Dead Rise: An Alex Penfield Novel

by Robert W. Stephens

  “What was the boy like this last time?”

  “He was laughing, just like when you saw him. He wants us to find him. Like I said before, it’s much like a game with him.”

  “I can’t imagine he’d ever be found. If they did bury him in the water, his bones have long ago washed away.”

  “Maybe so, but the truth is out there. Someone knows what happened to him.”

  “The dream you had…the one where I was floating in the water. Do you think it was really the boy you saw?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had that dream in a number of days.”

  Penfield thought back to the time he was in the bay. He’d known he was dying. He’d closed his eyes and felt the freezing water wash over him. He’d thought he wasn’t coming back, but he’d cheated death again.

  He thought of Atwater’s dream. He couldn’t understand how he and the old man were so connected. The man had done nothing but help him, but there was still this uneasiness Penfield felt around Atwater. He trusted his visions, yet he didn’t trust the man. He knew that contradiction made no sense, at least not in his mind, but he didn’t know how else to reconcile the conflicted feelings that ran inside him.

  “How sure are you that we have this right?” Penfield asked.

  “You mean about him being buried in the water? He’s shown you and me the same thing. He vanished into the marsh for a reason. It may not be the spot where they dumped him. Maybe that’s why the boat was set on fire. Maybe his family used that boat to dispose of him. You said you saw the figure on the shore. Do you think it was Charles Ray Tatum?”

  “It could have been anybody.”

  Penfield and Atwater spoke for a few more minutes. Atwater told him he intended to stay in Gloucester for a few more days. He said he thought he’d be needed and didn’t want to travel back to Richmond.

  Penfield walked to his car and watched as Atwater drove away. He made the drive back home. The traffic was light at that time of night, so he made much better time than he had on the initial drive to the Tatums’ house. The temperature had dipped into the mid-thirties by the time he got there. Penfield climbed out of his car and walked toward his front door. A burst of cold wind hit him, and it didn’t even feel like he was wearing a heavy coat. He didn’t think he’d actually felt warm since he’d jumped off that boat into Mobjack Bay.

  Penfield went inside and walked immediately back to his bedroom. He tossed his jacket onto a wooden chair and then placed his cell phone and car keys on his nightstand. He entered the master bathroom and turned on the shower. He wanted to get warm as soon as he could, and the shower seemed like the best way to accomplish that. He stretched his back to try to loosen up his stiff muscles. His body was still sore from the incident on the Tatums’ boat, and his head still felt like it might split open at any moment from the concussion he’d received when the boat had burst into flames.

  Penfield was about to climb into the shower when he heard his phone ring. He thought about letting it go to voicemail, but then he thought it might be Emma. He turned off the shower and walked back into his bedroom. He looked at the display on the phone and saw it was Emma calling.

  “Hello.”

  No one spoke on the other end of the phone, but Penfield could hear someone breathing. The breathing sounded strained, as if the person was sick.

  “Emma, are you there?”

  “I have her,” a man’s voice said.

  The voice was somewhat muffled, and Penfield recognized it from the time Emma had spoken with the killer while at the sheriff’s department.

  “Who is this?”

  “Have you not heard what I said? I have her.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You have twelve hours, and then I start returning her to you, one piece at a time.”

  “Twelve hours for what? What is it you want?”

  “Slater knows.”

  “What does he know? I want to help you, but I need to know exactly what you want.”

  “Twelve hours.”

  Penfield heard the man’s heavy breathing abruptly end. He looked at the display and saw the phone call had cut off. He then checked the time on the phone. It was ten minutes to nine.

  Penfield grabbed his car keys and jacket and ran outside toward his car. He called the Gloucester County sheriff’s department as he backed out of the driveway. He got transferred to Slater quickly, and he filled him in on the phone call about Emma’s kidnapping.

  “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Penfield asked.

  “I don’t really know the Tatums, at least nothing beyond this case. I certainly don’t know what this guy wants.”

  “We have twelve hours to figure it out.”

  “You said he used her phone to call you. Is that right?”

  “It is, but he’s probably dropped it on the side of the road by now.”

  “We still have to try to track it. It would be irresponsible not to give it a shot. Where and when was the last time you saw Emma?”

  Penfield told Slater about his encounter with Emma just a couple of hours ago at the Tatum house.

  “So they’re probably still in Gloucester,” Slater guessed.

  Penfield had already assumed that as well, but it didn’t really help them. It was a big county, and they could be anywhere.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Maybe the guy will try to contact me again,” Penfield said.

  “Why are you coming here? I have a dozen deputies here. We don’t need you.”

  “Listen, I’m not going to try to tell you how to do your job, but I want to help.”

  “I can appreciate that, but we don’t need it. A civilian’s presence here will only complicate things and slow us down. You should never have been on this case to begin with.”

  Penfield didn’t try to argue the point. He knew Slater’s kind. He’d seen it a million times before. If Penfield was going to find Emma, he’d have to do it on his own.

  Chapter 23

  The Warehouse

  Twenty-One, November.

  Emma opened her eyes. She looked around, but the room was too dark to make out any details. She could hear the wind, and it sounded much louder than it should have. There was probably an open window somewhere. That would also explain why it was so cold. She was sitting on the ground, and her back was pressed up against a pole or beam, at least she thought it was one of those things. Her arms were tied behind her back, so she couldn’t turn around.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious or even how long she’d sat there after she woke up. Her head and neck throbbed from the attack at the graveyard. Emma eventually heard footsteps behind her. The steps didn’t sound like the normal thud of boots or shoes on smooth pavement or dirt. Instead, they crunched, and Emma thought the person might be walking across gravel or some other rough service.

  The footsteps grew much louder, and Emma knew the person was almost beside her. She heard the person walk around her, and a bright light struck her eyes, blinding her. The light then tilted down and away from her. Emma blinked a few times and looked up at the person. She could make out a tall and dark shape in front of her, but the room was still too dark to make out any other details, even with the powerful flashlight shining just a few feet from them.

  “I told you to stay away. I said my work would be done soon. Why didn’t you leave me alone,” the man asked.

  “You know I can’t do that. I can’t just let you slaughter innocent people.”

  The man kneeled down before Emma. The light was now just a few inches from the floor. It bounced off the cement floor and partially illuminated the man’s face. He had long hair like Charles Ray. He pulled it back. That’s when Emma saw the deformed face. The left side was caved in as if a giant heater had melted away the skin and bone.

  “Why do you assume they’re innocent?” the man asked.

  Emma said nothing. Instead, she concentrated on the man’s face. She could tell he wasn’t wearing a mask.
This was the man’s real appearance. He’d apparently been inflicted with the same disease as Jimmy Tatum.

  “Who is Penfield?”

  “He has nothing to do with this.”

  “I’ve seen him with you. Is he your new partner? Did he replace your beloved Ben?”

  Emma looked away.

  “I called him earlier. I told him my demands. I told him what to tell Slater,” the man continued.

  Emma turned back to him.

  “What do you want?”

  “Do you think Slater will save you? Do you think he cares enough about you?”

  Emma tried to figure out what Slater’s connection to this man might be. She couldn’t think of anything, though. He hadn’t been to any of the crime scenes, nor had he made any public announcements to the press.

  “Why did you kill my partner?”

  “Slater knows. You should have asked him. He could have told you what was happening from the beginning. You’ve been running around in circles while he’s had all the answers.”

  “What are the answers? Why don’t you tell me?”

  “You weren’t supposed to be a part of this.”

  “Who are you? At least you can tell me that.”

  “You know who I am. I already told you.”

  “I don’t believe for a second you’re Jimmy Tatum. People don’t come back from the grave.”

  “But I am him. Don’t I look like him? Don’t I sound like him?”

  He leaned closer to Emma so she could get an even better look at his face.

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  “You’ll be returned to Slater soon, just not all at once.”

  The man stood. He looked down at Emma for several long seconds.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said.

  He walked past Emma and disappeared behind her. Emma listened to his footsteps as he walked out of the room. She was glad he was gone, but now the room was quiet again, and the single source of light was also absent. She counted off several minutes in her mind. Once she assumed she’d given enough time for the man to leave, she started to yell for help. She yelled until her throat was sore and her voice cracked, but no one came.

  ***

  Penfield headed toward Guinea Road and the Tatums’ house. There was a good chance Emma had been grabbed at that location after he and Atwater had left. If she had, maybe there was something he could find that would give him some clue as to where she’d been taken. He knew it was a long shot, but he had no other course of action short of waiting for the killer to call again.

  He saw Emma’s car as soon as he turned onto the Tatums’ block. He pulled up behind it and climbed out. He walked over to her car. It appeared undamaged. He walked a slow circle around the car but didn’t find anything on the ground, nor did he find any evidence that any of her car doors had been forced open. He looked on the front and back seats but didn’t see anything of interest there, either. Penfield didn’t know if that meant Emma had gotten out of her car willingly, or if she’d already been outside when the killer approached her. He looked around the area. The car was completely in the open, and there was a street light ten feet away. There was no way someone could have approached the car without Emma seeing him several seconds in advance. She could have always gotten careless, but he didn’t think that was the case. Emma was an accomplished detective.

  Penfield thought back to their conversation. He and Atwater had said they both thought Jimmy Tatum had never been buried in the coffin. Atwater had even gone so far as to say he was sure the boy had been dumped in the water. He didn’t think Emma would go looking for the boy’s remains. There was no way she’d ever find them, especially at night, but maybe she went back into the woods to reexamine the tiny graveyard. Maybe she felt compelled to try to find some evidence of Atwater’s story about the boy leading him into the marsh beyond the coffin. It would have been easy for someone to attack her there, and she’d never see them coming.

  Penfield walked into the backyard. He walked over to the tree where Atwater had claimed to have seen the boy. Penfield walked around the base of the tree, but he found nothing out of the ordinary. He walked down the full length of the back of the house. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He even saw where someone, presumably Charles Ray, had applied duct tape to the windowpane that had been knocked out.

  Penfield pulled out his phone and called Emma’s number again. He waited for it to ring to see if it was somewhere near the house, but the call went straight to voicemail. Penfield slipped his phone back into his pocket. He looked around the backyard one more time. Everything was in its proper place. He went to the back of the yard and walked along the edge of the trees until he found the opening.

  He headed down the path, walked past the initial graveyard, and made his way to the Jimmy Tatum gravesite, at least the one that the Tatum family wanted people to believe had belonged to their son. Penfield pulled his cell phone back out of his pocket and used the flashlight application to illuminate the ground. He immediately saw a series of shoeprints. He determined they were made from several different people, one of which was probably his own from earlier visits. One of the set of prints appeared to have been made by large work boots. He didn’t think this would be the foot attire from someone with the sheriff’s department. He tried to remember what kind of shoes Charles Ray had worn, but he couldn’t.

  He walked closer to the coffin and saw two small indentations in the soft earth. He kneeled down to get a closer look. He guessed they might have been made by someone’s knees striking the ground. The rounded edge of the prints indicated the person would have been facing the side of the coffin. Penfield panned his light toward the wooden box and saw a dark red smudge on the surface. He moved closer toward it and touched it with the tip of his finger. It was wet and sticky. It was most likely blood. Penfield panned the light around the rest of the coffin but didn’t spot any other blood splatters.

  Penfield stood and pointed his light inside the coffin. He saw a cell phone sitting at the bottom. It was almost certainly Emma’s. He looked at his watch and saw about two hours had passed since the man had called him. He had ten hours left before the killer’s threats would be carried out.

  ***

  The sun finally rose, and Emma saw for the first time where she’d been imprisoned. She was in some kind of abandoned warehouse. She looked around, but all of the equipment and supplies had been removed, so she had no idea what this place had once been in its heyday. She saw two large broken windows about thirty yards in front of her. The windows were high on the wall, and they let in long streams of golden morning light that fell on the floor near her feet. The air was still cold, and her body had been shivering for hours.

  Emma also saw graffiti spray painted across the walls. The letters and images were massive and had been painted in various colors. They were mostly people’s initials, but there was also a drawing of a boat on the water and some sort of elaborate geometric design of thick lines and circles that intersected with one another. Emma didn’t know if the boat on the water had something to do with what this place had been or if it was just an artist’s painting of a familiar Gloucester scene.

  She tried to settle her mind and listen for clues that might let her know where this warehouse was located. She couldn’t hear any automotive or boat traffic through the windows. The only thing she really could hear was the slow dripping of water running off the pipes in the ceiling just above her head.

  She tried to think of some way to talk herself out of this mess once the man returned, but she couldn’t come up with anything. She pulled at the ties on her wrists one final time. All that happened was her back going into the worst spasm of the last few hours. The pain was excruciating, and she tried to shift her body to lessen the agony. She couldn’t move, and the waves of stinging pain kept running through her back and into her neck and arms. She finally broke down and started to cry.

  The man returned to the warehouse as if on cue. Maybe he’d always been
there. Perhaps he’d been hiding somewhere just out of her view and had spent the last several hours delighting at the pain that he’d inflicted on her. Emma heard his footsteps as he approached. He walked around the pole she was tied to and stopped several feet in front of her.

  “He didn’t speak out. He didn’t admit his guilt in this, but I knew he wouldn’t. He doesn’t care about others. I’m guessing you know that already,” the man said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Slater. I’ve been watching.”

  “How do you know? Did you speak with him? Did you even leave here?”

  “He’s done nothing.”

  The man reached behind his back and removed a pair of garden shears that were tucked into his jeans. He kneeled down in front of Emma. She instinctively tried to move back, but she couldn’t.

  “He knew what I would do to you. I made myself clear,” the man said.

  “Please don’t.”

  “I’m sorry, but this is just as much your fault.”

  The man leaned past Emma. His deformed face touched the side of her face. She could hear his labored breathing just a couple of inches from her ear. Her fingers were clinched into fists, and she felt him pull her right index finger away from the others. She then felt the cold metal of the shears on both sides of that finger.

  “I’m sorry,” the man whispered again.

  “Please, don’t do it,” Emma said.

  “I have to. It was a promise.”

  The man squeezed down on the handgrips of the sheers, and Emma felt them cut into the flesh of her finger. She tried her best not to yell, but the pain was too much to bear, and her screams echoed throughout the empty warehouse. The shears stopped when they hit the bone. She heard the man grunt as he squeezed harder until Emma felt the bone snap in two pieces. The man pulled away from her. Emma felt the warm blood rolling down her other fingers and onto the back and palm of her hand.

  The man walked around Emma. She saw him kneel down again out of the corner of her eye. He picked something up and walked back in front of her. He held the severed and bloody finger up.