The Night Season

by Chelsea Cain

  “I’m not a journalist,” Susan said. “I was fired.”

  “You’re a freelance journalist.”

  Henry. Archie had said there was no antivenom.

  “Twenty-four hours?” Susan looked around the office for a clock. “What time is it?” she asked.

  He didn’t even have to glance at his watch. “It’s almost noon. Six hours to go, give or take.”

  Susan spun around again slowly in the chair. “This guy takes a kid and keeps him for a year and a half. Then uses a poisonous octopus to kill three people, put a fourth in the hospital, and he leaves keys on all of them.”

  “The keys are his signature. The octopus is his weapon. I don’t know how the kid figures in.”

  “Why did he give me a key? Was I almost a victim?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s kind of like a Peter Benchley novel.”

  “Okay,” Archie said.

  “How much time do I have? For an exclusive?”

  “Two hours and I send out a press release.”

  Her phone rang. She knew that ringtone. “Number of the Beast.” Iron Maiden.

  “It’s Ian,” she said.

  “You can take it.”

  She let it go to voice mail. “I’ll call him back,” she said. A serial killer with an octopus? She could get that story run anywhere. But she knew that once she did, any hope that Ian would hire her back was over. She’d have to make a living as a freelancer, or move to a city with more media outlets.

  There was a second option.

  She could use the exclusive to get back in with the Herald. Ian would have to take her back. She’d make him sign something. Everything could go back to the way it was.

  “Can I smoke a cigarette and have five minutes to think about it?” she said.

  “Sure,” Archie said.

  Susan stood up. She looked at Archie. He waited.

  “Are you giving this to me because you’re worried I was almost murdered and want to keep me around so you can keep an eye on me?” she said.

  He held his thumb and forefinger out an inch apart. “A little,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Susan hunched under an overhang next to a garbage bin outside the task force building and lit a cigarette with a lighter from her raincoat pocket. The drizzle was relentless. The noon sky was flat and dark. She could hear the gutters running all around her, a constant gush of water spilling onto concrete. The streetlights from the nearby intersection swung back and forth in the gentle wind, flashing red.

  The cigarette tasted really good.

  She didn’t bother to check Ian’s message on her voice mail. She hardly ever listened to voice mails—if people had something important to say, well, that’s what texts were for. He probably needed her to fill out some paperwork or do an exit interview or something.

  “Number of the Beast” started up again.

  He was like herpes.

  She let Iron Maiden sing a verse before she picked up.

  “What?” she said flatly. She was going to make him work for this. If she was going back there with the story, she was going to get a better task chair, maybe even a view of the river.

  “I’m sorry,” Ian said.

  She would not have been more surprised if he’d said, Aliens have landed and they want to give you an interview. Maybe he had the wrong number.

  “It’s Susan,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m calling to say I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  “I behaved badly. You can have your job back.”

  Susan let that sink in. She took a drag off her cigarette. Examined it. Flicked some ashes into the trash can. There was something hinky going on. She had been driving Ian crazy for almost a year. She was always late to meetings, was hardly ever at the office, tried to expense everything, insisted on her own story ideas, and had twice broken the third-floor candy machine trying to get M&Ms out by reaching up through the flap. But she’d managed to land incredible stories—to be right in the middle of them—so she’d always figured her job was safe, despite his occasional threats. Also, there was the fact that she had slept with him, and he knew that if she ever told (which she wouldn’t) he would be ruined. It had been during her older-married-men-with-authority phase. Thinking of it now gave her the willies.

  “Did you hear me?” Ian said. “I’m offering you your job back.”

  “Why?” Susan asked.

  “We need you,” Ian said.

  “No, you don’t,” Susan said. She took a drag of her cigarette. “I mean, you do. But you don’t know that.”

  “Don’t be difficult,” Ian said with a little of the old edge back in his voice. “You think you’re going to find another job out there?” He paused. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m in a jam here. Just come back. I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Okay,” Susan said.

  “Okay? Really? You’ll take your job back?”

  “Sure,” Susan said. “You bet.”

  “That’s great,” Ian said, with a relieved sounding sigh. “Thanks, babe.”

  “Oh, Ian?”

  “Yeah?”

  Susan smiled and stretched the moment as long as she could, grinding the cigarette out on the brick wall. There was no way she was giving him this story. She didn’t work for the Herald. She was a freelancer. She said, “I quit.” She waited for the gasp on the other end of the phone before she hung up and tossed the butt in the trash.

  She wasn’t done.

  She got another cigarette out of her purse and lit it. She hadn’t had two cigarettes in a row since grad school. The second one made her feel light-headed and warm. She had no regrets. She just had to get another job with insurance before she got lung cancer.

  An orange peel went by, swept along by the gutter rapids.

  Susan called Derek.

  “Hey, there,” he said.

  She wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “Did you call Leo Reynolds and tell him I got fired?”

  Derek was in his car. Susan could hear NPR in the background. He turned it down and the host’s voice dropped to a low burble. But he didn’t answer the question. He didn’t have to.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Susan said.

  “Ian is a moron,” Derek protested. “You didn’t deserve to get fired. You do good work. When you get around to it.”

  When she got around to it? “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just that you spend a lot of time hanging out with your police friends.”

  The cigarette bent in Susan’s hand. “That’s me working. How do you think I get stories?”

  “You don’t ever wonder if you’re too close to them?” Derek said. There was a characteristic in his voice that Susan didn’t like—air quotes around “close,” an implication of something sordid.

  Susan was irritated by air quotes in general. But there was something about these particular air quotes that really got under her skin.

  She took an angry drag off the bent cigarette. “Sure, yeah,” she said. “Which is why I didn’t want to write the story about Henry. It would have been inappropriate. I know the line.”

  “Where are you right now?”

  Susan turned so she was facing away from the task force offices. She felt ridiculous. It’s not like he could see her through the phone. “Shut up,” she said. “I’m mad at you.”

  “So I called Leo Reynolds,” Derek said. “You got me. His family knows the Overtons. You may have noticed the Overton-Reynolds Wing at the museum.” Susan hadn’t. “And he obviously likes you. So I called him and I told him you’d been unfairly fired, and that if he really liked you, getting you your job back might be a grander gesture than slowly burying you in floral arrangements.”

  “How did you get his number?” Susan asked. She happened to know that Leo was unlisted.

  “You wrote it in Sharpie on your desk,” Derek said.

  “Oh.” She remembered that now. She hadn’t been
able to find a Post-it.

  “I still think he’s bad news,” Derek said. He paused. “But he sure got through to Ian.” Susan could hear the smile in his voice. “You should have seen him get the call.”

  Susan couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of that conversation.

  The radio noise stopped, and she heard Derek open his car door. Wherever he was going, he’d arrived.

  “So Ian unfired you?” Derek asked.

  “He did.”

  “Great,” Derek said. He sounded happy. He was out of the car. She could hear city sounds on his end, traffic, the slap of footsteps in water.

  “Then I quit,” Susan said.

  “Susan,” Derek said. He stretched the word out, turning it into a disappointed sigh.

  She heard a siren then, someone on a loudspeaker, police radios yelping, the buzzing commotion of a hundred urgent conversations.

  She felt suddenly very fond of Derek. “Where are you calling from?”

  “Waterfront Park. Ian’s got me down here covering the sandbagging effort. Gotta go. On deadline.”

  If she told Derek, he’d run with it. It would be a headline on the paper’s Web site in ten minutes. You don’t ever wonder if you’re too close to them? She couldn’t say anything. Besides, what was she supposed to say, Keep an eye out for an octopus-wielding madman?

  She threw the rest of her cigarette in the trash.

  “Derek?” she said.

  “Yeah?” he shouted. She could see him, phone against one ear, fingers pressed against the other, wearing some stupid sport coat and a tie, Herald ID on a lanyard around his neck. He’d wear that thing in the shower if he could.

  She was being mean. He’d make a good boyfriend. For someone normal. Someone not her.

  “Be careful,” she said to the dead air.

  CHAPTER

  30

  Susan had left a tampon on his desk. Archie had noticed it while he was on the phone with Claire.

  No change.

  That’s what Claire had said.

  Archie wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. If Henry’s body was processing the toxin, shouldn’t his vital signs be getting better?

  He opened his desk drawer, slid out the flash drive, and turned it over in his hand. It had been six months since Gretchen had given it to him. Her last move in their demented psychological chess game.

  Archie had yet to plug it into his computer and look at the files. He had promised Henry he wouldn’t.

  He put it back in the drawer and checked his watch. It was after noon.

  An e-mail bounced up—the electronic file of Patrick Lifton’s missing persons report. The FBI had come through.

  He was scanning it when Susan came back in.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “The story. I called the national editor at The New York Times while I was outside. Can I have a desk to work at?”

  “You leave the boy out of it for now,” Archie said.

  “Yep,” Susan said. “Now give me back my purse. I need my notebook.”

  Archie’s phone rang. He saw Heil’s number and snapped the cell to his cheek.

  “Where are you?” Archie asked.

  “In the front,” Heil said.

  “You’re calling me from the office?”

  “It was faster. There’s someone here. Says he’s the one who moved Stephanie Towner’s body.”

  “Here, now?”

  “I’m looking at him. Says he’s the caretaker at Oaks Park.”

  “I’ll be right out,” Archie said. He looked at Susan. “You can work in my office,” he said. He immediately regretted the offer.

  * * *

  August Hughes had broad cheekbones and a wide nose, and white hair that receded halfway back his scalp. Deep folds were stacked on his dark forehead, and dimples had long ago deepened into shallow trenches on either side of his mouth. White whiskers spotted his chin. His collared shirt was ironed. He was wearing red suspenders.

  His son, Philip, had brought him in. He’d taken care of the congenital receding hairline by shaving his head and growing a beard.

  Archie had decided against interviewing them in the interrogation room, and instead suggested the conference room where they now sat.

  The list of possible key purposes was still on the dry-erase board.

  Heil sat next to Archie; August and Philip Hughes, side by side across the table.

  August Hughes swallowed hard. “I’ll accept full responsibility,” he said.

  His son looked away.

  They hadn’t asked for a lawyer.

  “You moved the body to the carousel?” Archie asked.

  “I did.”

  “Why?” Archie asked.

  “I’ll accept full responsibility,” he said again. His irises looked almost black, the whites of his eyes more cream than white, and threaded with red blood vessels.

  “Why did you do it?” Archie repeated.

  Philip Hughes placed a hand on his father’s back. “Tell them, Pop,” he said.

  August’s shoulders slumped. “At first I pulled her off the bank because I was afraid the river would wash her back out,” he explained. “I laid her in the grass.” He shrugged a little and frowned. “But it didn’t seem right. She just looked so cold. So scared. I didn’t want her found like that.”

  Archie raised an eyebrow. “So you put her on the carousel?”

  “Carousel’s been there since 1923,” August said. “It’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and recognized by the National Carousel Association. All wood. Hand-carved. It’s the prettiest thing in the park.” He shook his head, eyes closed. “I knew it was wrong. Knew it when I did it. But sometimes right is wrong, know what I mean?”

  “You might have destroyed valuable evidence,” Archie said. She had been in the water two days; any trace evidence had certainly been long gone. But August Hughes didn’t know that. “Something that could have helped us catch her killer.”

  August’s eyes opened. “She was murdered? I thought she drowned.”

  Philip Hughes took a breath, removed his hand from his father’s back, and laid it on his father’s hand. “It’s okay, Pop.”

  “Why didn’t you report it?” Archie asked August.

  “How could I explain what I’d done?” the old man said. “Besides, I knew the work crew would find her. They take their smoke breaks over there. But it ate at me. I finally told my son this morning. Asked him to bring me down to you all.”

  People did a lot of strange things, for strange reasons. Archie had seen some of those things up close. But this? It was up there.

  “Why the ostrich?” Archie asked.

  August Hughes looked at his hands. “No reason. Thought she’d like it. You can tell a lot about someone by the carousel animal they get on. Rooster. Stork. Frog. Zebra. Most people, they get on the jumping horses, the dragon, the lion, the tiger—you know, the classics. We got two ostriches on that carousel. Some kids, they cry when their moms try to set them on one. They want to ride on the dragon. Some kids, they go right to the ostriches. They have secret names for them. You see them whisper in their ears. Those are the kids with heart. I thought she was one of them.”

  “My dad’s a drinker,” Philip said.

  “I drink beer,” August said, looking up. “Just enough. Not more.”

  Archie was forty-one and his whole body hurt most of the time. He couldn’t carry his kids more than a few blocks. This old man, he’d managed to move a body in the dark, after a few beers? Dead bodies were a lot harder to move than most people thought. There was a reason people talked about “deadweight.” Dead people weren’t any heavier than they were when they were alive. But it felt like it. “You picked up that girl, got her over the fence, carried her a hundred feet, and got her up on the carousel?” Archie asked. “By yourself?”

  “I didn’t say I did it quick,” the old man said.

  “Dad’s strong,” Philip said. “He still goes to the gym every day. He boxed in the army
. Then worked at the shipyards.” He patted his father’s hand. “The roller rink was destroyed back in ’48, and after that they put the floor up on pontoons. My dad, he was working at the park during the Christmas flood of ’64. Saw the brown water coming in, and he cut the floor loose from supports with a chainsaw. Saved the roller rink.”

  “Nineteen-forty-eight,” Archie said. “That was the Vanport flood, right?”

  The elder Hughes nodded. “Water had to go somewhere, once it washed away the town. The Willamette rose fifteen feet. The park was underwater for thirty days, trees dead, rides warped. Course, I didn’t work there then.”

  “You weren’t supposed to be there on Sunday night, either,” Archie said. He had seen the schedule for that week. “So what were you doing at the park?” he asked.

  “I go there a lot at night in the winter,” August said. “Place is closed. Don’t want anyone getting into things, getting into trouble. Kids jump the fence and fool around. I know them all. I know all their parents.”

  It was a hunch. Nothing more. Archie had the case file in front of him. He opened it and took out the hospital surveillance image of the boy and pushed it over to August Hughes.

  “Have you seen this kid?” Archie asked him.

  Philip Hughes leaned forward. “Is that the boy on the news?”

  August frowned. “He’s not any trouble.”

  Archie’s heart quickened. “You’ve seen him? Are you sure?”

  “He comes around for the goldfish,” August Hughes said. “The older kids, they come to the park and spend a fortune throwing darts at balloons to get those fish. Jump all around when they win one. You’d think they’d gotten themselves a trip to Paris, the way they bounce around. Ten minutes later, they couldn’t care less. I find those bags on the Ferris wheel, in the bathroom, on benches. The kid asked if he could have them. I don’t care. They don’t belong to anyone. They only live a few weeks.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Archie asked.

  “He came by the park every couple of days last summer. Haven’t seen him since the park closed for the season back in October.”