The Hanging Judge (Nowhere, USA Book 4)

by Ninie Hammon

  Somehow what he was doing now seemed like a mirror image. He was fighting a nightmare horror he couldn’t see, whose motives he couldn’t understand, but whose intent was clear — to kill everybody in the county. That’s what the Hutus had been doing — their objective had been to rid the world of the Tutsis and they had shown no mercy, given no quarter.

  Neither would the Jabberwock.

  An hour of explanations and half a dozen soft drinks later, Jolene Rutherford was still unconvinced. Oh, something was going on. Something exceedingly weird. That was obvious. But vanished? She wasn’t buying.

  It wasn’t until Stuart started telling her about his experience in Charlie’s mother’s house that interest sparked in her eyes. She asked questions — would have made a good trial lawyer because she came at the same point from different directions, dug for details, made him repeat his description of the sensation of breathlessness, of heaviness in the air, the sense that the empty room was somehow too crowded. When he’d said he had a clear perception that he was an intruder, an uninvited and unwanted guest, her face went pale.

  “I ran out of there,” he said, and the mere memory of it tightened his gut in a fist of fear. “I not only didn’t lock the back door, I think I left it wide open, just leapt into my car and—”

  “So did I,” Jolene said.

  “So did you what?”

  She considered before she spoke, clearly didn’t want to share what had happened to her because to do so would put her on “their side.”

  “I ran out, leapt into my van and drove away. That was mostly a reaction to the fact that the door slammed and locked,” she paused, looked at them both pointedly before she continued, “by itself, and my hands were shaking so bad I had trouble getting the deadbolt to disengage so I could get out of there.”

  There was belief in her eyes now, reluctant — but who wouldn’t be reluctant? It was obvious that she no longer thought they were making things up.

  “It’s … real,” she said and barked out a bleat of inappropriate laughter as wonder spread across her face. Then she burst out laughing in earnest and leapt to her feet. “It’s real. All the crap I have been faking for years … for my whole career. It’s real. There really are ghosts.”

  “What’s happening here isn’t about ghosts!” Stuart said. Because ghosts were the spirits of the dead and Charlie and Merrie were not dead!

  “Of course it is.” Jolene blew by his remark. “Trust me, I know a ghost when I see one.” She giggled again. “Were they really there all along, in all the places I went, but I just couldn’t see them?”

  “You’re reading this all wrong,” Stuart said. “I know, with your frame of reference, you would jump to the conclusion that the … unnatural—”

  “Supernatural.”

  “Okay, supernatural phenomena we’ve been experiencing here might look similar—”

  “Similar? Oh, this is way more than ‘similar.’ What you described, Stuart, the phenomena in Charlie’s house, and what happened to me in my father’s house — those were ghosts. I am an expert on ghosts.” She looked at them a bit sheepishly. “You can’t fake the real thing convincingly unless you know what the real thing is.”

  Then her face lit up like a flare had gone off behind her eyes.

  “The equipment. I have it! It was loaded in the back of the van and I didn’t unload it, just brought it with me.”

  “Equipment?” Cotton had never seen Jolene’s television show and didn’t know she was talking about the gadgets and gizmos that were supposed to “measure” paranormal activity. Smoke and mirrors.

  She turned to Stuart. “I didn’t get to be one of the best ‘psychics’ on the circuit without learning to read body language. Yours is so loud it’s shouting at me. You think those machines are nothing but—”

  “Smoke and mirrors?”

  “Let me give you a little lesson in ghostbusting. A GaussMaster EMF meter really does measure electromagnetic fields. I have all four types of motion sensors — passive infrared, ultrasonic, microwave and tomographic — that detect motion in complete darkness, infrared thermometers to measure surface temperature, the latest model geophone that converts surface vibrations into voltage which can be recorded …”

  She caught the skepticism in his look.

  “Hey, you guys wanted me to take what you’re selling on face value, you need to extend me the same courtesy.” She looked intently at Stuart. “The machines are real. They are honest science. They work. It’s just that … let’s say we’re talking about a simple set of scales. You’ve tested it, know that it weighs accurately, so you give it to me to use on my show — an apparatus that’s nothing more than an objective dispenser of information. But it can still report the wrong weight if somebody’s thumb is on the scales. That’s what I do, what I’ve been doing for years. I put my thumb on the scales. Make it appear the objective machines really did pick up something. Not a huge win, not a slam dunk, not holy crap that’s a ghost floating up there on the ceiling! But enough activity to leave the viewer with some hope their long-held belief that the dead really are trying to communicate is real.”

  She leaned closer.

  “The machines are as objective as scales; they work. We can use them here, now. We can measure real psychic activity, get factual data that’s scientifically verifiable.”

  “So you’re telling me that you believe your father is dead?”

  She winced at that. Good.

  “That he has returned to his house to haunt it, that his ghost is—?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying! There are other explanations for the disappearance of all these people that aren’t based on them all being dead. I don’t believe the whole county — how many people?”

  Stuart and Cotton looked at each other and spoke in unison.

  “Nobody knows,” Cotton said.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a number,” Stuart said.

  “Well, however many of them there are — they didn’t all get killed by some plague that dissolves people and all their belongings. All those people are alive — somewhere. I am not saying that the presence you sensed in Charlie’s mother’s house and what I sensed in my father’s were their ghosts, the spirits that have left their dead bodies. What I am saying is that what we encountered were ghosts — not theirs, but somebody’s.”

  She looked from one to the other of them. “And I intend to prove it.”

  Chapter Seven

  When Charlie looked up and saw Malachi standing in the doorway of E.J.’s room, a wave of hostility washed over her so hot he surely must have felt the heat fifteen feet away.

  E.J. was asleep, courtesy of one of the best pain medications ever put on the market, oxycontin, available courtesy of some illegal drug enterprise she hadn’t asked Malachi about — because there were some things in life you were better off not knowing. Malachi’s whole family was engaged in one criminal endeavor or another, had always been and would likely always be — so the least he could do was filch some of their larder to ease the real pain of his friend.

  If, indeed, Malachi Tackett was anybody’s friend.

  It appeared he had read some if not all of what Charlie was thinking from the look on her face, but did not look chagrined. If anything, he looked empathetic, like he understood how somebody would feel enmity toward him and his family — you know, given that they were drug dealers, thieves, murderers and all that — so he didn’t begrudge her some hard feelings.

  That made Charlie even angrier.

  Then she heard Sam’s voice from out in the hallway.

  “Malachi! Where have you been?”

  There was no accusation in Sam’s tone, only concern, and it wasn’t until then that Charlie noticed his appearance — disheveled, dirty and with that horrible haunted look in his eyes. It was a look that said wherever you’d been that you thought was worse than where he’d been, he’d see your monster and raise you ten. And whatever it was you were thinking he’d done, he’d actually
done ten times worse.

  The anger drained out of Charlie. He wasn’t responsible for what his family had done — much of it while he was serving his country getting his butt shot off on some foreign battlefield. But she was massively disappointed and she was sure that showed, too. She had counted on him. So had Sam. And so had Liam.

  He had let all of them down.

  He started to speak, but Charlie put her finger to her lips and got quietly out of the chair and came to the door of E.J.’s room. She and Sam had been reluctant to leave his side. The low-grade fever he’d been running since he’d been mauled by a rabid dog on Friday had blossomed into a full-bore fever of almost 101 degrees. It bespoke infection, but Sam could find no evidence of it in his mangled wound. There was nothing to do but to pump him full of antibiotics. Gratefully, there was no scarcity of those — yet! — because the animal hospital had been well stocked with basic medications that, with some study and some math, could be used for humans as well.

  “Rusty can stay with him for a little while,” Sam said, and beckoned her son, who was actually reading a book to Merrie in the waiting room. Both Charlie and Sam had brought their children with them to the veterinary/people clinic for their shifts with E.J. Neither would admit to being reluctant to let their offspring out of their sight, but that was the reason. Rusty had proven to be a surprisingly good babysitter for Merrie — mainly because he loved to read and she loved to be read to, even if she couldn’t understand the story. And with the menagerie of animals to be tended to, there was enough to keep both of them occupied.

  Rusty took Sam’s place in the chair beside E.J.’s bed. Merrie went to help Raylynn feed the puppies and Sam led the parade down the hallway, with Malachi behind her and Charlie bringing up the rear. They went into the breakroom at the end of the hall; Charlie closed the door behind them and then leaned against it, her eyes closed.

  “Liam’s dead,” Malachi said with no discernible emotion in his voice. Charlie opened her eyes and he was looking at her when he said it. She felt a hammer blow of sorrow. “I caught a ride into town with Billy Dan Singleton — in his brother’s truck.” Billy Dan had tried to blast his way through the Jabberwock with his souped-up Chevy. “He was at the meeting last night.”

  “Did he tell you what happened?” Charlie asked, challenge in her voice but she didn’t care. “How your mother and brothers staged a coup right there in the school auditorium, took over the whole county lock, stock and barrel — we’re running things now, thank you very much. If you have a problem, see Viola Tackett. I’m not sure if you have to kiss her ring.”

  “And you think I knew she was going to do that?”

  “I figured that’s why you neglected to show up.”

  “Chai … there’s more,” Sam said, not looking at him but studying the tiles on the floor near her feet. Chai. Charlie had heard Sam call Malachi that before, almost a term of endearment.

  “Before we pour more gasoline on the fire, let’s deal with the blaze we have going already.” Pulling out a chair, Malachi flipped it around, straddled the seat and laid his forearms on the back. He included Sam in his explanation, but it felt to Charlie like it was directed at her, and she wondered if Billy Dan had told him about her little speech, and how what she had said had ruffled the queen hen’s feathers. “I was not at the meeting because … I was fighting other battles. That weren’t real.” He rested his forehead briefly on his forearms. “I don’t know what happened or where I was exactly. I’m still piecing it together.”

  “You left with Roscoe to go to Harry’s to see what happened to him,” Charlie said.

  “And nobody’s seen either one of you again after that,” Sam said.

  Malachi’s head snapped up.

  “Roscoe? You saying Roscoe didn’t come back to town?”

  Sam shook her head.

  “Has anybody …” You could tell he didn’t want to continue. “Has anybody been out to Roscoe’s place to check on him?”

  Charlie shot Sam a startled look.

  “You don’t know where he—?”

  “Harry’s house was … falling down. Like the others, aged a century. Roscoe jumped out of the truck, started digging around, trying … like maybe he’d find Harry under a rock. When he saw I wasn’t digging, he told me to go back to the truck.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “And the next thing I knew I was in Rwanda with my sergeant ordering me back to the truck so a tribe of butchers could massacre a family … and chop off a little boy’s head as a gift for me.”

  Obviously, he hadn’t intended to say all that and seemed a little surprised that he had.

  He took a breath.

  “The next thing I knew I was lying under a stupid mulberry tree. What happened between the time I left Roscoe and when I woke up … I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Roscoe didn’t go looking for—?”

  “I don’t know what Roscoe did or didn’t do. All I know is that when I got back to Harry’s house … what was left of Harry’s house, Roscoe was gone and I had to hike over Callahan Mountain to Crocket Pike to hitch a ride.”

  “Roscoe didn’t come back into town,” Sam said.

  Malachi dropped his forehead back on his forearms. “My guess is you can cross his name off your Christmas card list.”

  He lifted his head and saw the shocked looks on their faces and could only muster a tired, “Sorry. Inappropriate black humor. My bad. What I’m saying is that I think I know what we’ll find when we go out to Roscoe’s house.”

  He turned back to Sam then and asked, “Okay, what’s the ‘more’ you want to tell me about Liam getting shot?”

  Sam hooked his eyes with hers. Didn’t flinch. Charlie was proud of her.

  “Your mother killed him.”

  Stuart McClintock looked across the table at Cotton Jackson’s weary face and acknowledged that his own face likely looked just as exhausted and haggard. They hadn’t gone back to bed after they’d both awakened in the grip of horrific nightmares, courtesy of whatever it was that flat out did not want them sticking their nose into its business. That lost sleep piled on top of the sleepless nights Stuart had spent before he ever got to Nowhere County weighed him down and made it hard to think.

  Only Jolene was rested. No, not just rested — so full of energy it pulsed off her like sparks off a blown transformer. She was exuberant, excited by the possibility that she might actually encounter real paranormal activity.

  That prospect didn’t excite Stuart. It yanked his gut into a knot of dread.

  He sat quietly, not really listening as she described the functions of the equipment she had packed away in her van, the one with the name of her television show emblazoned on the side. It was ghost tracking equipment, and from what he could gather, it was moderately sophisticated scientific gear that she’d used to find the boogeyman in the closet in homes from Bangor to Bakersfield, Sarasota to Seattle — and to make her show a household name all over the country.

  He was too tired, too worried and too … okay, admit it, too frightened to pull punches, to sugarcoat reality, to be polite.

  “Your show is a fraud and you’re a shyster.” He held up his hand in an appeasing gesture when her face flushed. “An entertaining fraud, and a charming shyster — I get it. You’re not looking for reality, just trying to amuse your audience. And there’s not a thing wrong with that. But hocus-pocus equipment designed to distort reality—”

  “Wrongo, Moosebreath,” she cried, and softened somewhat when he got the reference to Bullwinkle Moose and Rocky the Flying Squirrel from old television shows. “I’m not claiming what I do is real. I’m no Moses Weiss.” She saw they didn’t connect. “Moses Weiss really does talk to dead people. And it drove the poor man bonkers. I am happy to admit that I cook the books, make it believable enough to keep the audiences coming back. But… ”

  She leaned across the table and fixed him with an unwavering look.

  “I trick the equipment, ‘manage the readi
ngs,’ warp the outcome to create the most entertaining effect. Weren’t you listening to what I said before? The same instruments I use are used by scientists to document real phenomena. If there really is some—” She must have seen skepticism in his and Cotton’s faces. “I’m not using the G word, ghost, okay. But some kind of … entity, spiritual phenomena, sentient being. What’d you call it — the Jabberwock? Doesn’t matter what you call it, if there really is something there, this equipment will show us where and what it is.”

  “What’s the point?” Cotton wanted to know. He rubbed his eyes to clear them, leaving them even more red than they already were. “So we find out there is … what? A spirit? A poltergeist? Casper and all his significant others?” He stopped and barked out a sardonic laugh. “How come all ghosts are white? Did you ever wonder about that?”

  Jolene looked mildly uncomfortable, the way most white people looked when they were forced to actually recognize the skewed-white distortion of the world.

  “I’ve noticed,” Stuart said. “When my grandmother died, I wondered if she’d come back as a white ghost. That’s when I decided all ghosts were white because if they were black you couldn’t see them in the dark.”

  Cotton dragged the conversation back to the point.

  “So we can demonstrate they’re here — what good does that do? Maybe you weren’t tracking with Stuart and me when I said I have spent two weeks trying to get people to believe there is something horribly wrong here, that thousands of people have vanished. And there’s plenty of evidence, hard, factual, you-can-hold-it-in-your-hand evidence to prove that, but—”

  “What if it’s not just you saying the sky is falling. What if there are fifty, a hundred, a thousand Chicken Littles?”

  “I don’t get what—” Stuart said.

  “If I get the kind of real readings that I believe I’ll get — not fraudulent, cooking-the-books, but real — can you imagine the explosion it’ll cause when I tell this whole story on my show? With indisputable, scientific proof and a whole county full of empty houses? The road to Nowhere County will be clogged with cars all the way to Lexington. You’ll be tripping over nut-bag ghost-crazies and real scientists and lookie-loos and everything in between.”