by Bob Avey
When he sat up, a pain like an ice pick being shoved through his head shot through him. As far as he could determine, he was alone. He ran his hand across the floor, searching for the flashlight. No such luck. He patted his jacket, feeling the shoulder holster, then ran his hand inside the coat and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the weapon, pulling it free. Intimately familiar with the firearm, he determined even in the darkness that it was still loaded. It seemed senseless that his captor would leave him armed, and though it went against logic, he suspected it’d been done for a reason.
He got to his feet and readied the weapon. With that done, he began to inch forward, and when he bumped into a wall, he ran his free hand along it until he came to a doorway. He’d found the kitchen. The entryway’s arched design and his memories of being there before told him this. Now that he had his bearings, he knew that the front door was located behind him and a few feet to the left.
Elliot turned around, and at that point he saw, due to the varying shades of darkness, exactly where the exit was. He started toward it, moving in slow, even steps, not wanting to trip over anything, or make enough noise to alert his captor, if he was still around.
When Elliot reached the doorway and stepped out onto the porch, he saw someone down in the valley that fronted the old houses. He appeared to be tending a campfire. Elliot glanced around the area but saw no one else. He failed to see the rationality of the situation. His captor, if that’s who stood beside the fire, had left him armed, and he was clearly not trying to hide at this point. Something wasn’t right.
Nevertheless, Elliot crept across the weathered wood of the porch, carefully choosing his footsteps. When he reached the edge, he lowered himself to the ground. After crouching in the tall grass, he rose to a semi-standing position then started toward the man, cautiously descending the small hill leading to the valley.
When Elliot reached a point about fifty yards away from the man near the fire, he paused. The man had his back to him. To his right, the forest he’d emerged from loomed like a dark metropolis. To his left was the road, which led back to town. He suspected he could sneak past, going either way, and leave without alerting his mysterious friend, but then he would never know what the man’s game was, or if he had Cyndi held captive nearby. He checked his watch. The appointed time was long past.
With a heaviness in his chest, Elliot considered calling Chief Washington. He felt his pocket. The phone was still there. He pulled it out and flipped it open. Pressing the power button yielded no result. Somehow, calling Jed Washington didn’t seem like a good idea anyway. The possibility existed, even though remote, that the man tending the campfire was not the same man that’d lured him into the woods and bashed his head. That might explain why he sensed something wasn’t right about this. And if the chief came out to find Elliot lurking in the darkness of Donegal’s outskirts, trying to arrest one of his old fishing buddies, that wouldn’t go down very well.
The man stood and turned toward the forest, his movement leaving the side of his face exposed.
Elliot thought he recognized the profile, but in the dim light he couldn’t be sure. He appeared to be carrying on a conversation with someone, speaking and gesturing with his hands, but if anyone else was there, Elliot certainly couldn’t see them, and at this distance he couldn’t make out what the man was saying.
Again he turned, which left him facing Elliot. Like an overzealous scoutmaster, terrifying his young troops with ghost stories, the man appeared ugly, his features distorted by the flickering orange glow of the firelight, but the realization of who he was shot through Elliot like a current through wire.
Elliot squeezed the handle of the Glock and stared at the distinctive face of Douglass Wistrom. He now wished his phone had worked. Washington needed to be here to make the arrest. But he wasn’t here, and Elliot couldn’t just let the suspect go.
A twig snapped behind him, and the sudden sound, coupled with his already frazzled nerves, caused him to leap upright.
Whatever it was caught Wistrom’s attention as well. He spun around, facing Elliot head on.
Elliot started toward the suspect. “Detective Elliot of the Tulsa Police Department. Don’t move.”
Wistrom stood firm for a moment, frozen in shock perhaps, but it didn’t last. From his pocket he pulled a handgun, which he aimed at Elliot, and with a crazed look invading his face, he began to charge, screaming like a man who had lost everything.
Elliot readied the Glock. “Drop the weapon.”
Wistrom kept coming.
Elliot fired a warning shot.
Wistrom screamed and fired a shot of his own.
Elliot had no choice. He squeezed off two rounds. One of them caught Wistrom. He fell to the ground, a wail like that of a wounded animal gurgling from his throat.
Elliot knelt beside the man. “Try not to move. I’ll get help.”
Wistrom shook his head.
“Where’s Cyndi?” Elliot asked.
The question seemed to drive fear through Wistrom. His eyes widened and again he shook his head.
“You told me to meet you here. Why?”
A look somewhere between astonishment and disbelief crossed Wistrom’s face, as if the mysteries of the universe had just been revealed to him. “Not me,” he said, the words barely escaping his lips.
“Your fingerprints are all over Saucier’s barn. If you didn’t kill him, why were you there?”
“Parents,” he said. “Looking for answers.”
Wistrom struggled to get the words out. Elliot wanted to stop him, tell him to rest, but he could not. He wanted to hear, to know. So he asked the question that burned in his mind. “Are you Justin Stone?”
The man’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.
“Did you kill Abraham Saucier?”
“Lost my head. Accident.”
“Were Kathryn and Solomon Stone accidents, too? Did you kill them? Did you murder your family?”
A tremble started in the man’s hand, the one that Elliot held, then coursed through his arm and soon his whole body vibrated. When the shaking stopped, he began to cry, and he motioned with his free hand for Elliot to come closer. Perhaps he wanted to lighten his load, share his burden by confessing his sins to the only person available.
Leaning over, Elliot put his ear close to the man’s lips, hearing what sounded like the faint whispers of a frightened child, which came out as, “Brighid.”
“The prostitute? Did you kill her?”
He shook his head.
“What then?”
The man struggled to hang on. His breathing was short, ragged. He tried to speak but nothing came out. He ran his tongue across his lips and tried again. “You got the wrong one.”
After that, the man closed his eyes, and while Elliot held his hand the life slipped from Wistrom’s body. Elliot wondered about his last statement. Perhaps he was referring to his invisible friend, the one he’d talked with while Elliot watched him from the grass.
Elliot heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps crunching through the leaves. Someone was approaching. He looked up and saw the hulking form of Chief Jed Washington, staring down at him.
Elliot rose to his feet. He’d always heard that the dead don’t wear masks of fear, or surprise, or anything else for that matter, but as he stared down at the body of Douglass Wistrom he did not believe that, for his face continued to plead with Elliot, trying to explain his actions, even after Elliot had put a bullet in his chest.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chief Washington had not miraculously appeared at the scene that night. Someone had heard the rifle shot that was fired at Elliot and called it in. Washington got the news a few minutes later. As a result, he drove through the area and saw the campfire. There had been nothing supernatural about it, yet his timing had been impeccable. He’d seen enough to know that Elliot had acted in self-defense.
Elliot walked across the dining area of Goldie’s on 21st Street and chose a booth along
the wall. A few minutes later, Sergeant Conley came over and sat across from him. It’d been two weeks since Elliot had killed Douglass Wistrom, or Justin Stone in the lonely valley outside Donegal. He was still on administrative leave, a forced sabbatical that Elliot had needed more than he cared to admit.
Elliot unfolded his napkin and placed it across his lap. Conley’s seemingly frivolous jocularity was deceptive. With a caring for others that stretched the boundaries of human kindness, he could have been a priest, a psychologist, even a good bartender. He wound up a cop instead. He took a bite out of the cinnamon roll he’d picked up, then grinned as if he was about to crack another of his dry jokes. “What’s the matter, Elliot? You look like the only kid on the block without an ice cream cone.”
Elliot couldn’t help but smile. “I have a lot on my mind.”
Conley nodded. “Don’t we all. Feel like talking about it?”
Scenarios of the crazy events that’d all started with an unidentified dead man at Windhall went through Elliot’s head. “I killed someone, David. I can’t get it out of my head. I’m not sure I ever will.”
Conley took a sip of coffee, then set the cup on the table. “If it helps, you’re not the first cop to feel that way. I wish I could say it’ll get better, but I’d be lying.” He paused then added, “You did good, kid. You solved a tough case first time out. That’s no small feat.”
“I guess that’s what’s bothering me.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not so sure I have solved it.”
“What kind of talk is that? You nailed it. Captain Lundsford’s beside himself.”
A vision of Justin Stone’s pleading face unfolded in Elliot’s mind. “He told me he didn’t do it.”
“They all say that.”
“When they’re dying?”
Conley held an unfinished piece of cinnamon roll and he shook it for emphasis as he talked. “I know what you’re doing here. You’re beating yourself up because you put a bullet in a man.”
“Maybe, but you might change your mind about that after you hear the rest. I stated in the report that the suspect was alone, nobody else around.”
“Ain’t that the way it was?”
“That’s what I thought at the time. Maybe I was confused by the concussion. But later, when it all started playing through my head, I remembered things more clearly.”
Conley stuffed the last bite of cinnamon roll into his mouth, then shook his head. “No, you got it all backward. It’s later when things get fuzzy, not the other way around.”
“When I first saw the suspect, he was in the valley about a hundred yards away.”
Conley shrugged.
“If I was watching Justin Stone in the valley, then who snuck up behind me and knocked the wits out of me?”
The cheerful look drained from Conley’s face. “What are you saying?”
“He wasn’t alone. Somebody else was out there in the woods that night.”
Elliot didn’t say anything else. He’d seen Conley keep his spirits up in some pretty dire situations, but the information he’d just given his friend seemed to place a weight on his shoulders.
“What are you going to do?” Conley asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
Conley stared at Elliot for a moment then said, “There’s more to it, isn’t there, something you’re not telling me?”
Elliot thought about his answer. He wasn’t sure he had the right to lay all of this on the good sergeant. But he had to tell someone. He nodded.
Conley swallowed the last of his coffee, then scooted the cup to the edge of the table, signaling the waitress to refill it. “All right, kid. Let’s have it.”
“Graves,” Elliot said.
“Come again?”
“I’ve been in touch with Jed Washington, chief of police in Donegal. They’ve searched Saucier’s property from corner to corner, the woods behind it and the area around where the old house stood, where the Stone family lived, before it was bulldozed into the ground. They didn’t find any more graves.”
“Were they supposed to?”
When the waitress appeared to refill Conley’s cup, Elliot turned his right side up and took some as well. After doctoring it with cream and sugar, he said, “Kathryn and Solomon Stone had two children.”
Conley set his cup down, half dropping it, slopping coffee over the rim. “I don’t know, kid. Maybe you’re trying to read too much into it. You got some time left. Enjoy it. Go fishing or something, get your mind off work for a while.”
“Yeah,” Elliot said, “maybe I’ll do that.”
“There is something I don’t understand,” Conley said.
“What’s that?”
“Why did Wistrom leave those religious symbols behind. It’s almost like he was trying to draw attention to himself?”
“He was trying to throw us off. You see the sigil of Baphomet is a satanic symbol, or at least it’s been adopted by them. Since pagans don’t believe in God, they don’t believe in Satan either. Wistrom was trying to take the heat off the pagans by implicating Satanists.”
Elliot left Conley at Goldies, and after climbing into his truck he began to drive. He had no particular destination in mind, though his route to Woodward Park wasn’t what you would call circuitous.
When Elliot parked and got out of the truck, the typically crowded park hosted only a few wandering couples, and the expanse of grass and plants boasted a more severe deprivation of color than he remembered from previous visits, a level of dormancy from which recovery seemed, at the moment, hopeless.
Beneath the protective canopy of a park shelter, a squirrel held an acorn between its paws, chattering at a nearby crow, though the large black bird seemed to take it as an invitation rather than a warning and edged closer.
Elliot studied the area where the azalea bushes grew. No one walked the pathway that wound through the rocks and bushes there. Stepping onto the grass, he descended the small hill until he reached the area. Traffic sounds from 21st Street filtered through the quietness, encroaching on the solitude of the park.
When Elliot came to a suitable location, a park bench beside the trail, he sat and watched the guilty cars go up and down the street. When his mind drifted to the case, as it often did since the ordeal in Donegal, he wondered if he should heed Sergeant Conley’s advice and consider the case closed, a job well done. It didn’t feel that way. On the contrary, it seemed rather than being laid to rest that the surface had only been scratched. He feared that no matter what he or anyone else thought, closed or not, it would eventually come back to haunt them.
And of all the loose ends, which dangled around the case like unfinished business, the one that bothered him the most was the role Reverend Marshall Coronet had played in setting off a series of events that eventually led to the convenient solving of one of his problems.
On the other end of the spectrum, another unsettling notion lay in the facts, and though this didn’t feel right, unlike his gut instincts, the possibility supported logic. He’d felt the presence of someone other than Justin Stone in the woods and in the valley by the old houses that night. And the only other person he’d actually seen, one who’d seemed to appear from nowhere, was Donegal’s own chief of police, Jed Washington.
At the apex of Elliot’s confusion, he heard something other than the noise of traffic, a familiar voice, one which he surely did not expect, and he wondered briefly if he truly had taken the first steps down the path to insanity, though when he turned toward the voice, she was there and as real as ever. She wore a gray wool coat with a red scarf thrown around her neck, the color of the accoutrement complementing quite seductively the pink of her cheeks. It was Cyndi Bannister.
Elliot stood, and while no thoughts came to mind that he could verbalize, he suspected his expression told her how he felt, because she came to him, falling against him and laying her head on his chest. Tears came to Elliot’s eyes as he drew her near and kissed the
top of her head, for she looked not at him but at the ground, and when she did give in and allow herself to face Elliot, he saw that she, too, was crying.
“I’m sorry, Kenny.”
Elliot shook his head. “When you didn’t show up at Polo’s, I thought you’d changed your mind. And I thought you wouldn’t want to see me again.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just . . . Well, I knew what you meant when you said you had something important to talk about. Because I’d been thinking about it, too. I was scared, didn’t trust my feelings, wasn’t sure of what I might say or do. So I left for a few days to think things over. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have put you through that.”
“Do you trust your feelings now?”
Cyndi looked away for a moment, staring across the barren plants that would bloom into lush azaleas in the spring. When she turned back, she said, “I’ve never met anyone quite like you, Kenny. I’m still not sure what that really means, but I’m willing to take it one step at a time, if you are.”
“Absolutely.”
The word came out of Elliot’s mouth without hesitation, almost without thought, an involuntary reaction of speech, though his feelings for Cyndi were anything but involuntary.
“Good,” Cyndi said. A smile brightened her face. “I talked to my parents. They want to meet you.”
Elliot thought about that for a moment. In a few seconds, he’d gone from one step at a time to meeting the parents. Then again, nobody ever said that expression came with a speed limit. “Sure,” he said. “I’d like that.”
She pulled away and straightened her coat. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Right now?”
A curious look crossed her face. “Why not?”
“Do they know we’re coming?”
She shrugged.
The air lacked movement, but that did little to dull the edge of the cold. Elliot pulled his coat together and buttoned it. “All right.”
With that, Cyndi turned and started up the hill, toward her car.