Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  Josiah smiled faintly. Trevor knew his friend, like the kids at school, assumed the weeks he’d spent in the hospital after his accident had made him prematurely wise about medical matters. He did nothing to discourage that opinion. Why shouldn’t something good come out of that awful time?

  Of course, being in St. Thomas More ICU had not really boosted his medical IQ, except in the areas that had directly affected him. He now knew that in the United States an average of twelve people a day died of drowning. Of that number, ten were male. He knew that “cyanosis” was when skin turned blue from lack of oxygen in the blood supply, and that CPR, even when administered correctly, can cause broken ribs. He knew that broken ribs ached with every breath.

  The hospital stay had also taught him that he wanted to do for others what his doctors had done for him. He didn’t think it was a coincidence that he’d come out of the coma knowing he had to do something right with his life. He had to do good.

  He’d started seeing people, especially children, as majestic beings cloaked in eggshell bodies. He’d wondered how many children had died throughout history who would have given the world something wonderful had they lived. He wanted to help them live to achieve their destinies.

  Deep thoughts for the ten-year-old he was at the time of the accident. But Trevor had aged beyond the days he was comatose. Except for his brief babbling upon returning to consciousness, his family never addressed this change or the reason for it, sensing the pain, the fright that lay behind it. He wouldn’t discuss it even with himself, pushing it away when it threatened to emerge from the recesses of his memory.

  Trevor looked at Josiah again, and his eyes grew wide.

  “What?” his friend said, scared again.

  “Your helmet.” Trevor whispered the words. He unsnapped his friend’s chin strap and gently pulled the helmet off his head. He half-expected brains and gore to spill out, but there was only messy hair and sweat. He turned it in his hands to show Josiah: a deep crack ran horizontally across the entire front. Broken Styrofoam showed through the cracked plastic.

  “That could’ve been your head.”

  Josiah rubbed his forehead. “I have a little headache, but . . .” He shook his head.

  Trevor reached up to his own helmet. It had just become a lot more acceptable.

  “Come on. Can you get up?”

  Trevor reached out a hand to pull his friend up.

  “Hey, look,” Josiah said when he was standing, leaning heavily on Trevor. He was squinting up at the rock cliffs that marked the end of their subdivision and the start of the vast Royal Gorge Park.

  Trevor followed his gaze. Boulders and scraggly pines lined the top ridge, pale blue sky beyond.

  “I don’t—,” he started, but then he did; he saw the figure standing way up there, rock solid. Man or woman, he couldn’t tell. They watched for a good thirty seconds, but the person didn’t move. “Freaky,” Trevor said. “Let’s get your bike.”

  It lay in the street, front wheel mangled, spokes jutting out like spindly ribs. Josiah sat on the curb while Trevor tried to make the damaged bike rollable. First the spokes kept getting hung up on the fork. Then the tire peeled off and wrapped around the hub.

  “Dude, I think you made out better than your bike,” Trevor said. He retrieved his own bike from the grass and told Josiah to walk it home. He lifted the other bike’s front end and pulled it down the street on its back wheel.

  Josiah was favoring his right leg, but not dramatically, and Trevor could tell he was relying on the bike to keep himself from falling. He came alongside.

  “You need to get your mom to take you to a doctor,” he said.

  Josiah’s head swung back and forth. “I’m all right.”

  They walked silently for a time. When Trevor let loose with a tight giggle, trying to restrain himself, Josiah turned.

  “What?”

  Trevor smiled. “Man, you should have seen yourself. You did a handstand on the handlebars!”

  “I did?” Josiah grinned.

  “Straight up.” Trevor laughed. “I mean, your body was straight up in the air, even your legs.”

  “I thought you’d like that.”

  “Oh, like it was on purpose!”

  They both cracked up, and Josiah walked a little steadier. At Trevor’s house, they wheeled the bikes up to the drive, and Trevor punched a code into a keypad that got the garage door rumbling up.

  “He’s still there,” Josiah said. The figure on the ridge.

  Trevor went into the garage and came out with binoculars. After a moment of searching, then focusing, he saw the man—definitely a man, with wild hair and a long, bushy beard. He was looking back at Trevor with his own set of binoculars.

  “He’s got binoculars too,” he said. “I think he’s looking right at us.”

  “Probably a pervert,” Josiah said. He cupped his hands like a megaphone and yelled at the man, “This what you want, perv?” He turned around and shook his considerable backside.

  Trevor backhanded him. “Knock it off!”

  “Ow! Watch the elbow, dude!”

  Trevor pressed his eyes against the rubber eyecups. “Hey,” he said, “there’s a dog sitting next to him. Looks like a Husky.”

  “Let me see!” Josiah pulled the binocs out of his hands.

  “Probably just some construction worker.” Trevor sounded doubtful.

  Josiah rotated the focusing knob. “Whoa,” he said. “Creepy.”

  Trevor went into the garage. He didn’t like creepy things. Not since the accident, he didn’t.

  29

  The boy disappeared into the garage. He was small for his age, and of course there had been no driver’s license photo for Olaf to study, but he knew he had found Trevor Wilson. He fit the description: four and a half feet tall, ninety pounds, strawberry blond hair. And he had opened the garage door at the address listed.

  The larger boy was still watching him through field glasses. Tomorrow, he’d tell police about the strange man on the cliff. They’d come up here and find where he’d stood, find some dog hairs. Nothing new. But if they snooped far enough, they’d find tire tracks. He’d have to do something about that. He didn’t mind leaving fingerprints at the crime scenes, because he’d never been printed and he didn’t plan on being caught. At least not alive. The tires were another matter. If the treads were unique enough, police could identify the van as a suspect vehicle while he was away from it, hunting or purchasing supplies, perhaps. They would then have the advantage of surprise, and that was something he wanted to keep for himself.

  The big kid had lowered the glasses and was talking into the garage. The other boy, Trevor, leaned out, grabbed his friend by the arm, and pulled him inside, glancing quickly up at the ridge. He didn’t like being watched, Olaf thought. Smart kid.

  He panned his binoculars to the back of the house. Then farther, to the greenbelt that conveniently ran like an alley behind the backyards the length of the block. Every yard was framed by a six-foot-high cedar fence, each with a gate opening onto the greenbelt.

  His eyes followed the footpath across two streets to where the houses stopped and a small, sodded park filled the gap between the neighborhood and the cliffs upon which he stood. The park consisted of a wooden play set, a row of teeter-totters, and a smattering of trees. A gravel parking lot demarcated its southern border to Olaf ’s right. A trail appeared to snake west, into the foothills. Most likely, it eventually passed near Olaf ’s current position, though he hadn’t crossed a trail on his way here.

  He swung his vision back to the Trevor kid’s house. The garage door was closed, the bikes gone.

  A sour thought occurred to him: what if the big kid stayed the night? His own boys cherished overnights with friends. Olaf ’s desire to kill the boy in his sleep meant using more stealth than he had before. That would make it difficult enough without the complication of another child in the room. He lowered the binoculars, taking in the grid of houses from his eagle’s perch,
and sighed. His mission was paramount. He’d get the job done—neatly or not.

  He scanned his surroundings. He needed to be as sure as possible that he wouldn’t encounter any surprises when he returned later that night. The trail that began at the park below was somewhere north of him. He turned and headed off in search of it, bounding over boulders and deadfalls far more nimbly than his bulk suggested he could. The dog hung at his side until it was sure of his direction. Then it leaped ahead, sniffing, watching. Together they moved silently and, once in the trees, invisibly.

  30

  Crime scene photos covered every horizontal surface of Alicia’s hotel room. Brady moved from one to the next with a magnifying glass and notepad. Alicia sat at the room’s desk, watching her crime scene walk-throughs from Palmer Lake and Ft. Collins in slow motion on her PowerBook. Occasionally she’d freeze a frame and click a button to print out a high-resolution photograph. Whenever he heard the printer, Brady would drift over, take the printout, and drift back to wherever he’d been before the printer beckoned.

  Once, he asked if Alicia had access to the Internet. She rolled her eyes, and he said he needed to surf for a bit. She strolled down to a soft-drink machine, and when she returned with a pop for each of them, he was back at the piles of photos. Twenty minutes later, he said, “Okay, ready?”

  She watched another few frames of Daniel Fears’s house click by before closing the laptop’s screen. “Shoot,” she said.

  He pointed to a pile of photos on the bed. “Vic number one. Joseph Johnson. Ogden, Utah. No images of hell, as far as I can see from the crime scene photos and reports. But check out these books: Embraced by the Light by Betty Eadie and Curtis Taylor, Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life after Death by Stephen E. Braude, and Hell to Pay by Duncan McAfee.”

  “What are those?” Alicia asked.

  “According to Amazon.com, they all have to do with near-death experiences—NDEs.”

  “Okay,” she said, unsure.

  “You know, someone’s heart stops, they’re clinically dead, and then they get resuscitated—CPR or whatever. While they were ‘dead,’ their spirits . . . experienced things.”

  “Things?”

  “Maybe they float above their corpse or—what these books all address—they head for heaven.”

  “Weird.”

  “A lot of people believe in the reality of near-death experiences.” He glanced around at the papers and photos that represented the Pelletier victims. “Apparently, these people did.”

  He recited each victim’s NDE-related books. Even William Bell—the plumber’s assistant whose entire library consisted of five books, including A Decade of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Photography—owned The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near-Death Experiences by P. M. H. Atwater and Only Visiting: Glimpses of the Afterlife by Duncan McAfee.

  “That guy keeps popping up,” she noted.

  “Duncan McAfee. He’s the only author owned by at least four vics.”

  “I think we have a connection.”

  He let out a big breath. “Now I want to know why these people were interested in NDEs.”

  “That’s what phones are for,” she said. “You take three murder books and give me two. We’ll call relatives, and I’ll also track down Duncan McAfee. I’ll use my cell phone so you can use the hotel line.”

  ALICIA WAS on the Internet when Brady hung up from his final call. It had taken a little more than two hours.

  He said, “I’m starving.”

  She scooped up the desk phone. “How about room service? What do you want?”

  After she ordered for both of them, she said, “Well, Cynthia Loeb’s wonderful ex said her heart stopped during a hysterectomy four years ago. First she said it was horrible. Then she stopped talking about it, but she got obsessed with all things afterlife—heaven, hell, angels, demons. He insisted they’d still be together if she hadn’t gone loony tunes on him, his words.”

  She flipped a page. “I couldn’t track down any of William Bell’s relatives. His boss said he had some kind of accident a few years ago. Crashed an ATV or JetSki, he couldn’t remember. He was in the hospital for a month, but he never talked about it. In fact, he went from being gregarious before the accident to almost reclusive afterward.” She shrugged. “Oh, and I found out Duncan McAfee is a Catholic priest in Manhattan.”

  “A priest?”

  “Yep. I got his number too.”

  “All right. I had two busts. Daniel Fears’s ex hung up on me when I asked about his medical history. His mother said he had a ‘bad experience’ last year when his appendix burst, then she hung up on me. Ditto when I spoke to three of Joseph Johnson’s relatives. You’d think I was a reporter for the National Enquirer asking about their late loved one’s transvestite tendencies. Jessica Hampton’s husband said she definitely had a near-death experience when her heart stopped during a complicated childbirth. When she first was revived, she was terrified, screaming about demons and hell. In recovery, she told him she’d been taken to hell by demons, who tried to hold on to her when she was getting pulled back to her body. The next day she said she didn’t want to talk about it, and she never again did, even though he was supportive and encouraged her to open up. She became very religious and attended Presbyterian services three times a week and a Bible study twice a week.”

  He had been sitting cross-legged on the bed. Now he stretched his arms and legs and clambered off.

  “I’m going to go wash up and then call Zach before room service comes,” he said. He left, promising to return in fifteen minutes. Alicia flipped open her cell phone and dialed Father McAfee’s number.

  On the eighth ring a man’s voice said, “Hello?”

  Either she’d awakened him or he had been drinking.

  “Fr. Duncan McAfee?”

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “I’m Special Agent Alicia Wagner with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “FBI? About my files?”

  “Uh . . . what files, sir?”

  “You’re not calling about my files? What do you want, then?”

  “What happened to your files?”

  “They were stolen!” he yelled.

  Alicia moved the handset away from her ear. “When was this?”

  “Three weeks ago! I filed a report!”

  “What were these files?”

  “My life’s work. All my work.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe there’s something I can—”

  “Oh, stop jerking my chain! You people aren’t going to do anything. The police aren’t doing anything.”

  “Did your files have to do with your books, your near-death experience books?”

  “What else would they have to do with?”

  “Sir, I’m calling because we found your books at the scenes of several crimes. I wanted to ask—”

  “Am I a suspect now? For crying out loud!”

  “No, it’s just that—”

  “Then stop bothering me!”

  Click.

  “Hello? Father McAfee?”

  Whoa.

  FATHER MCAFEE cradled the phone and closed his eyes.

  What now, dear Lord? Father Randall’s visit three weeks ago had begun a time of restless nights and torment. The old man had not stirred old guilt or fears; McAfee knew how to handle psychological demons. For fifty-nine of his sixty-eight years, prayer alone had driven them from his mind. No, another sort of demon—perhaps even a manifest one, McAfee grudgingly conceded—had haunted the church grounds. Unexplainable shadows, echoing footsteps in empty halls, hideous laughter in the rectory, lasting just long enough to wake him up and let him know it was real, not dream sounds—that’s how it started.

  A week ago, the harassment had escalated. He’d come into the chapel to find the statues of the saints knocked over, beheaded and delimbed, defiled with what McAfee had thought was blood but turned out to be red paint. Bad enough. Frightening enough. The police had essentially shrugged. Kids, they said. Bu
t McAfee knew better. The culprit, he was sure, was whoever, whatever was haunting him and his church—left, seemingly, by Father Randall.

  He heard the scuff of shoes on the stone floor behind him and spun. A shadow drifted by on the wall in the hall outside the open door of his office.

  “Who is it?” he called. He felt foolish, like someone in denial.

  The shadow was gone, but the now-familiar laugh—a cackle, really—floated back to him. As it died, something crashed; glass shattered.

  “Go away!” McAfee yelled. “Be gone from here in the name of Jesus Christ!” He crossed himself.

  He received no reply, but a few moments later the shadow slid into view again, and stayed. Whoever was casting it must have been just out of sight in the hall. McAfee’s heart thumped faster. He closed his eyes, mumbling a prayer. When he opened them again, the shadow was gone.

  ALICIA ANSWERED Brady’s knock with her cell phone wedged between her cheek and shoulder. She waved him in.

  “John, listen to me,” she said into the phone. “No, it’s not perfect, but almost.”

  She listened.

  He went to the table where the room service food was laid out and found his cheeseburger on a plate under a metal cover. He started eating it standing up.

  “We’ve already made headway. We’ve discovered the linkage . . .”

  She sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “Yeah, okay. Thanks . . .” She flipped the phone closed and added, “For nothing.”

  Around a mouthful of burger, he asked, “Gilbreath?”

  She nodded. “They got positive matches on fingerprints and animal hairs from Ogden and Ft. Collins. Same dogs, same perp, different states . . . the Bureau’s got jurisdiction.”

  He nodded and took another big bite.

  “The investigative team is flying in tomorrow,” she said. “And we’re flying out.”

  She stood, tossed the phone onto the bed, and found her Reuben sandwich. She popped a French fry into her mouth. “These fries are awful.”

  He reached down and grabbed a handful.

  She picked up the Reuben and set it down again. “Don’t you want to stay? Don’t you want to help close this case?”