A Killer Harvest

by Paul Cleave

  “Is your husband around?” Vega asks.

  “Oh my god, is Vincent . . . Has there been an accident? Is he dead?” she asks, lifting a hand to her mouth. With the number of rings on her fingers, her arm muscles must be as strong as her neck.

  “No accident, and he’s not dead,” Ben says.

  “Your husband,” Vega says. “Is he here?”

  Helen Archer shakes her head. “He’s working,” she says. “He’s in banking,” she says, which is vague, and Ben suspects she keeps it that way because banking can be hard to explain and even harder to make sound interesting. It’s probably why so many bankers are good at avoiding jail. “He won’t be home until late. They’re working on . . .” She pauses, then smiles. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m blabbering. You still haven’t said why you’re here.”

  “Vincent was friends with Simon Bower,” Ben says.

  “Ah,” she says, and she looks relieved. “So that’s why you’re here. Not to talk about Vincent, but about Simon. After what he did, well, I’m ashamed he was in our life in any capacity.”

  “You never liked him?” Vega asks.

  “I can’t sit here and say I’m disappointed that Vincent ever saw anything in him, and I can’t give a speech about how you can’t choose who your children become friends with, because the truth is we all liked Simon. He was a good boy. Always friendly, always polite. Throughout the years he came to birthdays and dinners because Vincent would often invite him and he was always more than welcome. If there was anything that needed doing to the house, or the previous house, Simon would always offer to help. In fact, he’s the one who laid down this beautiful outdoor area,” she says. “Only now . . . now I want to rip it up. What he did . . . it was so . . . so inhumane, it makes me ill. You must think I’m a harsh person when I say I’m glad the police killed him. Yet part of me . . . part of me still wants to believe he couldn’t have done those things.”

  Which tells Ben she isn’t going to believe what he’s about to tell her. “Actually, he’s not why we’re here,” he says, and her body tenses. “You watch the news?”

  “I like to stay up on current events,” she says.

  “Then you’ll know about the fire that was set in Christchurch Hospital last week.”

  “Where are you going with this?” she asks.

  “And you’ll know about the woman thrown from the rooftop of a parking structure in town.”

  “I’ve read about it,” she says.

  Vega takes her cell phone out of her pocket. She queues up a photograph she took of the walls in what Ben is now also thinking of as the Room of Obsession. She hands it to Mrs. Archer. “This is from one of Vincent’s bedrooms,” she says.

  Helen Archer takes the phone. “What are you showing me here?” she asks.

  “Vincent is responsible for the fire,” Ben says, “and for the attempted murder at the car parking building.”

  “That’s impossible,” Helen says.

  “That photograph,” Vega says, “is full of people he’s currently targeting.”

  “He blames the police for what happened to Simon,” Ben says. “And he’s out for revenge.”

  “You’re insane,” Helen says. “You both are.”

  Ben pulls a pair of evidence bags out of his pocket. “This is a list of people he’s targeting. The name on the top is the woman he threw from the roof.” He shows her the second evidence bag. “This was her engagement ring. We found it pinned to Vincent’s wall.”

  “We believe that right now he’s targeting the young man who is second on that list,” Vega says. “He’s the son of the police officer Simon killed and, as of right now, nobody can find that young man or Vincent.”

  “This is all some kind of mistake,” Helen says. “I think I need to call my husband.”

  “There is also evidence implicating Vincent in the disappearance of another young woman,” Vega says.

  “Not my Vincent,” Helen says, and she’s made no move to get up, made no move to reach into her pocket for a cell phone.

  “Then help us find him so we can clear things up,” Ben says. “A young boy’s life is on the line here, Mrs. Archer. Help us find Vincent so we can at least rule him out.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know who you are,” she says. “You’re the man who killed Simon, and I stand by what I said that I think that’s a good thing, but it won’t be a good thing if you’re the man who shoots Vincent too. I’m not going to help you do that, not when you have your facts wrong. You’re a shoot-first, ask-questions-later type of policeman,” she says. “The worst kind of policeman.”

  “What happened with Simon was an awful thing he brought on himself,” Ben says. “He killed my partner, and then he tried to kill me.”

  “For which we only have your word,” she says.

  “What happened to him was self-defense,” Detective Vega says. “Please, Mrs. Archer, there are other lives on the line here. We’re not wrong about him.”

  “I read the news, Detective,” she says. “I know the woman who fell from the parking building is your fiancée. I’m sorry about what happened to her, but that makes this personal for you. It means you’re not thinking straight. You don’t want to arrest Vincent, you want vengeance, and that doesn’t bode well for my son, whether he’s done anything or not. Now, we’re done here, Detectives. Any further questions can go through my lawyer.”

  She stands up.

  Ben and Vega stand up too. “Your son,” Ben says. “There’s something not right with him. Maybe he’s masked it well and you’ve never suspected, or maybe deep down you’ve always known something was off. Right now he’s out there trying to kill a sixteen-year-old boy. When all of this is over, the police and the media and the Internet are either going to portray you as the woman who wouldn’t help us and let that boy die, or as the woman who did the right thing and helped us save lives. Which is it to be?”

  “You’re a manipulative bastard, aren’t you,” she says.

  “And one who’s going to tell everybody how thanks to you, we were able to save the life of a young boy. That’s the headline here, Mrs. Archer, if you work with us. How you turned your own son in, how heartbreaking it was, and how it made you a hero.”

  She looks down at her hands. “What do you want to know?”

  “Is there anywhere isolated he might go? Somewhere he can take a victim? Somewhere he likes to go to get off the grid?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Vega asks.

  “A couple of days ago,” she says.

  “What did he want?” Vega asks.

  She sighs. She looks defeated. In the last few minutes they’ve punched a hole in her perfect life and told her that her son is a killer. “He came to drop off a present for his niece. It was her birthday recently and we had a party here and he didn’t show,” she says. Ben and Vega see her mind ticking over, wondering if the reason he didn’t show might go hand in hand with the reason they are here. “He made her a rocking horse,” she adds.

  Ben says nothing. Nor does Vega. They say nothing in the hope Helen will fill the silence. She does. “He also borrowed one of our cars. His broke down, and he can’t afford to replace it. We’ve offered to buy him a new car, of course we have, but . . . but Vincent sees that as charity. He never accepts anything, it’s the way he is. He was willing to let us at least lend him a car while his was getting fixed.”

  “So his car is in the shop,” Ben says.

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  If Vincent is right now following Joshua, it’s no wonder he hasn’t been spotted.

  The police are looking for the wrong car.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “Hey, freak,” Scott says, and Joshua can’t get his breath back, can’t make sense of what’s happening, can’t get to his feet. His head hurts and his legs hurt and so does the rest of him. He can taste blood. Scott has punched him in the stomach. “You shouldn’t have told on me.�
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  Skin has torn away from Joshua’s hands and knees. Bits of dirt and flecks of stone are stuck in the cuts. His schoolbag has twisted around his body and is restricting him like a straitjacket. He doesn’t know what Scott is talking about. Doesn’t know how far Scott is willing to go. Isn’t he frightened of being expelled? Or being charged with assault? Joshua doesn’t think so.

  Scott punches him so hard in the arm, it goes numb. “If you tell anybody again, then this is how every day is going to go between now and the rest of your life,” Scott says.

  “I . . . I didn’t tell anybody,” Joshua says, and he sure isn’t going to tell anybody about this. This is how bullies get away with things.

  “You going to keep your mouth shut from now on? Or do I have to break your jaw?”

  “I get it,” Joshua says.

  “What do you get?”

  He gets that whether he tells anybody or not, Scott is always going to come for him. That’s the thing about the Scott Bullies of the world—they do what they want because they can, because they don’t care, because their empathy chip has been switched out with an asshole chip.

  If he doesn’t do something in this moment, then nothing will ever change.

  He lashes out with his foot.

  It connects with Scott’s knee.

  “Ah!” Scott cries out, and he drops his hands to it as he falls over. “You’re dead!”

  Joshua is already on his feet and running, but he’s running farther from the intersection he was trying to reach earlier, the tumble down the bank having turned him around. He can’t change direction now, because it would mean running back into Scott. He can hear him catching up. Last time he got his ankle-tapped, he hit the ground hard. The same thing is going to happen this time too.

  Unless he keeps it from happening in the first place.

  He comes to a stop. He fights his bag off and faces Scott. He separates his legs and makes a solid base and tightens his hands into fists. He pictures himself as a brick wall that can’t be budged. He pictures his hands as sledgehammers.

  Scott will slow down. He’ll reassess.

  Surely.

  Won’t he?

  Scott keeps coming, and fast.

  Joshua swings his fist as hard as he can the moment he’s in range.

  And completely misses.

  The momentum takes him off balance. Scott punches him in the back of his head. Those two things combine to send him flying again into the air. Without his bag to take the impact, his head hits heavily against the ground.

  Everything goes black.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Vincent watches it all from his position up on the tracks—Joshua getting punched in the stomach before kicking the other kid in the knee, Joshua running, Joshua making an unsuccessful attempt to defend himself. The poor kid never had a chance—and suddenly Vincent thinks that, ultimately, he’ll be doing him a favor by killing him. The world can be a big and scary place—too big and scary for Joshua Logan.

  The second kid is bigger than Joshua. He’s got fat and muscle to service his streak of meanness—he’s seen it before in other kids, and he’ll see it again. Joshua is starting to move, but slowly, and with his eyes still closed. The big kid is still standing over him, talking to him, but in a voice too low for Vincent to hear. Vincent makes his way down the bank, the stones noisy under his feet. The kid turns towards him.

  “He fell,” the kid says.

  “He didn’t fall,” Vincent says. “You pushed him.”

  The kid’s face tightens. Vincent can see all the nastiness in his features. This is an ugly kid made uglier by the way he sees people. “So what if I did?”

  “Nothing,” Vincent says. “But if you’re going to beat up a defenseless kid, at least have the courage to own up to it.”

  “What’s it to you, you piece of shit?”

  Joshua is starting to groan. He opens his eyes and stares right at Vincent. He looks confused. He closes his eyes again. The groaning stops and he goes still.

  “I’m sorry, kid,” Vincent says. “You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Actually, mate, you are. I suggest you mind your own business.”

  “Really? Is that what you suggest?”

  The kid tightens his hands into fists. He sure has a lot of courage, Vincent has to give him that. Then he raises those fists and takes a step forward. “I am going to smash you, you pervert,” he says.

  “Run,” Joshua says, groaning again, and now he’s looking from Vincent back to the boy. “Scott, you have to run.”

  The boy—Scott—glances towards Joshua. “I’m not running from anybody,” he says, which is also the last thing he says, because at that moment Vincent brings the knife out from under the rag and plunges it so deeply into Scott’s chest that the blade gets stuck.

  “No,” Joshua says, but then his eyes close again and he goes still, as if he’s the one who’s been stabbed.

  Vincent watches the look of shock on Scott’s face, and he can’t deny there’s a spark of pleasure from taking this brat out of the world. He’s sure half the people this kid ever came into contact with will want to give him a medal, and now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure the other half will too. He watches the life fade from him. It leaves his eyes first, then his face. His mouth droops open. His final breath smells awful and sounds awful and makes Vincent want to take a shower. He puts the boy on the ground and wiggles the knife out. Annoyingly, he’s getting blood on his hands and pants. He’s definitely going to need to take that shower after he’s done here.

  Joshua’s eyes are opening and closing as he fights to stay conscious. One dead boy—another about to die—Vincent needs to confuse the police as to what really happened here. He remembers a case in the news recently. A person was murdered and thrown in front of a train in the hope it would look like a suicide or, at the least, hide what really happened. It didn’t work back then, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work now.

  Let the train cut Scott into a dozen pieces.

  Let the train finish Joshua off.

  By the time forensics can piece them all together, he’ll be much farther along with his list.

  He grabs Joshua by the wrists and drags him up the bank.

  THIRTY-SIX

  They have their sirens on and are speeding towards the school when the police radio comes to life.

  “Kirk here,” Ben says.

  “Detective, this is Officer Walker, we’ve got a location on the black Lexus you’re looking for. It’s parked up on Hillswood Road about ten yards east of the train tracks.”

  Ben closes his eyes for a second and lets his imagination run. He doesn’t like where it goes. “I want you to get that car open and check if the boy is in there.” He doesn’t need to add in the trunk, because he knows the officer will know what he means.

  “On it,” Walker says.

  Vega has already changed direction. Ben estimates they’ll be there in two minutes. A long two minutes. He hears glass shattering over the radio. He hears the trunk pop open.

  He holds his breath.

  “Trunk is empty,” Walker says.

  He breathes out slowly. “Anything to suggest where Archer might be?”

  “We’re looking,” Walker says.

  “Look faster.”

  “Yes sir,” Walker says.

  “We’re almost there,” Vega says.

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?” Ben asks.

  “Not if you want us to get there in one piece,” Vega says.

  “Did smashing the car window bring people out of their houses?” he asks Walker.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Then start asking questions. What about the house the car is parked outside of? Could they be in it?”

  “We got an elderly woman coming out that front door. I’ll know in a moment.”

  “What about the train tracks?” Vega asks. “They cut through all those neighborhoods, and they would form a shortcut between the
school and Joshua’s home. Maybe he walked down them? Maybe this guy saw him?”

  Ben talks back into the radio. “Get those train tracks checked out right now, Officer, and I mean right now.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Up ahead a furniture truck is backing into a driveway, the front end hanging into traffic and blocking both lanes. Their siren causes panic, and the more the other drivers try to get out of the way, the more congested the road gets.

  “Move!” Ben yells, to no one in particular. To everybody. He waves his arms in a universal gesture for get out of the way. It doesn’t help.

  He keys the microphone on the radio. “Talk to me,” he says.

  “I’m on top of the train tracks and walking in the direction of the school,” Walker says. “It’s a dump back here. Lots of bottles everywhere, it’s like—”

  “We don’t need a commentary,” Ben says. “Can you see anybody?”

  “Not yet,” Walker says. “I’m still . . . wait.”

  Ben’s heart stops pounding as his chest tightens and grips it, stopping it from beating. That’s how it feels. The furniture truck gets more of its bulk into the driveway. Vega punches through the gap that has just formed, clipping the truck and smashing the headlights of both vehicles. The driver yells at them. Other cars are pulling out of the way. Vega hangs a hard left and Ben can see the railway line two hundred yards ahead.

  “What have you got?” Ben asks. “Officer? Officer Walker? What have you got?”

  There’s silence, and then the radio comes back on. The tracks are a hundred yards away now. “Detective, I’ve . . . err . . . I’ve got Joshua Logan.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry, Detective, but he’s not. Joshua is dead, sir, and he’s not the only body down here.”