The Stone (Lockstone Book 1)

by Seb L. Carter

  Molly forced a smile onto her face.

  “I mean it,” he said. “It’s always hard starting out. But remember that you’re not alone. You have my number.”

  “And I gave her mine,” Sara said with a comforting smile.

  “Good.” Liam hugged his notebook close. “Don’t let yourself fall too deep before you use those numbers,” he said to Molly.

  Molly nodded. Her smile was a little more genuine this time. “I won’t.” Then she reached up and gave Liam a hug. Liam tensed up a little, but then he let himself relax into it.

  Liam had to stay behind to put up the chairs and clean up the refreshments. The big room always weirded him out a little, especially in that time right after everyone left, like the ghosts of people’s pain from group lurked in the shadowy corners, specters who watched him as he folded the chairs, the hollow clang of the metal echoing through the room the way heavy chains clang against a hard, cold floor.

  Being alone in a place like this always stirred up flashbacks of that night. It didn’t matter that it was nothing like his old house, that he was in the basement of a church with institutional flooring and recessed fluorescent lighting. The clang of the chairs and the weight of emptiness, even after all this time—going on seven years now— sometimes overwhelmed him and filled him with a relentless fear that, at any moment, someone with a gun, who always looked like Walter Yates with half his head gone from a self-inflicted wound, would come crashing through the double doors to take him down with a shotgun blast. And that this time, Liam would see that recognition in the one good eye Walter Yates had left.

  He’d learned to cope, taking deep, calming breaths. Two-count in, four-count out. It helped sometimes. Other times, he hid it. He’d gotten quite good at smiling through the pain. A Band-Aid to hide what he was feeling inside. Lying to everyone about his feelings became second nature. He sat in groups like the one tonight to try to help people work through their own problems, but he felt like a fraud most nights. He still had so far to go with his own issues.

  He missed his family. Every day he missed them, even his father, the one he knew before that night. He wished there was something he had done, something he had said. He missed them like a hole in his heart. They were his permanent ghosts.

  Why did they die and not him?

  Over and over, the same thoughts: He should have been able to prevent it. If only he’d been more vigilant.

  And a voice in the back of his mind lingered like a malignant tumor: He was the reason his father snapped. It happened the day after he was discovered in bed with his best friend—his best guy friend. The math was simple, and it drove him to use all those sleeping pills to try to end it a second time. The day his father picked up a rifle and killed his entire family was Liam’s defining moment. And now the challenge in his life was to figure out how to bear that burden.

  With his backpack over his shoulder and the bag of cookies in one hand—the leftover cookies, he put back into the box and stuck it into a plastic grocery bag—Liam closed and locked the reception hall, and he carried the key upstairs to slip beneath the church office door.

  Before he walked outside, his phone rang.

  He stopped in the vestibule of the church and checked who it was. His aunt Jonie. He answered, but he didn’t walk outside yet. This was Chicago. A visible phone became a target for thieves.

  “Just checking in, kiddo,” his aunt said. “Wanted to see what’s up with you?”

  Liam sighed. “You know, most parents just send a text message these days.” His Aunt Jonie was his aunt, but really, she’d become his parent.

  “I know,” she said. “But that just seems so impersonal. I like to hear someone’s voice. Besides, where have you been? I tried calling you an hour ago.”

  “I know,” he said. He hadn’t known, really. “My phone was on vibrate. I was in a meeting.”

  “Oh,” she said. The note in her voice said she didn’t need any further explanation. “How’d the meeting go?”

  “Good. Really good. We had a good turnout tonight,” he said. “I was just about to walk to the train.” He hoped it would be a short call. He peered out onto the street. It looked like it had rained. The streets glistened. Snow pack left over from the colder months still clung on in the corner of the parking lot, largely melted. It was moving toward spring and warmer days. Chicago snow sometimes took a while to realize the change in the weather.

  “Well I’m glad to hear it. I’m glad you’re still keeping up with that.”

  “You know I’m facilitating now, right?”

  “I know, honey,” she said. “But that’s got to help you too. I know it does.”

  “Yeah,” Liam answered. “It’s cool. Makes me feel like I’m able to use my experience to help others, you know?”

  “That’s why I’m proud of you, kiddo.”

  A brief pause entered in, and Liam took the chance. “Well listen, I need to get going. I have homework, and I still gotta walk back to campus.”

  “Okay, honey. You be careful. It’s late out, and that’s when the bad stuff happens,” she said.

  “Aunt Jonie, it’s barely past nine.”

  “It’s still dark out. You know how it is. That area used to be Cabrini. It’s not a safe part of town.” Cabrini Green was tenement housing. Now it was all townhouses and open fields where the high-rise crime havens once stood.

  “It’s a lot different now, Aunt Jonie. They’ve torn all those old buildings down.”

  “I know, honey. I know. But still. Sometimes I feel like an area gets bad once, and all that negative energy just seeps in and stays there.”

  “That’s kind of silly,” Liam said. But she was right. Nights in this part of town seemed to carry the weight of all that suffering.

  “Still, you know I don’t like you walking late at night.”

  “I know that you worry too much,” he said in an exasperated tone. But he smiled as he said it. It was good to hear her concern. Even though he acted annoyed, he still knew it meant she loved him just as much as he loved her, his only real family now, her and his cousin, Trey. After everything he’d been through, the psychiatrists said over and over, every expression of love was important. Show love so often that they never forget someone cares. That’s what his aunt Jonie was doing, but it wasn’t something banal for her. She really did care, and she showed it to him as often as she could. “I love you, Aunt Jonie.”

  “I love you too, kiddo. Call me when you get back to your dorm.”

  “How about I just text you?”

  “Ha ha. Yeah, okay. Just do it one way or the other.”

  “I will.”

  “If I have to get in my car and drive all the way over to DePaul—”

  “All right!” Liam was laughing now too. “I get it. I’ll let you know.”

  After he hung up, he started his walk to the train. It was a nice evening, even after the rain and a slight chill in the air, so he walked slow toward the L-stop. It was a busy Chicago street, marked with a number of night spots, the weather nice enough that some of them even had patio seating and music spilling out along with laughter and boozy odors. It would be easy for him to go into one of those bars, become a regular, and lose himself to the haze of alcohol. There was a time he considered it, some way to dull the daily ache for all that was lost. But he rejected that idea when he found he didn’t really like the taste of beer, and hard liquor made him want to puke after even one sip.

  There were drugs too. Some of the people he passed standing on the street corners probably knew where to get those. It was as close as asking. But Liam had enough demons in his life without making their task of torture easier by losing his mind to drugs.

  Closer to the L-stop, he was forced to cross under a viaduct, the sidewalk beneath dotted with tents and homeless people covered in thick blankets. The lights were a harsher orange here. Liam stopped at the corner just before the bridge and watched.

  He’d grown accustomed to the homeless that were ubi
quitous in any urban setting, especially Chicago. There were even a few that were familiar faces, the same people standing in the same spot to shake a paper cup and calling “God bless you” to people who dropped coins in to join in the clatter. When he had some extra change or a spare dollar, he usually gave it to them. When he had nothing, he always apologized when they asked for money. He rarely had much to give them. Tonight, he stopped by one woman sitting on a dirty blanket next to a small, grizzled dog who wagged its stubby tail as Liam approached.

  “Here,” he said. “It’s not much.” He held out the bag of cookies to her.

  She stared at the bag then stared up at him, then she looked away with a frown. He put the bag on the ground next to her and continued on his way. When he glanced back as he walked away, she was eating one of the cookies and feeding the rest to her dog.

  At the street corner, he waited for the light to change so he could cross. Another homeless man stood on the other side of the street, an old man with a scraggly white beard that appeared to become suddenly interested in Liam. Liam didn’t pay attention to him. It happened sometimes after someone witnessed him giving his pocket change or the cookies away. They thought maybe he had more to give.

  But this guy stared at Liam with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. The man stood directly in his path. Liam tried to ignore him, but the way the old man stared hit him like a sudden blast of chilly air.

  The light flashed the walk signal, but Liam didn’t cross. He waited, watching the old guy. And he was relieved when the homeless man remained where he was instead of crossing over to the side of the street where Liam stood. But Liam wasn’t about to cross to meet the man either. Instead, he went to the other cross walk and waited for that light to change so he could go over to the far side of the street. He’d have to cross again when he got to the L-stop, but it was a small price to pay for safety.

  Yet, as Liam began crossing, so did the homeless man.

  Liam stopped in the middle of the street. When he stopped, so did the homeless man. The whole time, the old man kept his icy stare locked onto him.

  “What do you want?” Liam called out to him.

  The man didn’t answer.

  Liam had to decide to go back or keep going.

  A car honked its horn causing Liam to jump. He stared at the driver who gave him a frustrated wave of his hand. The light had changed again, and he was standing in front of the car. Liam waved an apology, and he trotted over to the far street corner.

  And, as he feared, the old homeless man was there on the other side of the street, still staring. Liam dropped his backpack off his shoulder. He wasn’t a guy who carried a weapon with him or anything, but his bag had more than one heavy book in it, not to mention a laptop. He twisted his hand around the strap so that he wouldn’t accidentally fling it if he had to use it as a weapon.

  When the light changed for him to walk, Liam’s stomach dropped. The homeless man made no move. Of course, he didn’t. He was waiting for Liam to cross.

  And finally, Liam did.

  As he got closer, the old man never dropped his stare. Sharp, blue eyes that seemed to have a light of their own. The way the old man looked at him, with a keenness that seemed out of place on the old, grizzled face, and the courageous, almost valorous, way he stood tall and straight made him seem as if he was not a man meant for the streets, but one who could greet dignitaries in a throne room. He even crooked an arm in a regal way.

  Liam gripped his backpack tighter.

  Six feet away from him, the old man smiled. “Hi Liam,” he said.

  That caused Liam to stop. “What?”

  “Thaddeus has something for you,” he said. His voice carried a deep resonance that didn’t fit the man’s thin frame. He held something in his hand. Liam’s heart pounded as he braced himself for a swing while the homeless man turned his palm up and opened it.

  With a gulp, he peered closer. At first Liam thought it was a potato. It was about that size. But, upon closer look, he understood it to be a simple-appearing stone.

  “I don’t know anyone named Thaddeus.” Liam’s bewildered gaze traveled between the stone the man held and the man’s weather-beaten face.

  But his eyes were pulled back over and over to the stone, so much that, for a moment, he lost sight of the man holding it.

  So odd, a simple stone. A stone that tugged at him, a pull that reached down somewhere deep inside. For a surreal moment, Liam believed the homeless man. The stone truly was meant for him. He could sense the connection.

  “It has come to you. Take it.” The old man stepped forward, and Liam didn’t step back.

  The windows of a shop vibrated. A car alarm nearby screamed as the car rocked back and forth.

  The old man continued to come toward him, and, once close enough, he tossed the stone toward Liam. And Liam had no choice but to catch it.

  A rush of relief—of a connection—flooded through him when the warm stone touched the skin of his hand. A wave of dizziness caused the world to spin. His face grew numb, his body distant.

  And there was a woman. Liam noticed her instantly. She stood apart from everyone else by how she, at first, seemed formless, a body struggling to take shape.

  When she did finally lock into a hazy clarity, he saw that she was a dirt-smudged woman with light-brown hair, but not like the homeless people on the street. There was an otherworldly, fey beauty to her. She wore a brown leather jacket covered in dust. He thought he was witnessing a ghost at first. Her form was, at times, ethereal, misty. Distant.

  She stared at him with an expression that filled Liam with great sorrow, so much so that he thought he might drop to his knees there in the middle of the street and lose it. There were tears in his eyes, and he wasn’t even sure why.

  She was saying something, though Liam couldn’t hear her. Her mouth moved, but all he could hear was the rush of wind or his own blood in his ears. The dizziness overwhelmed him, and he stumbled.

  But just when he thought he was going to faint, the sensation passed. He looked around to find himself back on the street corner, standing not far from the homeless man.

  The old man who had given him the stone had changed somehow. His demeanor was different. His mouth hung slack, and his eyes swirled in his head, unable to focus.

  Until they did. The old man took one look at Liam and screamed. Liam could smell his sour breath like he’d been drinking. He staggered away as if Liam had struck him

  When he turned to run, Liam tried to grab for him, to get him to stop.

  The old man moved too fast.

  He ran into the street.

  A taxi cab struck him down in a sickening crunch and squealed to a stop just past the intersection.

  Four

  Los Angeles, California

  Special Agent Zachary Shepard couldn't stop watching television. He was supposed to be packing his overnight bag, but he’d stopped when he turned on a cable news station just to see what he’d missed while he was elbows deep in a serial murder case there in Los Angeles. They were done with it, and he thought he might be heading home to maybe drive up to where his ex lived to catch his kid, Toby, playing in a little-league game.

  But the news playing out on the television told him something else. Little league was probably far from the agenda laid out before him that day. Somebody in La Jolla decided to go into a big mansion up on a hill and murder a whole group of people. As an agent assigned to the behavioral analysis unit of the FBI, he could only guess what was coming next.

  His phone rang. “Yeah,” he answered. He didn’t even bother to look to see who was calling. He suspected he already knew.

  “You watching the news?” It was Glenda, his partner. She was apparently doing the same thing he was in the hotel room down the hall from his.

  “Yup. Let me guess. San Diego?”

  “You got it. San Diego PD put the call in to Quantico an hour ago, and we get another week in sunny California. Nine people, they’re saying. It’s like
the Manson murders all over again down there. You about ready?”

  “I’ll catch you in twenty,” he said. Zach hung up the phone and finished packing.

  La Jolla, California

  It was only a forty-five-minute flight from Los Angeles to San Diego. By midday, they were driving through a wrought-iron gate outside a mega mansion, a classy kind of place if it weren’t for all the flashing lights from cop cars and fluttering yellow police tape.

  Glenda whistled when they got out. “Boy, that’s a big chunk of real estate,” she said.

  Zach had been to San Diego before. La Jolla was a ritzy community just north of San Diego. Mostly a community of McMansions, lots of palm trees, and views of world-famous golf courses with the twinkling Pacific Ocean further out.

  The house stood above the tall stone wall that lined the front yard. And Glenda was right. The place was huge. The architecture was French provincial style with a brick exterior and a copper swoop of ceiling over the expansive entry way. It stood at three stories with high, hipped roofs and double French windows and doors that opened to balconies on the sides. If Zach didn’t know any better, he’d have thought the building came plucked right of out of the south of France. The visible part alone, Zach guessed there were twenty or so windows and doors along the second story. And this was a neighborhood of single-family houses. Either it was a big family or whoever owned this place had a lot of guests.

  Or used to own this place. If the owner was inside, he or she was dead. Good luck to the realtor trying to sell this property after nine dead people were found inside. That was liable to put a dent in someone’s profit margins.

  They were greeted by a hefty Hispanic man in his mid-fifties, a salt-and-pepper mustache thick above his lip. A detective, Zach gathered, from the badge hanging around his neck. He stood with his hands on his hips and chewing the end of a pen like he was dying for a cigarette. “You guys from the FBI, I take it?”

  “The black SUVs give us away?” Glenda said.