by Anthony Izzo
“I’m sorry I lied to you, but we needed to know what you saw.”
“Why?”
“To find out what killed that girl.”
“It wasn’t a person, was it?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I’ll tell you if you want to talk to me.”
She measured him with her gaze. “You’re not some kind of pervert or weirdo, are you?”
“I let my membership to the perverts and weirdos society expire last month.”
She looked behind her, and looked back at Matt. “Okay, come in.”
He entered the living room, half expecting to find the inside as run-down as the exterior. The beige rug had vacuum tracks on it, and the room smelled of peach-scented air freshener.
The furniture was the same sandy brown as the rug, and a massive oak entertainment center covered one wall, a thirty-five-inch television encased inside. The entertainment center was flanked by a cherry grandfather clock, which gonged twelve times.
“Have a seat.”
Brendan darted into the room, a toy fire truck clasped in his arms. He came up to Matt, held up the truck for inspection and chirped, “Cuck! Firecuck!”
“Brendan, sit down,” Sally instructed.
He wobbled to the center of the room and plopped onto his rear end in a manner only a two-year-old could without having a sore tailbone for a week.
“I’m keeping an eye on him. My mother’s at work.”
“Only brother?”
“One’s enough.”
“Be glad you have him.”
“I guess I am.”
“Good.”
She went into the adjacent dining room where a red Eureka vacuum stood, its cord unraveled like a snake. She picked it up and began winding it around the prongs on the vacuum designed to hold the cord.
“What happened after you left the park?”
“One of the cops took me to the police station. I waited in a little room for a while. I don’t know how long because I didn’t have my watch on.”
Rafferty’s tactics hadn’t changed, as Matt remembered that small, dank room and the fear he had felt the day Rafferty threatened to kill him if he talked about the murders. “Do you know which cop you talked to?”
“The one who drove me there had red hair. The one I talked to at the station was big and ugly.”
“Do you know his name for sure?”
“I forget his name but he told me he was the chief.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not at first. He was nice at first.”
She finished winding up the cord and rolled the vacuum into the kitchen. When she came back in, she had a can of Pledge and a dirty white T-shirt, presumably a dust rag.
“I’m going to clean while we talk. My mom’ll be pissed if the house isn’t clean.”
She aimed the can at the end table and pressed the button. Polish hissed out. Using the rag, she rubbed it into the wood surface.
“What did he tell you?”
“He was pissed when I told him about the detectives. He told me there weren’t any detectives in Lincoln.”
“How about threats?”
“He just told me not to talk to anyone. But he looked all crazy and messed up. Like he was about to lose his temper.”
She finished dusting the end table and moved to the entertainment center, wiping down the television screen.
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not really. Like I said, he started off nice and then got nasty. I was sort of scared.”
Brendan looked up at his big sister, momentarily interested in her cleaning activity, and then went back to rolling his fire truck back and forth on the rug.
She stopped dusting and looked at Matt.
“What did I see in the park?”
“This is gonna sound nutty, but you saw, well, creatures.”
“I don’t think you’re nutty. I told the police chief they were men. But I know they weren’t men. No men look like that.”
“There’s a lot of Them in town, Sally. They live under people’s skin.”
“Is that why so many people smell?”
“Exactly.”
The girl noticed the smell of them, which he speculated was something not everyone could detect. If everyone in town could detect the strange odor of the beasts, they would know something was not right with a good portion of Lincoln’s townspeople.
Maybe certain people were born with the ability to detect the scent, and the same people might not have that much trouble believing that the creatures existed.
“What are they?”
“I don’t know for sure. But they’re very dangerous. You make sure not to walk through that park by yourself. Don’t go anywhere by yourself.”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“And watch out for Chief Rafferty. He’s one of Them.”
“I noticed he smelled funny too.”
“I’m gonna go now, so you can finish your housework.”
“You can hang around if you want to.”
“Thanks anyway, but I don’t think your mom would be too crazy about finding a strange man in the living room,” he said. “Be careful, Sally.”
Matt got up and Brendan said, “Bye-bye!” and waved his hand enthusiastically. Matt reached down and ruffled his hair.
He was at the door when she asked him, “How do you know about these things?”
“I had a bad experience with them when I was about your age. I also sat in that little room at the police station and had the police chief threaten me.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Talk to your mom about getting out of Lincoln.”
He opened the screen door and stepped into the heat.
Rafferty jammed his finger into the elevator’s L button and pressed hard, turning the skin under his fingernail white.
The doors slid closed.
His visit with Donna Ricci had been infuriating; no one told him what to do in his own town or talked back to him, especially another cop. This was his turf.
He’d lost his temper again, first with Clarence then with Ricci, nearly snapping her arm in half. If he didn’t get control of himself, he didn’t know what would happen.
People will die, that’s what will happen, Ed. Just as sure as shit, people will die.
The only positive thing that came out of the meeting with Ricci was he could now pin the murder of the Barbieri woman on Charles Dietrich. And since Dietrich had burned in the fire, he didn’t have to worry about anything going to trial. As an added bonus, he doubted anyone would miss Dietrich. Missing junkies didn’t show up on the side of milk cartons.
He wanted Donna Ricci out of his town, and if there wasn’t so much shit hitting the fan right now, he would’ve made sure she disappeared. He would have to gamble for now that she wouldn’t talk about what she saw in the Barbieri house. He didn’t think even a dumb bitch like her would ruin her career by spouting off about monsters chasing her through a burning house.
The elevator slowed and stopped. The L button lit up, the doors opened, and Rafferty stepped around an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She had a cast on her right leg, and Rafferty bumped her as he passed.
“Ow! You clumsy asshole!”
He decided he would play polite; he didn’t need anymore incidents at the moment. “Excuse me, ma’am. Are you okay?”
“Watch yourself.”
Maybe when you got that old you didn’t care what you said to anyone, cops included.
He walked past the security desk and the guard, a man with the name James on his tag, nodded to him. A boy of about twelve hopped past him on crutches, his mother walking beside him, haranguing him for going skateboarding.
Walking past the emergency room entrance, he spied her out of the corner of his eye.
Jill Adams, hair done up in a ponytail, wearing a green top and white pants. She hadn’t seen him, so he slipped behind one of the columns in the lobby. Sh
e was hunched over a laundry cart, sorting through a pile of hospital gowns.
She hadn’t been on his mind this morning, but seeing her had jarred his memory a little; he wanted to pay her another visit and scare the hell out of her.
Jill Adams had some fire to her, and he liked that. It would be a challenge to take her when the Harvest came. She would put up a fight, and that got him a little excited. Intimidation was his favorite tactic, but once in a while it was nice to get one that fought a little and then crush them like a cockroach.
She took one of the gowns off the cart and then turned and walked down the long emergency room hallway.
“See you soon,” he said.
Jill climbed the porch steps and looked at her watch. It was ten to four and Matt was coming at five o’clock to pick her up. That would leave her plenty of time to shower and change, as well as have a tall glass of something cold.
She had no air-conditioning in the car, and she knew when she got in the house, she would have to literally peel her clothes off.
Pulling her keys from her purse, she unlocked the door and went upstairs. She set the keys and her purse on the kitchen counter, then took the pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator.
She took out a glass and poured herself a tall one.
Something was odd in the kitchen but she couldn’t figure out what it was. There was something out of place, not the way she had left it this morning.
“What the hell is bothering me?”
Unable to place what was wrong, she took her lemonade and went into the living room. The light on the answering machine flashed and she pressed the Play button.
“Hi, Jill, it’s your mom. You do remember your mother, don’t you? I’m the one you haven’t called in over a week. Call me back if you haven’t forgotten my number.”
“Jesus Christ, Mom. Nothing like a little guilt,” Jill muttered.
After setting down her lemonade, she flipped on the stereo and Molly Hatchet blared from the speakers. She forgot they’d left it on Ninety-Seven Rock last night. Buffalo’s only classic rock station, as they claimed. She wasn’t a big classic rock fan—her tastes leaned more toward John Coltraine—but it would suffice.
She went into the bedroom and changed into a tank top, jean shorts and sneakers. Realizing she forgot her lemonade, she walked back to the living room.
“I’m losing it.”
The lemonade was not on the coffee table where she had left it.
“What the hell?”
Maybe she left it in the kitchen. No, that wasn’t right, because she had brought it into the living room, but she’d check the kitchen anyway.
She got halfway through the dining room and gasped.
“Pretty damn good lemonade.”
Ed Rafferty leaned on the wall in the archway between the dining room and the kitchen. He took a rude sip off of the lemonade and sucked an ice cube into his mouth, crunching away.
How could she not know he was in the apartment? The stereo was how. He must have sneaked into the living room while she was changing in the bedroom, his footsteps masked by the music.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just came for a visit. You should clean out that attic. It’s a mess.”
She suddenly realized what had been out of place in the kitchen: the chair pushed away from the table. She always pushed the chair back in, and she knew for sure that she pushed it back in this morning. It occurred to her that he must’ve pulled the kitchen chair out and sat in it. Waiting.
Rafferty chugged the glass of lemonade and belched.
“Sweet. I could taste your lips on the glass.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Just concerned about you is all.”
“So concerned that you picked my lock?”
“You shouldn’t leave your door open.”
“I didn’t.”
She was getting hot, her blood rising and making her skin flush pink. This was the second time he’d invaded her home, solely for the purpose of surprising her. The thought of him sneaking around the apartment made her skin feel like beetles were dancing on it.
He dropped the glass on the dining room rug and it tipped over, the liquid dribbling onto the carpet.
“Get out,” she said. “You have no legal right to be here.”
He started toward her.
She backed up into the living room, bumping her calf on the coffee table.
“You’re an outsider, Jill, and I have to keep tabs on all the outsiders in my town. It just so happens that you’re also a particularly lovely one.”
Her eyes darted back and forth, looking for a weapon to fend him off with. Her best shot would be the brass candlestick on the mantle, but she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to actually hit someone with it. It could cave in somebody’s skull if swung with enough force.
And if Rafferty changed forms, she wouldn’t have a chance.
“Tell me about your experience in the warehouse.”
“I don’t know—”
“Don’t lie to me, you dumb cunt.”
“Don’t call me that, you son of a bitch,” she said through clenched teeth.
“C’mon. A junkie named Dietrich chased you through the furniture warehouse. You couldn’t miss him. Pale, whitish hair, lips like a woman.”
He was only five feet from her, a sour odor coming off of him like heat from a radiator.
“No need to worry about him anymore. He’s dead. But I would like to question you, Jill. I worry about you. A pretty girl all by herself. There’s some nasty people around this town.”
“I’m finding that out.”
He stepped closer again. She backed up against the couch.
He slumped in the lounge chair next to the couch and set his feet on the coffee table, blocking the path between the chair and the table, trying to trap her.
She saw an opportunity to run.
She planted her foot on the coffee table and pushed off, bounding over it and running through the dining room to the kitchen. Rafferty’s footfalls pounded on the floor behind her.
Her scalp caught fire as he yanked her hair from behind, jerking her backward, her sneakers squealing on the kitchen floor. Rafferty whipped her around and shoved her back against the stove, rapping her lower back on the door handle.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Anywhere away from you.”
“I knew the first time I saw you I had to have you.”
He leaned in toward her, his rank smell overpowering.
He reached for her arm.
Her left hand struck like a cobra, jabbing hard into Rafferty’s right eye. He growled and slapped his hand over his wounded eye.
Seeing an opening, she bolted out the door and down the back stairs, Rafferty following, clunking on the stairs.
She reached the side door, yanked it open, and hit the screen door handle with her palm.
“Open, dammit!”
The wind whooshed from her lungs as Rafferty’s shoulder plowed into the small of her back. The screen door flew open, the two of them hitting the concrete, Jill rolling away, heaving for air.
He must’ve jumped off the landing to get at her, she thought dazedly. Judging from the force of the blow, and from Rafferty’s sheer size, she was lucky that her spine hadn’t snapped.
He was coming at her again, teeth bared, growling low in his throat like a wolf.
She was still on the ground sucking air when Rafferty clenched his hands around her right ankle and began dragging her. The skin on her right elbow shredded on the concrete.
He moved backward, dragging her like a woodcutter might drag a freshly cut pine tree through the snow.
If she let him get her in the house, there was no telling what horrible things he might do to her.
His back at the screen door, he took one hand off her ankle and pulled it open. It slipped from his hand and slammed shut, Rafferty yelling “Fuck!”
This was her cha
nce.
She slipped her free foot between his legs and drove the point of her sneaker into his crotch.
Grunting, his grip on her ankle loosened, and she twisted her leg free. She crawled away, scurrying like a mouse from an owl.
The full weight of him slammed into her again, banging her chin into the concrete and making the ground start to spin.
“I should’ve done this in the first place.”
She heard metal jingle and clank behind her.
Handcuffs.
He jerked her left arm behind her back and slapped the cold metal on her wrist. Then he did the same with the right.
Gripping her upper arm, he hoisted Jill to her feet with little effort. Chin throbbing, vibrating like a tuning fork, she knew she was in trouble.
Would he try to rape her? The thought of him forcing himself between her legs made her stomach churn.
He turned her around, still gripping her upper arm.
“No one gets away from me.”
She saw his eye was swollen and pink, looking like raw hamburger.
“Let’s go.”
She was aware of a sticky wetness dribbling from her chin and running down her throat. The fall on the concrete had cut her open. Absurdly, she hoped none would get on her tank top, because blood was a bitch to get out. Surely the least of her problems right now, but it sprang to the forefront of her mind.
He gave her a shove and they started up the driveway when Matt pulled in.
CHAPTER 22
Donna pointed to her truck and the cab driver pulled up next to it. The driver turned around and through a tangled beard said, “There ya be.”
She paid him with a rumpled twenty she’d found in her pocket. Then she climbed out of the cab. The cab pulled away, its muffler rumbling.
The hospital had released her with instructions on how to care for her wounds. She didn’t relish coming back here, but she needed to get her truck. Donna stepped on to the sidewalk. Looking around, she saw no sign of any police cars. She walked down the block and stopped at Rhonda’s house.
I can’t believe this.
Rhonda was dead, the house was burned, and Bob was acting like he didn’t have a care in the world. It was amazing how the status quo could get so fucked up in such a short amount of time.
