The Thief of All Light

by Bernard Schaffer

  Far off in the distance, something crackled across the horizon and streaked toward him. It peeled through the darkness as it came, splitting it open and casting it aside, and warmth radiated throughout his entire being, holding him, lowering him gently down into an infinite light.

  29

  CARRIE SCOOPED NUBS INTO HER ARMS AND LEAPED OVER TRAVIS Berry, landing just inches from his thrashing legs. He was clutching the cleaver’s handle, trying to wrench it from his head. Every pull brought a high-pitched shriek from him, inhuman sounds as he worked the blade back and forth, sawing through his own skull and the flesh to get it free.

  Carrie slammed the door shut behind her, burying Nubs’s head against her chest to muffle the sounds, hurrying down the staircase to where Rein lay sprawled. She stared in mute horror at his bleeding stump and bare, blood-soaked torso. Nubs was clenched around her neck with both arms, and Carrie had to force herself free, pushing the child away, pulling her back to kiss her on top of the head, telling her it would all be over soon.

  She unbuckled her leather belt and ripped it from her waist, working it around Rein’s forearm in a tight loop, twisting until it would not twist anymore. The blood leaking out of his raw stump slowed to a trickle, and she propped his forearm across his chest to keep it elevated. “Stay there,” she ordered Nubs as she walked around the living room, searching for the three glowing dots of her pistol. She snatched the gun from the floor and raced back up the stairs, two at a time.

  Carrie grabbed the doorknob and twisted, trying to force it, but the door would not budge. The light over the electronic keypad had gone steady red. Carrie pressed her ear to the door and listened, trying to hear if the man was still moving inside. The screams had stopped. Nothing was bashing against the floor any longer.

  “Still alive in there, Travis?” she called out.

  No response came. She closed her eyes, drinking the sweat from her lips as she pressed them together, forcing herself to try to breathe quieter. She pressed the barrel of her gun against the door, feeling the trigger’s smooth curve with the tip of her finger, ready to fire through it at the first rattle of the handle. The first footstep. Come on, motherfucker, she thought.

  “Does it hurt, Travis? I hope it does,” she said, the gun shaking in her hand. She heard a low, gurgling, moan come from within, and smiled. She pressed her lips against the wooden door, projecting her voice into the room beyond. “That a boy, Travis! Stay with me just a little longer. This is how you die, you son of a bitch. Not a famous serial killer. Not a monster. Just another pathetic asshole wearing a cheap mask, filling up his pants with his own shit, screaming like the terrified pussy you really are! They’re going to try to find you in time to save you, Travis. But I’m not going to tell them. No. Not for a long time. I’m going to wait.”

  She pressed her ear against the door again, listening, and this time there was something. No more moaning, not sawing. The sound of struggle. The sound of wet slithering across the room’s wooden floor. The desperate grunting of a wounded animal trying to claw toward freedom.

  Carrie leaned back and kicked the door handle, trying to smash the lock, but the sturdy metal held, cracking the thick rubber sole of her shoe. She could hear sputtering pleas from within the room, Travis Berry begging something to open. To not let this be the end. Carrie pressed the barrel of her gun against the door’s lock, clenched her eyes shut, and fired.

  Sparks showered her arm from the bullet striking the lock’s metal. Jagged splinters exploded from the door and frame, spearing her in the arms and neck. She fired again, her ears ringing now, deafened from the gunshots, but the door’s handle collapsed, hanging from its housing by deformed screws. The area she’d shot smoked and flickered with red-hot embers, and Carrie stuck her fingers inside the lock’s guts, digging around its sharp edges until the blood from where it had sliced her open hissed on its hot metal. She kept digging, finally finding the length of the steel bolt and pulling it free.

  She rushed into the room, past the door, and was enveloped in its total darkness. She turned in each direction, the gun moving with her, searching for Berry, seeing nothing. Hearing nothing except high-pitched ringing.

  She turned the gun to the wall across from her and fired twice. Two brightly lit .45-caliber-sized holes appeared in the wall. Moonlight streamed through them, cutting the darkness.

  “Where are you?” she shouted. She fired four more rounds as fast as she could pull the trigger, punching light through the wall and searching. The intrusive moonlight revealed a trail of wet, shining blood smeared across the floor. Carrie followed its trail, heading toward the far wall, and stopped, realizing what she was looking at. A dark mouth, formed by an opening in the wall. A hidden panel that had been pulled aside, with bloody handprints spattered across its surface.

  At the hole’s entrance, a pair of pale ankles were kicking. Travis Berry, wriggling to get the rest of himself inside the wall. Carrie fired through the wall, not knowing where she’d hit, but his yelp of pain was loud enough for her to hear it.

  She latched on to his ankle with her free hand and pulled, screaming at him to come out. He kicked as she pulled, smashing her fingers with his heavy boots, but she wouldn’t let go, twisting the bottom of his pants leg in her grip, using it to drag him forth.

  Travis Berry emerged from the darkness, screaming and thrashing. He grabbed the edges of the panel with one hand, the other swinging the meat cleaver, slashing the air and spraying the walls with his own blood.

  He kicked Carrie in the knee, hitting her right on the knob of bone, and she felt his ankle slip from her grasp. Her leg gave out beneath her, sitting her down on the wet floor, staring at the sole of Travis’s boot as he reared his foot back, about to smash it into her face.

  Carrie thrust her gun forward into the closest part of his body she could reach, jamming the barrel into the soft, squishy center of Travis’s genitals. He paused, his bent leg hovering in the air, frozen in place, his one good eye open wide. Carrie pulled the trigger.

  She rolled out of the way as Travis screeched, clutching himself between the legs. A spurting font of blood erupted between his fingers, a hot geyser that had been struck true.

  Carrie leaned against the wall, catching her breath. She was sickened by what she saw, amazed by such raw, open agony, but she forced herself to watch. Travis’s face contorted, his mouth staying wide open in a soundless scream. His lips were strung with lengths of spittle and his tongue bulged forward, flopping around his mouth, out of his control.

  She waited. Watching until the blood spitting out of him slowed to a trickle and his contortions came to rest. She inched closer to him, staring down at his face, his once boyishly handsome features now ruined. He stared back at her with his remaining eye, words bubbling up from his mouth in pink, foaming bubbles. He let out his last—a long, rattling gasp—and went still. Carrie stood bent over him, watching everything, listening, trying to hear as much of it as she could. She wanted to remember every detail of his death for the rest of her life.

  30

  SITTING IN THE DRIVEWAY ON THE AMBULANCE BUMPER, CARRIE watched the flurry of activity at the house’s front door in silence. Nubs was in her arms, her tiny face pressed against her chest, snoring lightly. There were not enough EMS units there yet to worry about taking Nubs to get checked out at the hospital. That would come. She stroked Nubs’s hair and kissed her again.

  Dozens of police cars from local jurisdictions, state police, and county detectives were scattered across the lawn, along with ambulances and first responder SUVs. Two fire trucks were parked in the front yard, using their powerful search-and-rescue equipment to flood the house with light.

  Two metal gurneys parked next to the front entrance, empty. Carrie had seen the EMS teams hurrying into the house carrying bags of gear, and now they were emerging. The first team came running out, carrying Jacob Rein on an orange Reeves stretcher, running lines of fluid into his arms, the monitors hooked to his chest beeping as they laid
him on the gurney and buckled him down. As they rolled Rein across the lawn toward the nearest ambulance, she saw another EMT come running through the doorway carrying a small cooler.

  She watched them load Rein into the ambulance, along with the cooler, and slam the doors shut. The interior lights in the back of the ambulance stayed on as they continued to work on him, even as the siren erupted and the driver sped away.

  A second team emerged carrying a second Reeves stretcher. Carrie sat up, trying to get a better view. Nubs stirred at being moved, and Carrie stroked her hair, telling her it was all right as she sat back down. She could make out Waylon’s body being set down on the gurney. They’d hooked IVs to him, and that was a good sign. She could see Rein’s blood-soaked shirt sticking out from beneath the neck brace they’d wrapped around Waylon’s throat. Rein had packed his shirt into the injury and tied it tight before coming upstairs to rescue them, she realized. It had not been much, but it had been all he’d had, and he’d done it one-handed.

  Carrie could not unsee the spray of blood across the basement wall, or the severed hand lying on the floor. She could not fathom the act Rein had committed to save them. It was nothing she could put into words. She watched Harv Bender come through the door, following the gurney as the EMTs continued to work on Waylon. At least they hadn’t given up yet, she thought. Hadn’t draped a blanket over him and zippered him up inside a black bag, either. It was something, she thought. Not much, but something, and she decided she would take it.

  The EMTs rolled Waylon toward the next ambulance and loaded him in, the gurney’s metal legs clanging as they shuttered upward to roll him into the rear. Bender stood by, waiting for them to close the ambulance doors before making his way over to her.

  He reached out, running the tips of his fingers through the little girl’s hair. “How is she?”

  “This is probably the first sleep she’s had in days,” Carrie said.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know what I said before.”

  “It’s all right. It’s over.”

  “No, it’s not all right. I was wrong,” he said. “What you all did here, it was a miracle. An absolute miracle. And Rein? I mean, goddamn. That was just a hell of a thing.”

  “Will Bill make it?” Carrie said. The words sounded empty to her, devoid of any emotion. She’d been wrung out like a wet sock, left hollow.

  “I have to believe he will,” Bender said. “He’s too damn strong to let some son of a bitch kill him like that.”

  “Did you send someone to tell Jeri and the girls?”

  “Dave Kenderdine’s on his way over there. He’s going to drive them to the hospital. How about her? Will you reach out to her grandmother?” he said, nodding to Nubs.

  “In a few minutes. I just needed to collect my thoughts.”

  Bender patted Carrie on the arm and said, “That’s a good phone call you get to make. Enjoy it. We don’t get to do that too often.”

  She watched him walk back into the house, shouting, “Is that son a bitch in a body bag yet? I want to take a picture holding his head up like a trophy.” She reached into her pocket for her phone, holding it up to see if there was any signal. One bar. She kissed Nubs again and pressed Penny’s name on the screen, holding it against her ear, waiting for it to ring.

  The old woman answered, her voice a mixture of surprise and dread. “Carrie? Oh my God, what is it. Did you find something?”

  Carrie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, steadying herself. “I—” she started to say, the words catching in her throat. She wiped her face and forced herself to swallow, holding Nubs so tightly the little girl began to stir, and said, “Penny, I’ve got her.”

  Photo by Lisa Schaffer Photography

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bernard Schaffer is an author, full-time police detective, and father of two. As a twenty-year law enforcement veteran, he is a decorated criminal investigator, narcotics expert, and child forensic interviewer. Schaffer is the author of numerous independently published books and series. He lives and works in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA. Visit him @BernardSchaffer or www.bernardschaffer.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Brandon and Julia, Mom and Dad, my sisters, all friends, all family. The readers who have stayed with me since the earliest independent days. My partners in CID, the members of the Warrington Township Police Department, all surrounding agencies, prosecutors, child services, and the criminal investigators I have worked with, learned from, and been inspired by for the past twenty years. Tony Healey, my constant companion on this journey, and so many others. Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC. Literary Management. Kensington Publishing and its staff, for giving this book a place it can be proud to call home. This book would not exist were it not for these next three people. I could not have done it without Sharon Pelletier, Steve Zacharias, and Michaela Hamilton. Their support, hard work, and trust make me want to be a better author.