’ he said.

  Peach wasn’t listening. She held her medical records in her hands without opening the file. ‘Why would Justin take this?’ she asked Cab. ‘Why would he care? And why hide it with these other things?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cab told her. ‘Sometimes boyfriends get curious about things they should leave alone.’

  Peach shook her head. ‘Not Justin. If he wanted to know something, he would have asked me. Plus, he meant for me to find this. He wanted me to see it.’

  Cab couldn’t pretend to understand. It was a piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. Lala looked up from the other papers that Justin had hidden away inside the false vent on the roof. ‘We may have bigger problems. Cab, take a look at this.’

  Cab sat next to her on the bed. Lala showed him a copy of the photograph that he’d already seen, displaying the article about Frank Macy’s manslaughter plea. Then she turned over more pages. There were other copies of newspaper articles, all of them dealing with Diane Fairmont and her son and the Common Way Foundation. It was like an obsession, but it wasn’t the articles themselves that bothered him. These weren’t copies made from a newspaper. Someone had made copies of these articles and posted them on a wall like a macabre collection of trophies. Like warnings. It was the kind of collage he’d sometimes found after a stalker struck his victim.

  He saw more photographs. These were taken inside an empty garage. The bulletin board was in the background, against a foreground of an oil-stained floor. And then more photographs, inside what appeared to be an abandoned house.

  ‘What is this?’ Cab asked, but he knew what it looked like. A staging ground. The lair of a killer.

  He realized that he was staring at the reason that Justin had been murdered. Somehow, Justin had found this place. A place that no one was supposed to know about. Not until after more people had died.

  ‘The bigger question is where,’ Lala said. She could read his thoughts. She knew what these pictures meant.

  She put the last photograph in front of him. It was an exterior shot of a dilapidated chocolate-brown house at a T-intersection, with a Bank Sale sign posted in the front yard. The branches of an old elm tree brushed the roof. The windows were boarded over with plywood.

  ‘We need to go,’ Cab told her, getting up.

  ‘Do you know where it is?’

  ‘I was just there,’ he said. ‘I saw it this morning. It’s two blocks from Diane’s estate.’

  49

  Garth checked every room on the first floor of the estate, but the security guard wasn’t there. He’d seen him fifteen minutes earlier in the kitchen, with his gun on the table and a croissant in front of him. Now the croissant was half-eaten, and the security guard and his gun had both vanished. Candle wax oozed across a plate, but the candle had gone out, and he could smell smoke in the air.

  When he checked his phone, Garth saw that he had zero bars of signal. He held it in the air and shook it, but the cell towers had finally gone down. He picked up the house phone and heard nothing. No dial tone.

  They were an island now. Cut off.

  He opened the front door and shouldered onto the porch. The storm wailed. The wind hurtled debris across the yard. He shouted the guard’s name, but his own voice was like a whisper. The garden lights were off. It may as well have been the middle of the night.

  Garth grabbed an oilskin slicker from the hall closet and shrugged his beefy torso into it. Before he zipped it, he removed his gun from his shoulder holster and shoved it inside one of the raincoat pockets. The coat had a hood, which he yanked over his head and tied with a knot under his chin. He shoved his feet into rubber boots. When he jogged down the steps into the deep water, he felt as if the bay had overrun the land and turned it all into a vast sea. The animal sculptures in the garden seemed to be drowning.

  He bowed his head against the wind and pushed toward the back of the estate. The paths were invisible except for the humps of land jutting out of the water like the undulating tail of a monster. He left the open lawn and found himself in dense foliage. Trees fired leaves at him. Grit got in his mouth. The rain squirmed inside his slicker. The sheer force of the water in his face made it hard to breathe.

  ‘Screw this!’ Garth said aloud.

  He turned around, using one arm to shield his face from the branches that whipped through the air like knife blades. He followed the fence hugging the border of the estate and then veered into the gardens. Mud sucked at his boots under the water, and he kept losing his balance, because he couldn’t see the ruts of the ground below his feet. Finally, he felt hard cobblestones as he reached the driveway. He headed toward the house.

  That was when he heard the shot.

  It came from outside the property. The sharp bang was barely audible over the wail of Chayla screaming at him. He reversed course and ran toward the wrought-iron gate at the street. The two halves of the gate slammed wildly back and forth, open and closed, closed and open. Garth had to dive out of the way when one of the metal panels took aim at him like a baseball bat. When both halves swung open again, he hustled onto the street. He was outside the grounds now, and he saw the storm roaring out of the bay. The waves of rain came and came and came. The wind picked up everything in its path and swept it toward him.

  He squinted, trying to see. He had no idea where the gunshot had come from. Ahead. Behind. Was it really a shot? Maybe someone had set off a firecracker for the Fourth of July.

  No, it was definitely a shot.

  Garth pulled his gun from his pocket. He splashed down the street, carried by the wind at his back.

  *

  ‘I don’t hear sirens,’ Cab said. ‘I don’t see any lights.’

  Lala nodded in agreement. ‘There’s nobody coming.’

  They were alone on Bayshore Boulevard. Waves crashed in twenty-foot surges that swept from the bay on their right and flooded through both lanes toward the houses that fronted the opposite side of the street. The sports car rode on water, not pavement.

  ‘Try the security guard again,’ Cab said.

  Lala shook her head. ‘No signal.’

  The street was black. There was no light anywhere. He slowed in the deep water to keep the car from stalling, and he felt the tires bump up on the curb as he swerved, unable to keep a straight path. When he spotted the cross-street that led to the abandoned house, he swung the wheel left, and the Corvette fishtailed. He shot down the narrow cobblestoned street. Where the road ended, he parked on a soft shoulder. The brown roof of the foreclosed property was barely visible beyond a swath of mature elm trees. Cab got out, and Lala got out on the other side. They both had their guns in their hands.

  A chainlink fence marked the eastern edge of the lot. Squat hedgerows grew beside it, giving them shelter. They stayed low. In the rain, they could barely see. He felt as if he were a passenger on the Maid of the Mist, engulfed by the spray of Niagara Falls. They crept close to the rust-stained stucco wall of the house. The front windows were nailed shut with plywood, and kids had spray-painted the boa
rds with graffiti.

  They reached the front door. It was locked.

  Cab cupped his hands over Lala’s ear. ‘The garage,’ he said.

  He led her along the front sidewalk. Panicked lizards leaped from the bushes and skittered up the wall. Water cascaded down the slanted roof of the garage and sluiced over their heads. They slogged into the driveway, where they stood in front of a tan double-wide garage door. Cab pointed at Lala’s gun, and she held it straight and ready as he bent down to yank the chrome handle. The door slid upward on its tracks with a bang.

  A black Lexus sedan was parked in the middle of the concrete floor, facing the street. Cab approached on the left side of the car, and Lala shadowed him on the right. They met at the rear of the sedan. The garage was deserted.

  ‘I know this car,’ Lala murmured. ‘It’s Frank Macy’s.’

  Cab slid a penlight from his pocket and cast a beam around the garage. He spotted the cork bulletin board on the east wall and recognized it from the photographs Justin had taken. When he examined the bulletin board, he saw that only one article remained, thumb-tacked in the very center. He recognized a gauzy picture of Diane, and he saw the message written across the paper in red marker.

  Revenge.

  Gray ash lay at his feet. With the garage door open, the wind scattered the ash into a cloud. He bent down and could still see burnt fragments of paper that had survived the char. When he caught one, it was fresh and warm.

  ‘Cab,’ Lala said.

  She crouched near the trunk of the car. He came closer, and he said, ‘Yeah, I smell it, too.’

  Cab opened the driver’s door of the sedan and pulled the trunk release lever. The trunk popped open with a soft click. He heard Lala suck in her breath, and he knew what she’d found.

  ‘Is it Deacon?’ he asked.

  Lala shook her head. Her face was screwed up in puzzlement.

  He came around the back of the car. The first thing he saw was an aluminum pistol case, which was open and empty, with a slot in the foam where the gun had been. The next thing he saw were bugs crawling across a large sheet of plastic wrap, feeding on the belly of the body that stared up at him. He recognized the face.

  It was Frank Macy.

  50

  Peach felt abandoned.

  She’d wanted to go with Cab and Lala, but they had refused to let her join them in Tampa. They told her to go home, but she couldn’t bear to set foot inside her own house. She couldn’t stay here either, not when everything in this place reminded her of Justin. Cab had given her a key to his mother’s condominium in Clearwater, but she didn’t want to head west into the teeth of the storm. So she perched on Justin’s sofa as stiffly as one of her mannequins, listening to Chayla beat on the house like a hip-hop singer.

  Justin on hip-hip. If Beethoven were alive today, he’d probably be a rapper. I think I’m glad he’s dead.

  Justin.

  Her medical file sat on the table in front of her, unopened. Her records. Her history. Everything about her was in there. Dr Smeltz had been her doctor from the day she was born, and he had been her doctor until she and Deacon moved to the Gulf. Really, he was still her doctor. She had never chosen a new physician; she hadn’t seen a doctor in years. Other girls went to the doctor to deal with birth control, but that wasn’t an issue for her.

  Everything.

  Like the time, after her parents died, when she’d gone crazy with a razor blade and cut herself on her stomach. Lyle had found her bleeding and rushed her to the hospital. She still had the scars. They’d made her see a psychiatrist, but she hated the man’s questions and his annoying patient voice. Couldn’t he see that all she needed was for her parents to come back from their trip? When were they coming home?

  Around that time, she found a mannequin sticking out of a Dumpster behind a Kohl’s department store. Her first. Ditty. She’d called her that, because she kept hearing that John Mellencamp song in her head – the one with the little ditty about Jack and Diane. She’d rescued Ditty from the garbage and taken her home, and Ditty had been a better therapist than any of the real live people who wanted to help her. She’d spent hours talking to the mannequin in her bedroom.

  Everything.

  Her mind. Her body. Her life.

  ‘Why did you take my file?’ she asked Justin.

  You already know the truth.

  Peach picked up the thick folder and left it in her lap. It took her a while to open it. When she finally did, she turned to pages in the middle. Somewhere around age six, she’d broken two bones in her right wrist. Funny, she didn’t even remember it. She waved her right hand as if she were a beauty queen in a parade, but her wrist worked fine, and she’d never noticed any pain there. Kids heal. She saw her mother’s signature on release forms for X-rays. Thinking about it, she had a vague memory of wearing a cast and of Deacon writing FRUITY on it.

  More pages. Physicals. She remembered the cold steel of a stethoscope on her chest and how she squealed. The wooden stick on her tongue. Ahhhhh. Dr Smeltz poking her in the belly button. ‘You’re as fit as a fiddle with a hole in your middle.’ Herself, giggling every time.

  Weird rash. ‘You shouldn’t touch those plants, sweetie, they’re poisonous.’

  Prescription for Amoxicillin for a bad ear infection.

  Chicken pox. ‘I’ve seen lots of tots with spots.’

  Diarrhea.

  Burn on her pinkie from touching a hot stove. She still had a whitish patch of skin there.

  Pneumonia.

  The notes on pneumonia were near the front of the file, because it was one of the last times she’d seen Dr Smeltz. She remembered getting sick in Tampa and Lyle and Deacon screaming at each other. She remembered the long drive home at night, the loud music, the weird sweet smell in the car, and then herself throwing up all over the back seat. Deacon, shouting at her.

  The soft bed at Diane Fairmont’s house. Dr Smeltz in the bedroom. ‘You’re lucky I was here, young lady. You are very sick, but I’m going to make you better. Okay?’

  She removed a page from the doctor’s notes. His handwriting was awful. Fever at 104. Taking immediate steps to bring temperature down. Delirium. Girl keeps repeating: Why is there so much blood?

  Peach blinked and read that sentence again.

  Girl keeps repeating: Why is there so much blood?

  She heard a voice in her head, but it was her own voice.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What’s happening? I’m scared.’

  ‘Why is there so much blood?’

  Peach snapped the file shut. She stared at her hands and saw that they were trembling like leaves afraid to fall. She put the file back on the table in front of her, and she never wanted to open it again, never wanted to see it again. You already know the truth.

  She closed her eyes. The thump of the storm became a thumping inside her head, pressing on the walls of her skull. She felt herself go somewhere else, somewhere long ago and far away. It was night. She was on a road, the world spinning. And then her brain, sounding like the kindly voice of Dr Smeltz, interrupted and pulled her back: Don’t you go there, young lady.

  Peach thought about Justin in the library at Lake Wales. She imagined him at the reception desk, smiling, being charming, asking the librarian to find a local address for Dr Smeltz. Before that, he’d spent hours among the microfiche carrels, copying pages from the newspapers ten years ago. She saw a stack of pages he’d left for her. Articles he’d copied from the microfiche.

  Those pages looked scary to her now. She didn’t want to see them, but she picked them up anyway. Most of the copies were from newspapers printed the day after Labor Day, featuring ugly black headlines about the murders. But not all. As she dug through the pages, she saw that Justin had gone further back, to the weekend when things began to go bad. When everything was different. When nobody was the same.

  She saw an article about a political fundraiser in Tampa.

  ‘Oh, Lyle, can I go, too? I want
to see the city! And the zoo! Please please please please please.’

  She remembered Lyle: stressed, angry, driving her and Deacon in the Mercedes to Tampa. Another argument. Deacon sulked the whole ride. He didn’t want to go, not with his twelve-year-old sister, not as a babysitter. Lyle left them alone in the city; he had things to do, important people to talk to. She and Deacon went to Busch Gardens. She took rides; he smoked funny-smelling cigarettes and said not to tell Lyle about it.

  On one of the rides, she noticed that her throat had begun to hurt.

  By evening, she was in the hotel room in bed, burning up. Coughing. Sweating. Sobbing: ‘I just want to go home, please take me home, I want to go home!’

  Lyle shouting at their brother: ‘Goddamn it, Deacon, for once in your life, stop thinking about yourself, and do what I tell you! Get in the car, and drive your sister back home right now!’

  Peach picked up another article from the stack of copies Justin had made. She read the headline:

  SEARCH CONTINUES FOR

  MISSING TEENAGER

  Police and community volunteers scoured the woods surrounding Lake Wales yesterday, continuing the search for Alison Garner, 14, who was reported missing by her parents late Saturday evening.

  No evidence of the girl’s whereabouts have been discovered so far, and no witnesses have come forward with information about the disappearance.

  Alison was believed to be riding her bicycle when she left the family home, which is located on Old Bartow Road in West Lake Wales. She was last seen wearing red nylon shorts and a white tank top …

  No matter how many times Peach tried to read the article, she couldn’t finish. She simply saw one name over and over.

  Alison. Alison. Alison.

  There was one page left that she hadn’t seen. One more article that Justin had copied. She didn’t want to pick it up, because she knew exactly what it would say. She knew how the story ended.

  You already know the truth.

  She turned over the paper.