“You think these cases, Wolf’s manslaughter case, the disappearance of Siri, and the murders of these two women are linked, don’t you?” said Laura.
“I’ve got this sick feeling in my gut that they somehow are.”
“Explain.”
“I can’t. It’s just gut. Maybe they’re revenge slayings?”
“Why would someone kill innocent women just for revenge? It doesn’t make sense. These are ritual slayings, the work of an extremely sick individual.”
“Sick, all right,” Jennings said.
“But intelligent,” Laura said. “This is someone with a lot of self-control.”
“Don’t give him too much credit, girl,” Jennings said. “He’s a fucking nut job. He wants the whole world to know he’s out there and he wants us to be afraid. He’s playing a game. A low life predator is what he is.”
“I think there’s more to this killer than meets the eye,” Laura said.
Jennings’ eyes narrowed in thought. “Listen, the city’s full of young people who decorate their bodies with filth and dress up like every night is Halloween. Think what they’re doing is cool or something, and he’s stalking them. It has to be some sort of religious thing. Doesn’t like the fact that they worship the dark side, and he’s making a statement, taking advantage of their stupidity. The way they dress, the way they act. You want the truth I think they’re asking for it.”
Laura threw her hands up in frustration. “Are you kidding me, Rick? That’s like saying a woman who dresses alluringly is asking to be sexually harassed or even raped.”
“Well, isn’t she?”
“Oh my god, Rick, you’re blaming the victim. That’s dark ages stuff. This is the twenty-first century.”
“Tell that to the human libido. That hasn’t changed in twenty-thousand years.”
“So you’re saying that just because a man has a libido he has the right to—”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that people ask for what they get, period! Wishful thinking doesn’t change who we are inside. If you invite trouble you get trouble.”
Laura gave a sigh of resignation. What the hell was the point?
“Besides, I was just commenting on how weird this town is getting,” Jennings said. “Wait till you get out and about. You’ll see what I mean.”
“I already have, and you’re right. It sure has changed since I lived here. It’s as if Portland slipped through some crazy portal into an alternate universe or something.”
“Exactly,” Jennings said. “A dark universe. The town is full of fetish clubs, head shops, drug dens, fortune tellers, every manner of alternative lifestyle bullshit known to man. And it seems like every other block has a fortune teller. A lot of that shit is centered down around the Old Port section of the city. A bunch of goddamned hippies, if you ask me. Christ, I thought the sixties were gone. What the hell’s going on? This isn’t the town I grew up in.”
Laura shrugged. “Things change, Rick. It’s not just here.”
Jennings eyes narrowed. “I just don’t understand it, that’s all.”
“Maybe something’s drawing them here,” said Laura. “Some energy or something.”
Jennings grunted. “You believe in that crap?”
“Obviously you don’t,” Laura said making a sour face. “Listen, Rick, I believe there’s a lot of unexplained stuff out there. The world isn’t just black and white, you know.”
Jennings was silent for a long, contemplative moment, thinking again about what he’d seen at both recent crime scenes, worrying over it, wondering if he should mention it to Laura, wondering if it had even been real.
“What about that big guy stuff Wolf was talking about?” Laura said. “Seeing through someone else’s eyes? Pretty weird, huh?”
“Yeah, when you consider the tracks we found at yesterday’s crime scene. The guy must have been wearing a size sixteen shoe. That’s a giant in anyone’s book.”
“So do you think Wolf might actually be psychic or something? Seeing through someone else’s eyes?”
“I think it’s a stretch, but what the hell, we’ve got dark goths, vampire wannabes, a religious serial killer, and...and...”
“And what, Rick?”
Jennings avoided Laura’s gaze. “Never mind.”
“That’s not what you were going to say.”
“How do you know what I was going to say?”
Laura smiled sweetly. “You forget, I can read you like a book, Uncle Rick.”
“I haven’t forgotten. You always were an intuitive little bitch.”
“That’s why you asked me in on this case isn’t it?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You know it is. So, what do you know about the dude with the giant feet?”
“Nothing. They’re working on it. Maybe Wolf was wearing oversized shoes.”
“Oh, Christ, Rick.”
“I’ve seen weirder.”
“The guy must be a mad man.”
“Or girl,” Jennings said.
“What?”
“I haven’t discounted the possibility of it being a woman,” Jennings said. “Remember Siri Donovan or whatever the hell her real name was, dropped off the face of the earth. Now Wolf’s women are being murdered.”
“Wow, that’s an about face. A minute ago you were telling me that Wolf had killed her to shut her up.”
“I was merely speculating.”
Laura stared at the lieutenant in amazement. “Well, what do you think would be her motive?”
“How about they’re fucking her ex lover?”
“So she pretends to be a religious serial killer, carves a cross on them and ties them to a makeshift cross six feet off the ground? And she does it all in oversized shoes. Pretty slick, if you ask me.”
Jennings’s eyes drew down into beady pinpoints. Again he was thinking about a crime scene from half a decade ago. A crime scene he was not supposed to talk about.
A crime scene that nobody was supposed to know about.
Chapter 35
“It’s not logical,” Laura said. “The transcripts described her as being small, about my size. I’m strong, but I’m not strong enough to do that. The killer is either a very strong man or more than one person. And the tracks you found at the last scene almost certainly point to one person. A very big person. Not a chick. Besides, in all of history there have been only a handful of female serial killers. It’s possible but very unlikely.”
“I agree.”
“So where does that leave Wolf?”
Jennings sighed. “Listen, Laura. If you want the truth, I sort of like the guy. He has a way about him. I think he’s an extremely tormented individual. There’s something eating him alive. I believe he was at least partially telling the truth at the trial. He just might have been the victim of some sort of scheme.”
“I can’t believe you’re ready to admit that, after what you just said.”
“What I said was I don’t know what to believe.”
“Do you think there were more people involved besides this Siri Donovan woman?” Laura asked.
“Don’t know. And I don’t think that’s her real name. It’s why we were never able to find her. There’s not much on her, as far as I know, not even a photograph.”
“What? That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I thought. But Motor Vehicles had no records of a Siri Donovan, neither did Social Security. There were no photographs of her in Wolf’s apartment and none in her apartment. Actually there was no information at all about her in her apartment. It was like no one with a life actually lived there. The woman she worked for gave us a description, as did bartenders and customers. All said as far as they knew she had no close friends. They describe her as being extremely beautiful with big eyes and dark hair. That’s it. And when she disappeared no one came forward to find out what happened to her.”
“But you said she had a job. Social Security must have had a record of her.”
<
br /> “Her employer claimed it was her first job and that she’d applied for a number at the time she applied for the job.”
“Jesus,” Laura said. “How old was she? Twenty-nine? Thirty? Sure sounds suspicious to me.”
“Me too,” Jennings said.
“It’s like she didn’t exist until she met Wolf,” Laura said.”
“Precisely,” Jennings replied. “And the night Shaun Talbot died her existence terminated.”
“That alone should have been enough for a mistrial,” Laura said.
“The jury wasn’t allowed to consider any information about her because it was all hearsay. As far as the court was concerned she didn’t exist.”
“Well, what about Wolf,” Laura asked. “What about his background, his parents, siblings, all of that?”
Jennings frowned. “Same thing. Everything about him is sketchy, like he was dropped here from planet Krypton. When he was eight years old he ended up in the state foster care system. Before that there’s nothing.”
Laura blinked. “Doesn’t make sense, Rick. Who dropped him in foster care?”
Again Jennings frowned, and this time he shook his head. “Nobody knows.”
“What? Aren’t there records?”
“Nope. Either they’ve been removed or they never existed in the first place.”
Laura leveled her gaze at Jennings. “What’s going on, Rick?”
“Listen, none of this is relevant.”
“Are you kidding me? Of course it’s relevant. How am I supposed to investigate this guy if you’re withholding information?”
Jennings glared at Laura. “Listen, he doesn’t even know who he is. Claims he has no memory of those early years. It’s possible he spent time in a Catholic orphanage. That’s all I know, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Laura leaned forward in her chair, her interest piqued. “Possible?”
Jennings sighed in exasperation. “The only Catholic orphanage in the area was destroyed by fire just before Wolf ended up in foster care. Supposedly there were no survivors. And all records were destroyed. He left the foster care system at fourteen or fifteen, learned how to play guitar and put himself through college by playing music. The rest is history.”
“Where was this orphanage?”
“It isn’t relevant. There were no survivors.”
“Humor me.”
Jennings sighed. “An island about five miles off Portland. A place known as Apocalypse.”
“Holy shit,” Laura breathed.
“What, you’ve heard of the place?”
“I grew up in Portland, remember?”
“Okay, so you’ve heard of it. What exactly have you heard?”
“A lot of weird stuff. Things kids like to talk about. It would be nice to hear the real story.”
“The Catholics built a Mission there in the nineteenth century,” Jennings said. “The orphanage soon followed. It was a place for homeless kids to go. And I told you, Wolf’s not from there. There were no survivors.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that?”
“Jesus, Laura, why are you harping on this?”
“I have my reasons.”
Jennings shook his head in exasperation. “Okay, in about 1850 a ship carrying slaves bound for somewhere down south got blown off course in a storm and shipwrecked on the island. At that time the island was uninhabited. Legend has it that local Indian tribes would not go near the place because of some ancient superstition or some such nonsense.”
“What superstition?”
“I don’t know. Something to do with a prophecy of doom or something. I’m not sure what the Indian word was for it but in English it was loosely translated into apocalypse. That’s how the place got its name.”
Laura stared at Jennings. “Wow. How cool is that? I never knew any of this.”
“And it’s not important now.”
“So humor me. What happened to the shipwrecked people?”
Jennings glared at her. “Starvation forced them to feed off one another.”
Laura made a face. “Yuk!” she said. “Cannibalism?”
“The ones that died of exposure or starvation became food for the survivors,” Jennings explained. “By the time they were discovered it was too late. There had been so many atrocities folks just went away and left them to their own devices. The place had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, a true apocalyptic series of events tainted the island’s reputation in the minds of mainlanders and no one wanted to have anything to do with the place.
“There was no way the state could prosecute anyone because evidence of the crimes was long gone. Survivors and their descendents built shacks and made lives for themselves, mostly from the sea. In time they were joined by Indians, who had evidently forgotten the fears of their ancestors. Eventually they were joined by white mainlanders, and they managed to build a community of mixed breeds. They fished and scratch-farmed the rocky soil, dug clams, caught lobsters and heated with driftwood that washed ashore. Occasionally they worked as laborers for mainland farmers.”
“Wow, Rick, that’s quite a story. Maybe Wolf is from there. He does have sort of an exotic look about him. Dark complexion, black hair and eyes. He’s very handsome.”
Jennings frowned. “Yeah, that’s what I’m told. And a lot of people say he’s...got something.”
“Something?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of...magnetism or something. They say when he’s performing people can’t take their eyes off him. It’s almost like he has the ability to hypnotize them or something. I’ve seen him and he is good. And the chicks, Christ, they fight amongst themselves trying to get their hands on him. I want you to be very careful around him. Understand?”
Laura smiled. “Sounds very intriguing. Think he might mesmerize me with his charm?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Rick, I’m a professional.”
“Yeah, I know. But you’re also a woman. A good looking woman.” Jennings cleared his throat. His face began to redden.
“Gee, thanks.”
“Just watch yourself, okay?”
“Sure.”
“It’s possible that something else is going on with him as well.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
Jennings cleared his throat. “I don’t know how much of this I’m able to believe, but I’ve spoken to the warden at the prison and he says that Wolf used to have these spells or trances or something in the middle of the night. He’d go into these rages where he would shake the bars of his cell and howl like a lunatic. They couldn’t wake him so they’d end up beating him away from the bars. Several times they had to send guards in to subdue him and give him injections to calm him down.”
“Wow, that is weird.”
“But that’s only part of it.”
Laura waited.
“And sometimes during these...rages, light bulbs would pop nearby and things would fly around the cell. Pillows, blankets, stuff like that.”
“I’ve heard of this before,” Laura said. “It’s called telekinesis.”
“Yeah, I know what it is,” Jennings said. “Supposedly some folks have the ability to move things with their minds.”
“I can tell by your tone that you don’t really believe it,” Laura said.
Jennings did not reply.
“Not black and white enough for you, Rick?”
Jennings glared at her.
Chapter 36
They sat and regarded each other for a few short moments before Laura said, “What else do you know about the island?”
“Will you get off the island kick? That’s not why I brought you here. It’s not relevant.”
“Not relevant? Come on, Rick.”
“Okay, Christ, you are a persistent little bitch.”
“Noted.”
“The longer the people of Apocalypse Island were left to their own devices the more the rumors began to grow. It was said that the social order of the islanders w
as loose and that incest was rampant. Their leader was a man named Tanis Richey who was known among them as the king of Apocalypse Island. Supposedly he was a big, good looking man with some sort of...magnetism.”
“Like Wolf?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Think Wolf’s a descendent?”
“I told you I don’t know. According to legend they’re all related in some twisted way. Anyway, this Tanis Richey person supposedly had a lot of women. Some of them were thought to have been concubines of local sea captains in the West Indian trade who were put ashore before the captains returned to their wives here on the mainland. Others were reported to have escaped from slave-trading ships headed to the south. There was so much inbreeding that some claimed that the children grew horns and lived like beasts in caves.”
“Sounds like some of the stories I heard as a kid,” Laura said.
“And they’re the same ones I’ve been hearing since I was a kid,” Jennings said. “It’s all bullshit, and not worth talking about.”
“This Tanis Richey person. When did he live?”
“I don’t know. Early to mid-twentieth century.”
“Is he still alive?”
“I think that’s highly unlikely.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t think anyone knows. He faded into history.”
“So how did the Catholics get involved?”
“Sometime in the early part of the century, seeing a need, the Catholics established an outpost. Appalled by the poverty and squalor on the island they built a mission and an orphanage there to house, educate and convert all the unfortunate children. After a while even disadvantaged mainland kids were sent there. The orphanage lasted for about seventy or eighty years until a fire destroyed it in the early nineteen-eighties. And that was the end of it. After that the Catholics abandoned it and the state took the island over and made it into a territory or township or some such thing. Recently it’s even gotten sort of respectable. Now a ferry runs out there several times a week with supplies and such. There’s a general store and quite a respectable little community.”
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