The Stonefly Series, Book 1

by Scott J. Holliday

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know," MacDonald said.

  "Did you know this guy?" Harris said.

  "Jackson?"

  "Yeah."

  "Maybe saw him once or twice."

  "Well I knew him," Harris said. "He was a good cop and a family man."

  A uniformed cop called from down the hall. "She's ready."

  MacDonald and Harris walked down the hall into the room where Nurse Angela Barton was set up for her interview. Her head was wrapped to immobilize a broken jaw, an ice pack against her cheek. Her throat was red raw and would eventually bruise. Her eyes looked delirious and tired. Another nurse was there, tending to her needs, fixing a straw in a Styrofoam cup filled with ice water.

  Sergeant MacDonald felt nauseous looking at Angela Barton, felt pain in his own jaw, throbbing in his own neck. He wanted nothing more than to pull her close, hug her, tell her the world's not such a bad place, and then go knock the life out of the man who'd hurt her.

  His knuckles ached at that last thought—arthritis he'd earned during his Golden Glove days, his flawless amateur career. Back then he misunderstood his high empathy, mistaking it for weakness as men often do. He'd tried to expel it from his body by pounding it into someone else's. The trick stopped working when 'Damaging Danny Mac' went pro and the amateur headgear was removed. After his first fight, Dan could only see the brutalized face of the first professional boxer he'd beaten. His illustrious pro career ended at 1-0 and a visit to the poor guy's house the next day to give him the winnings.

  MacDonald took a seat against the far wall, leaving the folding chair closest to Nurse Angela open for Harris. Harris sat down in the chair and smiled at the nurse. "Can you descri-"

  "How are you feeling?" MacDonald said, interrupting Harris.

  "I'm okay," Nurse Angela said, though it was hard to understand her due to the head wrap. She tried to smile and indicated her mouth, then her side. Ghost Mother had punched her there, breaking a couple ribs.

  "Would it be okay to loosen that," MacDonald asked the tending nurse, gesturing toward Nurse Angela's mouth, "so we can hear her better?"

  "Only for a few minutes."

  "Will it hurt?"

  Angela Barton shook her head. "Pain meds."

  MacDonald nodded and the strap was loosened.

  Harris cleared his throat. "Can you describe the man who hurt you?"

  "He was big. He wore thick glasses and had long hair. He was a custodian, but he didn't work here. I know that, for sure. I believe he was wearing a wig."

  "Are you positive?" Harris said.

  "My mother went through enough chemo and enough wigs for her daughter to know an Eayon Six-A when she sees one."

  "So you knew it was a disguise?"

  "I knew he was hiding," she said. "I didn't think of it as a disguise, but as... " she searched for the word.

  "Insecurity," MacDonald said.

  She nodded. "Thought maybe he was on chemo, himself."

  "Is there anything else you can tell us?" Harris said. "Anything that sticks out?"

  "He was big, like I said. Not like a bodybuilder, and not fat, but just big. He smelled faintly of hydrating ointment. And he's definitely a custodian."

  "You said he was disguised as a custodian." Harris said.

  She shook her head. "No. He's a custodian. Not here, but definitely somewhere else."

  "How do you know?"

  "He just knew how to be, you know? Knew how to move, what questions to ask. Plus he had the mop and bucket. He's a custodian. I know it."

  The interview went on for a few minutes longer, but nothing more of consequence was found. "You've been very helpful," MacDonald said. He nodded to Harris, who held out a business card for the nurse to take. "If you recall anything else."

  The detectives left the room while the tending nurse retightened Angela Barton's wraps.

  "We need that cop to wake up," Harris said, tapping his notepad against his off hand.

  "Mm-hm," MacDonald replied, looking off.

  "What's up, Sarge? Another hunch?"

  "That guy we went to visit yesterday," MacDonald said. "What'd his wife say about his job?"

  Harris checked his notes. "That he works the late shift at New Center hospital."

  "Custodian?"

  "She never confirmed it, but I'm guessing he's not a heart surgeon. Wait, you like that guy for Ghost Mother?"

  "Don't know."

  "Seems like a hell of a coincidence. We were just out there to help out your buddy, what's his name... "

  "Jacob."

  "Yeah. Elizabeth Duke's kid, right?" Harris scratched his jaw. "What a piece of cold steel that woman is. I'd rather make it with a-"

  MacDonald looked at his partner appraisingly.

  "Oh, whoa," Harris said, a smile building on his face, his froggy eyes glinting. "Sarge has the hots for Miss Duke, eh? Wright always said you might." He elbowed MacDonald, who remained unamused. "Can't say I blame you. She should have been a model, and I bet she's a demon in the sack. Always the quiet ones, you know?"

  They came to the room where the uninformed cop was laid out on a bed, still unconscious. A doctor stood at the man's bedside, reading his chart.

  "How much longer?" Harris said.

  The doctor looked up. "Couple hours at least, a day at most."

  "We don't have that kind of time," Harris said.

  The doctor turned up his palms.

  34

  The mapping app on Jake's smartphone showed him that Clichon Avenue would take him to the Collins household. According to the map, the road terminated just short of the middle branch of the Tobacco River. The satellite view showed the dock where he'd met Frankie for the first time.

  It was hot inside the truck. Jake rolled the windows down and hooked a left off the main drag. He drove down the country road with a feeling of trepidation. How to tell a mother that she has to help him change her son's murderous wish, of all things? She'd laugh him right off the porch or maybe point a gun at him. Even if she started out cordial and invited him to explain himself, he'd have to tell her the boy wish was that his own father would be the victim. Exponentially worse, he'd have to tell her the boy would die if the wish wasn't changed. She'd think he was mad.

  Maybe he was.

  The plan was foolish. He may have a better chance talking with Frankie alone and leaving his mother out of it. The problem was time. There wasn't enough. In two days the kid would drop dead if Jake didn't kill his father or invoke a change of the boy's heart.

  Who better than to invoke a rapid change of heart than mom?

  The road bent around a copse of hardwoods and the ramshackle house came into view. Darnell Collins's truck was parked out front. Jake jammed the brakes and stopped well short of the driveway. The engine idled, vibrating up through his seat. Up until now he'd chosen to ignore the idea that Darnell could be here, not wanting to contemplate the results of a scene where the object of the kid's wish was available to make granting it a realistic choice. Never mind that Jake's first run-in with Collins resulted in the knot on Jake's head and the threat of the blade.

  It flashed through Jake's mind that this could potentially be the last day of his life. With a strange sense of relief, he thought maybe it ought to be. If ranting death wishes could become the norm, he wasn't up for it, plain and simple.

  He'd lend more time to that thought process later.

  He reached over and opened the duffel bag, grabbed the handgun inside, tucked it into his waist at the small of his back, and pulled up the driveway.

  Jake couldn't hear anything, but he imagined the sound of droning cicadas filling his silence after he shut down the engine. He opened the door, hopped out of the cab, and stood by the truck watching the house, checking the windows, wary for movement.

  His heart pounded as he approached the front door, which was open, leaving only the screen between him and entry into the home. His palms felt greased. He wiped them on his pants before knocking on
the wooden frame, which rattled beneath his knuckles.

  "Hello?" Jake called into the house. He held his hands up in submission despite that there was no one there. "I'm deaf, so if you say anything I can't hear you. I'm just here to talk."

  No one came.

  Jake knocked again. This time more forcefully. He moved his right hand behind his back, wrapped his fingers around the weapon's grip, and waited.

  "Hello?"

  No one came.

  Jake stayed on the porch for a few more seconds and then went back to his truck. He hopped inside and got out his keys, but didn't put them in the ignition. Someone was home. He knew it. He just didn't know how to proceed. Go inside? No. But for how much longer could he afford to wait? Two days until Frankie paid the price.

  Jake didn't want to kill again, but he'd sure as hell do it to save the kid.

  A honeybee flew in through the open window and landed on Jake's arm. Its wings were folded back as it investigated him like a sniffing hound. Jake's skin tickled as the bee moved. He watched it calmly, thinking that at any other time, and in any other place, he would have jumped up and ran, swinging his arms around like an idiot.

  It occurred to him that Motown would give anything to have this bee on his arm, to have it sting him and end him.

  The bee moved toward Jake's wrist. Strange; it seemed to be injured, favoring one side as it moved along. A bum leg, much like the deer he'd seen at Darnell Collins's tree stand.

  The thought brought a nagging sensation—something about that hunting blind that bothered him, something he'd missed when he was there. He needed to go back, breathe the air in that place, look around and try to jog his memory.

  The bee stopped moving. Its abdomen shortened and curled under as though it were preparing to sting. Jake tensed and gritted his teeth, preparing for the pain... but the bee flew away.

  Jake rubbed away the tickle from where the bee had walked on him. He started his truck and backed out of the driveway. He would come back to the Collins house tonight, maybe via the river, and go to Frankie's bedroom window if he could decipher which one it was. He'd entice the kid out and talk some sense into him. It was the smartest play.

  For now, he'd go back to that hunting blind.

  * * *

  Darnell Collins held Beauty by a fistful of her hair. He had her pressed against the back wall of Frankie's bedroom, the index finger of his other hand over her mouth in shhh fashion. The force of his finger was so hard against her teeth, her upper lip had split.

  Frankie was balled up in the corner, silenced by the threat to his mother.

  The man at the door knocked again, this time more loudly.

  Beauty whimpered.

  Darnell's mouth didn't move when he whispered, "Don't."

  Beauty didn't.

  A few moments later a truck's engine started. The sound was barely audible as the vehicle pulled out of the drive and down the road.

  Darnell released Beauty. She dropped down to Frankie and hugged her son. Both began crying.

  "Who was he?" Darnell said.

  "I don't know!" Beauty screamed through snot and blood. "I told you!"

  "You're lying."

  "I'm not!"

  But she was. She had vaguely recognized the man in their driveway and had started toward the door to greet him, but Darnell yanked her back by the hair. He threw her and Frankie into the boy's bedroom and silenced them with the threat of physical harm.

  Now Darnell yanked Frankie from his mother's arms, kicking her down as she clung to her son. He lifted the boy into the air like a puppy by the scruff. Frankie punched and flailed to no avail.

  "Stop it!" Beauty screamed.

  "Don't you touch her!" the boy said, his fists and feet coming just shy of connecting with Darnell's chin.

  The big man looked down at Beauty. "I won't touch her, boy. I'll touch you until she stops lying."

  "Please," Beauty said, kneeling in front of Darnell with her head down. She pulled her legs beneath her body and clasped her hands in front of her face as though she were praying. "Please don't hurt him."

  "You useless lying cunt," Darnell said. "I should-"

  Beauty leapt at him like a spring uncoiled. She wrapped herself around his head and shoulders like an animal, digging her nails into his skin, her teeth in the meat of his shoulder. Darnell dropped Frankie and began clawing to remove Beauty from his face.

  "Run!" Beauty said.

  Frankie ran, ducking between Darnell's legs and out the door.

  "Run and keep running, Frankie! Don't come back! I love you!"

  Darnell tried to back out of the room and give chase, but Beauty kicked out her legs to stop their collective body mass at the doorway. Over Darnell's shoulder she watched her son sprint down the hallway toward the front door of their miserable home. She could be beaten to death in the next moment, in truth she expected she would be, but it was okay; her son was free.

  35

  Jake took the turn onto Bayonet Road and stopped. Ahead there was nothing but the two-tracks of dirt and the woods on either side. Continuing forward felt like entering a point of no return—some blackhole from which there could be no escape. He lifted his foot from the brake and let the truck idle in gear, reeling him toward the dead end. He recalled that his mother would always turn down the car radio and slow down whenever they were lost and looking for direction. Something about the silence and the reduced speed allowed her to think more clearly.

  Jake already had the silence. He hoped the slow speed would help.

  He reached the dead end and cut the engine with no greater sense of clarity, no more direction than when he started. He opened the truck door and got out, touching the gun tucked in his waist to ensure it was still there. The air had grown muggy and there was a scent of smoke from far off. A campfire? It reminded Jake of barbecuing on the back deck with his mother the day before he was taken to Dover. She took the day off work but was distracted, was in a rush to get back to her laptop. Some email to respond to, she said, some spreadsheet to pore over that night. They'd eaten burnt hot dogs and undercooked burgers because she turned the heat up too high in an effort to cook quickly. He tried to stay up late with her, hanging out in her home office while she worked, forcing their time together to last, but he never saw the other side of midnight until the following evening, the first of many sleepless nights in his new bed at Dover.

  There were footprints embedded in the muddy trail that led to Darnell Collins's hunting blind. Jake took the path steadily, careful where he stepped. He came to the tree stand to find it essentially the same as before. The main difference was the sugar beet pile had been disturbed, hoofed around. It was spread thin, some of the pieces had bite marks in them.

  That nagging feeling returned. Jake breathed deeply, trying to pick up a scent to jog his memory. He found nearby water beneath the distant smoke, plus pine and sap. He scanned back and forth. What was he here for? He examined the footprints around the site, looking for God knows wh-

  -the answer came to him. The other night Darnell Collins had been coming back toward the blind from deeper into the woods. Wherever he'd gone when he first arrived, it wasn't to this blind, but somewhere else. Jake looked into the thickness of the trees beyond the blind.

  Collins had been out there.

  Jake walked along the outer edge of the clearing seeking a trail or a footprint. It had been raining that night, so any prints should be deep enough to still remain. For several minutes he moved back and forth, methodically checking forest floor until he came across what looked like a heel depression in the mud. He knelt down next to the print and looked in the direction it appeared to be headed. Sure enough, there was a nearly undetectable animal trail straight away into the woods. The ground wasn't beaten and the branches weren't peeled back, but there was no mistaking someone had come through here.

  Jake followed the path slowly, pushing aside branches and checking for footprints along the way. They were hard to spot through the leaves a
nd grass that covered the ground, but he managed to find one here and there. Enough to keep him going.

  The path ended at a pond bank. Jake thought of the final scene from the original Friday the 13th where the drowned child, Jason, explodes from the water and pulls a victim into the murky deep.

  The trees to the left were small and tangled. No human had walked through there in some time. To the right it was more open. Jake navigated through and found the path picked up again on the other side.

  He spotted a shack up ahead. The quickening spiked. Jake started his breathing technique, started counting and finger-tapping.

  The shack was at the pond's edge and there was a small dock stilted in the marsh out front, a jon boat moored to it.

  Jake produced his handgun. Sergeant Dan had given him tips on how to properly hold it. One hand on the grip, the other cupping the first. He'd once taken Jake and his mother to a firing range. It was there Jake learned his mother was one hell of a marksman. He should have known. When they arrived at the range it seemed she was familiar with the place, but she was trying to keep it a secret, letting Dan be the man of the hour. When she picked up the gun she might as well have done it with surgical tongs, but when she fired it the thing became an extension of her body. Her target was always an extremely dead piece of paper.

  The shack's front door had a quarter moon cut from the planks, much like an old outhouse. Maybe it had once been. It had the correct scent. He peeked through the moon hole to find the shack was riddled with fishing nets and rods, tools hanging from hooks, and a magazine stack.

  He pulled the shack door open and stood in the opening. The scent grew worse. The magazines were mostly Field and Stream and Outdoor Life with a few editions of Penthouse showing a leg here, a bra strap there. The mags were stacked on a bench that was almost certainly a former outhouse double toilet seat. Now the holes were covered and nailed shut with circles of plywood. The fishing nets were dry-rotted. The rods were old, some of them cracked. There was a bundle of rope coiled up in an old bucket on the floor.