At the Stroke of Madness

by Alex Kava

  “Luc, can you show me?”

  “I can show you, but I can’t show you on the map.” He went to the door and grabbed his black beret and a jacket.

  “No, you can’t come with me, Luc.”

  “That’s the only way I know how to show you.”

  “Can’t you just give me directions? How far up the road? Is it on Whippoorwill Drive?”

  “I’m really not being stubborn,” he said, and tried not to get embarrassed again. “But I can’t tell you. I can’t put it into words.” His hands were already flying, trying to help him explain. “I have to show you by…well, by showing you.”

  She hesitated, standing with arms crossed, looking like she was trying to decide. “Okay, but you promise you’ll stay in the car.”

  “Sure, I can do that. Why are you interested in the old Shelby place?”

  “I need to check something out. Remember you told me that when the butcher shop closed someone bought all the equipment?”

  “Oh, yeah. But I don’t remember who it was. Seems like I should know.”

  “I found out. It was Ralph Shelby’s son. He bought everything, every last piece.”

  “Really? Hmm…I wonder what he wanted with all that old stuff.”

  “That’s what I want to find out.”

  CHAPTER 60

  Henry knew he had the rock quarry killer. The entire trip back to the station Wally Hobbs kept complaining about his stomach hurting. In that tinny voice he begged Henry to stop the car so he could throw up. Well, at least the bastard waited until they got to the County Sheriff’s Office. He thought about making Hobbs clean up the mess, but he knew he shouldn’t push his good fortune.

  Now he had Hobbs handcuffed to a metal folding chair in their interrogation room. Actually, it wasn’t really an interrogation room but a break room with a coffeemaker and an empty plate of crumbs.

  He had already read him his rights, or his version of them. Sometimes he knew he left out a word or two.

  “What do you think you were doing, Walter?” He wondered if he could bully the little man into confessing. Then he remembered that Hobbs’s partner was the biggest bully in town. He had probably built up some kind of immunity. “You want me to call your sister?”

  “No. Don’t call Lillian.”

  “What’s wrong? You don’t want your sister knowing you dig up bodies and slice them up?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve seen your handiwork, Hobbs. What is it with you? You kill some and when you get bored you dig some up?”

  “I haven’t killed anyone.”

  “How could you dig up someone like Steve Earlman? Don’t you have any respect for the dead?”

  “I didn’t dig him up.”

  Wally Hobbs’s eyes were the size of quarters and sweat poured down his forehead. Henry could smell him.

  “How many have you killed and how many have you dug up?”

  “Wait. You’ve got to listen to me. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Right.”

  “Marley and Calvin and me, we just wanted to make some extra money.”

  “Marley? Jake Marley?” Henry sat down on the edge of the table. “Marley’s in this with you?”

  “We didn’t think it would hurt anybody. Life insurance policies usually pay for everything, so it’s not like we were taking it out of the families’ pockets.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I was just trying to fix it so that if anyone checked they wouldn’t know.”

  “Check what?” Suddenly it was hot in the room and Henry needed to open a window.

  “If anyone checked…you know, Steve Earlman’s grave. Marley sells them the vault, but we don’t actually use a vault. We divide the money three ways.” Hobbs looked scared. “It was Marley’s idea.”

  Henry rubbed a hand over his face and he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Wally Hobbs was a weasel and a thief, but he was no killer.

  CHAPTER 61

  Adam Bonzado didn’t like what he was thinking. It couldn’t be possible and yet it made sense.

  He had driven back to West Haven, all the way to his lab at the university to retrieve the rest of the Polaroids Dr. Stolz had given him. It was bad enough that the victims’ head wounds matched the exact angle of the pry bar he kept in the El Camino, but now he needed to check something else.

  He grabbed the photos and rushed out of the lab, bumping into several of his students, barely mumbling a greeting. Now in the parking lot once again, he stood at the tailgate of his pickup. He stood there, hesitating with the Polaroid in his hand. It was a photo of the victim with the pronounced livor mortis on her back.

  Adam knew that livor mortis was the result of gravity pulling and settling all the blood to the lowest area of the body. This victim had been laid on her back for several hours after her death. That’s why the skin on her back was so red. Called the bruising of death, livor mortis also had the tendency of transforming the skin’s texture. The skin often took up the pattern of the surface it was laid out on. So a body laid out on a brick sidewalk might have indentations resembling brick and mortar. A body found dead on a gravel road might have a pebbled texture. And in this case, a body laid out in a pickup with a waffle-pattern bed lining might have a waffle-pattern imprint.

  Adam pulled down the tailgate and held up the Polaroid. The pattern matched the dead woman’s back. And as much as he didn’t want to believe it, he knew that Simon Shelby was the only person who had borrowed his pickup.

  CHAPTER 62

  Maggie knew she couldn’t wait for Watermeier. Wherever he was he wasn’t responding to any of her phone calls and her cell phone was on the verge of completely dying.

  Jennifer Carpenter had to have been killed within the last twelve hours, which meant that the killer was becoming more and more paranoid. If he still had Joan Begley and was keeping her alive, Maggie knew it wouldn’t be for much longer.

  She drove slowly on Whippoorwill Drive, in the opposite direction of the rock quarry. Luc sat quietly beside her. She hoped he hadn’t blanked out on her again. At least not until he showed her where Simon Shelby lived.

  “Turn up here. In that direction,” he said, pointing with an animated wave of his whole arm. “You can’t see the buildings from the road. The mailbox is one of those big galvanized steel ones that sits on a barrel. You know, one of those big wooden barrels.”

  Maggie glanced at him. He had to be kidding. A barrel? But Luc didn’t see the irony.

  At the courthouse, the clerk who helped Maggie look up the estate sale records of Steve Earlman told Maggie that Simon Shelby was a very nice young man. “Poor fellow,” she told Maggie without any prompting, “he lost his father when he was just a boy. Loved his daddy. I remember going to the butcher shop and seeing him there on Saturdays, helping Ralph. He had a cute nickname for Simon. I can’t remember what it was, though.

  “Simon really was crushed, just crushed when Ralph died. I don’t think Sophie knew what to do with the boy. I think that’s when he started getting sick a lot. We all felt so bad for Sophie. All that worry probably sent her to an early grave. But he’s such a nice young man now.” The woman rambled on and Maggie, who usually hated small talk, simply nodded and listened, noting all the coincidences.

  But it was more than coincidence when the clerk said, “He’s working his way through college now, the University of New Haven.”

  “Really?” Maggie had said, still more interested in the individual auction items.

  “Something to do with bones, of all things,” the clerk told her, and Maggie almost dropped the book of records. “I suppose that makes sense in some way, huh? I mean being the son of a butcher.” The woman had laughed. “Frankly, I think it’s a little morbid myself. But he must enjoy that sort of stuff. He works part-time at Marley and Marley Funeral Home, too. Such a hard worker.”

  “That nickname his father used?” Maggie asked the woman, although by this time she had felt c
ertain she already knew the answer. “Was it Sonny?”

  “Yes, that’s it. How did you know? Ralph called him Sonny, Sonny Boy.”

  Now Maggie saw the mailbox on the wooden barrel before Luc’s arm started waving at it, but she drove past the driveway.

  “No, it’s right there,” he said. “You missed it.”

  “I’m going to park the car over here.” And she pulled into what looked like a dirt path to a field. “I want you to stay here.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m serious, Luc. You stay here.” As an afterthought, she pulled out her cell phone and handed it to him. “If I don’t come back in fifteen minutes, call 911.”

  He took the phone and stared at it, but seemed satisfied that she was letting him do something to help. Which made Maggie feel more confident that he would stay put, never mind that the cell phone’s battery was dead.

  CHAPTER 63

  Simon stared at the tools on the wall, trying to decide which one to use on Joan. He had gotten used to her company. Despite hating to clean up her messes, he did like having her as his guest. He liked that she didn’t even ask to be let go anymore. He had control over her and he liked that, too. But that reporter had ruined everything. And now he had to get rid of Joan.

  He had called in sick, telling the receptionist at the funeral home that he might have the flu. It was something he had never done before. And he wasn’t going to class this afternoon, either. Another first. Not since childhood had he missed a day of work or college classes. After all those missed school days growing up, he had always felt like he needed to catch up. Maybe he felt like he needed to prove something.

  He hated missing. Hated ruining his regular routine. It didn’t feel right. But this was important. Already he had cleaned out two of the chest freezers, one here in the toolshed and one back at the house. He had tossed all the parts he had saved, all those pieces he had saved and wrapped in butcher-block white paper. He had tossed it all in the woods, where the coyotes would take care of it once it thawed. He hated parting with the pieces, but none of them proved interesting enough to showcase. He really didn’t need them. Besides, he needed some place to put Joan. At least until he found a new dumping ground.

  He continued to stare at the tools. He had ruled out the chain saw, though it was tempting, especially since he still wasn’t sure which gland caused her hormone deficiency. She tried to tell him she was fine. That she had only made it up to excuse her overeating. Poor girl. Like the rest of them, she didn’t recognize what a valuable commodity she was in possession of. But it didn’t matter. He’d just cut all of the glands out. Surely he would be able to tell which one looked diseased. And if he couldn’t, he’d decided to keep all of them.

  A knife would work. But which one? He had the entire collection now from his father’s shop. Anything from the huge cleaver to the small, delicate filet knife. Maybe something in between. He really didn’t want to do this. It was almost as if he had become attached to her. He liked coming home and having her there to talk to and share his collection with. He hadn’t ever had a pet before. No, no, not a pet. He didn’t mean that she was like a pet. No, no, no. It was like…actually he had never really had a friend before. That was probably what it was like. But he still reached for one of the boning knives. That was when he heard something outside.

  Had the coyotes dared to come already?

  He glanced out the small window of the toolshed. Nothing back in the woods. Then he saw her, walking around to the back of the house. He could see her, walking slowly, cautiously, sneaking toward the back door. And from this angle he could tell that Special Agent O’Dell had her gun drawn.

  CHAPTER 64

  Maggie couldn’t see a vehicle, but there were enough outbuildings to store several. Had he gone to work already? Or if not work, perhaps he had a class. Maybe he was even back at the rock quarry, helping Watermeier and Bonzado. What a pathetic twist. The killer not only returning to the crime scene but helping to process it. Simon Shelby had stood by and watched, actually even helped at times, while they sorted through his mutilations, his butchery.

  The acreage was well maintained. All the buildings were whitewashed, the grass and meadow cut short, no discarded old equipment. One of the buildings looked like it had huge solar panels on its sides, renovated for perhaps a workshop.

  She made her way to the back door but hadn’t peeked inside any of the windows yet. She decided to knock. Make sure he was gone, despite her certainty. And she slid her Smith & Wesson under her jacket, in case someone answered the door. When no one did, she tried to the knob, surprised to find the door unlocked.

  She brought out her revolver again and swung the door open. She stopped to listen. Other than an electrical hum of an appliance, she couldn’t hear anything. She entered slowly, watching, looking, searching as she eased down the hallway. She came to the kitchen first on the left. She glanced in. Nothing out of the ordinary. The electrical hum was coming from the old chest freezer in the corner. She continued down the hallway. An open stairwell was to her right and she looked up. Nothing.

  She could see the living room beyond the stairwell, or perhaps a parlor, furnished like a showroom with what looked like antiques, lace doilies and curtains. She got to the entrance and was paying such close attention to what was in front of her that she didn’t hear him come up from behind. She didn’t hear him until it was too late.

  Maggie turned just as something came crashing down on the side of her head.

  CHAPTER 65

  Luc didn’t like waiting.

  He wished Agent O’Dell had allowed him to bring Scrapple along. He didn’t like being without the dog. They went everywhere together. And he really didn’t like hearing Scrapple’s howl of abandonment coming from the living room window as they drove away.

  He tried to see beyond the trees. He tried to look down the path where Agent O’Dell had disappeared. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t driven up, or at least, walked up the driveway. She was being very secretive for someone who kept telling him not to worry. She reminded him of Julia. Before she moved to D.C. his daughter had always been going off checking stuff, stuff she probably shouldn’t have been poking her nose into. Maybe that was just what law enforcement people did. Maybe it was in their blood. Although he and Julia did share some of the same blood.

  He scratched his head, pushing back the beret and looking again to see if he could make out where in the world Agent O’Dell was now. He held up the cell phone. She said fifteen minutes. Well, it was close to that now, wasn’t it? He glanced at his wrist, only to remember that he had stopped wearing watches long ago when he could no longer understand them. Numbers had become useless to him. He couldn’t even write out a check anymore. They probably would have shut off his electricity months ago if he hadn’t had the foresight to set up all the automatic withdrawals for his bills. Hopefully the money wouldn’t run out before his time ran out.

  He looked out the car window again and this time felt a slight panic as he tried to remember why he couldn’t recognize anything. Oh, jeez! Where the hell was he? He twisted around in the car, trying to find something he recognized. Then he held up the black object in his hand. He was holding it so tight it had to be something important, but damn it, he couldn’t remember what the hell it was.

  CHAPTER 66

  Maggie woke slowly. Her head throbbed. Her legs felt numb, tangled, somewhere underneath her. It was pitch-dark despite her attempt to open her eyes. No use. It was too dark. She couldn’t move her arms. Couldn’t begin to untangle her legs. She could barely move her hands and tried to feel around the small, smooth space above her. Whatever he had shoved her into, it was too tight to move.

  Too tight and cold. So very cold.

  That was when she heard the motor kick on. That was when she recognized the electrical hum. That same hum she had heard when she first entered the house.

  Oh, God! He had put her in the freezer.

  She couldn’t panic. It wouldn’t h
elp to panic. She couldn’t have been in here long or she wouldn’t have woken up. She had to remain calm. She tried to twist her legs out from under her. It was useless. They were shoved in tight. Even her arms couldn’t move more than a few inches to the side. It felt like she was squeezing herself down into the chest tighter and tighter. That couldn’t be possible.

  She needed to stay calm. She needed to breathe. It was already difficult to breathe. How much air could she possibly have inside here? And the cold. God, it was unbearable.

  Her fingers hurt, but she balled them up into fists and pushed on the lid. There wasn’t even enough room to pound. She remembered her weapon. Yes, she could shoot some holes in the lid. Of course, why hadn’t she thought of that? She patted down her jacket. She tried to feel her pockets. And despair came quickly with the realization that, of course, he wouldn’t have tossed her revolver in with her.

  It was useless. She started to scream “help” as loud as she could. Over and over again until her throat felt raw. She shoved at the lid. She slammed her fists, now numb from the cold. She kept slamming them into the lid until she could feel what must have been blood dripping down into her face. And all she could think about was that the only person who might know where to look for her was back in her car with a cell phone that had a dead battery.

  CHAPTER 67

  Adam found Maggie’s rental parked off the road but no one was inside. Did she know about Simon? How could she? He pulled his El Camino in behind the Ford Escort and jumped out, heading through the ditch until he thought of something. He ran back to the pickup and grabbed the pry bar from the back.