“Summer Place, isn’t it?” Cordero said with a growing smile. “That stupid bastard is slapping that bitch again? What can I say—count me in.” He stood and felt at his beard. “Can I get a shave and a haircut?” he asked his jailer.
“Yeah, in the morning, before you see the judge.”
The detective looked at the cop. “I don’t think he’ll be seeing your local magistrate after my bosses make their calls to your city council—which they should be doing right about now.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be sending one of your local barbers down to see to Mr. Cordero. He has a plane to catch.”
“Summer Place...You know, I always wanted to pork that bitch myself.” Cordero had a gleam in his eye that made him look for all the world like Charles Manson’s twin brother.
“Mr. Cordero, if I may ask, what is it that makes you important to Professor Kennedy?”
The man in the cell thought a moment, pulling on his long beard.
“I’m a clairvoyant.”
The policeman laughed as he left the holding area. The man from the network was now alone with the nutcase in the cell.
“You’re kidding. If that’s so, why didn’t you see your arrest coming?” the detective asked.
“Maybe I did, and I just wanted to spank that little bastard anyway. My sense of justice has always been out of whack. And I’m hard-headed.”
The detective nodded. “See you in a while, Mr. Cordero.” He handed his card through the cell’s bars, and didn’t notice Cordero touching his fingers as he accepted it.
“Hey, Mack, tell me something?”
The detective stopped and turned around. Cordero pushed his bearded face through the cell bars.
“If I can.”
“You know the little bastard I’m supposed to have assaulted?’
“What about him?”
“You know he’s responsible for ten fires in the past two years? Three lives were lost in one of them. That’s the real reason I beat his ass.”
“And you know this how?” the detective asked. He took four steps back toward the glaring man behind the bars.
“I sensed it when he laid his hands on me to snag my metal detector. You know, he actually has an erection when he sets his fires...”
“You’re nuts,” the detective said and he turned to walk away.
“Yep,” Cordero said. “I’m just as about as nuts as you were, after you caught your ex-wife in bed with that fella she worked with at the school district, and in your very own house.”
The detective stopped dead in his tracks and his shoulders stiffened. His ex-wife had been a teacher and her boss had been the school superintendent, back on Long Island. He had caught them in bed, and had beaten the man almost half to death. He’d been a split second away from hurting his wife. How had this man known that?
“You have to take me serious about this punk; he’s going to kill more people.”
The man from New York walk away. Behind him, Cordero returned to the floor and crossed his legs again, shaking his head. “Oh, Gabe, what have you gone and done? That house just may well win it all this time around.”
Five hours later, a freshly shaven man by the name of George Cordero stepped out of his jail cell in Ogunquit, Maine. His hair was cut and combed. He seemed actually human, for the first time in his long stay on the island, and not bad looking, either. The policemen looked stunned when he walked out into the station wearing a new suit and shoes.
Before the tall detective could show him to the door, he was taken by the elbow and steered to a small room down the hall. The man who had pulled the strings to set him free nodded his head at the police detective sitting at his desk. The man twirled a small monitor on his desk outward to face Cordero. On the screen was a young man sitting beside a man with a suit, and what looked like two police officers across from him.
“Recognize the kid?” the policeman at the desk asked Cordero.
George leaned in and stared at the cleancut teenager who sat stoically with a smug look on his face. He nodded his head. It was the same kid he had been accused of assaulting and the one that broke his metal detector.
“His name is Chad Addison. Thanks to you, or the warning we received from your friend here, he was taken into custody. The arrogant little bastard confessed to a string of arsons like they were good deeds done for a merit badge, the little sick fuck. Well, his father’s lawyer showed up and he clammed up quick enough, so it looks—”
George Cordero turned away and headed for the front door. The policeman and the detective would never understand that his abilities were what had driven him away from society. He had come to fear that everyone he ever knew had deep, dark secrets to be kept, and that his days would be forever filled with the thoughts of bad people.
Cordero opened the door and took a breath of fresh air. He knew the deal he had just struck for his trip to the Pocono Mountains would be the last deal he would ever make. He knew, if what he heard and felt was true, he was going to a place that would end his torment.
“Summer Place.”
Loveland, Colorado
The dinner party was proceeding proceeded far better than Leonard Sickles would have ever thought possible. The young man from Los Angeles had held his own with intellectuals from both Hewlett Packard and IBM. Every once in a while his language would revert back to the streets from which he sprang, but more times than not, he would mentally corral the harsh words that were boiling over to get out.
Leonard Sickles, former gang banger, was famous for rising from the front ranks of the Crips in East Los Angeles, to become one of the most gifted software designers in the world. His talent had been discovered by accident by a former professor at USC. It took two years for the professor to gain the trust of Lenny “too smart” Sickles and then another year for the kid to recognize his own genius. Leonard was a prodigy. He had just graduated at the top of his class, completing six years of instruction in only four. It had taken the death of his younger brother in a drive-by shooting to make him focus on bettering himself. He knew his mother could not take another death in their small struggling family.
The dinner party was an excuse for Electro-Light Design Incorporated of Fort Collins, Colorado, to thumb their noses at the people from IBM and Hewlett Packard, who had not been able to land the brilliant former gang member for their own.
His new boss and the owner of Electro-Light Design, Thomas Reynolds, pulled Leonard away from one of the hired kitchen helpers—to whom he was telling a very sordid joke—and smiled his way into the hallway with his arm around the boy.
“Leonard, you have visitors at the front door. A couple of men from New York.”
“Really?” he asked.
“How did anyone know you were here?” Reynolds asked. He nodding his head to one of the guests in passing. “Is there something you’d like to tell me? I mean, we do have a deal in principle, right?”
“Sure, my word is righteous.”
“I mean, you wouldn’t hang me out to dry by talking with another company, would you? Computer Associates in New York, or some other east coast outfit?”
“Look, Mr. Reynolds, I said I would sign the contract. What’s the matter, my word ain’t good ‘nough?”
Reynolds placed his arm around the smaller black man. Leonard got very uncomfortable every time his new boss performed that particular gesture. It was as if he was trying to act like his father. The clothes Reynolds had purchased for him for the dinner party were starting to feel just a little tight.
“Okay, son, just checking. Maybe you better go and see who your visitors are. I’ll make nice with the sharks in the dining room.”
“Sure,” Leonard said. He returned to the kitchen worker he had been speaking to earlier.
“Hey baby, where’s the front door to this funeral parlor?”
She pointed to the left and Leonard treated her to his once-famous slumped-over walk, winking at her before he rounded the corner.
When he was out of sight, he s
traightened up into the practiced calm and confident stride that made white society take him seriously. He approached two men in dark suits, who stood just inside the door. His mind was racing, but on the outside he remained cool.
“I didn’t do it, number one. And number two, I was actually invited here.”
“Sir?” the larger man on the left asked.
“It’s obvious you’re cops. Come on man, I really was invited.”
“No, sir, we’re private security from the UBC Television Network in New York.” The two men looked at each other, and then at a file photo that the shorter one held. Leonard shifted. He’d jacked some cars from the UBC lot in LA, once, but that had been a long time ago.
“Mr. Leonard Sickles?”
“Come on man, just say you’re cops.”
“Sir, we are here to offer you a job for seven days and one night—Halloween night. The offer is for—”
“Get the fuck outta here, man,” Sickles said. He slapped at the air and started to turn away.
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” the man finished.
Sickles tuned back around and looked at the two men.
“Two hundred large?” he smiled. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. You’ll have to spend the week before Halloween in New York doing some technical work.”
Leonard looked the smaller of the two over, and then eyed the larger.
“Get the fuck outta here,” he repeated. “This is a fuckin’ joke, right?”
The two men exchanged looks. “No joke, Mr. Sickles, Professor Gabriel Kennedy asked for you personally.”
“Professor Gabe? Where’s he at?”
“We don’t know,” the large one said. “We are to retain your services and get you to New York within the next 24 hours.”
“Is he in trouble again?” He fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
“We don’t know, sir.” The smaller man pulled a sheet of paper out of the file he was holding. “There is this.” He handed the paper over to Sickles.
He eyed the man and then slowly reached for the paper.
“Bring your Infra-Spectroscope design—I found you the money to build it.” He read down the page, looking for a signature, but there was none. In its place was one word that he read aloud. “Punk! That’s Professor Gabe all right—the asshole.”
“Hey, hey, what’s going on here? You’re taking a hike on me and my company for New York?”
The three men at the door turned to see Thomas Reynolds standing angrily in the outer entranceway.
“Spying, Mr. Reynolds?” Leonard asked, his right eyebrow rising. “Is this the kind of trust I can expect from you and your company, man?”
“I’m paying you enough to buy your trust. Now what’s this about?”
“What this is about, is the man who saved my life. My shrink from a long time ago. He needs me, and I’m going to help him. I’ll be back—” he looked questioningly toward the two men.
“The day after Halloween, sir.”
“Yeah, the day after Halloween. Then I’m yours. And don’t think I’m not going. I owe this man everything I am, and all that I will become.”
Reynolds’ posture eased. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and withdrew his wallet. He handed a card to Leonard.
“Use this. It’s a company credit card. Try and keep it reasonable, okay?”
Leonard smiled and nodded. “You bet. The big city hookers can wait until I have an expense account,” he joked. Reynolds shifted uncomfortably, and so did the two network security men. Leonard stuck out his hand, and when Reynolds took hold of it, he turned his hand upside down and grasped Reynolds’ hand with both of his in a hood-shake.
“Thanks Mr. R, I’ll be cool with it.” He let go of his hand and then smiled again. “Give my regards to the pukes inside; tell them my main man needs me.”
“Leonard, do you even know what you’re getting into?”
“No, not really.”
“Do you know what this man does now?” Reynolds asked.
“What does he do now?” Leonard asked the two men.
“Sir, all we know is that he is working for the producers of a reality television show.”
“Yeah, what’s it about?” Leonard asked.
The two men looked at each other, and the larger one opened the door and turned.
“Ghosts I believe. A haunted house type of thing. Shall we go, sir?”
Leonard’s smile faded. He started to wonder what the hell he had just agreed to.
“Ghosts, huh?” he asked as he cautiously stepped forward.
“Yes, sir,” the small man said. He gestured for Leonard to leave first.
“Haunted house?”
“From the rumors and gossip we’ve heard at the network, sir, it’s very, very, haunted.”
Leonard felt a sudden chill. He reached out and snapped on the front porch light before stepping out into the darkness. “I thought Professor Gabe was a full time shrink,” he mumbled to himself. “Ain’t there enough live people around, he’s gotta go after dead ones?”
Kennedy’s team had its second member for the live broadcast from Summer Place.
Browning, Montana
John Smith—at least, that was how he had signed in—sat alone inside the coroner’s examination room. The lights were low, with only a single spotlight illuminating the sheet-covered body on the stainless steel table before him. He knew the sheriff and coroner of Glacier County would be coming along soon, so he waited. That sheriff would know him as John Lonetree, headman, activist, and also the Chief of Police of the Blackfeet reservation, located near the border with Canada. He had used the fake name and ID to gain entrance to the county offices when the sheriff and coroner went to dinner. He had made his prayers, his examination, and had done all the right things his people traditionally called for, for the young woman laid out on the cold steel table.
The girl’s name was Betty Youngblood. John had known her from the day she came into the world, and now on this dark day he performed her death rites. As he lowered his head, he removed his cowboy hat and tossed it on the chair next to him, freeing his long black hair to cascade around his shoulders. Blood had stained the area at the top of the sheet, and at her midsection. Betty hadn’t been important enough for the coroner to delay his dinner. Her wounds were unattended and had been unexamined when John had arrived. He swallowed hard to keep his emotions in check. The world would never change for his people, it seemed.
The girl had been born, like most Indians on the Blackfeet reservation, into abject poverty. She had endured a life of abuse by a single mother who had tended toward the bottle, and who had taken out every one of life’s failures on her oldest child. At fifteen, Betty had left the Rez and escaped into the white world. John had heard she had taken to prostitution and other forms of criminal life to keep from going home again. He shook his head. She could not avoid it now; she was going home with him tonight. Another bright red spot on everyone’s shame: the reservation system, the white world, and his own closed world of the American Indian.
John heard their voices long before the examination room door opened. As the overhead lights came on, he kept his head lowered and his hands clasped in front of him. The voices ceased suddenly when the two men saw they weren’t alone.
“Just who the hell are you?”
Lonetree finally looked up. He saw the small, balding fat man who called himself the county coroner, standing with his hands at his sides. Beside him was Sheriff Van Kimble. They had been friends since they were kids, but now the sheriff had his hand on the butt of his nine-millimeter, looking at him in anger.
“What are you doing here, John?” the sheriff asked.
“Who is this man?” the coroner asked.
“He’s the police chief over at the Blackfeet reservation. You two haven’t met yet. John this is Doctor Fleming, our county coro—”
“I know who he is, Van,” Lonetree said, standing. He towered over bot
h men at six feet five inches. “Doctor, do you usually leave a body to sit while you go and eat, without taking the decedent’s vital stats?”
“I, uh—”
“This girl was raped; there may be seminal fluids that are at this moment deteriorating. Have you even fixed the time of death through body temperature?”
“Now wait a minute, John, we already have the killer in custody,” the sheriff said. He stepped forward and let the door close behind him.
“Yes, I’ve heard that also. Randy Yellowgrass, that right?”
“Your Harvard education hasn’t failed you. Yeah, that’s right. My deputy found the drunken, stupid bastard still standing over the girl in the alley at Eighth and Monroe.”
“And you believe Randy, harmless Randy Yellowgrass, could do something like this?” Lonetree pulled the white sheet away from the body and let it fall to the floor.
On the table, Betty lay with her eyes open. The left one was half shaded by her eyelid, the other dilated to almost pure black. Her throat had been savagely cut from ear to ear. Her left breast had been completely removed, and her vaginal area was wrecked. John stepped forward and placed his hand on her hair. It had been tinted with tiny streaks of blonde dye. He shook his head.
“Please don’t touch her until—”
“Until what? Until you examine her, Doctor?” John turned and faced the much smaller coroner. His own nine-millimeter handgun was temptingly heavy at his right hip.
The sheriff looked at the gun and the man wearing it. John was dressed in Levis and a plain blue chambray work shirt under a denim jacket. His features, although darker than the sheriff’s own, were light in comparison to some of the other Indians that frequented the town, but he looked most definitely like most white men would expect a modern day warrior to look.
“Why are you armed, John? You’re not on the Rez; you’re in my bailiwick now.”
Instead of answering the sheriff, Lonetree walked to the other side of the table and looked down at Betty.
“She used to walk up to my pa’s porch. We could see she had been crying. Her face was puffy and swollen…she was only nine, and had learned even at that age to cover up her mother’s beatings. My father and mother would feed her, clean her up and wait until morning to send her back.” He looked up at the sheriff. “Betty’s ma would be sobering up by then, and would be more regretful. On the Rez secrets are kept pretty well.”
The Supernaturals Page 15