by Alex Jameson
Harlan was shorter and heavier than John. The pants were too tight. The shirt strained and threatened to tear. They would do, for now at least. He found a green jacket that was a decent fit and pulled that on too, along with his hat and sunglasses. There were some Wet-Naps in another cabinet. He used them to make sure there was no blood on his hands or face, and then cleared the windshield as best he could. He wiped the scissors clean and stowed them in his pocket.
He leaned the clown forward and pulled the wallet out from his pocket. There was about eighty bucks in it. He took it. Then he checked the glove box. There was a gun.
Take it.
Harlan lifted it carefully, as if it might go off in his hands. It was a small, black revolver with a short barrel. He didn’t know how to open it. He couldn’t tell if it was loaded or not, but there weren’t any bullets in the glove box with it. He had only fired guns a few times before, and only ever rifles and shotguns. He’d seen this sort of handgun in movies and on TV; he was pretty sure he just had to pull back the thing near his thumb and then pull the trigger. It was a pretty thing. It looked almost elegant. But it didn’t make him feel safer; if anything, it made him feel dangerous. He didn’t like it.
Take it. It might be useful.
“I don’t w-want it.”
He put it back and pushed the glove box closed. Then he leaned over the clown and locked the driver’s side door before hopping out of the truck, locking his door, and slamming it closed. Hopefully it would be a while before anyone thought to investigate.
He didn’t go inside the McDonald’s. He wasn’t hungry anymore. He started walking, past the fast-food joint toward the trees that lined the interstate on both sides. His knee didn’t hurt much anymore, and after a short while, he actually felt better. He felt powerful. Strong. He didn’t need a gun to feel safe.
The clown had said he was heading to Columbus, and he was bringing supplies to make more clowns. Then that’s where he needed to be.
CHAPTER 23
* * *
Cedar Bluff, Kansas
Reidigger flew into Kansas City earlier that morning. The Douglas County sheriff’s department sent a car for him. He was silent the entire drive, despite the deputy attempting to make small talk about the case.
“Never would’ve thought I’d see something like this,” he said, shaking his head. “Crazy.”
Reidigger mused that if he had a nickel for every time someone told him they “never would’ve thought I’d see something like this,” he probably could have retired by now. He stared stoically out the window until Agent Cole called. She’d been driving up to Coleman, Kentucky when they got the news about Cedar Bluff, and since she already had a car had opted to just drive overnight. She’d just arrived.
When he got to Cedar Bluff, he greeted Agent Cole outside of the station with his customary curt nod. She was short and thin, and reminded him a bit of Jodie Foster, with her square chin and boyish features.
“You ran the plate number?” He had had the Cedar Bluff police send it to her so she could call it in.
“Yes, sir. The plate belongs to a Eunice Bertrand, from Asheville, North Carolina.”
Asheville. Why does that sound familiar?
“And who is that?”
“A seventy-four year-old woman who lives alone with six cats.”
“Any known male relatives that fit the physical profile?”
“Somewhat, sir. She has a grandson named…” Cole referenced her cell phone. “…Gary Ender, thirty-one, who mostly fits, but he’s been reporting daily to work. We tracked his cell phone and computer history and confirmed it. Strange thing is, the car isn’t supposed to be an Oldsmobile. It’s supposed to be a 1995 Dodge A100.”
“A van?” Reidigger thought about it. “So our guy switched the plates. Find out where the van was parked in the days between the first and second murders.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cole got on the phone immediately while Reidigger went inside and met with the police chief, who led him out to the impound lot where they were keeping the car. It was a gray 2001 Oldsmobile. The tread on the tires were worn down to almost nothing. There were a couple of dings and scratches, but otherwise it looked like it was in decent shape.
He circled it twice, inspecting the bumpers, the front grill, the headlights and taillights. This car was going to tell him something. It felt like Christmas morning, and he was in no rush to unwrap his present.
“Did you lift any prints off the trunk or door handles?” he asked the police chief.
“Yes, sir. Two sets. One of them was all over the car. The other was only on the passenger side door. We ran them both through the system; nothing came up on either.”
“Give them to Agent Cole.”
The resources that Reidigger had at his disposal were substantially more thorough than anything Cedar Bluff had.
He took a disposable latex glove from his jacket pocket and pulled it on with a snap. “And no one’s been in this car? You’re certain?”
“No, sir, nobody. I gave explicit instructions to all my people.”
“Good.” He opened the passenger side door and peered inside. The dashboard was a bit dusty. He noticed a couple of stray curly black hairs—facial hair, likely—on the driver’s seat.
That was it. There was nothing else.
There were no empty coffee cups or discarded food packaging. There was no trash at all, no change in the center console, not even so much as a gum wrapper. He opened the glove box. The maintenance manual for the car was in there, and a tire pressure gauge. Nothing else. He checked the backseat; it was equally void of anything telling.
Fuming, he popped the trunk. Aha! Something at last—a black backpack. He pulled another glove on and unzipped it, searching the contents carefully. There were two sets of spare clothing: two shirts, two pairs of jeans, two pairs of socks, two pairs of briefs. That was all—no personal effects, no toothbrush, nothing.
There was another bag in the trunk, a plastic grocery bag tied once at the top. Reidigger opened it. Inside were two thick black rubber gloves, each long enough to reach the elbow, and a green rubber smock that tied in the back. He inspected them carefully. They’d been cleaned. They were immaculate; there was no blood or hair on them at all.
“Dammit,” he muttered to himself. They could find this guy today, and short of a full confession there wouldn’t be a shred of evidence to link him to the first four murders. “Dammit!” he shouted and kicked the car hard enough to dent the rear door.
“Ahem.” Agent Cole cleared her throat behind him.
Reidigger turned on her, scowling. “Yes, Cole?”
“I called the owner of the van. She said that it’s been sitting at a storage facility just outside of Asheville for a few years now.”
“Okay, so we call the storage facility—”
“I did. The van is still there, and it has plates on it. I took the number and ran it; it’s for a ’01 Oldsmobile, last registered a decade ago to a Margaret Kidd. Problem is, she’s been dead for nine years.”
“Alright,” Reidigger said impatiently, “so we find out who her relatives are, who the car went to after her death, where they live, what they look like, any priors—”
“They’re running that down as we speak. We’ll know shortly.”
“Great.”
He massaged his temples. This was supposed to be a huge break in the case. All they had was a blurry video that could be a million different guys, and a car with no evidence. Maybe, just maybe something could come off the gloves and smock…
Gloves and smock. Suddenly he remembered where he’d heard of Asheville before. Sam Asher had convinced him to track all the employees at a meat-processing plant there on a hunch. And as much as he hated, hated to admit it, Asher had been right about a few other things so far.
“Cole, find me the number for a meat-processing plant in Asheville, North Carolina. It’s called Fischer something-or-other.”
Cole had it at the r
eady; she’d taken part in the tracking of the hundred and thirty-eight employees earlier in the week. She dialed it and handed him her phone.
“Good morning, Fischer-White, how can I help you?” a cheerful female receptionist answered.
“Hello, this is Agent Carl Reidigger with the Department of Homeland Security. I’m calling to inquire about one of your employees… do you have anyone there by the last name of Kidd?”
“Kidd? Yes, we do. In fact, you’re not the first to call about him this morning.”
Reidigger felt his eye twitch. “Oh?”
“Yes, someone else called earlier about him… did you say Department of Homeland Security? Hello? Sir?”
Asher. Reidigger seethed. It had to be Asher.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
Indiana
Jake was concerned, for two reasons. The first was that Marvin Harris’s old Buick felt like it was going to give out on them. They drove up through Kentucky and skirted along the southeastern edge of Indiana, near to the Ohio border before they stopped for a meal and some sleep, and somewhere along the way the engine started making a clattering sound that continued even after he turned off the ignition.
The second reason that he was concerned was because of Sam’s behavior. He was a man obsessed. All through the night, he’d intermittently mutter the name Harlan, to the point that Jake felt he needed to talk continuously just to keep his brother from slipping into insanity. This had started out feeling very much like the situation with Heckler, but since he’d joined up with Sam on the road, nothing had felt the same. The thing with Heckler had been clean, thoroughly planned, no evidence or fallout. This time around, people knew who they were and where they’d been. Hell, they’d caught the attention of the federal government.
They stopped at a motel around midnight, about an hour outside of Cincinnati. Jake was exhausted; he hadn’t slept since nursing Sam back to life. But Sam insisted on staying awake.
“You sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
“Keep watch for what, Sam? No one knows we’re here.”
“Right… well, I’m not tired. I’m just going to stay up a bit later.”
Much to Jake’s relief, Sam was asleep beside him when he woke the next morning, facing the wall and mumbling incoherently every now and then. Jake decided to let him sleep a bit longer. He went out and picked up a couple cups of coffee and half a dozen donuts, and then came back to the motel and took a shower. He borrowed a pair of socks from Sam’s duffel; when Jake had left Kingston, after getting the emergency call from Sam, he hadn’t fully expected to stay out on the road with him. In fact, he had no idea what to expect. He’d hastily stuffed a small overnight bag with a single change of clothes, sans socks, and flew out the door.
Jake turned on the small television set and found a news station. They weren’t talking about clowns; that was a good sign. He gently shook Sam awake.
“Hm. What time is it?”
“It’s about… eight o’clock.”
Sam opened his eyes fully. “We should get going.”
“Get going where, Sam?”
“To a computer. See if he did anything last night.” Sam sat up and reached for his shoes on the floor.
“Hey, take it easy a sec here. Why don’t you take a shower, drink some coffee. Have a donut.”
“We don’t have time—”
“Sam, we have nowhere to go right now. We can’t just drive around the United States searching for one guy.”
Sam inhaled sharply and let out a slow breath. “A shower does sound pretty good right now.”
“I didn’t want to say anything, but you smell like wet leaves and disappointment.”
Sam snickered. It was good to hear him laugh. He brought the coffee into the bathroom with him and closed the door. After he undressed, he inspected himself in the mirror. He looked like a wreck. He had deep black raccoon marks around his eyes. His nose was red and swollen. He carefully peeled the bandage off his forehead. The stitching was indeed crooked, just like Jake had promised. At least the bruises on his arms and ribs were starting to heal. He’d always healed pretty fast. He turned around to get a look at his back. Ugh. The bruises on his back were still a deep purple and edged in yellow.
The hot water stung a bit at first, all the pain points on his body being assaulted at once by the motel’s high water pressure, but after a minute or so it became soothing. He had to wash carefully to avoid unnecessary throbs and twinges. Afterwards he put on clean clothes, took the empty garbage bag from the room’s wastebasket and put his dirty clothes in it, and then stuffed it into his duffel.
Jake was lying on his back on the bed, munching on a cruller and keeping an eye on the news.
“Are those my socks?”
“Hey,” Jake said around a mouthful of pastry, “I saved your life. Socks is the least you could do.”
“Fair enough. What time is it?”
“Uh… eight forty. Should we go find a computer, see if anything new has happened?”
“Not yet. Wait a few minutes.” They sat on the bed and watched the news. Jake didn’t know what he was supposed to be waiting for, but at 9:01 a.m. on the dot he got his answer.
Sam made a call from his cheap cell and put it on speakerphone. It rang twice before a female receptionist answered.
“Good morning, Fischer-White, how can I help you?”
“Hello there,” Sam said. “My name is Joseph from Job-Right employment placing.”
Jake covered his mouth to hide his snicker. Sam shushed him with a finger. “I’m calling to confirm a statement from one of your former employees, a Mr. Harlan…” He trailed off, hopeful.
“…Kidd? Harlan Kidd?”
Sam’s heart leapt. “Harlan Kidd, yes. Sorry, it’s a bit smudged. Is that one d or two?”
“K-i-d-d. He was one of our crew foremen. We, um, didn’t realize he was leaving us. But I suppose that’s how it goes, with the strike still on—”
Jackpot.
Sam hung up. He breathed a heavy sigh. Beside him, Jake whooped and smacked the bed with his fist.
“Harlan Kidd. Jake, he’s got a name.”
“Harlan Kidd,” Jake said. Somehow saying his name out loud made him less of an enigma, less mysterious. He was just a man. A maniac, to be sure—but just a man. “So what do we do with this new information?”
“I’ll tell you what we don’t do—we don’t share it with anyone. We need to get online. Come on.”
They went to the motel office and asked the clerk where they could find a computer. He directed them to a mall about twenty miles away that had an electronics store.
It took Jake three tries to get the Buick started. Finally it sputtered to life.
“This car is not long for this world, Sam.”
“I know. We’ll think of something.”
They reached the mall and found the electronics store, but their display computers weren’t connected to the internet. Opting instead to buy a cheap off-brand tablet for a couple hundred bucks, the brothers then headed back to the motel, where they got the wi-fi password from the clerk before heading to their room.
“This way, we don’t need the hardware,” Sam said. “We just need wi-fi, and that’s everywhere these days.” He booted up the tablet and logged online. After a couple minutes of searching he said, “It doesn’t look like anything new went down… that’s good news, at least.”
“See what you can find on Harlan Kidd.”
He searched. There was barely anything. “The guy’s a nobody. His mom died in 2007. He’s mentioned in the obit. That’s about it.”
“Is there an address?”
“No… he’s not listed anywhere.”
“Hm.” Jake thought for a minute. “Maybe I can call in a favor, get one of the other officers to drive over to the plant in Asheville and get an address. Tell them he’s wanted in connection with something, and go check out his place—”
“No way. We can’t bring anyone else in on this.
They’ll lose their jobs, maybe worse.”
He thought briefly about Reidigger and he wondered if the feds had as much information as they did... which wasn’t much anyway. In fact, it might not be as useful as Sam had initially thought; now that the euphoria of finding the guy’s name was passing, he realized that it was likely Harlan would give a fake name. He probably wasn’t even carrying ID.
“We need a plan,” Jake said. “We can’t just wait until he kills again and again, and just follow a trail…”
“I know. I actually had a thought about that. I had a weird dream last night, and—”
The ringtone of the cheap cell phone wasn’t yet familiar enough to Sam, so when it chimed, he first furrowed his brow, wondering what it was. Right, the phone. He didn’t recognize the number, but he answered anyway.
“Sam, hi.” It was Lynn. She spoke in a hushed tone.
“Hey. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, nothing. Everything’s okay. I’m on a phone in the teacher’s lounge. I was going to call you after work from a pay phone, but I couldn’t wait. I just wanted to hear you.”
“I’m here. We’re alright. In fact… Lynn, we know his name. His full name. I’m not going to say it over the phone, just in case, but we know it.”
“Is that good? Can you use that?”
“Yeah, definitely,” he lied.
“If I can help at all, tell me what to do. You know I’m good with computers—”
“No, I can’t ask that of you. You could get in serious trouble.”
“Like the kind of trouble you’re in? Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
He hadn’t told her about Reidigger’s threat to have him arrested and blacklisted. “Don’t worry about it. We’re going to be back on the road soon, heading northeast. We think he’ll head where there are more people; more sightings.”
“I talked to Sarah this morning,” Lynn said. “I haven’t been over there, but I called her to see how she was. She’s going back to work today. She said she feels up to it.”
