The Widening Gyre

by Chuck Grossart

  After getting a description of Zach’s car and the plate numbers, Taggart hung up and made the necessary notifications. Within minutes, the BOLO would be out on the street.

  Taggart grabbed his keys. He wanted to be there when Zach was stopped, so he could tell him what was going on. As he turned to leave, he glanced outside his office window and saw a black bird, perched on a tree limb, looking directly into his office. Its eyes were so black, so lifeless.

  The raven squawked, ruffled its wings, and leapt into the sky.

  Taggart stared at the keys in his hand. What the hell am I doing? He had no business rushing out of his office to follow a kid whom the State Patrol would stop without his help. He’d become much too personally involved in this case, and now he was paying the price. His place was here, in his office, handling the stack of paperwork on his desk that never seemed to go away. He still had a job to do.

  “Paperwork,” he grumbled.

  Taggart thought for a moment, then called Jack into his office.

  “What’s up, partner?” Mauger asked.

  “Tell me I’m crazy.”

  “Okay, you’re crazy. Does that help whatever’s eating at you?”

  “Tell me not to leave this office and follow Zach Regan.”

  “Follow him?”

  Taggart filled him in.

  “So what do you want me to tell the kid’s dad when he calls?” Mauger asked.

  “Tell him . . . tell him to keep calling Zach. Blow up his phone. Maybe we’ll get lucky and his dad can convince him to get his butt back here.”

  “So are you going?”

  Taggart shook his head. “I’d get in the way, Jack.”

  “I don’t want to squash your delicate ego or anything, but we’ll be just fine without you. Take those keys in your hand, get in your car, and go find Zach.”

  “The State Patrol will get him.”

  “Huh. That’s the first time I’ve heard you say anything nice about those guys. Go, Jim. If we hear anything here, I’ll let you know.”

  Taggart patted his partner’s shoulder on his way out the door.

  With each step toward his car, Taggart couldn’t believe how out of character this was for him . . . but it felt right. He’d never shaken the dread he’d felt that night at the Sayre house, how he’d stared into the cold night air and knew, somehow, that Peyton was in danger.

  Maybe that dread was because of Zach Regan.

  Or someone else.

  43

  Peyton ran outside to tell Justine. She would surely want to leave right away once she heard what Detective Taggart had said. “Aunt Justine! Justine!”

  Justine was standing in the garden, a clump of weeds in one hand, and shading the setting sun from her eyes with the other. “What’s the matter, Peyton?”

  “I just spoke to Detective Taggart,” Peyton said, trying to catch her breath. “Zach went under hypnosis, and he told them exactly what I told them. They know Zach didn’t kill Rakel.” Peyton took her aunt by the arm and pulled her toward the house. “We need to go.”

  Justine could tell she wasn’t getting the entire story. Peyton was holding something back. “Hold on a minute. What else did he tell you?”

  Peyton looked down for a second, a little embarrassed for not telling Justine the entire truth. And she could tell. “He doesn’t want us to come to Omaha,” Peyton said. “Taggart says he’s afraid Zach may not be able to handle the fact that he’s sharing his life with Mitch Bannock. Zach doesn’t know.”

  Justine smiled, knowing how the rest of the conversation must’ve unfolded. “But you told him we were coming anyway, right?”

  “No, not exactly,” Peyton said. “I hung up. We need to go, Justine. You can feel it, too. I know you can.”

  Admittedly, Justine did feel the need to hit the road immediately, but prudence dictated otherwise. “Look, it’s going to be dark in a few minutes. Let’s go inside, sit down, and talk about it.” She put her arm around Peyton’s shoulder, and guided her toward the back door.

  “I know you’re right,” Peyton said. The urgency to leave was crawling across her skin like a mild electric shock. “But we need to go. Now. Before it’s too late.”

  Justine sat down on the couch and motioned for Peyton to join her. She didn’t. Peyton remained standing, defiant, hands on her hips.

  “Look, we’re going to go, okay?” Justine said, smiling at the resolve in Peyton’s eyes. This little girl wasn’t willing to back down, a trait that would surely serve her well later in life. “We’ll leave early tomorrow morning. How’s seven a.m. sound?”

  Peyton stared at her, the determination in her eyes fading as she realized she wasn’t going to get her aunt to budge. “Five would be better,” she said.

  “We’ll split the difference. Six o’clock. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Peyton replied, a slight smile crossing her lips.

  “I’m going to call Rick. He’ll need to know what’s going on and where we’re going.” Justine rose from the couch and headed for the kitchen, where she’d left her cell charging on the counter, then stopped. “Um . . . where are we going? Omaha, I know, but where?”

  Peyton answered immediately. “To Detective Taggart’s office. He’ll know where Zach is.”

  “From what you said, he might not be too happy to see us.”

  Peyton smiled. “He’ll get over it.” She turned to head upstairs to her room, then stopped at the stair landing, turning back to face her aunt. “Thank you, Justine.”

  “For what, honey?”

  “Believing me.”

  Justine walked over and took Peyton in her arms. “You and I are in this together, kiddo, come hell or high water.” She cupped Peyton’s face in her hands, and saw her eyes were wet with tears. “I can’t explain everything I’ve seen and heard for the last couple of days, but whatever is going on, you’re not going to have to handle it alone, okay?”

  Peyton nodded, her throat too tight with emotion to speak.

  “Now go pack. I need to convince Rick that we haven’t flown off our rockers.”

  “Is he going to be mad?”

  “Mad? Nah. Worried, yes, but not mad. I’ve trained him too well for that.”

  44

  Zach hadn’t wanted to leave another note for his parents to find—the last note he’d left them had been much different. They’d been through enough already, but he didn’t feel as if he had a choice.

  He was out in the middle of nowhere, completely lost if not for the navigation app on his cell phone. He was glad he’d charged it the night before, but nervously watched the battery icon drain away with each passing minute. He knew he could follow the signs and find his way to Twin Creek if he had to, but he’d rather use his phone.

  The sky was purple with twilight, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open.

  Zach thought of the man he’d seen in his house, and of all the things he’d said.

  It’d seemed so real.

  But . . . what if it wasn’t? Zach had suffered a horrific head injury that night at the party. The doctors had said he’d recovered, albeit with some memory loss, but what if they were wrong? Could he have imagined the entire thing? Maybe this Mitch guy was his injured mind’s way of taking all these things that made no sense and cramming them into a vision that did make sense. A way to understand what was incomprehensible, to believe what was unbelievable.

  Or maybe it was worse than that.

  Rakel was dead, and he had been there. That much was real, and he cringed at the memory of seeing the pictures of her body for the first time, so lifeless, brutalized.

  take it, Zach, cut me

  The girl he’d kissed. The beautiful young woman he’d loved. The same girl who’d been so deceitful, lying to coworkers about him, making him out to be some sort of stalker.

  you know you want to do it

  After the hypnosis session, he was convinced he hadn’t killed her . . . but now, lingering doubt nibbled at the edges of his sanity. What
if he had killed her? What if this was all some sort of mental side show, a product of his subconscious mind to hide the horrid thing he’d done?

  Either way, he couldn’t go home now. He was committed. He would find Peyton, and whatever happened next would happen. Good, or bad. The truth was out there, and he would face it.

  As Zach drove on, the beasts of the night howled at his passing, coyotes, wolves, their yellow eyes glowing eerily in the shadows on either side of the road. Watching.

  An omnipresent evil was tracking Zach’s progress. The pawn he’d placed outside of Twin Creek—Vic Davol—was on the move, too, and soon the initiative in this game would be his once again.

  Checkmate.

  *

  The Bannock house—1307 Oak Hill Drive—sat roughly twenty-five yards back from the road. There was a stand of large trees to the west of the property, and two more large trees framing the front of the house, which faced south. A long gravel driveway passed the east side of the home, continuing to the rear of the property, where there were two medium-sized outbuildings. There was no garage, so the residents parked their cars on a patch of gravel at the rear of the house.

  Vic studied the printed Google Maps picture in the SUV’s dome light, and planned his approach. There was a turnout just to the west of the property, and from there he could extinguish his headlights, take the dark-colored Cherokee across the cornfield, and hide it in the trees to the west. From there, he could sneak up on the house unseen.

  It was a nice house—a wide front porch framed by four stone columns, with gentle arches in between. There were three dormer windows on the second level, and the entire house was covered in fancy stonework. Definitely not what he’d expected to see for a farmhouse in the middle of friggin’ Nebraska.

  On the seat beside him was a pistol—a Smith & Wesson M&P9c, with a full twelve-round magazine. They’d also given him a full-length KA-BAR fighting knife as a backup weapon, tucked into a Kydex sheath he could attach to his belt. He preferred the pistol but knew the knife might come in handy. There was a burner phone as well, which he would use as soon as he had the girl safely tucked away in his second destination of the night, an abandoned farm on the outskirts of town.

  His instructions were simple enough. Take the girl to the farm, make the call, and wait.

  The husband was gone at the moment, but there was another person in the house, Vic had been told. She wasn’t needed, and Vic could do as he wished with her. The girl was his target, and he had to keep her alive. At all costs.

  He turned off the dome light and pulled away from the curb, heading for Oak Hill Drive.

  45

  “I know it sounds crazy, Rick, but she’s— No, it’s not that. I believe her.”

  Justine’s husband was having a difficult time digesting all that she had dumped on him: everything from seeing Timmy, to what they’d learned at the cemetery, to what they had discovered about their own house. Rick wanted to come home right away, and she knew he would, but Justine was able to talk him out of it. She also had to convince Rick that Peyton wasn’t suffering some sort of mental breakdown because of her parents’ murder. She’d suspected the same thing, at first, until she’d heard Timmy’s voice and saw him standing in her bedroom doorway. It had become all too real.

  “Look, I said I saw him too, Rick, just as real as if you’d been standing there. And I know for a fact that I’m not crazy.” Even as she told him about seeing Timmy—well, Timmy’s ghost—Justine knew exactly how her words must sound to her husband. Nuts. Crazy. Delusional. But she and Rick had never encountered anything like this before. They’d been through some challenging times with some of the kids they’d fostered, but nothing like this. If Rick had called her and told her the same things, she would have a hard time believing it, too, but in the end, she would. Neither of them would make up a story like this. Nor could they, even if they wanted to. This was uncharted territory for both of them, and unfortunately for Justine, she was going through it alone.

  Sure, it would’ve been nice to have Rick here, too, and she actually felt relieved when he said he’d be heading home right away, but the urgency Peyton felt—which Justine shared—was hard to ignore. They did need to get on the road toward Omaha, and fast. Waiting for Rick would be time lost that Justine wasn’t willing to waste. Was it a dumb decision to go off on her own like this? Maybe, but in her heart Justine didn’t feel like she had a choice. She’d convinced Rick to stay.

  “I promise I’ll call on the way there, okay? It’ll be fine.”

  Justine was in the living room, and didn’t hear the noises coming from the kitchen. From the back door.

  “I will. Love you too.” Justine pressed the disconnect button. “Well, that went better than I thought it would.” She tossed her phone in her purse and turned to go upstairs—when the hair on the back of her neck stood straight up.

  She stood perfectly still. Listened.

  Had she heard something?

  The seconds ticked by, and Justine fought the urge to run upstairs to Peyton, lock themselves in a room, and call 911.

  But that was crazy. She’d locked all the doors. She was anal about such things, especially when Rick was gone. Maybe everything was catching up to her. Never before had she felt unsafe in her own home, but after all that had happened, and especially after learning that a family that had once lived in this very house had been brutally murdered (and seeing one of them)—it had definitely made her wonder.

  It was just a bird, for cripes’ sake.

  The night animals would take it away.

  The warmth she’d felt here, the sense of contentment, of comfort, had gone down a few notches.

  “Peyton?” she called. “Are you still upstairs?” They had decided to take a few changes of clothes, just in case they had to stay longer than a day.

  Nothing.

  “Peyton!”

  Peyton immediately appeared at the top of the stairs, a pair of jeans in her hand. “What’s wrong?”

  She’s still packing, probably enough for a month. “Did you come downstairs when I was on the phone?” Justine asked.

  “No, why?”

  “I thought maybe I heard something. It’s nothing,” she said, laughing a little and hoping it sounded genuine. She sure wasn’t feeling it.

  “How did it go? With Rick,” Peyton asked.

  “Pretty much how I knew it would. He’s not mad, a little worried, well-trained, and staying put. Just like I said.”

  “You’ll have to teach me this whole training thing one day,” Peyton said.

  “Are you almost done packing?”

  “Almost.”

  “Finish up and hit the sack. Morning’s going to be here before we know it.”

  Peyton started to turn away, then stopped. “Aunt Justine, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, honey. Just a little tired. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Can I drive first?”

  “We’ll flip a coin. Now scram, will ya?”

  As Peyton headed back to her room, Justine realized she was tired. Exhausted was probably a better word. She’d pack in the morning—she always seemed to wake up way too early before a road trip anyway, so she’d have the time. Right now, she needed to get to bed. Before, though, she decided to check the doors one last time.

  The front door was locked. She flicked off the porch lights, then turned to go check on the back door, and that’s when she stopped cold.

  The kitchen was dark.

  She didn’t remember turning off the kitchen lights.

  Could she have? Maybe, God knows her brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders right now, but she could swear she’d left the lights on.

  She and Rick had talked about getting a dog once. He wanted a big one, either a golden retriever or a German shepherd. She didn’t want to deal with the hair all over the house, and he’d let the urge pass to drive over to the pound. “We’re getting a damn dog when you get back, Rick,” she said to herself. A great big, snarling, vici
ous German shepherd would be a wonderful thing to have right now. Or maybe a Chihuahua. They barked a lot. And they didn’t shed as much.

  Just go look, she told herself. Turn on the lights—the ones you forgot about turning off—and make sure the door is locked. Then get to bed, you forgetful ditz. She stepped to the kitchen, flicked on the lights, and that’s when he came for her.

  *

  Peyton was so excited she doubted she would get any sleep at all tonight. When she started packing, she grabbed random clothes from her dresser and closet and tossed them into her suitcase, not paying much attention to what she was choosing, and now, her suitcase looked like a dirty laundry pile.

  That wasn’t going to work.

  Peyton dumped her suitcase on her bed, and started over. She had no idea how long they would be in Omaha—maybe a few days at the most. She was grateful Justine had decided to make the trip, not only because Peyton didn’t particularly want to go by herself but because she would have someone with her who had seen—really seen—the reasons why Peyton felt the way she did. A teenage girl with a weird story was nothing more than a teenager with a weird story, but when it was backed up by an adult with no possible reason to fabricate any part of it, and who was completely convinced that something bigger than the both of them was unfolding (even though neither of them understood all of it yet), then Peyton would have someone at her side who would be able to convince anyone who didn’t believe them. They might not listen to a confused teenage girl with stars in her eyes for some boy, but they’d have to listen to a grown woman who had seen things, and learned things, that had touched her deeply enough to convince her to drive to Omaha out of the blue.

  Peyton was thankful for Justine’s support—things would be so very different without it—but doubted her aunt would stay in Omaha any longer than necessary. The fact that she was willing to go at all was amazing, but Peyton wouldn’t want to take Justine for granted. She was dropping everything and heading out on a drive with a kid whom she’d taken in after a terrible murder-suicide, all alone, without her husband there with her for support, with no idea what they’d encounter on the other end, other than maybe a detective who wouldn’t be happy to see them. If their roles were reversed, and Peyton were in Justine’s shoes, Peyton hoped she’d be able to do the same thing.