Hollingsworth

by Tom Bont

  “Anne,” her father warned, “let it be.”

  They bestowed their Look as they rushed past to spend their half-hour with him.

  Angela wiped tears from her face as she strode across the parking lot. She spent the rest of the day in bed and under the covers. And the next day. Other than eating a bowl of ice cream for breakfast. And lunch. And supper, though she put nuts on it.

  Angela spent Monday morning at her desk sorting through email blathering on about the typical agency gripes; inaccurate reports; how appropriations were pinching budgets; people should refrain from using more than one piece of paper towel to dry their hands after washing them in the restroom. One piqued her interest. It entailed a reminder to those folks in the “weird” department to unload all silver rounds before shooting range practice. She made a mental note to check with Clint on whether that was a joke or not.

  Her daily quota of deletions out of the way, she polished the Hernandez report.

  Clint, face pale, collapsed down in his chair before she hit Send.

  “Damn, partner,” Angela blurted. “You look like warmed-over death. Too much vacation?”

  “I think I picked up a cold or something.”

  One of the other agents on the task force, Brad Johnson, a grizzly bear of a man with a face always in need of a shave, yelled out across the room. “A cold? Guess that new girlfriend gave you more than you gave her!” Everyone in the office laughed except for Angela. “What’s the matter, Hollingsworth?” he teased. “Don’t like humor?”

  “Like it just fine. When I hear some, I’ll let you know.”

  “Ouch,” Bill razzed. “Don’t quit your day job, Johnson.”

  At least I think Bill’s his name.

  Angela circled back to Clint. “New girlfriend, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And here I thought you didn’t know how to have fun.” She leaned back in her chair. “Anyone I know?”

  “Nope.”

  “When are you gonna bring her around?”

  “Never.”

  “Do you give answers with more than one word?”

  “Sometimes.” A smile crept across his face and disappeared. “Morning, Kent.”

  Angela peeked over her shoulder as Kent Gladen, her new boss, walked into the gang room. He stopped at her desk, smoothing his slim black tie, the only tie she could recall him wearing, against his shirt. “Report on the Hernandez case?” he asked, his tone low and gritty.

  “Should be in your inbox, right—” she pressed the Send button “—now.”

  “I need both of you in my office. Something weird in Wichita Falls.”

  Something weird. A joke?

  Kent’s only three decorating indulgences were an Ohio State Buckeyes Brutus bobblehead on the front of his desk, his Buckeyes coffee cup, and a picture hanging on his wall of a younger, military version of him along with some other soldiers. Burning poppy fields blazed in the background. The bobblehead, she’d been itching to poke since the first time she’d walked into the office. The picture, she’d stare at with intense curiosity until she realized he wasn’t going to offer any information past what was depicted.

  Taciturn, he also wasn’t into small talk. “I talked with the Wichita County Sheriff, Elroy Ackerman, while I was driving in this morning. He has three murders I’m interested in. Someone skinned them. Need you to go consult and lend assistance if possible.”

  Angela asked, “Werewolves?” To date, Evan accounted for her only supernatural encounter.

  “I doubt it. Not their typical M.O. Take some silver bullets with you anyway. Works on most things.”

  Angela shot Kent a look. “I didn’t need silver when I killed Evan.”

  “Werewolf brains are just as sensitive as a human’s,” he drolled. “Destroy it, the werewolf dies.”

  Wichita County Sheriff Elroy Ackerman placed a picture up on his whiteboard of a body with the surface texture of a skinned, bloody grape. His sweaty underarms showed a man who’d been spending long nights and even longer days on a case. Aside from a shower, a razor might have done him some good, too. “Three nights ago, the body of John Aster, a bulldozer operator, was found in a culvert eight miles from town.” He got back mixed gawks of horror and curiosity on Angela’s and Clint’s faces. “Well, we’re assuming it’s Aster. We found his truck nearby.” He ran his hand across his black, stubbly head, and crow lines radiated from his brown eyes as he squinted at the picture.

  “Two nights ago, Greg Spain, a local, self-proclaimed cattle baron, was found four miles from town in a creek bottom.” He put another picture next to the first one. Skinned too.

  “And last night—” another picture, same wounds “—the county judge, Wilford Craven. This time, in the parking lot of a local watering hole.”

  “Have the, um, skins been found?” Angela asked.

  “For Spain and Craven. Not Aster.”

  “Whatever’s doing this is getting braver,” Clint muttered. “It’s moving closer to town.”

  “I agree.” Elroy continued studying the whiteboard. With a start, he glanced back at Clint. “It? I don’t know anything other than a man who could do this. What makes you think it isn’t a man?”

  “The suspect might be human, but he’s—or she’s—a monster too.” Clint pursed his lips. “It,” he declared with finality in the tone of his voice.

  Angela flipped through the coroner report. “Says here there weren’t any knife wounds or claw marks. How did the suspect remove the skin?”

  “Yeah, I wondered that too. That’s when I called the Texas Rangers. If there’s some cult overdosing on crazy around here, I was hoping someone might’ve heard about it. They said someone would call me back. About ten minutes later, I was talking with your boss. Supposedly, y’all handle stuff like this.”

  “We never get the standard murder,” Clint confirmed. “We always get the weirdos.”

  Elroy squinted back to the pictures. “Well, this sure does peg out my weirdo scale.”

  Angela continued reading. “Aster and Spain both died from exsanguination. Blood loss? No stab wounds. No defensive wounds. Good God, they…they were skinned alive! Why would a grown man sit there while someone skinned him?”

  “Drugs maybe? Toxicology reports haven’t come back yet,” Elroy confessed. “That’s a preliminary you’re reading. I’m really hoping they were drugged, ‘cause if they weren’t, then we really do have some crazy cult on our hands.”

  Angela stepped up to the pictures and examined them in detail. “What can you tell us about these three? Any connections between them?”

  “None that I know of. Judge Craven and Spain belonged to the same hunting club, but the dozer driver, Aster, didn’t quite run in their circles.”

  Clint rubbed his jaw. “Sheriff, you have a deputy you can send out to the club? I’m curious if Spain and Craven had any dealings.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks. In the meantime, can you take us around to the sites?”

  They began at Craven’s murder scene and failed to uncover anything other than what was in the report. A blood trail led east, but it faded after a hundred yards or so.

  Elroy pointed to a mesquite tree. “That’s where the investigators found his skin. Right here on the ground up against the trunk.”

  Spain’s location had about the same amount of information, but its blood trail dribbled to the southeast for about half a mile. It had ended at a skin as well, this time hanging on a No Passing sign next to a pockmarked road.

  When they got to Aster’s, Angela volunteered to canvas the ditch. Like the other scenes, police tape stretched around the area. The sheriff’s department had left a single patrol car parked nearby, but the tall grass and side of the trench shielded it from her. “Who found him way down here?”

  “Johnny Hanson. Works for the public utilities. He was driving to work and noticed the ditch overflowing. We’d had a rain the night before. Aster’s body had plugged up the culvert.”

&nbs
p; “So, the body could have been dumped here,” she mumbled.

  “Possibly.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” She kneeled down, and her knees rustled the soft grass. Whatever water had collected in the ditch had succumbed to the dry Texas air and receded. Bone dry. The beam of her flashlight disappeared down the length of the culvert, but a glint reflected back at her from within.

  “I’d be careful down there,” Elroy warned. “You might find a—”

  “—snake!” Angela screamed as she scrambled back along the ditch.

  “Hang on,” Elroy insisted. He showed back up a few moments later with a pair of long-handled tongs. “We keep a pair in the trunk. Never know when they’ll come in handy.” He stepped down into the ditch and seized the snake. “Rattler.”

  Angela wasn’t particularly scared of snakes, growing up out in the sticks as she did, but she sure knew to grant them their space. Didn’t stop the adrenaline from doing its job, though. Her hands were still shaking. “Little shit didn’t rattle until I was right on it!”

  “Yeah, they do that sometimes if they think a predator will keep going,” Elroy admitted. He pressed the head of the snake to the dirt road and mashed his heel on it, killing it. “What’d you see?” he asked as he lobbed the snake’s body into the tree line.

  “Not sure. Something flickered up in there.”

  Did I really just say, “up in there?” Damn, I hate the country!

  She pointed at Elroy’s tongs. “Can I borrow those?” So armed, she crept back down into the ditch. Once certain no snakes hid in the mouth of the culvert, she stretched out with the tongs and snagged the sparkling glint. It was a high school class ring…on a piece of skin as well preserved as a glove.

  Elroy produced a large plastic bag and held it open for her so she could drop the evidence into it. “That’s Aster’s high school class ring. All-State wide receiver three years ago. That’s the award stamped there on the left.”

  “No scholarship?” Clint asked.

  “No. Ripped his shoulder up pretty bad his senior year. Colleges walked away after that.”

  Angela considered the area around the ditch. “He was probably killed here. Or at least a bit further upstream. Too heavy to travel too far.”

  Elroy regarded the culvert. “I think you may be right. I’ll call the coroner’s office and get them to sweep the pipe for anything else that doesn’t belong there.”

  They all silently scanned the area, when Elroy choked back a sob. “I’ve known Aster his whole life. Used to mow my lawn after my boy left for college. That bum shoulder didn’t slow him down none. Played touch football every Saturday he wasn’t working. Jogged. Lifted weights.” He shook his head. “How does someone get the drop on a kid in that kind of physical shape?”

  Clint shrugged. “I don’t know, Sheriff, but we’re gonna find out.”

  They spent the next hour scouring the area around the site under the assumption the coroner’s report was correct; Aster’s death occurred after the rain.

  “Found something!” Angela yelled. She pointed to a footprint.

  Elroy dropped to one knee and inspected the ground with an educated eye. “Looks like a slipper. No treads to speak of. Disappears east into the brush though.”

  Clint stared at the sky. “Getting dark, too. Let’s pick it back up in the morning when we can see something.”

  Angela unbolted her hotel room door to a pimply, redheaded boy. His nametag read, Billy.

  “One medium pepperoni and jalapeno? That’ll be $16.18, ma’am,” he informed her.

  Angela took the Rizza Pizza box from him and handed over a twenty-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”

  “Thanks! Have a good evening!”

  Angela locked the door and dropped the steaming cardboard box onto the table. The newscaster on the television was talking about the murders, repeating what she already knew about the case. While a large slice cooled on the flipped-back lid, she plucked the crispy pepperoni slices that had fallen under the blade of the cutter and chewed them with determination.

  Four hours on the treadmill, sprawled out right here.

  She continued her pepperoni raid along the edges. She liked things orderly.

  Nice and symmetrical. Like little trails leading to the treasure.

  She halted her pepperoni genocide to concentrate on the center of the pizza where all the lines converged. She bounced up and rushed over to the map she’d taped to the wall. Digital maps were nice, but she liked to look at large ones. It bestowed a keener sense of dimension.

  She grabbed her marker from the desktop and systematically drew a line in roughly the same direction each of the trails all headed. Taken to their guesstimated ending, they all converged in a large, undeveloped piece of property several miles outside of town.

  Banging on the wall to the adjacent room, she yelled, “Let’s go!” She folded the cooled pizza slice in half and ate it as she stepped into the hallway.

  Clint wiped his hand across his sweaty forehead. “I must be losing my touch.”

  Angela turned the radio down. “Why’s that?”

  “I didn’t think to put it all on a map like you did.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Angela argued. “It’s been a long day.”

  He scoffed. “I don’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

  “You can make it up to me, though,” she razzed. “Seeing as I’m driving, call the sheriff and see if his deputy found out anything on Spain and Craven.”

  “We just talked to him two hours ago, he would’ve called if—” Clint’s phone rang and he glanced at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil.” He fumbled with the buttons a few moments and finally transferred the call on the car speaker. “Hey, Sheriff,” he answered, “I’ve got Agent Hollingsworth with me. Go ahead.”

  “Got some information for you. Judge Craven refused to grant a restraining order against some kind of development on Spain’s land. We’re still trying to get the details, but there’s a mound there that some believe the Wichita Indians used to bury their dead.”

  “Was it?” Angela asked.

  “Unknown. The Wichita weren’t known as mound builders. That’s why Craven rejected the request. That’s all I have. Where y’all headed?”

  Clint glimpsed sideways at Angela. “Going out for something to eat.”

  “You won’t find too much open this time of night.”

  “Thanks,” Angela said. “Hey, before you hang up, you got some GPS coordinates from the court documents?”

  “I’ll see what I can find and send them to your phone.”

  About a half hour later, Angela and Clint pulled their car over a cattle guard leading onto Spain’s property. Cow pies littered the road ahead. “Follow this dirt road another mile,” Clint instructed. “Should lead right up to where the GPS says we need to go.”

  Angela leaned forward over the steering wheel. “Is it me, or is it getting darker?”

  Clint squinted up at the sky. “It ain’t you. The stars and moon are dimmed more than usual, too.”

  Angela focused on the road as a fog rolled in, shortening their headlight beams. Luckily, the GPS kept them on track.

  “This is about as far as we can go on the road,” Clint finally proclaimed.

  They both eased out of the car and scanned the area. They couldn’t see more than a dozen feet in any direction. The stench of rotten mud surrounded them. And it was a quiet as an undertaker’s basement; no crickets, no wind, nothing.

  “Which way did the GPS say we needed to go?” Angela asked.

  “About fifty yards to our left.”

  Angela glanced over both of her shoulders. “What the hell was I thinking,” she mumbled, “coming out here at night?”

  “Same thing I was thinking.” He swung his flashlight slowly back and forth. “There’s a bad guy that needs a catchin’.” He pointed his flashlight at her pistol. “What loads you using?”

  “The silver ones. Didn’t get a chance to c
hange out before we left.”

  “No, we want the silver. Most things supernatural don’t like it. And if they aren’t supernatural, it’ll still leave a big hole.” He checked his loads and stared into her eyes. “You ready?”

  “Yes,” she answered, pulling her Glock and flashlight before taking position two steps to his left and rear.

  They stalked across a dampened field for about five minutes before Angela asked, “You okay?”

  “Sure.” He continued scanning the area with his flashlight. “Why you ask?”

  “You keep dropping your hands. Your weapon too heavy?”

  He bristled. “I’m fine.”

  Before she had a chance to respond, a loud screech froze them in their tracks. The earsplitting noise bore down on them from all directions at once before dying away. They spun their lights around in a circle, hunting for its source.

  Clint whispered, “What the hell was th—”

  He flew away into the fog, arms and legs splayed out.

  A panicked scream disappeared into the dark. Angela gaped in shock, utterly alone.

  “Clint!” she yelled, dashing after him.

  Another shriek pierced the air, but this time she pinpointed its location—slightly to the left. First sound gives you distance. Second sound gives you direction. Works for matches at night, too. Her Uncle Bill had told her a soldier’s superstition once about not lighting three cigarettes with the same match. The third soldier usually got a bullet to the face once a sniper had range and windage.

  She continued sprinting, not worrying about running into anything when she ran out into a clearing where the fog thinned enough to see.

  Before her stood a twenty-foot high hillock. Off to her left, a parked bulldozer. The ground underneath, dew-damp, flattened grass. To her right, movement. She spun. Shined her light and pistol at it. Clint, face down and spread-eagle on the ground. Above him stood an old, Indian woman with long, sharpened, rake-like fingers, raised in the air, ready to strake Clint’s back. When the light struck her, she glared at Angela and shrieked again, her mouth an unhinged maw larger than her head and full of needles. Angela squeezed the trigger again and again. The wraith shifted and dodged aside faster than she could follow.