by Joe Hart
Ruthers frowned and rubbed a scuff on the toe of his boot. “There’d be no one to ransom but maybe she had a bunch of money stored away from the settlement or life insurance from her husband?”
“Possible,” Gray said, bringing up his email. “But I saw in the report that her beneficiaries were her in-laws. Just two months ago they had her declared legally dead. Why don’t you give them a call and see if her accounts were transferred to them also.”
“Okay. Did the coroner’s report come through yet?”
“It did and I’m looking at it right now.”
“Anything?”
“All three victims died of lacerations to various parts of their bodies but we already knew that. No fingerprints, no traces of saliva or sweat other than the victim’s.” Gray reread the last part of the paragraph, his brow drawing down. “Bite marks appear to be nonorganic.”
Ruthers sat forward. “What?”
“Bite marks found on two out of three victims were not concurrent with any known organic bite pattern, nor was there any animal saliva found within the wounds. Digital rendering of the wounds show nearly perfect symmetrical configuration of teeth marks.”
“Sir, what the hell does that mean?”
Gray read the passage again. “It means an animal probably didn’t do it. It was something manmade.” He glanced across the desk at Ruthers and watched disgust darken his features.
“Like a machine to take bites out of someone?”
“Something like that.”
Ruthers sat back in his chair. “My God, what the hell are we dealing with here, sir?”
“I’m not sure yet, but we need to bring this to light somehow. If Joslyn’s disappearance is connected to these murders, we have something big on our hands here that stretches back years.” Gray drummed his fingers on the desk and then looked at Ruthers. “Are you sure you’re with me on this, Joseph?”
Ruthers had a shell-shocked quality to his features, but his eyes cleared after a moment. “With you?”
“Yes, this theory could lose me my job and you yours if we pursue it. We’ll be ostracized and possibly face charges of some sort if it doesn’t pan out. If you have any second thoughts, let me know and I won’t involve you from this point forward, you can go on patrol and pretend we never talked last night or today.”
Barely a second passed before Ruthers answered. “Our job is to find the truth, right?”
Gray smiled. “Yes it is.”
“Then I’m with you.”
“Good. Make those calls and I’ll see if I can get someone else on our team here,” Gray said picking up the phone.
~
Gray sipped his bourbon and watched the sun begin to slide behind the tree line to the west. The restaurant’s deck was mostly empty considering the dying day’s heat. Bits of music and conversation filtered to him as a door opened and closed nearby, the clink of glasses and silverware against fine plates. Gray’s fresh dress shirt was beginning to dampen at his chest and stomach and he pulled the light fabric away not wanting to look completely soiled. The cool shower he’d taken a fading memory.
The afternoon had slid away in a wash of paperwork and regular calls coming in. Several were from concerned citizens who’d finally caught wind of the murders. Mary Jo fielded most of them, assuring the callers that all measures were being taken to ensure the safety of the town.
Gray finished his drink and pressed the sensor on the table that signaled a waiter inside the restaurant. When he heard the door open and close, he didn’t look up.
“I’ll take another.”
“Rough day I’m guessing.”
Gray looked up and saw Tilly standing beside the table. She looked prettier than he’d ever saw her before, her white and green scrubs traded for a black blouse and a short skirt. She wore viciously pointed high heels on her feet.
“Sorry, I thought you were the waiter,” Gray said, standing to pull out her chair.
“I waited tables when I was a teenager, it didn’t stick.”
“You look very nice.”
“Thanks, so do you.”
Gray sat again on his side of the table and smiled at her. “Thanks for coming.”
Tilly nodded once, her eyelashes long in the failing light. “To be honest your call caught me off guard.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be, I haven’t been someplace this nice in years.”
“That’s a shame.”
Tilly gave him a smile and a little light glinted in her eyes. “Yes it is.”
Their waiter hurried out of the door of the restaurant and took their drink orders in a rush before returning to the air conditioning at a half run.
“No one likes the heat,” Tilly said, fanning herself with a menu.
“I can’t say I’m partial to it.”
“I don’t mind it, it’s better than the cold that’s coming in a few months.”
“See, we’re opposites. I like the fall best of all the seasons. The cool air helps keep the peace. Heat enrages people.”
“Excites others,” Tilly said, crossing her legs. She adjusted her skirt and Gray managed to keep his eyes above the table as their waiter came back with their drinks, leaving as soon he’d placed them on the table. Gray sipped from his glass and looked off toward the setting sun, an open furnace behind the trees.
“It was never this hot when my father was a kid,” he said after a time.
“No, my mother still complains about the heat and mentions the cooler summers when she was young.”
“Too many things have changed, the earth’s heating up because of it.”
“The last study said they had global warming under control.”
“I’m not talking about global warming, I’m talking about the rage and the angst mixed in with the technology that won’t stop coming. We think we’re controlling everything, but we’re not.” Gray shook his head. “We’re burning up.”
“You think that’s what caused the Jacobses’ murders?” Tilly asked.
“I don’t think the heat had anything to do with it.”
“I hope I wasn’t reading you right the other day in the morgue.”
“What did you read?”
Tilly lowered her voice even though there was no one in earshot of their table. “It sounded to me like you were insinuating that the Olsons’ and the Jacobses’ murders were connected in a way other than coincidence.”
Gray smiled into his glass. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“No, it wouldn’t be smart if you did.”
“Because that would raise questions about my own position.”
“Yes, it would.”
Gray finished his drink in a long swallow. “What do you think?”
“About the murders or your questions?”
“The murders.”
Tilly sighed. “I think there’s a possibility that they were done by the same people, but,” she said, raising one finger off the table toward him. “If they were, we’re dealing with very desperate individuals that are in a great need of money.”
“There was cash left at the Jacobses’ home.”
“They panicked seeing what they’d done and left in a hurry.”
“But took enough time to use a machine to take bites out of them?”
Tilly’s eyes shifted around Gray to the other people on the deck. “This really isn’t the place, Mac.”
“I know it’s not, but I need you to tell me in your professional opinion if the Line could ever fail.”
Tilly sat back as if slapped. “What do you mean, the Line fail?”
Gray pressed on, tumbling down a slope. “Could it ever work in the opposite way or, change someone somehow?”
“Mac, FV5 shuts the murder gene off, end of story. There is no changing someone into a psychopath once it’s done. It would be like trying to fire a gun without cartridges.”
“Yes, but what if there was a reaction that we’re not aware of?” he plunged on, unable to slow now. “What i
f there was a way that science hadn’t predicted?”
Tilly stared at him, her expression hardening, becoming poisonous in the deepening evening. “You sonofabitch. That’s why you asked me here, to try and get me to back up your little theory.”
“You saw the bodies yourself, Tilly, my God, you saw what was done to those people.”
Tilly shook her head, her body no longer relaxed in the chair. She finished her drink and stood, her purse gripped in one white-knuckled hand. “I should’ve known better, but I thought—” She shook her head. “Goodbye Gray, have a lovely dinner.”
He opened his mouth to say something else, to apologize, to stop her from leaving. Instead he looked away and listened for the sound of the door as he sipped at the stinging ice melt in his glass.
Chapter 15
“We’re leaving, little brother.”
Darrin’s words snapped Ryan from his trance, his eyes focusing on his brother’s face instead of the television’s blank screen across the room. Darrin and Adam stood side by side near the kitchen doorway; both dressed in black clothes, brand new black gloves dangling from their fingertips.
“Okay,” Ryan managed, his throat raspy from not speaking for most of the day.
“Go wait for me in the van,” Darrin said to Adam without looking at him. Adam lumbered off, his large shadow following him across the floor and out of sight. Darrin waited until he heard the front door shut and then grinned. “You ready?”
Ryan tried not to hesitate. “Yes.”
Darrin rounded the large couch and sat beside him, his eyes alight with frenetic intensity. Ryan could only hold his gaze for a few seconds.
“I know you’re nervous, little brother, but it’s fine, this is all part of the plan. Once it’s done, you’re in the fold. He’ll come to you more often and then you’ll know the true shape of what we’re doing.”
“Does Adam know?”
“He knows but I’m not sure he understands.”
Ryan nodded. “I’ll do it.”
Darrin put a hand on his shoulder. “This is who we are, Ryan. We’re bigger than everything else, more special. We’re some of the few, maybe the only ones in the world. Doesn’t that feel good?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been too long since the balance has been tipped. We’re part of the way the world used to be. Every system has its kind, something that trims populations down, hunts, feeds. Without us, there is no order, no fear, only a blind rushing onward of life without consequence.” Darrin squeezed his shoulder once and stood, hovering over him. “Without fear there’s no beauty. We’re the consequence, little brother. We carry the fear.”
Without another word, Darrin left the room and a minute later the roar of the van rumbled away into the night. Ryan stared at the black screen across the room for a time and then stood, moving like an automaton, his motions stilted and unnatural. He paused at the kitchen sink and drew a glass of water, drinking it all down without stopping. He set the glass aside and looked at it, marveling at how different things would be when he washed it later. Just a passage of time and everything would change.
He barely made it outside before vomiting.
The water he’d just drank came up lukewarm and washed with acid. He gagged again, his stomach clenching to the point of pain before relenting. When he was able to stand straight again his eyes immediately went upward, hooking on the sky above.
It was a cloudless night, still warm to the point of discomfort. Stars spread across the sky like the universe was nothing but a patched quilt hung over the world, pinpoints glinting through its seams like gaps into something beyond.
Ryan lowered his gaze and moved away from the house, its glow no longer a comfort as a cold sweat broke out over his body. His shoes crunched in the darkness, one after another, taking him closer and closer. The silo looked down on him in the starlight, its rounded cap a brilliant white against the night sky. Soon he stopped and turned right, pushing through the weeds until his feet scuffed against concrete.
Down the steps, his legs wanting to furl beneath him.
A tomb stood before him, its shadow an open mouth waiting for him to step inside. Ryan’s stomach churned and he wondered if he would be sick again. But the nausea receded leaving a tight wire of his insides. The bucket stood to his right and he found it in the dark corner of the concrete wall, his hands fumbling over handles until he found the thickest one.
He drew out the machete, its blade singing against its brethren before sliding free. Dark pockets of rust were black boils on its steel in the faint light. He ran his fingertips against the roughness for a while, reading the story of agony in each braille-like bump.
Ryan turned and strode to the steel door, taking care not to trip and fall on the wicked edge of the machete. His hand raked the darkness until it met the small switch box. With a flip of his thumb, a thin band of light flashed on beneath the door’s bottom edge, its yellow glow painting the area around his feet gold. He dug in his pocket for the key and pulled it out, not giving himself time to pause before sliding it into the lock.
“It will be quick,” he whispered, opening the lock and dropping it to the ground. He hefted the machete once, wrapping its handle deep within his palm before throwing back the slide with a shriek.
The door exploded outward and slammed into the side of his face.
Ryan stumbled back, flashes of light showering his vision. His feet tangled and he fell onto his ass, the machete clanging to the concrete somewhere beside him. The steel door traveled the full range of its hinges, opening wide, cutting the ground with light as a skeleton with red hair staggered out of the root cellar.
Miles Baron’s face was shrouded in shadow but Ryan could see his mouth hung open, unhinged, air gasping in and out of his lungs in noisy hitches. His arms were bent at his sides, remaining hand and stump near his chest as if waiting for a blow. Blood pattered down on the concrete from the fresh wounds on his back and buttocks where he’d ripped the hooks free.
Miles turned his head toward the place where Ryan sat and Ryan stared up at his former science teacher as his own blood ran from the gash in his cheek.
Everything was still for a moment, a frozen painting of horror and decision before Miles’s feet skidded on the floor as he lunged toward the stairs and ran up them. He stumbled once near the top before pelting away into the night.
“No,” Ryan heard himself whisper. “No!” he yelled and reached out, his hand skittering over dirt and empty space until it closed on the machete’s handle. Then his feet were under him, pulling him up the stairs as a caged animal struggled to release itself from his chest.
The moon hung over the trees at the edge of the cornfield, throwing the stalks into a strange aquatic light, their tassled heads like broken hands stretching toward the silver orb. Ryan tried to calm his breathing as he wiped away the flowing blood from his cheek, feeling flayed skin beneath his fingers. The rows of corn stood motionless but over the noise of his raging heart he heard the padded falls of feet in dry soil.
The open alley between where the crops began and the brush ended was a straight line only yards across, and it was down this that the hunched figure of Miles ran. Ryan caught sight of his gangly, naked form as he entered the softer dirt of the field. His legs, still acting on their own accord, carried him toward the fleeing figure while the thrum of adrenaline coursed through his entire body making him feel as if he were holding onto a livewire. Ryan pushed forward harder, dirt flying up behind his feet, arms pumping, the machete’s long blade sawing the air beside his head as he flew down the narrow alley. Miles didn’t pause to look over his shoulder but merely ran, his stick-thin legs and bare feet carrying him faster than Ryan assumed the man could run.
He shortened the distance between them, but not fast enough.
The end of the field came to meet them in a tangle of overgrown weeds and low bushes, dried to the point of brittleness, before the forest began in earnest. Miles piled into the brush without stopping
, twigs snapping and breaking in a sudden rush of noise. Ryan met the boundary seconds later and plunged in after the older man, hacking once at a small sapling with the machete. The land dropped away through the scrub and opened unto the trees, mostly deciduous with wilting leaves that hung down in shadows of mourning.
Ryan followed the sound of his teacher’s progress, the moonlight flickering between outstretched branches. His eyes began to adjust and he saw a flash of red hair through the trees, the pale body struggling beneath it. Ryan ran after him, pointing the blade off to the side in case he tripped. He ducked under low branches and leapt over a fallen tree before the ground dipped again and he slid downward into a dried streambed.
With all the water gone, the stream’s bottom was hardened mud, dotted with rocks and uneven tables of fine sand. A corridor of moonbeams coursed through several wide openings in the trees, transforming the streambed into a stage of milky light. Ryan came to a stop and breathed through his mouth, listening over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. The trees were silent curtains on either side.
Nothing moved.
Ryan walked forward, searching the shadows of the banks, prying into their murky depths for the scarecrow form. Panic rose up then and tried to seize him. He’d lost Mr. Baron. Lost him somehow in the transition between the woods and the dead river. The teacher was hiding, waiting for him to pass by in the dark.
“Mr. Baron?” Ryan called, as he stalked forward, head swiveling like an owl. “I was, I was coming to let you out.” His eyes combed the riverbank. Jutting roots became arms and fingers, a sloped rock became a face. Ryan moved closer, straining his eyes at the dancing shapes that wouldn’t still.
Nothing there.
“Mr. Baron, I’m sorry.” He moved farther down the streambed, his eyes beginning to water, throat closing up. His chest hitched and tears began to run down his face, mingling with the smeared blood. “I’m so sorry for everything.” Even as he spoke, he gripped the machete tighter, his fingers beginning to ache.