Ruckman Road: An Alex Penfield Novel

by Robert W. Stephens

  He suddenly felt the pain in his side again. He tried to keep his thoughts from drifting back to Patricia Porter and Dominic Stewart, but he couldn’t stop them. He saw Dominic appear in the hallway of the apartment and point his gun at Torres. Penfield hadn’t made a conscious decision to jump in front of Torres. Perhaps it had been his training, or maybe it was just the human instinct to protect someone else. They had given him a medal afterward, but it was bullshit. He didn’t deserve it. If anything, the entire case was a sign of his failure. He and Torres had gotten Patricia Porter killed by going to her in the first place. They had hoped to strong-arm her into turning on Dominic. In a way, they were no better than he had been. They used their authority to threaten her into giving them what they wanted. True, it hadn’t been a physical threat, at least not by them, but the meaning was clear. “Do what we want or suffer the consequences.” Maybe Penfield had deserved what had happened to him.

  He looked back outside at the tree a second time and thought again about the history it had seen. He was just a blip on that long list of people to walk by it, and his life had almost been cut short by a worthless piece of shit like Dominic Stewart.

  Chapter 15

  A Face in the Storm

  Hannah stirred when she heard thunder in the distance. The bedroom was in total darkness. She grabbed her cell phone off the night stand and saw it was almost ten o’clock in the evening. How long had she been asleep? She remembered coming upstairs for what she planned to be a short nap. She must have been more tired than she thought.

  She listened for Penfield and Torres but didn’t hear any sign of their presence. They must still be downstairs, at least she hoped they were still downstairs and hadn’t left her alone in the house. She thought about going back to sleep but decided to find the detectives and see what their plan was. She hoped they were willing to spend the night.

  “Sarah.”

  The man’s voice startled Hannah. She couldn’t tell where it came from. The thunder boomed again, and she thought she might have imagined the voice. Penfield had played the enhanced recording for her, and it had frightened her badly. Her mind was still foggy and unfocused from the sleep. That had to be it.

  Hannah swung her legs off the bed and sat on its edge. She went to stand but then stopped suddenly when she heard a long scratch against one of the windows. It had to be a tree branch blowing in the wind. She thought about it more, though. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but she didn’t believe there were any trees close enough to that side of the house to be able to reach out and touch the window. She heard the rain falling hard. She heard a second scratch on the glass, followed by a boom of thunder.

  “Sarah,” the man’s voice said again.

  She was more awake this time, and the voice was clearer, even with the sound of the pounding rain and wind. Hannah looked into the direction of the voice. It had come from the window in front of her. All of the window shades were drawn, so she couldn’t see anything. Hannah stood and walked slowly to the window. She listened for the voice, but it didn’t come. Then she heard another loud smack against the window pane that made her jump.

  “Sarah,” the voice said a third time.

  She reached out and took hold of the bottom of the shade. She tugged on it, and the shade retracted. The lightening flashed, and Hannah saw a bloody face stare back at her from outside the window.

  Penfield heard the wooden boards of the attic floor creak behind him. He turned around and saw Torres standing a few feet inside the attic. He hadn’t heard her come up the stairs. His focus was slipping from the frequent pain in his side. How much longer could he do this job?

  “Are you okay?” Torres asked.

  Penfield didn’t answer her. He turned back to the window.

  Torres walked over to Penfield.

  “What were you looking at?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Hannah is still asleep.”

  Penfield didn’t reply, and it was obvious to Torres that his mind was somewhere far away from this house.

  “Are you okay?” Torres asked again.

  “Yeah, just thinking about Patricia Porter.”

  Torres didn’t expect that response from Penfield. In hindsight, though, she should have.

  “I don’t know if I’m ever going to get past this,” Penfield said.

  He said it before he realized how weak and vulnerable it would make him sound, and he was immediately embarrassed.

  “You will get past this,” Torres said without hesitation.

  She had said it with such certainty that Penfield turned from the window to look at her. Her eyes met his.

  “Her death wasn’t our fault. She sealed her fate the moment she hooked up with that sociopath. He was a dangerous man, and she had a lot on him. He couldn’t let her live. He never was going to let her live, regardless of what we did or didn’t do. Our visit with her had nothing to do with it. Maybe it sped his actions up by a week, maybe a month, but it was going to happen no matter what. If she had listened to us when we first came to her, she’d still be alive today.”

  “You’re blaming her?” Penfield asked.

  “I’m not blaming her, but we offered her a way out. What did she tell us? ‘Fuck off?’ I’m pretty sure that was the exact phrase she used.”

  Penfield stood, and he grimaced as the pain in his side flared up.

  “You’re still in pain, aren’t you?” Torres asked, and she gently touched his side.

  He looked down at her hand and then back up to her face.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  Then they heard Hannah scream.

  Penfield and Torres ran downstairs. They found Hannah standing on the second-floor landing. She was shaking and trying to talk, but all that came out of her mouth was an incoherent mumble. Torres ran over to her and put her hands on Hannah’s shoulders.

  “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Torres asked.

  Hannah said nothing. She couldn’t even look at Torres. Her eyes were trained on the master bedroom doorway. Penfield nodded to Torres and went into the bedroom with his weapon drawn. There was nothing there, though. He went into the accompanying master bathroom. Also nothing. Penfield walked back into the bedroom and noticed there was only one window shade opened. He walked over to the window and saw a bloody handprint on the glass.

  “Torres,” Penfield yelled.

  Torres came into the room and hurried over to Penfield.

  “What did you…?”

  Torres stopped talking when she saw the handprint. There were two long red streaks from where the blood had run down the glass from the base of the palm print. Penfield examined the window more closely.

  “Look,” he said. “I think the print is actually on the inside of the glass.”

  Torres leaned closer and saw what he was talking about.

  “It’s between the outside of this window and the storm window,” she said.

  Penfield turned when he heard Hannah enter the room.

  “What did you see?” Penfield asked.

  “It was a man. He was outside the window,” Hannah said.

  Torres looked out the window and then down to the ground. She looked at Penfield and could easily tell what he was thinking. They were on the second floor. There was nothing outside for a man to stand on.

  “I think….I think it was Joe,” Hannah said.

  It took a second for the words to register in Penfield’s mind.

  “You saw your brother?” he asked.

  “His face was covered in blood, but I think it was him. Joe’s still alive.”

  Penfield looked at the bloody handprint again. It was made by a large hand, almost certainly from a man. He turned and glanced as casually as he could at Hannah’s hands. They were far too small, and they were clean.

  “Let’s check outside,” Penfield told Torres.

  They left Hannah in the bedroom and walked to the first floor. The front door was still closed and locked. They exited the house a
nd walked around to the side where the master bedroom overlooked. They were both drenched from the pounding rain within a few seconds. Torres pulled a small flashlight from her pocket and scanned the ground under the window.

  “I don’t see any prints, no indentations from anything like a ladder.”

  “The ground is so wet. Someone would have had to leave marks,” Penfield said.

  Torres looked up to the second story window.

  “How the hell could anyone get up there without a ladder?”

  They walked back to the front porch and got out of the rain.

  “Did she open the inside window and make the print herself?” Torres asked.

  “I don’t think so. The print is much bigger than her hand, and it’s high up on the glass. Her arms would have to be enormously long to be able to reach that high. The inside of the inner window wasn’t wet either. How would she get her hand that far up without opening the storm window too?”

  “So what the hell does this mean? And what about her brother? Could that really have been Talbot?”

  “Is that the reason why they never found a body? There wasn’t one to find?” Penfield asked.

  “The jogger sees him and runs home for her cell phone. Only Talbot wakes up and climbs out of the bay himself.”

  “Why not come home then? Why spend the last few days hiding?” Penfield asked.

  “Someone’s after him, maybe. He sees his sister coming and going here, so he tries to make contact,” Torres said.

  “By scaling the side of the house in the rain? How would he even know what room she was in? Hannah said the face was covered in blood, so how could she really tell it was him? She may have thought it was Joe because that’s what she wants to believe.”

  Penfield and Torres went back into the house. They found Hannah in the den. She told them she couldn’t stay in the bedroom by herself. She was still shaken and still insistent that the face in the window belonged to her brother.

  The crime scene techs arrived an hour later. Penfield had them lift a print from the window. It was so high up on the inside of the window that they had to cut the glass pane out to reach it. This only confirmed to Penfield that his theory about Hannah not being able to do it was correct.

  Penfield asked them to take prints from the television remote control in the den. If Talbot had made the bloody hand print on the bedroom window, the fingerprints should match what could be found on his remote.

  “Get me the results as fast as you can,” Penfield said.

  The crime scene techs left, and Penfield found Torres and Hannah in the kitchen.

  “Do you believe me now?” Hannah asked the two detectives. “The voice on the recording and now this? Something’s happening here, and I don’t know what it is.”

  Penfield didn’t know how to respond. He looked past Hannah to the kitchen window. The sun had risen an hour ago, but it was still gloomy and gray, and the rain continued to fall.

  Chapter 16

  Henry Atwater

  The rain finally stopped by late morning. The sky was still dark and covered by thick clouds. The air felt wet, cold, and oppressive. Penfield went outside to check the exterior of the house in the daylight. His feet sank in the grass as he walked across the soaked yard. He looked back at his steps and saw the deep indentions his body weight had made. He arrived at the spot just under the window with the handprint. He examined the ground and saw the earlier prints he and Torres had left during the night. They hadn’t vanished in the hours of heavy rain, but there were no indentations from a ladder or any other object that could be used to climb to the second floor.

  He looked up to the window. He didn’t see anything hanging from the roof or even a place someone could descend from. Their earlier estimates were correct. There was simply no way for anyone to scale this side of the house without a rope or ladder. There was absolutely nothing to hold on to. Even if Hannah had imagined seeing the face in the darkness, it didn’t explain the presence of the bloody handprint. He thought he‘d proven she couldn’t have left it. So who did and how did they do it?

  Penfield walked to the back of the house to see if he could find other prints or some evidence of a possible intruder, but he found nothing. He finished circling the house and went back inside through the front door. He immediately saw Torres and Hannah talking in the den. They faced the window that overlooked the playground, so their backs were to Penfield. He thought about joining them but decided to walk to the basement instead. He still couldn’t stop thinking about the recording Hannah had made. The handprint on the window was a compelling piece of evidence, but the audio recording seemed to shake him even more.

  He opened the door and descended the stairs into the basement. The air was cold and damp as it usually was. The heating system rattled and seemed to shake the walls of the basement. Penfield removed his phone and played the audio recording Hannah had sent him. He tried to retrace her footsteps as the recording played. He went into each room and looked around. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Everything was in its place as it had been on his initial visit to the house.

  He entered the room where the pain in his side had almost incapacitated him. The memory of the incident caused his side to grow hot. He felt the beads of sweat form on his head. He thought about putting his hand against the cinderblocks to try to cool his body down, but he pushed through to the next room. After checking the middle room, he walked to the back room as the child’s voice began to play. He entered the room and did a slow turn. He heard the man’s voice say “Sarah,” and then the phone’s recording ended.

  “Mommy.”

  It took Penfield a second to comprehend the child’s voice he’d just heard had not come from the phone. He turned in the direction of the voice and saw a little girl standing in the corner of the room. Her back was to him, and all he could see was the dirty white dress and the long dark hair that fell below her shoulders.

  “Are you all right?” Penfield asked. “Who are you?”

  Penfield saw the girl’s shoulders rise and fall as she began to cry.

  “Where do you live?” Penfield asked, but the girl said nothing. “Are you hurt?”

  Penfield took a step closer to her but then stopped. The girl gave no indication that she was even aware of his presence.

  “Has someone hurt you?” Penfield asked.

  “Mommy,” the girl said again.

  Penfield walked toward her.

  “Where’s your mommy? I’ll get her for you,” Penfield said.

  Penfield thought about running for Torres. Perhaps the girl would respond better to a female officer, but he didn’t want to lose sight of her. She obviously had a way of disappearing quickly. He walked up behind her and reached his hand out to touch her shoulder. She turned around quickly, and Penfield’s eyes widened. Her face was covered with hideous burns. Her eyes were blood red, and the flesh of her cheeks seemed to hang in jagged chunks of flesh.

  “Where’s my mommy?” the girl asked.

  A piece of her flesh dropped off her face and fell to the floor. Penfield looked down at the chunk of charred skin on the cement. He looked back at the girl but was too horrified to say anything. He couldn’t comprehend how she was still alive with burns like that.

  “Where’s my mommy?” she asked a second time.

  Penfield told his brain to respond to her, but he still couldn’t force his mouth to form words. The girl’s eyes narrowed, and she shoved Penfield hard with just one hand. He flew off his feet and landed roughly on the cement floor. He momentarily lost sight of the girl as he rolled to a stop. He felt the waves of pain rush through his side from the impact with the concrete. The pain spread out to his back and neck. He pushed his body back in her direction, but she was gone. Penfield struggled to his feet and limped toward the entrance to the basement. He didn’t see her, nor did he hear her footsteps dashing up the stairs. He checked each room in the basement, but the girl with the burnt face had vanished along with the chunk of bloody flesh th
at had fallen to the floor.

  Penfield climbed the stairs and went back to the living room. He looked for Torres and Hannah in the den, but they weren’t there anymore. He stood quiet and listened for them upstairs. He heard nothing.

  Penfield felt a sharp and sudden pain on his chest. He walked into the bathroom and locked the door. He opened his shirt and looked at his chest in the bathroom mirror above the sink. He saw a burn mark on the center of his chest. It was in the clear shape of the girl’s handprint. He turned on the faucet and grabbed the towel off the rack. He placed it in the sink and let the cold water wash over it. Penfield squeezed the excess water out and placed the cold towel on his chest. It stung and made the pain even worse. Penfield put the towel down on the edge of the sink. He looked at himself in the mirror again. Had that actually happened? The burn mark on his chest proved it, but he had no idea where the girl had run to. She couldn’t have gotten away so quickly, but it was the exact same thing Hannah had experienced on the third floor a couple of days ago.

  Penfield turned the water on again and splashed cold water on his face. He ran his wet hands over the top of his head. He had seen the girl and heard her voice. It sounded just like the girl on the phone recording. Her existence was undeniable, yet the way she looked and the way she pushed him couldn’t easily be explained. There was no way a child of her size could throw him down like that, but it had happened. He had the bumps and bruises to prove it.

  Penfield’s thoughts drifted to the memory of a man his father had dealt with years ago. He’d thought of him frequently over the last few days. The emotional part of his mind told him it was a potential option, a last-ditch effort to make sense of what was going on in this house. His rational side, however, warned him to stay far away. The man would bring nothing but painful memories, and anything he might potentially say couldn’t be verified.

  Penfield looked at his chest again. He halfway expected the mark to be gone, as if his mind had simply imagined the events of the last ten minutes, but the burned flesh was still there. He unlocked the door and exited the bathroom and almost bumped into Torres in the process.