A Killer Maize

by Paige Shelton

  With every step, I felt my panic transforming from a claustrophobic need to get out of the corn maze to a heart-pounding desire to find Sam, but this was as close to the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack search as I’d ever experienced.

  “Watch where you’re going,” snapped a costumeless man holding two small children by the hand.

  “Sorry,” I said as I skirted around them. Hopefully I wasn’t leaving fallen characters in my wake, but I continued to hurry.

  I came upon a big opening in the maze and beheld a most beautiful sight: a raised platform in the middle of a clearing, and only a couple of people were atop it.

  I ran up the stairs and the world opened wide. I could see the entire maze from this vantage point: the snaking, curving aisles, the abrupt and cruel dead ends. I could see the tall billboard with the creepy house painted on it and realized that it bordered the maze, wasn’t in the middle of it like it had seemed from the carnival grounds. The maze didn’t spread as far as I thought it did. From here, I also noticed that it was actually quite well lit, with large floodlights around the far perimeter, a couple in this clearing, and several smaller lights strategically placed throughout. However, the maze was still too big and too crowded for me to pinpoint a specific person within its aisles.

  I unconsciously put my hand to my forehead in scout mode and took my time as I turned and searched, turned and searched again. It was on my third circle around that I thought I might be seeing something important.

  About fifty feet into the maze from the platform, I saw a flash of movement in the aisle and then activity moving through the stalks. It might just have been some kids fooling around, but the flash seemed . . . bigger than if some kids had just stepped through the wall of corn.

  I tried to memorize the route I would need to take to reach the point where I’d seen the flash. I could still see movement through the stalks, a cartoonish flurry of activity.

  I hurried down the stairs of the platform and took the path I’d scouted out. Once I passed one intersection, I couldn’t be exactly sure I was headed in the right direction, but I just kept going.

  As I took a left fork in the maze, someone said my name.

  “Becca, what’re you doing?”

  I stopped, my feet skidding in the dirt, and turned to see Sam, dressed in exactly what I thought I’d seen him dressed in.

  “Sam! Sam!” I said as I walked up to him and hugged him tightly.

  “Uh, okay, what’s going on?” he asked as I disengaged.

  “I thought . . . well, I wasn’t sure you were safe.”

  “Oh. How much do you know about what’s going on?” he asked as he directed us to the side of the aisle.

  I told him about my recent encounter with Scott. He nodded seriously as I continued.

  “I thought that maybe I’d been duped, though, and that Scott was the bad guy and he was going to hurt you.”

  “No, no, I’ve been trying to help Scott. Scott’s a good guy, Becca.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “A hundred percent. He’s just in over his head. I came here tonight to try to keep him out of trouble. The Bellings brothers should never have asked him to do what he’s been doing. This is dangerous stuff. He could get hurt.”

  “I saw something. I think something’s going on in the stalks.”

  “Where?”

  “That way, or that way. I . . .” I had no idea what made me look up, but that movement would change everything.

  “Sam, lift me up.”

  “What?”

  “Seriously, just for a second, lift me up.”

  Sam bent down, grabbed me under my knees, and lifted. I could see the lights, and when I did, I remembered that the scuffle had occurred at the second light over. I pointed. “That way, I’m sure.”

  Sam put me down and then grabbed my hand.

  “Excuse us,” he said as we threaded our way through a group of teens. “Emergency.”

  In only a few seconds we were standing beneath the light I’d pointed to. The stalks there were smushed and broken.

  “Wait here,” Sam said.

  I squeezed his hand. “Not a chance.”

  If he’d had even a minute to spare, I was sure he would have argued with me to stay put, but fortunately for me, time was of the essence, so he just nodded, parted some of the stalks, and led the way.

  Though my mouth wasn’t being covered by a hand and I felt safe with Sam, my second time amid the stalks wasn’t any more enjoyable than my first had been.

  Sam didn’t realize that his rushed steps were causing the stalks to snap back and hit me in the face. I didn’t want to complain, so my only option was to keep my eyes closed and my head down, hoping that I wouldn’t trip over something and he wouldn’t suddenly let go of my hand.

  The sounds of our own movement must have muted the sounds from the ruckus ahead because I didn’t even realize we’d come upon the exact trouble we’d gone looking for.

  “Stop!” Sam suddenly yelled as he did exactly that.

  I stopped, too, opened my eyes, and peered around him.

  We’d come upon another clearing, a much smaller one this time. The clearing I’d been in earlier, the one with the platform, had been made by cutting all the cornstalks from that part of the field. This space was a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot area in which someone had smashed down all the corn and, apparently, set up their own living space. There were two lawn chairs on either side of what looked like a huge metal toolbox. Sitting on top of the box was an old transistor radio, its antenna extended straight up in the air.

  I didn’t know who Sam was talking to. It was either Jerry or Scott. They had their hands on each other. It looked as though Jerry was trying to choke Scott and Scott was trying to punch Jerry in the gut.

  “It was him!” Jerry said. “He’s the one who killed Virgil and who was going to kill Randy tonight.”

  Scott, his eyes bulging from the pressure on his throat, turned toward Sam and me, but I couldn’t tell what he was trying to communicate.

  “No, Jerry,” Sam said. “I know better. Come on, let go of him or I’ll have to jump in, and I’m on his side.”

  Jerry looked at Sam a long time before he finally let go of Scott, who fell to the ground and struggled to find his breath again.

  “He’s the one,” Jerry insisted.

  “Sam knows about Virgil and the other witness. I told him,” Scott choked out with a raspy voice.

  “What did he tell you?” Jerry asked Sam.

  “That Virgil and the other witness testified against someone twenty or so years ago. That someone from the convicted person’s family had come to town to get revenge. They thought it was you, Jerry, but they couldn’t prove it until now,” Sam said.

  “They? You mean the Bellings brothers, right?”

  “The family, yes.”

  “No! The person they testified against was a Bellings. Well, it was a distant cousin. The brothers made sure that Virgil and Randy . . .” Jerry was suddenly quiet. He’d said the other witness’s name twice now and I could tell he wished he hadn’t, but he continued. “They came to Orderville. They’ve been waiting all these years for the opportunity to kill the other Bellings.”

  I shook my head and tried to understand what he was saying, but plain and simple, it didn’t make sense. Jerry was beginning to ramble.

  “No, Jerry, it was your father, not a Bellings, that they testified against. I’m certain of that,” Scott added as he stood on shaky legs.

  “No!” Jerry looked at Sam. “You’ve fallen for their tricks—their lies, too. Don’t listen to him.”

  “Has the killer been hiding here, in the corn maze?” I asked. I’d come around Sam and wasn’t as frightened as I should have been. It was three against one, after all, though I wasn’t totally
sure who Sam’s and my third ally was; I hoped it was Scott.

  “Yes!” Jerry said. “That’s what I think, at least. This is a good place to hide. No one would even consider the possibility that someone was here, waiting, watching, hoping for the right opportunity. Scott’s a crafty guy.”

  “There’s one way to know for certain,” I said to Sam.

  “How’s that?” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t happy that I’d jumped into the conversation.

  “Well, I’m sure that Scott has a toolbox like that . . .”

  “Becca . . .” Scott said.

  “But, if he does, he’ll have used every tool inside it. There will be fingerprints all over the tools. Unless they’re brand new, there would be no way to clean all the prints. We just need to get out of here and have the tools looked at more closely. That’ll tell us what we need to know.”

  “Unless the tools were stolen,” Scott said.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Sam said. “It’s a good idea. Let’s just get out of here and we’ll send some people back here to gather ev . . . gather the stuff. We’ll get it worked out. Jerry, Scott, let’s go.”

  Sam was a good police officer, one of the best from all I’d seen. I didn’t know much about being a law enforcement officer, but I knew they liked to have their weapon with them when they came upon potential killers. Sam didn’t have his gun. And we were in the middle of a volatile situation. He was just trying to get us all out of there. My contribution about the prints was something he’d, of course, already thought of and probably wished I hadn’t brought up.

  For the briefest of instants, I thought he’d accomplished his goal. It looked like both Scott and Jerry were just as ready to get out of there as I was.

  “Let’s go,” Sam repeated with a calm and even tone.

  Scott made a small motion that showed he was turning to walk away—and this move probably saved his life.

  Because, from what must have been his back pocket, Jerry pulled out a short-bladed but sparkly sharp knife and hurled it at Scott, then ran into the stalks opposite from where Sam and I had entered the clearing.

  The knife embedded itself in the top part of Scott’s arm but would have landed close to his heart had he not turned only a second before. Scott yowled and went back to his knees.

  Sam and I ran to him as he struggled to stand up again.

  “No, don’t!” Sam said. But it was too late; Scott reached for the knife, yanked it out of his arm, and threw it to the ground. In the dim light of the corn forest, I could see the dark stain of blood ooze quickly through his short sleeve, down his arm, and in between his fingers. We needed to stop the bleeding, and quickly.

  “Come on, Sam, let’s get that SOB,” Scott said.

  “Your arm!” I said.

  Scott held his hand over the cut, but the blood still oozed. “The sooner we get him, the sooner I can get some medical attention. I’ll be fine.” He stood surely and disappeared into the stalks.

  Sam glanced at me.

  “Go, go, I’ll get out the other way and meet you out front. Go!” I said.

  The two of them took off. Having a dangerous and violent man on the loose was enough to make them believe I could take care of myself from there. I hoped they’d find Jerry quickly so that Scott could get the medical attention he needed.

  Being alone in the small clearing was more unsettling than I’d anticipated it would be. The path Sam and I had taken into it was evident, though, and I’d be able to find my way out easily. I thought about picking up the knife or grabbing something else that might serve as evidence or a weapon, but I was too spooked to follow through on those inclinations. I just wanted to get out and get away.

  As I stepped one foot over the threshold from the clearing to the path, I thought I saw movement about ten feet ahead. Though we’d worn a decent path, there were still plenty of standing stalks obscuring the lights.

  “Who’s there?” I said stupidly.

  Just then, the figure came more fully into view, except it wasn’t much of a figure; I could make out only a deeper darkness, cloudlike but in the shape of a human—a human with long black hair, actually.

  “Go the other way, Becca,” said a voice that seemed to come from the figure. The voice was female, though deep and thickly southern.

  “Excuse me?” I said, again stupidly.

  “Go out the other way. This way is dangerous,” the voice insisted.

  And then the figure seemed to dissipate, and I saw only dead stalks of corn ahead.

  I didn’t think about it, I just did as the voice had commanded. It took me only about thirty seconds to find my way out and into the open.

  It was as if I joined the party about those thirty seconds too late. I missed what must have been a struggle between Sam and Jerry, and I only caught the part where Sam was clicking handcuffs in place onto Jerry’s wrists as Jerry lay face down on the straw-strewn ground. A uniformed police officer stood next to them and observed. Either Sam had been prepared enough to bring his own handcuffs or the police officer had supplied them.

  Scott was still bleeding, though another police officer or perhaps a security guard was guiding him somewhere, hopefully to get his injury cared for.

  Lucy and others were in the process of getting people out of and away from the maze. I chose to hurry to her, offer my assistance, and see if she could give me more answers.

  “Hey, did you see a grown woman dressed in black and with big black hair exit from the maze?”

  Lucy, who was grateful that no one else had been killed and that almost no one had noticed what had really gone on at the corn maze, laughed lightly. “Becca, there are a number of people dressed as witches around here.”

  “But grown women?”

  “I don’t know. Dianna maybe, but I thought I saw her leave. And I thought she had a gray wig.” She looked around; though the crowd was dissipating quickly, costumed characters roamed here and there. She gestured toward the faraway sign with the painting of the old house. “There’s a legend around here, though, about Jena Bellings.”

  “I might have heard.”

  Lucy shrugged. “Well, I don’t give much credence to that silliness, but maybe you experienced a little gypsy magic.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I turned and faced the maze, and for an instant that was shorter than a blink I thought I saw the figure in the corn. I thought she smiled and nodded at me.

  “There, right there,” I said as I pointed.

  But Lucy and her clipboard were gone. In fact, I didn’t see them anywhere, but I assumed they were off doing important things for important people.

  Twenty-five

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  The results from the evidence testing were conclusive, and put Jerry, the corn-dog vendor, away for a long, long time.

  His fingerprints were all over everything: the tools, the lawn chair, the radio, the toolbox, and the gun that had been used to kill Virgil—the cops found it in the toolbox. There was also one wrench inside that had Scott’s fingerprints all over it, but the police concluded that Jerry must have stolen it from Scott. Scott confided to me that he didn’t remember owning such a wrench, but he had so many tools, maybe he forgot about it.

  After all the facts were put into place, it turned out to be a pretty simple story. Twenty years earlier, Virgil and Randy had helped put Jerry’s father in jail. They’d been innocent bystanders to a crime, a Mafia murder, though disappointing to me only, not Russian mafia.

  Orderville, South Carolina, was, in fact, a great place to hide witnesses. In what I thought was the most unusual twist, the Bellings family knew about the witness protection program and knew that at least one person had been relocated to their town, but they weren’t sure who until Virgil told them about himself. Virgil’s real name was Darrell, and Randy’s was Aaron. It wasn�
�t until the night of the maze opening that the Bellings brothers and Scott figured out the other witness was Randy/Aaron, but Scott and Sam and I intervened before Jerry could commit another murder. Randy/Aaron had to be relocated again, just in case there were others searching for him. None of us knew where he’d been sent.

  A few weeks before he was killed, Virgil had received written threats; so had Randy. Jerry’s research had led him to three “Outsiders” via a twenty-year-old archived newspaper article and picture he’d come across on the Internet. It talked about the three new citizens of Orderville, South Carolina, and how well they were fitting in. If the picture of Virgil, Randy, and Dianna hadn’t been enough, the article’s mention of Virgil’s tattoo confirmed to Jerry that he’d found who he was looking for. Before Jerry’s father died in jail, he’d frequently told his son to be on the lookout for the man with the spider on his neck. Jerry had moved to Orderville six months ago, but had bided his time, figuring that if he waited until the fair started, he’d be able to kill the witnesses and have his actions diluted by what he termed “those people’s stupid gypsy magic.”

  According to Sam, Virgil and Randy’s biggest mistake was not contacting WITSEC marshals. Virgil had gone to Renard Bellings, but though the Bellings brothers were powerful, they weren’t able to stop Virgil’s murder. As with many too-powerful people, they’d been arrogant and thought they could handle the situation on their own, so they’d called in their brother-in-law, Scott.

  The Bellings brothers had told Scott about Virgil. Scott, wasn’t, in fact, the owner of the shooting gallery after all, but just pretended to be so he could place himself at the fair, where he could keep an eye on Virgil and try to figure out who the other witness was. He’d hoped to use some of his Scott charm to get Virgil to confide in him, but that plan had quickly gone awry, and I’d been there to witness it. After Virgil’s death, Scott decided he needed to aggressively try to figure out who the other witness was so he approached both Randy and Dianna and asked them outright. Randy remained calmly mum, but Dianna became agitated and worried about her fellow Ordervillains—yes, that’s what they call themselves. I find it an appropriate name. She, suspicious by nature anyway, started to put the pieces of the puzzle together and she figured that the newest newcomer Jerry was up to no good. Ian and I weren’t the only ones she warned. We should have all listened to her, but it was difficult for anyone to think Jerry, the nice-looking young man with the shaggy hair, could be a villain.