by Alex Jameson
“John?” Sue looked up quizzically. “What are you doing, John?”
He shoved himself down into the seat as Sue approached the car. “Hey, come on…”
He fumbled for the door locks, finding it just as she tried tugging on the passenger-side door handle.
“Let me in, John! Let me in this instant!” She stuck her fingers in the top of the window, open just enough for her to snake a hand in. “Don’t leave me here!”
He put the car in drive and stomped the gas. The car lurched forward. Sue ran alongside it for a few paces, but couldn’t keep up.
“John! Come back here this instant!”
He adjusted the rearview mirror and saw her, standing in the street, watching her car drive away, the bludgeoned clown still trying to crawl to safety. The last thing he saw before she faded from his sight was her raising the jack handle over the clown and bringing it down again, hard.
He drove fast, blew a light, turned, turned again. Finally, when he was convinced he was far enough away he slowed down. Fiddled with the seat controls until he found a comfortable position. He hadn’t realized, until he slowed down, how fast he was breathing. He was practically hyperventilating. Yes, she’d killed a clown, but she’d done it stupidly. He did have criteria: Protect the children. Send a message. That murder was senseless.
And they’ll think you did it.
“Huh? N-no…”
Oh, they will, Kidd. They’ll think that was you, unless they catch her.
“No! People s-saw her.”
They’ll convince themselves otherwise. You know how that works. They’ll lie to themselves and say it was you. They saw the Clown Killer, in the flesh. Maybe they’ll say it just to get on TV…
“N-no…” But he knew it was true. People could lie to themselves easily. Memory was a funny thing, easy to overwrite. A petite woman in her fifties could become a bald overweight man.
“No!” All that work. Gone in a minute.
You can still make up for it. But first, ditch the car.
“We n-need a ve… vehicle.”
She’ll report it.
“She w-won’t.” He was certain Sue wouldn’t report the car stolen—at least not tonight. There was too much potential for her to get caught. “I h-have another idea.”
He drove out of the city to the surrounding suburbs and found a Wal-Mart that was open twenty-four hours. Before heading inside, he searched Sue’s purse. There was a bit of cash and several credit cards. He pocketed the cash and took out anything identifying—her cards, her ID, photos, her car registration and insurance card—and on the way into the store, he threw everything in a trash can except for one credit card.
Inside, he first headed over to the sporting goods section, where he picked up a sturdy hatchet and a thin, curved fishing knife with a seven-inch blade. Then he hurried over to hardware and grabbed a flat-head screwdriver and a socket set. He was about to leave when he figured he could use a change of clothes. He picked up a few pairs of socks, two t-shirts, and a sweatshirt, and then as an afterthought, a few bottles of water. He set everything down on the conveyor belt in a checkout line and hoped that the combination of items wasn’t suspicious.
“Going c-camping,” he muttered.
The bored female clerk did not seem to care. She scanned the items wordlessly and then yawned as she told him his total. He swiped Sue’s credit card.
Outside, he tossed the card into the trash, stowed his new stuff in the trunk, and headed toward a residential area. It took him about forty-five minutes to find a white late-model Honda Civic. He didn’t think it would’ve taken that long, but finally he spotted one in the driveway of a yellow split-foyer house with a big yard, one that wasn’t too close to its neighbors. Perfect.
He parked Sue’s car a few blocks away and popped the trunk. He fixed the ten-millimeter socket onto the end of the wrench, grabbed the screwdriver, and walked back to the car parked in the driveway. He crouched behind it and watched the house for a few minutes. There were no lights on.
Quickly removing the license plate, Harlan hurried back to Sue’s car. He didn’t change it there; it would be too conspicuous, there on the side of the road, if anyone happened by. Instead he drove to a nearby pharmacy, closed at this hour, and parked behind it. Then he quickly switched the Ohio plate for her Indiana one and tossed hers in the dumpster, careful to cover it with other trash.
Satisfied, he stowed his belongings in the trunk and steered the car back toward the highway. It took him a while to figure out how to use the GPS in Sue’s car; by the time he got back on the interstate it was after midnight. No matter; he could drive all night at this rate. The owner of the other white Honda wouldn’t notice their missing plate until morning, maybe even later, if they weren’t very observant and didn’t go anywhere on Saturday. Sue might not report her car stolen at all. He couldn’t take that chance, of course. He’d drive until morning and then ditch the car somewhere.
Then he’d have to hurry along on his way. Someone would find her car and report it, even if she didn’t. They’d trace the VIN and contact her, and there was no way in hell he wanted to be anywhere nearby when Sue came for her car.
CHAPTER 32
* * *
The plan had worked. Sort of. Back in the motel room in Indiana, when Sam had first suggested that they stage their clown rally in Kingston, Jake thought he’d lost his mind. At first, he didn’t see the reasons that Sam considered obvious.
It was their home turf. Familiar territory for them—they knew the layout, the best vantage points. Second, if Harlan Kidd was truly as batshit crazy as Sam thought he was, believing that the Hunter’s moon or whatever was driving people mad and turning them into clowns, then he might see some significance in Kingston, the location of his first murder. Harlan might believe it was symbolic that the clowns rallied there.
Jake admitted he had a point; serial killers did have a tendency to return to the scene of the crime, particularly unorganized ones, if for nothing else to find out what sort of investigations were going on, or what people were saying and suspected. Harlan’s name hadn’t been released to the public, so he might believe that no one knew it was him. A lot of killers want to be recognized for their work—hence things like sending letters to the media, taunting the police, getting sloppy with their kills—and find it frustrating after a while when no one seems to catch on to their sick form of cleverness.
Sam’s last reason was the clowns themselves. They were organizing, traveling in groups or packs or herds or whatever a group of clowns was called, after which Jake did a quick search to confirm that a group of clowns was allegedly called an “alley”. The clowns were gathering already; staging it in Kingston, where the first of their own was murdered, giving them a purpose to rally.
That day in the motel in Indiana, Jake spent hours online on the small cheap tablet they’d purchased, posting anonymously to forums and message boards, and then replying anonymously to his own messages to seem like there was interest in Mischief Night in Kingston. Sam made calls from the motel phone to news networks, papers, and radio stations in North Carolina to “warn” them of the coming clowns.
When Sam spoke with Lynn, he asked her for a favor: to disseminate the information to students. He told her to do it casually: “Hey, did any of you hear about this…?” He told her to be careful; of course, no one suspected sweet Ms. Hunter of being a clown.
Naturally, the students hadn’t heard about it, so that night they took to the internet to see what the fuss was about and discovered that a few local news outlets had already reported on the alleged gathering. Those students then posted to social media, further spreading it. Within twenty-four hours, it was viral, known nationwide. The plan had worked… sort of.
Unbeknownst to Sam and Jake, clowns in other parts of the country took up the Kingston cause. First in Arborton, Tennessee; then in Coleman, Kentucky; in Cedar Bluff, Kansas. In major cities all over the country. In California, and in Texas, and North Dakota,
and New York the clowns planned a Mischief Night gathering.
They posted meeting spots and assembled costumes and memorized the names of the eight victims of the Clown Killer as they prepared for a night of senseless, unrestrained mayhem.
***
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.” Biggie held one hand over his mouth as if he were speaking into an intercom. “In just a few minutes, we’ll be arriving in beautiful Columbus, Ohio. Local weather is a balmy forty-four degrees. If you look to your left, you’ll see absolutely nothing of worth. Welcome to Columbus, and as always, we thank you for choosing Biggie’s van.”
Janet and Eric snickered. Sam rolled his eyes. He couldn’t wait to get rid of these people.
Janet twisted in her seat and gave Sam a look. “So where to, hotshot?”
He blinked at her. “I don’t know,” he said.
“This was your big plan. Tons of clowns, right? So what… you want us to just drive around until we find something?” she asked sarcastically.
“Let me think a minute.” The truck had been heading to a Halloween store to drop off its cargo, but it seemed unlikely that Harlan would show up there. Besides, it was nearly midnight; it was likely closed by now. “We should be looking for woods, parks, playgrounds… anywhere that clowns tend to gather. We could stop somewhere and ask someone for popular clown-gathering spots...” Though that didn’t work out so well last time I tried it, he thought bitterly. “Brian can keep an eye on the net, see if anything comes up on the news around here.”
“You guys,” Biggie said, “this place is a ghost town.”
They peered out through tinted windows. He was right; there was no one out on the streets.
“Mandatory curfew,” Brian said without looking up from his phone. “Anyone out past ten p.m. can be fined; anyone in a clown costume will be arrested on the spot.”
Eric turned and glared at Sam. “Nice going, man. Send us on a wild goose chase. There ain’t no clowns around.”
“They’re here,” Sam muttered. “I know they are.”
“Well, I’m starving,” Janet said from the front seat. “I want waffles. Maybe we can find an all-night diner or something—”
“Whoa,” Brian murmured. “You guys, the Clown Killer is here.”
“What?” Sam asked. “What did you say?”
“He’s here,” Brian said louder. “Just reported: A clown was killed in Columbus, on Market Street, less than an hour ago.”
Eric’s eyes lit up. “And where there’s a Clown Killer, there’s clowns!”
Biggie scoffed. “Just one problem, genius; we’re on Market Street. We’d know if… oh, hey. Would you look at that.”
The van crested a small hill and rolled to a stop. Up ahead, the street was blocked off by a police barricade of sawhorses spanning its width. The telltale blue, red and white flashing lights of emergency vehicles confirmed Brian’s report. About a dozen or so people had gathered, some in pajamas and coats, to see what was going on.
“Ho-leeee shit,” Eric muttered. “Biggie, park it. I want to check this out.”
Biggie pulled the van into a spot on the street. Eric slid the door open before they were completely stopped and jumped out, followed by Janet and Biggie and then Brian, who paused briefly and turned toward the back seat.
“You guys coming?” he asked.
“We’ll, uh, hang back,” Sam said.
The bespectacled young man shrugged and followed his friends out into the night. As soon as they were gone, Jake scrambled over the middle seat to check the ignition.
“Dammit, he took the keys with him.”
Sam had other thoughts on his mind. “Jake, he was here. And by the look of things, it was very recent. He might still be nearby.”
With the van door open, they could hear the shouts of the handful of police officers telling people that the curfew was still in effect and to return to their homes. But for every few people that retreated, a few more hazarded out of apartment buildings and down the street, eager to get a better look at what was going on. The coroner’s van was still on-site; Sam couldn’t see from here, but he hoped they had at least gotten the body off the road.
“I doubt he’s still here,” Jake said. “Think about it. Harlan made his kill; he’s not sticking around. It’s about time we acknowledged that he’s not an idiot. Hell, he could be out of Ohio by now. I think we should sit tight and wait it out—”
“Sit tight?” Sam said. “If anything, this is our chance to get away from these people. We should get out of here, now. And if we can have a careful look around at the same time—”
“Look, I know you don’t like these guys, but let’s consider our options. They’re going to Kingston. Our plan worked. They’ll take us straight there.”
“We have two days to get to Kingston. That’s plenty of time. We’ll find a car—”
“Find a car?” Jake scoffed. “You mean steal a car. Uh-uh. I’m not doing that, Sam.”
“Then we need a plan, alright? We can’t stay with these guys. We can’t even talk openly, let alone form a plan. We need to stay focused, and—”
“I am focused,” Jake shot back. “You need to focus. Let’s look at the big picture, okay? We’ve already gone against a direct order from a federal agent. We’re carrying two unregistered guns. Sorry, but I’m not too keen on adding grand-theft auto to my already impressive resume. This isn’t some action movie. At some point, we’re going to be accountable for our actions, and you don’t seem to realize that.”
“Of course I realize that.” Sam said heatedly. “I know damn well that there might not be any going back for me… for us. But I’m thinking about more than myself here. If it means that no one else has to go through what I went through, then it’s worth it.” He folded his arms. “At least it is to me.”
“Don’t think for a second you’re the only one that was affected by what happened to Aiden,” Jake snapped. “He meant just as much to me as he did to you. God, you’ve become so obsessed with this. It’s like Heckler all over again—”
“Hey!” Sam shouted. “We agreed we don’t talk about that!”
“No, you said we don’t talk about it, and you expected me to go along with it. Did you ever stop to think that maybe I wasn’t so okay with what we did?”
“Don’t—”
“We killed a man, Sam. We planned it out and we killed him.”
Sam looked around to make sure no one was in close proximity to the van; the door was open and they had been shouting. “Christ, Jake, lower your voice…”
“Why? What does it matter?” Jake threw his hands in the air. “We killed a man, and we got away with it!”
Sam’s nostrils flared. His fists balled in his lap. “Move,” he grunted. “I want to get out.”
Jake rolled his eyes and moved aside so that Sam could leave the van. He slung the tact bag over a shoulder and paced the sidewalk for a minute, quelling his anger.
“I’m going to scope things out quick,” he said flatly. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’m going to stay right here.” Jake, in the center of the van, crossed his arms and stared ahead.
“Fine.”
Sam adjusted the tact bag and approached the crime scene as carefully as he could, sticking to the shadows of closed shops that lined the street, his back brushing against concrete and glass. He crouched low, and tried standing on his tiptoes, but he couldn’t see much from his vantage point.
A few more people had joined the gathering group of citizens, looking afraid, bewildered, and some even angry. A half-dozen police officers held their hands up, palms out, shouting at the crowd to stay back. Behind them, a few police cars, an ambulance, and the coroner’s van all sat silently, lights flashing. Sam knew it would be only minutes, maybe less, before they started using force to disperse the people, or make arrests. He saw two officers speaking into shoulder-mounted radios, no doubt calling for support in case anyone got unruly.
It was a wise decision.
A familiar voice rose above the din.
“Kill the clowns! Kill the clowns!”
It was Eric. Sam groaned. That idiot was going to get them all taken into custody. His friends, Biggie and Janet, joined in immediately, and only a few moments later, others took up the chant too.
One of the cops grabbed a bullhorn from his cruiser and addressed the people, his voice magnified over their litany. “Disperse. Disperse, or we will use force. This is your only warning.”
This was met with boos and jeers from the bystanders. Behind them, on the other side of the sawhorse barricade, two more police cruisers pulled up. Sam edged back, careful to stay hidden as possible. It was time to get the hell out of here. Jake wouldn’t be able to argue if there was no one to drive the van.
He turned to head back down the block, but he froze a moment. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.
Marching down the middle of the street from behind the crime scene was a group of clowns, spanning the width of the road. They faded into view from the darkness like some encroaching horror, in masks and makeup and wigs and noses, sharp teeth and crazy eyes and fake blood. They wielded knives and bats and machetes. They waved their weapons in the air and shouted. Some laughed.
Good God, Sam thought. These people are going to get themselves killed. He flattened himself into a dark alcove in the doorway of one of the shops as the clowns advanced.
The crowd of citizens took notice. They heard the shouts and laughs from behind them.
“Clowns!” He could hear Eric’s voice above the others. “Let’s get ‘em!”
He led a charge down the street, followed by Biggie and Janet and a few others, toward the approaching colorful menace. The cops, in turn, chased the citizens, ordering them to halt and get on the ground. A few of them took their pistols from holsters and held them ready, barrels pointing down. On the other side of the barricade, two police vans pulled up. A couple dozen police officers in riot gear, helmets and batons and shields filed out, formed a line and advanced slowly.
