by Jim Johanson
Mary stepped backward slowly, making her way to the door as silently as possible. A stray goose bone snapped underneath the worn sole of her shoe like a stick on the forest floor. Consolo turned at the sound to see Mary standing in the doorframe. Their faces were covered in shadow, each other able to see only the outlines of their blackened figures, appearing to one another in the likeness of demons or angels of judgment. Consolo immediately began stumbling toward the door, hammer clutched in his hand. Mary bolted outside, her legs feeling like rubber, like a drunk person making a feeble attempt at walking upright, until she got into Northcote's truck, turned the keys and started the engine.
Consolo shuffled through the doorway, leaning heavily on his cane. Mary backed the Truck haphazardly out of the driveway. With great fervor, Consolo got into his own truck. With great effort, he was able to turn the wheel with the strength of just his one arm, the other resting limp at his side.
Mary sped down the road, her heart pounding. She checked her rearview mirror in time to see Consolo swerving clumsily out of his driveway and onto the road behind her. His front left tire very nearly caught the rainwater ditch, but he managed to pull the truck away from it, straightening out and slamming the gas pedal down to pursue the witness to his crime.
Raindrops accumulated on Mary's windshield. The sun was setting on the horizon in front of her at the farthest point she could see before the road curved behind a shroud of trees. Mary rarely drove more than once a month, and she was completely unfamiliar with Northcote's truck. She slapped anxiously at the two different levers jutting out from the steering wheel, trying to figure out how to turn on the windshield wipers and the headlights. Her eyes darted back and forth from the road to the steering wheel levers to the rearview mirror where Consolo's truck was clearly gaining on her.
After pulling down on one of the levers, the wipers finally came on as she raced down the road. With her eyes obscured by the rays of the setting sun breaking across the rain-spattered windshield, she caught just a momentary glimpse of the brown blur that leapt out in front of the truck.
Suddenly the windshield was shattered, a pair of antlers partially logged into the glass, hooves loudly clacking against the truck's hood. Mary lost control of the truck and in a second she was off the road completely. Her head smacked against the driver's side window as the truck rolled over twice before finally coming to rest upright fifty feet from the road in a mossy clearing nearby the outstretches of forest.
Consolo reached the spot of the wreckage quickly, slamming on his brakes, causing the truck to rock back and forth as it came to a stop. He lurched over painfully in his seat to gaze out the passenger window, assessing the carnage. Dissatisfied, he picked up the bloodied hammer from the passenger seat and pulled the driver’s door handle. Having just barely cracked open the door, he stopped when he spotted another car coming down the road. It was a police cruiser.
Inside the police car, Sheriff Ford, Billy and Tim road silently up until Ford first spotted the wrecked truck. Ford flicked the rooftop lights on, illuminating the otherwise dull forest with pulsating hues of blue and red.
Mary's field of vision had gone completely black except for some vague strobes of light. Her head ached. The deer broke more of the windshield out as it thrashed its antlers free. Shards of glass showered down all over Mary and the front cabin of the truck. The deer fell to the ground, stumbled to its feet and dashed off. It left a trail of blood stretching from the road, to the wrecked truck, then to the woods, dotting the dead leaves and mud with specks of red, not unlike the trail that Billy had made with Evelyn's blood from the road to the Greer home.
Mary groaned in the seat of Northcote's truck. She managed to pop her seatbelt off. The approaching red and blue flashing lights coalesced around her, appearing as strange blobs of color through the shattered windshield.
Consolo pulled his truck’s door shut with his good arm. He put the car back into drive and dropped his foot onto the gas, causing the truck to peel out before skittering sloppily down the road. He felt not unlike a medieval jouster, wondering if the police cruiser would get in his way or let him pass.
Ford nearly had to swerve to avoid Consolo's truck as he teetered over the road's dividing line. Consolo was having trouble maneuvering the vehicle. As he swung incautiously back into his own lane, his driver's side door swung open and clipped the back of the police car, leaving a sizeable dent and nearly tearing the entire truck door off. It hung daftly by the hinges, unable to close, as Consolo sped off toward the horizon.
At Consolo’s house, Albert Northcote found himself waking with a severe headache. He rolled over onto his back, feeling his head with his hands and touching the gash where Consolo had struck him. With a surge of effort, he pulled himself to his knees, reaching out for anything to help him stand. He unwittingly knocked over Consolo’s lit gas lamp as he staggered to his feet. With the glass broken, the kerosene spilled out onto the carpet, immediately igniting it and spreading.
Northcote’s long robe caught fire at the hem near his ankles. As quickly as he was able, he opened the sliding glass door just wide enough to slip through, and upon exiting he staggered to the pond where he collapsed, the flames extinguished with a splash as his body fell still on the surface of the water.
Ford contemplated pursuing Consolo but decided against it. Criminals can be caught later; victims can only be saved in the moment, he reasoned.
"That was Mr. Consolo," offered Billy from the backseat, in a hushed but determined stutter.
"I know who it was," replied Ford.
In the distance just above the tree line, flames reached toward the heavens, flickering and growing larger as they consumed Consolo’s house.
Chapter 24
Sheriff Ford’s moustache had become noticeably whiter since the events at Consolo’s house six months earlier. Often times he would simply stare off into space as if contemplating some great mystery, though never did he offer any explanation for what it was he spent so much time pondering.
The old coffee machine gurgled, subtle background noise. There was a “Wanted” poster for Michael Consolo posted on a bulletin board alongside a “Missing” poster for Billy Greer. The two posters were visible in the corners of Tim’s and Ford’s eyes the entire day, subliminally taunting them as a job unfinished.
The sound of the clock ticking was annoying Tim more than it had in the past, as if the general ambiance of the station itself had grown quieter. The ticking became more like a resonating gong than a gentle click.
Tim got up from his seat.
“Ain’t this clock ever gonna run out of batteries?”
“What’s that?” responded Ford.
“How long we been workin’ here, and not once has this clock stopped. You know how many ticks I’ve heard this clock make? I counted it up. If we’re here for even five hours a day, that’s sixty minutes, with sixty seconds each, that’s 18,000 ticks we hear in a day. Average 260 work days a year, that’s four million, six hundred eight-some thousand ticks. I think about more one tick and I’m about to lose my mind, Sheriff.”
“Take the clock down then.”
“Truthfully?”
“You could have taken the clock down a long time ago, Tim. You just had to say somethin’. I’d say I forgot there was even a clock there at all.”
Tim got up on a stool, pulled the clock from the wall and removed the battery.
“Seems to me that you’re spending too much time thinking on things that don’t matter much,” grumbled Ford.
“I think about lots o’ things, Sheriff.”
Tim’s eyes caught the posters of Billy and Consolo.
“I been thinking about… the case with Consolo, and Billy Greer, and Mr. Northcote, and all of them?”
“I’ve been tryin’ awfully hard to forget, Tim, but I don’t suppose I will.”
“Well, I worked up a theory on what I think might have happened.”
“We already know what happened.”
&nb
sp; “Well, right, I know, but I was just thinkin’ that if we knew more about what Consolo was really up to, it might help us find out where he went.”
Ford didn’t respond. Tim continued.
“So, that body that we found in the house, all skeletal, and the rest of the bones in the bathtub, I think he was building… building a new family… after he wife died, see? And that’s why he kept his wife’s body in the pound, at the end of that chain. He didn’t want to lose her, and for him it’s like she’s still there. But then he gets this idea to start diggin’ up other folks, and then they’re like his friends too, like his poker buddies, just hangin’ around to keep him company. But he don’t want to get caught in the cemetery, he’d lose his job, so he gets that the Greer kid to do it for him. That don’t explain why he wanted to kill Ms. Evelyn Greer though. And he left her bones just right where they were, so why was he takin’ the others from the cemetery? Maybe ‘cause they were already broken down, by the elements, that—”
Ford slammed his coffee mug down on his desk, interrupting Tim.
“Tim, what that crazy son of a bitch was up to, was being crazy. It’s just craziness, okay? That’s all it is. I don’t know what kinda TV programs you been watching, but I’ll tell you right here and now, one kind of crazy is the same as any other kind of crazy, they just do it different. Don’t make no difference in the end, and I don’t want to understand it if I don’t have to. You want those kinds of answers, you go and ask a shrink, not a sheriff. I don’t have no need to know those answers and I don’t need the answers to those types of questions takin’ up space in my head.”
Tim took up a rare, defiant tone in his voice.
“Well, that may be, but you knowin’ or not knowin’ don’t make us or the marshals any closer to catching him, now do it? That don’t tell us what happened to Billy Greer after he disappeared from the community home. And you tell me this, how’s a boy who’s supposed to be brain-damaged beyond belief manage to slip out of there in the middle of the night by himself with nobody noticing? That don’t make no sense to me. I think someone kidnapped him, and maybe it was Consolo, so for all we know he’s still out there somewhere, maybe three states away, and he’s got this kid and he’s doing Lord knows what to him. Makes me right sick. And worse, I don’t think we’re ever gonna find ‘em.”
Chapter 25
Mary brushed her hair in the mirror in her dorm room. Her sleeve slid down her arm, exposing a four-inch long scar she’d received from an injury in the truck crash. The more she looked at the scar, the more accustomed to it she became. What at first had served as a cruel reminder of the trauma she’d endured was now becoming just another feature of her body.
A college freshman, Mary was three months in and still getting her room settled. Jackie was stuck in class late into the evening, having scheduled all of her classes not to begin before noon. Jackie had just been invited to a party by a classmate who was trying to rush a frat house. She was insisting that Mary come with her, via text message. Mary was reluctant, but in the last three months Mary had been clinging onto Jackie like an abandoned puppy, going everywhere she went and doing whatever she was doing. It had worked out well for her so far. Mary didn't even mind Jackie's sloppiness of leaving dirty clothes draped over every available space in the dorm room, even when the hanging space overflowed and they accumulated on the floor, waiting for someone to learn how to do laundry.
As Mary pulled her hair to one side, another scar carved by an errant blade of shattered windshield glass became apparent in her reflection.
Mary set her newly acquired cell phone down on the dresser after replying to Jackie, feigning excitement about going to the party. She walked over to Jackie's desk, where all her makeup was laid out on the area intended to be used for studying. She found something to cover the forehead scar. She covered it not because she cared if anyone else saw, but rather that it might break her mood were she to catch a glimpse of it in a mirror while she was out.
Mary continued sorting through Jackie's makeup like a ferret trying to pilfer shiny objects. The phone rang. Mary answered it without checking the caller.
"Jackie," she sighed, "I got your text, what do you..."
“Hey Sis, it’s me.”
Mary froze. There was an awkward pause of silence.
“Mary?”
Mary felt like she had swallowed a golf ball. The voice was unmistakable but Mary hadn’t heard it in a long time. It wasn’t just her brother’s voice. It was his voice before the gasoline accident, before the brain damage. His voice had lost the strange, blunted affect that he’d taken on after his accident. It didn’t sound like he had recovered. It sounded like he’d never been damaged at all. Mary shivered as she contemplated the ineffable possibility. He’d been faking, all along.
“Mare, did you know you can get brain damage and still be totally functional? There was a guy, can’t remember his name, was a construction worker, and a pole shot straight through his head. Finny, Phineas, I think that was his name, somethin’ like that. He turned into a mean old son-of-a-bitch but he was still walkin’ and talkin’ like an everyday person. Knew right what he was doing even with a big chunk of his brain missing. I guess it don’t matter now.
“I know things got weird on us for a while, but didn’t have no choice. I had to be rid of that woman, had to get us out of that house. Wasn’t any other way, and I wasn’t about to just trade that hell hole for jail, so they had to think I was, you know, like a retarded person. I might be stupid but I never been retarded, not like they think I am. I think maybe, were it you, you might’ve done the same.
“I wonder how that pedo football coach Consolo is gonna like prison. You know they think he’s the one killed Evelyn. But he had to go, too. Had me doin’ all sorts of strange shit, thinkin’ that I didn’t know better, so I was just playing along. He never saw it comin’.”
Mary’s chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself. She hadn’t taken a breath since Billy started talking.
“Don’t got nothin’ to say, huh Mare? That’s rightly fine. You just go on enjoying college. But I want you to know I did somethin’ for ya before I left town. Left it sitting on your dresser, in your old bedroom. They got the house all boarded up, but you can get in the back, just gotta move a board or two. I pulled them nails out myself. They come out easy when the wood’s wet.”
There was a moment of silence. Billy heard Mary take a staggered breath and swallow a gulp of air.
“You take care now,” he concluded. It sounded like he finished the call by saying “love you”, but he’d pulled his mouth away from the phone as if trying to say it without saying it.
The call finished with the sound of the snap of a landline phone dropped back onto the receiver. Mary held her phone to her ear, unable to move. A click and a dial tone sounded, followed by a prolonged series of beeps. She stood motionless.
A prerecorded voice began playing.
If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
–beep– –beep– –beep–
If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
–beep– –beep– –beep–
If you would like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
–beep– –beep– –beep–
Chapter 26
Mary tried her best to put the phone call with Billy out of her mind. This was a new life, she told herself. Nothing that happened before college matters. It’s all gone. But inevitably, the curiosity of wondering what Billy had left on her dresser haunted her. The situation was unresolved, and every time she found herself wondering what he might have left, it brought back all the other unpleasant memories associated with that time in her life. She needed closure, to put everything to rest and finally be finished.
A friend Mary had made at college, Danielle, happened to be going home for the weekend, her usual drive chartered closely to the winding, country roads of Racine. By summoning as much courage as she had, Mary
asked Danielle if she could go with her, if they could stop by the abandoned and condemned former residence of the Greer family. Danielle, a meek and soft-spoken girl, was eager to oblige a request from a friend.
Mary found herself absent-mindedly tapping her fingers and shaking her legs the entire ride, visibly nervous. Sunlight broke through the trees, melting the remains of the most recent snowfall. Danielle drove cautiously to avoid any patches of ice on the road which made the ride there take even longer than it should have. Mary hadn’t fully told Danielle the reason why she was going there. She hadn’t told anyone, especially not Jackie. Jackie would have forbidden her to set foot anywhere near her former home, knowing how much Mary had suffered psychologically in trying to integrate and move past everything she’d experienced.
“That’s the one, up here on the right,” said Mary, pointing with her hand.
“Is there a driveway?”
“You can pull in right there.”
The front door still had caution tape draped across it, all the windows and doors nailed shut with boards. A sign warning against trespassing was stapled into the side of the garage.
Danielle pulled in, put the car in park and began to take her seatbelt off.
“I’ll be right back,” said Mary.
“You don’t want me to come?”
“No, it’s okay, it’ll just take a second.”
Somewhat defeated, Danielle resigned to fiddling with her necklace in the car while Mary got out and approached the house. Danielle watched as Mary disappeared around back. She briefly turned the car radio on, then back off, feeling a bit nervous and wanting to make sure she could hear if anyone was coming. Waiting alone at the rundown and isolated property made her somewhat anxious, even without being aware of the house’s history.
