The Third Hill North of Town

by Noah Bly

  Guy looks like a fuckin’ walrus, Bonnor noted, unaware of the tears coursing down his own face, one after another.

  Mary didn’t allow her face to soften as she watched the deputy weep in front of her; she had a strong hunch the man had treated her son cruelly that night, and in light of that she had no intention of showing him more mercy than he deserved.

  “Sam, you better go upstairs with Dr. Reilly and take a look around,” she suggested. “I need to stay down here and ask the deputy a few more questions.”

  Sam nodded and started moving toward the staircase, but then stopped again, frowning. “What about Gabriel?”

  Mary started; Gabriel Dapper had slipped her mind entirely. It was funny, really; the man had been foremost on her mind when they’d entered the jailhouse just a few minutes ago, but ever since she’d seen what awaited them inside the building she’d actually forgotten there was at least as much to worry about outside. Her face turned suddenly still as she glanced down at the jailhouse office, thinking.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said at last, sighing. “You won’t like it, but I don’t think we have any other choice at this point. You and Dr. Reilly better hurry upstairs, Sam, and I’ll join you as quickly as I can.”

  Who the fuck is Gabriel? Bonnor Tucker wondered.

  This can’t be happening, Dr. Edgar Reilly kept repeating to himself as he and Samuel Hunter knelt beside the unconscious body of Dottie Buckley in the hallway of the Buckleys’ upstairs apartment. Edgar was beginning to believe he was hallucinating. The deranged woman he had unleashed on the world was leaving a trail of casualties behind her, strewn about like bloody bread crumbs, and God only knew how many more innocent souls would be killed or hurt before Julianna could be recaptured.

  A dozen or so plastic purple flowers and the fragments of a glass flower vase were scattered about on the wooden floorboards around them, along with the chipped remains of several ceramic figurines, all apparently having been dislodged from a shelf beside the kitchen doorway. One of the figurines was a cherubic Bavarian boy, dressed in lederhosen and a bright green vest; the boy had been cleanly split in two at the waistline, as if sawed in half during a failed magic trick. The figurine’s cheerful, big-toothed smile struck Edgar as obscene, and he turned it facedown to avoid its gaze while he tended to the injured woman.

  “Does she need an ambulance, Doc?” Sam asked him. “She doesn’t look so good.”

  Dottie Buckley had lost a fair amount of blood from the multiple lacerations in her feet, and thus far Edgar hadn’t been able to revive her. Her skin was pale, and the nightie she was wearing was soaking with sweat from the heat in the apartment. Using a first aid kit Sam had found for him in the bathroom, Edgar had done what he could to tend to her cuts, but one of them was still seeping blood in spite of his ministrations.

  He nodded, mopping the perspiration off his forehead with his sleeve. “She’s not in any real danger, but she’s likely very dehydrated, and she’s going to need a lot of stitches,” he murmured, trying to pick glass from a cut on Dottie’s right elbow with a pair of tweezers. “I hope they have a hospital in this godforsaken town.”

  Sam rose to his feet to begin to look around for a phone, but as he stepped from the hallway into the living room Dottie at last stirred and opened her eyes.

  “Oh, my,” she gasped up at Edgar. “Who on earth are you?”

  Edgar attempted a reassuring smile but could only manage a twitch of his lips. “My name is Dr. Reilly,” he said. “You’ve been injured, but you’re going to be fine. We’re getting you an ambulance right now.”

  Dottie felt dizzy and confused; she couldn’t seem to recall for the life of her what she was doing on the floor or what she had been doing before she had fainted. She studied Edgar’s tired-looking face for clues, but saw nothing there to help her.

  He looks like a walrus, she thought.

  “Are you new in town, Dr. Reilly?” she asked, suddenly aware she was only wearing a nightgown and feeling embarrassed to be so underdressed in the presence of a stranger. “It’s very nice of you to make a house call like this, but my normal doctor is Andy Hyden. Are you filling in for him tonight or something? I’m Dorothy Buckley, by the way, but everybody calls me Dottie.”

  Edgar began to explain what he was doing there but Dottie cut him off.

  “Oh, my goodness!” she exclaimed, catching sight of Sam standing by the phone table in her living room. Dottie had little experience with non-Caucasians, and in her current condition it seemed inexplicable to her why a black man would be in her home. Her breathing quickened and her nostrils flared with alarm. “There’s a Negro over there!” she whispered to Edgar.

  Sam glanced over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows before lifting the receiver from the cradle to dial the operator.

  “Yes, indeed,” Edgar agreed absently, finally managing to extract the glass shard from her arm. He indicated the broken knickknacks on the floor around them as well as the cuts he had just bandaged on her feet. “Can you tell us what happened, Dottie? We know Julianna Dapper was here tonight, and we’re looking for her and the two boys who were downstairs in the jail.”

  Dottie’s face darkened at the mention of Julianna’s name, and her memory came rushing back.

  “Ronnie!” she cried out. “Where’s Ronnie?”

  Edgar’s gaze darted involuntarily toward the stairwell on the other side of the kitchen as he realized who she was calling for. He swabbed the wound on her elbow with alcohol and cleared his throat, forcing himself to speak. “He’s . . . downstairs.”

  In the living room, Sam had frozen with his finger in the O slot on the phone dial. From the moment he and Edgar had entered the apartment he’d assumed the injured woman had to be the wife of the dead sheriff at the bottom of the steps, but the panic in her voice as she cried her husband’s name told him she was about to suffer a far greater injury than anything that had been done to her body. He was stricken with sadness at the sight of a bowl of popcorn sitting on the brown shag carpet by an armchair; the homey ordinariness of the sight felt like a mockery to him.

  “Why isn’t my Ronnie up here with me?” Dottie demanded. “Is he hurt?”

  There was a long pause, and Sam could hear Edgar’s fingers fumbling about in the first aid kit.

  “I’m very sorry,” Edgar said quietly. “I’m afraid I have some terrible news for you.”

  Sam’s eyes stung at the gentleness in Edgar’s voice. There was silence in the room, and then Dottie Buckley began to keen.

  Gabriel Dapper stood beside his Cadillac, gazing at the two-story brick building with a sign above the front door that read “Creighton County Jail.” Lights were on in both floors of the jailhouse and the windows on the second floor were open, but he couldn’t see much of the interior of either floor. The brooding look on his face didn’t alter as he swatted at a mosquito on his forearm; he leaned on his car and chewed on a thumbnail, still attempting to sort through the conversation that had occurred between himself and Mary Hunter when they had pulled up in front of the jail ten minutes before.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Gabriel had demanded as they all stepped out of their vehicles. “What’s going on?” The last time he’d spoken to the Hunters and Edgar Reilly had been at a gas station a hundred miles or so behind them, and no one had said a word about planning to visit a jailhouse in a sleepy Iowa town late on a Sunday night.

  The twenty-two-hour trip from New England to Iowa had taken a toll on each of them. Gabriel, Sam, and Edgar were rumpled, sweaty, and unshaved; Mary’s face was drawn and her blue dress was wrinkled. All four were exhausted, but Gabriel was by far the worst, having had no sleep whatsoever.

  Mary Hunter had glanced at Sam first, then walked over to Gabriel, looking uncharacteristically subdued. She’d met his eyes and taken a deep breath before answering his question.

  “Your mother and Elijah are here,” she said quietly.

  The hum of a streetlight over their heads was the only sound
for several seconds as Gabriel had gaped down at her, floundering for words.

  “Here?” He couldn’t believe he’d heard correctly. “Mom is here?”

  “Yes,” Mary answered. “Or at least that’s what Sam was told when he talked to the police earlier tonight on the phone.”

  “I don’t understand.” Gabriel had stared at her, nonplussed. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Panic flickered over his face. “Is Mom hurt?”

  He turned quickly toward the jailhouse door, but Mary caught his arm before he’d gone two steps. He stopped walking but he didn’t bother to hide the impatience in his voice. “What do you want, Mary? I need to see my mother.”

  “She’s fine, Gabriel,” Mary had said. “The sheriff and his wife are taking care of her.” She paused, releasing his arm again as he relaxed ever so slightly. “There’s something you should know, though, before we go in there.”

  Gabriel’s eyes had flicked over at Sam and Edgar, standing side by side in silence a few feet away, then he studied Mary again darkly.

  “What’s going on?” he asked again. Anger had begun to rise in him. “Why the hell did the three of you keep this from me all this time? What didn’t you want me to know?”

  Mary had sighed. “We would have told you sooner, but we had to make sure you didn’t get here before us if you took the news badly.” She hesitated for a fraction of a second before continuing. “It’s absolute nonsense, Gabriel, but the police are claiming that your mother was sexually assaulted by Elijah. I don’t know what the other boy is capable of, of course, but I swear on my life that Elijah would never, ever do such a thing.”

  The blood had drained entirely from Gabriel’s face; under the streetlight his skin was the color of bleached flour. He stared at Mary in silence for a long time as the light hummed an endless nasal note to the darkness surrounding them.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he’d breathed at last. “My mother has been raped, and you’re standing here telling me I should just ignore the police when they say your son was the one who did it. Jesus Christ, lady, what’s the matter with you? Why should I believe anything you say?”

  “Because I know my son,” Mary had answered simply. “And I can tell you he’d cut off his own private parts before he’d lay a finger on your poor mother, no matter what anybody else is saying about him. All I’m asking is that you give him a chance to tell his side of the story. Please, Gabriel. If you’ll just listen to him, you’ll see what I’m telling you is true.”

  “Do you really think the cops haven’t already heard everything he has to say?” Gabriel snapped. “Elijah didn’t get tossed in a jail cell just for the hell of it, Mary. What will it take to get you to admit that your little angel might not be exactly who you think he is?”

  Mary’s lips had thinned. “A little proof, for starters,” she said wearily. “Look, Gabriel. Can you be fair to our son or not? I’m not asking you for special favors, but because Julianna is your mother everything you say will carry a lot of weight with the sheriff. So if you go in howling for Elijah’s blood you’re going to make . . .”

  Gabriel interrupted, his temper snapping. “You want me to be fair? Sure, no problem! I can do that. How about I take Elijah out for an ice cream cone, too, while I’m at it? I’ll even buy him a pony later, if he wants one! He only kidnapped and raped my mother, for Christ’s sake, and dragged her clear across the goddamn country, but we wouldn’t want to treat him unfairly, now, would we?”

  Mary’s expression didn’t alter in the slightest, but something in her eyes had nonetheless told Gabriel that their uneasy alliance had just come to an abrupt end. If he had been feeling less outraged he might have regretted this development, but as it was he couldn’t seem to make himself care.

  “Very well,” Mary had answered coldly, stepping around him at once and moving toward the door. “I’m truly sorry you feel that way.”

  Sam had fallen into step at her side with only a quick, appraising glance at Gabriel, but Edgar Reilly had paused for several seconds before hurrying after the Hunters with a troubled look on his face.

  And Gabriel had been standing outside ever since, thinking.

  As anxious as he was to see his mother, he couldn’t seem to make himself walk toward the jailhouse entrance. Something else was preying on his mind, something he couldn’t ignore or put off any longer. He turned at last and stepped back to his Cadillac, opening the driver’s door and leaning down to grope under the seat.

  “Hello?” Bonnor Tucker called out softly from his locked jail cell. He stared at the staircase on the other side of Ronnie Buckley’s corpse, wondering if it was safe to begin screaming for help again, or if the awful Hunter woman would reappear the instant he opened his mouth. “Is anybody there?”

  His voice died in the shadows of the jailhouse.

  Bonnor didn’t know what was going on, but as much as he wanted to scream out his rage and frustration—and rattle the bars of his cage until the whole building fell down on top of him—he didn’t dare. The last thing the Hunter woman had said to him before she vanished up the staircase was “I won’t be happy at all if you start yelling your fool head off again while I’m still in this building. Understand?”

  And just thinking about the look she had given him made Bonnor shudder.

  Mary Hunter was easily the most frightening human being Bonnor had ever met in his life. He couldn’t have said why, exactly; she was so tiny he could have picked her up with one arm and held her several feet above the floor without even breaking a sweat. But something about her eyes when she looked at him—something unearthly and unspeakable—chilled him to the core. Now that she was no longer standing in front of him, however, he began to feel a bit ridiculous; surely she hadn’t been all that scary.

  “Hello?” he called again, slightly louder. “Are you still up there?”

  A deep, angry voice answered him. “What the hell is going on in here?”

  Bonnor whipped around in his cell and gaped down at the open office door. A man even bigger than Bonnor had suddenly materialized, filling the door frame. The stranger had enormous shoulders and thick, heavy thighs; he was wearing slacks and a button-down white shirt, and he’d wadded up his suit coat into an awkward-looking bundle beneath an arm.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Bonnor challenged cautiously, still not wanting to bring Mary’s wrath down on him. “Find a key and let me the fuck out of here!”

  The man saw Ronnie Buckley’s body at the far end of the hall and almost dropped his bundle. “What happened?” he demanded, hurrying forward. “Where’s my mother? Where are the Hunters, and Doc Reilly?”

  Bonnor blinked, perplexed. “Who the fuck are you?” he repeated. “And how the hell should I know where your mother is?”

  “I’m Gabriel Dapper,” the man snapped. There were deep lines of exhaustion around his big green eyes and at the corners of his mouth; he looked as if he could barely stay on his feet as he paused in front of Bonnor. “My mother is Julianna Dapper, and I was told she’s supposed to be here! Is she upstairs? What happened to that man over there? Where are the little bastards who kidnapped Mom?”

  Bonnor swallowed hard; the bundle under the man’s arm had come partly undone, and he could see the handle of a gun next to what looked like some kind of wooden rod.

  “Just let me out of here, mister,” he said timidly, “and we’ll get this all sorted out, okay?”

  Gabriel looked at Ronnie Buckley’s body again, then sprinted for the stairs without a backward glance at Bonnor.

  Five minutes before Gabriel began speaking to Bonnor, Mary Hunter had entered the Buckleys’ cozy upstairs apartment and found Sam standing over Edgar Reilly and a weeping Dottie Buckley. Broken ceramic figurines and shattered picture frames circled Dottie on the floor; the grieving sheriff’s widow reminded Mary of a cruelly mistreated child, surrounded by broken toys.

  “Julianna’s not here?” Mary had asked Sam quietly.

  Sam shook his head. “Mrs. Buckley doesn
’t know what happened to her, but . . .”

  “But she must have gone with Elijah and the Tate boy,” Mary had finished. She sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Me too,” Sam said. He paused. “Gabriel’s not going to like this at all.”

  Mary nodded, reaching down to touch Dottie Buckley’s shoulder. “I am so, so sorry, honey,” she murmured.

  Dottie, still cradled in Edgar’s arms, wept harder. Edgar patted her on the back with a helpless look on his face and whispered in her ear that the paramedics would be there soon to take care of her.

  Mary had looked back up at Sam, disregarding the tears in her own eyes. “We have to get as far away as we can before Gabriel sees all this,” she said. “We have to find Elijah before he does.”

  “How?” Sam asked brusquely. “Even if he hasn’t come inside yet, he’ll be standing by our truck when we try to leave. There’s no way he’ll let us out of his sight once he knows what happened in here.”

  “We’re not taking our truck.” Mary dug into her purse and showed him a set of car keys, attached to a miniature key ring in the shape of a nude woman with massive breasts.

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “What in the—”

  “These belong to Deputy Tucker,” Mary interrupted. “His station wagon is parked in the alley in back of the building, and he tells me there’s a fire escape through one of the rooms up here that will take us right down to it.”

  Sam’s eyebrows rose higher, and Edgar lifted his head to stare at her.

  “He actually gave you the keys to his car?” Sam asked, almost grinning in spite of himself. “Just how did you pull that off?”