Shocker

by Randall Boyll

  Jonathan scooted forward, reaching down again. He snagged Don’s hand and tried to hoist him back up to the safety of the catwalk. Don seemed to be having convulsions, his knees jerking up, his mouth hanging open while foul-smelling smoke blew out. Jonathan knew Don had only seconds to live, and pulled with all the strength he could find.

  Smoke boiled out of Don’s chest then, a familiar spurt of orange and black gas that twisted itself into something recognizable, something hideous.

  Pinker.

  “Okay, asshole,” Pinker snarled at him, floating in the black night, a glowing specter made of light and noise and hate. “I’m going nationwide now.”

  He began to disintegrate, molecule by molecule, flowing into the jet stream of electrons, his face twisting up with that awful, self-satisfied leer, the one he had worn in Jonathan’s house when he joined the wiring and turned the place into a house of horrors.

  There was a bright, brittle snap, and Pinker was gone, a blue streak shooting across the night sky that slowly faded to nothing.

  Jonathan pulled Don up, dragging him onto the catwalk with energy he no longer had. Then he collapsed beside him, panting, imagining that this must be what death was like.

  Don mumbled something. Jonathan pushed himself up on one shaking elbow, looking into Don’s pain-weary eyes. “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Don gasped. “I didn’t know how to get him out of me.”

  “But you did it,” Jonathan said. “I never even knew you had a bad heart.”

  Don smiled weakly. “I don’t. You know that, I know that—but Pinker didn’t.”

  Jonathan smiled back. Below them, the sound of sirens drifted up. Help was on the way.

  Chapter •

  Thirteen

  Seven days later, ace reporter Walker Stevens was on the scene of yet another crime. The camera was on, the sound man had given the thumbs-up, and it was just about time to Interrupt This Broadcast with yet another news special on Channel 8, WPIN. The news was far from good. The cops nosing around looking for clues would find only a big portion of Walker Stevens’s supper somewhere near the house. Walker himself was not in very good shape, despite the customary visit to the hedges; this murder stuff was getting too damned bizarre. The whole family was of course dead, mangled, dismembered, guts and blood tossed around the living room like so much wet confetti. This time there had been a message written in smeary blood on one wall, giant letters that looked as if a very large and industrious kindergarten kid had used red fingerpaints by the gallon.

  None of this was especially more gruesome than the other murders, but one thing had stuck in Walker’s craw, and threatened to stay there permanently.

  The killer had also slaughtered the family pets this time. A dog, couple of cats, a hamster. Even the goldfish were dead, and as one cop remarked, the water was still too hot to touch.

  How in the hell do you boil goldfish in an aquarium? How the hell do you report these crimes again and again without losing your mind? Maryville was in the grip of a super-duper mass murderer, and as always this little tidbit of information would come to the people via Walker Stevens, always Walker Stevens. Lately people had taken to calling him names on the street. Nobody wanted to hear this shit anymore. That Jonathan Parker kid had been caught almost in the act. But now, this fresh atrocity, and you could bet your ass the kid had an alibi.

  So who was doing it?

  “Go on cue,” the sound man said. “Ready?”

  Walker swallowed. There seemed to be yet a bit of supper lodged in his plumbing somewhere. God help his career if he upchucked on live TV.

  The sound man raised a finger. “Three, two, one. You’re on.”

  “Hello, Maryville. This is Walker Stevens reporting live from 1415 Margaret Street, where yet another mass killing has been discovered. With the arrest of young Jonathan Parker last week, increasingly implicated in the murders following the electrocution of Horace Pinker, the horror seemed to be over.”

  Behind him the coroner’s people began carting sheet-draped bodies out of the house. The cameraman swung around to follow the action, giving Walker a reprieve. After they’d been loaded, the camera swung back.

  “But last night an apparent copycat murderer struck Maryville, killing an entire family and leaving an obscenely grisly threat to Jonathan Parker scrawled on the wall, signing the name ‘Pinker.’ Police are further baffled because there was no sign of forced entry. It seems apparent that the family was awake and watching television when the killer struck.”

  A cop came out dragging the carcass of the dog, good old Rover or Fido or whatever, onto the porch and down the steps. Doggie’s head thumped on the wooden steps. Walker’s stomach gave a lurch.

  “Meanwhile, Jonathan Parker has been released by authorities following the testimony of his father, police Lieutenant Donald Parker, who, although suffering from severe microwave burns, was able to give testimony that his son, Jonathan, was not only innocent but had saved his life.”

  Another cop came out. He was holding two mangled, dripping cats by their tails. He tossed them in the trunk of his cruiser. Walker’s plumbing began to rumble.

  “Indeed, police lab reports confirm that the deaths of football coach Sydney Cooper and student assistant coach Roy ‘Pac-Man’ Stuart now appear to be the result of a murder-suicide. Incredibly, Sydney Cooper is the prime suspect in those deaths, since it was his fingerprints alone found on the murder weapon. We’ll have more details tonight at ten.”

  The cop slammed his trunk and went inside. A few seconds later he came back out, staggering under the weight of a large rectangular aquarium. He dumped it out on the lawn, cursing at himself and the still-hot aquarium. Boiled fish sluiced across the grass. One slid up to nudge Walker’s left wing tip. One dead and boiled eye stared up at him. He looked down at it while his insides roiled.

  “Now, back to our regularly scheduled program, still in progress.”

  He threw his mike at the sound man. He gave the camera a wave to make it go away. He tossed his remaining cookies on the fish.

  Just another day in the life of Walker Stevens, daring reporter.

  Jonathan shut the TV off and surveyed the men in his apartment, looking grim and haunted. In front of him half the university football team was assembled, volunteers for an ugly job. They stared back at him, waiting for directions.

  “Coach didn’t do it, guys,” Jonathan said. “Neither did Pac-Man. I want you to know that.”

  He turned to Rhino, who had decided this was a good time to pick his fingernails and was doing it studiously, almost cross-eyed with concentration. “Are you up to this?” Jonathan asked him.

  Rhino let his hands fall. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  Jonathan nodded. “You bet.”

  Rhino swept a hand, indicating the others. “And we’re all a team, right?”

  They nodded agreement, seeming none too happy about it. Most of them wore faces indicating doubt. Rhino ignored it. “So we’ll do what you asked us to, Jon. It’s a federal offense, incidentally, and technically almost impossible.” He grinned. “But hell, we’re the Warriors, right? We eat that kind of stuff for breakfast!”

  He got a few half-hearted “yeahs.” Jonathan looked at his watch, knowing Rhino would knock heads together if they tried to back out. “Exactly at midnight,” he said. “It’ll just give me time.”

  “You got it.” Rhino hesitated, frowning. “May I ask why we’re doing this?”

  “No.”

  Rhino raised his hands. “No problem! We’ll do it anyway! Right, men?”

  A few shrugged. The rest studied their shoes with sudden interest.

  “Right???” Rhino bellowed.

  They stood up with uncomfortable smiles pasted to their faces. Rhino led them out, still barking siss-boom-bahs and other related cheery stuff. When they were gone Jonathan crossed the room and picked up the telephone. Distant thunder boomed outside, promising foul weather.

  He dialed WPIN, Maryville’s
only television station. A lady answered. “Helloooo?”

  “This is Jonathan Parker, ma’am. I have an exclusive story for you concerning the murders last night.”

  “Hold, pleeeease,” she said, and the phone was full of happy Muzak. Jonathan waited, nervously tapping his foot. The phone clicked and someone else said hello. He shunted Jonathan off to someone else. It went on and on, eventually leading him to a remote phone in somebody’s car. A guy got on who said he might be interested. Jonathan told as much as he dared. He thought he recognized the voice, and he was right.

  Walker Stevens, eating Rolaids by the handful. Who else?

  Jonathan arrived at the Parker house—the house where he had lived from the age of seven until he started college, the house where his foster mother, Diane, had lived before Pinker butchered her—at dusk and went inside with a mixture of dread and nostalgia churning through his mind. In his hand he carried the diving mask that had cost Pac-Man and the coach their lives, a simple Undersea Sports affair that he had had since junior high school. He clicked the light on and let the old memories flood over him: over there he had fallen down the stairs more times than he could count; over there was the pottery ashtray he had made for Diane in art class when he was thirteen. Everything was the same, but it was all different. Every sign of the carnage that had occurred here last year had been scrubbed away. The carpet was new: little Bobby’s blood had hung on too stubbornly in the old one, Don had told him. Upstairs, where Diane and the new girl, Sally, had been killed, the room was probably spotless. It was there that Jonathan needed to go; it was there where he had seen Pinker for the first time.

  He left the front door open for the reporter and the camera crew, who were due any moment, and went slowly up the stairs with the hairs on the back of his neck rising up in unconscious response to the memories that attacked him here. The ghost of Pinker hung over everything, a dismal shroud of death and hate. Jonathan came to the top of the stairway and was hit by the memory of the dream, the dream in which he attacked Pinker for the first time and woke up in his own bed, drenched in sweat, while Alison hovered over him asking what was wrong. Nightmares never come true, they say, but for Jonathan everything had come true, all too true.

  He walked to the door and turned the knob. It came open with a faint creak, as if the room had been unused for the past year, which was probably the case. The little girl’s bed was in here, nicely made up. There beside it was where Diane and the girl were knifed to death; no sign of that now. Yet the room was too quiet, too full of restless ghosts and haunted memories. Jonathan went back downstairs, feeling vaguely ill.

  He was sitting at the foot of the steps when the Channel 8 people arrived. Walker Stevens rapped on the open door and stuck his head inside. His familiar wig was neatly combed into his real hair, looking almost convincing. He put on a phony little smile and came in. A young guy carrying a big square suitcase followed, grunting from the weight of it and the folded tripod he had dangling from one shoulder on a strap. One more man came in, a nondescript fellow lugging more equipment. They dumped it all on the floor and headed outside for another load, leaving Walker and Jonathan alone.

  “Now let me get this straight, Mr. Parker,” Walker said. “Can I call you Jonathan? Great. Now, you want us to go on live, at five minutes to midnight, right? And if we do, you guarantee to produce the person who did the copycat killing last night?”

  Jonathan nodded. “Upstairs to the left. Room on the right. You’ll have to set things up in the bedroom.”

  “Eh?” Walker raised an eyebrow, not looking very happy about things. “Why’s that?”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “You’d make a good reporter. Did you kill that coach and his helper? Just between you and me. Man to man.”

  Jonathan rolled his eyes slightly. Dork. “No, and if you’ll get things set up, I’ll show you who did. I’ll show you the man who did it all.”

  Walker sighed. “If you make a fool out of me on live television …”

  You don’t need any help, Jonathan thought, but said: “I’m going to make you so hot you’ll be anchoring network prime-time news before you know it. CBS will kill for you. All the others, too. Even CNN. Deal?”

  Walker nodded. His troops marched back in lugging more stuff. They looked soggy and dispirited, even more so when Walker told them to go upstairs. They did, muttering.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said, and raised his diving mask. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Hey!” Walker snapped as Jonathan headed for the door. “There’s no way I can justify the time and money if you walk out for a casual swim. Guys! Pack up!”

  Jonathan turned. “Hold on there. I’m going out to find the killer. I’ll bring him here. Just have a camera feeding your station at five to midnight.”

  “Why should I? This is preposterous.”

  “Fine,” Jonathan said. “Let the other networks get the story first. I don’t really care that much.”

  The cameraman tromped back downstairs. “Well? Do we stay or not?”

  “Stay, I guess,” Walker growled. “I’ve got a feeling this kid means business.”

  Jonathan went out, satisfied to hear the rattle and clatter of machinery being set up. He aimed himself at the park, walking fast but not running, anxious to get there but needing to save his energy for the fireworks tonight. The estimable Mr. Stevens had no idea what a show would be put on around midnight. Trouble was, neither did Jonathan. Not for sure.

  It took him nearly twenty minutes to get to the outskirts of the park, another ten to walk to the lake. The sky churned overhead, thick clouds the color of ashes. The park was deserted in preparation for the rainstorm about to happen; Jonathan could smell it in the air. The lake was shrouded in drifting mists.

  Jonathan put on the diving mask and waded into the water, still fully clothed, still not working very hard. When it got deep enough he began to swim at a leisurely pace. He felt he had time to spare.

  Or no time at all.

  At that moment a university athletic department van jammed with people drove up to the hurricane fence that surrounded the Maryville Light and Power Company’s main station. It was here that electricity from the northern Ohio generating plant near Cleveland piped uncountable millions of volts into the Maryville station every day. It was here that Rhino brought his team, as instructed. They piled out of the van and stood around in the growing wind, hands shoved deep inside jacket pockets, shoulders hunched, nobody cheerful at all despite Rhino’s cheerleading.

  He got out and stared at the sky. Rain coming, and soon. It was almost too dark to see. He walked around to the back of the van, leaned inside, and found the rubber gloves, crowbar, and wire cutters he had borrowed from his dad’s toolbox. He eased the double doors shut and looked at the others.

  “Everybody ready?”

  Someone grumbled, hard to tell who in the dark. “Why do you need all of us, Rhino? All you have to do is cut a hole in the fence.”

  Rhino held his temper. “It is because I need you guys to patrol the perimeter while me and Bruno go inside. I don’t want to get caught screwing with all this stuff.” He indicated the huge transformers, gigantic insulators, receiving towers, unrecognizable mazes of wires, and the half-dozen signs that screamed DANGER—HIGH VOLTAGE. “Remember, if we get caught, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of our actions.”

  “Huh?”

  Rhino sighed. “A joke, asshole. Didn’t you ever watch Mission Impossible!”

  “Before my time. But what’s with this perimeter crap? Are you ROTC or something this semester?”

  “Never mind, then.” Rhino walked to the fence, handing the wire cutters to Bruno, the only one there who wasn’t griping about something. He went down on his knees without protest and began to clip the chain-link fence.

  “Damn,” he muttered after a minute.

  Rhino bent down, squinting at his handiwork. So far he had managed to cut one lousy link. “What’s wrong?”

&nbs
p; “Didn’t your dad ever sharpen these things? We need bolt cutters.”

  Rhino looked at his watch, pressing the light button with a finger. “Ten-fifteen, Bruno. No time to go back, and no time to waste. Keep cutting.”

  Bruno went back to it, grumbling. Rain started to waft down in a fine mist that rapidly swelled to a black curtain of falling water. Everyone was soaked instantaneously. This did nothing at all for their tempers. Rhino positioned them at strategic points, then went back to watching Bruno.

  It looked as if this would take a long, long time.

  Chapter •

  Fourteen

  The lake was still, the water barely ruffled by the slight breeze drifting down from the park. Shimmering mist hung in an enchanting pall over the water, dancing, swirling into odd shapes that looked like human images, then were gone, replaced by others. The water lapped at the muddy shore in small steady beats. Cattails and rushes stood silent watch.

  Jonathan burst up to the surface one hundred feet from shore, breathing hard, his old diving mask tight around his eyes and nose. He jerked it away from his face and dumped a small amount of water back into the lake. He propped it on his forehead, wincing where the strap pulled at his hair, and fought to bring his breathing under control. He had been at this for fifteen minutes, growing slowly desperate. The lake was only ten or twelve feet deep but the bottom was sludge eight inches thick. The necklace could have worked its way underground by now; in the murky black Jonathan was as good as blind.

  He looked at the shore, trying to remember where the road worker had thrown the pick. It was impossible to tell. Worse than that, the chain might have fallen off in flight and landed God only knew where. The television people were waiting for their big scoop; Rhino and the boys were following orders at the power station. It looked as if the only one not following the plan was Jonathan.