The gray light had grown bright enough to see by the time they finished telling everything. “I know it’s pretty difficult to believe,” Dale said.
“Difficult?” Winfield said, snorting with laughter. “It’s damned near impossible!”
“If I could just have had a chance to play that tape for you,” he said, dipping his head downward to indicate the pile of shattered plastic strewn on the floor. Light brown audio tape was unspooled into a tangled mess. Hocker had patted him down before binding him up—removing the bills and credit cards in his wallet. When he found the cassette, he had laughed as he ground it into the dirt floor of the cellar with his boot heel.
“I didn’t really conceive anything like this could happen until I heard it in Larry’s own voice—” He choked with memory of his dead friend, sitting up in his coffin and looking at him with eyes as glazed and flat as marble slabs. “Even then, it took me a while to believe it. Hell, I probably can’t really accept it even now. But if you had seen what we saw out at Rodgers’ house last night...” He shivered, and not just from the damp cold of the cellar.
Winfield looked over at Donna, whose face looked pale and much thinner than he ever remembered it. Was this the face of someone who had seen things she couldn’t accept? he wondered. Or had she, somehow, been drawn into the insane delusions of this man?
“You said you could hear what Rodgers was doing out there last night, trying to run us down,” Dale said. “This man is very afraid his time’s run out and that he’s going to take the fall on this soon. He’s desperate, and he knows we’re here. If he can silence us, well, things might continue the way they have been for quite a while up here. It’s going to take a lot of persistence on the part of someone to find an answer to where we’ve disappeared.”
Winfield sighed and sagged back against the wall. Chill be damned! If he couldn’t get Tasha to help them, they were screwed!
“I know it sounds crazy,” Donna said. “I keep trying to put myself in your shoes and seeing if I would believe what we’re saying. lTo be honest, I don’t think I would. It’s too weird to be true.”
“But if you put together some of the pieces yourself, keeping in mind what I’ve said, it does start to make a kind of sense. How about Larry Cole? You were there at the accident. Was his body so bad off it required a closed casket to keep from upsetting the family?”
Winfield shrugged as best as he could with his hands shackled behind his back.
“He was a mess, I already told you that,” he said softly, trying to remember precisely what he had seen last Friday night, not colored by the details Dale had just given him. “I agree with you that Rodgers’ insistence on a closed casket struck me as a bit unusual, but I wasn’t about to go make an issue of it. His decision was his decision, and he did maintain that, in spite of what Larry’s mother said, she had requested a closed casket.”
“How con-venient,” Dale said, mimicking the nasal drawl of the Saturday Night Live character “Church Lady.”
“And you must have heard about Reggie Perry,” Donna said. “From what his brother said in the bar, there was no reason for him to die like that. He’d been doing just fine until pop! He’s dead.”
“Things like that happen,” Winfield said.
“Often enough for anyone to get suspicious?” Dale asked, arching his eyebrows.
“Possibly,” Winfield said, scowling. “Look, “I suppose I can tell you this, now that, apparently, we’re…” He snorted and spit over his shoulder onto the wall. “Christ, I’m starting to act like our host.”
“I suppose I can tell you now that if there was one mistake made in all of this, it was that your friend Larry Cole got a little too close to this.”
“What do you mean?” Dale asked, looking over at Donna and trying to read her reaction.
“He was right. And you’re right, to a degree,” Winfield said. “Lots of ‘unusual,’ shall we say, things have been going for a long time around here, and I was conducting an investigation, trying to pin certain ‘untimely deaths’ on one or possibly two people who work in the hospital in Houlton.”
“Like what happened yesterday to Reggie Perry?” Dale asked.
Winfield nodded his head. “Exactly.”
“Do you want to mention any names?” Dale asked, feeling a sudden flush. Until now, he hadn’t really considered how extensive something like this might be. If there was enough money involved it might be very big indeed.
“No,” Winfield said. “I don’t care to mention any names. I’d say, odds are we’re going to have a bitch of a time getting out of this. I’m not really worried about compromising anyone. I can say that there is—should I say was?—an investigation in progress.”
Dale chuckled aloud and shook his head. He glanced up, at the cellar ceiling, when he heard Hocker’s heavy footsteps track from the living room into the kitchen overhead. Hocker said something to Tasha, but no one in the cellar could make out the words. Tasha shouted, “How the hell should I know who it is?”
“You know what’s funny as hell?” Dale said, still shaking with laughter. “Now that I think about it, on the tape, Larry said something about his ‘contact.’ Were you his contact?”
Winfield nodded solemnly. “I had spoken with him off the record because I knew him from when he grew up here. Second, he worked for the state, and I wanted to sound him out on the possibility of getting the State Police involved in the investigation.”
“What the hell would Larry have known about the State Police?” Dale said, shaking his head in wonder.
“I said I asked him off the record,” Winfield replied. “I’d been working on my own and wanted to bring someone else in on it, but frankly I thought the whole thing—and I’m not talking zombies here, like you two; I’m just talking about some suspicious deaths locally—I thought the whole thing was strange enough to warrant my attention. I mentioned it to Larry one night, while we were drinking down at Kellerman’s.”
Sudden laughter burst out of Dale like a gunshot. His shoulders shook as he looked back and forth between Donna and Winfield.
“And all along,” he sputtered, “I was thinking maybe you were in on it with Rodgers, working for him! Jesus, I guess that shows what kind of cop I would have made!”
Winfield tilted his head back and looked up at the cellar ceiling when they heard Hocker’s hefty footsteps go across the floor again.
“And what do you think we can do about him?” he asked. “Because if I’m right, and Rodgers is responsible for several local murders, or you’re right, and he’s ‘experimenting’ with the corpses, if we don’t get out of this goddamned coal bin, it isn’t going to matter what we think.”
“I’ve been trying to work these knots loose all night,” Dale said, glancing at Donna. “This guy may be crazy, but he sure as shit knows how to tie your hands up nice and snug. I’ve been working on the girl all night, trying to scare her into helping me get loose. Thanks to her, I was almost sporting my left nut on my right shoulder.” He briefly described his first encounter with Tasha in the church parking lot. “I think she’s our best hope. It’s obvious she doesn’t really like this guy Hocker, but she feels some kind of security from him, too. I think if she realizes just how much trouble she’s gotten herself into, she’ll come around.”
Donna sighed and leaned her head back against the cold stone wall. “You think she hasn’t realized that already? God, I mean, what’s it going to take for her to wake up?”
From upstairs, footsteps sounded in the kitchen again, running this time. The three prisoners heard Hocker call out, “You just make sure that back door is locked this time! I’ll take care of this!”
“Could be one of my co-workers, looking for me because I didn’t show up for my morning shift,” Winfield said, his eyes brightening with hope that quickly faded when he remembered how easily Hocker had blindsided him. It irritated him because it made him realize he was getting older and slower.
Dale was shaking his head, his eye
s closed as he tried to slow down his thoughts. After what he had seen last night at the funeral home, his imagination had gone into overdrive, and he didn’t like what he thought might be outside the house.
“I’ll bet it’s someone looking for us, all right,” he said softly. “I’ll bet you ten to one it’s Rodgers, coming back with a little help.”
II
By the time dawn came, Hocker agreed with Tasha that it was time to head out of town. He had never really wanted to get involved here; things had balled up, and as much as he wanted to clear out, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Maybe, he thought, it was because he hadn’t had a chance to torch anything yet. He couldn’t very well leave without leaving his mark on the town. Hell, those three dead guys buried back in the woods didn’t count. Who was going to miss them?
Hocker hadn’t slept well, because he didn’t trust Tasha to guard the guests down in the coal bin. He figured she’d get cold feet and, when he was sound asleep, let them go. Then she’d betray him. Naw! It would be best to keep an eye on her and the hostages until they could slip out of there into Canada.
Sunlight slipped in through the living room window and, like a spear, lanced through a hole in the drawn window shade and hit him squarely in the eye. He jumped awake with a start and looked around, afraid that he had fallen asleep and, that while asleep, Tasha might have fucked him up.
But no, she was still sleeping, a quiet hump in her sleeping bag over by the fireplace. Hocker got out of his sleeping bag and hurriedly pulled on his jeans and socks. Damned, it was cold! But he didn’t want to chance even the tiniest fire in the fireplace. Not after everything that had happened. Combining what he had taken from that old man, the cop, and the other guy tied up in the cellar, he had enough money to afford a motel room once they were in Canada. Hocker felt long overdue for a hot shower and a night’s sleep on a real mattress.
Grumbling softly to himself, he hiked on his boots, buttoned his flannel shirt, and sauntered into the kitchen. None of the appliances worked, he knew, but he didn’t want to bother with setting up the small camping stove, even though it was the only way he could get a cup of coffee. What he should do, he thought, was go in there and wake up Tasha. Let her do the woman’s work!
He decided against doing that, though, because he was enjoying the early morning quiet in the house. For a moment, he let himself wonder what it would have been like if he had grown up in this house instead of…
“Fuck it,” he whispered as he slammed open the lid of the cook stove and started working the valves to get the flame glowing. He cracked a wooden match with his thumbnail and lit the burner. The flame hissed loudly as it burned with a warm, blue glow, but it did nothing to cut the chill in the house. Hocker was still sputtering under his breath as he filled a small saucepan with water from his canteen and put it on the stove to boil.
“ ’Morning,” Tasha said sleepily. She was standing in the doorway, her eyes half-closed as she raked her fingers through her hair. Hocker, not wanting to let her know she had caught him by surprise, merely nodded her a greeting without turning around.
Before long, they were standing together in the frigid kitchen, sipping coffee from a steaming mug. The daylight outside was getting stronger, driving away the tangles of mist that clung to the hollows. The sloping hill was sharply lit by the slanting sunlight, and everything glowed with a gold light against the darkened sky to the west.
Hocker’s eyes, though, as often as he tracked up the hill to the horizon, always kept coming back to the barn: the goddamned barn where I hid the goddamned cop’s goddamned cruiser!
Something is going to have to burn in this town, he thought, feeling the hand holding his coffee mug tighten involuntarily. It was almost like a part of his brain began to itch, and he knew of only one way to scratch it. Burn! Burn something!
“What was that?” Tasha said, suddenly tensing.
Hocker tore his eyes away from his contemplation of the barn and looked at her. “I didn’t say nothin’.”
“No, that noise…”
“Just our guests knocking around. Probably lookin’ for their breakfast.” He chuckled and spit onto the floor.
He had been wondering most of the night what he should do about them. He couldn’t leave them there in the cellar when he torched the barn! If the sparks drifted over and started the house on fire, they’d be trapped. He sure as hell didn’t want to be a murderer!
Those guys in the woods don’t count, Hocker thought. They attacked us, so they deserved what they got!
But he couldn’t let them go, either, even if one of them wasn’t a cop. They had seen him and could easily identify him. He had to make sure they didn’t get free until he was safely across the border. Of course, that wasn’t difficult, because the Canadian border was only a few miles from Dyer. He decided not to worry about it; he’d figure out what to do when the time came.
“No,” Tasha said, her face creased with worry. “It sounded like a car pulled up outside.”
Hocker put his half-empty cup down on the counter and hurried into the living room. Tasha followed two steps behind him, and they saw that she was right. There was a long, black limousine idling at the top of the driveway, squarely facing the house. The limo was missing one headlight, and the front and sides looked as though the car had tried to wrap itself around a tree. A man, dressed in a long, gray coat, and wearing a hat to shade his face from the morning sun, stood by the opened driver’s door. One gloved hand rested on the top of the car door as he looked at the house, squinting into the morning sun; the other hand rested on the open door.
“Oh, shit,” Tasha said. She slid one hand protectively up onto Hocker’s shoulder. This guy sure doesn’t look like a cop, she thought, but who is he, and what does he want?
“Maybe we’ll get lucky, and he’ll just go away,” Hocker said. He was clenching and unclenching his fists, and Tasha was thinking Hocker looked like he wanted this man to come up to the house, so he could add him to the collection downstairs.
“It looks like there’s some other guys in the car with him,” Tasha said, whispering close to Hocker’s ear.
It was true. Behind the dark screen of the tinted windows, they could see silhouettes of a number of men. Hocker figured the limo could probably hold ten or more people comfortably.
“I’ll bet this is the asshole who was out here last night, trying to ram down the front porch,” Hocker said. The man was staring steadily at the house, and Hocker couldn’t shake the odd feeling that this man could somehow see him and Tasha right through the wood.
Maybe, he thought, it’s the way the sunlight makes his eye glow so strangely.
For several tense seconds, everyone stood stock still: the man staring at the house, and Hocker and Tasha staring back. Finally, the man took one step away from the door and, cupping his hands to his mouth, shouted, “I know you’re still in there, Mr. Harmon.”
His voice was clear and strong, but it reverberated with an odd distortion in the early morning stillness. Tasha thought she heard the door window rattle from the force of his voice.
“Yup,” Hocker said, nodding his head slowly. “It’s those jerks down in the cellar he wants.”
“Let’s just send them out to him,” Tasha said. “Maybe he’s a cop or something and is after them. We might be able to get away from here while he deals with them.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Hocker hissed between his teeth. “I’m thinking.”
Tasha refrained from saying, “I haven’t got that long.” Instead, she took a deep breath and backed up toward the kitchen.
Hocker glanced at her and yelled, “You just make sure that back door is locked. I’ll take care of this!” Tasha did what she was told, then hurried back into the living room.
The man beside the limousine seemed to chuckle to himself and, shaking his head as though sadly concluding he had to scold a misbehaving child, he reached behind himself and opened the limo door. Two men, dressed in tattered work clothes, b
linking fiercely in the glare of sunlight, stepped out onto the driveway. The man leaned close to them, then glanced back at the house.
“Mr. Harmon! Miss LaPierre! I think you must realize the futility of pretending you can’t hear me. I know you didn’t leave the house last night. If you don’t come out right now, things could get very unpleasant.”
Hocker smacked his fist into his open hand. It made a wet sound. “Just come on,” he whispered harshly. “Send your goons up here. I’ll show ’em!” He eased Winfield’s revolver from his belt and spun the chamber, making sure it was fully loaded.
“Come on, Hock!” Tasha said, backing away. “You can’t just keep on killing people.”
“I ain’t gonna kill ’em ’less I have too,” he said, smiling wickedly. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and see if there’s any more rope in the kitchen or somewhere?”
Tasha left him by the window, wondering how easily she could simply slip away out the back door. But she didn’t; she went into the kitchen and rummaged through the closet until she was certain there was no rope in there. When she rejoined Hocker in the living room and looked out at the driveway, her heart nearly stopped. The man was pointing at the house, and the two shabby men, walking as though their limbs were stiff with age, started up the walkway to the house. “You’ve had your chance,” the man by the limo shouted. The smile on his face was broad, eerily lifeless and chilling as though he was going to enjoy what would happen next.
Hocker gripped the revolver tightly, raising it up in front of his face as he watched the men slowly approach the house. He, too, had noticed the peculiar way the men walked. He was thinking, since they were so damned stiff, they wouldn’t be any problem to take out of the picture.
When the two men were halfway up the walkway, Hocker swung open the door and stepped onto the porch. He pointed the revolver at them. Tasha saw an expression of genuine surprise on the man’s face when he saw someone he wasn’t expecting. He opened his mouth to call out but then apparently thought better of it.
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