A Soul To Steal

by Rob Blackwell

  But I shouldn’t complain. It’s a start and we have some time left. I promise this will be a month that no one around here ever forgets.

  Yours Sincerely,

  Lord Halloween

  P.S. The next body? Just look around. I made sure even the idiots at the police force could find it quickly.

  Chapter 7

  “ Robert Crowley is hard to quantify. As a poet in his own right, he was mediocre at best. His poems tended to be overly-symbolic with a poor sense of pacing. And yet it would be unfair to leave him out of a discussion of British poetry during the 19 ^th century. Other poets at the time considered him bold and innovative, and later, better masters of the art were influenced by him. But it seems his real claim to fame unfortunately comes from the rather bizarre circumstances surrounding his disappearance. That-if nothing else-assured he was unlikely to be forgotten.”

  — Ross MacFarlane, “Scottish Poetry Through the Ages”

  Monday, Oct. 9

  Quinn sat in the early morning darkness staring at his living room wall. He was not really conscious of being there-his thoughts had drifted somewhere else-and it was only with a sudden start he realized he had been staring at the same spot for over an hour.

  He supposed it must have been some manner of dreaming, though he knew he was awake.

  Maybe this will be enough sleep today, he thought grimly.

  He could not be surprised, or even too disappointed. After Saturday evening had gone so well, it was only natural that the night would go badly. The nightmares, always intense, always realistic, had been worse than ever.

  So bad, in fact, that sleeping on Sunday night did not appear to be much of an option. Instead, he had stayed up-at first by watching the TV-and then by reading. He had not nodded off-though he felt incredibly tired-but his mind had wandered.

  Quinn stood up abruptly and crossed over to the window. Sometimes he thought he could still hear the sound of hoof beats out there. But he heard nothing this morning. He tapped his fingernail against the glass and then turned around to get in the shower.

  He was at work by 7:00 in the morning, far ahead of everyone else. He had three goals for the day: the first, and most important, was to talk to Kate again. He wondered if her brief kiss on his cheek had felt the same to her-the electric impulse that had spread through his body. He doubted it. Then he smiled at himself. This is what it was like when he was depressed and running on no sleep. He doubted everything.

  The second goal was to attend Sheriff Brown’s press conference on the stalker. Quinn leaned back in his chair. Well, maybe “stalker” was a little strong. Peeping-Tom, perhaps? It didn’t matter. The story had provided him with fodder for two months. A man, always hiding in shadow, spying on houses in Leesburg’s outskirts. More than a dozen people thought they had caught a glimpse of him, and on at least two occasions, police had been called out to find evidence of an attempted break-in.

  It was, sad to say, Quinn’s favorite story at the moment. He had slim pickings in the town itself and crime was usually crowded out by Kyle. But Kyle had dismissed the stalker story as unimportant-a phantom no less-and so it had become Quinn’s. And if now it was a story “with legs,” it remained in Quinn’s purview.

  He hated the idea that he could be territorial-he despised Helen’s insistence that any article on the board of supervisors go through her first-but good stories were hard to come by.

  Though he was not expecting much, he assumed the sheriff would face the normal angry parents and concerned citizens during the conference. Enough for a story. Enough so that Quinn actually had something other than business to write for the week.

  He sighed. It was not supposed to be like this.

  The phone startled him out of his reverie and for a minute he glared at it like it was some strange alien being. It was so early in the morning, who the hell would be calling him?

  “Quinn O’Brion,” he said, picking up the line.

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Hello?” he asked again.

  “Quinn,” the voice said. “I didn't expect you to be there.”

  It took a second for Quinn to place the voice.

  “Then why were you calling now, Gary?” he asked.

  They both knew why. Gary was notoriously hard to catch on the phone, mostly because he hated talking to the press. Quinn was an exception. But Gary still felt that every conversation with Quinn endangered his job with the Leesburg police.

  He was probably right.

  “Uh…” Gary drifted off.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Quinn said quickly, worried Gary would hang up.

  “What's going on?”

  There was a long silence on the other end.

  “Gary?” Quinn asked. “You still with me?”

  “Yeah,” Gary said finally. “I’m here.”

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  “The press conference is off.”

  “What? Why? Did they catch him?” Quinn asked hopefully. His pulse quickened as he smelled a good story.

  “If they caught him, don’t you think there would be a bigger press conference?” Gary said. “They certainly wouldn’t cancel it.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Quinn waited. This was the best policy with squirrelly sources. Secretly they want to talk. It is just a question of pausing long enough for them to spill it all out.

  “There is a lot of commotion,” Gary said after some time had passed.

  “What kind of commotion?”

  “It’s very hush-hush,” he said. “They won’t tell anybody anything.”

  “What do you mean by commotion?”

  “Yesterday, they called in a bunch of guys,” Gary said. “But they never told us what it was for. A lot of us were just standing around with nothing to do.”

  “So they called in a lot of guys on a Sunday and then didn’t do anything with them?”

  “About right,” Gary replied, keeping his voice low. “And then…”

  Quinn paused again. It was all he could do not to ask more questions, but he paced himself. It wouldn't do to rush this.

  “Then Stu came out. You know Stu, don’t you?”

  “Brown’s deputy? The one always hovering around him that looks scared of his own shadow?”

  “Er… yeah,” Gary said. “Anyway, Stu came out and told the boys to go home. Said it was a mistake made by a dispatcher or something.”

  “That’s weird, but I guess it’s possible…”

  “Well, we all thought so too, but… then he said something weird,” Gary said.

  The conversation drifted to silence.

  Finally Quinn couldn’t take it anymore.

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that we shouldn't mention this to anybody,” Gary replied. “He said it would be embarrassing if everybody knew about it.”

  Quinn laughed.

  “Who gives a shit if the dispatcher called in a few guys for no reason?”

  “That’s what we thought,” Gary said.

  “And then Stu called a couple guys back. Johnny Redacker and the Kaulbach kid. They looked confused and went into his office. We caught up with them later and Kaulbach looked sick.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were at the bar…”

  “On a Sunday?”

  “Hey, we already had to come into work, why not?”

  “Fine, fine,” Quinn said. “What do you mean sick?”

  “I was telling you,” Gary said.

  “Okay,” Quinn said.

  “No sense in me talking to you if you are just going to interrupt,” Gary said again.

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “I’m sorry.”

  Gary waited.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said again.

  Gary cleared his throat and continued.

  “Kaulbach and Redacker came in and the two of them were all sullen and quiet. That isn’t like Johnny at all, of c
ourse, and we were all curious to know what the hell was going on, so we started asking them questions. But they wouldn’t say nothing. Johnny started giving us the procedural bullshit, you know, ‘It’s against policy,’ all that jazz. I swear he is to big for his britches ever since Stu promoted him. Last week, he actually told me…”

  “Gary?” Quinn interrupted. It was best to keep the guy on track.

  “Right, right,” he said. “So Johnny is clamming up and the whole time Kaulbach looks like he is going to faint or something. Finally, he excuses himself. I went after him, because the kid is new, you know?”

  “Also you thought he might spill his guts?” Quinn asked.

  “Well, that is what he was doing,” Gary replied. “He was puking his lungs out. I mean really just pouring it out.”

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “You don’t need to paint a picture.”

  “I asked him if he was okay, you know, after he finished, and he said he was. I asked him what had happened and he said, ‘Stu said we could lose our jobs if we said anything.’”

  “That it?”

  “Well, then this morning I get in early and I find this voicemail from Stu. It said the press conference today is canceled, and if anybody asked why, I was to tell them that Brown is sick or something.”

  “Pretty lame,” Quinn said. “And since when do you handle press? You won’t talk to Kyle so…”

  “That cocksucker,” was all Gary said.

  “I know what you think of him,” he replied.

  “What I think of him? That asshole nearly cost me my job,” Gary said.

  “I know, I know…”

  There was a significant pause.

  “I don’t know why I was in charge of press today,” Gary finally said. “Maybe Fred really is out.”

  Or maybe not, Quinn mused. Fred Tipper had a reputation as a leaker on the police force. This was mostly undeserved, since his job was to talk to the press. Or more specifically, Kyle. Gary, on the other hand, had handled press only a few times and his dislike of Kyle Thompson was well known.

  Gary didn’t really like any reporters. The only reason he tolerated Quinn was because of a single favor more than a year ago.

  “You know something more,” Quinn said. It was not a question.

  “Christ,” Gary replied, but said nothing.

  “Look, I really appreciate what you’ve said so far,” Quinn began.

  “Bullshit,” Gary said. “Bullshit. Reporters are all alike. You butter us up or you dress us down, but you don’t really give a damn. You just want information. You just want a story.”

  “Yes, I want a story,” Quinn said. “But I’ve given you no reason not to trust me. In fact, quite the opposite.”

  “You can’t always bring that shit up,” he said. “You can’t keep using it on me.”

  “Come on, Gary, I’m not using anything,” he said. “I’m just trying to get the story.”

  There was a pause. Silence reigned and Quinn watched the clock on the wall move agonizingly forward a full minute before he talked again.

  “What are they hiding?” he asked, when he could take it no longer.

  “I don’t know,” Gary replied.

  “But you know something,” Quinn said.

  “The Kaulbach kid…”

  Quinn let the pause come. He steeled himself to wait. If he hurried, Gary would realize he could just hang up the phone. Sometimes there was a magical effect on sources. If you ask a question, they feel compelled to answer it. But push it too far and you lose them. Quinn waited.

  “He kept saying something,” Gary began again.

  “What?”

  “He kept saying, ‘I found her head. I found her head.’”

  “Found who’s head?”

  “Well, I finally asked him,” Gary said. “Look, I can’t be telling you this. This is my ass on the line.”

  “Think about it Gary, why did they put you in charge today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do,” Quinn said. “You hate reporters. You tell them nothing. You’ve made no secret about it. Stu doesn’t trust Tipper-he never did. He’ll leak. But you won’t.”

  “Because they trust me,” Gary said. “And I'm betraying that…”

  “No, because you got burned by Kyle and Summer,” Quinn said. “You said something off the record and they put it in their stories. But they don’t know about us. Why? Because I didn’t burn you. I went out of my way to protect your son and I didn’t have to. A cop’s kid dealing marijuana is a big story…”

  “Shut up, okay?” Gary said. “You don’t have to remind me.”

  “Kyle doesn’t know I talk to you-my own editor doesn’t know,” Quinn said.

  This last part was a bold lie-Rebecca knew damn well who his source was. But she would never give it up.

  “No one will know if you leak to me,” Quinn said. “You know you can trust me. They won’t know.”

  “All right,” Gary said finally. “All right.”

  “Tell me what you know,” Quinn said.

  “They found a body, in the woods, on the gravel road between here and Waterford,” he said.

  “Hearse Road?”

  “Yeah,” Gary said.

  “They found a body. Murdered?”

  “She was decapitated, Quinn,” Gary said. “That kind of thing doesn’t tend to happen accidentally. The Kaulbach kid spilled the story along with his guts. The woman was missing a head-clean cut from her shoulders.”

  Quinn felt a momentary stab of panic. In his head, an image played from his nightmare. The Horseman was bearing down on him, a sword in his hand, preparing to remove his head. He could feel the blade about to cut into his flesh.

  Quinn pushed it away.

  “And Kaulbach found the head,” he said.

  “They were called out there to search,” Gary said. “Originally they wanted to have a whole pack do it, but they stopped.”

  “Why?” Quinn asked.

  “Because they’re scared,” Gary said. “Scared this isn't a murderous lover or something…”

  “Scared it’s the Horseman,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah,” Gary said, and then added, “Wait. What? The Horseman? Who the hell is the Horseman?”

  “No one,” Quinn said quickly. “I sometimes get my serial killers mixed up.”

  “I'm not going to say who I was thinking of,” Gary said.

  “Lord Halloween,” Quinn said. “That’s who they are worried about.”

  “Look, I was truthful at the beginning here,” Gary said. “I don't know much. We don't know that it is that guy at all. Hell, some people still even think it really was Holober. But even if it wasn’t… He has been gone 12 years, for Christ's sake. It’s just…”

  “Just what?” Quinn asked.

  “The brutality of it is unusual for this town, you know that. And with this time of year…"

  “It isn’t hard to jump to conclusions,” Quinn said. “So are they going to talk about it?”

  “Are you nuts?” Gary asked. “If I so much as mention that you are inquiring about a headless woman in the woods, what the hell do you think they will say? They’ll clam up.”

  “So how do I get the story, Gary?”

  “That’s not my problem,” Gary said. “I shouldn’t have told you this much. They’ll find out who leaked it.”

  “No they won’t,” Quinn said.

  “They will…”

  “They will if you run around acting guilty,” Quinn said. “Don’t do that. Just act like everything is normal. Just be cool.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Gary said grumpily.

  “Look, I appreciate what you’ve told me…”

  “Just don’t screw me over,” Gary said. “All right? Just don’t screw me over.”

  And with that, he hung up, and Quinn was left in silence.

  He looked at the clock. It was still early in the morning and no one else was here. And he had the story of a lifetime.

&nbs
p; Almost.

  There were two concerns. The first was the vision of his nightmare intruding on reality. The idea that this was the work of a Washington Irving character was absurd and yet Quinn couldn’t help but wonder about it. A headless corpse, days after he had been dreaming about a headless rider who enjoys taking trophies. It unnerved him. But he pushed it to the back of his mind. Dream phantoms don’t kill people.

  The second problem was more banal. He needed confirmation. Regardless of how it works in the movies, a one-source story wasn’t going to fly at the Chronicle. In theory, Gary could be making stuff up or have his facts confused. Quinn trusted him, but he wasn’t enough. Considering the return of Lord Halloween would panic just about everyone, he had to make sure the story was 100 % solid.

  But Quinn also knew he could not call the known world. Doing so could alert Summer or someone even more important to what’s going on. This was a major scoop-likely the biggest one of his career-and he would be damned if he was going to let it get away. How he acted would be critical. The police were trying to keep this quiet. That was fine by him. The Chronicle wouldn’t publish for two days-a lifetime for a story like this.

  If whatever was going to happen broke today, it would be old news by the time the Chronicle came out. But if the police wanted to keep a lid on this… that changed things.

  He had to be careful, building the case so it wouldn’t break until precisely the right time. This had to work but he was going to need help. He dialed Janus’ number.

  He was so busy the next few hours, he didn’t even see when Kate walked in. Only when his stomach started rumbling at 12:30 did he look up and notice her there. She seemed absorbed in whatever she was doing.

  He got up and crossed over to her desk.

  “Hey,” he said, in what he hoped was a casual way.

  She looked up at him.

  “Hey stranger,” she replied. “I saw you over there working the phones. What has you so busy?”

  Quinn thought for a moment. It was a risk to bring her in on a story like this. He really knew very little about her. On the other hand, she had been a reporter at a good city paper and Laurence had mentioned something about police beat experience. She might be an asset. Quinn glanced around nervously.