“Upright and breathing.” I shrugged. “Better than the alternative.”
“Have you been seeing a therapist?”
I shook my head. “What’s the point of that? If a rheumatologist isn’t enough to help me, I don’t think talk therapy will be any better.”
Spaulding nodded and sat back in his chair, glancing at Johnson.
“You know the statistics on this kind of thing as well as we do, Hank,” said Johnson with a grim expression on his face. “You know what we have to do next.”
I grimaced. “Yes, I know. Can you do me a favor, though?”
“What’s that?”
“Can you start people investigating other avenues while you clear me?”
Johnson pursed his lips and looked at me for a moment. “I don’t know that we can do that yet.”
“I was a state trooper for a long time—a decade and a half,” I said. “Doesn’t that buy me some credibility here?” Again, I looked at each man in turn.
Kamphaus wouldn’t meet my eye.
Johnson returned my gaze, slack-faced and empty-eyed. “You were, but you’ve also had a significant amount of stress in recent years. Stress can be tough on a marriage.”
“If you knew my Jane, you wouldn’t be thinking that.”
“And there’s also the PTSD business.” Johnson was looking down at his little pad—one that was very much like the one I used to carry.
“And your career does buy you credibility,” said Spaulding. “We wouldn’t even be investigating this early if not for your background. It’s too soon, and you know that.”
I drew a deep breath and let it out slow. “Okay. I know you have to rule me out.”
Johnson pinched the bridge of his nose and then rubbed his temples. I was willing to bet it had more to do with the bloodshot eyes than the conversation.
“How can I help you do that as fast as possible?” I asked.
“Just be honest and have patience with the process,” said Spaulding.
I shook my head. “I never knew how that sounded from this side of the table.”
“Sorry,” said Spaulding, “but it is the truth.”
“I know, I know. Ask your questions.”
They asked me all the expected questions—where I was earlier this evening, what time I saw them last, who might have seen me driving around, et cetera. I told them about my visit to Evan’s house and gave them the phone number and address.
“Let me ask you this, Mr. Jensen. Where else did you drive to tonight?”
“I told you: I went and looked for them in the neighborhood.”
“And you drove?” asked Johnson.
“Yes.” I gestured impatiently toward the window. “The weather was bad, and I don’t have much endurance these days.”
After a pregnant pause, Johnson just nodded.
“Okay,” Spaulding said. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“The Timmens are involved in this somehow.”
“Your neighbors across the street? Where you found the cape?”
I nodded. “Call it a hunch.”
Johnson glanced at his partner. “Okay.”
“Roberta Timmens was a person of interest in the Hatton investigation.”
“Suspect?” asked Johnson, lifting his eyebrows.
I hesitated and shook my head. “No. She was a potential witness, but we never got to interview her. She was out of town when it all came to a head. And after that, what was the point?”
“What makes you suspect her now?”
“She was a member of Elizabeth Tutor’s bridge circle. She was the only one who wasn’t murdered or abducted. I’d think that if the Butchers wanted her dead or gone, she would’ve disappeared long before now.”
Johnson looked at Kamphaus.
“We’ll look into that,” said Kamphaus.
Johnson turned to look me in the eye. “You know what I have to ask you next.”
“Did I kidnap my own family? The answer is no.”
Three
It was 4:30 in the afternoon and the spring air was crisp and bold. I drove my cruiser through the little town of Marion and beyond, enjoying the rural scenery and country bliss that was Thorndike Road. Yet something nagged at the back of my mind—something dark, violent, and hungry.
I was headed to the safe house. The meal Jane had cooked was bumping around in the back seat. If I knew my wife, there was enough for forty or fifty people. Jane said she wanted us to have a decent supper for once.
Jane wanted to be nice to Mrs. Layne, and I was okay with that. Melanie Layne was sweet. She was only a part of this because she liked to play bridge. Ms. Layne knew who the Bristol Butchers were, though. She’d played bridge with one of them every week: Liz Tutor, that whack-a-doo woman who lived west of Bristol. Chris Hatton’s lover.
The thought of the two serial killers made my blood boil. We’d gotten too close and had tipped our hand. People died because of my mistakes.
I’d be damned if I let them kill Melanie Layne, too. We put her in one of our safe houses with troopers guarding her around the clock. My partner was with her, waiting for dinner.
I turned left into the drive of the safe house, lifting my hand to wave at the old codger sitting on his porch on the right. The man was Richie Duvall, a retired trooper who’d picked up a few shifts helping us guard witnesses by sitting on his porch, watching the road, and drinking coffee.
As my tires crunched the gravel of the drive, the sun dropped like a stone over the horizon. The sky went from late afternoon to full dark as if some mystical stage hand had thrown the breakers for all the lights. A moment later, the moon bounced from the eastern horizon and shot up into the center of the night sky.
The police radio of my cruiser vomited a dollop of static into the car at eardrum splitting volume. It felt like a warning, like someone screaming for me to turn around—to look behind me before it was too late. As the static faded, the radio made a sound like someone was tuning an old AM radio using the dial—a kind of sliding static intermixed with discontinuous voices and music. I reached out to snap the radio off and then jerked my hand back like it had been burned.
The radio was already off. “What the hell is going on here?” I muttered.
The headlights flickered a couple of times and then died, plunging me into the dark shadow the house drew in the moonlight. I hit the brakes and let the cruiser skid across the gravel to a stop. It sounded like a knife blade scraping against bone.
Nothing felt right. Nothing looked right.
Something in the backseat popped like a child’s cap gun. I jumped, cracking my head against the driver’s side window. I twisted around, grimacing at the pain in my neck and shoulders, right hand seeking the Glock on my hip.
It was nothing. One of the glass lids of Jane’s Corelle casserole dishes had slid out of the groove meant to hold it in place. I tried to laugh it off, but I had developed a serious case of the hinkies. I eyed the house, overwhelmed by a feeling that a large predator was watching me—a bear or a lion.
The feeling intensified as I got out of the car. I glanced across the street toward Richie, but he had left the porch, though the lights were blazing inside.
Before I could close the cruiser door, the police radio blared the opening stanza of “The Wheels on the Bus.” I slammed the door to shut out the sound, but I could still hear the words, plain as day. I backed away from the car, watching it as if it were alive. As suddenly as it had started, the song stopped, and an eerie stillness wrapped around me.
I stood very still, hand on the butt of my gun, eyes bouncing from shadow to shadow in the dark dooryard. Behind me, the house sat as quiet as a tomb. There was no sound of chatter, no television noise, nothing.
I turned and swept my eyes across the ground floor windows of the house. They were dark, empty. Dead. Something was wrong, but Richie had waved like everything was normal. I glanced across the street again. Now the lights were out at Duvall’s house. It looked abandoned
.
That couldn’t be right. I’d just seen it all lit up a second ago.
I walked up the three stairs to the back door, trying to be as quiet as a big man could be. I pulled the handle of the screen door, wincing at the rusty shriek of its hinges, and propped it open. I pushed the back-door open, and the ominous feeling intensified. The air wafting out of the house was malignant—pregnant with violence.
There was a slimy, coppery smell in the air. It was a familiar smell. Blood.
“Jax?” I called, trying to keep my voice light. “Jane made dinner. Come help me get it in from the cruiser.”
The only sound I heard was that of fluid dripping. I pulled my Glock out of its holster and held it ready. I stepped into the four-feet by four-feet mud room and froze, straining my ears to hear in the silence, my eyes to see into the gloom.
I slid into the cold darkness of the house and opened the inner door of the mud room. A dark shape lay on the linoleum floor—a dark shape in the form of an elderly woman. Melanie Layne.
My hand scrabbled near the door frame until I found the light switch. Something deep in my mind screamed that I should leave the light off, but I had to see if she was alive.
Soft yellow light washed across the room. She lay there unconscious and handcuffed to the rusty radiator. There was a small trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were pinched closed, but her breathing was regular. I shook her gently by the shoulder, but I couldn’t rouse her.
With my eyes glued to the gloom in the next room, I holstered the Glock and removed the handcuffs. I stooped and scooped Mrs. Layne up, cradling her like a newlywed bride. I backed out through the mud room, placing my feet with care, and then continued out onto the gravel drive.
The air outside was cool and sweet, and it was only then that I realized the safe house smelled like an animal’s den—a meat eater's den.
“That our witness, Jensen?”
I jumped, almost dropping Mrs. Layne, her shoulder length gray hair dancing in the breeze. Richie Duvall stood at my elbow, peering at Mrs. Layne’s face.
“She’s a hottie,” he said.
That wasn’t like him. Richie had always been a straight shooter. “Jesus Christ, Richie. Give a guy a heart attack,” I whispered.
“Gotta die sometime,” he said.
Instead of his service pistol, Richie held a child’s cap gun. “What the hell, Duvall? Where’s your firearm?”
Duvall looked at me like I was a nutcase. “Right here in my hand, Jensen. You wigging out on me?”
“I’m not the one acting like a kid, Richie.” I shook my head. “Can you stand watch out here? I can’t leave her alone, and I have to go back inside and find Jax.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got a TV dinner in the oven.”
“Be serious, Richie! I think Chris Hatton is inside the house.”
Duvall shrugged and reached out to caress Jane’s cheek, her long black hair dancing in the cool breeze. “TV dinners are expensive on a cop’s retirement, Jensen.”
“TV dinners, Duvall?! I said I think Hatton’s in there. What the hell is the matter with you?” This was off script—wrong in all the important details… Jane should be at home with Sig.
He sighed. “I guess I can watch your wife for you. She’s a hottie, after all, but you shouldn’t go back in there and get eaten. Wait for backup, man. Let them get eaten.”
“What in the blue fuck are you talking about, Richie?” I asked, my voice incredulous. “Are you fucking drunk?” This is all wrong.
“Well, I’ve got a TV dinner to tend to.”
“For fuck’s sake, Duvall! I don’t have time for your games. I’ve got to get inside!” I said with a cold disdain.
“’Course y’do. You went inside the first night, too. Don’t get me killed this time.”
The first night? This time? None of it made sense. I stared into his soft blue eyes, struck dumb and paralyzed by the strangeness of it all. But there was something familiar about all this. Something my mind wouldn’t cough up.
“Well?” he groused. “You gonna stand here all night making eyes at me or are you gonna get on with it?”
“Stay with her,” I said, putting Jane down on the gravel and twitching her bangs out of her face. “I’ve got to go inside and find Siggy.” Jax was the one inside, not Sig. “I mean Jax.”
“Yep, I’ll watch your wife. She’s a hottie. But you were right the first time. Siggy’s in there with the beast. Jax is years dead.”
The feeling of déjà vu gone astray surged through me like a bloated spring river breaking its banks. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the only one in this farce who was sticking to the script was me.
As I climbed the steps to the house, my senses kicked into overdrive. The smells of a New England spring evening were almost overwhelming, and the bees buzzed in the woods a couple of acres away. With one last look at Jane’s face, I stepped back into the foul-smelling house. I had my gun out again, holding it ready in front of me.
My gaze was riveted on the black space defined by the open mudroom door. Part of me wanted to glance behind me, for at least one more look at Jane, but my head would not turn. As I put one hand out to grab the handle of the screen door, I saw that the utility room light was off again.
I heard the subtle scrape of an athletic shoe on a wooden floor, and my training took over. I snapped into the “move and shoot” stance that I had drilled to exhaustion. I peered into the laundry room, eyes straining to sift the shadows.
As I stepped inside, all sound ceased. It was like being thrust deep underwater, where the only noise was that of my own pulse beating in my ears. I slid forward on the balls of my feet, muscles as tight as high-tension power lines, nerves crackling. I tried to move like a wolf stalking a rabbit, smooth and quiet.
Something clicked, and the kitchen lights flared, momentarily blinding me.
Bloody tracks of athletic shoes trailed across the blue and gray linoleum and two bodies sprawled on the kitchen floor near the sink. The bodies were dressed in NYSP uniforms, and the faces of both troopers were gone. Blood pooled beneath them, dripping and running in tiny rivulets from bites marks and gashes all over them. The bites in their flesh were savage—not the kind of bite and release marks a human might make, but vicious tears and gouges like those made by a ravenous animal.
My shoulders and neck muscles were tight and burning as if they’d been set aflame. I tried to roll my shoulders, but that only increased the discomfort.
Two dark, gaping doors stood across the kitchen from the utility room, beckoning me.
“Don’t be timid, Hank,” a voice called from beyond the doors. “Come the hell in.” The voice sounded like my partner, Jax, but there was a strange quality to it—too gravelly, too full to be entirely human.
I crept toward the doors. After a brief hesitation, I slid my left foot into the darkness. My eyes struggled to adjust. It had been a smart tactic to turn the kitchen light on like that. My night vision was gone, and the darkness of the room was as effective as a blindfold. With my left hand, I felt around the door frame, looking for a light switch.
“You know I’m armed, and you know how good I am with this pistol,” I said.
“Oh, Hank, you amuse me so. I would expect nothing less than perfection out of you with your preferred weapon.” This time, the voice sounded like my boss, Lieutenant Gruber.
Something shifted in the darkness across the room just as I flicked the light switch on. Bright white light splashed across the bloody carnage on the dining room table in front of me. There was a body on the oval table, broken and twisted, laid out to mimic the gentle curve of the oak. I couldn’t seem to stop my gaze from wandering back and forth across the gruesome mess.
The white of exposed bone, the ripped flesh, the partially congealed blood clothing the body on the table, the expression on the victim’s face—Jax’s face—all told of an agonizing and terrible death.
Chris Hatton was sitting on the opposite side o
f the table, grinning like he’d just surprised me with a birthday cake.
My gaze crawled back to Jax’s lifeless, staring eyes, and I fired my pistol.
Hatton jerked from the impact of the bullet, but he never stopped smiling, never flinched, even as my round ripped through his right shoulder. Fresh blood splattered on the wall behind him as the bullet exploded out of his back.
It wasn’t a killing shot—too high and too far off center—but even so, being shot hurts. Humans react to being shot. They cry out, they clutch the wound, they fall down or slouch to the side. The man across the ruin of my partner’s body didn’t do any of those things.
He laughed.
My stomach felt like I’d swallowed three pounds of lead, and my blood ran cold. Numb from the neck up, I stood there, staring at him in bewilderment. My hands, however, were not confused. They did what I’d trained them to do.
The next bullet smashed into Hatton’s torso, just above his solar plexus. That was a killing shot. Even if death was not instantaneous, it should have put him down in a hurry…but it didn’t. Another bullet slammed into the base of Hatton’s neck, just above the junction of his collarbones. And yet he was still laughing. He hadn’t even paused when the bullets ripped into his flesh. He shouldn’t have been able to breathe, let alone laugh with such abandon.
The Glock wavered in my hand like I’d never held it before.
“Ah, Hank,” said Hatton, wiping at the tears on his cheeks. “This is why I like you so much.” His voice sounded like his throat was full of blood. “You act. You don’t dither, farting around like a little boy. You don’t talk about it, you don’t beg or question why things are the way they are. You just act. Where I come from, that is a trait to be prized.”
My mouth opened, but I had no words. I just stared at him, feeling slow and stupid, both arms drifting down to my sides like balloons with slow leaks.
He held up a blood-speckled index finger as if asking me to pause for a moment so he could catch his breath.
The blood that had been pouring out of him a moment before slowed to a trickle. I shook my head to clear it. “That’s… What in the hell?”
“Nothing so dramatic as that, Hank.” As he said the words, the gunshot wounds closed. His voice already sounded better, strong and full, although he looked ghastly—gaunt and ashen, like a man half-dead from starvation. “But I do come from a place that is as beautiful as your heaven.”
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 3