by Scott Toney
He snatched his jacket and ran out to his car. Pastor Erasmus Pickering would be waiting for him outside Clemency Baptist Church, a large man with skin the color and texture of well-done steak. He always had a good word to say and the one word that grated on Darryl’s conscience was forgiveness.
He could just about forgive the man that flipped him off in Smith’s last Saturday night but not a murderer. Not the man that took his little girl and locked her in his house for two days. Her stories had kept her alive until three o’clock on the afternoon of June 27th.
Three o’clock.
Darryl looked down at the revolver in his hand and up again at an army of dust motes drifting lazily in a beam of sunlight. He could hear the creak of his chair and eleven chimes from the clock in the hall. He wondered what Kizzy heard during those last hours. Rain possibly, pattering against the windows and the bark of a dog somewhere in the distance. Had she thought of him? Had she cried out for him?
Kizzy was in heaven where the bluebells are. And that’s all that mattered.
Morgan Eriksen was locked up in the Penitentiary of New Mexico safe from the outside world. Safe that is, from the revolver in Darryl’s hand. But there would be a day when that monster would have to come outside.
And that day was today.
CHAPTER 3
David shifted his weight in his chair and adjusted his shoulder holster. He sensed something in the air and wanted to leave his hand wrapped round the butt of his revolver. He had interviewed scores of prisoners in his time but none quite like Morgan Eriksen.
He glanced over the victim profile. It had taken the police months to find Morgan and only because a hiker had seen his shiny truck on the Tolby Ranch more than once.
Sandra Adams, 19 / Jaelyn Gains, 17 / Lavonne Jackson, 14 / Mikaela May, 16 / Lyana Durgins, 19 / Serena Pruitt, 18 / Kizzie Williams, 9 / Patricia Eriksen, 21.
Morgan Eriksen stalked young girls. He liked to hang out in school parking lots and watch. He drove a 2008 Chevy Colorado with front fog lamps and alloy wheels and there wasn’t a speck of dirt on it. Funny that, considering he spent a good deal of time driving off-road to the ranch. Lucky Frank Tolby was long dead. He’d be miffed if he thought his ranch was being used as a knackers’ yard.
“So tell me about transformation, Morgan.”
“What part of Africa are you from?”
The question took David by surprise. “Dar es Salaam,” he said flatly.
“Tanzania,” Morgan said as if he was familiar with the region. “You’ve never been there have you?”
“No, I have never been there.”
“What kind of African are you if you have never been to your home town?”
“My home town is Albuquerque,” David corrected. He had never been out of New Mexico in his life.
“Norway is a beautiful country. I used to live there. So many pine trees . . . I love pine trees. Don’t you?”
David wondered if Morgan had been consummately evil since birth, or at least since being a toddler. That’s when the weird stuff happened like setting cats on fire and throwing lighted clods of dung into the next-door neighbor’s open window. There was an incident at Morgan’s high school in Norway. A girl’s hand had been found nailed to a classroom door and some years later, a human heart posted through the open window of a parked car. The man it belonged to was a lecturer in psychology at the University of Tromsø, a lecturer Morgan didn’t much like.
David adjusted his ear-piece and glanced at the two-way mirror. It was the third time Morgan Eriksen had been allowed out of his cell and placed in an interview room where three agents and a doctor in psychology listened behind a sheet of glass. And none of them could make head or tail of it.
“So what made you decide to come to America?” David said, steering the conversation to more general things.
“It’s where everyone goes.” Morgan said “Everyone that doesn’t belong, that is.”
“Have you ever been married?”
Morgan gave a sideways look and raised his chin. “That’s how I got residency.”
“Where is your wife now?” David saw the name Patricia Eriksen in the file and flipped over a few pages to look at her face. Black hair, brown eyes, pretty.
“Well, there’s not much left of her.”
“What’s left?”
Morgan sniffed and raised his lower lip. “Ashes.”
“Did you love your wife?” David assumed it was a valid question. After all, they had been married for four years.
“Yes,” Morgan said with a trace of disappointment. “She asked too many questions. Odin didn’t like that.”
David heard the jarring voice in his earpiece. The boys in the box wanted information on Kizzy Williams not Patricia Eriksen. “Let’s talk about Kizzy. Is that OK with you, Morgan?”
Morgan looked straight at David and nodded.
“Did you drug her?”
“Yes.”
“What with?”
“Sleeping pills and vanilla pudding. It’s better for them. They’re quieter when they’re drugged. I told her Odin was coming in a day or two. She was a little scared I think.”
“Who’s Odin?”
“A god.”
David noted the wide smile on Morgan’s face and couldn’t help thinking he had overstepped something important. He remembered the god Odin in a school report he had done in eighth grade. Odin was said to be the ruler of Asgard and guider of souls. According to the crime scene investigator, Odin’s face had been carved and painted on several tree trunks in the woods.
“What did Kizzy talk about?”
“Her dad. Her sisters.”
“Tell me about her sisters.”
“Nothing to tell. They’re not like Kizzy.”
That was the first time Morgan said her name and there was a strange light in his eyes when he said it.
“Did you like her, Morgan?”
“Yes, she was brave. I liked her stories.”
Kizzy was a great talker according to her dad. It had kept her alive longer than the others, two days longer if David had calculated right. The others were all dead within nine hours of their kidnapping although Morgan never admitted to killing them.
“What kind of stories?” David watched the shudder on Morgan’s temples and the dry swallow in his throat.
“There was one I remember. It was about a ghost town in San Miguel County. Trementina it’s called. Do you know it?”
“Yes,” David said.
It was his turn to be monosyllabic. All he could hear was the gentle soughing of the air conditioner and he turned his ear towards Morgan, soaking up every last word.
“She and her dad went to Trementina a year ago,” Morgan said, a little brighter this time. “They say an epidemic swept through the town in 1901 killing many small children. She said you can still hear groaning in the wind and children crying. At least she could.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Yeah, I hear it sometimes down by the ranch.”
“Do you think of her when you hear it?”
Morgan clenched his jaw and sighed loudly. “Sometimes.”
Good, David thought. Because sometimes is going to turn into always.
“She said every time she saw a ruined house she felt sad. I told her it was the residue of what was left behind, a little part of their personality. That’s the part I like to keep.”
David had found body parts in that commercial fridge. Fingers, hair clippings, souvenirs of those he killed. The defense psychologist ruled that Morgan had acute distress disorder and PTSD, both of which were thrown out by the jury. The same jury deliberated for less than three hours and gave him the death penalty.
“She was worried her father would miss her,” Morgan said, eyes burning with a rekindled fire. “I told her people sometimes disappear without a trace. They simply vanish.”
David wanted to shake his head. People didn’t simply vanish not unless they were sucked
up in a rotating vortex and dumped in a flying saucer. And what was the betting this nutcase had told Kizzy that?
He studied Morgan a little more closely. He was not dirty looking like a vagrant, not even when they picked him up. In fact, he was freshly shaved with a pressed white shirt and jeans. There was a smell of soap about him and if it wasn’t for an armful of tattoos peaking through the cotton of his sleeves, you would have thought he was an advertising executive.
“She said she could feel them in that place,” Morgan continued, “like warm breath on your face when no one’s there.”
“Kizzy said that?”
“She wanted to see the flagstone houses, the corrals, the outhouses. She wanted to touch every stone in case she could see them. But there was nothing left and it bothered her.”
Kizzy’s words were articulate if indeed they were Kizzy’s words. But what were the words of a nine year-old, a scared nine year-old?
“She wanted me to believe she wasn’t afraid.”
“Wasn’t afraid of what, Morgan?”
“Me.”
The last word was chilling. Kizzy had to have been terrified of Morgan because he was her abductor. He was a stranger. The one thing she had been warned not to talk to.
“Did you believe her?” David asked.
“Yes, until Wednesday morning.”
And then something changed.
CHAPTER 4
Darryl drove down State Road 14, a cracked stretch of tarmac west of Oro Quay Peak. The landscape was lightly dusted in snow and bloated clouds overhead threatened to spill rain. He remembered a time when he was a child hiding out in an arroyo with a homemade bow. Between the silvery heads of Apache plume, he watched the coyote as it scavenged on the dry river bed, vulnerable, unsuspecting. Pulling the draw string to his cheek, he watched the arrow as it cambered and fell, striking the animal in the throat. He wasn’t afraid then, and here he was dreading the interview like he dreaded his first day at middle school. Only he wasn’t a child anymore. He was an adult.
With a gun.
Pastor Razz shifted beside him and yawned. He’d been asleep most of the way since they left Albuquerque and now he had an odd grin on his plump face. “Nice car, son. Pink is it?”
“Cabernet red,” Darryl stressed. The 1964 Comet had once been his father’s toy.
“I had a dream,” Razz said, pretending to look at the sagebrush. “Mighty revealing it was.”
Darryl grinned, hoping it wasn’t one of those prophetic dreams. They always seemed to give Razz x-ray vision after he’d had them. He looked out at a speckled wilderness regimented with green piñon trees and cone-shaped hills. The remains of a white fir lay embedded by the side of the road, bark calcified like the bones of some prehistoric animal. And sagebrush . . . he hated the sagebrush. He couldn’t stand the smell.
“You’re all teeth and no brains,” Razz said. His wide face was stern and there were more jowls on him than a bulldog. “Just ‘cause you got flow-through turbo mufflers doesn’t mean you can go faster than the speed of sound. This ain’t no runway.”
Darryl darn-well wished it was. He’d be flying by now.
“Just cruise and you’ll get there just as quick,” Razz said, patting his gut. “You look tired, son. And pale.”
Pale? That would be a miracle, Darryl thought, especially for a man rooted in the Deep South, the darkest South that is.
“You’re scared, that’s what it is. You’re scared of that little red notebook and what she saw.”
“I’m scared of what I might do,” Darryl whispered.
“I spoke to the detective,” Razz said. “He says all you have to do is sit still behind a sheet of glass and listen. It’s what you wanted.”
It was exactly what Darryl wanted. He wanted a close look at this Morgan Eriksen so he could take a potshot at him.
“Where did you get that suit from?” Darryl said, changing the subject.
“Where I get all my suits from,” Razz said, pulling on the brown lapels and adjusting a wide tie with a crab on it. “Thrift. At least I don’t walk around with my fly undone.”
That was the thing with Razz. He loved a leg-puller now and then. Truth was the suit had some serious shine on, especially around the butt.
“It’s nearly lunch,” Razz said. “We should pull over and eat our sandwiches.”
“Sandwiches?” Darryl was hoping for a decent meal at José Cabañas. And here they were, two cool dudes in their Oaklies, about to spread a picnic rug on the wide shoulder.
“Pull over,” Razz repeated.
Darryl thought Razz sounded a bit miffed and pulled over. There was something in his tone that he didn’t much like and he couldn’t remember a bag of sandwiches in Razz’s sticky paw when he picked him up.
He knows what’s in that icebox, you moron.
The passenger door flew open and Razz stood there glaring at him. Either he wanted to chew Darryl out or he was passing a truckload of gas. “You think I’ve got a brain smaller than a walnut?”
The thought had never occurred to Darryl as he gripped the wheel. He admired Razz, if he was honest, only he was mean when he just woke up and this was one of those times.
“I know what you’re hiding,” Razz said, pointing at the icebox on the back seat. His face was all twisted as if a dog had left something strange on his porch. He leaned against the door and the Comet almost lurched under his weight. “It’s not worth it. You’ll get bleeding ulcers and die of a heart attack. And you’re only forty-two.”
“Who says?”
“God says.”
“God should mind His own business,” Darryl said, regretting the day he ever went to church. He had been compelled to answer an altar-call in 1994 and he’d been pretending ever since.
“Jesus loves you,” Razz said. “You know that and so do I. Trouble is, He also loves that homicidal maniac we’re about to see.”
“That’s His problem, not mine.”
“Let me tell you what your problem is. Kill Morgan Eriksen and you’ll be the next dead-man-walking, furry slippers and all.”
Darryl had never led a lawless life and the thought of doing time in a six by eight foot cell was not what he had in mind.
“I’m talking about the gun you got in that cooler,” Razz said, pointing at the back seat.
“Oh, don’t tell me. God’s got eyes in the back of His head.”
“He’s got eyes for you my son.”
“Then he’s a snitch.”
Razz stroked his tie and took a deep breath. “So you do have a gun in that cooler.”
Darryl wished he’d kept his big mouth shut and worse than that; the gun was wrapped in a Subway wrapper and made to look like a meatball marinara.
“You’ll never get past the x-ray machines.”
They’ve got x-ray machines? Darryl opened his door and got out of the car. He needed time to think. It was the coldest January in history and he grabbed a black ski jacket off the back seat. He thought he could smell burning piñon in a wood stove, a rich fragrance that reminded him of Santa Fe. But there was nothing out there except brush and sand.
“You’ll get high blood pressure,” Razz assured, looking up at the sky. “And you’ll wind up dead just like Kizzy.”
“Anything’s better than this,” Darryl said, walking over to Razz. “Is it wrong to want to die?”
“It’s only wrong if you want to do yourself in,” Razz said, putting a hand on Darryl’s shoulder. “Life’s a gift. It would be wrong to waste it.”
Darryl didn’t want to die if it meant sleeping for eternity in a pit blacker than a manhole. He’d rather be doing things. And he didn’t want to do himself in. He’d likely miss even if he tried. “Do you think of dying?”
“I look forward to it. It’ll be like running into a Pro Football Stadium and hearing thousands of voices cheering you on. That’s what real champions do. The grass would be greener of course, none of those brown patches and weeds. And your dad w
ould be sitting in the front row telling you to pull your fly up for the umpteenth time.”
Darryl managed a light chuckle. “And Kizzy?”
“She’ll be in the royal box, son, waving a medal. You got plenty to live for. And you need to go back to church. You’ll be a free man if you do. Do yourself a favor. Don’t pull the trigger. You couldn’t hit a deer at ten yards.”
“I could.”
“Nah, you’d shoot your foot off.”
Darryl frequently missed the target at the shooting range but at least he practiced once a week. He’d been practicing for a day such as this . . .
“What about your girls?” Razz said, jutting his chin at the car. He climbed in and pulled out a brown paper bag from under the passenger seat.
Darryl hadn’t thought about his surviving daughters much. He hadn’t thought about his sanity either. He walked back to the driver’s seat and stared through the rear-view mirror. A car shimmered on the horizon, trickling towards them with a trail of exhaust fumes. “So you did bring sandwiches,” he said, mouth watering at the thought.
“Ham and mustard, my son,” Razz said with a big white smile. “I made them myself.”
CHAPTER 5
David sat alone in the interview room and looked at his watch. It was twelve-thirty and it felt like evening. The weather forecast had predicted snow and he hoped Darryl Williams would make it in an hour. Darryl wanted to come face-to-face with his daughter’s murderer and face-to-face meant sitting behind a sheet of glass. As for the little red notebook, he was mighty reluctant to hand it over. He turned a tear-stained page and a deep and gnawing sadness began to build inside. David saw a vision through the wooden slats of a barn wall, a vision Kizzy had the day she died.
Monday, 6/25. M brought me another pudding. I don’t like the taste. I’m thinking it’s got something in it that makes me sleepy. I’m in a small room in a barn, dad. I can see through the wall and its light outside. I found this notebook in the straw. I hope you can read it.
Tuesday 6/26. M took me to choose a tree. He said we could go fishing so I told him about our holiday. I told him about Jesus but he doesn’t know Him. He says I’ll believe in flying saucers next. Its night now and there’s a light on in the barn and the fridge makes a noise. I can see a girl lying on a table wrapped in a blanket. She’s not moving. There’s a man with a knife and I can hear voices. I’m really scared, dad. I don’t want to look. But I saw what he did to her. I’ve been sick. M’s coming. He’s got food again.