Dead River

by Fredric M. Ham

  The buzz picked up as Sikes shuffled down the last fifteen feet of the ramp. He carefully scanned the crowd, glancing away from the bright lights of the video cameras. Rage coursed through his body as he glared at the contingency of reporters and cameramen. He had utter contempt for all of them, the media buzzards and their slanted and sensationalized stories they reported as news.

  News my ass, he thought. He wanted desperately to tell his side of the story, the real truth. But there wouldn’t be any such exchanges, no answering of questions or verbal head-butting with biased reporters that wouldn’t know how to report a story if they had it handed to them. No, they would get what they deserved—silence. Besides, who would understand what he was doing? No one, it was that simple.

  Suddenly Sikes stopped, thrusting his hands into the front pockets of his shorts, his red Dale Earnhardt T-shirt hanging loose over his protruding stomach. He’d actually dropped a few pounds while in jail but still had a pudgy, boyish shape. The crowd’s buzzing was reduced to a murmur, and all eyes shifted to the man standing motionless.

  Dalton Abramson and his team were planted at the front of the crowd, only inches from the bottom of the ramp. They were flanked on the right by Jack Stanley and his CBS cameraman, and on the left was Amy Fitzpatrick from the Orlando Sentinel crowded in close to the NBC reporter and cameraman.

  Sikes took a step forward and then stopped again, the sun reflecting off the mirrored surface of his sunglasses.

  Dalton Abramson was the first to fire off a question. “Why do you think you were released?” he shouted. He always tried the indirect line of questioning to “loosen them up” as he would say, hopefully throwing them off guard.

  No response from Sikes.

  “Do you know Sam Weber?” Jack Stanley shouted.

  Abramson shot Stanley a look that had “don’t ask another question until I’m done with him” written all over it.

  Still no answer.

  And then a chaotic barrage of questions ensued, one shouted out over the top of another.

  “Why’d you kill Sara Ann Riley?” asked Amy Fitzpatrick, pointing in Sikes’s direction with her ink pen.

  “Did you kill Tami Breckenridge?”

  “Are you going to leave Florida?”

  “Hey, talk to us. Tell us what actually happened.”

  “Are you innocent?”

  Sikes started down the last ten feet of the ramp and bored into the middle of the crowd. Earlier he’d called a taxi in the lobby and now spotted a Yellow Cab parked at the back of the lot.

  As he made a beeline for the cab, the sea of reporters and cameramen parted. Then from behind came a question that stopped him in mid-stride.

  “Who’s Gabriel?” someone shouted.

  The crowd went silent, only a few shuffling feet and the mechanical buzzing of cameras could be heard.

  Sikes turned and glared at the crowd. “Who’s asking?” he inquired.

  “Hey, he can talk,” someone yelled. A few chuckles followed.

  “Chip Downey, Cedar Key Beacon,” a man yelled from somewhere near where Dalton Abramson stood.

  Sikes couldn’t match a face with the voice.

  A reporter standing close to Sikes mumbled, “Cedar Key Beacon?”

  “Can you tell us about Gabriel?” Downey screamed out again.

  Sikes lifted his sunglasses, resting them on his forehead. He stood silent for several moments as a rash of still-camera flashes fired. He finally spoke. “Read your Bible, Mr. Downey. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  Then Sikes turned and headed for the taxi. As the cab pulled out of the parking lot, Dalton Abramson tossed his microphone to his assistant.

  “This was a goddamn waste of time,” Abramson said.

  Chip Downey walked past Abramson, not making eye contact with anyone.

  “Hey, Downey,” Abramson said. “What the hell was the Gabriel question about?”

  Downey continued walking. His ball cap was pulled down so the bill met the top of his sunglasses.

  “Who’s Gabriel?” Abramson asked again.

  “Don’t know, that’s why I asked the question,” Adam Riley said as he walked toward his car, never looking back.

  93

  ADAM CUT THEIR Key West trip short the week before, very short. He had wheeled the Volvo out of the Rothchild Inn parking lot at nine in the morning the day after they had arrived and didn’t speak a single word during the six-and-a-half hour drive back to Cocoa Beach. Everything was back to where Valerie and he left it before the trip; the threatening distance between them now seemed to grow in geometric proportions. He was spending more time at the R & R Gun Rack and less time at home, or at work, for that matter.

  Two days after Sikes walked out of jail a free man, Adam walked out of the R & R Gun Rack at six-eleven. Dusk was long gone, and the sky was a blanket of thick, billowy clouds, offering no hope of illuminating the parking lot. The absence of light was assured by the overgrowth of laurel oaks and towering sycamores that dominated the property’s landscape. Leaves of the two deciduous trees were still dense and had not given in to the warm winter months. Arno Goudy’s idea of providing lighting for his customers outside the gun shop was a single dismal light fixture mounted on the east side of the building. It hung there dribbling out a pathetically dim spot of light on the concrete pavement below, barely five-feet in diameter.

  Adam headed in the general direction of his parked car, unsure of its exact location. As he continued, the darkness increased. His pupils were dilated to the maximum. A car passing by momentarily provided a beacon of light, but it was gone as fast as it came.

  He suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

  Goddamn it, there it is again.

  There was someone else in the parking lot, he could feel it. There was no sound, no figure lurking in the blackness, only a feeling, a sixth sense. He removed the nylon gun case from under his arm and slowly pulled the zipper across the top. Then he remembered the gun was empty. There wasn’t a magazine locked into place. Shit.

  Removing the car keys from his front pocket, he unlocked the car using the remote. To his right, no more than forty feet away, the Volvo’s door locks snapped, and the dome light lit up the interior. At the same time he heard feet shuffling to his left.

  His breathing picked up, and his heart began pounding in his chest. He could now feel the blood rushing to his head. There was a dull thumping rhythm in his ears. It was the human body responding to the unknown, reacting to fear. A slight breeze whisked across the parking lot, cooling his forehead. It was then that Adam realized he’d broken a sweat.

  “Who’s there?” Adam shouted, squeezing the handgrip of the unloaded Glock inside the nylon case.

  No answer.

  A flash of light came from the area of the parking lot where he’d heard someone. There was a figure standing next to a car lighting a cigarette, a man. At least there was enough light so he could make out it was a man. The man drew hard on the cigarette and then suddenly flashed a beam of high intensity light in Adam’s direction.

  “Hi there, sonny,” the man said.

  Adam dropped the Glock into the gun case and let out a rush of air from his burning lungs through pursed lips. “Jesus Christ, Bill. You scared the living shit out of me.”

  “Thought you might need some light to get to your car,” Bill explained. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Adam walked slowly in Bill’s direction. “Well, you did.”

  “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “What the hell’s with the lighting out here?” Adam asked, whipping his arms around, left hand gripping the gun case.

  “I’ve told Arno he needs to put in some better lighting. Can’t see a goddamn thing at night.”

  “Really,” agreed Adam sourly.

  “Arno isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Not like his father. But I heard the old man had his shortcomings too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I guess he was a royal asshole.”
/>   Adam was now within five feet of Bill. “What’re you doing out here? Didn’t see you inside.”

  “I just got here. Came to shoot some before they close.”

  Bill flicked the flashlight upward, and Adam could finally see his face, the long jagged scar on his left cheek glistening.

  “You all right, sonny? You seem a little jumpy.”

  “I’m okay. I am jumpy, as you say, because you just scared the shit out of me!”

  “Didn’t mean to, sonny, didn’t mean to,” Bill said, drawing hard on his cigarette.

  94

  THE CASHIER at the Blockbuster in Sharpes leaned over and whispered into the ear of her co-worker. The boy was lazily stacking returned movies on the cluttered countertop.

  “Isn’t that guy over there the one who was supposed to have murdered that Riley girl?”

  The boy turned, craning his neck for a glimpse of the man, then leaned into her. “I don’t know, didn’t see him walk in,” he whispered with a smirk.

  She pushed him back with a forearm, keeping some distance between the two of them. “Well, I think it’s him.”

  “Wasn’t he like let out of jail or something because of some screwup?”

  “Yeah. They dropped the charges against him because of a technical thing.”

  “Damn. That’s messed up.”

  “Well, I’m sure it’s him. We should just act normal.”

  “You, act normal?” the boy snickered softly. “That’s a laugh.”

  The girl gave him a light slap on the back. “Shut up, jerk.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw the man with greasy, dark hair standing on the other side of the counter. She felt like his eyes were peering deep inside of her, into her soul, making her skin crawl with waves of both fear and repugnance. Sort of how Jodie Foster must have felt when staring into the eyes of the demented Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, she thought.

  He handed her two movies and a membership card.

  “Hi,” the girl said nervously then looked down at the cash register. “Did you find everything okay, sir?”

  “Where’s Carrie?” the man asked.

  “I don’t know a Carrie.”

  “Carrie used to work here,” he insisted.

  “I just started a week ago.”

  The girl turned toward the boy stacking returned movies. He stopped sorting titles. “Carrie quit,” he said assuredly, almost a little cockily. “I think her family moved out of town, Pennsylvania or somewhere like that.”

  The man didn’t reply.

  “That’ll be seven dollars and ninety-five cents,” the girl said, turning around, still trying not to make eye contact with the man standing directly in front of her.

  The man handed her a ten-dollar bill. “What’s your name?” He paused for a moment and finally said, “Oh, there it is, on your name tag. Kelly. Now that’s a nice name.”

  Kelly said nothing. She slid the movies across the counter, stopping just short of the edge, and laid the change on top of them. The man quickly reached for the money brushing Kelly’s hand with his fingers. She jerked her hand back and gasped.

  “You all right?” the man asked.

  “I—I’m okay,” Kelly said unconvincingly. She paused for a moment in an attempt to collect herself. “Both movies are due back before noon on Saturday.”

  When she finally looked up at her customer, the man was again staring into her crystal blue eyes. A heavy knot balled up in her stomach, followed by a coldness deep inside of her. Then came the creeping goose flesh once more.

  “Thank you … Kelly.”

  Kelly pulled her blond ponytail with one hand, cinching the hair-band tight against the back of her head with the other. Then she forced a thin smile and nodded as she watched the man leave the store.

  “God, that guy’s creepy,” Kelly said, shuddering with each word. “Don’t you think so, John?”

  John turned and brushed a stack of DVDs with his arm, sending them sprawling out across the countertop. “You’re creepy.”

  Kelly slapped him on the back again, but this time harder. The boy laughed uncontrollably as he restacked the movies. She checked her wristwatch and sighed. It was ten-thirty, two more hours to go until they closed.

  Sikes was halfway through his first movie when the phone on the wobbly end table beside his La-Z-Boy recliner chirped. Another chirp. He reached for the VCR remote and punched pause then snatched up the phone on the third ring.

  “Hello.”

  “David … how are you this afternoon?”

  Sikes didn’t recognize the voice. “Who is this?”

  “Just think of me as someone who likes to see justice served. You know what I mean … David. You’ll hear a lot more from me very soon.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You know what I mean … David. Or should I say … Gabriel?”

  “Fuck you … whoever the fuck you are. I don’t need to listen to this.” Sikes slammed the receiver down in the cradle, sending the unstable end table rocking then finally toppling over.

  Earlier in the day, he had called Joe McCarthy to settle on a date that he could start back as a part-timer, only to be told by McCarthy he didn’t need his services anymore. McCarthy was as worthless as swine vomit and deserved to die. Then there was the Carrie situation. The ungrateful bitch had moved, out of state no less. And then there was the phone call he just received from some insignificant asshole, an intrusion into his world. It had been less than three days since he walked out of jail, and now all of this …

  He clutched his throbbing head with both hands. It wasn’t a headache, but something else deep inside his skull. Like the hard pounding of a heavy, stone grist mill, the never-ending grinding motion, pulverizing everything in the path of the large stone wheel. The granite wheel was rotating, circling inside his head, and it actually felt good. No, not good, better than good, it was more like deliriously magnificent pain. The kind of pain that makes you feel like the top of your head is floating away. He always believed in the weightlifters’ notion of pain: Pain is weakness leaving the body.

  His first recollection of these episodes was back in Magee, Mississippi, at the age of seven or eight. Every spell, as his mother called them, was exactly the same, including the fabulous sensation of smelling delicious mincemeat pie. But when he reached the age of about twelve that amazing scent of pie was replaced with something else, something much more exhilarating. He would find himself getting sexually aroused, very erect, sometimes so rock hard it hurt, and wanting to release this pain any way that he could.

  Carrie was gone. She had moved out of state, to Pennsylvania, that redheaded shit-kid had said. But now he had Kelly. His sweet, beautiful, Kelly.

  95

  ADAM SHOT UP straight in bed and checked the alarm clock on the nightstand. His head wasn’t completely clear, but two things were unmistakable: it wasn’t time to get up for work, and he swore he’d heard either the alarm clock buzzing or the phone ringing. He glanced at the clock again: 2:36 am.

  Then certainty set in. The phone was ringing, and this revved up his brain’s amygdala, that tiny, almond-shaped mass of gray matter responsible for controlling the body’s fear process. This sent his nervous system surging with electricity. Adrenaline pumped furiously through his body, doubling his heart rate. He quickly rolled over to check on Valerie. She was staring back at him with half-open eyes. “You going to answer that?” she asked almost incoherently.

  Ignoring her query, Adam rolled over and reached for the phone on the nightstand.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Riley.” It was the familiar metallic voice resonating in the receiver. “Were you sleeping?”

  The second wave of adrenaline surged, and Adam’s heart seemed to lift in his chest and then shift into high gear. “You son-of-a-bitch, you goddamn son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted into the phone.

  “Mr. Riley, there’s no need to get upset. Not just yet anyway.”

  Vale
rie was sitting up now, tugging on Adam’s arm. “God no, it’s not him again!”

  Adam covered the receiver with his hand. “Stop it, Val,” he said in a tight-jawed whisper. “Now.”

  “What’s your missus upset about? Did I call too early?”

  The laughter that followed was haunting, a ghostly metallic modulation reverberating in the receiver. Adam withdrew the phone from his ear momentarily to cut the volume. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  The caller broke out into another fit of laughter. “The question is what do you want?” Then the man’s voice suddenly became solemn. “You called me earlier, making threats.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t call you.”

  “Oh, I know it was you, but that doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is telling you what I want.”

  There were several moments of silence.

  “You still there?”

  “Yes,” Adam snapped back.

  “Dawn,” the voice echoed.

  “What?” Adam shouted.

  “I want Dawn. You see, she really belongs to me.”

  This set off an explosion of rage. Adam’s mind raced to that place he’d been quite often lately. Where there was no right or wrong, good or bad, only vast fields of growing hatred and a burgeoning desire for retribution. “You bastard!” he shouted into the receiver. “If you so much as come within a mile of my daughter, I swear you’ll be dead.”

  Peter Carillo stood impatiently in Rob Averly’s office shortly after ten-thirty, eight hours after Adam Riley’s phone call. He rocked his stocky body from side to side and tugged on the thick salt-and-pepper mustache hairs that sprouted from under his wide nose. The confined space smelled of cheap cologne rolled up with what had to be at least a day-old egg salad sandwich buried somewhere on the cluttered desk in front of him. The anger he felt was escalating with every word he spoke. “I believe there’s no choice,” Carillo argued.