by N. M. Brown
Luckily for the locals, he tended to check out these situations in the evening – when the streets were almost always quieter, and the drains could be purged of any offensive matter without spoiling everyone’s lunch.
Over the past six months, a number of complaints had been made about the stench coming from the back of Barney’s Bar ’n’ Grill. Most of the allegations insinuated that Barney Edwards – the proprietor – must be throwing rotting meat into his waste bins, or perhaps even flushing it down his toilets.
Initially, Doug was willing to accept the allegations, because even as he crossed the parking lot he could identify a faint, sickly whiff of the aroma the locals had complained about.
It smelled sweet and rotten, a little like a pumpkin that’s been left out too long after Halloween.
However, despite the pervasive smell hanging in the air like an unpleasant fog, Doug was unable to locate the source. He wandered around the industrial bins at the back of Barney’s without success. It was not coming from the bins nor the building; the waste pipes were running freely, and there were no unpleasant aromas in the toilets – other than the normal reek of shit. Even the storm drains on the road out front were clear and dry of anything other than the occasional lizard.
Eventually, having paced around the area for half an hour, Doug had a moment of inspiration. He looked at the six-foot-high wooden fence that separated the small area at the back of Barney’s and the adjacent property, and he climbed up onto it, his feet sliding as he scrambled his way up. That was when he found himself looking into the deserted parking lot of the Sanderson Clinic. From this position, leaning across the barrier, he could confidently state that this was where the foul, gassy smell was definitely stronger.
Chapter Forty-Two
Leighton pulled up thirty feet away from the small house on Thorn Road. This was a residential area to the east of the city, where people lived in small, neat spaces and had little to do with each other. The smooth grey road stretched for half a mile, linking two larger developments, and was lined with small single-storey homes on both sides.
Although he switched off the car engine, Leighton kept the air conditioning running. He knew it wouldn’t feel as cool inside without the car running, but at least the fan would keep the air moving. After rechecking the house number, Leighton slid down in his seat, pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. Within a few seconds, a cheery sounding young woman answered.
‘Hi,’ Leighton said, ‘my name is Michael Stanton. I’d like to order a House Special pizza to be delivered to 311a Thorn Road.’ Leighton nodded. ‘Yeah, twelve-inch, traditional crust please.’ Having completed the call, Leighton got out of his car and wandered away from it until he found a house with an empty drive. He walked up to the porch and rang the doorbell. As he’d suspected, nobody was home. If there had been anybody in the house, Leighton would simply have claimed to be lost, looking for instructions on how to get back to Oceanside Boulevard. Having confirmed the place was empty, Leighton sat down on a small swing seat on the porch. From this position, he could watch Stanton’s house, which was farther down the street. The seat gave him a clear view whilst also allowing him to blend in.
After twenty minutes, a small red motorbike groaned to a stop outside Stanton’s house. Leighton watched as the delivery driver took a flat container from the heated box on the rear of the bike. He approached the front door and rang the bell.
The door was opened by a frowning man in his late thirties. Leighton felt a surge of adrenalin as he got his first view of the potential killer. Stanton spoke to the delivery man for a moment then emphatically shook his head and closed the door. The delivery driver kicked at the ground and returned to the waiting motorbike. After locking the pizza back in the insulated box, he climbed on his bike and drove off.
Within a few minutes Stanton appeared. He was too far away for Leighton to see if he looked rattled, but he figured he would be. If he really was a killer, he would be concerned about random deliveries showing up at his house, interrupting whatever he was up to in there. A few minutes later, Stanton came out of the house, got into his car, and drove off.
Leighton waited for a few moments before returning to his car. He climbed in and opened the glove box. Taking out a pair of bone coloured latex gloves, he stretched them twice and put them on.
As he hurried out of his car, Leighton checked all around before hurrying up to Stanton’s house. Stepping cautiously around the side of the house, he found himself on a neat terrace.
He tried the glass patio door; to check if it was locked. It wouldn’t be a problem if it was; Leighton had spent more than two decades getting into locked cars and therefore carried a small set of metal picks in his wallet. This set was little more than some tiny hooks, but thankfully it wasn’t required. The sliding glass door was unlocked. Leighton slid it open and exhaled a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.
Before he stepped into the house, Leighton pulled a pair of shoe covers from his trouser pocket, and stretched them over his loafers. He then stepped across the door frame and into the Stanton’s home.
Inside the house was silent. Moving forwards, Leighton discovered that the patio led into a basic living area – and yet there was little, if any, sign of life.
As he moved into the hallway, Leighton discovered a black canvas holdall sitting close to the front door. Leighton crept toward toward it and crouched down. At that moment, a car groaned past outside and Leighton froze. He cocked his head, listening for an increase in volume. Thankfully the sound faded away, and Leighton let out his breath. Returning his attention to the object before him, he gripped the zipper and opened the bag. Upon discovering the neatly arranged contents, Leighton immediately understood the purpose of the holdall. There was a glossy map of Black Mountain Open Space Park, and a portable stove, along with some torches, snap-lights, flares, and various emergency ration packs. This was clearly a bug-out bag for when things became too hot for Stanton. Leighton glanced at the map and wondered if this was somewhere that Stanton already knew.
Leighton stood up and walked cautiously into the remaining three rooms. The kitchen was small and neat, the bedroom looked almost unused, but it was the third room that interested him. There was nothing in the white space other than a desk and chair, and a single shelf on the wall. The shelf was empty with the exception of two small items, and had it not been for one of the items, Leighton would have walked away. Something on the shelf had caught his eye. As he moved toward it, he was unsure of what he was looking at. It seemed at first like a large jewel, but as he got nearer he realised exactly what it was.
When he first met Rochelle, she had told him that Sarah had stolen a tin of cherry lip gloss that had been in the pocket of her jacket. This had stuck in Leighton’s memory because his daughter had once had a small tin like that, only Annie’s was watermelon flavoured.
And now, sitting on the shelf, in the house of a convicted killer and current murder suspect, was a tin just like the one Rochelle had lost. Reaching into his pocket, Leighton took out a camera and a small, white plastic ruler. He carefully placed the ruler on the shelf in front of the lip gloss and photographed both items.
Leighton crept into the bathroom and glanced around. The shower cabinet was covered in droplets of water, suggesting it had been used recently. Above the small wash basin was a steel medicine cabinet. He opened the mirrored door and found the cabinet contained nothing more than some mouthwash, a nailbrush and a matchbox. Picking up the box, Leighton heard a dry rattle, like the sound of dead bugs, as the contents moved inside. He took a breath, and used his fingertip to slide open the small drawer to reveal five teeth. The spiked roots of some were still stained by faded blood.
Leighton pulled out the camera again and took several photographs of the box of teeth. It was then that a noise from outside caught his attention. This time, when he heard the loud sound of an approaching car, Leighton knew it was the homeowner returning.
‘Shit,’ he whi
spered. His hands trembled as he returned the box to the cabinet. He closed it and left the bathroom. As he crossed the hallway he saw the outline of a figure at the mottled glass window of the door. He side-stepped back, into the living room.
He slipped out the way he came – through the patio door – and scrambled over the wall into the adjacent property. He waited there, crouched in some stranger’s yard, for several minutes. When Leighton believed enough time had passed, he nonchalantly left the garden of the neighbouring house, and walked purposefully along the street to where his car was parked. Moving briskly, he peeled off the gloves and removed the shoe covers, which he stuffed into a trouser pocket. As Leighton neared the car, he felt a sense of foreboding; perhaps that was why he hadn’t turned around to look back, over his shoulder, at the house he had just left. If he had, he would undoubtedly have been unsettled by the figure watching him from the patio window; perhaps more unsettling was the fact that the figure was smiling.
Clambering back into his car, Leighton felt empowered, yet helpless. If he called the station, it was unlikely they would follow it up. Given that he was on suspension, he could be charged with trespass for being in the house, and he could easily end up spending a night or two in the cells. That would take him out of the picture entirely, and Stanton would be able to continue his mission. Yet, he had evidence: the photographs would be enough to justify a visit from Slater and Goza.
Turning the key to start the ignition, Leighton made his decision. He would speak to Rochelle and figure out how to send an anonymous email with the photographs attached. He just wanted to make sure she was safely at home first.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t.
Chapter Forty-Three
The sound of repeated knocking on the door roused Rochelle from where she had been sleeping, curled in a warm knot on her couch. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but when she returned from Leighton’s place she had felt more relaxed than she had in many years. Partly, she told herself, due to the warm bath and soft blankets, but also because of the strange feeling that somebody else cared. When she had first woken up in Leighton’s home, it seemed for a few precious moments that her other life – her real life – had simply been a nightmare.
That was why, when she returned home to her shitty little world, she’d crawled into unconsciousness: she wanted to escape back to that state of contentment. As she tumbled into the dark warmth of sleep, she hoped to wake up in Leighton’s safe haven.
When she heard the sound of the door, she stumbled from the couch and staggered unsteadily, as if the entire building was at sea, to answer it.
She fumbled for the lock and then opened the door, expecting to see Leighton’s earnest face. She was mistaken.
‘Oh shit,’ she said as she tried to the slam the door shut again. Unfortunately, she was too slow.
Chapter Forty-Four
Pulling up outside Rochelle’s modest home, Leighton glanced at the closed shutters. He checked the time: 6.45pm that was when he felt a sense of unease begin to uncurl in his guts like an awakening beast. He climbed out of his car and locked the door.
Moving tentatively to Rochelle’s front door, Leighton glanced around at the neighbouring windows, most of which had open shutters. He reassured himself that Rochelle’s work involved nights, so it was likely that she would only recently have woken, if at all. After ringing the doorbell and getting no response, Leighton tried the door handle and found that the apartment was unlocked.
‘Hey,’ he called as the door swung inwards, ‘Rochelle, are you in there?’
Leighton stepped into someone else’s home for the second time that day. The apartment didn’t just look messy, it looked like the scene of a fight.
As he wandered back to the door, Leighton noticed something even more alarming.
There were a couple of drops of what appeared to be blood on the white walls of the hallway. Leighton shuddered and began to panic. If Rochelle had been abducted, she was in real danger, possibly dead already.
He staggered out of the apartment to his car and leaned on the hood, breathing in gulps of air. He had to get back to Stanton and confront the bastard. Whether that placed him in danger or not was no longer important.
The house on Thorn Road was shrouded in the long shadows of the early evening when Leighton returned. Thanks to the low illumination of nearby homes, he could see the saloon car was missing from Stanton’s drive. He parked his car across the drive, no longer concerned about stealth. His emotions were too raw.
In a moment of anger and frustration, Leighton ran up to the front door and kicked it. The door did not shift. He tried barging it with his shoulder, but the lack of movement suggested it had some type of deadbolt on the other side. He hurried around to the rear of the house and grabbed the handle of the patio door. It too was locked, but Leighton had no patience for lock picking this time. Picking up the steel patio table, he threw it at the large rectangle of glass. It imploded with a deafening bang. Somewhere, nearby, a car alarm began to sound.
Leighton hurried into the dark house. As he suspected, the black holdall was missing from the front door, suggesting that Stanton was long gone and would not be returning to the house tonight. .
Knowing it was only a matter of time before a concerned neighbour heard the alarm and called the cops, Leighton moved quickly from room to room looking for anything that might help him figure out if Rochelle had been in the place. Thankfully, there was no sign that Rochelle or any other girl had been there.
It was then that Leighton remembered the map that had been in the bug-out bag. If Stanton was panicking, and feeling like the net was tightening, he would need to get off the grid. The trails around Black Mountain Park were the perfect place to do that. It was a large area, but Leighton suspected he knew exactly which part Stanton was heading to.
Chapter Forty-Five
As Leighton drove into the dusty landscape of the Black Mountain canyon, darkness was beginning to fall, and Leighton knew his theory was nothing more than that. With each passing moment it seemed increasingly unlikely that he would locate Stanton. The road was uneven, which caused the car to bounce around and skid on the loose rocks. Since the closure of the mines, the paths around the area were only used by hikers accessing some of the walking trails. This meant Leighton was trying to look out for nothing more obvious than some flattened bushes, in an area of several square miles.
Having looped around twice he was almost ready to give up, when his headlights picked up a glinting metal bumper: Stanton’s beige car abandoned off to one side of the mountain track. Had it been an hour later he would never have noticed the car, which blended almost seamlessly with the arid landscape. As he drew close to it, Leighton wondered if its capacity for camouflage had been the reason for Stanton’s choice of car. A beige coloured car on a dusty road would be almost impossible to spot from land or air. Leighton also noticed that the car’s licence plate had been freshly ripped off. It was a clever move. In a couple of months the windows would crack, and the sun would scorch away the paint, making the vehicle almost unidentifiable – though the fact it was left hand drive made it slightly more noticeable. It seemed that the killer was always, both literally and figuratively, a number of steps ahead of his pursuers.
Leighton pulled over a few yards ahead of the other vehicle. Climbing out cautiously, he surveyed the landscape. It was unlikely that Stanton would want to be out in the open for any length of time, but his bug-out bag had provided Leighton with a significant clue to where he was heading. The boxes of highway flares would be useless for anyone on the run in open country. Even if they were hiding out in a barn, or some other outhouse, the bright glow of a burning flare would signal their presence like a shrieking alarm. The only way Stanton could use them without fear of being seen, is if he were inside a windowless building or deep in a cellar. There were few buildings and no cellars on Black Mountain, but there was a large and disused arsenic mine.
Scrambling down the dwindling track, Leigh
ton spotted a yellow warning sign, indicating that the mine up ahead was dangerous. By the look of the dented sign, somebody had been using it for handgun target practice. A few feet beyond the sign was the black entrance to the disused mines. The curved shape of it reminded Leighton of a train tunnel or a gravestone.
Chapter Forty-Six
Crossing the parking lot of the Sanderson Clinic, Doug Wilder let his nose guide him. He walked in overlapping circles like a drunk trying to get home. Occasionally he would stop and close his eyes, as if he were a mystic, attempting to communicate with the spirit world.
In recent years there had been a real boom in different gadgets, with all sorts of gas sensors to help with locating the source of smells, but Doug didn’t have any time for that kind of thing. The way he saw it, if you couldn’t smell shit, you had no business working in sanitary and waste management. It would be like being a chef with no sense of taste.
As he engaged in his business, Doug concluded that the smell did not actually seem to be emanating from the square building of the clinic itself. He slowly followed the trail to the rear of the building, where there was a square industrial trash can. A glimpse inside revealed it to be empty – other than some old mannequin parts and a couple of bent walking sticks. Yet the stench remained just as intense in this location. It simply didn’t make sense.