Howls From Hell

by Grady Hendrix

  The fire alarm would boot them all from their rigs, but that meant admitting she couldn’t handle the situation.

  Mark reached the stairs at the end of the hall and ran down them, feet falling in rapid descent. She hurried after him.

  At the bottom, she watched Mark disappear out the glass doors and jog to his car.

  She walked to the full-length windowpane facing the parking lot.

  Mark slid into his old, restored Mustang, which was parked close enough for Sarah to see the multiple donut-shaped air fresheners dangling from the rear-view mirror.

  For months, he had tried to convince Sarah to go for a ride in it, bragging about the power of the engine. How it made the car vibrate.

  He sped off. The muffler rattled and roared, the sound rumbling through the glass.

  “Still on for dinner?” Otto said, coming down the stairs.

  Sarah lifted the back of her hand to her forehead. All colour drained from the world. Her knees threatened to buckle and send her crashing to the floor. Instead, she found a hard wooden bench and dropped. Her teeth clicked painfully.

  “He did it. He fucking did it.”

  “Did what?” Otto sat beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. He squeezed gently. She closed her eyes. The gesture helped center her, bringing her back into the realm of consciousness.

  Sarah told him everything.

  She opened her eyes, tears spilling out, and she hated herself for them.

  “He was . . .” Sarah’s breath caught in her chest. She pushed it out in a racking sob. She couldn’t say the word. “The kid’s mom, Otto!”

  She collapsed. Otto held her.

  * * *

  6

  Captain Anderson slid a box of tissues across the desk, but Sarah slid them right back.

  “I don’t want any fucking Kleenex, sir, I want an APB put out on him.” The air conditioning hummed in the large office. Anderson sat across from Sarah, the considerable man nervously tenting his fingers and tapping them against each other.

  “We have officers keeping an eye out. This is a very serious allegation you’re leveling against Officer Taylor, however, so we need to do our due diligence by not assuming his guilt before he gets the chance to defend himself.”

  “He wouldn’t have run if he was innocent.”

  “Forrester, you know that kind of evidence wouldn’t hold up in any court. All we can do is go to him and ask him some questions.”

  “Do you have any officers stationed at his home?”

  The captain shifted in his chair. “I’ll send someone to check in on him as soon as we’re done here.”

  Sarah sat bolt upright. “Send them now.”

  “Forrester, let me remind you I am your superior officer—”

  “He’s probably packing a bag and heading south as we speak!”

  “—and I will not take orders from someone so emotional that they can’t—”

  “Emotional?” She glared at him, finally understanding. “Because I’m not a man, you don’t have to take me seriously.” More tears threatened to seep out, and she hated them, hated the fact she couldn’t show rage for rage, that when she found conflict those tears wanted to dance on her face, undermining her.

  “How dare you.” Anderson returned her gaze, jaw clenched. “I spearheaded the ACU initiative to level the playing field. This program gives everyone the chance to make a difference, the chance to help—even if you’re not as strong as your colleagues—so for you to insinuate that I am treating your accusation any different than I would a man’s makes me sick to my stomach.”

  He slammed a clenched fist on the desk. “I personally went through the file of every officer who applied for a position with the ACU, spent my own time evaluating and interviewing every single one of my officers, so this isn’t personal for just you, Sarah.” His hands rested on the table, still clenched into fists that blanched his knuckles.

  Anderson sighed and relaxed them so they laid flat.

  “You said there were ways to audit the calls,” Sarah said.

  “The neural connection is strong, but only peer-to-peer. What information is saved after the call is . . . spotty.”

  “Spotty?”

  “We can get visuals, though nothing in HD. We can get metadata—”

  “Then you can see who the possessing officer was.”

  Anderson’s gaze faltered. He tapped his fingers on the desk.

  “Scrambled.”

  “What?” Sarah leaned forward. Suddenly, Anderson’s commanding voice was hard to hear.

  “The information is scrambled. Metadata, visual feed, everything. It might be some sort of encryption, but tech hasn’t been able to decode it.” He sighed. “They’re saying it’s all corrupted.”

  “So,” said Sarah, head swimming, “there’s no way to catch him?”

  “It’ll be hard. The only evidence a rape kit will reveal is that a husband had intercourse with his wife, and we can’t exactly charge him for what one of our officers did in his body. There will be no DNA from the actual perpetrator, and the higher we go with this incident, the worse our division looks. It was like pulling teeth getting approval for the ACU, so my superiors are always looking for a reason to shut it down.”

  He lifted a hand and rubbed it over his shaven head, small hairs rasping against his touch.

  “The victim, Mrs. Vance,” he continued, “is recovering with the support of her family. I could never understand how she feels, but it seems less severe than your traditional case, I assume, because she knew and loved the man our officer controlled.”

  “You think it’s any different because he’s her husband? Captain, you don’t get what something like that does to—”

  “No, I don’t. You’ll have to forgive my ignorance. It’s not okay because they’re married, and that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying our trained counselors are working with Mrs. Vance. The situation is complicated, but it’s between her, her family, and the support they choose to receive.” He got to his feet and stretched his back.

  Sarah stood, her legs numb. Her entire body was numb, like she was summoned herself, but controlling it from above like a puppeteer.

  Mark would get away with it.

  “Thank God Mr. Vance survived. Your emergency treatment saved his life, Sarah. You should be proud of that.”

  Sarah felt no pride when she left his office. Instead, she was filled with disgust—disgust for Mark, an officer bringing to this new force the corruption she had naively hoped would remain in conventional law enforcement. Disgust for her superior, willing to turn a blind eye and reinforce the code of silence that protected vile men only in the job for the power trip. Disgust for the bureaucracy that allowed injustice to reign over reason. That allowed rape to slip through the cracks. Injustice that finally dried her tears, but left her fiery as a bull, poked and prodded beyond its breaking point.

  “He can’t get away with it,” Sarah told Otto from his passenger seat. He had offered to drive her home after finding her sitting mute behind her steering wheel.

  “He won’t. If he comes back, they’ll figure out what he did and make him pay. If he doesn’t come back, then he’s already paid with his job and the life he’s built here. He’d be a fugitive forever.”

  “That’s not enough, Otto.” He didn’t get it, didn’t see the look in the man’s eyes when she caught him. “He didn’t relinquish control. He was outraged that I had the nerve to interrupt him. He thought he deserved it.” She looked at Otto, but he focused on the traffic, clearly uncomfortable at the topic. “You don’t get it.”

  “I’m sorry,” he replied as they came to a red light.

  “No, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.” She closed her eyes and leaned back against her headrest.

  “Not to be insensitive, but I guess we’ll need a rain check for tonight?”

  Oh shit, I forgot all about our plans. Sarah turned her head to look at her friend. His slim face was focused on driving, but she could f
eel his attention on her. “I’m sorry, I’m just not feeling up to eating in some pretentious restaurant that avoids gluten like it’s rat poison.” Eating was the furthest thing from her mind, though it had been hours since lunch.

  Otto’s face drooped, then lifted, the gleam of an idea in his eye. In his crooked smile.

  “A home-cooked meal, then. Where we can just relax.” He turned his face to her.

  She could stay mad, but what was the point? It all amounted to wasted energy, and at that moment she was out of energy to waste.

  Otto was helping. He was a good man. Without his glasses, without the baby fat, he was something else, too. The heart of her old friend, in a body that was taken care of. Sarah didn’t want to be thinking about him like that. Didn’t want to be thinking of anyone like that, not after what she saw Mark do, but Otto was her friend. She didn’t want to be alone.

  “You cook?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.” His smile grew wider.

  The light ahead turned green while Otto was busy looking at her, and a lifted Ford F-250 behind him blared its horn. Otto raised his fist at the truck, middle finger sticking straight as he leaned out his window and screamed, “Go fuck yourself, baby-dick! You’re not impressing anyone with that truck!”

  He sped away before Sarah could hear baby-dick’s reply.

  I guess nice guys aren’t immune to road rage. She hid her smile so as not to offend Otto.

  * * *

  7

  * * *

  The smell of artificial cotton sprayed out of an automated air freshener. Otto led her from the noisy, dim hallway into his apartment. After they were through the door, he closed it, slid a chain lock home, locked two separate deadbolts, and used his foot to lower a metal bar into the flooring.

  “Tough neighbourhood?” she asked.

  “Somebody thought so.” Instead of tossing his keys on the table next to the door, Otto dropped them into his pocket. “Guy that sold me this place had it all installed. Bit of a . . . you know . . .” He twirled a finger around an ear and whistled.

  Despite the closed door, Sarah could still hear the music coming from a party down the hall. The warble of a police siren rose and fell on the street outside.

  “Very nice.” Sarah hung her coat on the hook next to the door and gestured at the floor lock. “I thought they only had those in cafes.”

  “Crazy people can be resourceful,” Otto replied. “Ever had turkey burgers?” He strode down a hallway flanked by nerdy knick-knacks perched on simple shelving and through an archway on the right into the kitchen.

  “Probably,” she replied, following.

  Here was a Mario figurine next to a collection of Game of Thrones Pop! figures. There was a nativity scene set up with various Star Wars action figures. Yoda was in Baby Jesus’ bassinet. Princess Leia played the role of Virgin Mary.

  “Well, you haven’t had mine.” Otto removed some ground turkey from the fridge and threw it into a bowl. He reached into a cupboard, grabbing three spice jars with one hand before taking an egg from the fridge.

  Where was Mark now? What was he eating?

  “They’ll catch him,” Otto said, as if reading her mind. “Sooner or later, scumbags like that always get caught. The surveillance state we live in, I’m sure he’s been seen on like a dozen CCTVs.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Otto ground the ingredients in the bowl, the smell of raw meat mingling with the spices.

  “Let me tell you though, if that prick decides to show his face at the station, I’ll make sure he feels the weight of his actions.” Otto flexed his hands into fists, raising them. Egg white dripped from his pinky.

  Sarah laughed, brushing her hair behind her ear. His hands still looked small despite the muscle he put on.

  “Do your neighbors have kitchens this nice?” There was a gas stove, a huge, double-doored fridge, a deep freezer that could hold an entire cow, cupboards with frosted glass, and an island in the center. Sarah placed her purse on the quartz countertop that crowned the island.

  “My neighbours look like the kind of people whose cooking skills top out with Kraft Dinner.” Laughter came from the outside hallway, followed by the sound of running footsteps. “I’m surrounded by assholes.”

  He opened a cupboard and brought out a head of garlic.

  “Can you grab a red onion from the pantry?” he asked, pulling off one clove after another before putting away the diminished head. There were two doors in the direction Otto indicated. Sarah opened one. The wrong one. Coats hung before her, shoes on the ground. Tucked away to the side of the closet was a life-sized Stormtrooper costume.

  Sarah smiled. She closed the door on the Star Wars cosplay and turned around to grab an onion from the pantry opposite the closet.

  “Why don’t you sell this place?” Sarah said, coming around the corner. He could afford better than this. They had both received a considerable pay raise after accepting the transfer to the new unit.

  “And commute like everyone else?” he asked, smiling as he crushed the garlic with the blade of a chef’s knife. “I’m used to it. It’s home.” He chopped the garlic and dropped it into the bowl.

  “Why did you start hiding the things you like?” Sarah asked. She knew he was a nerd, but the only evidence now was here in his apartment.

  “I changed,” he said, peeling the skin from the onion. “I bettered myself.”

  “Nerds can have muscles. You don’t have to completely reinvent yourself to change.”

  “It wouldn’t have been that easy. I needed something dramatic. A new identity.”

  “I’m just saying you don’t need to be ashamed of any of these things. If anybody judges you for it, it’s because they themselves are afraid of getting shit on.” She put her hand on his arm. “You deserve to treat yourself. You’re doing so well.”

  He pulled away, grabbing the knife and dicing the onion.

  “Sarah, I used to treat myself. I treated myself every day, from middle school till the day I joined the ACU. Every value meal I crammed into my gob was a treat that made me fatter, lazier, and more disgusting.” He tossed the knife in the sink with a clatter. “Do you know how it felt, assuming control of someone thinner than you? Someone who could run, jump, climb stairs without losing their breath and getting stitches in both sides?” He lifted the chopping board and dumped the diced onion into the bowl of meat. None spilled. “You either break the mold, or the mold breaks you. I treat myself by taking care of myself. If that means laying off the fried foods and sweet drinks, so be it. If it means keeping the things I like private, then oh well.”

  “That sounds lonely.”

  Otto smiled. He shrugged. His hands sunk into the meat with a squish. The smells of garlic and onion filled the air, mingling with the air freshener to form a sickly potpourri that made Sarah queasy.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.

  “Through the living room, down the hall, and on your left.”

  Sarah crossed through a room obviously furnished by a bachelor. Mounted on the wall was a sixty-inch, curved TV facing a large sectional with cup holders set in the armrests. Beneath the TV were all sorts of toys: an Xbox, PlayStation, a charging iPad, and an HDMI cable that led to a large desktop PC humming away beneath a modest desk.

  Why did she nag him? Just because he didn’t show off his passions anymore didn’t mean he abandoned them.

  “I hope you like red wine,” Otto called. “I’ve got a bottle of cabernet from the Napa Valley with our name on it.”

  Red wine gave Sarah headaches. Otto didn’t know that.

  What a hypocrite. Sarah chastised him for not sharing, but how much of herself did she really put out there?

  Red wine. Sharing red wine was something you did on a date, not something you did to comfort a friend after they experienced a trauma.

  Trauma craved the hard stuff in the cupboard above her sink.

  Sarah would stay for an hour or so, then get a rideshare home. S
he didn't want Otto thinking this was a date.

  She stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. The room was large, a bathtub/shower combo against the far wall with the sink to her left. A bar of soap sat in a stone dish stained white from its residue. It wasn’t lavender, vanilla, or any sort of flower. It just smelled like clean.

  She washed her hands and examined her face in the mirror. Pinching her cheeks, she wondered if she might benefit from a regimen like Otto’s. Though she trained often, she wasn’t as strict with her diet as when she first joined the ACU. It wasn’t necessary since her body played no part in the calls.

  A smudge in the corner of the mirror distracted her from the thought, a mark left behind by a greasy finger.

  The old, messy Otto isn’t completely dead, she thought, grabbing the hand towel from the rack. Sarah pushed the cloth against the mirror to wipe away the mark, but in doing so, pressed the opening mechanism for the medicine cabinet behind it.

  The mirror pressed inward, activated with a click, and sprung open a crack, revealing a hint of the contents within. Through the opening, she saw pill bottles, lotions, creams, and a curious stack of objects that looked like folded leather.

  Don’t snoop, Sarah. The man deserves his privacy.

  She wouldn’t judge him for anything. Like the well-muscled man she saved from the domestic dispute. Looking was as harmless as tiramisu.

  Sarah opened the cabinet fully and revealed a stack of wallets of various lengths and colours. Men’s styles, women’s styles, cloth wallets and leather wallets. There was even a wallet made from duct-tape, a novelty item only a teenager would be interested in. Her sensibilities told her she already went too far, already pried into his personal belongings more than a friend had any right to, but her curiosity got the better of her. She took a wallet from the top of the pile, opening it to read the name on the cards within.

  Verne Sommerville was the name on the Visa within the first wallet. The driver's license showed a balding man with thin lips.

  The second wallet belonged to Fiona Walters, an overweight woman with red cheeks and hair to match.