Chapter 32
For the first time today, Liam had his flashers on as he sped through town. He took Main Street, somewhere in the back of his mind noting that Mrs. Pincourt had finally moved her damn Civic, and then quickly made his way onto the highway. His speedometer quickly hit eighty, and with the light traffic, Liam thought he could make the forty-minute drive to Stumphole in just a little over half that time. While the swamp wasn’t technically his district—Elloree’s jurisdiction stopped just short of Stumphole’s boundaries—there was a long-standing gentleman’s agreement with the surrounding counties that Liam and his crew would look after the swamp. In return, the others kicked in a little extra support at year’s end to help balance the budget. Normally, this arrangement was fine with Liam, given that nothing he couldn’t handle ever happened in the swamp. Until now, that is.
You can handle it. You’re still in control.
But these words of encouragement were beginning to sound hollow to Liam, even within the comfortable confines of his own head. Things had been happening all around him without his knowledge in Elloree proper, let alone out at the swamp. Like Tommy Lee and Bobby Ray, for one. Like expensive cars in the Mayor’s parking lot. Like “redeveloping” the downtown core, whatever the hell that meant.
I’m the damn Sheriff in this place, and I’ve been kept out of the loop? What the fuck is going on?
“None of the girls are technically from Elloree,” Dwight began from the passenger seat. “Which we already knew, but here’s the thing: their parents are—well, more specifically, their mothers are from Elloree. Or, in the very least, they spent some time here.”
Liam swerved to pass a slow-moving tanker truck as he mulled this over.
“They must’nt have stayed long, otherwise one of us would have recognized them or their children,” he said, more to himself than to the others in the car. Regardless, he saw Dwight nod in his periphery.
“Yeah, but it only gets stranger from there, Liam.”
The man paused unexpectedly, and Liam looked over at his deputy. Something had happened when he’d left to go see the mayor, something that had affected Dwight in a way that Liam hadn’t seen before. He wondered briefly if it was the man’s diabetes catching up with him, his obesity finally taken its toll, somehow starting to affect his brain, fattening his neurons, perhaps, slowing them down.
Or maybe it was something else entirely.
“Yeah? What is it?”
Dwight shook his head as if trying to rid himself of evil thoughts.
“I counted forty-six children who have gone missing from the surrounding areas in the last three decades alone.”
Liam scoffed.
“Impossible.”
Dwight cleared his throat.
“I triple-checked. Dozens of girls went missing back in the early two-thousands and the same in the eighties. None of them were ever found. No leads, nothing. It seems as if every twenty or so years, kids just start to go missing.”
Liam found himself shaking his head now.
“That can’t be right.”
“I wish I was wrong, but I don’t think I am. Something seriously fucked-up is going on here, and I think it has to do with the swamp.”
As Liam mulled this over, his eyes flicked to Hugh Freeman in the backseat. The man had yet to wash his face since he had arrived with the girl, and his mud-streaked features gave him an almost stoic appearance.
“What you think, Hugh?” Liam asked, not so much to get the man’s opinion—he pretty much knew what that was at this point—but to make sure that he was still conscious.
Hugh’s eyes flicked up to the rearview.
“I told you what I think—what I know. There’s evil in that swap, evil that goes back more than two-hundred years. An evil that won’t die until all of the kids that came from it are returned.”
“Came from that swamp?” Liam asked. “What you mean?”
This was the first he’d heard about the kids coming from the swamp, rather than simply being drawn to it.
“I don’t know all the details—I only know what my partner told me. And we were sent here by the head of the FBI to put a stop to it.”
Liam found himself shaking his head again, and was perturbed by how often he did this without really knowing.
The FBI… this was the third or fourth time that Hugh Freeman had mentioned a partner and the FBI, but so far, Liam had no proof of the involvement of either. Never having interacted with them before, Liam’s only knowledge of the Bureau came from TV. And to him, the current episode was beginning to look a lot more like the X-Files than Criminal Minds.
Liam regretted asking for Hugh’s opinion and was becoming more and more concerned for the man’s psychological demeanor.
After this was over, FBI or not, NYPD Detective or not, Hugh Freeman was going to get himself a real bona fide psychological assessment.
Liam took the exit for Stumphole Swamp, and rolled down his window as he slowed to a more reasonable speed.
The odor of burning wood instantly filled his nostrils.
“You smell that?” he asked, sniffing.
Dwight nodded.
“Look,” the deputy said, pointing to a spire of smoke in the distance.
“One thing’s for certain,” Liam said, more to himself than to either of his two passengers, “Peter Sheppard wasn’t wrong about the fire.”
He only hoped that everything else, especially what Hugh had said, was a lie.
Chapter 33
Stevie was the first one on the scene, and all he could do was watch.
When he had first arrived, he pulled up behind a Porsche and a Taurus, and then he made his way up the muddy walk, moving quickly, calling out for anybody who might be present. His first intention had been to enter the house, but when he got close to it, the heat was just too great. The place, as dry and old as it was, was completely engulfed in flames.
If there had been anyone inside, they wouldn’t be worth saving now.
And yet, Stevie thought he heard something, tortured moans or screams, even as the roof collapsed and the walls crumbled.
It’s the wood, the joists burning, that’s all.
Except…
In addition to the sound of the blaze, Stevie could now pick up the whine of approaching sirens and knew that the Sheriff would be there soon. He was deciding how much he wanted to share about his strange experience with the man who called himself the Curator. Most of the time, he simply said whatever popped into his mind. Most of the time, he was at the mercy of his wagging tongue. But this time…
You’re in luck! Got a book by that title just the other week.
When the sirens cast purple hues across the now thinning cloud of smoke, Stevie quickly made his way back to the row of cars.
Sheriff Liam Lancaster pulled up in his cruiser and quickly jammed it into Park directly alongside Stevie’s own vehicle. The man hopped out and was followed a few seconds later by Dwight, and then the strange NYPD detective.
“Stevie, what the fuck is going on?” Liam demanded.
Stevie shook his head.
“I’ve got no idea; I just got here. I tried to get close to the house, but it’s impossible. The smoke, the fire, it’s just too damn hot.”
Liam hurried by him and up the muddy walk, casting a quick glance at the two cars alongside Stevie’s own.
“Anyway, know whose cars these belong to?”
Dwight, huffing and puffing as he tried to keep up, spoke breathlessly, “The Porsche is Tommy Ray Ross’s. And I think… I think the Taurus is Principal Zanbar’s.”
“Principal Zanbar? Why the hell would he be here?”
As they made their way toward the source of the heat, Liam dropped a bombshell on Stevie.
“There are rumors that Tommy Ray Ross is dealing heroin.”
Stevie’s eyes veritably bulged from his head.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Serious is Dwight’s heart attack,” Liam replied.
The whine of a fire truck finally reached a fever pitch and Stevie turned to see the red truck pull up the laneway. All four of the men stood off to one side as it passed, but it didn’t make it very far. The muddy walk had turned to mush, and the heavy tires of the fire truck started to spin.
A burly man leaned out the window and said, “Sheriff, we’re going to park here, no point in getting stuck. Looks like the structure’s gone now, anyway.”
Sheriff Lancaster nodded, and the man shut off the sirens and hopped out, his thick black boots sloshing and squishing in the soft mud. As he made his way toward the building, Stevie turned to Liam and spoke in hushed tones.
“You think Tommy Ray was here? With the principal? You think he has something to do with Patty Smith’s murder?”
For the first time since he had known the man, Liam didn’t answer right away.
He simply shrugged.
The four of them kept walking until they could get no closer to the fiery blaze without risking scalding their skin. Another fireman appeared, and started to spray a massive jet of water at the structure, while a third walked in the direction of the swamp to retrieve water for when the truck’s reserves ran out.
The entire time, Stevie felt as if someone, or something, was watching them.
Watching and waiting.
Chapter 34
It took more than an hour for the firemen to put out the fire, and it wasn’t until forty-five minutes after that, that it was deemed safe enough for Liam and his men to give it a cursory examination.
The fire had reduced the derelict house to a handful of joists; only a section of the back wall, which had been repaired using brick some time ago, remained intact. The rest was a pile of soot and ash.
The house itself was set back about forty meters from the road, and without the fire to guide his eyes, Liam doubted that he would have been able to find the place even if he had known it was there in the first place. Surrounded by thick elm trees and their anorexic birch relatives that worked in concert to form a single canopy high above, the place had been expertly camouflaged. It was clear from the burnt outline that it had once been a small bungalow with a porch out front.
And it was on what was left of this porch that Liam found the first body. Blackened, like a hunk piece of overcooked bacon, lay the body of a man that Liam Lancaster simply knew deep down was Tommy Ray Ross.
Although the object he had been affixed to had since burnt away, thick metal spikes still protruded from his hands and feet.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dwight grumbled.
Liam indicated for the man to take a walk while he and Stevie and Hugh continued to scour the remains.
“You think it’s Tommy Ray?” Stevie asked, as they hovered over the still smoldering body.
Liam nodded.
“I’m sure of it.”
Hugh Freeman, who seemed least affected by the corpse, moved ahead of Liam.
“Hey, wait up, Hugh,” the Sheriff instructed.
The man obliged, but Liam got the impression that he was looking for something in particular, and that made him nervous.
“Hey, my guys staked off a spot near the back, where the kitchen was,” the burly fireman who had spoken to Sheriff Lancaster earlier piped up. “There appears to be an underground passage there, a crawlspace of maybe something bigger. I’d stay away, unless you want to break an ankle.”
Liam nodded.
“Thanks, we’ll be careful.”
The last thing that Liam wanted was for one of his men to get injured.
He’d seen enough death today in Elloree to last a lifetime.
“Best stay along the perimeter,” Liam instructed.
Hugh chewed the inside of his lip and for a moment, Liam thought the man was going to disobey his order.
“You’re wondering if your partner was in there?” Stevie asked. “If FBI agent Brett Cherry was in the fire?”
Hugh said nothing, which was answer enough.
Although they were averse to walking directly on the burnt floor plan, the place wasn’t so large that they couldn’t scope out most of it from walking around the perimeter. Liam instructed Stevie to head to the right, while he and Hugh went the other way.
Squinting, Liam noticed several other mounds lying on the ground, just inside where the front door had been. Mounds that, while they lacked the spikes that had been hammered into Tommy Ray’s appendages, didn’t look all that different from the Mayor’s son’s corpse.
They were smaller, but possessed the same general outline.
“Jesus Christ,” Liam muttered, hanging his head. His mind flicked to the photographs on his desk, of Carla Shari and the other bright-eyed six-year-olds that had gone missing. Then he thought of Hugh’s ominous words: I saved one, but the others are all dead.
“There must have been a dozen of them here, maybe fifteen,” he said absently.
Hugh didn’t answer, but nodded in agreement.
“Mother called the children back.”
It wasn’t the man’s words so much as the callousness of his tone that made Liam snap. He turned to Hugh, his face immediately transitioning to a deep scarlet.
“You mother—”
“Hey, Sheriff! Liam, get over here!”
Liam swallowed his anger and hurried around the side of the house to where Stevie stood.
Please tell me there are no more bodies.
Except Stevie wasn’t looking at the burnt remains of the house, but to something that he had found in the mud.
“What is it?” Liam asked.
Stevie bent down and picked up a solid object about the size of a woman’s purse. While both he and Hugh watched on, Stevie used the blade of his hand to scrape the mud from the package. Then he held it up to the fading light for all to see.
It was a tightly wrapped plastic brick, upon which was an insignia of a snake eating an eyeball. Inside was a hard, condensed block of yellow-brown powder.
Things suddenly fell into place for Liam. He glanced back to the house, scanning the still smoldering corpses lying within. It was difficult to tell, but it looked like there was another body, one that was slightly larger than Tommy Ray, but not as muscular, buried beneath a pile of dead children.
It was Principal Zanbar; Liam knew this the way he knew that the corpse with the spikes through his hands and feet was Tommy Ray.
“Looks like this was where Tommy and Principal Zanbar were keeping the dope,” Dwight said, suddenly peering at their side.
Liam rubbed his temples, knowing he was smearing soot on his face, but not caring.
“Was Principal Zanbar present when Rebecca Hall mentioned Tommy was running the heroin?” He asked.
Dwight nodded.
“Yeah, he helped me corral the students. Acted pretty damn strange about the whole thing, too.”
“And now I guess we know why—he was working with Tommy Ray.”
The four men stared at the smoldering ashes for some time, each locked in their own thoughts. Liam was thinking about how he was going to break the news to Bobby Lee Ross, how the town would suffer from the deaths of not only the preacher’s daughter, the preacher, but now the Mayor’s son and the high school principal. Even if they could keep the heroin under wraps, there would still be questions that would be asked, questions that Liam would be compelled to answer.
Just as night fell, and it felt as if the silence would last until the following morning, Stevie spoke up.
“What I don’t get, is that if Tommy is here and Principal Zanbar is here, as are the missing girls, if that’s who they are, who set the damn fire?”
Liam’s gut reaction, his initial instinct, should have been that it was an accident. That perhaps the girls had snuck up on Tommy and Cliff, and they had gotten spooked and set the place on fire while hiding or cutting or doing whatever they did with heroin before selling it.
But he knew this wasn’t true.
Deep down, Liam knew that this had been deliberate.
That this had been murder.
“What do we do now?” Stevie asked.
Liam chewed the inside of his lip.
“Good question. Good fucking question.”
Chapter 35
Daughter Page 12