Collette pursed her lips as she thought about Kiah’s response. Then she nodded and took a drink of her lemonade.
“Speaking of Kenah, she and I would like you to come for dinner, soon. We’ve been inundated with family and it seems like we haven’t had time for our close friends. Things are quieting down a little and we’d love to have you to join us for an evening,” as Kiah explained, the invitation sounded odd in his own ears.
Neither Collette nor Pol seemed to feel the same. They agreed as one and the three of them went about setting a date and time.
Chapter 18
“Settling In”
Nick James sat at the head of the conference table. The scowl on his face was reflected back at him in its polished wood surface. Before him, spread out for panoramic viewing, lay the grisly images of the slaughter that put Nightmare Manor on the national scene. He didn’t really need to look at them to remember the events that took place that terrible night, but it helped him recall the more obscure events from his deeper memory. The terror, the surreality of the entire event, the blood flowing across the tile floor in heavy streams...
Nick shook his head to clear it, for the moment wondering how much of what he was remembering was fact and how much his own creativity had added in for effect.
Hence the photos. Nothing could dilute the stark truth they told. As he slowly picked one up and looked at it, then lay it down and took up another, he remembered the nightmares he’d had the first few weeks after the event. Absently, he wondered if they’d come again.
“Nick, here are those dossiers that you asked for–” Amy said as she strode into the conference room and glanced down at the photos. “Oh, my!” she gasped, dropping the blue folders. They fell flat, covering several of the ghastly images.
Startled, Nick looked up at her. “Oh, I’m sorry! I should have warned you,” he said, putting out a hand to steady her.
Shrugging his help away, Amy said, “I’m fine. It was a shock, is all.”
Nick looked back down at the horrible collage. “Not a good one, either.”
“Nick, why are you poring over those terrible crime scene photos? Don’t you remember what happened last time you did?” Amy asked. She made sure to stand in such a manner that her gaze didn’t easily fall to the tabletop.
With a nod, Nick answered, “No nightmares this time, I promise. Actually, I’m trying to get a sense of who those two kids were. Maybe there’s a similarity in the way the crimes were perpetrated...”
Amy folded her arms. “I thought that the man who did this died at the scene.”
Nick nodded, picked up the blue folders and walked around to Amy’s side of the table. He suspected that she knew he was intentionally guiding her back to the doorway, but was grateful that she let him. As he flipped through the data printouts, complete with recent photos of each victim, presumably from their driver’s licenses, something occurred to him. “There’s really not much here,” he noticed, flipping through the pages again. He shot Amy a questioning glance.
Amy shrugged. “There wasn’t much on them. No prior arrests, no trouble with the police, going to school... nothing remarkable about them,” she said.
“Other than being good, clean cut, American kids?”
Amy managed a weak smile. Before she could reply, the front door buzzer went off.
“Hey, Nick! You here?” Jake’s voice echoed back to them.
“Conference room!”
Amy motioned toward the crime scene photos and said, “Don’t immerse yourself in them this time, all right?” She walked out of the room, passing Jake on his way in.
“What can I do for you?” Nick asked, returning his attention to the dossiers.
Jake glanced around the room at the bare white walls, the dark gray carpet and the table with only a couple chairs around it. Rather than sitting in one, he leaned against the table and took off his sunglasses.
“That your ride parked out front?”
“The Cobra? Of course,” Nick said.
Whistling his approval, Jake asked, “It an original?”
Nick chuckled and set the folder down on top of the photos nearest him. “What? No, not even I’m crazy enough to drive a million dollar car to the office. The original’s at home with the rest of the collection. A firm in Utah provided me with that one.”
“Really? They do great work. It had me fooled.”
Realizing that Jake needed to be dealt with before he could return to the task at hand, Nick said, “Jake, I’m a little into something right now. Is there something I can help you with or did you just come by to say ‘Hi’?”
Jake shrugged. “A little bit of both, I guess.”
Nick nodded and returned to his seat.
“So, Hi, nice car.” Jake paused for effect, then continued. “I was wondering, have the cops gotten back to you? I haven’t heard anything since you bailed me out of that interrogation.”
“The police interviewed Taya yesterday, merely as a formality,” Nick replied, injecting a touch of firmness to his tone. “Beyond that, I’ve had no contact with them. I’m sure that if they need either one of us, Mr. Jackson will let us know.”
“Good point,” Jake agreed, then noticed the photo beside him. He pivoted so that he could better see the image. It was of a woman draped through the space in a white door where a window once resided. From the ragdoll appearance and the wash of blood spilling down the wood and pooling on the floor, it was evident that she was dead. “Hey... I remember this...”
“They’re the crime scene photos from the Manor.”
Jake moved to sit in a nearby chair and began looking at the pictures in earnest. “There’s gotta be dozens here. Are these all from that night?”
“Yep, every one.” Nick leaned forward, moving the dossiers out of the way to reveal even more disturbing images.
Jake picked up one of a heavy young man with a prosthetic eye drooping against his cheek, slashed through the throat. “Why?” The tone in his voice sounded almost accusatory.
The private investigator held the dossiers out to Jake, who accepted them and began to leaf through the pages. After about a minute, he stopped and looked up at Nick. “These are the kids that were murdered. The ones where they found the other half of our wedding invitation.”
“Yes,” Nick said.
“You’re comparing the new murders to the old ones at the Manor.”
Nick could hear an edginess in Jake’s voice.
“Right again.”
Jake waited, letting a pregnant silence grow between them. At last he asked, “Well?”
Nick raked his fingers through his hair and scowled. “Nothing, yet,” he replied. “But I’ve only recently got the information from the police report in those papers you’re holding. Something may come to light, but so far nothing.”
Jake lowered his voice to almost a whisper and asked, “You don’t think that we’re going to have more of that weirdness happening again, do you?”
The question mirrored Nick’s own recent concerns. Those same concerns had lead him to pulling out this old case file.
“I don’t know, Jake. We didn’t ask for it to happen last time, so who are we to think we have any say if it begins happening again. One thing I can say is that if things get... weird... again, we’ll be better prepared to deal with it.”
“Indeed,” Alexander’s deep voice rumbled from the doorway, causing both men in the room to jump in surprise.
Visibly trying to regain his composure, Jake said, “Dude, don’t do that!”
Ignoring Jake, Alexander said to Nick, “I dropped Taya and Nathanial off without incident.”
“Excellent, thank you, Alexander.”
Standing, Jake shook his head and glared at Alexander. “We need to fit you with a bell or something,” he teased.
“So, if there isn’t anything else...” Nick motioned to the mess in front of him.
With a nod, Jake took out his shades. “OK, cool. Well, I’ll see you at the meet-and-greet tomorrow night. And bring that killer ride of yours. I’d love to see it on the road.” As he passed the much taller Alexander, he paused and said, “Maybe a pink one on a collar.”
Nick waved back as Jake left the room. He heard the young man bid farewell to Amy, then the door buzzer sounded again.
Alexander rolled his shoulders, as if to shrug off Jake’s parting comment. “I’m going to get some coffee. Would you like some?”
Realizing that he felt more exhaustion than he would have expected this early in the evening, Nick nodded. “That’d be great, thanks.”
Without another word, Alexander headed down hall to the office’s full kitchen.
The room grew quiet. For the first time, Nick noticed the thick stillness around him. It seemed to close in, heavy and foreboding. He put up with it for several deep breaths, then stood and walked to the doorway.
“Amy, can you pick up a nice stereo tomorrow for the office? The quiet is gonna kill me.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Amy called from her desk in reception. Nick could hear the humor in her voice and he smiled.
Jake paused outside the SIN office, blinking against the bright sunlight. He squinted as he put on his shades, then walked over to Nick’s car. Detailed out in deep black and accented with chrome trim work, the Cobra was stunning. The flowing curve of the hood and fenders guided the eye to the polished silver side-exhaust pipes. From there the eye was drawn to the beefy haunches and tail. The rich black was so deep that it seemed to go on forever.
Typical that Nick would buy an American muscle car built in a Polish Mig factory!
Walking around the car, Jake wondered to himself exactly who he needed to call to get one for himself. After taking in the car from every angle, he nodded his approval and made his way to his truck. A flyer for the Centennial jutted out from under his windshield wiper.
Once inside, he crumpled the flyer and tossed it behind the seat, then immersed himself in SIX:A.M.’s haunting “The Girl With Golden Eyes” as he pulled away from the office.
Alone now, he thought over his quick sit-down with Nick. While it was true that he had no memory of the two recent victims, he realized that due to the sheer number of performers at Nightmare Manor, it was unrealistic for him to remember every single one. Still, he couldn’t ignore the pang of guilt at not remembering them now.
From there, he let his thoughts meander through the chaos of that fateful night. The ease with which Bridger Dameron had slaughtered his friends and companions caught at Jake’s breath. Hearing about Phil and Morgan dying, among so many others... the look in Bridger’s eyes as he had pointed the pistol at Jake’s chest and squeezed the trigger. Sometimes, when the weather changed, the bullet wound in his chest still ached. He doubted the feeling would ever go away completely.
The “weirdness” he had referred to with Nick always made his skin crawl when he thought about it. Lying unconscious in the staff room, bleeding from a gunshot wound, he hadn’t participated in the final apprehension of Bridger, but he had lived it over and over through Taya. Their two year marriage couldn’t survive the constant retelling and analysis of the horrible events and had ended in an amicable, yet painful, divorce. To this day, he still didn’t understand why she had pushed him away and closed herself off. All he had wanted to do was help her. He had loved her, still did, in a way. But she was now little more than a shell of the “good time girl” that he had fallen so hard for. She lived through Natey, now, conceived in rape, yet never once did she regret having him in her life. Many times she had told Jake how grateful she was for the little boy. He didn’t understand how such a ray of bright hope could come from such a painful violation.
It had nearly killed him when she had the restraining order issued against him six months ago. With the details still sketchy at best, he had complied, still aghast that a judge had backed her up on it. Now that it was lifted and he could see Natey again, he couldn’t describe how full his heart felt.
Lost in his thoughts, Jake nearly ran a red light, bringing the Raptor to a sliding halt that squealed the tires along the pavement.
He sat back in his seat, watching the traffic go by, grateful he hadn’t charged straight out into the intersection. Obviously, letting his mind wander while behind the wheel wasn’t a wise thing to do, so he cranked up the rock’n roll, rolled down his window and concentrated on getting home in one undamaged piece.
Chapter 19
“Childhood Trauma”
Lundberg Cemetery had the prestige of being the oldest burial grounds in all of Shadow Valley. Established in the early 1800s, the original of its twelve acres were marked off by a wrought iron gate. On the newer side of the division, a granite mausoleum rose above the ornate gravestones. Resting beneath a broad, heavy wood roof, over three hundred were laid to rest. As a registered historic site, both the original cemetery plots and mausoleum had caretakers that kept them in pristine order.
Seven years old Tommy Chilton stood at one end of the wide marble corridor, internment plots in the walls on each side. At the far end, he could barely see the murky light from the storm outside. Every thunder crash echoed through the halls and any lightning was swallowed up by the deep shadows.
The young boy turned to his mother, Debrah Chilton, who stood beside him, jotting down information from one of the graves into her genealogy notebook.
“Can you believe the luck, Tommy?” Debrah asked as she worked. “I’ve been stuck on this name for months! I can’t believe we found him so close to home.”
Tommy didn’t respond. Long months of experience had already taught him that when his mom was “in the zone”, as she called it, nothing short of the ceiling falling in would distract her. Not even the storm outside could crack her concentration.
Feeling tired and hungry, the little boy wandered over to one of the marble benches and sat. His feet dangled above the floor and he swung them back and forth, pointing his toes to try and touch the shiny floor.
“I’m going to have some great information for the next club meeting,” he heard his mother say.
The hollowness of the corridor gave his mother’s words the sound of talking into a tin can, which he found interesting to listen to. This time, though, he thought he heard something else. It sounded like someone talking a long way away. He decided there must be someone still out at the graves suffering in the cold rain, which made him glad that he was sitting inside. For some reason, the wall plots didn’t bother him nearly as much as the burial plots out in the main part of the cemetery.
There it was again, under the drone of the rain and his mother’s absent humming! Definitely someone talking, only this time it sounded louder and seeming to come from a ways down the main mausoleum corridor.
Curious enough to quell any fear, Tommy hopped off the bench and began to walk down the length of the interior hallway. He trailed his left hand along the smooth marble wall as he did, sometimes brushing his fingers across a name plaque that he didn’t pause to investigate.
The more steps he took, the louder the voice became and the more determined Tommy grew.
As he neared the far end of the mausoleum, he began to slow, paying close attention to where he thought the sound originated. There, three rows up from the ground, it sounded like the voice came from one of the wall burials. Not curious enough to get close and read the name on the plot, Tommy stood back a few steps and listened. He couldn’t understand what was being said, but he knew without a doubt it was a man’s voice. And the man sounded angry. As the pitch and urgency of the man’s cries increased, Tommy began to feel less curious, more alarmed.
“Um, mom,” Tommy called out casually.
Then the front
of the vault shuddered as whatever was inside began kicking at it.
“Mommy!” Tommy yelled, backing up quickly as the violent shuddering ended with the front of the burial plot flying off and crashing to the floor.
Behind him, Tommy heard his mother shriek in terror and he knew he should run to her, but he still couldn’t take his eyes off the macabre scene. He even came to an abrupt halt when he saw a man’s dirty bare feet jutting out of the new opening, followed by his legs and the rest of his body.
The young boy didn’t recognize the tattered clothing, that looked to him like it was a million years old. He did see the crazed look in the young man’s eyes. A look that scared him more than the man’s abrupt entry into the world. Tearing his eyes away, Tommy turned and ran to his panicked mother.
Unable to stop the shaking, Levahn slowly slid into a crouched position, propped up by the wall of the mausoleum. His throat constricted as the host body tried to adapt to the invasion of Levahn’s incompatible soul. Rendered speechless, Levahn simply sat there in the darkness and shook.
Chapter 20
“Tripping the Light”
The atmosphere in the ballroom at the Andrews Homestead felt lively and upbeat.
Jake stood off to one end of the room, watching the members of the Shadow Valley planning commission and their guests socialize.
Music came from the city orchestra, which he’d hired and set up on a platform at the far end of the ballroom. At the moment, they were in the middle of a rousing rendition of “The Lindy Hop”. The upbeat number brought several couples out to the floor to shake things up.
Shannon McKenna stepped into the room and Jake found his eyes immediately drawn to her. Her red hair and fair skin were offset with a deep green, off-the-shoulder dress that caressed her curves down to barely above the knees. A simple gold heart pendant hung from a thin chain around her neck.
Jake felt himself gasp in surprised approval, even as she walked over to him, past the dancers and tables littered with plates of food in varying degrees of consumption.
Heaven's Eyes Page 10