Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  The wooden bleacher seats on either side of the gym were filling up fast as the meeting’s scheduled time approached, and David watched with much curiosity who was coming to the meeting. Most of the attendees were families, a mom and dad and two or three kids, all bundled up against the rain and wind outside. David could imagine the whole parking lot outside was probably overrun with mini-vans and station wagons, and David wondered what it would’ve been like if he’d grown up with a set of parents, like so many other people do. They didn’t really appreciate it, he was sure - they didn’t know what it was like to not have a mother or a father. These families seemed so happy, even in the face of such troubling events in their little town. They had people to talk to, people they could rely on.

  Tearing himself away from staring at the little family, he saw other people and small groups that intrigued him. David saw some of the city council discussing something with other town officials, a very animated discussion with hands waving and fingers pointing in the general direction of the podium. There were also sideways glances and gestures at Sheriff Brown sitting behind the podium, as if he were a subject of the heated discussion.

  And David saw lots of cops, milling around and scanning the crowd, probably looking for people that they didn’t recognize. It was pretty much accepted that Lisa’s killer was a stranger from out of town, and David had gotten some idea of how people reacted to a killer in their midst through reading his father’s notes. Outsiders and strangers, although there were many more drifting through now than 18 years ago, still evoked the same reaction, the same distant, wary glances, the same carefully worded questions. David felt that it would not do to harass every new person in town - it hadn’t worked before, except that it had gotten his father killed.

  No, the only way they were going to catch this guy, whether or not it was Jasper Fines back for more, was to use their heads.

  David continued to scan the crowd, recognizing most of the people. The lady who cut his hair at the Hair Cuttery, the one with the bad breath and the never-ending questions about his love life and the accent he couldn’t even understand half of the time. There were some kids he had known in school, kids that had always hung out smoking behind the auto shop and were now grown up and working in gas stations - David thought suddenly that maybe the guidance counselors back at LHS had been right. He saw lots of faces he knew, but he closely studied the ones he did not know.

  Jack stood in the doorway to the gym, looking. He was going to leave the boiler room the same way he’d come in, through one of the small windows that opened onto the tennis court, but he hadn’t been able to resist the urge to see the faces of the people he was going to kill. He was used to watching the faces of people as they died, but that wouldn’t be an option here, so this would have to suffice.

  There were a lot of faces in there, people he didn’t recognize, but he was able to pick out one or two people he’d seen around town over the past few days. The cops were milling around up by the podium like things were getting ready to start, but Jack couldn’t help but look in - he’d wanted to see how many there were. Beaumont had loved this little piece-of-shit town, had given his life to protect this collection of white trash and deadbeats and losers, and Jack was about to do something about it, something permanent. The Beaumont kid was gone, probably all the way to California by now and not coming back no matter what kind of bad news he got from this town - the kid must hate it almost as much as Jack did. But maybe God would smile upon Jack and they would meet up out in Los Angeles, meet in some back alley somewhere where Jack was in charge and could finish off the Beaumont's in grand style. Every single one of them, dead. Maybe, just maybe, the kid would be out there by now, and Jack could take a small break from his retirement to track down the slippery little weasel and put him out of his misery. The kid had hated his old man almost as much as Jack did, or at least that’s what Gloria Thatcher had said just before Jack had tied her up and gassed her. Maybe they did have some things in common, but that didn’t mean Jack didn’t want the little runt to suffer. He wanted to kill the kid, but he wanted to kill the kid slowly, ever so slowly.

  Jack knew he couldn’t afford to continue looking for much longer, but he couldn’t help it - these people were all going to die soon, and it would be his greatest moment. Beaumont was gone, and now his town was about to be blown off the map. Too bad there was no way to...

  It was her. It had to be. Jack stared at the older woman sitting on the wooden bleachers next to a very attractive brunette, and the memories flashed back across the screen of his mind. He’d broken her nose, and yes, this woman’s nose seemed to take a strange twist at the end, long healed but still ugly. She’d kneed him in the crotch, but a couple of nights later he’d shot her in the leg and scared the crap out of her and shot her boss right in front of her.

  She’d quit the force and now she drove a school bus, the librarian had told Jack. She suffered from horrible, debilitating ulcers.

  Oh well, lady, your pain is about to end. And the cute girl next to him would die too, soon. Too bad I can’t hook up with that hot little number before this place goes up, but oh well. The sacrifices he made. A little laugh escaped his lips as he started to turned and leave, already aware that he was staying too long, that things were going to end around here soon -

  And then he saw Beaumont.

  there he is but he's younger

  He was out of uniform, but it had to be him. The chin, the face, the...no, it couldn’t be. The man was dead.

  This version of him looked a lot younger, a lot skinnier. The face was the same, though, and the build would have been the same if this kid were to put on about thirty pounds.

  It was the Beaumont boy.

  He had come back and Jack hadn’t heard about it. But for a long, scary moment, Jack had imagined that the old man was back. The kid was sitting up there in the bleachers, next to a pretty girl that had to be his girlfriend, right behind the deputy with the broken nose. The pictures at Gloria’s house hadn’t done him justice, not even close. This kid was growing up fast, and the pictures he had seen must have been very old. Now the kid looked just like his father, the spitting image of a younger Beaumont. He looked his full 18 years, and a little pissed off.

  Jack was stunned, unable to stop staring at the kid - there he was, right there! He did look a lot like the old man, especially from this angle - looked so much like him that it was kinda scary. Jack looked at the kid for a long moment and suddenly had half a mind to stroll right in there and climb the bleachers and strangle the brat with his bare hands, even if it was in front of all those people - they’d be dead soon, anyway, and it would’ve been worth it.

  Damn, he’d wanted to kill him slowly! Oh well, every once in a while, Jack didn’t get his way. The kid was about to bite it, and that would be the end of all of them - the end of all of the Beaumonts, and the end of this pissant little town.

  David was looking out the windows when he saw the black bird.

  It was impossible, of course, because the winds were howling out there and the rain was coming down again in thick sheets, but there it was, hovering outside the steamed windows on the opposite side of the gym. It was flapping its wings like crazy, flapping to stay up, and crazily it looked like it was looking right at David. There were others, too, more birds of different types, eagles and crows and even a seagull, flapping crazily in the gusting wind, and they bobbed in front of the windows for a moment before dropping out of sight. How could they fly in that weather? It had been hard for David to keep his car on the road.

  And then they were gone, blown away by a huge gust of wind. The black bird and the eagle and the others disappeared so quickly, it was as if they had never even been there in the first place. There were blown away in a sheet of rain that seemed to blowing almost sideways.

  David stared at where it had been, thinking. Strange birds, owls and seagulls - he’d seen that blackbird up at the rest stop pullout when he’d been trying to decide if he should leave or
not. He’d seen several on his trip west, and then there’d been that lady at the coffee shop with the sister who’d been nicknamed ‘Bird.’

  And now, more crazy birds out there in this storm, flapping and spinning and looking in the window, probably already dead by now.

  But for a moment it had seemed like the blackbird had been looking right at him.

  Weird, he thought, shaking it off. He glanced at the doors coming into the gym and saw that some guy was staring at him.

  A chill rushed over David‘s body. Craggy, worn looking face, but deep, piercing blue eyes, the color so rich that he could see the color even at this distance. The hair and beard and mustache were unkempt, making the man look more like a bum or a homeless person than a concerned citizen, and David instantly knew that he’d never seen that man’s face around town, ever. But he had seen it somewhere. His father’s file had contained a pencil sketch of Jasper Fines, as described by Norma Jenkins after their little ‘encounter’.

  This face was close, damn close. And he was looking right at David, an angry look on his face. David suddenly felt worried. He turned and nudged Bethany. “Bethany, look at that guy over by the door, staring at us.”

  She turned and looked for a moment, then asked: “Where?”

  David turned to point out the man, but he was gone.

  Jack left in a hurry. The kid had spotted him, and for one long glorious moment their eyes had met. There was some kind of connection between them. Glorious, certainly, but the kid was dead already, and Jack had to leave.

  He moved off from the high school, walking across the rain-swept parking lot towards his van. The wind was blowing so hard that it threatened to blow him all the way across the lot and out into a muddy field next to the parking lot. And it felt like the temperature might be dropping, or maybe that was just wishful thinking. The colder it got, the hotter the boiler would need to run, and the sooner the show would start. Jack needed to find a place a couple of miles away where he could watch, and then, after he’d collected his stuff from the hotel, he’d leave. This town would be gone, for all intents and purposes, and Jack would have put the ghost of Beaumont to rest. All that awaited Jack was years of pleasure and enjoyment in Los Angeles.

  “Please, everyone, let’s settle down,” Sheriff Brown said into the microphone. It took a few minutes, but the crowd quieted and they were able to begin.

  “Okay, folks, we all know why we are here. Some pretty bad things have happened around here, and we’re here tonight to talk about them. First of all, we’re going to tell you what we’re doing about it, and then we’ll take questions, and hopefully, when we’re finished here, we’ll all feel a lot better.”

  Sheriff Brown launched into his speech, and for all of the talk of protection and safety and public good, it still sounded like a campaign speech to David. The sheriff announced that there would be policemen patrolling around the clock, and that the sheriff’s department would take every step possible to catch whoever had killed Lisa Stevens. He spoke for several minutes on her, talking about what a lovely girl she had been, and David saw some of the people in the crowd nodding, like they were at church listening to some kind of sermon or something. He wasn’t buying any of it - the guy didn’t even sound like he was serious! And so far there had been no mention of the biggest rumor around town - that the deaths of Abe Foreman and Gloria Thatcher had been anything but accident and suicide. During the speech David glanced back at the door, but the man who looked like Jasper Fines never reappeared, and David wondered if he had left.

  Brown talked on for several minutes, not really saying anything except promising that the ‘town would be safe’ and that the ‘perpetrators of this heinous crime would be caught’. Blah-blah-blah.

  After he was done, the State Marshall stood and spoke for just a couple of short minutes on the progress of the investigation into Lisa‘s death. David saw that the sheriff and his deputies didn’t seem to be paying any attention to the State Police Lieutenant as he spoke - they were talking quietly amongst themselves.

  “What about my Aunt?” he shouted suddenly, standing. Bethany jumped and grabbed at his legs, but he ignored her. He’d had enough talk - now he wanted some answers.

  The eyes of everyone in the place were on him, and at first it was scary, but as the moment drew out longer and longer, it felt more...comfortable. Everyone was looking at him, sure, but they were looking at him because he’d asked the question that must’ve been on the minds of a lot of other people - they had started to get restless, some of the taking off their coats in the warmth of the gym.

  Sheriff Brown stood as Blake backed away from the microphone, and Brown looked like he was itching to yell at someone. Now the Beaumont boy had offered him the perfect opportunity.

  “You want to know what happened to your Aunt?” he asked, his voice carrying to the ends of the room without the amplification of the microphone, carrying like a tent preacher. “You’re Aunt’s death is going to be ruled a suicide, and Abe Foreman‘s death was an unfortunate accident,” his booming voice answered as the crowd murmured.

  David nodded. “I know that’s what you say here in front of all of these people, but why did you ask me so many questions when I was at the Police Station? So many questions about her life and her relationship with Abe Foreman, like you were investigating a homicide instead of an accidental death?” His voice was not as loud as the Sheriff’s, but it did carry - and it had lost its nervous tremble.

  The sheriff smiled. “We were only trying to understand why your Aunt might have wanted to commit suicide.”

  “She didn’t.”

  The crowd murmur grew louder but he stood firm, staring at the Sheriff.

  “Oh, no?” Brown asked, smiling. “You know something that the entire Liberty Police Department, in cooperation with the Virginia State Police, doesn’t?”

  “All I know is that there are too many questions surrounding her death, and Abe’s. Why were there burns on her wrists, like she’d been tied up? And why were there scratches on the banister where Abe fell, like he’d tried to grab hold and keep from falling? And besides, my Aunt didn’t have any reason to kill herself.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “Whenever my Aunt wanted to escape from the world, she’d just pour herself a drink, or two, or ten. Probably everyone in this place knew that. So why kill herself - and if she did, how did she tie up her own hands, or get those strange burns on her wrists?”

  Sheriff Brown waved him off, dismissing him. “None of that is important. She might’ve finally run out of liquor, for all we know. We found none at the scene. And she might’ve changed her mind after starting the car, and tried to get out. We’re not sure, but we do know that she killed herself.”

  The crowd murmured louder - the fact that she had killed herself had been widely publicized, but the manner in which it had been accomplished had not. Very few people had known that it had been carbon monoxide, the standard closed-garage suffocation - supposedly a painless way to die.

  The Sheriff continued. “As for the rest, it’s all speculation. Why, did you think something else happened - maybe O.J. did it?”

  Nervous laughter from the crowd, and David blushed, then recomposed himself. “No, I think they were killed by the same person who killed Lisa Stevens.”

  That sent the crowd talking. No more murmuring for a while, but actual conversations. It took the Sheriff a few moments to quiet the crowd down, and then he looked at David. “Oh? And how did you make that leap of deductive reasoning, might I ask?”

  “Because someone went through my father’s files at my Aunt’s house. I think it was the same guy who killed my Aunt, and Abe Foreman, and Lisa Stevens. The man that killed my father.”

  Silence.

  No one knew what to make of it, and there was some outright giggling, followed by a swell of laughter. Suddenly, the whole idea struck the crowd as funny, and the laughter grew and swelled and bubbled until David thought he was going to fall over from embarrassment. They might
’ve been laughing at him or this crazy idea of his, or they might’ve just been laughing to let off some steam - there had been precious little to laugh about in Liberty over the past week or so. But either way, they were laughing, and it felt so odd to have everyone laughing at him.

  He started to shout, yelling for everyone around him to shut up. He waved his arms, yelling, and his voice held a power that quieted them, his voice full of honesty and authority. If asked, David’s voice at that moment would’ve reminded a lot of the older citizens of another Beaumont, one long dead.

  The crowd quieted, all except for the sheriff up on the dais, who continued laughing, holding himself. After a moment, he stopped too, and stared at David, a look of sheer pleasure on his face.

  “No, I know what you all are thinking,” he said over the renewed hisses of quiet laughter. “But I’ve looked into it. Back in 1978 the victims were missing…parts of their bodies, and so was Lisa Stevens. She was missing her thumb, and her tongue was cut out.”

  At this, he heard Bethany beside him begin to cry, but he couldn’t stop, not now. Not while they were listening. Others were listening to him or shaking their heads or, even worse, comforting small children or covering their ears so they could not hear what this bad man was saying.

  He held aloft his father’s file, waving it. It was from the box of files sitting next to Bethany. “And how many murders have we had around here? Five in this decade, and now three in two days? I think that Jasper Fines is back, or whatever his name is, and he killed Lisa the same way he killed those people back in the ‘70’s. And then he killed my Aunt and Abe, and while they were dying, he looked through my father’s records and read the file on his case all those years ago. I found dried blood INSIDE this file - do you know what that means? That means someone had to have read this file just after Abe fell and died, and the reader accidentally got some of Abe’s blood on his hands and smeared it when he was turning the pages of the files!”