Widow Town

by Joe Hart

  “Is decaying nicely,” Gray said.

  Tilly gave him a withering look. “He may have not even known who you were.”

  “He knew he wanted to kill me.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt about that. The aggression and delusions associated with Phenocartal is well documented. I’m guessing that’s what drove him to do what he did to the Jacobses and to Miles.”

  Gray’s jaw hardened. His eyes slid over the corpse, the open chest cavity, internal organs removed, face collapsed inward like a sinkhole, the back of the skull a jagged line of shattered bone.

  “This isn’t right,” Gray said finally, bringing his eyes up to meet Tilly’s.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Him, he doesn’t fit.” Gray saw Ruthers move closer to his side but he didn’t turn to look at the deputy. “This guy, his brain addled by Rock, goes to the Olsons’, robs them, kills them, burns their place down, then a month later storms into the Jacobses’ place, robs and tortures them, tries to burn their house down. And sometime in there he captures Miles for unknown reasons and chains him up in his barn and tortures him.” Gray looked from Ruthers to Tilly. “That make any sense to you guys?”

  “He was an addict, making sense went out the window a long time ago for him,” Tilly said. “He obviously needed money for more supplies, that was his motive and as the drug took over more and more of his mind, he became violent and murderous as well as desperate. He had the murder weapons, Mac. He threaded hooks through Miles’s flesh like a worm. Your own deputy walked Miles’s trail that led right to the guy’s place.”

  “I thought we were in agreement that there was most likely more than one person responsible.”

  “One person was definitely capable of the crimes, especially given the evidence.”

  “Look, I’m not denying the evidence, but this guy didn’t have the smarts or the capability to murder those people and cover his tracks.

  “He had the smarts to get the upper hand on you.”

  “Yep,” Gray said, pointing at the ruined remains on the table. “It sure worked out well for him too.”

  “The bottom line is he was crazy enough to commit the crimes, his mind was gone and he was running on enough drugs to kill a bull.”

  “Damn it, Tilly, you’re basing your thinking on one thing,” Gray said, stepping forward to jab a finger into the dead man’s cold shoulder at the line of orange dots. “This. You can’t get past the idea that the Line might not be foolproof.”

  “And you can’t get past that it is!” Tilly said, her voice peaking short of a yell. “You don’t want it to be him, Mac, you want it to be someone else so you can prove your theories. This isn’t the past, no matter how much you want it to be.”

  “You can learn a lot from the past, Tilly, it has a way of repeating itself.”

  She stood like a statue for a long time and then adjusted her mask back into place, covering the grim line of her mouth. “I have work to do, I’ll send over the rest of the reports as soon as they’re available.”

  Without another look at either of them, she went back to her task, the whirring of a pneumatic bone saw began shrieking off the tiled walls. Gray turned and made his way past the empty tables until he and Ruthers stood in the vacant hallway outside the morgue. Gray leaned against the wall, the burning in his lungs from the argument sapping the strength in his limbs. Glancing at his deputy’s face, he drew out the nebulizer and inhaled another blast.

  “Go ahead, Joseph, I know you have questions.”

  Ruthers frowned. “I’m confused, sir. I thought this was pretty cut and dried.”

  “Then let me hear it. Tell me a story.”

  “Well, Dr. Swenson is right, the guy’s mind was gone so that would allow him to kill time and time again without being an actual psychopath.”

  “Go on.”

  “And we did match the weapons as well as the blood to the victims.”

  “Continue.”

  “And we tracked Miles’s trail to his property, so I would have to say the simplest answer is the right one.”

  Gray took in Ruthers’s apologetic look and chuckled a little. “You don’t need to be sorry for deducing, Joseph. You’re right on all accounts.”

  “Then what makes you think that he’s not our man?”

  Gray started walking down the hall and placed the inhaler in his pocket. “Remember when I told you about links in the chain?”

  “Yes.”

  “What I didn’t get to is that when a case is closed, the chain becomes a full circle without any loose ends. Loose ends mean reasonable doubt, not only in the courtroom but also in the minds of those who catch the criminals.”

  “I guess I’m not following a hundred percent, sir,” Ruthers said, keeping pace with him as they reached the stairway leading up to the main floor.

  Gray paused on the first step and turned to the younger man. “There’s a loose end in our case, Joseph, and her name is Joslyn Worth.”

  Chapter 22

  Gray guided the cruiser into the center of Widow Town.

  The sun slanted in hot rays against the buildings, washing the streets with a baking amber light. A small child played in the shade of a dying tree in a yard, his mother watching him from the corner of their porch, one of her hands fanning herself with a paper plate.

  “If it was Donald Hudson behind all this, there’s a good chance Rachel would’ve seen him around the neighborhood before Joslyn was taken,” Gray said. He glided the car to the curb in front of Rachel’s home and shut the engine off.

  “But wouldn’t she have mentioned seeing someone like him before when you questioned her?” Ruthers asked, opening his door to let the heat pour in.

  “She most likely would have, but maybe we can jumpstart her memory. We’ll give her a description of the pickup that was registered to Hudson a year ago, maybe she’ll remember seeing it.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No, but right now I’d rather exhaust the possibilities of what we have, not what we don’t,” Gray said, stepping from the car.

  They moved across the wilted lawn to the porch and stopped before the door. Gray knocked once and waited. Ruthers scanned the street behind him and readjusted his duty belt. Gray knocked again, his eyes beginning to narrow.

  “Joseph, go look in the windows of the garage and tell me what you see.” Ruthers said nothing and left the porch. Gray kept watching for movement inside the house, saw only the ticking hands of an old clock on the wall.

  “Garage is empty, sir. She has a vehicle?”

  “She does.”

  “Maybe she went shopping.”

  “Maybe.” Gray put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. It opened. “Rachel?”

  He waited, listening for a full minute before he pushed the door all the way in and stepped across the threshold. Gray glanced at the floor and walked toward the living room. Ruthers followed a few paces behind.

  Toys littered the floor. A colorful book sat at the edge of the large couch. Shadows gathered near the toy basket in the corner. Gray turned and walked out of the living room and through the kitchen. There were dishes beside the sink, clean ones on the right, dirty on the left. The smell of cigarette smoke hung heavy here. Over a dozen butts covered the bottom of the glass tray on the table. A wine glass with a sip left at its bottom rested beside a cup with a straw hanging from its side.

  Gray moved into the narrow hallway, pushing open a door to a room painted in yellows and blues. He stepped inside and opened and shut several drawers on a low dresser using the bottom of his shirt to cover his fingers. His gaze traced the room, the walls, the ceiling, the floor. A hanging mobile featuring grinning monkeys turned slowly in the still air above the crib.

  The next room was the master. A queen bed took up most of the space. A picture of a lake dotted with slender-necked geese hung above the headboard and a small bathroom led off to the right. Gray walked to the closet and peered in through the open doors. Kneeling, he scan
ned the area beneath the hanging clothes. He stood and moved to the bathroom, opened the four drawers in the vanity before stopping to stare at his reflection in the mirror.

  “Sir?” Ruthers asked from the bedroom doorway. Gray moved back into the room.

  “They’re gone, Joseph,” he said, glancing out the window. “They were taken.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “There’s nothing in any of the drawers in the bathroom but only a few empty hangers in the closet.” Gray motioned to the closet. “There’s three pairs of shoes on the floor, but none in the front entry.”

  Gray walked toward the hallway and sidled by Ruthers. “And this,” he said, entering the living room to point at the little chair he’d seen Ken sleeping in on his first visit. “She told me her son loves to sleep in this chair. Even if she left in a hurry, a mother wouldn’t forget something like this.” He paused, the image of the hand-carved sign at his house along with the smell of baby powder overwhelming him for a moment.

  The smell.

  “Cigarettes,” Gray said, stepping into the kitchen. He sat in the chair before the mostly empty glass of wine. “She wouldn’t smoke inside the house with her son.”

  “Looks like she had something to drink,” Ruthers said, walking toward the garbage can in the corner of the kitchen. He popped the lid. “The empty bottle’s in here, Sheriff.”

  Gray didn’t turn in his seat. Instead he leaned forward, staring at the full ashtray. With one hand he began to mimic stabbing the butts out in the glass bowl.

  “They wanted it to look like she was unstable, ready to do something rash. Smell the sink, Joseph.”

  “What?”

  “Put your head in the sink and take a whiff. See if you can smell anything near the drain.”

  Ruthers moved to the sink and bent over it, pushing his face down close to the drain.

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “You smell wine, don’t you?”

  “I do. It’s faint but it’s there.”

  “They poured it down the drain after they made her drink this glass.” Gray studied the wine glass, the light catching the ghostly marks of a lower lip on its rim. “And look at the cigarettes, they’re stabbed out in different ways, like the person smoking was standing up and moving around instead of sitting in one place drinking a full bottle of wine.”

  “I’ll call for forensics,” Ruthers said, walking out of the room.

  Gray gazed at the backyard, bathed in strong afternoon sunshine. His eyes gradually unfocused until they saw only blurred shapes and colors, the brown death of life under the constant heat.

  “They won’t find a thing,” he said to the empty kitchen.

  Chapter 23

  “Wake up, little brother.”

  Ryan opened his eyes and stared into Darrin’s cold pupils less than six inches away. His fetid breath hung in the air between them and Ryan had to resist from shoving his older brother away in revulsion.

  “You’ve been sleeping all afternoon, champ. Time to rise and shine, you’ve got a busy night ahead.”

  Darrin moved away from Ryan’s bed as he sat up and swung his feet over the edge. His head ached and there was a broken spring above his shoulders where his neck had been. When he stood, his knee throbbed but bent normally and didn’t seem near as swollen as the night before.

  “Knee looks better, gel does the trick, doesn’t it?” Darrin asked as he watched Ryan gain his bearings.

  “Yeah, it’s not so bad today.”

  “The plan worked, Ry-Ry. Crazy Hudson is dead.”

  Ryan froze. “He is?”

  Darrin nodded. “Yep.”

  “What happened?”

  “They used a dog, just like I thought they would, so I dragged your project’s undies on the ground from where he was found to Hudson’s property. Our good sheriff was canvassing the area and Hudson’s place was the first he went to. Hudson tried to kill him with some gas and the sheriff shot him.” Darrin laughed, a sound like a rusty hinge. “They found everything, the blades, the chains, the hooks. Not to mention Hudson’s lab.” Darrin held his hands like a book before him and then slammed them together. “Open and shut, little brother. Didn’t even have to call it in like I was going to.”

  Ryan sighed. “I wasn’t sure it would work.”

  “Always the doubter.”

  “But what if they find that lady’s car?”

  “We dumped it in one of the abandoned mine pits where they were digging for lithium. Even with no rain there’s still sixty feet of water at the bottom. No trace, Ry-Ry.”

  Ryan put his forehead in his palm. “God my head hurts.”

  “Take a couple pain killers, you need to be ready to move when it gets dark.” Darrin came toward him and dropped something in his lap. Ryan picked up the square, hard piece of plastic with a key-ring hole in one corner.

  “He left that for you this afternoon. It’ll get you in the rear maintenance entrance. From there you take the stairs up. There’s a switch on the inside of the stairwell on the landing. Flip it off and it’ll kill the lights on that end of the hall. The camera will be blind. First door on the left.”

  “Is Dad—”

  “He’s working again tonight. He came home this afternoon, got some sleep and then went back in. You can’t let him see you or everything’s fucked. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. You can still make it right. Here.” Darrin reached behind his back and drew out a long knife with a gracefully curved blade. It was one piece, its handle forged out of the same steel as the edge. When Darrin dropped it in his hand, its heft surprised him.

  “My other one was in the bucket with the rest of the toys I left in Hudson’s barn. This is my new one, so don’t lose it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Darrin appraised him, his eyes two dead spots in his face. “There’s no other chances past this one, little brother. You fuck this up ...” Darrin shrugged. “You’re done.”

  Ryan tried to nod but didn’t know if he actually managed to or not. Darrin left the room, swirls of dust twisting in the evening light like miniscule tornados. Ryan swallowed and looked at the blade in his hand. His reflection gazed back at him from the polished steel.

  Chapter 24

  Danzig was sitting on the tailgate of his ancient pickup next to Gray’s house when he drove into the yard. His friend smiled at him as he pulled even with the truck and shut the cruiser’s engine off.

  “I always said you were too stubborn to die,” Danzig said when he stepped out of the car.

  “So far,” Gray said, stepping up to the back of the pickup. “I expected you to be at my bedside when I woke up this afternoon.”

  “Didn’t hear a peep of it until an hour ago. Happened to run into Monty at the gas station. He filled me in.” Danzig’s paused. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, just fine. Got this to cure me,” Gray said and held out the inhaler. He took a pull off of it and felt the now familiar cool blast coat his throat.

  “You interested in something stronger?” Danzig turned and pulled a bottle of Harbinger Whiskey out from the bed of the truck.

  Gray smiled. “Have I ever told you that I love you?”

  “Nope, and let’s keep it that way,” Danzig said, hopping down. The truck’s springs squealed as its bed rose four inches.

  They sat on the deck behind the house. A warm breeze pushed against the trees that barely concealed the sun’s outline, now sinking like a wounded ship below the horizon. Their glasses beaded with condensation and pooled about their bottoms in interlocking rings. A woodpecker rattled against an oak at the edge of the yard.

  “Quiet,” Danzig said.

  “Yep.”

  “So you gonna tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “About your dreams. What do you think, Mac? About how you almost got yourself snuffed out today.”

  Gray sipped the whiskey. It stung in a blaze of honey to roots of his stom
ach. He wondered if the doctor would approve of him drinking and then cast the thought aside.

  “For your information I didn’t attempt to get myself killed, it was the axe-wielding maniac with a drug-addled mind that tried to perform said duty.”

  “Smartass.”

  Gray shrugged and drank. He set his glass down, turned it in a circle. He could feel Danzig waiting. “I don’t think it was him,” he said finally.

  “You think he was a fall guy?”

  “Something like that. If he wasn’t, there were others in on it with him. There are just too many things that don’t add up.” Gray tapped his glass once against the tabletop. “It was a package too neatly tied. Like I was meant to find everything.” He glanced at Danzig and then shook his head.

  “Do you think, and don’t take this the wrong way, that you’re wanting it to be someone else?”

  “Now you sound like Tilly.”

  “Mmm, how is my Tilly?”

  “As stubborn and thickheaded as ever.”

  “Gotta love her.”

  “I don’t, but you can. Why, after all these years have you not asked her on a date?”

  The big man shifted in his seat. “She and I are two very different people. Wouldn’t work, that’s all.”

  “Never know until you try. What was that metaphor about alloys you were trying to sell me?”

  Danzig grunted. “So the doctors said you’re going to make it?”

  “Yeah, just have to keep sucking on this nebulizer for a few more days.”

  “You should take a day for yourself, rest up.”

  “I can’t, Dan, not with everything that’s going on.”

  “But don’t you see, nothing’s going on now that you shot that guy. Everyone involved thinks it’s over, that you got your man.”

  “Joseph is still with me.”

  “Okay, you’ve got a young, impressionable deputy on your side. Bitchel and your good friend Mark the DA will hang a solid case on this Hudson and unless another murder crops up with the same MO, it’s finished, my friend.”