Stalker

by Dave Dykema

  Stone stared at the gap in his hands, picturing what they’d just held. He was shocked that Dan escaped so rapidly. When he turned back around he was still staring through his outstretched hands. To Dan he looked like a director surveying a shot, “shooting” it through his hands to get an idea what it would look like on film. To Stone, it was what was called the “Money Shot.” For within the framing of his hands he saw the spot in the snow the gun fell into.

  He rushed over to it. Dan was confused, wondering what the heck Stone was doing playing director. By the time he realized what Stone was after, it was too late. Stone reached into the blanket of snow and came up with his prize. Dan was within its sight a moment later with nowhere to run. He gulped hard and thought quickly.

  Stone smiled, his thin lips pressed tightly together.

  “I’ve got you both, right where I want you. The only thing now is deciding who gets shot first.”

  “Why are you doing this? What are you trying to prove?” Dan asked, trying to buy some time.

  “I don’t take dissent in my ranks well. Loyalty means everything to me.”

  “And that’s why you killed Janet?”

  “Janet was on the verge of spilling everything. She couldn’t be trusted.”

  “You can trust us,” Dan tried weakly.

  “Trust the media? Don’t make me laugh! You’d eat your own for ratings.”

  “You took the life of one of your own.”

  “My people needed to be taught a lesson!”

  “You seem like such a strong man to have such a hold over these people. Why didn’t you use your skills for something good?”

  “This is good! This is right!” he said, waving his arms around. “Do you think when Jesus was first around he was greeted with warm smiles and open arms? His own people killed him! It’s the same story over and over: birth hurts. Every new religion has its moments when people don’t understand it. It’s new, therefore people fear it. In time, I would have been accepted, cherished, loved.”

  “Now’s not your time, you bastard.”

  Stone laughed. “I realize that. But it’s not really your time either, and it’s fast running out.” He held the gun level again. “Now, which to kill first?”

  He waved the gun back and forth between them, aiming carefully. On one hand there was Dan, a fairly easy target, standing mere yards in front of him. Since he wasn’t a good shot that might be the choice to take. On the other hand, shooting Melissa would mean so much more. She had celebrity. Her death would be remembered. She was the traitor. It would taste sweet. On top of that, he would get to watch Dan’s face as she plunged from the tree, shot through the chest. Finishing Freeman off would be easy at that point—child’s play.

  He raised the gun and fired three shots. The air clapped loudly from the explosions within the weapon’s chamber. Melissa shrieked and hung onto the base for dear life. Tree branches popped and cracked as lead bit into them. The bullets dislodged the dead branches, and they came crashing down. As they hit other branches, the combined weight collapsed those as well, until a roaring ball of wood and snow was hurtling toward the earth.

  Dan managed to jump aside, while Stone backed up, mouth agape, tying to comprehend the cacophony his violence caused. He raised his arms to protect his face as the branches hit the ground at the base of Stone’s feet, which were at the edge of the steep slope. The impact cracked the snow and caused the lip to buckle. Stone teetered for a moment as the snow began to slide away under his feet. Dan saw the fear in his eyes as Stone flashed him a look of desperation, knowing what was coming, before he was sucked down over the edge, caught in the swirl.

  Stone shut his eyes and balled himself up in a fetal position as his downward ride began. His only hope was to ride out the free-fall. He tumbled head over heels as he was mixed with the branches and the snow and the dirt, stirred like cement in a mixer.

  As the avalanche gained more ground, Stone tumbled less. Now the sensation was of being pulled, dragged along. He hit several trees on his way, bending and snapping them. The snow slide widened as it gained momentum, and now some of the smaller trees broke off and mixed with the jumble of earth and snow. His head was covered with abrasions and contusions. His nose broke as it collided with one of the trees. His ribcage felt like a tackle dummy used by professional football teams in practice. One snapped rib poked out through his coat, driving into the snow like a spoke on a gear. Stone didn’t even feel it.

  A large rock loomed in the path. Stone was dead from his head injuries before he slammed into it. Blood shot out of his mouth and excrement filled his pants. Then he was dragged like a limp doll farther on, arms and legs akimbo, the roar growing louder as half the hillside crumbled off.

  After a distance of 250 vertical feet, Stone’s body stopped its fall. It was pinned against a wide tree, one too large to snap off from the onrushing carnage. Rocks, dirt, and snow continued to pummel him in the back for the few moments it took for the onslaught to end. He was partially buried under the mountain of snow, his crystal torn from his neck and lost among the ruins.

  Then all was quiet.

  When the avalanche was at full tilt the sound was deafening. Stone’s screams of pain were carried off down the hill, drowned out by the roar of cascading snow. In contrast, the setting was eerie.

  Melissa joined Dan on the ground. It took him a moment to realize who she was and where she came from. And then he was on his feet and scooping her into his arms as fast as possible. He hugged her tightly, kissing her cheek and lips desperately. She responded in kind. He held her face before his, looking into her eyes, scarcely believing they were hers; scarcely believing she was here before him.

  “Is Stone dead?” she asked.

  “I don’t see how he could have lived.”

  Nonetheless, they both required confirmation. It was the journalist in them that needed to know. Holding hands, they started to inch toward the edge.

  This was behavior the avalanche experts would not encourage. The ground at the top seemed sturdy enough, but it didn’t take a whole lot to start the snow slide in the first place: just the stress from the wet snow exceeding the strength of the bonds of the snow cover triggered by the falling branches.

  Looking over the edge, the damage was breathtaking. Huge blocks of snow and ice were strewn about like boulders. The path the avalanche took was cut into the hillside as if God had taken a shovel and scooped out the earth Himself. At the bottom was an immense wall of snow that started to ride up the opposite side of the gulch, exceeding twenty feet in some places and clearing ten feet most everywhere else.

  After some awe-inspiring glances, Dan finally set to work on finding Reverend Stone’s body. He had to go over the pile three or four times before he finally saw a dark shape pressed against a tree trunk. Squinting, he made out an arm and part of a shoulder. The head was covered in snow. He waited for it to rise up, gasping for breath, but it didn’t move. The church was buried under the snow—just like Jerry’s snow globe…

  Jerry! That reminded him. What happened to Jerry?

  “We have to get back.”

  Melissa saw the fear in his eyes. She gave Dan’s hand a squeeze, and smiled her best smile, even though it was an effort. He returned her squeeze, took a deep breath, and started back down the trail, leading her to an uncertain future.

  The Kicker

  *1*

  Sergeant Miles Cameron woke from his coma. His first word was the same one he spoke when he first slipped into it: “Betty.” When his wife heard it, she gasped and threw her Reader’s Digest into the air from shock and nearly made it out the door to summon a doctor before it hit the ground.

  Forty-five minutes later Cameron was sipping orange juice with Betty by his side, holding his hand, while a team of doctors took readings and asked him questions. They were pleased he had recovered so quickly, all things considered. They owed it to the fact that he wanted to return.

  After the doctors came Officer McKay. Ordinarily it would
have been too soon for a parade of visitors, but Cameron seemed like he had something to say.

  McKay jumped right to the point. He held up a fax of Dan’s mug shot from Traverse City. “Did Dan Freeman do this to you?”

  Cameron shook his head no.

  A little surprised, McKay then showed him a mug shot of Melissa. “Did Melissa Van Dyke do it?”

  “No,” Cameron said weakly. “It wasn’t either of them. It was a man, though.”

  McKay reached into a manila folder and pulled out some more faxes that came in that morning. The police in Traverse City had taken photographs of everyone at the scene and passed them along.

  When Cameron saw Bill Cambridge a light of recognition went off, and he shivered. Seeing the response, McKay handed him the fax. “Take your time. Look it over carefully.”

  Cameron squinted and furrowed his brow. He wasn’t used to seeing with only one eye. The man in the photo looked almost as bad as Cameron, with a pulpy left eye. Cameron smiled inwardly upon seeing it.

  “It’s him.”

  He returned the fax and leaned back, rubbing his head. This caused some concern for McKay, who debated summoning a doctor.

  “How are you doing, sergeant?”

  “Feels like a pickaxe has been slammed into my head, but I’m okay, I guess. The doctors say the bullet entered my eye but then scraped along the inside rim of my skull, exiting out the back. Not much brain damage was done. At least,” he swallowed hard with a limp smile, “I hope.”

  “You were lucky,” McKay agreed, “but you seem to be your old self.”

  “And since you know my ‘old self’ you know that I want to hear the full story. What did Traverse City tell you?”

  Twenty minutes later McKay finished his story. Cameron had listened intently, asking questions along the way for clarification of certain points.

  “But the whole scenario makes sense to me,” he said, digesting the information. “It sounds a little strange, but it does clear up a lot of mysteries too.”

  “The woman found on the floor of the cabin next to Jerry Stevens has been talking. She’s in hysterics, but she corroborates the story. She’s going on and on about how Reverend Stone is such a great man, and that he’ll be coming back, ‘just wait and see!’”

  Cameron nodded. “She’s so convinced Stone is the answer to everything that she doesn’t have a problem confessing. She’s probably under the delusion that Stone will come down from the heavens on a shaft of light and lift her right out of her prison cell.”

  “Basic nut job.”

  “But can she be trusted?”

  “The psych boys up there have given her a brief once over. From what I understand they think she’s reliable, if maybe a little flaky. I guess the catchphrase would be that there’s a ‘ring of truth’ to what Kim’s saying. Traverse City wants to hear our version of what happened.”

  Cameron scratched at the patch over his eye. “Well, I was a witness in Freeman’s apartment shooting; this Kim is part of Stone’s group, and she’s not denying anything; and if Jerry Stevens recovers from surgery there’ll be another witness. It seems to me there’s little point in holding Freeman or Van Dyke anymore. I feel sorry I ever doubted his story. Maybe some of this could have been averted.”

  McKay smiled. “Looks like this case is closed.”

  Cameron scowled. “Hardly. There’s still a lot of legwork to do, determining if there are other members of this cult that could be dangerous. In a nutshell, we’ll want to shut it down as quickly as possible. That won’t be an easy task. Plus there’ll be the mayor and city council to deal with. They’ll have a thousand questions. They always do.”

  “Then there’s the media…”

  “Well shit, those vultures never go away.”

  They both had a brief chuckle over that, Cameron thinking back to his press conference. To Miles it felt good to laugh. He was on all sorts of painkillers, but he still felt a dull throb in his skull, and thinking about it made him angry. It felt better to laugh, to think about his wife Betty, his kids, and how retirement sounded enticing. Perhaps they would do some of the traveling they always talked about, but never got around to.

  “Well, I better call Traverse City and let them know what we’ve got,” McKay said, standing. But as he made his way to the door, he stopped, turning back. “There is one thing that still bothers me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The avalanche. I’ve done some mountain climbing in college and used to go climbing on vacation when I was younger, but that’s not the point. The point is: an avalanche can’t occur in Michigan.”

  “Why not?”

  “For starters, avalanches are rare in the east. About the only place that has them is the Presidential Range in New Hampshire. There are a few exceptions, but that’s pretty much the rule.”

  “Could this one have been an exception?”

  “Well, the hills of northern Lower Michigan are high enough, but not steep enough. About ninety-percent of all avalanches start on slopes of 30-45 degrees.”

  “Maybe it was an unusually steep slope.”

  “That could be. I mean, we’re not standing there measuring it with a protractor. It just seems odd.”

  “Then what do you think caused it?”

  McKay shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you suppose it’s possible it was an act of God?”

  “Literally? Being vengeful?”

  “I know it sounds kind of Old Testament, but yeah.”

  Cameron pointed to his eye. “Why not? I should be dead.”

  McKay thought about it for a moment, and then turned back toward the door. “Well, I should let you get some sleep. Good night, sergeant.”

  “Good night.”

  Cameron closed his eyes and heard the door shut behind McKay. A minute later he drifted into a peaceful sleep, the first he’d had in a long time.

  *2*

  Melissa didn’t know what to do with her phone call. She hoped maybe the station had a lawyer she could use. She hated imposing on WKBC, but didn’t know where else to turn. The holding room was cold; they were keeping her and Dan apart to question separately; and she just wanted out of there. She felt like vomiting.

  As soon as Laura Danvers got the call she brushed the snow off her windshield, threw an extra blanket in the back seat, and drove to Traverse City. She could have flown, but there weren’t many flights offered, and the ones that were arrived at about the same time Laura figured she’d get there anyway. Being a woman of action, driving gave her more satisfaction.

  She went straight to the courthouse to post bail and was pleasantly surprised to find that she didn’t have to—her employees were being released! She hurried to the police station where a few minutes later Melissa came out, looking haggard and worn.

  “How are you holding up?” Laura asked after a long embrace.

  Melissa stared at the door, waiting for it to open, waiting for Dan to come through. “Okay, I guess.”

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Not a wink. I paced all night long.”

  “Worried?”

  She nodded. “And scared. Since we turned ourselves in we haven’t seen each other. Jerry was whisked off to the hospital so fast and they haven’t told us a thing about his condition. There was nothing to do but worry.”

  “I’ll go see if I can find anything out,” Laura said, hurrying off.

  Melissa stood alone, still wearing the same beat up clothes she came in with, wrinkling her nose at the slight damp odor to them. Her back was turned as the door behind her opened.

  Dan cleared his throat. She turned at the sound. Her eyes lit up from their droopy state, a sparkle replacing the cloudy film. She ran over to Dan, hugging him, gripping him tightly.

  “I love you,” Dan whispered.

  “I love you, too.”

  Laura watched from a discrete distance, not wanting to spoil the mood. But when the desk sergeant on duty told her the news, she knew they’d want to hear and hurried back
over.

  “Good to see you out, Dan,” Laura said. “How are you doing?”

  “I’ll live. How’s Jerry? I haven’t heard a thing and I’ve been going crazy.”

  Laura beamed. “He’s waking up from surgery and starting to talk. He feels like crap, but they’re taking him off the critical list.”

  Dan’s knees buckled at the welcome news. “Thank God. If he had died after all he did to help us…”

  Thankfully that was a statement for a rhetorical debate. Dan still balled his fists in anger, seething from what Stone did to his best friend. While he’d paid Stone back, he was mad he didn’t get to do it with interest.

  “So are we free to go?” Melissa asked, looking around the station house suspiciously for some final hoop to jump through.

  “I think so,” Laura said.

  “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

  *3*

  Dan woke up a few miles outside of East Lansing. Laura shared with him details she just got from WKBC on her cell phone.

  “So Cameron wasn’t killed?” he asked.

  Laura shook her head. “No, but he was in terrible shape. He came out of his coma this morning and talked. He I.D.ed Bill Cambridge as the man who shot him, and the rest of his story jibed with what you two said.”

  Dan felt another huge weight float off his shoulders. It was all falling into place. Everything was going to be fine…

  He gave directions to Jerry’s apartment, speaking softly so not to wake Melissa. He felt like he was seeing an old friend as Laura pulled in next to his Chevy. He pounced out of her car and ran to his.

  A sudden chill gripped him as he saw marks in the snow around it. They were a day or two old, but they looked like indentations of footprints. It was too hard to tell with the wind of the last several days. He wondered whose they were and why they were there.