Behold the Child

by Harry Shannon

  Most of the afternoon went to paperwork. Kenzie found a small, red mouse near his right eye and iced it. He called Laura and lied to her. He told her the day had been boring as hell, but that he had to work late pushing papers. Meanwhile, Black lay flat on his cot in the drab, grey cell; motionless and sullen, as if furious with himself for having fallen into such an obvious trap. He refused to talk to Kenzie and demanded to see a lawyer. Meanwhile, Kenzie was already annoyed with himself. He decided to release Black in the morning without filing charges. He’d made his point. The calls would stop.

  Towards nightfall, Doc came over to resume their chess game. He produced some ointment for the shiner, but asked no questions.

  The telephone rang again. Kenzie felt a wave of bumps wash over him, like the return of some childish superstition. He almost allowed Doc to answer the phone, but forced himself at the last moment. The sounds were there, just as he’d somehow known they would be; the kids, the rattling and the hissing of air.

  But this time there were words, and they chilled his blood.

  16.

  They smelled the boy long before they found him.

  The night was bitter cold, the ground crackled with frost. A full worm moon burned white in the evening sky and their breathing spewed tiny, twisting dragons of fog. Kenzie left the police cruiser’s lights on bright and walked over to the icy stream, one hand clenching the handle of his Glock. He paused at the edge of the woods to locate and turn on his heavy flashlight. He sprayed the beam from left to right, his nostrils twitching.

  “Man, something stinks. I could barely understand the guy, but I think he said he’d left Timmy somewhere around here.”

  Heavy footsteps crunching along behind him; Doc grunting from exertion. Kenzie kept his eyes focused forward, following the narrow beam of light, and searched the woods.

  “Too bad he didn’t tell you who he was while he was at it.”

  “Hang on a bit,” Kenzie said. “Could be he did.”

  They worked their way along the path, concentrating carefully. The flashlight caressed some brittle sage, paused for a second and moved on. Kenzie blinked. His breath caught in his throat. He moved the light back to find what he’d nearly missed.

  “There, Doc. Look.”

  A child’s black tennis shoe was jammed into a clump of brush like a ridged exclamation point.

  “Wait here,” Kenzie said.

  Doc sighed and hugged himself against the cold. He seemed to briefly consider standing alone in the darkness. Then he said: “Fuck that. I’m coming with you.”

  Kenzie lost his footing on the bank, slipped onto his ass and slid down until his boots sank into the freezing water. He barely noticed. He was far more concerned about the amount of noise made by his handcuffs, mace and keys as they went jangling through the mud and sharp stones. The crazy bastard might still be nearby, watching them with amusement. He heard Doc stepping carefully, and the sucking sounds his large boots made in the muck. They approached the body.

  The stench was like a force field, and it drove them back. Doc shook his head and gagged. “Sweet Jesus, is that from a human?”

  My God, this poor kid suffered…

  Although Kenzie had been to his share of crime scenes as a homicide detective, he thought he’d left such things far behind. He reached into his coat pocket and grabbed some menthol chest rub. He dabbed a bit under his nostrils; offered some to Doc. The veterinarian took it gratefully and followed Kenzie’s example. The menthol almost overpowered the stench of entrails and rot.

  Kenzie examined the ground around the body carefully. He took some plastic bags out of his pocket and picked up a few things with tweezers; a nail, some threads and a dried-out wad of chewing gum.

  Doc was obviously terrified. “Shouldn’t you wait and let the State Police do that, Sheriff?”

  Kenzie shook his head absently. “The number of predators we got around here, this place will be covered in coyote and badger prints come morning, and Timmy would be half eaten. Can’t risk that. I’ll pick up what I can. See, you never know. If this chewing gum belongs to our perp, he just left us some DNA to work with.” But in his heart of hearts, Kenzie knew it belonged to the Black boy. Whoever had brought him here had struck him hard across the face, and the gum had gone flying. He took some photographs. The flash made the scene appear washed out, even more ghoulish.

  Kenzie ran the beam up the body and flinched. A long plume of frigid air blew past his shoulder as Doc, leaning in close, gasped in horror. Kenzie sighed and took more pictures.

  “Who could do such a thing? Gut him like that?”

  Kenzie put the camera down and swallowed. The carnage to the boy’s belly was hideous to behold, but he’d seen worse with LAPD. He kept reminding himself of that fact, almost as a litany: I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen worse. Another flash photo: Timmy’s eyes were rolled back in his head and several blood vessels had burst, spider-webbing the whites. As for the evisceration, it was ghastly, but hadn’t killed him right away. No, Timmy had been strangled while he lay suffering.

  “Do you think it was his stepfather, Sam? Is that why you busted him?”

  “Good guess, but not likely, Doc. When I took the son of a bitch into custody this afternoon, Timmy was still alive.”

  “It could be Black got someone else to do it, then.”

  “Do this? I doubt it.”

  “What the hell happened here, Sam?”

  “I think the boy fought back,” Kenzie said. He wanted a cigarette. Badly. Even though it had now been a long time since he had smoked. He covered the boy’s hands with plastic bags. “Look at his fingernails, Doc. He scratched and kicked, maybe thumbed the perp in the eye. Something that really hurt. I’d say the bastard lost his temper and sliced the kid open, then had no more use for him.” He walked around a bit more, stepping carefully. “Looks like he used some brush to fuck up any trace of footprints.”

  “Look,” Doc said. “Look over there.”

  Kenzie ran the beam along the ground. “Where?”

  “Up there, Sheriff. To your right.”

  One lone print: A large one, the boot heel and a partial. It lay half-under a flat piece of rock part way up the bank. They’d gotten lucky. Kenzie stepped wide around the crime scene and eased close to the print. He took a photograph, measured the print carefully and noted the size and depth of the indentation. He piled some rocks up around it, hoping to preserve it for the forensics team that would come up from Elko in the morning. He paused.

  “Doc. Come here.”

  There was something near the heel of that print, something grayish and dried up. Kenzie used the end of his knife to scrape some of the matter out into a plastic bag. He sniffed carefully. It smelled foul, even with the stench of the body and the open intestines lying nearby. He felt Doc behind him and held up the bag.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Doc whistled. “From pigs. That’s pig shit.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Kenzie turned his head. “What, Doc? What are you thinking?”

  Doc took a step back, his bulky body large in the moonlight. “I’m thinking that there is only one farm around these parts that has a lot of pigs.”

  Kenzie felt his heart kick. “Let’s not get too excited yet,” he said. “Maybe the perp just crossed that man’s land to get here. Where is it?”

  Doc shook his head and pointed south. “We’re gonna drive, we got to go all the way down to Star Valley and go over the bridge. But a man could walk it in fifteen minutes going right across that field.”

  Kenzie jumped to his feet, excited. “Damn. You mean that old German guy Klaus, the one who hired me? He keeps pigs at his place?”

  Doc nodded. “He surely does.”

  “I’ve always had a funny feeling about him.” Kenzie grabbed his cell phone and tapped out a number. After a few rings, a sleepy Laura answered. “Laura? It’s me. Honey, look. I want you to call the State Police right away. Now get a pen and take this
down.” He told her about the anonymous call, where the body was, and what he had already done at the crime scene.

  “Sam, Jack Talbot called from Los Angeles. He said you were right about the phone calls, whatever that means.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sam, this is terrible. Horrible.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What are you…”

  “Now sweetie, don’t worry about me. But tell them I have gone to interview a suspect by the name of Klaus Wachner.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, our landlord. Just tell them this is a weird old guy who hardly ever comes to town. Doc and I are going to his place right now. If he did this, I don’t want him to have time to cover up anything.”

  Laura said: “Sam, I’m worried. Don’t go alone.”

  Kenzie laughed reassuringly. “Like I said, don’t worry. He’s just a crazy old man, and there are two of us. Doc is with me. Now make that call, honey. I’ll call you back in an hour or so.”

  Kenzie broke the connection. Doc spat again. “Nice of you to volunteer my ass without asking me first.”

  “I don’t have time to run you back to town,” Kenzie said. “Sorry. You can wait in the car if you want to.”

  Doc hugged himself against the cold. “You carry a shotgun, right?”

  “On the dash.”

  “Well then you can keep that there popgun. I’ll carry the shotgun and back you up. How’s that sound?”

  “Just fine,” Kenzie said dryly. “That’s what every cop wants to hear from his partner. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you every step of the way.’” They shared a bitter laugh. Kenzie packed up his camera and the evidence he had collected. A few moments passed. Doc cleared his throat.

  “Sheriff? I’m scared shitless.”

  “That’s a reasonable posture,” Kenzie said. “Me too.”

  Kenzie paused to look down at Timmy. I’m sorry I have to leave you here, he thought. You were a brave little boy. I will get this bastard, I promise. The boy stared back as if asking a question of tremendous importance. Kenzie swallowed. No, I don’t know why the world allowed this to happen. I wish I did.

  In the car, Kenzie said: “Now tell me about any other missing children from around this part of the state, Doc. This is damned important. Don’t leave anything out.” He drove slowly, carefully. This old road was poor anyway, and tonight it was covered with slick ice and patches of snow.

  “Hell, only other time I heard of was maybe eight, nine months ago,” Doc said, “and it wasn’t here, but over the mountain in Dry Wells. A couple lived there name of Johnson went to get their little boy one morning and he was missing. Everybody searched up and down the valley, but they never found a body. Sheriff Harris helped them out. He was getting on in years by then, and it upset him no end. Some folks figured the kid got caught by a mountain lion. Maybe ten days later, some migrant workers passing through lost their little boy. Same deal. Search parties, flyers, shit we even had some local television coverage that time. Nada.”

  A grinding, hissing noise: Kenzie felt the cruiser sliding to the right. He gunned the powerful engine and twisted the wheel until he had regained control of the vehicle. He kept his speed down, trying to be as quiet as possible. He searched for the ancient bridge while he listened.

  “They went nowhere with the investigation,” Doc said softly. “Then a couple of weeks later they caught this drunken tramp down by the railway, and he had some stuff on him belonged to the Johnson boy. Can’t recall what exactly, maybe a sweater and a pocketknife or something. It seems that tramp had been living around Twin Forks for years, comin’ out at night to scavenge for food in trashcans. Man, he was some paranoid, pissed-off guy. He broke the nose of the sheriff of Dry Wells when they went to arrest him. Kept on babbling about dead children and ice cubes, something like that. Said he probably had killed ‘em.”

  “Probably? Sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic,” Kenzie said. “Crazy as a loon without medication. Will the state give him the needle anyway?”

  Doc chuckled without humor. “We’re talking a couple of kids, here, Sheriff. Missing and presumed dead. Guy was screwed, blued and tattooed in a heartbeat. You get my drift?”

  “I get it. They were happy to have nailed somebody,” Kenzie said. “Too happy to think things through properly. And old Sheriff Harris got to retire with honor.”

  “It bothered me some when I read about it,” Doc admitted. “But still, he could have done it. Some schizophrenics are dangerous, right? That’s how I rationalized, it anyway. I think everybody wanted it to be over with, even though it was in the next county. And for the last few months it was.”

  “Until tonight.”

  “I guess so.”

  Kenzie saw the bridge. He shut off the lights and rolled the police cruiser onto the battered wood and steel platform. He winced at the racket the tires made going over the splintered planks. Kenzie reflexively lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “So maybe this is our killer, maybe not. What do you know about old Klaus Wachner, Doc?”

  “Just that he moved here recently,” Doc said. “He was some kind of big shot with the Army. Way I heard it, back when he worked at one of those Area 51 places, all top secret stuff.”

  “A scientist?”

  “A biologist, I think,” Doc said. “Stuff that’s way beyond me. He worked with new technologies and weapons-grade chemicals, something like that anyway. Never talked much about it. Likely wasn’t allowed to.”

  Kenzie knew that many serial killers had seemingly normal lives. He chewed his lip as he drove slowly through the cold, oppressive night, then asked the question that was on his mind. “Any family?”

  “Huh?”

  “Klaus Wachner, does he have a family?”

  “Did. Wife died in childbirth,” Doc said. “And then his little girl suddenly got real sick and died, too. I heard that was maybe ten or twelve years back, when he worked for the government. Then not long ago he just moved here, picked up a couple of empty houses and up and bought his spread.”

  “So he moved here just before me?”

  “That’s true, he did. But before that he really fixed the place up. Wachner had crews digging holes, pouring concrete, adding on to the ranch house, installing livestock pens and a new power panel, all kinds of stuff. He did a hell of a lot of work on that ranch.”

  “And he lost a daughter,” Kenzie mused. “Maybe that’s the motivation for killing kids.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, one of them ‘killed’ his wife by getting born, right? Hell, maybe he murdered his own little girl years ago for revenge, and then that’s what started him off.”

  “I could see that making sense to a nut job.”

  “My instincts tell me he’s wrong, Doc. And they never lie.”

  17.

  The tension was so palpable time seemed to warp back on itself. Kenzie felt like they had been driving for hours, but it had only been minutes. He knew they must be close to the right place.

  “Where are we?”

  Doc peered through the windshield, which had started to fog up from the warmth of their bodies. “Can’t tell,” he said, finally.

  Kenzie risked flicking on the lights. They saw bright, feverish eyes in the roadway. He felt ice run up his spine and the short hairs on his neck jumped.

  “Fuck me!”

  The scrawny coyote lowered its head, sniffed and slithered off into the brush. Meanwhile, Kenzie caught a glimpse of a dilapidated cabin perhaps twenty yards away. He was surprised to see power lines running to it and that the dim porch light was on. He clicked the lights back off and unbuckled his seat belt. “Doesn’t look like he worried too much about the exterior,” Kenzie said. “It’s a dump.”

  “You’re stopping?”

  “I figure we walk from here,” Kenzie said. He unfastened the bands holding the shotgun tight against the dashboard. “There you go, Doc. Try not to blow my ass off, okay?”

  After a mo
ment, Doc said. “The devil’s alternative.”

  It was pitch black. Sheriff Kenzie took several deep breaths to calm down and then turned towards Doc. “What did you say?”

  In the blackness, Doc said: “The devil’s alternative. I’ve got two crappy options. I stay out here alone, or walk into what might be a trap. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

  Kenzie grinned wickedly. “Then may as well ‘do.’”

  After a time, Doc sighed and unlocked the passenger door. “Suppose you’re right at that,” he said. “Better than doing nothing. I warn you, though. I may have to go somewhere and clean out my shorts after this.”

  Kenzie thought for a moment. “Me, too.”

  Doc eased his bulk out onto the dirt road. Kenzie’s eyes began to adjust, and he watched Doc’s massive form as he waddled forward with the shotgun cradled in his arms. “One thing I do not get,” Doc said, softly.

  “Why he called me and whispered where the body was.”

  “You got it.”

  “I suspect he wants to get caught,” Kenzie replied quietly. Suddenly he thought of Oso, The Bear, whose mother burned him with a hot iron when he misbehaved: I can’t stand the pain any more, ese. Kenzie shook the memory away and continued speaking. “Most likely part of him wants to get caught. It happens. Might have just gotten tired of waiting for justice and decided to give us a little hint.”

  “Like stepping in pig shit.”

  The air reeked of fecal matter. Kenzie became aware of a small choir, gently chuffing and squeaking. He realized they were passing an enclosure filled with large pigs. Nauseated, he wondered if Klaus Wachner had fed the missing children to the big animals once he was done abusing them. No bodies that way, for sure.

  Jesus Christ, that conjured up some awful images. Sooooie, pig pig.

  Kenzie paused at the edge of the light streaming from the yellow porch bulb. He looked at Doc and swallowed. He dropped his voice to a hoarse croak. “You know how to use that thing, Doc?”