The Toymaker

by Sergio Gomez

  Of course, there wasn’t anything down here.

  Those darn kids and their crazy story of the man in the rabbit mask had him spooked.

  You’re too darn old to be spooked by kid’s stuff, Bob. He chided himself.

  Better safe than sorry, though.

  Bob hit the light switch near the door that turned the two floor lamps on. Their light flooded the living room. He scanned the area before proceeding, to try to decide where someone might be hiding.

  Behind the couch?

  He made his way to the one facing the television, tiptoeing to it, even though he knew he was being silly. There was a gap between it and the wall where a grown man might be able to hide behind. Bob checked there.

  But there was nothing there. Not even a dust bunny, Wilma was a clean freak like that.

  He sighed.

  Better silly than dead, he thought, as he turned around.

  The thought disappeared from his mind as quickly as it came, because the next moment he saw the corner closet door fly open. A man with a rabbit mask popped out from behind it.

  Bob’s eye was drawn away from the strange mask to the shimmering object the man clutched in his right hand.

  A knife.

  The panic set in and the adrenaline pumped through him.

  The speed of how this was happening before his eyes made no sense, because as slow as the man seemed to be coming at him—so slow he could have taken the time to read the name of the brand of the knife written on the side of the blade—it was also happening fast.

  The man lunged at him. Bob reached out to grab the man’s hand with the knife, and the next thing he knew he was falling over from the man crashing into him.

  He felt a hot pain explode in his lower back as they hit the ground. The pain from the impact paralyzed him.

  Another flash of hot pain went through his body as his attacker gained the advantage. This time, it was in his stomach.

  It was easier to knock the huge man over than he thought it would be.

  Big Bob screamed as they went to the ground, and his whole body tensed up.

  It was the back problems, of course. Raymond knew about that because he’d seen the man struggle to get in and out of his truck every day. The Achilles heel of a man that surely outweighed him by sixty pounds, and the reason he went over like an unbalanced armoire.

  Down on the ground, Raymond snatched his wrist free from Bob’s grip and drove the blade into his stomach again. Big Bob’s eyes grew as the blade punctured his liver. He’d been gripping Raymond’s sleeves when they hit the ground, but now both hands loosened up as the knife burst the organ like a grape.

  Raymond pulled the knife out, and stabbed him a third time, this time with more patience and precision—right in the heart.

  Both of Big Bob’s hands shot out to defend against the attack, but he’d been too slow. Even still, his hands gripped around Raymond’s stabbing arm for a few seconds, then fell as the life drained out of him.

  Big Bob’s legs kicked several times, and in the stillness of the sleeping house it may as well have been someone playing drums.

  The realization that he needed to get out of here hit him as Bob Harper’s lifeless body went limp.

  Raymond pulled the knife out and got up. He took half a second to see the damage; blood dripping out of his midsection and blood dripping out of his chest. And lots of it pooling on the floor already.

  It would’ve been easier to hit him over the head and take him like he did to the Crimp boy, but once again the guiding force had put him on the correct path. At the last moment before leaving the house, he’d decided the knife would be a better weapon against someone as heavy and strong as Bob Harper.

  He was kind of glad he didn’t have to bring him back home. Butchering and cleaning up a dead body were a doozy of a chore.

  Now, that wouldn’t be his problem. His problem was to get out of here before someone came down and spotted him.

  Raymond ran out of the house through the backdoor as fast as he could, letting the guiding force take the reins.

  There lay Big Bob, a bloody, dead mess.

  Oh, fuck.

  Jamie heard the backdoor slam shut. His first priority was seeing if Bob was actually dead or if by some miracle hanging on to life by a thread. If there was still life in him, then he’d call 9-1-1 for an ambulance before chasing whoever it was that had just left out of the kitchen door.

  He’d been killed by the back window in the living room, the one that overlooked the backyard, so he could at least afford enough time to look out and maybe catch a glimpse of whoever had broken in.

  Jamie darted to the window, and couldn’t believe what he saw. The silhouette of a tall man wearing bunny ears running into the backwoods of their house. The motion light had come on as the man ran through the yard, but he was far out of the circle of its light by the time Jamie spotted him. The long ears protruding out of the top of the mask were unmistakable, though.

  The guy with the same mask as the one that had taken Jarod.

  What the hell is going on?

  There was no point in chasing him down. He was going to get away with that much of a head start.

  Jamie spun around and crouched down over Big Bob. He picked his wrist up and felt for a pulse, just to confirm what he thought.

  Of course, there was no pulse.

  “Fuck.” Jamie jumped up to his feet and went over the phone in the kitchen to call the police for the second time tonight.

  Chapter 26

  Sheriff William Harris climbed down from the Harper’s porch steps. They’d woken him up out of a dead sleep to come out for this. Part of the job description, but being woken up in the middle of the night was something he’d never learned to like. The Sheriff of Dutch County had to be available for the big cases no matter what time of night they came in, though. Things didn’t get much bigger than a home invasion that ended in murder.

  His deputy had told him about the scene here before. Kids seeing a man running away in a bunny mask, kidnapping another kid from the neighborhood. The deputy had written it up as a prank, and Sheriff Harris couldn’t blame him. He would’ve done the same. This was Dutch County. Stuff like that didn’t happen here.

  Neither did murder.

  Of course, the part that didn’t make sense was that Jamie Harper had been the one to make the call. Why call it in to the cops, if it was just a prank? That could’ve just been him putting on a show for Wilma since she’d come out at the tail end of it all and saw the boys panicked after it’d happened.

  But now, there was a dead body.

  The first responders had Big Bob Harper in a body bag, stabbed three times, and loaded into the back of a truck, ready to be taken to the Dutch County morgue.

  Sheriff Harris slid into the driver’s seat of his cruiser, where Deputy Dwayne Smith sat waiting for him.

  He took his hat off and threw it in the back seat. The short walk from the porch steps to the cruiser had him sweating. It must have been his damn blood pressure acting up.

  With the sleeve of his shirt he wiped his brow. “The first responders found no distinguishable footprints in the backyard where the boy said he saw the man running into the woods.”

  “Hmm,” was how Deputy Smith always responded when he was thinking.

  William flipped through Smith’s notebook, to the pages of notes he’d taken earlier in the day. To make sure that this wasn’t some nightmare he was in, and that the pages weren’t blank. That he wouldn’t wake up in bed, with his arms wrapped around a pillow, sweating from bad dreams that had his heart working double time.

  But no, the pages weren’t blank. The notes from earlier were there, and it seemed like reality in this case was the nightmare.

  “It rained earlier,” the Sheriff said, “but the team said the dirt was too hard in some spots for footprints.”

  “Hm.”

  “The rabbit killer guy happened to run on these spots, so there’s nothing in the backyard.”
/>   The Sheriff looked up from the notebook to see what his deputy was thinking, and the deputy was looking back at him. Neither one had to say it, but there was something fishy about the boy’s story.

  “The little brother saw the rabbit killer when he saved them from the Crimp boy?” The Sheriff asked.

  “Yeah. That’s what he said,” Deputy Smith said. “But not this time?”

  The Sheriff shook his head. “This time it was just the older brother—Jamie, who first found Big Bob Harper dead.”

  “What was Big Bob even doing in the living room at this hour?”

  “Mrs. Harper said he was having trouble sleeping ever since he hurt his back. He’d occasionally get up to stretch his back and walk around the house. Sometimes outside if the weather permitted.”

  “Would the boys know about that?”

  “Bob Harper hurt his back about five years ago. He told everyone in town and their grandmother about it when it happened. Wouldn’t shut up about it, actually. So, yes, I think the boys would know about his nightly strolls.”

  “Hm.”

  “‘Hm,’ indeed, Dwayne.”

  “You thinkin’ what I’m thinking, Sheriff?”

  “Both calls were from the older boy. The younger one only saw the rabbit-killer when the Crimp boy was taken. Something tells me the older boy was up to no good, and convinced his little brother to go along with it.”

  William flipped back to the first set of notes. “The Harper boy and the Crimp boy had some sort of rivalry—from the older Harper boy’s own admission.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gets more interesting. Something that isn’t in your notes.” The sheriff closed the notebook and tossed it onto the dashboard. “Before the boy left for the Army, he called in to report Big Bob on abusing his brother.”

  Deputy Smith had seen the shiner on the younger boy’s eye when he was here earlier. They’d been questioning the whole family on the porch. It wasn’t relevant to the incident, so he didn’t think anything of it at the time. Kids got shiners, sometimes. The older brother had been beat up too, though, and now he was thinking maybe he should’ve asked a few more questions.

  He gulped. “I don’t like how this is adding up, Sheriff.”

  “Boy comes back into town, trained by the Army. Starts to pick off those that he had unresolved issues with. Comes up with a bizarre rabbit killer story that there’s no traces of. Only person who has seen this mysterious man is him and his little brother. Yeah. I don’t like how it’s shaping up, either.”

  “Yeah,” Dwayne said. “Any reports of PTSD?”

  “No way we’ll get that. Army’s too tightlipped about stuff like that. So as far as we know, nope, no PTSD.”

  “Can we make the arrest?”

  Sheriff William reached into the backseat where his hat was. Before putting it back on he wiped his brow dry again. “Until this rabbit killer shows up, or someone other than the little brother reports seeing him, Jamie Harper is suspect number one.”

  PART FOUR

  DISTURBANCE ON DUDLEY STREET

  Chapter 1

  There was a feeling in the air when they woke up, like a disturbance had happened in the world. Only the children connected to Lucas could feel it, though.

  Victor felt strange all the while he and his mother shopped for ingredients for the pies for Thanksgiving.

  Jack felt it while he and his dad and Maria were downtown exploring the shops.

  Tommy felt it as he watched television in his living room, and it was something more than just a lack of sleep last night. Though, he wasn’t sure what it was.

  Gina felt it the moment the ringing phone woke her.

  “H-hello?” Her voice croaked with sleep.

  “Gina, it’s Twist.”

  He sounded strange, like he’d been crying all night or something. “What’s up?”

  “Meet me out ‘in the spot’. It’s urgent.”

  “What? What’re you talking about, Twist?”

  “Just meet me there, okay? I’ll tell you everything.” He hung up without giving her a second to respond.

  “Rude.” She said, then slammed the phone back on its cradle.

  But there was something wrong in the air, and she had a strong suspicion that Twist was feeling it, too. With an urgency that matched her friend’s voice, she got dressed.

  Twist clutched the phone as hard as he could while waiting for someone to pick up at Jack’s house.

  No answer.

  He looked out of his window and saw the Toyota wasn’t in their driveway across the street. They must have gone out.

  Victor hadn’t been home either.

  All that was left was to ring Tommy.

  He dialed the Marino house. Mrs. Marino picked up, with the television blasting loudly in the background so Twist wasn’t sure if either one of them could hear the other.

  “Hello, Mrs. Marino? Is Tommy home?” he asked, talking as loudly as he could without shouting into the receiver.

  “Who? Tommy? —Tommy, turn that down, will ya?” she said.

  Twist asked for Tommy again, and then he heard the phone shuffling as she passed it over to him.

  The TV could still be heard in the background, but it was turned down lower. “Yo, who is this?”

  “It’s Twist.”

  “Oh, what’s up, Slick? This better be good, I’m watching—”

  “Can you make it to my neighborhood?”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible. Something happened last night.”

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down, Twist. What’re you talking about?”

  “I have to tell you guys, all of you, I think it has something to do with us going into the tunnel yesterday.”

  “Okay, you’re obviously just bugging yourself out, little man. Calm down and—”

  “Tommy, shut the fuck up.”

  Tommy felt as if someone had just shoved him across the room. Twist wasn’t one to be aggressive with people, and especially had never been aggressive with him like this. He was at a loss for words.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be mean like that,” Twist said. “But I’m not freaking myself out. Just come into town, fast. It’s serious man, my brother’s in jail.”

  “Your brother? Jamie?”

  “Yeah, hurry up.”

  Before Tommy could respond, the line went dead.

  Jamie Harper was in town, and he’d been arrested before Tommy Marino even got the news that he was back from the Army.

  That must have been a damn world record. He couldn’t even imagine Pauly doing something like that.

  Tommy shut the television and VCR off, then jumped off the couch. He went to the front door, snatching the keys to his motorbike off the key hanger.

  “I’m going out, Ma!” he yelled as he jetted out the door.

  Chapter 2

  Jamie found himself in the Dutch County jailhouse, and it’d been less than twenty-four hours since he’d been in town. Maybe this was the town telling him to stay the hell away from it, that this place was no good for him.

  Joining the Army had been a wise choice, considering if he stayed, who knew how much worse things could have gotten? Maybe he really would’ve killed Big Bob.

  It didn’t matter though, because Big Bob was dead now, and he was in a cell, arrested for suspicion of murdering his own stepfather. They were also pinning Jarod’s disappearance on him.

  Whelp, this is how it ends for Jamie Harper. An innocent man accused of double homicide getting the needle.

  This was the kind of stuff he always read about in the newspaper. A man who’d been convicted of murder, but he continued to proclaim innocence until his final heartbeat. Jamie always wondered why they didn’t just lie and cooperate with the police and try to avoid the death penalty, but now that he was wearing the shoes, he knew the answer.

  There was more on the line than your life. Lying about killing your own stepfather—as much as he resented him—was a bigger pill to swallow when it
was you. He could only imagine what Twist and his mother would think about him if they thought he really did kill Big Bob. They would never be able to forgive him, maybe even hate him, thinking he came back to town just to murder people. He’d rather die an innocent man than live with that hanging over his head.

  Some things really were worse than death.

  Before he could go further down these dark thoughts, the door at the end of the room from the holding cell was opened.

  The keys attached to Sheriff William Harris’s belt loop jangled as he walked down the hall. The footsteps of both his boots and Deputy Smith’s echoed off the empty walls.

  Jamie thought maybe he was one of five people that had ever been in this isolated part of the jail, and the shininess of the metal bars keeping him in this space suggested he may be right about that.

  There was disappointment in the sheriff’s eyes. That, plus a look of a man who had to do something he didn’t want to.

  “Good morning, son,” he said, grabbing a chair behind him and pulling it toward him to sit on it.

  Deputy Smith did the same, except without the pleasantry.

  Good cop, bad cop.

  Jamie was ready for anything they would try to throw at him.

  The sheriff sighed as he ran a hand through his hair, then said, “We spoke to both Mr. and Mrs. Crimp. Their son hasn’t come home yet. Now, it hasn’t been even a day yet, but something tells me he won’t be showing up.”

  “What’re you suggesting, Sheriff?” Jamie stared at him with cool eyes.

  The way the Sheriff’s eyes moved, ever so subtle but the movement was there, told Jamie they weren’t going to treat him with kid gloves. That was fine by him, because he wasn’t expecting it.

  “You and your little brother were the last ones to see him,” Sheriff Harris said.

  “No, the man with the rabbit mask was the last one.”

  The two men looked at one another.

  “Right,” the Sheriff said, “the rabbit killer.”

  “You don’t believe me about that?”