“He is dying” Peter said, and everybody got silent instantly.
“What are you saying, Peter?” Burt inquired with a handcuffed Bob by his side, with his back to him.
“He’s got lung cancer because of smoking” Peter explained, still with the pack of cigarettes in his hand. His hands were shaking.
Burt turned around Bob, and he shook his head.
“I am perfectly healthy at the moment” Bob said. He was calmer now.
“The murderer was hiding in the gap between the tractor and the wall, and he waited there smoking the whole pack of cigarettes then.”
Burt looked at the floor and he did not see any cigarette stub.
“But where are the stubs?” Burt asked frowning.
“I don’t know” Peter answered, releasing the smashed pack, which fell down on the floor in less than a second without any noise.
Burt touched his intercom again. He was just going to click the side button of the microphone when Martin’s voice came from the intercom.
40
“Is that Burt?” A nervous voice asked on the other side of the line.
Martin, who was at the police station, had answered the phone call. He had felt a bit restless; he had a strong presage that something bad was happening.
“He is not here at the moment, but I can leave him a message. Who is speaking?”
“I am Mike, the grave digger, and I was looking for snails when I found something...”
Martin started smiling, and Mike could feel that smile.
“What did you find?”
He told him whispering all the time.
He wiped the smile off Martin’s face.
41
“Hi, boss. I’ve got bad news. There is a new victim. This is what he told me, Mike, the grave digger. He was looking for snails when he discovered a hand.”
Burt looked at Bob, he was puzzled.
“Heard it” Burt said briefly, tilting his head to the side and adopting a strange position.
The intercom vibrated again.
“Boss, what should we do?”
“Lloyd and you take the car and go to the area indicated by Mike. I don’t want those assholes from the FBI to know about it, we don’t want them to wrinkle their suits.
“You are late, boss...”
“What?” Burt grave voice echoed in the barn walls, sounding like distant thunders.
“They just happened to call to the police station to ask if there were any news and something about Running Water slipped out of my mouth. Then they started laughing and asked me where that place was. I did not say anything else, but I think they suspected something and they have gone there.” Martin explained in a trembling voice.
“You are such a jerk. You never speak and when you do, you screw up.” Burt was starting to blow his stack, but then he took a deep breath and added: “Never mind, we’ll be right there. We are quite near, about a mile from there, so maybe they will get there after we do.”
Then he hung up.
Richard looked at the panties and the bra and he said:
“Sir, we have this crime evidence. What shall we do with it?”
“Take it, you asshole, but don’t touch them. Hold two chopsticks to pick it up and put it into one of those plastic bags we have. Ah! And I want you to take a sample of that dark soil. I will get it tested.”
He took his phone from his pocket while he was saying it and he phoned William. Two ring tones later, a familiar voice answered.
“What’s up, Burt?”
“I have some evidence to send you...”
“What kind of evidence?” William asked.
“I’m sending a pair of panties, a bra and some soil that seemed to be mixed with blood. You’ve got some work to do, man.”
And then he hung up.
He had told him nothing about the possible new victim.
Two minutes later, they left Bob the fool’s barn.
42
Ann was not sure, but she thought she had heard a bang that was not caused by the rain, but maybe by something heavier. She looked out the window from her bed, with her nightgown on and a heavy heart. Then she saw something hitting the window, and the glass cracked like a spider web. It was a stone, she had seen it. Now her heart was racing, and she started sweating. She felt an irrational fear and then she started panicking. She didn’t dare to come closer to the window; she didn’t even dare to put her feet on the floor. The light was off and the lights from the street lamps came into her bedroom like long white fingers. Her eyes were wide open. She wanted to call his brother, but she wouldn’t move. A sudden terror paralyzed her body, and thus she stayed that way for a long time, sitting on her bead while she was holding her wrinkled sheet around her neck, as if they could protect her.
The boogeyman is coming, babe; he is about to appear somewhere around this bedroom.
43
Peter had no better idea than calling his friend Denny while they were going to the new crime scene, to tell him everything. He clicked on an icon that said Denny before Richard’s sad eyes. When he answered the phone after the third ring, he started explaining everything to him.
“Denny, you are not going to believe me.” He said exultant before the watchful eye of Bob the fool, who was with them. “I have had a new experience.”
“What? Have you met a new girl?”
Peter knew Denny was joking.
“I have had a new extrasensory experience or whatever you call it...”
“You are getting on my nerves.” Denny complained, and he could hear a background giggle.
“I can smell things if I touch the objects.” Peter explained with bright eyes. Bob kept watching him incredulously. “This is the first time it happens to me; I found an empty pack of cigarettes and when I touched it I started smelling nicotine.”
Denny burst out laughing on the other side of the line, and Peter could visualize him with his lips curved and his eyes closed.
“That’s normal, cigarettes smell like that, like nicotine. What did you expect a pack of cigarettes would smell like? Would you expect it to smell like chocolate, maybe?”
“There was a foul smell too, mixed with the nicotine smell. It smelled rotten. It was a corrupt, fetid stench” Peter said those last words with great emphasis.
The line kept silent, he just could hear the hum of a plane, probably from a TV movie.
“I don’t know, Peter. You are my best friend, but sometimes you scare me and other times you puzzle me.”
“Why?”
“What are you telling me right now? Are you saying that you smell the rotting flesh of a new corpse?” He had hit the jackpot without even knowing, but Peter did not tell him.
“Denny, the murderer is dying. His breath denotes he has an unresectable cancer.”
The line remained silent again, and Peter could visualize him now petrified, holding the mobile phone in his ear with a blank stare.
“Peter, is it true what you are telling me?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, then I feel respect for you, maybe I feel fear, and my sister does too. By the way, she knows about your feelings, even though she hasn’t got that gift of yours.”
“What does she know?”
“That you are crazy about her.”
“Who is this freak?” Bob asked with a scared look.
Burt turned around and he said:
“He is John Bray’s son.”
44
The blue and red lights spread out all over the pavement, the weeds, and the trees. Lloyd and Martin were next to the road with their phosphorescent raincoats, near the river. Mike was spitting on the floor. He still had his bag full of snails on his shoulder. The flashlights beams were combing the area, and when Jack put the car in first gear to stop the vehicle, Mike’s deformed finger pointed towards the ground. Burt went down first and the he saw it. It was a hand, covered up to the wrist, as if it had been planted there, like a broken stick.
“
I was looking for snails when I found the hand. I haven’t touched anything. It remains such as I found it.”
Burt patted his shoulder.
“Sir, we have just arrived. We have not proceeded with the body removal yet.” Lloyd said, focusing him with the flashlight. Burt was serious, really serious.
“Take that damned light from my face!” Burt yelled moving his hand in the air.
His hand was focused then. There was some brown water running down his forearm.
“It is not a busy road, not at this time of the year.” Martin said, “In fact, nobody has passed around here.”
Burt Duchamp stooped down near the hand and he watched it for a long time.
“Take it out from here” He finally ordered. “It seems to be from a young girl. It doesn’t wear any ring.”
A car’s headlights could be seen coming near them, until they got bigger and the car stopped behind their vehicles. They could hear the car doors opening and closing, and then some steps approaching. They were Ethan and Charlotte. Burt huffed when he saw them.
“Good evening, sheriff. We have learnt that there might be something here.” Ethan said contemptuously with his everlasting stupid gaze on his face.
Burt noticed they were wearing raincoats now.
“Always so timely” Burt bellowed standing up, he was right beside to the river. “Don’t think I’m going to do the honors.”
Jack and Martin sunk their feet into the river, which surrounded them with its stream, and the water got up to their knees. They put his hands under the water carefully and then they could touch the body. It was naked, and Lloyd touched something soft and perfectly recognizable: A breast.
“She is a girl, sir.” Lloyd said, while Ethan arched an eyebrow.
They pulled her out of the water with the greatest care. Lloyd grabbed her by her shoulders, Jack by her bottom and Martin held her legs. They left her on the grass very gently, as if they were moving a very valuable painting.
Burt looked at her with sadness and said:
“She is Natalie Milton, James’ only daughter.”
All of them knew each other in such a small town.
“Do you know who the woman is, just like that?” Ethan inquired, while Charlotte was silent next to him.
“We all know each other here” Burt barked, and then he took out his mobile phone to dial a telephone number: William’s.
“Yes, that’s her.” Lloyd confirmed, because she used to live next door and he had seen her that very morning with an umbrella in her hand. She had smiled at him.
“William has another victim, apart from the evidence we have just sent to him. Work is piling up and we don’t really know what happened first. It seems that the killer is acting swiftly.
Ethan wrote something on his notebook.
“Did you say you have sent evidence? Can you inform us about it, Mr. Sherriff?”
“No, I can’t.”
“I must warn you: If you persist in this attitude we will remove you from the case.”
Burt glowered at him.
“They are my people.” He said.
45
John was watching Channel Four as usual around nine. He had just watched a western film. He only watched that kind of films, and if they were black and white, much better. He used to say that the best western actors were from that time. He had in mind hundreds of film stars names, all of them dead now.
Christie was all over the screen, and she was dressed too demurely tonight for John’s liking, because he could not see that slit between the two melons, as he used to call her breasts, although he had not said that sort of things when his wife was alive. At that moment there was a heading that could be read:
The young girls’ murders have not been clarified yet
Nothing new; afterwards she announced that Boad Hill would be ravaged by the heavy rains for at least one more week. He closed his fist and then he hit the arm of the sofa.
“This weather sucks!” He ranted in the dark to the empty walls. John missed those old TV sets with a cathode-ray tubes, he did not like those flat screens TVs that looked like paintings. But, mind you, those TVs image quality was perfect.
Right then the phone started ringing. It was on a cradle in order to be recharged. A greenish light lit up the screen and John reached out to pick up the phone. When he did, he nodded.
It was his son, Peter.
46
“Dad, I will be busy tonight. I will be late tonight. A problem has arisen.”
“There is a new victim, isn’t there?” Peter could imagine his father’s face, watching him sadly with his light eyes.
Peter nodded as if he was watching him, but he reacted promptly.
“Yes, dad, there is another victim. The killer is in a hurry.”
“Why is he in a hurry?”
“He is in a hurry because he is dying, dad. I will explain it to you at home.”
There was a long silence then while the raindrops hummed like flies in his hears.
“God bless you, son.” His father said, “You are starting to worry me.”
The he hung up.
47
Ann was still awake watching television, sitting against the backrest of her bed, with the sheet and blankets around her neck, as if they were a retaining wall on the lookout and feeling an irrational fear.
She was watching every raindrop hitting the window glass and then turning into a big tear that glided down the glass. The television was on low volume, just in case she felt a new bang on her window and it shattered in pieces. She was feeling restless and distant at the same time. She was scared, her heart was racing, and she still remembered when that man grabbed her foot and how she escaped from him. She knew later that the man was Reverend Larry, and thinking about it still traumatized her. Something inside her was shouting in her mind that he was back and he was going after her.
She kept watching.
48
The naked body was lying in the middle of the pavement under the ceaseless rain. The girl's skin was now wrinkled. She was red haired. Unexplainably, her eyes were still open, looking up at the dark sky, full of water drops. Burt and his officers were standing there, surrounding her body. Ethan and Charlotte were next to them, behind them. Peter had stayed behind thinking, with his foot on the rough rubber of the car wheel. He was soaking wet, and the raincoat was heavy now with the heavy weight of such a lot of water. Peter was gathering in his mind all the images he had seen trying to remember every detail, puzzled about the evolution of his shine, as his father called it. It was an obsessive idea, but he could not help thinking about it.
Burt snapped his fingers and Peter reacted turning his head suddenly. Ethan burst out laughing, but Charlotte, her speechless companion, nudged him. She had a real temper. Peter saw it and he remembered his father's sentence: They bite down like crocodiles, silently.
"Peter! Here you are. Give me some hope." Burt's hands opened under the rain, like claws, and his voice was a bit high-pitched, which startled his agents. He was desperate, but also furious because of the presence of the X-files agents, as he used to call them.
Then Peter sunk his foot into a puddle on the pavement. He did not know it, because he did not drive, but that road was in a bad condition. It needed repairing, because it was starting to seem a rocky field. He approached the girl dragging his feet, with disturbingly sad eyes. Richard and Lloyd stepped aside with a stricken expression on their faces. Nobody spoke at that moment; there were no sounds around except the sound of water, which was writing words on the pavement. A strong wind came up among the treetops. Peter's hair did not move.
He stooped down, as calmly as possible, in such a way that none of the presents would ever forget it. Ethan came closer with his notebook and a pen that hardly could be used on the wet paper.
"She is Natalie Milen" He said with a tremulous voice. He had heard the name before; Burt and his men had recognized her already. Then, he sunk his knees inside the puddle and led his ha
nds towards her right hand. He rubbed a wet skin. It was stiff and soft at the same time. His sense of touch played with those sensations. He grasped her hand with his warm hands and breathed deep, as if he was getting ready to lift a heavy bar, heavier than him, over his shoulder. With his hands on hers, he lowered his head and closed his eyes, and then he pushed his mind inside hers. Soon he saw the increasing darkness, blacker, more infinite than ever, that would last only a few microseconds but he would remember forever. The light was narrowing more and more, until it became as small as a grain of rice, and finally, it disappeared floating in a distant galaxy. Afterwards, he saw many images and memories. When she was a little girl and she used to swing on the teeter-totter, when she was ten and she tried to remove her freckles with a scourer, her first kiss when she was very young. That sweetness in her lips and those butterflies in her stomach; but then he saw his white mask. "He is wearing a white mask. I always see it. We already know that..."
"Go on, Peter" Burt whispered with his hands on his waist.
"He is wearing a black raincoat and he's got the hood on."
But Ethan kept on writing down with his cynical smirk on his lips.
Then he saw the rest. The images were increasingly sharp and the smell was stronger, too. It was a stench of nicotine and something rotten, he could smell it when he had grabbed her from behind, covered her mouth, and then he had dragged her across the street. He had caught her in one of Boad Hill's streets. He could not recognize the street where they were, he just could see some cars and streetlights like trees on both sides. He saw one number, 43. That did not mean anything to him. His strength was brutal, and it was easy for him to drag her with her mouth covered and his other arm around her wrist. One of her shoes got trapped on the ground, as if it was attracted to a magnet. It was a red shoe, which was strange. High School girls do not usually wear shoes, but sneakers. But he felt something else. She was happy before being caught, because she was going to a ... Peter grabbed her hand tighter and tried to concentrate so hard that all of them could sense it like a vague vibration under their feet.
"What's going on?" Ethan asked to the empty night. Burt took a squint at him and Jack cracked a smile.
Rainy Fall Page 7