by Shawn Ryan
Parking his Celica in a space directly in front of his apartment building, Jason got out, locking his car behind him. The blonde was still on his mind. It intrigued him that he was thinking about a woman he'd seen for only a few seconds. He felt a good glow all over, and an especially toasty feeling in his balls, something he'd felt only fleetingly in the past months.
"I should've got her license plate number," he said, mentally kicking himself in the ass.
Damn, he thought, surprised again. That sounds like the old me.
He smiled as he walked up the steps to his apartment. He unlocked the dead bolt—which he had installed—stuck the key in the doorknob, twisted it, and pushed the door open. Without looking, he reached for the switch on his left, flipping on the lights, revealing a small apartment stuffed with more furniture than it was made for, and much more than was normal for a young man living alone.
Walking to the sliding glass doors on the right-hand side of the living room, he reached behind the curtains and yanked the pull cord. As the curtains swooshed shut, his eyes fell upon the two La-Z-Boy recliners next to the windows. One was covered in black fabric, the other in golden yellow. The black one had been his, the yellow one Sarah's. A slight wave of melancholy washed over him and he rubbed his hand slowly across the top of the yellow one, remembering how they used to hold hands while they watched TV.
On a small table between the chairs lay a copy of The Collected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sarah had always loved Sherlock Holmes, having read his adventures from the time she was a little girl. With her prompting, Jason had begun to read and enjoy Holmes. Now, like Sarah, he was hooked on the stories and reread them often.
He picked up the book and recalled how one night, after he and Sarah were lying together in bed, sweating and satiated after a particularly energetic bout of lovemaking, she confessed to Jason that one of the reasons she had been attracted to him was the fact that he was a detective.
"So, the only reason you're with me is because you've always wanted to fuck someone like Sherlock Holmes?" he had teased. "Should I buy a meerschaum pipe and smoke it while we're getting it on?"
"Mmmm," Sarah purred as she slowly stroked him back to hardness. "I think this is the only pipe I need."
Cut it out, Jason told himself as he laid the Sherlock Holmes book back on the table in his living room. Why torture yourself?
Jason heaved a deep sigh and headed for the kitchen, eyes cast downward. He noticed the beige carpet was developing yuck-gray traffic lanes of dirt. "Needs cleaning," he mumbled, and made a mental note to call the resident manager when he got a chance.
He entered the kitchen without turning on the overhead fluorescent light, and went to the refrigerator. He hadn't eaten lunch and still wasn't very hungry, but he figured he'd better eat something. When he opened the door, light spilled across the yellow-and-white linoleum and onto the cabinets behind him. He leaned down and looked inside.
"God, that's a sad sight," he said, staring at the wasteland of empty chrome shelves.
Except for a package of greenish bologna and a jar of crusty mustard, the only thing in the fridge was a plastic bottle of Sprite and a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Jason often bought a bucket, knowing he couldn't possibly finish it in one day, leaving him at least one thing to eat during the week.
He reached inside to get the chicken and noticed the refrigerator seemed awfully warm. He looked at the inside wall of the unit, at the dial that regulated the temperature. It was set on one, the lowest setting.
Damn. Must've hit it with my hand, he thought. Bet I haven't opened the fridge in three days.
He turned the dial to nine and looked back at the bucket of chicken. Carefully taking it out of the fridge, he pulled off the white cardboard top. Instantly he wished he hadn't. The smell of moldy, bacteria-laden chicken popped him in the nose. What was left in the bucket was chicken only in the academic sense; in its place was a greenish-gray mound of hairy goo.
"Christ on a crutch," he gagged and quickly put the top back on. Reaching under the sink, he pulled out a plastic garbage-can liner and stuffed the bucket inside, tying a double knot in the top to prevent any odor from oozing out. Then he stuck the bag in his broom closet.
I'll take it out in the morning.
Turning back to the refrigerator, he grabbed the bottle of Sprite, twisted off the top, and took a gulp. He immediately spit it into the sink.
"Hot, flat puke," he said, pouring the rest of it down the drain and tossing the bottle into the sink after it.
God, what a waste of time. To hell with eating. I'll get something on the way to work in the morning.
He walked to the bedroom and sank onto the bed, preparing to take off his shoes. As he sat down, something jabbed into his right hip. He reached into his pocket and drew out the sharp-edged object. A tingle danced across his scalp.
The disappearing ball trick.
How did that get here? He didn't remember picking it up from his desk at work. What the hell was it doing here?
Oh, stop that! Since the toy was here, he obviously had picked it up from work. Maybe he grabbed it along with his keys and just didn't notice. Whatever. It was here now, he thought, placing the toy on the nightstand.
He fell back on the bed. It was a mammoth thing, making the huge bedroom seem almost small. Jason had shopped for apartments for quite a while, searching for one that could hold all his furniture. He hadn't wanted to get rid of much. Friends told him he might be better off without such memory-invoking items, but he didn't think so.
Lying back against the headboard, he stretched out his arm to turn off the lamp. In doing so, his eyes fell on the photo sitting on the far side of the nightstand. It was a shot of him, Sarah, and Claire on the beach at Jekyll Island. All three were wearing sunglasses and Sarah wore one of those goofy straw hats that's about the size of a sombrero. But damn, she looked good in that two-piece, Jason thought. Having a baby hadn't damaged her figure.
Claire, meanwhile, was mugging for the camera, a pixie-faced elf who always seemed to be smiling and whose cobalt eyes and jet-black hair matched her father's. In the photo, a wide, clownish grin split her face, while her left hand was behind her head and her right hip was thrust out in what she thought was a provocative pose. A little Mae West, Jason thought, except for that raggedy-ass frog she held in her right hand. Rufus the Frog. It was her favorite stuffed animal. He remembered the day she accidently tore off its right arm by slamming it in a door. She ran to Sarah in near-hysterical tears, holding the frog in one hand and the arm in the other. Sarah calmed her, told her Rufus could be fixed. When Sarah brought out her thread and needle, though, Claire insisted on doing it herself. She hurt Rufus, she said, she would doctor him. And she did, although she sewed the arm on crooked, giving Rufus a hobbled, hunchbacked kind of look. Nevertheless, she rarely went anywhere without him, not even to the beach.
Not even to her grave. It was one of the few things Jason gave up. He placed it in her coffin.
God, I miss them both so much. So much.
It suddenly occurred to him that Claire died when she was not much younger than Amanda Benton. What an awful thought.
Rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of each hand, Jason pulled himself off the bed. Thinking of the past got him keyed up, put his emotions on edge. He felt the familiar tingling begin in his fingers and toes.
Strange, this was the second time today it had appeared when he wasn't mad or on edge. He figured it probably was a combination of remembering Sarah and Claire coupled with Amanda's death. Each of those would raise its own set of emotions. If all three weren't enough to fray his nerves, he didn't know what was.
The tingling grew harsher, more pronounced.
He realized he probably needed a shower to relax and began stripping off his clothes. He emptied his pockets, placing his change, keys, and beeper on the nightstand next to the magic trick. He gazed at the toy for a moment, then sat back on the bed and picked it up.
Who kn
ows, maybe it'll help, he thought.
The tingling increased.
Instead of putting the ball in his pocket, he left it inside the ball vase and concentrated on putting the inner lid down and taking it off without fumbling. That was the key.
For about two minutes, he did the trick smoothly and perfectly, his mind drifting. Instead of drifting into calm, pleasant thoughts, however, all he could think about was Sarah, which led to thoughts of Claire, which led to thoughts of Amanda.
Why do the innocent have to die? Why do they have to suffer? What kind of sick, fucking world was this?
It made him angry.
The tingling ripped through his body like a brushfire, but this time he ignored its warning. His hands started flying through the trick, blurring in their speed. At the same time, the intensity of his anger increased.
Why? Why? Why? It wasn't fair that the innocent should die. But it always seemed to happen that way. Why? Were the innocent somehow more expendable? Less worthy of living? Or did life simply reward evil? Or did life just not give a damn?
It wasn't goddammed fair!
The tingling exploded into his fingertips. For an instant, he thought he saw a golden flash envelope his hands, then the bulb in the bedside lamp burst with a blinding pop. When his eyes recovered, the room was dark.
Climbing over the bed to avoid the glass from the broken bulb, he flipped on the overhead light by the door. The magic trick was still in his hands. It felt hot, almost pulsating. He pulled it apart to find… nothing.
The ball, the real ball, was gone. Not gone as part of the illusion, but truly gone. Disappeared. Vanished.
But there was nowhere for it to go, he thought. He hadn't dropped the trick. It was in his hands the whole time. He hadn't put the ball in his pocket, either, but he checked just to make sure.
He scoured the bedspread, thinking it must have flown out of his hands. He got on his hands and knees and looked under the bed and the nightstand.
What the hell is going on? he asked himself. Where did it go? It couldn't just have disappeared.
Or could it? What was the flash just before the lights went out?
The phone rang. Jason nearly leapt out of his skin. "Motherfucker," he shouted, then answered it.
"Medlocke."
"Jazz, it's Lurleen."
Oh God, no "honey."
"Not again."
"Yeah. The sonuvabitch has lived up to his word. This time it's a boy."
Chapter 6
« ^ »
It was midnight and Badger was heading home from police headquarters. Working late on the Benton case had only left him exhausted and frustrated with the lack of progress.
Badger had grown up in Snellville, located on U.S. 78 about halfway between Atlanta and Athens, and had graduated from South Gwinnett High School in 1974. He still lived in the town and his first police job had been as a patrol officer on the Snellville force. He had stayed for seven years, rising to the rank of lieutenant before the county had hired him as a homicide detective.
Old habits were hard to break, so on his way home from work he usually drove around a few of Snellville's shopping centers, schools, and other buildings, checking for anything strange.
After checking several of the fast-food restaurants and shopping centers—especially the Kroger center just down from the high school—Badger pulled into the Snellville Civic Complex, shining his spotlight around the grounds, into the corners and doorways. Nothing there. He pulled around to the circular driveway in front of the buildings and stopped his car, turning off the ignition.
It always gave him a twinge of sadness to patrol the Civic Complex. Years ago, city officials decided to tear down the old fieldstone school building that sat where his car now was parked. The building dated back almost to the Civil War. From 1922 to 1957, it was Snellville High School, a fact proclaimed by a small granite monument sitting near the complex's turnaround driveway. After that it was Snellville Middle School and Badger went to grades six through eight there.
There were a lot of memories tied up there, and Badger fondly remembered the creaking hardwood floors, high ceilings, and drafty hallways.
He couldn't understand why they figured a driveway, a parking lot, and a Krystal was a better use for the land.
He shook his head in puzzlement, then started the car. He headed for the entrance, planning to get back on U.S. 78 and make a coffee run to the Waffle House and chat with a few of the regulars before going home. His house always seemed terribly empty when his kids were gone, and he feared it would seem especially lonely tonight.
But as his headlights spun across the grounds out front, he noticed a shadow leaning against the granite Vietnam veterans memorial sitting a few yards away from the Snellville High School stone. The Vietnam memorial was about seven feet tall with an ever-burning torch on top. For Those Who Served was carved into one side of the rectangular stone along with a bas-relief map of Vietnam and the symbols for all six branches of the American military.
Badger's first thought was that the shadow must be Homer Busby, the town drunk, probably sleeping off another bout with some MD 20/20 or Red Dagger. The drunk was harmless, but it sure pissed off Mayor Preston when Homer's snoring body was found leaning in some doorway or sprawled out on the sidewalk. More than once Homer had scared the bejesus out of some poor woman coming into work.
Oh well, Badger thought. I'll pick him up and give him a night in city jail. He'll be a lot more comfortable there, anyway.
Pulling his bulky frame out of the car, Badger ambled to the memorial, his flashlight in his right hand. The light played across For Those Who Served.
How appropriate, he reasoned. Ol' Homer was a Vietnam vet, one who never quite meshed back into society.
As he walked around the monument, Badger shined his flashlight at the body. "C'mon Homer, up and…"
His knees went watery and he felt the blood draining from his face as if someone had pulled a plug in his neck. His hand instinctively came up as he choked back a mouthful of bile. He stumbled back to the squad car, yanked open the door and grabbed the radio microphone, twisting the frequency knob to the one used by Snellville.
"Millie, Millie, this is Badger," he stammered. "Millie, you there?"
"Oh, hey, Badger," Millie, Snellville's dispatcher, answered. "Uh, you know you're supposed to ID yourself by car."
"Goddamn, Millie, it's my car," he shouted. "Uh… oh shit, I don't know… uh, County 165. Dammit, I don't have time for this. I've got a dead body at the Civic Complex. A little boy. Send me some help."
Badger sank to the ground, his back leaning against the car's open door. He sat there for a second, breathing heavily, before he leaned to his right and threw up.
Jason arrived a few minutes later. Buzz Saunders was already at the scene, checking the body.
"What have we got, Buzz?" Jason asked, walking up behind him. Saunders looked over his shoulder, his mouth set into a straight, hard line.
"like I told you before, some guy getting his rocks off," he said. "It's the same thing as before, only worse."
Jason looked over Saunders's shoulders. The coroner was right.
The body of a small boy rested on its knees, facing the war memorial. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a blue jacket with a silk-screened drawing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the back. Like Amanda's, his head was cut off and taped on backward. The bastard must have used a whole roll of duct tape again, Jason noted.
Like Amanda's, the boy's eyes were gone. Dark trails ran down his face like tears. Unlike Amanda's, the boy's arms were up, hands planted against the memorial, almost as if he were asking for help from above.
"How do his hands stay up like that?" Badger asked, echoing the question in Jason's mind.
Saunders reached up and pulled the left hand away from the stone. There was a slight sucking noise and the boy's arm fell down, palm up. A piece of duct tape was rolled up and stuck to the palm.
"That's how," Saunders said.
"This freak is a regular special effects genius."
Jason turned and followed the line of sight from the boy's face. The gray fieldstone steeple of the Snellville United Methodist Church rose above the line of fir trees growing about thirty yards away. lit by spotlights on the ground, the cross on top of the steeple glowed with righteous purity. There seemed little doubt what the killer was trying to say. War, death, and religion, the constants of human existence.
Jason turned back to the memorial. His eyes were as hard as the granite.
"Raped, too?" he said.
"I'm not sure, but I think so," Saunders answered.
"Sonuvabitch, what are we dealing with here?" Badger asked to no one in particular.
"Do we have a name, Buzz?" Jason asked.
"No, nothing. There's no ID on the body. I'll have to wait until we get back to the morgue and check some dental records or the fingerprint file. Isn't it a good tiling we've been taking kids' fingerprints at the malls for the last couple of years?" he added sarcastically.
Saunders sat back on his heels and took a cigarette out of the package in his chest pocket. It was the last one, but he shoved the empty package back into the shirt. Pushing his glasses up on his head, he put the cigarette in his mouth, but didn't light it.
"Damn," he said quietly. "Damn."
He looked up at Jason. Even without the glasses making them look big and swimmy, Saunders's eyes were soft. They were filled with fear.
"This is starting to scare me, Jazz," he said, the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. "Deep in my heart of hearts I was hoping I was wrong the last time. I was hoping maybe it was just a wild, random killing. I knew it wasn't, but I was hoping. Now, there's no doubt. And I'm scared."
Jason just nodded. He knew exactly how fear tasted. It was a stale, metallic flavor, like biting on a piece of aluminum foil. It grated from your teeth all the way down to your soul. And it never went away. It faded from your mouth, yes, but your soul retained the awful flavor.