Quickly checking her tucked-in shirt and leather jacket, Rachel stepped into the spacious office flanked by the American flag and the ruffled state flag. Peak followed behind, instinctively loosening his dark tie over his ashen button up.
John Parkman’s back faced them as the door closed. He looked out the window in a menacing way, sipping scotch. “You’re the detectives I’ve been hearing so much about. Especially you, Ms. Harroway. You’ve done a great service to this town.”
He turned around, a gold sky outlining his silhouette. “Please. Have a seat. It’s about time we settled this.”
When he descended into his large leather chair, the man revealed his face. He had a strong handsome jaw with bright blue eyes and rich brown hair. His suit was blue and pinstriped and was expertly fitted to his athletic body. The man was what they expected. A mature version of his teenage self, with years of wisdom and hard work under his belt.
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us, Mr. Parkman,” Rachel said politely.
“The pleasure is mine,” he said with a twitch of a smile. “The discovery of the burial mounds has kept me up for days. I’m willing to fund the police whatever they need to arrest this murderer before anyone else falls victim.”
“We aren’t here for funding,” Rachel admitted. “We are here because you are a suspect in the murders of those girls, forty years ago and recently.”
Mayor Parkman clenched his fists under the table. “I see.”
Peak showed him the creased Polaroid photograph. “This was found in the murderer’s trophy room.”
“At the church?” he asked objectively.
Rachel nodded.
“Well,” he clicked his tongue. “That is mighty odd to have such a thing stored with the victims’ possessions. Nonetheless, I can say that I’m innocent. I was home with my wife and kids the night of Maxine’s passing. As for the forty-year-old murders, I was the one most eager to find the girls. I do not say this to boast, but it was me who rallied up the other young men in the honors society to search for the girls.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing,” he said regretfully. “Not a trace.”
“What about Jacobson and Ball? Did you ever suspect them?”
“I treat those men like family,” Parkman said with offense. “Yes, they are flawed like the rest of us, but neither one has the heart of a killer.”
“Then who do you think took the girls forty years ago?”
“I have no idea.”
Without warning, the Orphan girls crowded the room, forming a bend around John Parkman and glaring at him with red, dagger-like eyes. Their raw and red throats trembled as they let out a rattle. Maxine Gunther and Dakota Mulberry stood in the middle.
Parkman crinkled his brow. “Everything alright, Detective?”
Jenson Peak turned to her too. “Rachel?”
Forcing her attention back to Parkman, Rachel replied slowly. “Yes. Everything’s fine.”
Rachel’s hairs stood on the back of her neck as an invisible finger wrote on the window bursting with the dying sun.
HE KNOWS.
“We would like to speak to your wife,” Rachel said, her throat drying.
“She’s not involved in this,” the Mayor said. “I’d prefer if she didn’t think of me as some monster. Our marriage is… shaky at the moment. Not to mention my children.”
“Nonetheless, we need to confirm your alibi. If all checks out, you’ll be marked off the list of suspects.”
Parkman grunted and picked up the corded phone. He dialed a number, put it on speaker, and set it in the middle of the table. After a few rings, a woman answered. “Hello? John?”
“It’s me, honey. I have two detectives in my office. They’re asking about my whereabouts Thursday night.”
“Why would they want to know that?”
“It doesn’t matter--”
“Doesn’t matter?” the woman screamed. “You're visited by officers of the law and shrug it off like it’s no big deal. What will the press think? What will our children think when they find out the police suspect their father of some shenanigan? What is it? Money laundering?”
Parkman pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, honey. Just tell them where I was Thursday night.”
“... they’re in the office now?”
“Yes.”
“...”
Rachel and Peak exchanged looks.
“Carry?”
“My husband was with me the whole night, regretfully.”
“Couch or bed?” Peak asked unapologetically.
Parkman glared at him.
“Couch.”
“That’s all, honey,” Parkman said and hung up without goodbyes. He set his jaw and glared at Rachel and Peak. “Satisfied?”
“I think that will be all for now.” Rachel stood and extended a hand. “Thank you, Mr. Parkman.”
Behind him, the dead girls glared with ruby eyes.
“You know where to find me,” the mayor replied and twisted toward the window as crimson rays hit the horizon.
Rachel and Peak didn’t speak until they were outside of the town hall.
“The couch,” Peak said first. “He could’ve easily slipped away. Also, the reveal of the mound could’ve set him spiraling for a release that he hadn’t felt in forty years.”
“The Orphans, Jenson.” Rachel took a breath. “They surrounded him as we spoke. Wrote on the glass. He Knows, they wrote. He Knows.”
Peak cursed. “Did they confirm him?”
“Not entirely, but they all believe he’s involved in some way.”
“So we can’t rule out the Treasurer or Parks and Rec director?” Peak said with frustration.
“Correct. We can’t even rule out Jennifer.” Rachel let out an exasperated sigh.
“Square frickin’ one.”
“We should get a tail on each one of them. If these murders give the Roper some sort of release, he’ll strike again. He’ll need his fix.”
That night, Rachel didn’t sleep. The groans of her large home grew louder and the case bombarded her conscience. Unseen eyes crawled up her skin, making her shiver and cover her almost bare body. Her olive eyes looked to the clock on the night stand and its late evening hour. Raven black hair tumbled down the side of her face. Like a ringing in her ears, the Sense made her tingle with persistent, subtle annoyance. She was alone in a big house, miles from town, with no one to hear her scream. Under the pillow beside her lay her savior: a heavy Glock 22 loaded with high caliber rounds. Still, she felt isolated. If the Roper came tonight, no one would save her. In the hall, something creaked. The wind whistled, masking a child’s laughter.
“Enough,” she mumbled and sat up.
She lifted her phone, noticing a message from the man she meant to call.
There’s someone watching me, Peak’s text read. The time stamp was forty-four minutes ago.
9
How the Dead Dance
Rachel’s ride into town was full of dreaded silence. Jenson Peak sent her a second text twenty minutes ago.
“Come quickly. Act normal,” it read.
He wouldn’t take her calls or elaborate about his situation. The only logical conclusion Rachel drew from the distant behavior was that Peak feared alerting the stalker that watched him. Peak would want to catch him unaware. If that was the case, Rachel would play along. The Sense tingled when she looked at the gun on the passenger seat.
She slowed to a crawl a block away from Peak’s second-story condo: a classy wood furnished building a few turns down from Main Street. Crook-shaped streetlights spilled yellow down the rows of cars and the clean sidewalk. Rachel parallel parked in between two fuel-efficient cars, clipped her pistol to her belt, and got out. She panned around the quiet, two-lane street.
Act normal, she reminded herself as she strolled down the sidewalk. Somehow, thinking about acting normal made it harder to actually act normal. She cast careful glances at the cars that flanked both
sides of the bumpy road. Within moments, she was outside of Peak’s apartment building. It had an A-shaped roof with high wooden rafters and a rustic glassy look gleaned from its cobble-stone pillars that upheld the awning above the entrance door.
Rachel pulled at the handle to the glass door. Locked. Biting her lip, she turned around, checking to see if there was anyone out there. Nothing but a chilling breeze. She zipped up her leather jacket and headed to the side of the building. A flight of external stairs folded in on itself and opened to the back door of each apartment. With hurried steps, Rachel bounced up the stairs. The night was quiet. There were no noticeable signs of a stalker, van, or anything/body out of the ordinary. Peak’s time undercover must’ve made him more alert to subtle dangers. Out of the two of them, Peak was always the more cautious, a grounded detective concerned more with facts than feelings. Rachel trusted her Gift and instincts to guide her. In a courtroom, however, the dead couldn’t testify.
Taking a breath, Rachel rapped her knuckles on the wooden door and took a step back. A wave of sleepiness hit her like a bus. God, she needed some rest. Even better, Peak might make some of his expensive Appalachian brew coffee. She was a tea type of girl, but this seemed to be a night of expectations.
With a soft click, the door unlocked.
Stalker at the forefront of her mind, Rachel stepped towards it, eager to get inside.
Standing in the light of Peak’s unsurprising barren apartment that reflected his nihilistic philosophy was Albert “Al” Jacobson, Highlands’ rotund and ever-balding town treasurer.
Goose bumps rose on Rachel’s body. The hairs on her arms stood up, and the Sense pulled at her so hard she thought it would tear the skin from her bones.
“Harroway, right?” Al smiled from ear to ear. “Detective Peak said you were on your way.”
Rachel froze. Everything inside screamed for her to get out as fast as her legs would take her.
“Come on in,” Al beckoned casually, his Southern twang filled with confidence. “Peak’s in the restroom. Bad shrimp.”
The man chuckled, standing aside to let Rachel past. She didn’t move. She could hardly breathe. Every second in this man’s presence felt like she was lying in pool of Black Mambas.
Al stared at her like she was insane. “You feeling okay? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She thought about drawing her gun, but there was zero solid evidence linking Albert Jacobson to the death of Maxine Gunther, let alone the other seven girls. His lawyer, Lennard Splints, would get her fined and sentenced within hours. If anything, the media would portray her as crazy and worse, him a victim of circumstance. He’d be unstoppable then. Still, putting a .45 bullet into Al’s kneecap would strengthen her chance of survival. Rachel shook the foolish thought. If Peak was here, he’d tell her to run away and buy time to find the proper evidence to put him behind bars. Therein lay the problem. Peak wasn’t here. He was inside his apartment where Albert stood now. Rachel felt a sickening feeling in her throat.
There was a chance that he’d already killed Peak, or would do so the moment Rachel left.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Jacobson?” Rachel asked, familiarizing herself with nearby escape routes. The stairs, mainly. And the second-story railing. Not ideal.
“I thought we got off on the wrong foot this afternoon. I wanted to get you and partner alone when my lawyer wasn’t around. He’s too good at his job, see, and there’s something that I’d like to tell you about those killings forty years ago.”
“What about them?”
Al looked down both ways of the walkway. “I’ll tell you inside. I’d rather not have any rumors going around. Oh, and everything I say will be off the record, before you start implicating me in anything that’s not true.”
Rachel nodded slowly. “Get Peak. I’d like to talk to him about something first.”
“He’s in the bathroom,” Al explained as if Rachel was an idiot. “It’s forty-four degrees out here. We can wait inside.”
“No,” Rachel said with authority. “Tell Peak to come out here. Tell him it’s important.”
Al smiled angrily and waved her off. “Give me a minute.”
He closed the door.
Rachel waited, tapping her foot.
THUMP!
Rachel’s eyes widened. The sound came from within the apartment. Act or wait. Gritting her teeth, she drew out her pistol and slammed her shoulder into the door. It flung open. She aimed the pistol at the bedroom hall, using her peripherals to study the barren living room and dining area.
Something pinched her neck. Rachel twisted back, seeing Al with a drained syringe. Suddenly, the floor came up to hit Rachel and the world turned pitch black.
Violent wind battered the inside of the black box and awoke Rachel with its icy touch. She lay curled up in an open trunk. The tops of trees extended far into the starry night. Nocturnal beasts made their ominous cries out of the darkness.
Rachel felt a jackhammer in her head. Every second that passed made it seem like her forehead would burst. A stinging feeling jabbed her neck with every unsteady heartbeat. She sat up as fast as she could. Hand resting on the trunk’s bottom latch, she stared out into the blackened forest around her. Hundreds of trees swayed in the darkness, their rickety bodies jutted at odd angles while their leafy branches crawled at the open air.
This wasn’t the same place as Maxine’s death, but it had the same, inexplicable feeling of death. Involuntarily, Rachel rubbed her neck, remembering the feeling of natty hemp rope against her skin and jugular. This is his game, Rachel thought, her heart racing in her chest. Recalling her previous experience in the trunk, she groped the darkness of the far corner, taking hold of a flashlight.
Something moved in the darkness. Rachel shined the flashlight across the thorn bush, casting long, spiky shadows. The bush rustled. Rachel breathed rapidly, bracing herself to jump out of the trunk. Other than the flashlight, nothing could defend her, and she doubted if anyone but the Roper would hear her screams. She was miles out in the woods at an elevation of over four thousand feet.
Pale and naked, a man burst forth from the bush, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Rachel scuttled backward, slamming her spine into the back of the open trunk.
The nude man, crazed and hairy, held his arms out to his side with hands dipped in glossy crimson. His left eye was milk white. His right eye was a red hole that tunneled through the back of his head, revealing the trees behind him.
With a twitching movement, he looked back and forth before locking his one eye on Rachel. He stomped toward the edge of the trunk and whispered, “Help me. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.”
Rachel shut her eyes as tight as she could as the man begged. After a few seconds, she opened them and found that the man had vanished.
“Orphans,” she mumbled as she lifted herself from the trunk.
Her bare feet smashed sharp twigs, fallen leaves, and a few stirred beetles. She winced, hating the Roper even more. Her knees quaked. She put her hand on the sand-colored 1970s sedan, balancing herself. The world shifted, spinning to the right. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Whatever Al had injected her with, it was still in her system, and it was strong. Very strong.
She took a moment to breathe, but not too long. Al--the Roper--was out in these woods with her, watching her most likely. She checked her pocket for a cellphone, unsurprised it was gone. Her leather jacket was gone too. That pissed her off.
Quietly, she approached a gap in the trees, seemingly where the car drove from. If that’s where the road was, there was a chance civilization was not far away. Rachel scoffed at the notion. Civilization not far away? This was Highlands. There were only a handful of residents, and about a third that many houses. Right now, it was her and the woods. Also, a few seventeenth-century frontier men with scalped heads glaring at her from the far tree line. Rachel ignored them.
The beam of her flashlight found a carving on a tree. Crudely scraped into the wood
was the word RUN.
Leaves crunched behind her.
Rachel twisted back.
No one.
She bounced the beam back and forth. It landed on a woman with wiry black hair, sitting on the ground, hugging her knees. Her forehead was purple and swollen. Rachel recognized her as a victim of one of Rachel past homicide cases.
“Amy?” Rachel asked.
The woman turned her head up to Rachel. Her lip twitched.
“He’s coming,” she said.
Footsteps. Rapidly approaching.
Rachel swiveled, seeing the broad-shouldered man with skinny legs wearing a plaid shirt, dark jeans, and muddy boots. A coil of rope ran diagonally across his chest. His gloved hand clenched the noose at the end.
A faded and old burlap sack covered his head and tightened to his neck with a drawstring. Two crude eye holes had been cut out. Without a word, he charged at Rachel.
She shined the flashlight in his eyes and dashed backward. The Roper turned his head away from the light as he ran. Rachel shut off her light source and darted into the bushes. Branches grabbed at her. Thorns bit at her soles and scratched her arms. She ducked under a branch, only able to see a few feet in front of her. With no artificial light, the woods were a yawning abyss, swallowing everything up. It would be just as blinding to the Roper, she thought as her foot snagged a branch and her body toppled down an embankment.
Head first, she rolled, the universe blurring into a swirling mess of black colors and stars. Her descent ended in a six-inch deep stream. The cold water bit at her wounds. The right side of her face slopped in mud. She pushed against the bottom of the stream with her palm, sinking her fingers into the submerged, slimy dirt. From belly button to beltline, a tear ruined her grey shirt. Whatever sharp rock caused it left behind a red slash down her torso.
The Haunting of Rachel Harroway- Book 1 Page 10