Devils in Dark Houses

by B. E. Scully

  “If Sherry Stratton is released, either from the case getting dismissed or because she makes bail pending trial, she’s going to get some kind of custody of her daughter, even if it’s joint or supervised. Kayla is staying with her maternal grandparents right now, and even if Sherry was refused custody, do you think they’re going to keep Sherry away from her own kid?

  After all, Sherry is their daughter as much as Kayla is their granddaughter. They don’t believe for one second Sherry is guilty in this. In their minds, William Stratton is the absolute bad guy. And can you imagine what kind of damage Sherry could do in terms of undermining Kayla’s state of mind, even with minimal contact? How convenient for Sherry to be right back in the life of the child who could potentially help put her behind bars. But that’s actually not even the worst case scenario. Parents like Sherry Stratton who know they’re going down have a tendency to take their children down with them when they go. As you well know, Monte. The mother might be doing us all a favor, but the last thing we need right now is another dead Stratton kid on our hands.”

  That conversation had taken place on January 15th. Monte had held out for almost a week before finally spilling the whole story to Cassie one night at the Slammer, sitting right at table Number Eight.

  “And you know the worst part?” Monte had asked. “Lieutenant Mickelson knows all about the whole thing. Of course he does! He’s head of homicide, and you know as well as I do that Iceberg knows everything that happens on his watch. So much as one scratch on a patrol car’s fender, Iceberg knows about it.”

  Monte was exaggerating, but it was true that Lieutenant Dan “Iceberg” Mickelson ran a tight ship. Tall and rangy, with the lean, muscular build of the long distance cyclist he used to be, the only undisciplined thing about Lieutenant Mickelson was what Cassie thought of as his “warning slug”—a huge vein on the left side of his forehead that throbbed and bulged whenever things at the station got particularly crazy. Considering how well Mickelson lived up to his nickname, slug-vein was the only way to even guess what was going on beneath that icy surface.

  “Have you talked to Mickelson yet?” Cassie asked.

  “Of course not!” Monte roared. “This is definitely a case of the less said, the better. In fact, goddamn Needham said something just like that to me last week, sitting right where you are now. But you know how it works, Cass. Every desk cop or file clerk or guy standing around the copy machine doing nothing saw that report, and every cop in the department has been following the Stratton case. They may not know exactly what’s going on, but they know I know something the D.A. doesn’t want coming out in that hearing. And the whole department is waiting to see how it’s gonna play out.”

  Cassie wished she could disagree with him, but she couldn’t. After all, cops spent their entire careers sniffing out suspicious situations and looking a little harder at things that other people might pass by. And like most workplaces, the tangled, thorny tendrils of the gossip grapevine spread far and fast. Five months earlier, the city had been rocked by a series of vigilante-style crimes that had gone viral, prompting a string of copycat crimes and online activism that had increasingly put the community at odds with the police. Add to that the fact that people couldn’t even read the news these days without learning about one more unarmed citizen, usually either black, poor, or mentally disturbed, being gunned down by a police force starting to look and act more like a military squad in a hostile land than officers sworn to serve and protect.

  People were angry and cops were defensive. In fact, the only ones winning this particular war seemed to be the media and the lawyers. Monte holding back at Sherry Stratton’s pre-trial hearing was more than just a favor to the D.A.—it was a statement about what it meant to be a cop. And Monte had less than two weeks to decide what that statement was going to be.

  Sherry Stratton’s hearing was scheduled for January 30th. It was now January 19th.

  It had been one hell of a winter so far.

  The young girl in the hoodie was still standing in the rain opposite Shirdon’s window. If she’s still there when I get out of the shower, I’ll talk to her.

  But just as Shirdon had suspected—and, if she was being honest, had hoped—by then the girl was gone.

  When she got to the station, the place was buzzing like a beehive, and it had nothing to do with either the Sherry Stratton case or vigilantes with Twitter accounts. This time, everyone from the cops to the janitors were all talking about one thing—the night before, a man had come into the station claiming he was going to murder Lieutenant Dan Mickelson. As if that wasn’t enough, the man who this would-be murderer claimed had told him to kill Mickelson was none other than Morris Falten, Mickelson’s partner before he rose up the ranks to head of homicide.

  The only problem was that eleven years ago, Morris Falten, who had a reputation for going hard and heavy after the worst kinds of criminals, had walked out of his house one March afternoon and never been seen again. His wife and son hadn’t heard a word from him since, and eventually he was officially declared dead.

  Only now a man calling himself the Hound claimed he was back. Even worse, he also claimed Morris Falten was looking for revenge.

  3

  The man in the muddy, tattered clothes was pressing the palm of one hand against a filthy wad of rags tied like a makeshift pirate patch around his right eye. The other eye was staring warily at the big bulldog of a detective sitting across from him. For his part, Monte Martinez was looking just as wary.

  Lieutenant Mickelson was on the other side of the one way glass, studying the pair intently. Cassie wondered if she was the only one in homicide who hadn’t gotten the memo to come to work early today.

  “How long have they been in there?”

  She was surprised when Mickelson jumped at the sound of her voice. Surprising a person like Dan Mickelson was about as easy as sneaking up on a caged panther.

  “Not long,” Mickelson said, turning back to the glass. “We’re waiting on more information from social services. The in-take officers spent half the night just figuring out this guy’s real name. Luckily he’s in the system, so his prints eventually gave him up.”

  “Mentally ill?” Police officers were used to seeing people desperate enough to actually want to get arrested for the night just for a place to stay, or a hot meal and some basic health care. But the worst de facto service jails provided was to warehouse the mentally ill who had ended up homeless and had no place left to end up.

  Mickelson nodded. “Which helps explain the fact that he’s convinced Morris Falten is back in town and has ordered him to kill me.”

  “Let me get this straight—Morris Falten, the superhero detective who disappeared, what, over ten years ago and was never heard from again? That Morris Falten?”

  “Eleven years ago. And yes, that Morris Falten. And also my partner at the time he disappeared.”

  “Right,” Cassie said, trying to keep up. “I was still in uniform then, but yeah, the Falten story is legend around here. So who’s this guy? And what does he have to do with Morris Falten?”

  “This guy’s name is Sean Packard. According to what we know so far, he’s a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia with all of the typical symptoms—delusions, hallucinations, incoherent speech. He’s been in and out of mental institutions since his mid-twenties.”

  “Previous violent behavior?”

  The slug-vein on Mickelson’s forehead pulsed to life and then went still. “Doesn’t look like it, but we’ll know more when we get his full medical records. He’s been arrested numerous times up and down the coast. Criminal trespassing, prohibited camping, misdemeanor thefts—that sort of thing. Looks as if he was in Arizona for the past several years and then drifted west again.”

  In the interview room, Sean Parker suddenly shot out of his chair, squatted down in the corner, pulled his knees up, and put his head between them. On the other side of the table, Martinez groaned out of his chair like a man in sore need of a massage therap
ist and slipped out the door into the hallway.

  The two men nodded at each other, but their eyes kept skittering toward just about any other destination. The name “Sherry Stratton” might as well have been written in big black letters on both of their foreheads. Speaking of which, Shirdon also noticed that Mickelson’s vein had come to full throbbing life.

  “Am I glad to see you,” Martinez told Shirdon. “I need all the help I can get in there.”

  “Anything concrete yet?” Mickelson asked.

  “Concrete? This guy’s more like wet sand—the further in I go, the harder the slog. And messier. Packard—or I should say the ‘Hound,’ because that’s what he keeps saying I should call him—he says he’s on meds for the schizophrenia, but you know how that goes. He probably went off them or got lost in the shuffle when he left Arizona. If he is on meds, he needs some new ones, because nothing he’s saying is making sense. And now he won’t talk to me at all, as you can see.”

  “I’ll be in my office,” Mickelson said, already starting down the hall. “If he says anything lucid, let me know. Otherwise, turn him over to mental health.”

  “You don’t want to hold him?” Martinez asked. “We can charge him with making threats against a police officer and go from there.”

  “Unless he says something lucid related to an active case, there’s no reason to hold him. With the weather as bad as it’s been lately, county lock-up won’t have any beds to spare.”

  Shirdon watched Martinez watch Mickelson stride down the hall. Even the man’s walk was purposeful, but today he seemed as off-kilter as the rest of the department.

  “Hell of a winter so far,” Shirdon said.

  “Tell me about it,” Martinez grumbled. “And we’re not even through January yet.” He sighed and nodded toward the interview room. “Back to the quicksand, but I don’t think ol’ hound dog there is having anything to do with the concept of ‘lucid’ right now.”

  The Hound was still crouched against the wall.

  Shirdon glanced through Sean Packard’s file while Martinez attempted to pick up where they’d left off, which seemed to involve something about aliens. The files contained all the usual information—Packard was forty-eight years old, and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1991, when he was twenty-four and almost finished with college. He’d been in and out of institutions and jail cells ever since. Shirdon was about to close the files when something caught her eye—before he dropped out of college, the Hound had been a history major. In fact, history seemed to be one of his big passions.

  Shirdon also noticed that a major historical discovery coincided with the onset of Packard’s illness. “Says here you’re interested in the Iceman, the frozen mummy found in the mountains between Austria and Italy?”

  She hadn’t even finished the question before the Hound was on his feet and right in her face, so close that she backed up in surprise at the fetid stench coming from the man’s unwashed clothes and body.

  “You know the Iceman?” he said, his one eye bulging.

  But Martinez was on his feet, too, holding his hands up in front of the Hound. “Hey, calm down and step back out of the officer’s face, or this interview ends right now!”

  For the few first years of their partnership, Shirdon had resented the fact that her comparatively slight, five-foot-six inch frame was far less intimidating to suspects than her partner’s hulking six-foot and counting one, but the older she got, the more she appreciated it. Martinez would always have the physical advantage in some ways, but then again, it took him a hell of a lot longer to climb a flight of stairs, and forget about fitting through the sometimes rat-hole tight places the job took them into.

  In the Hound’s case, though, size seemed to matter. He instantly retreated to his own chair and began staring intently at his hands. But at least he was off the floor and talking again.

  “I don’t know the Iceman, but I know about him,” Shirdon said. “I’m guessing not as much as you do, though.”

  The Hound kept staring at his hands, but he couldn’t resist the subject. “The Iceman. Just took him out of the ground, and the signal went out. Shit’s been hitting ever since. Great White Aliens. Everything goes back to them.”

  Shirdon glanced at Martinez, but he just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. “Who are the Great White Aliens?”

  The Hound pointed at the ceiling and raised his eyes to some unseen heaven. “Greek civilization, came right out of nowhere. Egyptians, Mayans, Persians. Primitive to super advanced, overnight. Had to have some help.” He looked at Shirdon intently, the first time he’d made eye contact. “From beings who weren’t originally from this planet.”

  Martinez had positioned himself along the wall, within arm’s reach of the Hound if he got too excited again. “Where were they from then?”

  “Some other planet. Maybe some other version of our own planet. People of earth going along nicely, developing. Too slow for the Great White Aliens, though.” The Hound shook his head sadly. “Came down here and advanced us before we were ready. Went in all the wrong ways. All wrong!”

  “Keep it calm, buddy, if you want to keep talking,” Martinez warned.

  “Why do you call them the Great White Aliens?” Shirdon asked.

  The Hound scowled down at his hands. “Pale-skinned. Must have looked something like us. Us humans. Enough to interbreed, anyway. Must have been pale. From outer space. Only thing that makes sense.”

  “Why would aliens come here and take over the planet?” Shirdon asked.

  The Hound shook his head again. “Might not even remember their original mission anymore. Might have left their descendants as stranded here as the rest of us. Might have destroyed their own planet and came here to take over this one.” The Hound banged his fist on the table and cast a wary glance at Martinez. He was talking too fast, saying too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop. It had been a long time since he’d talked to anyone other than the rain. “Maybe they were even criminals who got expelled from their own planet! They set up advanced colonies all over the earth, only some of them, due to weather or geography or resistance from the native populations—some of them went under! Lost civilizations, all over the planet!”

  “But some of their colonies survived,” Shirdon said.

  “Not only survived but thrived,” the Hound confirmed. “Blended right in with the natives. But they’re never satisfied. They’re always pushing, always trying to get back to their own planet, maybe. And the Iceman got them all stirred up again.” He leaned forward and whispered, “That’s where the Internet came from.”

  “Help me out here, Hound,” Martinez said. “So all white people or light-skinned people are aliens?”

  “No-no-no!” the Hound said with the rapid-fire urgency of someone who has spent most of his life trying and failing to be understood. “Don’t you see it? They bred with the native populations all over this earth. They’re everywhere now. Descendants all over the planet, only the alien blood has been mixed with ours for such a long time now—over four thousand years!”

  The Hound was speaking feverishly now. “Alien ancestors all over the world. Only some are almost pureblood. Those are the ones that control everything! Everything! All the money, all the power. Everything. And the almost purebloods hate the natives, because they know they don’t belong here! We do, and we’re finally wising up and taking back our planet. But there’s a lot of them here. A lot.” The Hound pressed his eye patch and shook his head again. “It’s not going to be easy. In fact, either of you could be one of them,” he said, swiveling his bulging eye back and forth between the two detectives. “This whole thing could be a complete set-up!”

  Martinez and Shirdon exchanged a glance. If they were going to get anything lucid out of the Hound, it had to be soon.

  “I don’t know, Hound,” Martinez said. “My partner here is as pale-faced as they get, but I’m pretty brown.”

  “You’re Mexican, right?”

  “I’m
American, same as you. But my family came here from Mexico, you’re right about that.”

  “The Aztecs. Spanish conquistadors. Not as native as you might think.” The Hound shook his head sadly. “Not many are by this time.”

  Martinez began grinding his jaw, his version of Mickelson’s stress vein.

  “And is Detective Morris Falten one of these Great White Aliens?” Shirdon asked.

  A long-ago memory sent up a flare somewhere in the Hound’s brain, but it fizzled out and went dark. “I don’t know anyone named Detective Morris Falten.”

  “The Bone Man,” Martinez broke in. “The man you came all the way to the station in the pouring rain to report because he wants you to kill another police detective.”

  “The Bone Man,” the Hound said, closing his eye tightly and tucking his chin against his chest. “The Bone Man is definitely a Great White Alien. Maybe even one of the pure bloods. I didn’t know that at first, but I know it now.”

  “Do you know the Bone Man personally?” Martinez asked, stepping away from the wall. “Because I’m going to be straight with you, Hound, the same way you’ve been straight with us so far. Most people around here think the Bone Man is dead. He disappeared a long time ago, and most people think it’s because one of the bad guys he chased for a living decided to get rid of him once and for all. Maybe because they thought he was an evil alien, too. Do you know anything about that?”

  The Hound stayed silent for a long time, staring at his hands. Then finally he said, “Sometimes people you think are gone aren’t really gone at all. They’re just not here the way you think they are. The way they were when you knew them.”

  “What way is the Bone Man still here, Hound?” Shirdon asked.

  The Hound looked up and stared at the wall, seeing something only he could see. “They’re here in the rain,” he whispered.

  Martinez sighed and rubbed his eyes. So much for that lucid part. “Listen, Hound, I know you’ve been through the system enough times to know that mental health is going to get involved here. If you need to see someone about getting your medication straightened out or if you haven’t been taking it regularly—”