Warm, Yummy, Wet & Salty: Black Star Canyon: Book 2 (Black Star Canyon Mystery Novel)

by C. C. Wall

  He swallowed. He held himself together. There was still chalk on the ground. There was still blood that stained the floor. Flashes of her lying there kept flooding his mind. He shook his head in hopes that they would fall out. He carefully walked over the chalk and dried blood. He went to the stove and turned on all the burners on high. Then he blew out the flames.

  He walked around the house making sure all the windows were shut. He put a towel on the floor to seal the bottom of the door to the garage. There was always a draft there. He thought to himself that he should’ve fixed that too. Another failure. He walked through and said goodbye to all the pictures. He took his favorite one off the wall. It was just of Sara on their wedding day. She looked so full of hope. She had so many great plans for their future. She looked so happy.

  He punched out the glass and pulled the photo out and put it in his pocket. He walked to the front door. He was starting to get dizzy. He knew he was running out of time. He turned and said goodbye to his home, his future, his past, his wife.

  He opened the door and walked out. He stumbled on the loose stone again and cried out. He quickly wiped his eyes and cleared his throat. By the time he made it to the sidewalk, the house exploded into flames. Glass and wood shot clear across the street. The roof even seemed to pop up and shift a little bit. Fire ran out all the windows and curled up the side of his home.

  Chaney saw none of this though. He never turned around. He never looked back. Once he left the house, he never, ever saw it again.

  52 - Out of the Woods

  After filling up on the chunky version of the warm, yummy, wet and salty, Harry took a nap. His tummy hadn’t been full like that since he left the house. He made sure to leave some for when he woke up and made sure that he didn’t sleep too soundly in case that coyote came for it.

  When he woke up, the birds were chirping and the sun was out. He was already panting. It was very warm out. He went over to the leftovers of last night’s feast and saw that there were a lot of little bugs on it. Ants and beetles and things. He tried to swat them off of his breakfast but they wouldn’t leave. So, Harry thought, he would just eat them too.

  This made the chunky version also crunchy! It wasn’t warm any more but the crunchy made it nice. It wasn’t as wet as it was sticky, but he was happy that he was going to have a full belly again.

  Once Harry buried his excrement, he was hot on the trail of the man and the woman he carried away. He went over to the crashed truck and jumped up inside. He sniffed around to make sure he had a good scent of the man. Once he felt like he had it, he jumped out of the truck and followed the drips of the good stuff that came off the woman as they fled.

  Each little drop, Harry licked up. After about an hour, he found a spot that had a big pool of the stuff that was still really wet in the middle. It was under a tree, next to a log. Harry figured that the man must have taken a nap last night too. Probably there.

  Harry was very full again. This made him sleepy. But Harry didn’t want to nap. He wanted to find them. He wanted is yummy, wet and salty but he wanted it warm.

  As Harry followed the trail, he heard sounds that he hadn’t heard for a couple days. Sounds of many cars driving. He knew he was getting close.

  He popped his head out of a bush and the entire landscape changed. In front of him was a busy street. Cars flying up and down the road. Harry whined. That many cars scared him. He stood by the side of the road and would barely get a paw out on the street before a car would come. Harry was getting frustrated.

  He wondered, if he walked down the street a bit to where it wasn’t so busy, if he could double back and pick up the scent. It was a gamble. His other thought was he could hide in the bush away from the scary cars and wait for there to not be as many of them. He wasn’t sure if that was even something that would happen. He also didn’t know if there was a place further down the road where there would be less of them.

  A funny thing happened while Harry was trying to figure out what to do though. One car was coming up that smelled familiar. It looked like Francine’s car. Harry wagged his little tail and fidgeted in excitement. He even jumped up in the air when it drove by but it didn’t stop. Harry barked at it, but it didn’t turn around. The window must have been down too because Harry got a huge whiff of Francine’s cheap flowery perfume.

  Harry whined a little more that she didn’t stop but then thought to himself, that this was better. Now, he can keep the warm, yummy, wet and salty all to himself and not have to share with her. Harry was back. Harry was determined. He was ready to go get that good stuff.

  Hours had passed and the sun was setting. Harry had been under that bush all day waiting for the cars to stop. He didn’t realize it though, because he fell asleep.

  A horn honking woke him up.

  He jumped to his feet. It was getting dark. The cars now had their bright eyeballs open so he could see them from farther away. There weren’t nearly as many as there were before. Harry thought that now was a good of time as any to risk it.

  He looked both ways and saw the bright eyeballs but they seemed pretty far away. He ran out. He made it half way across before one really big one was coming right at him from the other direction. He froze. There was no way to get away from it. He hugged the ground and it went flying over his little head.

  It was gone.

  Harry was okay. He jumped up, and saw no more were coming, so he ran the rest of the way across the street. Harry thought how easy that was. If he would have known he could of just gone under them, he would’ve ran across the street hours ago!

  He was on the trail. He could still smell it. Her scent was getting a little faint but the man’s scent was still strong. He thought that he should at least follow that and maybe it would lead him to the woman. He passed the big place where they would leave him in the car whenever they go there. The place with the loud vans and the flashing lights. Then he passed the big yard with big rocks that come out of the ground with words on them. That place they go to when Francine wants to cry and leave flowers on the ground.

  He was getting closer. The scent was getting stronger.

  Then, not only did he smell the woman, but he had the scents of all the warm, yummy, wet and salty! He wondered, if he was close to the place where the man kept all the women.

  Harry ran across a green park. This park he had been to many times before, but never without a leash. That alone made the trip exciting and worth while.

  Just ahead, across a small road he thought he saw something. He thought he saw the man. Was it? Yes! It was the man! Harry started to sneak over to him. Harry brought his body low to the ground. His movements were calculated. He was so close. That’s when he saw the others. The man had the three women. It seemed that he was trying to carry them up somewhere then got tired.

  This was Harry’s chance. He was going to show him.

  Harry began to bark as ferociously as he could.

  The man turned around and for once, he looked scared. Harry sensed it. So Harry attacked! He ran at him barking and nipping at his feet.

  The man ran away.

  Harry stood up strong and puffed his chest out. He did it! He chased the man away and got all three of the women with warm, yummy, wet and salty! Harry’s mouth began to water, so he sniffed around the women and found the warmest one. He went to where her hands used to be and dug in.

  53 - It’s All in the Name

  “Just a coffee for me, Helen,” Lukas said as he handed her back the menu. “Get whatever you want Sue, it’s on me.”

  “Coffee is fine too,” she said.

  “You haven’t eaten anything today,” Lukas looked at Helen. “What are your specials? I have a feeling that this is one of those times when women won’t eat unless everyone’s eating.”

  Helen smiled. “Pot roast, potatoes, green beans and garlic bread.”

  “That actually sounds really good,” he said. “Two of those.”

  “Coming up.” Helen said.

  “Why are
you making me eat?” Sue asked.

  “Because you are about to spill your guts to me about everything. No more secrets,” Lukas said. “Besides, spilling your guts on an empty stomach is not pleasant. Believe me.”

  Sue looked nervous.

  Helen came back with their coffee. “Did you guys know Lawrence was back in town?”

  “Yeah,” Lukas said. “When did you see him?”

  “He had breakfast with Jack Hart this morning,” Helen said and walked back into the kitchen.

  “That can’t be good,” Lukas said.

  “Nope,” Sue agreed. “Not at all. We should look…”

  “You need to stop thinking about anything other than what the hell happened with you and Norm,” Lukas said. “Go. Now.”

  Sue sulked down in her seat. “All right,” she said. “You have to understand, Norm and I married young. I didn’t know any better.”

  “It’s okay Sue,” Lukas said. “I’m not judging you. I just have to know what happened and what we are dealing with.”

  “Right,” she said. “He began to drink heavily right around the time I was pregnant with Eric. I didn’t mind the drinking so much. It was the violence that came with it, you know? He hit me a lot. Even when I was pregnant.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” she continued. “The violence started to get weird. The things he did were bizarre. Like, it wasn’t the pain that caused me to be scared of him, it was what he was doing to cause the pain. Does that make any sense?”

  “I think so,” Lukas said. “You don’t have to go into details.”

  “I’m not going to,” she said. “I hadn’t planned on it.” She took a sip of her coffee. “One day I fought back. I hurt him pretty bad. I broke his arm. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. That’s when I realized how vuneralble he really was. I nursed him back to health and he promised that he wouldn’t hurt me anymore. For a long time he didn’t.”

  “What changed?” he asked. “What made him go back to it?”

  “I don’t think he ever stopped,” she said. “It was a couple months after that, that I found the room. I came home early and the red door was open. Eric and I were never allowed to go in there. It was open, I was curious, so I popped my head in and there was Norm. Naked on his hands an knees scrubbing blood out of the floor.”

  “What the hell?” Lukas gasped.

  “He started yelling at me. I wasn’t supposed to be home. He lunged at me. I had been taking some self defense classes, so when he attacked me, I was ready for him. In the fight, he hit his head on a metal shelving unit he had in there and he fell down. He wasn’t moving. I started looking around and seeing all these tools that he had laid out. They were covered in blood and pieces of flesh and hair in them. There was everything from pliers, to crowbars, tire irons, blow torches. It was disgusting. I didn’t know what to do. Then, he grabbed my ankle and I snapped. I grabbed the crowbar and just went to town on his head. I beat the living crap out of him.”

  Sue grabbed an ice water and took a big drink. She was sweating and her mouth was dry. The water didn’t even seem to help. She cleared her throat.

  “After all that, he wasn’t dead. He still had a pulse. I bandaged him up and left him in there. Got cleaned up before Eric got home and when he did, I told him that Norm left us and Eric seemed relived,” she said.

  “Wow,” he said. “That’s intense.”

  “Oh, I’m not done,” she said. “I haven’t even got to the good part yet.”

  Lukas tried not to seemed terrified at what was coming out of her mouth.

  “The next day when Eric went to school,” she said. “I went back in there and he was still laying where I left him. I checked the room out and made sure there would be no way for him to escape. Took everything I needed out of there. Then I hung him up like he did to those other girls.”

  “How many girls?” Lukas asked.

  “I never found out exactly,” she said. “But it was quite a few.”

  Helen came with their food. “Here you guys go. Dig in while it’s hot!”

  “Thanks,” Lukas said.

  Once Helen left, Sue took a bite of green beans, “These are good.”

  “They are,” Lukas said. “Continue.”

  “I chained him up and once his head seemed to be all right, I put this mask on him that he used to make the girls wear. It had a piece that went in the mouth that muffled the screams and had mesh over the eyes so you could never see their pain. It just dehumanized them. It worked. As soon as I put that on him, he wasn’t my husband anymore. He was just some sick freak that I was going to torture the living hell out of.”

  She took another bite of food. “It was a couple months before he really woke up. Once he did, he was obviously extremely upset with me. So I beat him. Tortured him. Humiliated him. I was just trying to find out how many girls there were and how long this had been going on. He told me that once I wouldn’t let him hurt me anymore, he had to let it out somewhere.”

  “Jesus,” Lukas said.

  “He wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of telling me who the girls were or where their bodies were. He knew that’s all I wanted. What he didn’t know was that I couldn’t kill him. He was my husband. I have known him since we were little kids. He was my family. No matter how fucked in the head he was, I couldn’t do it. I tried a few times.”

  “Why didn’t you turn him in?” Lukas asked.

  “Because by that point, I felt like I was a part of it,” she said. “So, that’s why I joined the sheriff’s station. I was going to solve the cases and at least give the families closure. Right the wrongs my family had caused.”

  “So he has been in there for years?” Lukas asked.

  “Yep,” she said. “When I get pissed off or can’t take it anymore, I would go in there and do horrible things to him. I fed him every two days, gave him a bucket to shit in. That’s it. It kinda became a habit. It felt like a rut. It seemed normal.”

  “But it’s not Sue,” Lukas said. “I know that. Now, at least. You said no judgements.”

  “I did,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “He always said that if I loved him, I would chop off his hands so he could escape,” she said.

  “Like the girls,” Lukas said.

  “Yep,” she said. “Like the girls.”

  “So you think that he is the one doing this?” he asked.

  “Almost a hundred percent,” she said. “What scares me most, is that, he won’t kill me. If he gets his hands on me, he will torture me for years. Just like I did to him.”

  “That’s not gonna happen,” he said. “We are going to find him and stop him.”

  “And then,” she said. “He will rat me out. He will tell everyone what I did.”

  “Then I guess, we have to make sure there is no way he can ever go to trial,” Lukas said.

  Sue had a bite of her pot roast. “This is delicious! But I really need a cigarette. Please tell me you have one.”

  “I do,” Lukas said. He looked around for Helen, “Could we get this to go?”

  Sue and Lukas were walking back to the station. They each had a cigarette and were blowing out smoke that floated up into the cool, crisp night.

  “So, are you totally afraid of me now?” she asked.

  “Strangely, no.”

  They both chuckled.

  “Let me take your bag,” Lukas said.

  “Why?” she said. “Am I a weak little woman?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s because you keep hitting me in the leg with it and pretty soon I’ll have gravy running down my pants.”

  They laughed. Sue walked closer to him. Their hands bumped.

  “Thank you for letting me tell you that,” she said.

  “You know we have to tell Reagan,” he said.

  Sue looked terrified.

  “At least a version of the story,” he said. “We have to tell him that it’s Norm.”

  “He won’t believe me,” she
said. “We don’t really have any proof. They still think the hands were spelling use. Maybe, Norm will leave us a sign that Reagan and everybody won’t be able to deny?”

  “Is Norm that sweet of a guy?” he said.

  They both chuckled.

  “You know,” Lukas said. “Besides this whole torture and killing thing, I had a really nice time tonight.”

  “What the hell is that?” Sue shouted! She ran away from Lukas and up to the station.

  “Oh my God,” Lukas said.

  There on the steps of the station they found three newly decaying corpses. Each one missing a hand.

  Sue went over to check the girls to no avail. She shooed away a little dog that was nipping on the flesh of one of them.

  Lukas realized something. He stepped back. His jaw dropped. “Sue get over here! Now!”

  “What?” she said. She went over to the middle of the street where he was standing.

  “I guess you can thank him next time you see him,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “This is pretty loud and clear.”

  The bodies on the steps were set up in a way that they spelled something. There bodies bent into the shapes of letters on the steps of the sheriff’s station. They spelled S-U-E.

  54 - Popcorn

  “This is breathtaking.” Chuck snapped a couple more pictures. He got down on the ground and was rolling around on his stomach. “The care the killer took in setting these bodies up this way. Unbelievable!”

  Lukas was upset at Chuck’s enthusiasm. Every time he tried to explain how rude he was being, Chuck would snap another picture and the flash would blind him. Flash after flash. His vision was full of purple and yellow flares.

  “That’s enough!” Lukas shouted.

  Chuck had no idea Lukas was talking to him. He kept snapping pictures. “This guy is my new favorite. Hands down. Extraordinary.”

  “Shut your damn mouth, Chuck!” Lukas insisted.

  Chuck looked at him with concern. “I’m sorry, did I say something that upset you?”