by Newman,James
Then, I quickly wiped away the tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. I swallowed. Took a deep breath.
I picked up the phone.
And dialed the Sheriff’s number.
“Hello,” Burt Baker said, halfway through the fourth ring.
I recognized the murderer’s voice instantly. It was slurred just slightly with sleep, the voice of a man who has only been out of bed for a few minutes and has not yet had time to don the face and tone he uses to go out into the world. But it was him. No doubt about it.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Hello?” Burt Baker said again, louder. “Baker residence.”
“I know what you did,” I said, deepening my voice as much as possible. The last thing I wanted was to sound like a twelve-year-old kid. Especially the very twelve-year-old whom Baker might recognize as the son of the woman he’d been dating.
“Come again?” he said, without the slightest bit of worry in his tone.
“I saw what you did to Cassie Rourke, in the woods.”
“You…what? Who the fuck is this?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “All that matters is, I know who you are…Sheriff.”
“Who are you? What the fuck do you want?”
Bingo. I couldn’t help but notice how his voice cracked a bit that time. He hid it well. But it was there.
“This better not be some kinda jo—”
“It’s not a joke,” I cut him off. “I saw what you did to Cassie Belle Rourke, after the Apple Gala. Henry hurt her, and you killed her. You blamed an innocent man. But you’re not going to get away with it.”
“Who…wha…look here, man—”
“I made sure you won’t get away with it.”
He sounded like a lost little boy when he asked me again, “What do you want? Tell me.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Except justice.”
I hung up.
My heart beat faster than ever before. I held one hand against my chest, breathed deeply.
But I felt good.
Damn good.
“Checkmate, you son-of-a-bitch,” I said, recalling the one time Dan tried to teach me how to play chess but I hadn’t grasped it at all.
It seemed to be my brother’s favorite saying that night: “Checkmate.”
It felt good. It felt right.
So I smiled, and I said it again: “Checkmate, Sheriff Baker. Your move.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Less than twelve hours later, the sheriff did make his move.
And I wished I could take it all back.
I wished I could forfeit our game entirely, if it would change anything.
But it was far too late for that.
****
“He’s dead, Kyle. Oh, my God, I can’t believe he’s dead.”
“Mom?” I sat up abruptly, my mind still foggy with sleep. My heart raced from being jolted awake. My head throbbed. “What’s wrong?”
I realized I must have fallen asleep on the couch at some point earlier that afternoon. I’d slept for quite a while, too, because Mom had already arrived home from work. She had just gotten home, I assumed, as her purse still hung around one skinny arm. She still wore her work clothes, and several strands of her curly brown hair were pasted to her sweaty forehead.
I blinked several times fast, sat up. For the next few seconds I wondered if her words had only been part of a very bad dream, perhaps a nightmare about the day we learned my father had been killed in Viet Nam.
But no, this was now. And this was no dream.
“He’s dead,” Mom said again, through a shiny mask of tears. “I can’t believe this has happened.”
“Who’s dead?” I moaned, stretching. “Elvis?”
She either did not hear my smart-ass comment or paid it no mind.
“He was such a good person. God. Him and Terri both, all the things they used to do for us after your father died…how could I have been so…”
“Who are you talking about, Mom?” I asked her. “What’s going on?”
“It’s like it’s not real, you know? Like it’s this…nightmare. He can’t be dead. It’s impossible. I just saw him at the grocery store a couple nights ago. He can’t be gone. Can you believe it, Kyle?”
I suspected I would not believe it. No way. If only she would tell me what the hell had happened!
“Oh, God,” she cried. “It’s so awful…”
I sat up, waiting for an explanation. I began to chew at my nails as a dark blanket of worry descended upon me. Somehow I knew…this was for real. This wasn’t another one of Mom’s drunken rants or bouts of depression. Something had happened.
Something very bad had happened.
“It was a car accident,” she said. “I’m not sure about all the details yet. I just heard it from Sarah Mohler.”
“Okay,” I said, following her so far. Sarah Mohler was our next-door neighbor, a lady who had gone to school with my mother and remained one of Mom’s on-again/off-again friends. She was also the biggest gossipmonger I ever met, back then or ever since.
“She says it happened over on Highway 76. Supposedly he died instantly…thank the Lord he didn’t suffer…but…oh, God, Kyle…how do they really know that, if they weren’t there? I can’t imagine what Terri and the twins must be going through…the poor things…”
I barely listened to my mother’s rambling now. I could only focus on what she had told me, what I knew it all must mean as the pieces fell into place.
Even if I did not want to believe it.
“No,” I said. “Mom…please tell me that’s not true…”
It was too much too fast.
Terri…the twins…
Mom leaned over to embrace me, but I practically leapt out of her grip, from the sofa to the television.
I had to know for sure.
I turned on the TV.
And there it was, the Hour’s Top Story on Channel 5.
My heart leapt into my throat.
“No,” I said. “No…”
“Earlier this afternoon,” explained a tan young anchorman over grainy footage of something crumpled and warped that used to be a patrol car being pulled from a muddy roadside ditch, “Deputy Sheriff Mike Willem Linder was killed when his patrol car careened off of Highway 76 and hit a telephone pole. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Polk County Memorial Hospital at approximately 3 p.m.”
The anchorman put on his most somber face then, paused, and looked straight into the camera. Straight at me.
“Again, folks, we regret to report that Deputy Mike Willem Linder, of the Polk County Sheriff’s Department, died today in a tragic accident off of Highway 76.”
I shook my head back and forth, gnashed my teeth and clenched my fists as if the man on the television might take it all back if I only disbelieved what he had told me strongly enough.
“Deputy Linder was thirty-nine years old. He is survived by his wife, Terri, and two twin fourteen-year-old daughters, Staci and Traci. Funeral services are expected to be held early next week.”
This couldn’t be happening. A great weight lay upon my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I fell to my knees, and the television grew blurry before me.
The young anchorman’s voice was barely above a whisper as he concluded with, “We’ll be right back, with more Channel 5 News, after these messages.”
I continued to shake my head back and forth slowly, not hearing anything else on the television, just the sound of my own sniffling and Mom’s incoherent babbling somewhere behind me. The din of the storm outside filled my head like the truth of the whole matter personified, batting at the window and trying to get inside to wreak havoc.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to raise my head to the heavens and shout at God.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.
Deputy Linder’s death had been no accident, I knew.
He had gotten too close to the truth.
After I called him and lef
t my anonymous message, I knew Mike had wasted no time in investigating my allegations. Perhaps he had questioned Calvin Mooney’s guilt, or maybe he had come right out and foolishly accused his friend of murder…
And Sheriff Burt Baker had once again cleaned up any loose ends that threatened to expose him as the monster he really was.
Tears streamed down my face like the torrents of rain at the window. Shame filled my soul.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Mike’s wife, Terri. To his fourteen-year-old daughters, Staci and Traci.
I wanted to die. I wished it had been me, in that patrol car.
I might as well have killed our old family friend myself…
AUGUST 18
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Kyle!” came my big brother’s voice the following night, all the way from Tallahassee, Florida.
“Dan.”
Mom had gone out earlier that evening. Where I did not know, though I suspected she was with him.
I tried not to think about that.
Dan must have been eating an apple, judging from the loud, wet smacking sounds in my ear (crunch-scrape, crunch-scrape went his big front teeth as they worked away at the fruit), and his words were nearly unintelligible amidst all the noise. “What’s crackalackin’, little brother?”
“Mm,” I said. “Not much.”
I should have been ecstatic to hear from my brother again. Instead, I just wished he would leave me alone.
At least until I could figure everything out, find out what had happened between him and Cassandra Belle Rourke.
Dan’s voice was a stranger’s on the other end of the line. No, his voice had not changed. He was still my brother. But something darker lurked beneath his soft Southern accent and deep post-puberty tone. Something sinister. Something I could no longer trust.
The person I loved, whom I had idolized as long as I could remember, had become an enigma to me overnight.
What obscene secrets did he have to hide? How had he known her, and what had he done to her?
Did I even want to know the answers to those questions?
I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t think straight. I was so, so confused.
“Hello?” Dan said. “You there, little bro?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m here.”
“O-kay.” I could hear the puzzlement in his tone. It hadn’t taken him long to pick up on my mood.
Good. I wanted him to hear it. I wanted him to know I was none too happy with him. At least for now.
“You sure sound happy to hear from me, Kyle. Like I just told you your dog died or something.”
“I don’t have a dog,” I said. Cold.
The sounds of his apple-mastication ceased. I could almost hear my brother’s frown. “I know that. God. Excuse the hell outta me. Did I interrupt something? What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Kyle, what is it? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, Dan. I’m fine.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Nope.”
Thunder boomed overhead, rattling the window above the kitchen sink, so loud that I barely heard what Dan said next: “So did you do it? Just tell me you did it, and I’ll let you go.”
Ah. So that’s why he was calling. Not to see how I was doing. Not to check in on his little brother.
But to keep up the fucking charade.
I bit my lip. One hand went to my roiling stomach. I began to feel things about my brother I had never felt before. Things I did not want to feel, but could not help even if I tried.
They made me want to die, those feelings.
“Yeah,” I said, but my voice was barely more than a sick croak. “I did it.”
“Good man! I’m so proud of you.”
I shrugged, although he could not see my gesture. I made a bored, noncommittal grunt.
“So why so gloomy, little bro? You should be very happy. That’s a mighty fine thing you did. You’ll see.”
I said nothing.
Again: “I’m so proud of you, Kyle.”
Still, I said nothing.
“You there? Earth to Kyle…”
“I should be proud of myself, Dan,” I said finally, fighting back tears. “But I’m not.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“Mike’s dead, Dan. Deputy Linder is dead.”
“What…what are you talking about?”
“He’s dead. The news said he was killed in a car accident, but I know better. I know better.”
My brother said nothing. He sounded as if he might start hyperventilating on the other end of the line.
“Baker killed him,” I said. “Don’t you see?”
“Oh, God,” Dan wheezed.
“’Cause he knew too much.”
Dan made a hissing sound through his teeth.
“It’s all my fault. He’s dead now because I got him involved.”
Dan said, “No. No. Look. You can’t blame yourse—”
I didn’t want to take it out on my big brother. I really didn’t. But all I kept seeing as his voice came to me over the phone line were those love notes. Those letters from a dead girl, in the box under his bed.
“Did you know her?” I said quickly. My voice cracked as I said it, and it came out in a very low, nearly inaudible whisper, yet I knew he heard it because even the sounds of his strained breathing immediately went silent. He could not mistake what I had said. It was there. Between us, like a sharp electrical shock over the phone line. And I could not take it back even if I’d wanted to.
“What?”
“Did you know her, Dan? Tell me the truth.”
“Who…Kyle, what are you talking about?”
“You know.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
I could hear it in his voice, though. I did not have to tell him. He sounded guilty. He knew damn well what I was talking about.
“Look, Dan, I gotta go,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Kyle, what’s the matter with you? What are you—”
“Bye, Dan,” I said.
I hung up. On my big brother. It was something I had never done before, and would never have even thought about doing as recently as several days before.
But then, so much had changed since the night of the Apple Gala.
By the time the phone was back in its cradle, my face was drenched with tears. I ran to my room, praying he would not call back.
He did, of course. A few minutes later. The phone rang and rang and rang—at least forty times, I am sure, though I didn’t bother counting—but I ignored it.
I had never been so confused in my life.
Everything I had ever believed had turned out to be a lie. Everyone I ever loved turned out to be a liar.
The lies in my home stank of rot. Their stench filled up every room, permeating the air with the smell of treachery. Blood. Betrayal. And death.
It was an odor far more powerful, even, than that of Mom’s addiction.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
My heart might have stopped when I heard the short, sharp whoop of a police siren outside, followed by the reptilian hiss of tires on wet pavement.
I ran to my bedroom window, pulled aside the curtain. I could see nothing at first. I made a fist, quickly rubbed a small circle in the condensation so I could see outside.
The night surrounded my house like an enormous wet blanket. Beneath it a soft drizzle fell upon our lawn, giving the property a surreal silvery-blue look like something out of a dream.
The room grew cold as an icebox when I saw Sheriff Burt Baker’s beige patrol car parked in front of my house, down by the curb.
It didn’t move. Its engine idled softly, like the purr of one very large, contented feline.
I could see Baker’s thick round shape behind the steering wheel, like some satanic force twice as black as the night around him.
And another shape, in the seat beside him. Someone smaller.
Henry, I wondered?
Had they finally come to silence me? Was this the end?
How would they do it, I wondered? Would the sheriff snap my neck the same way he had snapped Cassie Rourke’s, so effortlessly?
I swallowed, and my throat was as dry as the hottest, barest desert wasteland.
I wondered if he was watching the house. Watching me.
What was he waiting for?
I nearly pissed my pants when his back-up lights came on, like two bright white eyes in the night.
“What do you want?” I whispered. “Leave me alone…”
The patrol car backed slowly into my driveway then, as if I had summoned it. I gasped. From where I sat I could hear gravel crunching beneath the car’s tires like the brittle bones of infants snapping and popping beneath an ogre’s feet.
I glared at his shape inside the vehicle, wondering what he planned to do.
A second or two later the car stopped, about halfway up the length of my driveway. For a second I thought Baker might keep reversing until he backed right into Mom’s station wagon. But then his brake lights glowed an eerie blood red, giving my whole front yard the look of some low-budget horror movie.
I moved back from the window, sure I would be spotted if I stood in that crimson glow for too long.
My heart thudded in my chest. I was so sure of it now—I was going to pee in my pants. I could not stop it.
I knelt on the floor, and dared to peek through the window again.
For the next few minutes the only movement outside was the thick cloud of exhaust farting out from the sheriff’s patrol car in a steady blue-gray stream. It billowed into the air like the hot, rank breath of a demon, partially obscuring my view of Burt Baker and his passenger and whatever the hell they were up to.
I glanced down at my hands, realized I had balled them into fists so tight they had gone numb.
How could I have been so stupid? I asked myself. I had signed my own death warrant for sure, when I had called him and told him what I saw.
I wished I could take it back. God, how I wished I could take it back.
He had come for me. He had arrived to clear up the final loose end in his evil scheme.
“Go away,” I said, trying to will him off of my property. “Please…”