Night Chill

by Jeff Gunhus

  “Please sit. Tell me what you know,” Lauren said.

  “Sheriff, I was supposed to tell you that one of your deputies needed to speak with you right away. Sorenson, I think his name was,” Dr. Mansfield said.

  Janney looked to the door impatiently. He was obviously unhappy about missing whatever the psychiatrist had to say. To Lauren’s surprise, Janney got up to leave. “Moran, you come find me later and fill me in. You got that?”

  Scott Moran nodded. Then he and Dr. Mansfield each took places around the small square table that Lauren had used as her base of operations throughout the long night. Moran grimaced as he sat down as though he were in physical pain. Lauren wondered if she looked the same way to the people around her. It was how she felt anyway.

  “First let me say I’m sorry for your loss,” Moran started.

  Lauren felt her stomach muscles clench. My loss. Dr. Mansfield cleared his throat impatiently.

  “I mean, there’s still a chance they’ll find her, of course. I’m sorry. I…”

  “You’ll have to excuse Scott,” Dr. Mansfield said. “He’s had some bad news in his family today.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Lauren said, feeling bad that, in fact, she wasn’t sorry to hear it. She just felt sorry that it interfered with the man’s ability to tell her about her husband. It was a selfish thought and she chastised herself for it, trying hard to find some sympathy. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “It’s my daughter, she…she” Scott Moran’s voice trembled and he bit his lower lip in an effort to control himself. Lauren looked up at Dr. Mansfield for an indication of what the man was talking about. The doctor scowled at the psychiatrist.

  “Come on, Scott. Pull it together here,” Dr. Mansfield said.

  Lauren caught the irritation in his voice and assumed that he thought the man was over-reacting to whatever was happening with his daughter. Ungracious thoughts poured through her as she waited for him to continue. My daughter’s missing. If yours is dead or dying, all right. Otherwise, shut the hell up. The thoughts made her feel like a terrible person but she couldn’t help herself. It was all she could do to keep from reaching over the table and shaking the man until he told her what he knew. But her lack of control over her thoughts didn’t extend to her actions. She sat quietly, feigning patience and empathy she didn’t feel.

  “Go on. Tell Lauren what you told me.”

  Scott Moran nodded his head. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He turned to Lauren. “You know my conversation with your husband would normally be bound by doctor-patient privilege. But since you are his spouse, and since it involves the commission of a crime, I’m not…”

  Lauren waved he hand in the air impatiently. “Wait, wait. What do you mean commission of a crime? What did the two of you talk about?”

  “Well, you know about the hallucinations, right? First the one with Huckley here in the hospital, then later at your house. The baseball bat?”

  “Yes,” Lauren said softly, ashamed for the embarrassment she felt, as if Jack’s obvious mental illness were a dirty family secret instead of a medical problem.

  Scott Moran whispered so quietly that Lauren was forced to lean across the table to hear him clearly. “So you know he thinks he heard Nate Huckley’s voice telling him what to do. He actually believed that Huckley caused his actions. That he was being haunted by him.”

  “I know all this. What else did he say?”

  “That Sarah heard Huckley too. That she was special. He went on and on about psychic phenomenon and these strange powers Sarah possesses. Do you know where he could have gotten such an idea? Has anything strange happened involving your daughter recently?”

  Lauren though of the pages of numbers Sarah had drawn. The number 320 over and over. Huckley’s room. She wasn’t ready to talk about that. “No, of course not,” she said.

  “Well, the idea fascinated him. He believed that Huckley was after her to try to steal these secret powers. On top of that, he was the only one who could save her. I mean, it was really paranoid stuff.”

  Lauren swallowed hard. “All right. So how does this make you so sure that Jack’s responsible for abducting her.”

  “Now I never said that, not directly.”

  “You said you were telling me this because ‘it involved the commission of a crime.’ I think those were your exact words. What crime would that be Dr. Moran? Hallucinating?”

  “Lauren, easy,” Dr. Mansfield said. “Scott is trying to help.”

  Lauren smoothed her hair back and took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just getting a little tired of people who don’t even know Jack already convicting him.”

  “Well, that wasn’t all he said.”

  “O.K., what else did he say to convince you he’s a criminal?”

  “There was one thing that shocked me enough to write it down word for word.” Scott Moran took out a piece of paper from his pocket. “Here you go. ‘I’d rather Sarah were dead than be captured by those bastards. She’d be better off being dead, that’s for sure. I just hope I have the guts to do it if it comes to that.’” Scott Moran folded the piece of paper.

  Dr. Mansfield put his hand on Lauren’s shoulder. “It doesn’t prove anything, but I thought you had the right to know.”

  “C-can I see that,” Lauren asked, pointing a shaky finger at the paper Scott Moran held. He handed it to her and she read through it, still unable to imagine the words coming from Jack’s mouth. “What did you—what was your recommendation to him?”

  “I told him to admit himself for hospitalization. I thought he was a suicide risk and might pose a threat to others. He just laughed at me. Told me I was the crazy one. I didn’t push it because I thought he would become violent.”

  “I just don’t understand,” Lauren said, her lower lip shaking. “How could it go this far so fast? I don’t understand.”

  “On the contrary, I don’t think this was fast at all. If anything, it was very slow. He told me about the accident in California. The little girl who died.”

  “That wasn’t his fault though.”

  “But that’s not what he thinks. He holds himself responsible. He is carrying enormous guilt. Something like that held inside long enough starts to take on a life of its own. It manifests itself in unexpected ways. Depression. Hallucinations. Split personality. All it took was a trigger.”

  “And what was the trigger?” Lauren asked.

  “Could have been anything. Some obvious ones are the man he saw killed by lightning. Could be because of Max Dahl’s daughter having a terminal illness. Could be he saw a pick-up truck the same color as the one in the accident. What I’m trying to say is that it could have been anything.”

  Dr. Mansfield stood up. “Thank you, Scott, for coming to us. Why don’t we let Lauren think about this for a moment?”

  Scott Moran took his cue, slid his chair from the table, and stood. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more. I really am.”

  Lauren tried to smile but felt as if she would lose control again. She remained seated and nodded her acknowledgement. Dr. Mansfield lowered himself to her level. “I have to talk to Scott about a few other things. Will you be all right?” Lauren nodded, not at all sure if she would be or not. The doctor patted her on the shoulder and told her he would be back shortly.

  Across the room Janney saw the meeting with Lauren Tremont breaking up. He still seethed at missing whatever Scott Moran told her. How was he supposed to handle the situation if he didn’t have all the information available? Before he could work up a real rage about being excluded, Deputy Sorenson appeared in the hallway. Janney dragged him to a private corner for an update. “What do you have?”

  Sorenson stared at the floor. “Nothing. Not a trace. The guys are still out looking.”

  “Godammit!” Janney ran his hands through his hair. “We need to find Tremont and Lonetree. We’re running out of time.” He steadied himself. He made it a rule never to look concerned around his men,
never show weakness. He was used to dealing with situations like this, but this one had him worried. Janney had intended to use this problem to make a case for being the number two guy instead of that idiot Huckley. Maybe even to argue to the Boss that Huckley was a liability. But for that to happen, he needed to contain this problem quickly. It would boost his stock and, more important, give him a chance to make Huckley look worse. But the Tremont woman made things difficult. If he hadn’t faked the phone call to the FBI earlier, he was sure she would have called them herself. And that would have complicated things.

  “What do you want me to do?” Deputy Sorenson asked.

  “Set up outside. They might be heading this way.”

  Sorenson leaned in close and whispered, “What about the other thing? Do you want me to do anything with that?”

  Janney looked up and down the hall, impatient with the deputy’s lack of discretion. “No, let it alone. I’ll take care of it. Just get outside and keep your eyes open.” He watched as the deputy turned and strutted down the hall, one hand resting on the handle of his gun. “Goddamn cowboy,” Janney muttered.

  If he was right about Lonetree, this might be the last time he had to deal with Sorenson. He felt a tinge of regret, but not because he felt any affection for the man. Sorenson had been a mistake. Like always, Janney had recruited him from out of state. The fewer local ties the better. Criminal record, ex-military, the man had seemed the perfect addition. And in the past year Sorenson had done everything asked of him. Of course, the kid thought he was involved in nothing more than old fashioned police corruption. A little drugs. A little prostitution. He didn’t have a clue what he was really mixed up in. They never did until the very end.

  But Sorenson was too cocky for his own good and Janney knew that would eventually lead to mistakes. The same way Huckley’s arrogance kept driving them to the brink. He decided to retire Sorenson after the current problem was cleaned up. That is if Lonetree didn’t take care of him first.

  Janney headed back toward the cafeteria where Lauren sat waiting for her husband to appear. With any luck, Janney thought, this whole mess would be resolved by the end of the night. If only the resolution could include getting rid of Huckley, permanently. Even if the Boss didn’t agree to it, it didn’t mean it was impossible. He pushed the thought around in his head, savoring its implications. Life without Huckley. Life without the hassle and complications that followed the man. Life without the risk that he put them all through. Just imagining it brought smile to his lips. Suddenly he felt a new sense of promise and opportunity. He whistled a little tune as he walked back to the hospital cafeteria, the seeds of a plan to destroy Huckley taking root with each step.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Even through his shirt, Jack felt the cold metal of the gun against his stomach. He reached down to his belt line to make certain it was still secure after his sprint across the lawn. The downward angle of the gun pointed the business end of the weapon straight into his crotch, so he had checked a dozen times to make sure the safety was engaged. He pulled back his sweater and felt for the safety catch again. Just in case.

  He tried to control his breathing. He was panting far harder than he should have for the small exertion he’d made. He had to relax. A couple of deep breaths as he crouched in a shadow against the brick building and his pulse started to slow and even out.

  I’m going to kill a man.

  The thought didn’t startle him, it just oozed its way into his mind. I’m going to kill a man. The simple statement had replayed in his mind since he and Lonetree had worked out their plan. These six words formed the soundtrack to his actions, looping around his brain until they dissolved in the background and made way for the other voices that clamored for attention in his head. Angry voices, angry because they knew Jack held out hope that killing would be unnecessary, that mercy would ultimately prove a better strategy than revenge.

  Especially to this enemy.

  The voices insisted the man Jack hunted was not really a man at all, but a monster that killed women and children. Tortured them in bizarre rituals. Had these victims been shown mercy? Of course not. So then, why shouldn’t such a monster be killed? Why should he be afraid to do it?

  The voices were compelling, but Jack still hoped he wouldn’t have to take the safety off the gun.

  Jack ran down the length of the building, careful to check each window for watchful eyes before he passed by it. The grass crunched beneath his feet, frozen by the cold. Each footstep sounded impossibly loud in the still air, like he was sneaking around with a string of empty soda cans tied to his feet. But he knew it was his mind playing tricks on him. No one could hear him. He hoped.

  A door around the back was unlocked, just as he expected. He turned the knob slowly, careful not to make a sound, and inched it open to minimize the creak of the hinges. The room was dark so he walked in and eased the door shut behind him.

  Forward through the room, down the hall, he moved on the balls of his feet. It reminded him of playing hide-and-seek as a kid, tip-toeing through a dark house, not knowing who was going to jump out of a shadow to scare him. The difference was that as a kid it was fun to get scared. He wasn’t having any fun tonight.

  With sudden clarity, he realized that his prey might not go quietly. Until that moment he hadn’t fully appreciated the possibility that the man might find him first. That on turning the next corner, a tire iron might crush into his face. Or a flash of light from a gun could be the last thing he saw before being enveloped in darkness forever. Jack had the uneasy feeling of a hunter whose role has been reversed, that the panting beast no longer running ahead of him trying to escape, but now stalked him from behind waiting for the moment of ambush. Some of his resolve melted into fear and paranoia, but he kept moving through the house.

  Jack took the gun from his waistband and held it out in front of him, the muzzle pointed up to the ceiling, just like he’d seen in the cop shows on television. Heeding Lonetree’s advice, he left the safety on but kept his thumb on the mechanism so he could release it in a hurry if he needed to. The instant it took to disengage the safety could cost him valuable seconds, but he also knew it gave him the time he needed to avoid shooting the wrong person. He appreciated that Lonetree’s suggestion was clearly an act of self-preservation.

  Jack moved into the next room. Still dark. There wasn’t a light on in the place. The prey was either gone or expecting them.

  Jack squinted to interpret the shadows in the room, but the curtained windows blacked the moon out. There could have been a gun positioned three feet from his forehead and he wouldn’t have known it. Despite the impenetrable darkness, he felt something was different about this room. He knew without light, without hearing a sound. He knew something was wrong.

  Someone is in the room. Someone is watching you.

  A brilliant light flashed on overhead. It burst through his dilated pupils and turned the world glaring white. He raised his left arm to shield his eyes and his right hand to point the gun at whatever was in front of him. Blinded and scared, he pulled the trigger. Hard. The gun didn’t fire. He hadn’t removed the safety.

  He crouched to the ground on reflex and fumbled with the gun, sliding the safety to the side. By the time he raised the gun again, his eyes had started to adjust to the light and his brain had caught up with the action. No one had shot at him. He wasn’t being attacked. Instead, the person who had turned on the light was sitting in front of him, regarding him with interest, as if curious whether Jack would figure out the safety on the gun or not, and once he did, if he would fire the weapon.

  Satisfied after a few beats that Jack would not shoot, at least not yet, Max Dahl withdrew his hand from the light switch on the wall and sat back in his leather chair.

  “I thought you might come by tonight.”

  Lonetree moved expertly around the corner from the front of the house, his gun trained on the space between Max’s eyes.

  “And I see you brought a friend. Joseph Lonetree,
right?” He lowered his hand back to the armrest of the chair and sat smiling at them both. “I don’t suppose we could do this over a drink, could we?”

  “Are Kristi or the kids here?” Jack asked.

  “They’re gone. At her mother’s in Annapolis.”

  Jack took a step forward, his knuckles white from his grip on the gun. “Where’s Sarah? Tell me or I’ll kill you.”

  Jack thought he saw a momentary flare of indignation in Max’s eyes. But it was there only for a second, as if his friend suddenly remembered the charade was up and he was no longer entitled to trust.

  “I swear to you, I didn’t know anything about it. I just heard about it tonight. After they’d already taken her.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  Max shook his head. “I know where they’ll take her eventually. But they won’t do it right away. They’ll want things to calm down first. I’m so sorry. I understand how it feels to know you’re losing a daughter.”

  Jack searched for any sign that Max was lying. The seconds stretched out as the two men stared each other down. Jack knew it was insane to believe anything Max said. Their entire relationship had been a lie. Lonetree had shown him the proof. Max was the enemy. He was a vicious killer, a predator. Jack had expected to feel rage at this moment. Rage for the lies Max had told. Rage for the betrayal of a friend. Rage for the evil that Max took part in. But his emotions were different than he expected, and he could not find the anger he knew he was entitled to feel. Something about Max had changed. His shoulders were slumped forward, his eyes circled with dark rings. Jack noticed the slight shake in his hands. Despite everything, Jack still felt pity for his friend. No matter the monster he was, right now he was just a broken man. The father of a little girl who was dying.

  “How about that drink?” Max asked.

  Jack hesitated. He and Lonetree had agreed that he would get the first crack at getting Max to help them. If he wasn’t successful, Lonetree would take over the interrogation. Jack wondered how long the big man would wait before he took matters into his own hands. He decided to see how far he could use his and Max’s friendship to make him talk. Lowering his gun, but knowing Lonetree still had him covered, Jack walked over to the small bar where he knew Max kept the good bourbon. He took out two tumblers, clinked some ice into each and poured two fingers of auburn liquid. He crossed the room and handed a drink to Max.