Roland Hatfield stood with his mouth agape now as she came out of trance, and once he realized she was back, he asked questions as if the dyke had broken, one spilling out over the other. She’d never known him to speak so loudly or long on any subject.
“Where did you go? What’d you see? Did the evidence reveal anything to you? Tell me, what did you see? Did the hammer help? The nails? What, what, what? Tell me now.”
Rae thought she heard footfalls, a rustling at the door, someone on the outside trying to get in but the wind was pushing hard against the trailer, and she chalked up the noises to branches of trees leaning in and scratching at the roof and exterior walls. Maybe. All the same, she checked to be sure her 9mm was where it belonged. She’d have it at the ready when she needed it. But it was gone, removed from her shoulder holster. Who but Hatfield had taken it? Or had she, while in trance, removed it? Either way, she saw that it lay on a the cracked-mirror bureau.
“Tell me! What did you see?” insisted Hatfield who now held the hammer at his side, obviously a believer after all.
“Not much,” she lied. “Disappointing reading, really.”
“You saw something! Your features, your body language said so.”
“Like before…I saw the killing.”
“And the killer? Was it Cottrill? Describe the bastard! Tell me!”
“I didn’t get a clear look at his features, and neither did Marci the night she died, but she knew him. I just know it.”
“How do you know?” “She recognized him the way we all subtly know who is in our presence.”
“How’s that, Dr. Hiyakawa? That you know that Marci knew him, but you can’t yourself identify the Sleepwalker?”
“Through the senses, his odor, his voice. She…she gave me the impression she knew her killer, recognized him seconds before death.”
“He spoke to her?”
“Screamed, shouted at her. Called her a bitch.”
“I see.” Hatfield looked confused. “I took the precaution, while you were under, to removed the firearm. The way you were flailing…you see? The hammer looked dangerous as well.” He held it up. “At one point, I thought you’d hurt yourself, so I pried it from you.”
“Dr. Hatfield, your sister, she saw his watch, his ring…called out something odd.”
“Something odd?”
“I thought it a name, but unsure. I got the sense Marci recognized his voice, and she called out this odd name.”
“George! She called out George Cottrill’s name!”
“No, she called out someone’s name. Couldn’t make it out; can’t be sure precisely.”
His eyes widened, and he nodded successively. “I understand.” He paced the room where his sister had been horribly disfigured. “I quite, quite understand. You can’t possibly know everything you see or feel in a trance state to be accurate or clear.” He kept pacing, one hand rubbing into the other when she saw the watch and the ring he wore—identical to those she’d seen in trance while reading the murder weapon. But had she seen these items in a moment of lucidity, when Hatfield had interfered, wrenching the hammer or the gun or both from her?
He kept pacing, hammer yet in hand. Catlike nervousness told her he was stressed to the edge. She inched away and off the bed, her fingers going for the gun. He kept talking, saying, “No one can expect perfect clarity in a…a comatose state.” He suddenly brought the hammer down at her hand as she reached for the gun, the claw digging into the bureau top, missing her fingers by an inch at best.
It all came clear in an insane instant.
Dr. Roland Hatfield had, for whatever reason, murdered his sister that night. The additional murders of the innocent had been a clumsy effort to cover up the first killing.
Hatfield wrapped his enraged hand around the hilt of the hammer even more tightly, his knuckles white, eyes red, bloodshot, angry. In a metamorphic moment, his features had changed into those of a madman.
“Rolly-polly,” she muttered the phrase that’d come out of her telekinetic reading of the murder weapon. “You were fat as a child, heh, Doctor?”
The childish rhyming nickname that his sister called him throughout their years together. She had indeed called out her killer’s name, and it was her brother’s play name. Rolly polly, wholly moley!
“Why? Why’d you kill her, Rolly?”
He wasn’t in a talking mood; in fact, his mood was for murder again, Rae’s murder. He lunged at her with the hammer. Rae feinted to one side and tripped him up with a move she’d learned in first year FBI academy, and it sent him into the bureau where he struck his head a sharp blow, the crash sending her gun to the floor, skittering not toward her but away from her.
When he regained his feet, blood trickled down his forehead to his eyes, now wide with rage. She lifted a small bedside table and threw it at him, sending him to the rustic floor with his deadly weapon still in hand. She tried to get to her gun, but it meant clamoring over him, and she feared he’d trip her and overpower her and bring the deadly hammer down and into her skull.
Still, she scanned the floor for the gun’s location. Seeing it the other side of the killer, who’d regained his feet, didn’t bode well.
“I’m going to kill you now,” Hatfield said in an even, calm voice as if saying he’d like the next dance.
“With the dead in here looking on?” she asked. “With your sister still watching you?”
“That slut! She got what she deserved! One man after another, always looking for the next hit—damned drug addict. Ruining my name, our mother’s good name!”
He came at Rae again, and she kicked out at his private parts, but he pulled back, and as her kick missed its mark, slamming into his thigh instead, he slammed the hammer into her shin, causing excruciating pain along with Rae’s scream.
She wheeled away in the cramped space, the pain shooting through her as she attempted to get past him by going over the mattress. She grabbed up one of the nails just as he grabbed an ankle, dropping her on the bed. She rolled over and down, stabbing his hand with one of the loose 3-penny nails—driving it home and making him squeal in pain. The shock of it made him lose his hold on her ankle.
The nail proved her only weapon against his hammer. It felt like she was in a fixed fight like some gladiator given a toothpick against a sword. Still, she held tight to her metal toothpick, her only weapon other than her training at this point.
She made it to the living room area and to the door, tearing it open and fleeing out onto the porch and the pitchblack night. The murderer in hot pursuit made it known he was on her heels.
# # #
No moon in the sky helped greatly to hide Rae’s escape. She used the black woods to cloak herself. Behind her, she heard his slow, deliberate approach, when she realized he was singing, a low, creepy, guttural rendition of the Gordon Lightfoot song, My Troubles and I. He was at the chorus, “Float through the sky…” repeating it like an old phonograph record with its stylus stuck on one groove.
Why in hell didn’t I see this coming, she inwardly pleaded with her so-called gift.
She dare not move or breathe for fear the medical examiner turned madman would hear and come directly for her. In the darkness all she saw was the glint of steel nails and the hammer in his hand. She clutched the one nail in her balled fist. God how she wished she had her gun. A nail was hardly enough in this situation.
In the blackness all around, Rae watched the brutal Dr. Hatfield, who’d become a predator, like some primeval werewolf, inch closer. He kept softly singing the same chorus. “Float through the sky…”
She recalled her early visions of the floating woman; God, how long ago had it been that she’d seen this vague omen?
She wondered if she dared attempt to turn the tables here and attack him before he could attack her. She felt around the leaves at her toes for anything smacking of a boulder, but she’d settle for a rock or a good, stiff branch. Rae’s toes reported back: Nothing doing.
The skimpy nail
was all she had, but if she could force it deep into the chest at the heart, or if she could sink it deep into his gullet—direct into a major artery—he might be stopped with a single blow. But suppose he deflected her attempt, and it wound up, say in his shoulder or arm?
Better part of valor, she decided, was to keep absolutely still and pray that he went on by and out of sight in his search for her in the wooded acres here, in which case she might slip back toward the road and another house, find sanctuary, call for help, backup—as she didn’t dare create the noise of a call from here, now. One hand deep in her pocket held onto her cell, the other held tight to the nail. Once she got some distance between them, she’d make a 9-1-1 call. She thank God that Hatfield hadn’t thought to get hold of her cell phone when he’d taken her Glock.
Hatfield had at least a hundred pounds on her.
“Float…float…float through the sky,” Hatfield sang on as he relentless came toward her.
She decided to remain as still and as inert as the tree she hugged and inched around as he came ever closer.
Still not breathing, or at least not so she noticed, Rae felt confident that her plan of survival had a good chance of working. She mentally steeled herself for anything now.
For the moment, it appeared her plan to blend with the night and the landscape was working, as she watched Roland Thomas Hatfield move past her. The black she’d decided on with her black leather jacket proved perfect.
“My troubles and I,” he continued singing.
Don’t move. Easy…easy does it. Mustn’t rustle a single leaf at this moment. Silence complete now. He’s within spitting distance.
Be patient. Easy…
Let him go out of sight in that direction.
He was moving off now, away from her, his tune with him. Everything was going to be all right.
Rae’s phone rang, piercing the quiet, bleating like a pained goat in the stillness, alerting the killer to her exact whereabouts. “Damn it!” she said and fumbled and worked to shut off the ring tone that played the theme from the Twilight Zone immediately. There was no time to answer a call from Quantico, Virginia now as he was coming straight for her now.
Rae ran back the way she’d come, back toward the light from the trailer and the other houses on Finch Lane. She ran faster than she thought herself capable of doing, but she could hear the dry crunch of leaves behind her telling her that he was gaining with his deadly weapon of choice raised and poised to come down at her skull. One strike to her head, and she could be incapacitated, and then he’d finish the job. She’d die like Marci Cottrill and his other victims had died.
She imagined the horrors he’d commit on her body, nails driven into her eyes, if she fell under his power. He likely had a pocketful of nails, brought with him from the get go. Sleepwalker indeed. This man was a cold-blooded killer, his steps premeditated. This man was the poster child for capital punishment.
Her mind raced as she worked to save herself. The neighbors. They were moments before to be avoided. Now they meant survival. But she feared she’d not get that far.
Rae had to survive. She feared Nia would be lost without her; Nia would lose her true self if raised by Tomi Yoshikani. She’d become a spoiled, shallow, and conceited adult with more concern for a diamond hairbrush than say brotherhood, friendship, loyalty, and such things as character and human life.
She heard the monster behind her, heaving and grunting like a razorback pig, and his panting sounded close. She looked for the blackest black hole she could find, and it presented itself. The trailer was raised off the ground on blocks, something she’d paid no attention to before this moment. Beneath the trailer, lie a thick, pitch black world. She rounded the house to throw him off. Here, she dived under the house so that he could not see precisely where she’d disappeared to as he rounded the corner.
Rae’s dive from sight had her disregarding the filth and spider webs along with the sound of scurrying vermin here beneath the trailer.
From her vantage point, Rae watched the agitated monster’s legs march to and fro as his eyes scanned a 380 degrees in search of her. The man showed anxiety chased by frustration, and his wolf-like howl of anger and venom sent a shiver through Rae.
Where she lay, no human eyes could penetrate. She now had the advantage. While some might think her hiding here foolish, she saw numerous escape routes going off in many directions, should he decide to come under and after her.
Rae’s legs, her shoulders, hands, body kept spiking inward each time she touched something awful here, or anything that came sniffing nearby, curious of this intrusion. Some of the ‘creatures’ turned out to be discarded empty tin cans or gooey substances she could not recognize by touch alone. A cat screeched, giving her away before it raced off into the night.
Once again, an outside source of noise had alerted a killer to her location. She wanted to scream in frustration, because now the maniac had gotten to his knees, and he next lowered himself and the hammer to the earth. Like a predatory animal, his eyes flashing in the blackness here, Hatfield was coming straight at Rae.
Rae recalled her key chain had a mace canister attached. She fumbled for the keys, and the rattle sent his eyes darting to precisely to where she lay. He moved like a lizard, intent on getting his claws—or rather those of the hammer—into her head. In any event, the reptile was onto her, slithering toward her.
Rae scrambled back and back toward one of the exits the other side of the house, rattling the keys intentionally now, guiding him ever closer, but he made animal-like moves and came at her so much faster than she’d hoped.
Still, when he came within inches, she opened the mace on him, hitting him directly in the eyes. The reaction was immediate, Hatfield screaming at the top of his lungs here in the confined, coffin-like space. The noise he made must send every insect, spider, and mouse racing away. He whelped like a mad dog, screeched in pain, screamed obscenities, all while Rae made her escape.
As soon as she emerged from beneath the house, Rae thought of racing off in a flight of terror, thought of playing Pauline as in the Perils of Pauline, but she missed her gun, missed its heft and weight and the feeling of security it’d always given her, and even as she recalled where it’d been left, she made steps toward the trailer door. Hatfield may’ve been reluctant to use the gun on her, reluctant to draw attention before he could get himself and his car out of the area, but she had no qualms about blowing him away. She need only get her hands on her weapon.
She burst back into the trailer, raced through the rooms and into the bedroom. She grabbed the gun where it had awaited her return. The feel of it, the solidness of it, and the purpose for its existence all made for a calmness that now flowed through Rae. She marched back through the trailer in a calm resolve, intent on either arresting or killing the Hammerhead killer, recalling that West Virginia was not going to put this man into a gas chamber or an electric chair.
It flashed through her mind that the man she now hunted could easily get off with an insanity plea, one that he’d carefully worked up from the beginning, or at least the day after murdering his sister Marci—who ‘d apparently died for her sins.
Rae burst back through the back door and crouched to point her gun at the monster beneath the trailer. She hesitated a moment, sizing up the situation. If she fired and killed him where he lay, someone might suggest she was not in any imminent danger, after all, when she blew him away. While she weighed up the various scenarios, she heard his car engine turn over. Hatfield was the other side of the trailer, intent on his own escape now, getting away.
She raced around to the other side of the trailer, fired two shots, and his retreating automobile reported back that she’d struck it. In fact, her rounds knocked out one light and put a hole in his trunk, but he was gone, and she was left standing on the gravel. Out of sheer fatigue, she went to her knees, her gun still held tightly in her two fists, while her mind configured not only what had happened but how she could prove it.
She stood and returned to the trailer where she sat on the stairs, shaking her head when her phone vibrated. She opened it, and answered the call from Quantico, Miranda Waldron.
Miranda perkily leapt into it. “Rae, darling, we got cut off, but no matter!”
“Listen to me, Miranda!”
“Rae, we’ve got great news! We intend to make that forty eight hour deadline that was so unfairly imposed on you.”
“I need to make an emergency call, Miranda,” she panted in return, out of breath.
The other woman kept going, not hearing. “The facts are irrefutable, Rae. The think tank has pieced together some valuable clues.”
“Listen to me, Miranda.”
“For one, we believe that your killer works in a hospital or hospital-like setting, and may in fact wear green scrubs.”
“Gee…Miranda, that’s great to know, but at the moment, I need immediate assistance, so ring me back in five—”
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