“My grammy has been awfully depressed for years now,” Allison bawled. “Sometimes, when she gets drinking, she tells me about her family, how she was once married to a guy here in New Castle and they had two kids, my mother and my uncle. They broke up for some reason, and my mother left and moved to Cleveland, where my mother had moved. That’s where I was born, you know. We came back five years ago because of a death in the family. My mother has always hated my Grammy for some reason, but after we moved here things just got worse! That’s when my mother pulled me out of school and kept us on the go. She didn’t want to have anything to do with my Grammy but…” Allison’s breath turned to hitching sobs. “…it’s like she can’t help herself. We always find our way back here. And meanwhile, things get worse with my Grammy and my mother.
“Anyway, I know I’m risking a lot in being here,” Allison continued. “But…I just wanted you to know that I don’t blame you for anything. I know you would have tried to help me if you could. And that…well, because of what my mother says about you, and the call she made to the police…that you can’t really do anything.”
“That’s quite all right, Allison,” I said.
“I’ve been doing what you said, though!” Allison had stepped back and was standing near the doorway. “I’ve got all kinds of evidence against Doug! All I need is a few more things and—”
“Evidence against Doug?” Jack asked. He looked confused.
I quickly filled Jack in on the musings Allison and I shared about Doug Tinker, about Allison’s belief the man’s father had been responsible for those earlier murders in New Castle and that Doug was the source for the original murders due to his supernatural origins. Jack had heard part of Allison’s crazy theory the previous summer.
Jack furrowed his brow, his interest obviously piqued. “The man’s strange, all right. So was his father, from what I heard.”
“He’s a freak!” Allison almost squealed. “I broke into his house again and guess what I found?”
“Allison, I thought I told you not to break into his house!”
“Remember the basement door?” Allison exclaimed, ignoring the reminder of my earlier warning to her. “It’s still locked, and it smells funny in the kitchen. Like it’s coming from the basement. What if there’s severed heads down there?”
“Allison!”
Jack started laughing. I shot a look at him. Jack’s laugh was good-natured, sunny almost. “Allison, the smell of rotting flesh has a very distinct scent to it. You’d recognize it in an instant.”
“I would?”
“Yes. Remember last summer when that deer was hit on Carmichael road? Remember the smell?”
The look on Allison’s face told me she remembered it. “Yeah,” she said, her voice strained in a look of disgust. “And what I smelled coming out of Doug’s basement wasn’t like that. It was different.” Her features changed again, becoming excited. “But guess what else I found? In his closet he has this box at the bottom of a bunch of clothes and stuff, and inside it were these pictures of men doing things to other men, and some of them were tied up and…” She visibly shuddered. “It creeped me out, so I put them away.”
Despite my denial that Doug could be the New Castle Butcher, I felt uneasy about the photographs Allison found.
“How are you able to do this investigating if your mother does these horrible things to you?” Jack asked.
“Some days my mom and James are so drunk they completely forget about me,” Allison said. “That’s when I continue my investigation.” She looked at Jack hopefully. “I want to be a detective when I grow up!”
“Do you?” Jack asked her.
“Listen, Allison,” I said. I walked over to her, put my arm around her shoulders and tried to gently steer her toward the side door. “You keep up your investigation. But don’t break into that man’s home anymore! It’s not only illegal, he could catch you unexpectedly and you could be hurt. Promise me you’ll stop following him around and breaking into his house.”
Allison sighed in annoyance. “Okay, I promise.”
“I’m not trying to hinder you at all,” I continued. “I think ultimately you’re doing the right thing. What you’re doing is very helpful. In fact, some of what you’re doing will go a long way in you becoming a real detective.”
“He’s right, Allison,” Jack continued. “Real detectives don’t break into other people’s homes. They can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Jack answered. “Because they need to go through proper procedure. They need a search warrant from a judge first. And in order to obtain one, they need to prove to the judge that they have probable cause to search the place. In other words, they must have already gathered a lot of really good evidence without resorting to obtaining it through illegal means.”
“You mean they need witnesses to come forward?”
“Yes. They need witnesses. They need some sort of physical proof that ties him to the crime. Fingerprints, bloodstains, that kind of thing.”
Allison was beginning to look disenchanted again.
“Don’t look so glum,” Jack continued. “You just need somebody to show you the ropes, that’s all. I’ve met a lot of detectives in my day, especially on my job with the railroad. I’ve seen them in action, so I know a thing or two. So does Robert here.” He nodded toward me. “He knows a lot about them from the stories he writes.”
I nodded. Jack did not know that I had first-hand experience with detectives and the police from my past life as a petty burglar. “That’s right. Killers are caught through process of elimination. If you can prove Doug was away from his home when the next victim is killed, or was in the same general area when it was believed the body was dumped, you have a good strong case. If you can get evidence another way—say you root through his garbage and find bloodstained clothing—you can take that to the police. They might test it, and if the blood matches a victim…well, you’ve got your man then.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely,” Jack said. “If you try hard enough and go about things the right way, you can do anything!”
I clapped Allison’s shoulder. “He’s right. But play this by the book, Allison. No more breaking into the man’s house. Take notes on him, quietly observe him, gather as much physical and material evidence as you can in a lawful manner. Then, if it still looks compelling, I’ll take you to the police station myself.”
“You will?” Allison was so excited, you couldn’t tell she was an abused child from a very dysfunctional home.
“Of course I will.” I led her to the side door. “Now go on home. Neither of us can afford to be in any more trouble.”
I watched Allison leave, then closed the door to the garage with a sigh of relief. I cast a glance at Jack, who was still standing by my workbench. He looked pensive. Reflective. “James is from Youngstown, Ohio, right?”
I shrugged. “I heard he’s lived there, but he goes back and forth. He sounds like a drifter”
“Yes, he does,” Jack said. “Just like her mother. She never has been picked up by the police, has she?”
I returned to my work. “No, she hasn’t.”
“Interesting. And she really thinks Doug is the elusive killer of all those poor souls that were dumped in Murder Swamp?”
“That’s what she thinks.” A thought just occurred to me, and I looked up from my work. “Tell me something…you’ve lived here all your life. You were a kid when those murders started. What do you know about them?”
Jack shrugged. “As much as everybody else. They started when I was around thirteen years old. An old woman named Wilma Struthers was killed in her home, not too far from where I lived. It was a shocking crime. I still remember that. Town went nuts. A few years later a thirteen-year old girl named Hannah Brubaker was killed, then he started killing hobos and leaving them in the woods.” Jack smiled, as if reliving a happy childhood memory. “Those were good times for me. “I had this paper route at the time. Made five d
ollars a week. After delivering papers, my friends and I would spend hours playing in the baseball field or go to the cinema. In the summer we would…” Jack went on recounting those good times while I listened, thinking about it all.
“The people in this town formed a mob and lynched Doug’s father,” I stated. “I wasn’t living here then, but I heard about it shortly after I moved here. The murders allegedly stopped when Allen was killed. Do you believe Allen was the killer?”
Jack shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what the people of this town think. They’ve made up their minds. Allen was the killer.”
“But was he? We’ve had a few murders in this town since Allen was lynched. Who’s the culprit?”
“Who knows? And who cares? Again, the victims are street people. They aren’t missed. Nobody ever comes forward to claim them. Well, except for a few times, but even then, those people were drunkards and whores. When Jack the Ripper was killing prostitutes in London, nobody cared either.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I went back to work on my car, my mind racing. All I could think about was Allison’s obsession with Doug taking over his father’s work as the New Castle Butcher. That brought to mind another series of crimes—the ones perpetrated by Cleveland’s elusive fiend. I mentioned this to Jack.
He responded with a raised eyebrow. “Now you’re stretching it. Cleveland’s a three-hour car ride. He’d have to have a reason for going there besides killing hobos.”
“Well, Doug works for Donnelly. I believe he’s in management. Would make sense to me if he traveled to Cleveland occasionally for company meetings.”
“Hmmm.” Jack’s tone of voice indicated that he found this interesting. So did I, but not for the reasons Jack did.
I couldn’t keep my mind on my work. When I saw Jack out the door, I promised him I’d be over at his house in two weeks for our routine game of gin rummy.
Winter came early, and with it more dire news from overseas. Germany had invaded Poland on September first of that year; France and England declared war on Germany shortly after. The USSR had invaded Finland in November, and Italy was rattling its saber too. Indeed, the entire European continent was on the brink of another World War. In the Pacific, Japan had invaded China the year before, and had fought a skirmish with Soviet-Mongolian forces in Manchukou. Here at home, the economy was sputtering onward. I had my work, and thank goodness for that. As for Allison and Susan, they were laying low. The carnival circuit was long over, and I rarely saw a vehicle in the driveway next door. I hardly saw Allison for that matter, too. We occasionally saw Linda when we stepped out to collect our mail, or when I let Grace out. Linda seemed to be doing quite well. She told me that Allison was staying inside mostly, reading detective magazines and books, and that Susan was mostly with her boyfriend.
“She’s gone quite a bit now,” Linda said. The two of us had stepped outside at the same time to collect our mail and were talking across our respective property. “They stop by occasionally, but they’ve been laying low for the most part.”
“He and Susan aren’t hurting you anymore, are they?” I asked.
“Oh no, absolutely not,” Linda said. Her denial was swift, but her eyes told a different story. She sighed. “I realize now that Susan has huge problems. She resents me for leaving her father. I tried to make it right later, but…” Her voice faltered. “I was too late. I’ve tried reaching out to my son, but he doesn’t want to see me. He avoids me whenever I show my face. He blames me for what happened to his father.”
“What happened to your husband, Miss Kenyon?”
“He was murdered,” Linda said. Her voice was direct, and matter-of-fact. “He was set upon by a mob and murdered. Hung by his neck in his very front yard, he was.”
My mind was racing. My blood was boiling with anticipation. “What was his name?”
“Allen Tinker,” she said. Her sea blue eyes sought mine, held them. “Kenyon is my maiden name. I took it back after I divorced him. He was accused of all those horrible murders because of what I accused him of during my petition for divorce. He was tried and convicted without the benefit of a jury. All because he was…rather odd. He was no more odd than…well, the kind of man who prefers the company of other men, if you know what I mean.”
I nodded. I knew perfectly well what she meant. Her husband, Allen, was murdered by a mob of vigilantes not because they believed he was the New Castle Butcher, but because he was a homosexual. Had Allen been seen trying to proposition the drifters and hobos that floated into town? Was that what set the town vigilantes on him? It was obvious Allen’s homosexuality ended his marriage with Linda. I could read it on her face, which bore regret over those hastily-made decisions.
“That’s why he stops and looks at this house on his evening walk,” I said, everything falling into place now. “Doug blames you for leaving the family. And he blames you for his father’s death.”
Linda nodded, turned away. “I suppose he does. Susan blames me even more. She was always a heavy drinker, but she took to the bottle even more after Allen died. I’m sorry for that, but I can’t be held responsible for her actions.”
“Is she hurting Allison?” I asked, my voice a whisper.
Linda’s gaze on me was direct. “Yes,” she said. “And there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it.”
“But…the police—” I began.
“If I do anything, Susan and James will do worse to me. Believe me, I’ve tried to make it stop, but I can’t. The police have been here countless times. When they come, Allison is released, they hide the devices they torture her with, and Allison is too afraid to say anything. I suppose much of this is my fault.”
“How can it be your fault?” I sputtered.
Linda ignored this, her face turned away from me a bit. “All I want is for the pain and torture Allison and I are going through to stop.” Linda turned and started to walk home.
I watched her go, my mind racing. I felt powerless to do anything. If I called the police, I knew it wouldn’t turn out. The police had reason to suspect me in something. But I couldn’t let Allison suffer. I had to do something!
Chapter Seven:
A Witness To Torture
I mentioned this to Jack Henderson two nights later. I was over at his place for our weekly game of gin rummy. Cathy was away that weekend with the kids again. This time, Jack’s physician friend was with his. His name was Dr. Sweeney. He was older, probably close to Susan’s age. I found Dr. Sweeney to be a very funny man. He was a big guy, and favored dark suits. Despite his size, he had a soft look about him. He was also quite the drinker. He put away dozens of whiskey sours during the course of our game. He also seemed to be very fidgety. He kept shifting around in his seat, making vague comments to Jack that seemed to suggest that he wanted me gone so he could engage in some private business with Jack. It became very obvious to me that Dr. Sweeney wanted me gone, and after a few hands I began to sense Jack wanted the same thing. I’d put away more drinks than I expected to, and finally bid them good evening.
Jack saw me to the door. It was cold and windy outside. I almost froze to death just trying to get in the front door of my house. I didn’t even hear Grace barking upstairs in the bedroom. Once inside, I staggered to the living room sofa, pulled my boots off, and fell on the couch. I looked out the window at the swirling snow and watched the Henderson house at the top of the hill. Something was compelling me to go back out, to head back through the cold and sneak over to the Henderson house again. I thought about the argument I witnessed, the one where Cathy accused Jack of stepping out with another woman when he was out of town on business. With Cathy gone now, I wondered if Dr. Sweeney’s visit was one Cathy was aware of. Jack had told me that Dr. Sweeney was a native of Cleveland. Jack probably visited him there when he was in that city on business. Jack had told me previously that he’d known Dr. Sweeney for eight years. Did the two of them hit the town together and chase after loose women? I had to know. I
pulled my boots back on and tried to leave again but, in my inebriated state, it was difficult. Still, I tried. I got up, swayed, then tried to make my way to the door. I felt my stomach lurch. I got outside just in time to be sick. At some point, I must have passed out.
I remember very little about what happened next. I was sure I must have made my way back inside the house and slept on the sofa, because that’s where I woke up—with an excruciating hangover. However, I had strange dreams. In the first dream, I was trudging my way through the snow to the Henderson house again. I was sneaking around the side of the house, relying on my old instincts as a sneak thief to make my way around the back of the house. I crouched down in the snow, the howling wind masking any sound I made.
The second dream was worse. In the second dream I was hunkered down outside a building in the woods. The image that followed was me, hunkered inside. I don’t remember how I gained entry. The entire place was bare concrete floor with damp, brick walls; it reminded me of a dungeon. I had slipped in effortlessly; nobody knew I was there. A naked man was strapped to a table with leather straps. A shadowy figure was seated nearby. I couldn’t see his face, but he was well dressed. A third man, also naked, like the man strapped to the table, approached. He drew a long butcher knife out. Without hesitating, he cut a deep slice into the other man’s belly, tracing the cut up to his chest. The skin parted and blood spilled. The man writhed in pain, the leather straps holding him firmly in place. His scream was muffled from the gag. Sweat poured down his face. As the blood spurted from the wound, the man wielding the knife bent down quickly and put his face to it. I heard a sucking sound—he was greedily lapping up the blood. He drank for a while, then he slipped his hand into the wet orifice. The man writhed in pain again. The torturer sank his hand deep, digging in the abdominal cavity. He appeared to extract something, wrenching it out. Another horrible shudder from the victim, then he passed out. The hand emerged from the bloody cavity. It was holding some kind of organ. The torturer raised the bloody hunk of meat to his mouth and—
It Drinks Blood Page 6