Ruckman Road: An Alex Penfield Novel

by Robert W. Stephens

  Hannah stood and walked into the hotel. She took the elevator to her floor and made her mind to check out by the time she reached her room. She packed her clothes and her laptop. Then she checked out. She was back at the house on Ruckman Road within an hour.

  Hannah dragged her suitcase to her brother’s bedroom. She then walked into the master bathroom and applied more of the cream the doctor had given her for her burned skin. The blisters were beyond painful, and every move seemed to irritate them and cause waves of pain across the surface of her entire body.

  She walked back downstairs and made her way into the den. She sat in front of the desktop computer and powered it on. She entered the password and waited for the computer to fully boot up. She opened the program for the security system. It took her a few minutes to figure it out and find the settings for the wireless cameras. She discovered the cameras were recording at just a few frames per minute. That would have made it impossible for someone to move the chair in the attic without being seen by the camera. The chair either moved by itself, or Joe had later edited the video. Neither option explained how her file was different than those of the detectives, though.

  It took her a few more minutes to determine how to record the footage from the cameras. She knew it had something to do with the DVR, but that device had to be controlled by the software program. She decided there wasn’t a need to record during the day. She would stay in the house and do a walk-through every hour. She would turn the DVR on at night while she slept and then review the footage in the morning.

  She stayed up until close to midnight and then felt herself dozing off. She decided to do one last walk-through before going to bed. She went into the attic last. The door was still open and the light was still on from her previous trip inside the room. She entered the room slowly, but she didn’t feel intense heat in the room like last time. Her skin was still painful, but the itching and irritation didn’t seem to increase now that she’d gone back in the attic. Hannah looked through the room and exited the attic as fast as she could.

  Hannah walked from the third floor to the second floor to go into the master bedroom. She was almost to the room when she heard a door slam shut on the first floor. Fear raced through her body, and she suddenly questioned the wisdom of leaving the security of her hotel room. She had to find the truth, though. Besides, it was just a little girl. She couldn’t believe she was so intimidated by her.

  She walked to the first floor and found the front door closed. The door slam didn’t sound heavy enough to have come from that door. She tried to remember what other doors were on the first floor. There was the pantry door in the kitchen and a closet door in the living room. There was also the door that opened to the staircase that led to the basement. She checked the doors to the pantry and the closet. They were both closed. She opened each one but found nothing inside. It had to be the basement. She walked over to that door and opened it. The door squeaked on the old hinges. The lights were off, so she flipped the switch at the top of the stairs. The light turned on but then blinked off. She walked back to the kitchen and grabbed the flashlight she’d bought the night before.

  She walked back to the basement door and headed down the stairs. They creaked under her weight. She got halfway to the basement floor when she realized she needed proof of the little girl. She pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and pressed the camera icon since she hadn’t turned the security system’s DVR on yet. She switched it into video mode and hit the record button. It was too dark for the camera to see much of anything, but at least it would record sounds. She hadn’t heard anything since the door slam a few minutes earlier, though.

  “Hello, is anyone down here?” Hannah asked.

  She immediately felt ridiculous for asking. Did she really think the little girl would respond? She did, though. Hannah heard the child’s laughter. It seemed to echo off the cinderblock walls, and she couldn’t tell which room it came from. Hannah reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Are you all right? I don’t want you to hurt yourself down here.”

  There was no response this time. Hannah went to the closest room. Each one had its own light. She flipped the switch, and the light came on. A quick glance of the room showed there was no one there. Hannah walked into the next room. She tried its light switch, but nothing happened.

  “Mommy, mommy,” the little girl said.

  Hannah could tell now that the voice was coming from the back room. The child sounded in distress.

  “Have you hurt yourself?” Hannah asked.

  “Mommy, please help me.”

  “Don’t move. I’ll find you.”

  She walked to the back room. She held the flashlight in one hand and the cell phone in the other. The screen on the phone was black except for the small point of light from the flashlight beam that danced across the walls as Hannah walked.

  Hannah found the light switch for the back room. She flipped it up, but no light came on.

  “Where are you?” Hannah asked.

  The little girl coughed, but Hannah still couldn’t tell where she was. The sound seemed to come from every direction all at once.

  “Where are you?” Hannah repeated.

  Hannah turned when she heard a loud mechanical groan from behind her. She’d seen a heating system for the first floor in one of the basement rooms. It must have just turned on.

  “Mommy!” the little girl yelled.

  Hannah turned in a slow circle, shining the flashlight all over the room.

  “Mommy!”

  The groan stopped. The light suddenly turned on in the room and startled Hannah. She tried to catch her breath as she walked around the room. There was no one there. She looked down at the cell phone. The display showed the phone’s camera was still recording.

  Chapter 14

  The Third Voice

  Penfield stood on the boardwalk and watched the sun rise in the distance. He was always mesmerized by the way the sun appeared to rise out of the ocean. The sky was a mixture of reds, oranges, and grays. Penfield could see thick clouds in the distance. A storm was moving toward them and would probably be there by mid-morning. He pulled his jacket collar tight around his neck as the wind kicked off the surface of the water and swirled around him.

  Penfield walked back to his car and climbed inside to shield himself from the cold. He didn’t feel like waiting in the house with Hannah. He just needed to be alone for some reason he couldn’t wrap his head around. He cranked the heat in the car and pressed his hands against the vents. After he warmed up, he turned on the radio. The weather report confirmed his thoughts on the approaching storm. The weather report changed to a traffic report and then some annoying commercial about mattresses. He turned off the radio, closed his eyes, and hoped to get a few minutes of sleep. His cell phone vibrated and ruined that chance. The display showed a Washington, D.C. area code. He knew the call was from his friend, Doug McMahon, a former Hampton police officer who now worked for the FBI.

  “Hey, Doug,” Penfield said.

  “You owe me big for this one. Do you have any idea when you called me?” McMahon asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes. At least you got to beat that D.C. traffic this morning.”

  “You’d think so, but no. It still sucked.”

  “What can you tell me about that file?” Penfield asked.

  “It’s an MP4 file, which could come from a phone. Most of the image is in darkness, but I couldn’t detect any edit points in the video.”

  “Meaning it’s one long take?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m not as interested in the picture as the sound,” Penfield said.

  “I figured that. You said the lady who sent you this claims it was shot last night?” McMahon asked.

  “She called me right afterward, or at least she said she did.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  “I don’t know what to believe. There’ve been some inconsistent things with this case.”

  “Yo
u mean she’s lied to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Penfield said.

  “Well, as far as the file goes, if she did fake it, she did a hell of a job. Everything seems legit. The sounds of the footsteps, her breathing. The kid’s voice.”

  “Let me ask you something. Is there any way she could have done that voice?” Penfield asked.

  “The lady? You mean make her voice sound like a kid?”

  “Yeah,” Penfield said.

  “Sure, but I don’t think she did in this case.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because the kid’s voice seems to change directions and distances from the recording device, the cell phone in this case. She could have done that herself, but she’d either need to drop an effect on it to make it sound that way, or she’d have to physically move herself from the microphone, then mix everything together afterward. We’re talking a lot of editing work. Seems like a ton of effort just to trick a cop.”

  “So you think it’s real?” Penfield asked.

  “I’d like more time to review it.”

  “What’s your gut say?”

  “I’d say it’s genuine. I gotta admit I was a little creeped out by that third voice,” McMahon said.

  “What third voice?” Penfield asked.

  “The guy’s voice.”

  “There’s no guy’s voice. Just the woman and the kid.”

  “Do you remember that groaning sound, the one that appears near the end of the recording?” McMahon asked.

  “It sounded like the heating system kicking in or something like that.”

  “Maybe, but when I was listening to it with the headphones, I heard something else. It was almost completely masked out by that noise.”

  “What was it?” Penfield asked.

  “A man’s voice. He just said one word: Sarah.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I cleaned up the file for you and amplified it. I’ll email it to you when we get off the phone.”

  “Okay, thanks. I owe you.”

  “Yeah, you said that earlier, but I need time to think of how I’m going to cash in this favor,” McMahon said.

  Penfield ended the call and looked out the front windshield. The sky was still red and gray, but the dark rain clouds had gotten even closer by now. His phone vibrated again. Penfield opened up his email account and saw the email from McMahon. There was no text or subject header, just an attachment.

  Penfield opened the file and waited a full minute for it to download. He pressed play and listened as Hannah walked down the basement steps. He closed his eyes and pictured her going from room to room. Then he heard the little girl say “Mommy, mommy.” He listened as Hannah made her way to the back room. He heard her call out to the little girl and repeatedly ask where she was. He opened his eyes and looked at the file. It was almost at the end. He heard the volume suddenly increase as the groan of the heating system appeared. A second later, he heard a man’s voice say Sarah. It was unmistakable.

  Penfield heard the crunch of a car’s tires in the gravel. He turned to see Torres pull up beside him. She got out of her car and climbed into the passenger seat of his. He played her the video recording Hannah had sent him, as well as the enhanced audio file McMahon had rendered.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Do you believe it?”

  “My buddy does.”

  “What about you?” Torres asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He hesitated a moment.

  “I think so,” Penfield continued.

  He waited for Torres to give him her opinion on the recordings, but she didn’t.

  “I think we need to spend time in that house. See things for ourselves,” Penfield continued.

  Torres nodded. They left Torres’ car in the parking lot beside the boardwalk and drove to the Talbot house. Hannah was still shaken, as Penfield assumed she’d be, and refused to leave the house. She told them she was convinced the house held the answers to what happened to her brother.

  The day went by without incident. The storm had arrived late in the morning. It started with light rain but transitioned to a heavy downpour and high winds by the time the afternoon arrived.

  The three of them spent the time reviewing the video files Joseph Talbot had made, as well as the recording Hannah had made the night before. Torres decided to take the first floor videos, while Penfield took the second, and Hannah reviewed the third floor. Penfield was the first to find something out of the ordinary. It was a file shot from the master bedroom camera. Talbot was in bed one second and lying on the ground the next. The time jumped with each passing frame, making his body movements appear jerky. However, his body was twisted in an odd position.

  “Look at this,” Penfield said.

  He dragged the video cursor back and replayed the video for Torres and Hannah.

  “How long was he actually on the floor?” Torres asked.

  Penfield did the quick calculation in his head.

  “About two hours.”

  Talbot eventually stirred and crawled out of the room.

  “Maybe he had a seizure,” Torres said.

  She turned to Hannah.

  “Did your brother have any medical condition that would cause that?” Torres asked.

  “No, not that I know of.”

  Penfield played the rest of the file. Talbot eventually appeared in the room again and went back to bed. He got out of bed in the morning. They tracked his movements through the house with the other cameras. Talbot left the house in the morning, presumably for work.

  They went back to reviewing the videos. Penfield went through five more days of the master bedroom footage. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. However, he found another strange occurrence on the sixth day. Talbot got out of bed in the middle of the night and walked over to the video camera above the door. He stood just under the camera and stared into the lens. Penfield did another calculation and determined he’d stayed like that for approximately four and a half hours.

  “Was there an error with the camera or the recorder? Maybe the frame freezes or something,” Torres said.

  “I thought that, too, but look. The shadows on the floor behind him change as the sun rises in the morning.”

  Penfield played the video again, and Torres saw what he was looking at.

  “So he just stares at the camera for hours?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” Penfield said.

  They reviewed more videos for what seemed like forever. They found more cases of Talbot exploring the third floor. He eventually appeared in each of the third-floor bedroom videos and the attic. He always seemed to be looking for something, or his body appeared in some strange position as if he’d had a seizure like he appeared to have had earlier in the master bedroom.

  Hannah finally told them she was tired and wanted to lie down. They promised they’d still be there when she awoke. She left them in the den and walked upstairs to the bedroom. Torres waited for the sound of her footsteps to reach the top of the stairs. She turned to Penfield.

  “I was thinking about Hannah’s supposed encounter with the kid. I think the video was faked. It had to be,” Torres said.

  “You saw the video yourself. You heard the voices,” Penfield said.

  “I know, but think about what she’s saying. People don’t just vanish into thin air. How does the kid get from the back of the basement, past Hannah, and run up the stairs and out of the house without Hannah seeing or hearing her? Also, why didn’t the phone capture any of that? There’s only one possible explanation. She’s conning us.”

  “Okay, but why?” Penfield asked.

  “Who knows at this point, but it’s all bullshit. I’m convinced of that. Everything conveniently happens when we’re not here. The windows. The voices. Everything. And what about what we’ve just seen on these videos. There was the seizure in his bedroom and then him just staring into the camera for hours. Looks to me like he had some kind of illness, either mental, or phys
ical, or both.”

  Penfield and Torres spent the next few hours walking through the house, exploring each room, opening every door, and searching every corner. It was mostly due to boredom and to stretch their legs and backs. They saw and heard nothing out of the ordinary. They were both careful not to disturb Hannah. Her short nap had gone over five hours, and she was still sound asleep.

  It was dark by now, and the storm continued. Penfield checked the radar on his cell phone. There was a thick patch of red over their area. It didn’t look like it would be gone anytime soon. He decided to start the video cameras recording again. He walked back into the den and turned the video recorder on through the security system software. He decided to walk back to the third floor. Talbot had spent a great deal of time there, including several searches during the middle of the night. There had to be something on that floor that captured his attention.

  Penfield saw the chair by the attic window as soon as he walked through the door. He thought back to the video Hannah had shown them of the chair moving by itself across the attic floor. He walked over to the chair and ran his hand across the back of the chair. He looked at the legs of the chair. There was nothing tied to them, no string or transparent line that could be used to drag it across the attic, nor were there any marks on the legs. He sat down on the chair and looked out at the former military parade field.

  The rain came down hard, but he could still see clearly. The street light outside illuminated the large live oak tree across the street. Its thick branches were bent in sharp angles, as if someone twisted and shaped them as they grew. There was something about it that was both beautiful and frightening at the same time. He knew the trees were hundreds of years old. It was fascinating to think about what they had witnessed, the thousands of people - perhaps hundreds of thousands - who had walked or sat under them. He was just one more person on that long list of history.