“This is Hale, go ahead.”
“Chief, you have to get to the hotel. 911 is getting calls saying people are dead. Blood everywhere. And Hendricks isn’t answering his radio or phone.”
Hale looked at Keller, both men taking a moment to grasp what they were hearing, then bolted from the home.
Everyone was on the move.
Chapter Nineteen
Hale, Keller, Levy and two sheriff’s deputies headed to the hotel. The rest of the stakeout team remained at the Bellmore residence. An ambulance was outside the hotel. The paramedics had been ordered not to go in. A number of hotel guests stood outside in their slippers, nightgowns and pajamas, while others had been afraid to leave their rooms and remained inside. Hale thought that was the right move.
As soon as he entered the lobby, he smelled death. The familiar odor of sharp copper and human waste was getting too familiar. His town, a place known for vacationing tourists, would soon be branded as a murder spot. A place the downtrodden and morbid would come to visit.
“Manteo Police,” Hale announced as he and the other officers entered the lobby with their sidearms drawn. Levy and Patrone, one of the sheriff’s department deputies, checked the back room, while Hale, Keller and Garnett, the other sheriff’s deputy, headed to the second floor.
A blood trail ran the length of the hallway and up the steps. Oddly shaped, four-toed footprints led the way in both directions, most likely indicating the killers had come and gone. Blood smeared the walls in various sized arcs, as if the killers were going along like children and decorating in only the way kids can. Even if he thought the suspects were gone, Hale was taking every precaution, and going by the book.
As soon as he broached the top of the stairs, he saw the body and knew it was Hendricks’. It, or rather what was left of it, lay outside the Bellmore room. The three cops moved closer and saw that the door to room Ten was open. Hendricks was clearly dead. His back was but a gaping hole. His right leg was stripped of flesh, the bones with gnaw marks on them. Hale felt the contents of his stomach rising, the combination of sight and smell too much. He paused and turned away, needing a moment. The faces of the other officers told him they felt the same.
He didn’t understand how the killers had gotten the jump on Hendricks. Room Ten was in the middle of the hallway. Hendricks would’ve had a clear view for quite a distance. There was no way he had been snuck up on, unless he’d fallen asleep. He was a good cop, but sitting around in a quiet place could cause anyone to get sleepy-eyed. Maybe the killers had been acting as guests, gotten close and then struck. But how had they known where the Bellmores were staying? It just didn’t make sense. But one thing was for certain: the killers weren’t run of the mill people.
“We keep our heads on straight and remember our training,” he said, hoping he hadn’t lost all color in his face. He was the leader and needed to appear strong. “As much as we want to shoot these pricks, we need them alive.”
A door opened down the hall. All three officers flinched and pointed their weapons, only lowering them slightly when a blonde woman popped her head out.
“Is it safe?” she asked. Her face was red and Hale could tell she’d been crying.
Hale held a finger to his lips, then motioned for her to get back inside. A second later, the door closed. He motioned for Keller and Garnett to take the other side of the doorway. Once everyone was in position, he called out.
“This is the Manteo Police Department. Come out with your hands up. We’ve got the building surrounded.” It was a lie, but he thought he sold it.
Hale heard no movement from within and no one came out. He swallowed the lump in his throat, hoping not to see dead kids in the room with their dead parents. He kicked the door open and went in. He stared down the sights of his gun and scanned the room.
Keller entered behind Hale and checked the bathroom.
Garnett moved in and took up position equal distance between both men, ready to aid either one.
“All clear,” Keller said.
Hale echoed Keller’s words a moment later after checking the area behind the bed. Though he’d seen the carnage as he swept the room, he’d been so focused on keeping his men safe, he hadn’t truly noticed it to its fullest until now. He’d also heard squishing sounds, as if he’d been walking on a giant wet sponge, or like the time he played golf the day after a torrential storm blew in and walked across the waterlogged lawn. Looking down, he saw that he was standing on blood-soaked carpeting, pools of crimson forming around his shoes.
He turned and looked at the other cops. Their mouths hung open. He realized neither of them had seen more than just the pictures of the crime scene at the Brown bedroom—not that it would have made seeing the real thing any easier.
The place was nearly a copy to the scene. The walls and ceiling were splattered in blood, as if there had been a ketchup-filled water balloon fight. Part of a short-haired scalp stuck to the long mirror. The heads of Mr. and Mrs. Bellmore each rested on a pillow. The eyes were missing and the jaws were dislocated but attached and hanging loosely. Below each head was the hollowed out torso that belonged to it. The cavities contained the arms, legs, feet and hands. A penis and ball sac rested below one torso and a vagina and breasts the other. Around the body parts were livers, kidneys, hearts and other internal organs not so easily recognized. Intestines draped among the mess and onto the floor. It appeared entrails had also been tossed around the room. The purple and pink colored sausage links were lying on the dresser and draped over the television, lamps and doorknob. Green ooze covered the room.
Hale heard hurried footfalls and looked to see Garnett leaving the room followed by the sound of vomiting. Keller’s face was long, his eyes watery. Hale didn’t know if it was from the pungent odor or incredible sadness.
There was nothing left for them to do. The people he was supposed to keep safe were dead. The killers had gotten away. But not forever. For all he knew, the killers would continue killing on the island—and why not, they hadn’t been caught yet.
“Hotel is secure,” Levy said, her voice coming over the radios. “We’ve got bloody tracks leading out the front.”
“Get Don down here with his dogs,” Hale said angrily into his radio. “We’re going after these pricks. Keep two officers, heavily armed, at the Bellmore house. I want everyone else here.”
Hale replaced the radio to his belt.
“What makes you think they didn’t take off in a car?” Keller asked.
“I don’t know, but the way these killers act, I don’t think they can drive.”
“I’m confused,” Keller said.
“Yeah,” Garnett said, standing in the hallway. “What kind of killers go around killing without a getaway vehicle?”
Goblins, Hale thought, then shook off the ridiculous notion. He was letting the brutality of the situation, and what Jed had told him, make him doubt himself. He was dealing with real people. Maybe the thing they had killed outside the Whitmore house had been some kind of experiment, but even if it was, it was human nonetheless.
Chapter Twenty
Soon after Don and the other officers arrived, making it a party of seven, Hale set out after the killers. Don took the lead with his Bloodhounds, the dogs seeming eager to help catch the criminals. Manteo police officers Willows, Levy and Keller, along with the sheriff department’s deputies Garnett and Patrone, joined in the search.
The group moved along roadways and hedges, past and through parts of forest and plenty of yards. They had to go around fenced in property and let the dogs pick up the trail again, but they performed fine.
The group made it to Croatan Ave Exd, a dead end road that led to nothing but rough country. Into the woods they went, going deeper into the forest behind the Manteo High School baseball field. They crossed Doughs Creek with little effort and found themselves beating back plenty of brush in the untamed wildernes
s. The noise they produced from shuffling through underbrush, the dogs and the occasional grunt from getting poked or scratched would surely alert the killers that they were coming. But there was nothing that could be done about it.
Unless the dogs were leading them to the shore on the other side of the woods, it was clear the killers had set up a camp in the woods, hence why the scum hadn’t been found. The Brown boy had gone missing on the other side of town. The acreage was vast and far from where the boy had been taken, though a small section around the high school had been searched.
There was no way the killers could have made it here without being spotted, Hale thought. Jacob must’ve been unconscious and hidden. Maybe placed in a large duffle bag or piece of luggage. It baffled him how the murderers had gotten away so cleanly, but they had.
Flashlight beams sliced through the darkness, but the going was still rough. The officers stumbled and fell. Garnett gashed his shin on a rock. Hale had scratches along his hands and cheeks. Levy was poked in the eye and seeing blurrily through it. But they all kept going. Don, a man in his sixties, was a seasoned hunter and survivalist and seemed unfazed by the undertaking. Whenever Hale felt like resting, he looked to the man and pushed harder. He imagined all the officers did the same. But it was knowing how close they were to catching the killers and hopefully saving the kids that was the real fuel behind their relentless trek. It didn’t help that no one but Don had been prepared. Hale wore his office shoes and the rest of the officers either wore the same or not much better. They could’ve took more time and geared up properly, but Hale hadn’t wanted to wait. He also had no idea that the killers had been hiding out in the deep wilderness section of the island. But it would be worth it. There was no way he was letting the trail grow cold.
Twenty minutes after going into the forest, the dogs led them to a rocky outcropping where a cave led into the ground. The rock formation seemed out of place and unnatural. Like it belonged more inland, near a mountainous region. The island was mostly flat ground and dotted with marshlands.
All beams of light shone into the cave, the opening about eight feet high and eight feet wide. The air smelled rancid, as if they’d stumbled upon a bear cave filled with rotting carcasses. For some reason, Hale didn’t doubt things were indeed decomposing within.
Seeing the cave unnerved Hale. He immediately thought of the creature and what Jed had told him. Goblins. It was ridiculous, he knew. But it didn’t mean there wasn’t a family of inbred backwoods people living in there. The kind whose minds were so far gone, they would not be considered human anymore. For some reason, the inbreds had decided to reveal themselves, venture further into society and kill. Hale wondered if they’d been killing for years, taking their victims in secret. Lone tourists passing through. They could’ve wandered in from one of the uninhabited islands and made their home here only recently.
It just didn’t make sense.
The island was small. There was no way animalistic killers or wild-people would’ve remained unseen for so long. A small population of inbreds that were now monsters. Malformed things that resembled fairytale creatures, like goblins. Hale wondered if the mutants had been around for centuries, hence the goblin tale Jed had talked about. They weren’t otherworldly, but mutants—DNA gone bad. If they had been living on one of the local uninhabited islands and made their way to Roanoke, it would explain the suddenness of it all.
“Looks like we made it,” Willows said.
Everyone was breathing heavily. Faces and clothes were battered, shoes scuffed and caked with mud.
The dogs were whining. Their tails were tucked between their legs and they were pulling Don in the direction they had come.
“What’s a matter, boy?” Don said to the one of the hounds, rubbing its head. He looked at Hale. “Never seen them so spooked before.”
Hale didn’t like it. If the dogs were afraid, what did that mean? Did they know something he didn’t? They’d been fine up until they found the cave. Animals were known to have senses humans did not, like when a storm was going to roll in, or if a person didn’t seem right and was intent on doing harmful things.
Hale once had a dog that growled every time the repairman came over to work on his porch. The canine was always fine around people, friendly. But for some reason, that guy had bothered the dog. After doing a background check, Hale had come to find the guy was a bad dude. Had been arrested numerous times for drugs and domestic abuse. He had supposedly gone on the straight and narrow, but Hale let him go.
“Don, would you mind heading back to the road with the dogs and waiting for backup?” Hale asked.
“Will do,” the man said. “I think it’s best to get them out of here anyway. Something’s spooking them; I don’t want to be around when it shows, especially if I’m unarmed.”
“What now?” Willows asked as Don headed off.
“We go in and end this nightmare,” Hale said.
The others nodded.
“Sounds like a plan,” Keller said. “Locked and loaded. Let’s get these bastards.”
It was true, Hale thought. They were armed and ready. Professionals. He would’ve preferred to wait for more people to arrive. Truth was: he had no idea what they were dealing with, except that the killers were crazy, and intelligent to a degree.
“One of us has to remain here, watch our sixes and wait for our backup,” Hale said. “Make sure no one gets past us and escapes.”
Silence took up the air.
They all wanted to be a direct part of stopping the killers and finding the kids.
“Don’t make me give the order,” Hale said.
“I’ll stay,” Willows said. “I’ve got the boomstick and ain’t no one getting by me. Just make sure you get those fuckers. They’re the worst kind of criminals—kid-snatching cop killers.”
Hale clapped him on the shoulder and smiled. “We will. Be sure of that. I hate leaving you alone, but with the dogs tracking the scent here, I’m pretty certain the bad guys are inside. I don’t want to wait to find out we could’ve saved the kids if we’d gone in sooner.”
With that decision settled, Willows on his phone to dispatch and Don heading back to meet up with the reinforcements, Hale and the team headed into the cave.
Chapter Twenty-One
Willows stood alone in the middle of the woods in pitch darkness. He’d made the call to dispatch, but when the call ended, the quiet and sense of isolation rushed in at him. For a moment, he didn’t understand why he felt unnerved. He wasn’t afraid of the dark. Hadn’t been since he’d been a boy when his brother used to hide in his closet and jump out wearing a hockey mask with red paint splashed over it. But then the reason came to him. It wasn’t the gloom, but the silence that made him feel like that scared little boy again. Where were the crickets, gnats and frogs from the nearby marsh?
He stood ready, gun out, and faced the cave. He hadn’t imagined it went too far back, but after shining the light around in it, he realized it wasn’t so much a cave as it was a tunnel. The thing seemed to travel for quite a ways, so far that he didn’t see the others’ flashlight beams. There was no sound of gunfire, which meant they hadn’t come across the killers, or the bastards had given up. Of course, if the tunnel went on for miles… No. Impossible. It would flood.
The types of killers they were chasing weren’t going to give up either. So he figured he was bound to hear gunfire soon enough.
The sound of a dog yelping caused him to turn around and face the woods. It had only lasted a second, as if the animal had gotten ensnared in a trap and was then killed. It hadn’t been too far away. He wondered if Don was all right, then remembered who he was thinking about. The man was a seasoned woodsman.
With nothing left to do but wait and make sure no unfriendlies came from the tunnel, Willows plucked a cigarette from his pack of smokes. He rarely took up the smelly activity, but whenever he was somewhere alone
with nothing to do, he smoked. As long as he used the same pack within two months, he didn’t think he had a problem. He never smoked at home or in his car, treating it like he did his drinking—only once in a while.
After finishing his cigarette, he stared at the clear sky overhead. The moon was nearly full and cast a soft glow over the area. He kept his flashlight off for this very reason, allowing his night vision to be at its best. But after ten minutes of staring at darkness, he grew bored and rested the shotgun on his shoulder. He moved to the left of the cave, his back to the rock, and waited.
Alone with his thoughts and able to be honest with himself, he felt a little torn. He disliked having to wait outside. He wanted to be part of the action, be with his brothers in blue. He hated waiting around and felt more like a security guard than a cop. No, a security guard working at a baby shower. Nothing was going to happen where he was. No one was getting past Hale and the others. He was as safe as a newborn in its mother’s arms.
Safe was the key word. The word his wife always used before he left the house to go to work. “Stay safe,” she’d say. Without a doubt, he loved his wife and children more than anything in the world. Wanted to make it home in one piece every night. Crime was on the low end of the spectrum on Roanoke Island, but anything could happen anywhere. People from all over the country came and visited the place. Most were pleasant, friendly, if not a little snooty. But Manteo received its share of trouble too. A cop never knew who he was going to run into when pulling over a vehicle or reporting to a dispute.
Balancing the job with family had always been tricky. Earlier in his career, Willows wanted to be out there on the streets, busting lawbreakers and getting collars. He had put himself in harm’s way numerous times, knowing it was part of the job. His fear level was almost non-existent.
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