A Killer Harvest

by Paul Cleave

  “Are you sure?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “How can you know this?” she asks. “How can you have seen something that your dad didn’t see?”

  He doesn’t know.

  “This guy who saved you, you think he might be at this cabin?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” he says.

  “Should we go out there?” she asks.

  “We should call Detective Vega. If they killed Ruby there, then we’re going to be contaminating a crime scene. Only I don’t have her number. Though Mom will have it.”

  “I have her card,” Olillia says. “If we call her, it means we have to confess to everything we’ve been doing.”

  He nods. “Let’s call her,” he says. “And hope what we tell her will make her let everything we’ve done slide.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  It’s the second time in her life that Detective Vega has been inside the trunk of a car. The first was when she was seven years old, well before her detecting years, and her foster brother thought it would be funny if they hid in the trunk of their babysitter’s car. She climbed in first, and then instead of him climbing in, he closed it shut, and told her it was a game and she had to be quiet. Which she was, for a while, but then she got scared so she asked him to let her out. He wouldn’t, because he wasn’t there. She screamed and cried and nobody could hear her. Her foster brother had gone inside intending to leave her in the trunk for a few minutes, but he had fallen asleep. Instead of keeping a close eye on them, their babysitter had been keeping a close eye on the TV and the pizza that had been left in the fridge. Vega spent two hours in that trunk in which she cried and wet herself and thumped against the roof. On occasion she still dreams about it, and, a few weeks ago, she accidently threw an arm out in her sleep, dreaming she was hitting through the roof of the trunk, only she was hitting Tracey in the face.

  And now that dream . . . it’s happening again.

  The back half of the car is parked inside Vincent Archer’s garage, the other half of the garage is full of Vincent’s projects. The man, who she assumes is the Good Samaritan, drove it in so nobody could see her being put inside. It could be his car, or one he stole. After the initial attack, the guy has been nothing but polite—well, other than the fact that he’s handcuffed her and hog-tied her with duct tape. He did that so she would wait patiently while he went and retrieved his car.

  Her wrists hurt bad, and the angle of her shoulders from having her hands behind her is pinching off her circulation and making her arms go numb. She is scared. As scared as she has ever been. Her optimism is burning bright—if anybody can get out of this, she can—but her pessimism is burning bright too; she has seen what happens to people when they’ve been stuffed into the trunk of a car. She tries to focus on all those hours she’s put in at the gym. All that strength training. She just has to break the duct tape, snap the handcuffs, and she’s free. Failing that . . . once they’re on the road she can kick at the roof of the trunk and the side of the car and hopefully, unlike twenty-four years ago, somebody will hear her.

  It’s a good plan.

  Somebody will hear her.

  Somebody will call the police.

  Somebody will save her.

  The Good Samaritan is looking down over her. He’s still wearing his sunglasses. He has a big grandfather smile and dark hair that’s thinning in the middle and graying on the sides. There’s a light dusting of freckles on his cheeks and a small cleft in his chin. He has nice straight teeth and is dressed well and looks like the kind of guy who might sell you insurance. He looks as though he keeps himself in good shape. Maybe he goes to the gym. Maybe even the same gym she goes to.

  “We’re going to go for a little drive,” he says, smiling at her, and she wants to break his teeth. He takes his sunglasses off, revealing a set of blue eyes she wants to poke with her fingers. He has dark bags beneath his eyes that she wants to tear at. “It should be quite pleasant, yes, quite pleasant, and I won’t drive too fast or take any corners too quickly so you should be okay back here. Are you comfortable?”

  She shakes her head. No. She’s not comfortable.

  “Oh, well now, that is a shame. Perhaps I can find you something,” he says, and he walks away from the car and goes inside. She tries to get up but isn’t able to. He returns with a pillow. “I don’t imagine you really want your face in the same pillow that Vincent Archer used, and I’m terribly sorry to do this, but I believe it will be better this way.” He leans in and props the pillow under her head. He’s right—the idea of using the same pillow Vincent Archer used makes her stomach curdle. But she can’t deny it’s a hell of a lot more comfortable.

  “There, that looks much better,” he says.

  He’s crazy, she thinks. Full-blown mental. A guy this unstable could as easily decide to cut off her ears and eat them as he would kill her.

  “Whatcha thinking?” he asks, then reaches into the trunk and taps her on the forehead. “Want to share what’s inside that neatly packaged brain of yours?”

  She nods. He’s about to take the duct tape off her mouth when her phone rings. He reaches into her pocket. “Who’s Olillia?” he asks.

  Even if she could answer, she wouldn’t. Olillia’s name has come up on the display because during an investigation Vega programs the names and numbers of everybody she’s spoken to into her phone for immediate access.

  “Silly me,” he says. He peels the duct tape away from her mouth.

  “Don’t do this,” she says.

  “Please tell me who Olillia is. Do I need to worry about her?”

  “A witness from an old case,” she says. “She doesn’t even live in Christchurch.”

  “Are you sure? You have a believable face but sometimes people with believable faces can say the most unbelievable things.”

  “It’s the truth,” she says.

  “Okay,” he says. “I had to ask though, so please, forgive me for that. And don’t hate me for this either,” he says, and he puts the phone on the ground and stomps on it, then stomps on it again. He picks it back up and works at it until he’s able to break it in half. He tosses the pieces into the trunk. She can’t call for help, but it also means he can’t go through her contact list and start building a room of obsession of his own.

  “You need to let me go,” she says.

  “Listen, I know you don’t know me, but I’m a reasonable man. I can understand why you’d be scared, and I understand how unfair this is for you. You must be feeling quite put out by it all, and I don’t blame you. I think you’d do well to accept early on that when it comes to me letting you go, that isn’t going to happen.” He puts the duct tape back over her mouth. He strokes the back of her head, the same way somebody would pat a cat. “The thing is, I’ve been having these really weird dreams, and they come with some rather strange impulses.” He smiles at her. “I can explain more later, because it will be easier when I can show you. Now, I know you’re thinking you can start banging against the trunk, bang bang banging,” he says, his voice low and soft, almost hypnotic, and she wishes he would put the sunglasses back on because she doesn’t want to see his eyes anymore. “But I’m going to have to insist you don’t. I’m going to show you some respect and politely ask you not to make any sounds. Now, please, don’t take this the wrong way—and this, of course, will only happen if you don’t do what I ask—but I will kill you if you disobey me on this.” He shakes his head, still patting hers. “I hate that I had to say that, and I don’t like the way it made me sound . . . all nasty and evil, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. To be clear, though, I will kill you if you try anything. I will also kill anybody who tries to help you. I know people can send mixed messages, that there can be breakdowns in communication, so why don’t you nod if I’ve made myself clear.”

  She nods. He couldn’t be any clearer.

  “Good, that’s really good. We’re going to get along so famously!” He almost squeals when he claps his hands togeth
er. “We have to make one stop along the way, and this is when I’m going to need you to be a really good little girl and not make a peep. Nod if you understand.”

  She nods.

  “You remember what I said would happen if you made a sound?”

  She keeps nodding.

  “Hmm . . .” he says, and tightens his mouth. “The more I think about it, the more I’m coming to understand this isn’t the greatest idea. I hate to do this, I really do, and I must apologize in advance here, but the thing is I don’t really know I can believe you.” He reaches in and gently removes the pillow. “You can have it back in a moment,” he says. “I’m awfully sorry, but I’ll try to make this quick.”

  He grabs her head and bangs it as hard as he can into the bottom of the trunk. It’s an instant headache, and she can’t see straight, and her ear takes the impact and is squashed. She can hear a ringing sound.

  “I so wish you weren’t making me do this,” he says.

  He bangs her head a second time.

  Nobody is going to hear her.

  Nobody is going to call the police.

  Nobody is going to save her.

  He bangs her head a third time, and she passes out without the need for a fourth.

  FIFTY-NINE

  The call goes to voicemail. Olillia doesn’t leave a message.

  Joshua continues sifting through the files. “Dad did look into the cabins,” he says, finding the information. “Two are summer homes rented out to people on holidays. Of those two, one was empty, and the other had French tourists who hired the place out for a week. Dad and Uncle Ben interviewed them and they were able to look around.”

  “Guess they didn’t find anything,” Olillia says.

  “The two cabins were . . . Oh geez, look at this!” He turns the paperwork towards Olillia so she can read it too. “Look who owns the third cabin.”

  “Robert and Helen Archer,” she says, reading off the notes. “You think they’re Vincent’s parents?”

  “Probably,” he says. “It says here they used it as a holiday house, but hadn’t been out there in years.”

  “Did the police search it?”

  “There’s no record of it,” he says. “I guess they didn’t feel there was any reason to. It was outside the range they were searching, and nothing suggested Robert or Helen Archer were involved.”

  “Wouldn’t your uncle have made the connection when he learned of Vincent Archer?”

  “He might have,” he says, and then remembers what his mom texted him earlier. If his uncle had made the connection before Joshua stabbed him in the throat, then for now that connection has been forgotten.

  “Let me try Detective Vega again,” Olillia says.

  “I’ll check the drawers, in case there’s something more current,” he says.

  While Olillia makes another phone call, he opens the desk drawers. The top one is full of stationery, as well as USB sticks and the family passports and receipts and blister packs with vitamin C tablets. He opens the second drawer. The only thing in here is a folder. He pulls it out and opens it. It’s full of newspaper clippings and has a list of names written on the inside cover.

  “Still no answer,” Olillia says. She doesn’t leave a message. “What have you got there?”

  “I’m not sure,” he says. He hands her some of the clippings and he looks over the others. They’re all of people who have been killed over the last two years. Six in total. Three shot dead by the police—one a guy strung out on drugs waving a gun in a street, one a woman with a machete threatening to kill her daughter, the third a father who pulled a gun on the police after they went to speak to him about the bruises and broken bones his children were showing up at the hospital with. There’s a serial killer who killed himself when Uncle Ben and his dad were closing in on his house, there’s a guy who fell through the roof of a Salvation Army shop he was robbing who was in a coma for two weeks before life support was turned off, and there’s a guy who abducted a small girl and, after being caught and handcuffed by Uncle Ben, tried to run away but ran into traffic and was killed by a car.

  Why would his dad have these?

  “So who are the names on the other list?” she asks, because the names in the articles don’t match the names on the list on the inside cover.

  “I don’t know. Victims of those people maybe?”

  “Let’s find out.”

  She types the names into the computer one at a time. There are fourteen of them. Some she finds no information on. A couple were featured in news stories, plenty have personal pages on social media websites. It doesn’t take long to figure out what they all have in common—each of them was sick, and now each of them is okay—their lives saved by organ transplants.

  Olillia turns away from the computer and faces him. “When you look at the dates these criminals died, and the dates these other people were helped, it looks like they were all organ donors who, in death, were able to help others. That’s admirable,” she says. When he doesn’t answer, she looks concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “I need to sit down,” he says, but before he makes it to the couch his legs give way and he ends up sitting on the floor in front of it. He turns himself so he can lean against it and looks up at her.

  “What is it?” she asks. “You look awful.”

  He’s thinking about his conversation with Dr. Toni. She knew his dad, but she said she didn’t see him much, only when he was in the hospital. What did she say? Sometimes criminals get injured and he’d be in here. She said she had known his dad a long time. The morning he woke up after the operation there was a nurse. He asked where Dr. Toni was, and the nurse said she was performing the same kind of operation she had on Joshua, but with another patient. Somebody else was getting a new set of eyes. That means somebody else had to have died that day.

  And somebody had, hadn’t he? The man who killed his dad.

  What did Uncle Ben say when Joshua came into the hospital that morning?

  He got what he deserved, okay? After that he said, I’ve made sure he’s being put to good use. Do you understand what I’m saying?

  Back then, Joshua didn’t know.

  Now he does.

  Uncle Ben killed Simon Bower out of anger, but also to serve a purpose. And now that he’s made the connection, he can see it. He can see Uncle Ben standing opposite him, pointing a gun at him before moving around behind him.

  What do you weigh?

  What?

  You look like you run. You look like you hit the gym a little too. What about smoking? Are you a smoker?

  How can he remember this if his dad was already dead? Olillia is sitting next to him now, one hand on his shoulder, holding his good hand with the other. “You’re shaking,” she says.

  The others in the articles, were there similar conversations with them? Did the child abductor run out in front of a car, or was he pushed? The serial killer, did he really shoot himself? The man in the hospital, did he not wake up because the injuries were too severe, or did he not wake up because somebody needed a heart?

  He thinks about the book he was listening to when he was in the hospital after the operation. Frederick the vampire who didn’t want to feed on people, but when he did he chose only those who were bad. Was his dad doing a similar thing? Did his dad kill bad people to help others? When he told his mom yesterday at the hospital about the curse, she told him it wasn’t that, but a combination of good people trying bad things and bad people doing worse things.

  She knew what his dad was doing. She had to know.

  On the scale of good people and bad, where do his parents fall?

  “Joshua? Talk to me. What is it?”

  “I’m okay,” he tells her.

  “You don’t look okay.”

  “I’m fine,” he says.

  “Should I try Detective Vega again?”

  “No,” he says. “Let’s go to the cabin.”

  “Are you sure?”

  For the first time since leaving
the library, she looks concerned. At school, and on the train tracks, and all afternoon she’s been incredibly strong. Sure, she was devastated when he saw her behind the police barrier yesterday from the ambulance, and she was obviously upset when she wrote the note for him, but the one thing he’s never seen in her is any sense of fear. She’s done so much for him in the twenty-four hours he’s known her, and he can’t ask her to do any more. Not this. Not when he could be putting her in danger.

  “No,” he says. “Not so sure.”

  She smiles at him, and perhaps she can read his mind, because she says, “I’m not scared about going out there,” she says. “Just concerned, but I want to go. I think that we need to, you know, be more careful than we’ve been. I’ve seen way too many horror movies where going to a cabin doesn’t work out well for anybody, but Vincent Archer is dead, so is Simon, so to be scared of them hurting us is silly. I’m just scared of what we’re going to see out there because some things you can never un-see,” she says, and he thinks of Scott, the look on his face as his life drained away. “I don’t want you to say you’re not sure about going because you think that’s what I want to hear. Do you want to go?”

  “I think I need to. Dad was never able to figure out what happened to Ruby Carter, but I think we can. I want to do this, for him.”

  “Maybe we should leave it to fate. We’ll try Detective Vega again, and if she doesn’t answer, then we’ll go.”

  He doesn’t believe in fate. He just believes in curses. She tries calling Vega again, and it goes straight through to voicemail. When she hangs up, he tells her the other thing that’s on his mind. The dreams—the fact that he can identify Ruby Carter in that moment she was abducted, the way he knew Vincent Archer . . . and that feeling that came over him in Vincent Archer’s garage around all the power tools, the same kind of power tools that Simon Bower used, that compulsion to cut and build and create. “I know why I’m remembering things my dad never saw,” he says.