by Taylor Fray
Betty Jo nodded, pursing her lips. It seemed as if she was struggling with something. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ve never said anything because I don’t want to make any false accusations. You know I could just be thinking crazy things and tying strings that don’t even string together, but the day Harley died, something awfully strange happened at the diner. Harley was always scheduled Fridays. Friday was her day. She never missed it because those were the big tipping days. I came in that Friday she died, and by about 4 o’clock I was getting worried because she wasn’t at work and she wasn’t answering her phone. Then I was just going about my business at work and I just thought it out loud ‘Where’s Harley? She never misses Fridays’ and Pete blurted out, ‘She won’t be coming in today, poor thing’ and then acted like he hadn’t said anything. I just always thought that he meant poor thing, because she was sick or because she didn’t have no money or something but that stayed with me.”
Morgan listened, every hair on her body standing on end. “This was around 4 o’clock that day when he said this?”
“Uhuh.”
The time of death had been marked as 5 o’clock. Police hadn’t shown up until 5:30, much less informed anyone about the murder. There was a cold rattle in Morgan’s heart, but she put on a calm face for Betty Jo. She didn’t want to alarm her if there wasn’t anything to it. “Don’t worry, you’re reading too much into it. Besides, Pete was there at the restaurant with you so he couldn’t have been involved.”
“Alright, I figured just as much. That’s why I didn’t say anything. Imagine if I did, I would’ve gotten fired, or even worse, I would’ve accused and innocent person of something terrible like that. I feel so stupid.” Betty Jo shook her head, disgusted with herself.
“No, don’t say that. You did the right thing by telling me. Every little detail is important. Witnesses have no real way of telling whether something is relevant or not, so it’s better to say everything even if it seems like it doesn’t matter.”
“So then, it was that wolf man you think?”
“Yeah. I’m sure it was him.” Morgan said it to reassure her, but the way things were going, she didn’t know what was what anymore in this freakish town.
“Alright.” Betty Jo slung her purse on and collected herself. “Please don’t tell nobody about all this. It’s awfully embarrassing.”
“Of course. And same to you. Let’s just keep all of this between us.”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Betty Jo said. “I got twelve sisters. If even one of them got hurt by their man, I’d be looking to put a hurting on him just like you, no matter what kind of man… or animal he was.”
“Be careful, Betty Jo.”
“You more, Miss.”
They looked at each other with an understanding, then Betty Jo walked to her home. As soon as she was out of eyesight, Morgan’s face turned grave. She didn’t have a good feeling about Pete since she met him, and now she was truly suspicious. Why he would possibly know of her sister’s murder before it happened was a bizarre question to consider, but she had learned over the years not to dismiss any trail, no matter how implausible.
She was going to really have to go all-out sleuthing, and tail him.
4
The first two days were routine. Pete lived the life of a 40 year old bachelor, and migrated between three places: his dingy restaurant, an even dingier bar he frequented, and his still dingier house he came back to at the end of the night. She gathered all kinds of information, ran his license plate, his legal records, ran background checks on him, his family, his acquaintances, but all that came up was the info of a restaurant owner who lived a mediocre but harmless life. This wasn’t helping. The longer she spent on Pete with no real information, the more time she was wasting. She could have given up on the Pete angle, but she wasn’t in a hurry to confront Zak again, if she could even find him, and the detail that Betty Jo had shared stuck with her. Perhaps Pete had worked with Zak, perhaps he was one of them, a wolf man, as Betty Jo had called them.
So now, she was going to go the illegal route by breaking into Pete’s house and digging around for info. If she didn’t find anything relevant soon she would have to give up on that trail altogether. She had been casing his house for days now. It was a tough choice to break the law, but hey, she had a damn good reason.
She parked about a quarter mile away from his house. She was sitting in her car, watching for when he would leave that afternoon. She pulled out her good camera, the one that could magnify a million times and take a picture of a mole on your skin from a billion miles away. Hours passed. All Morgan caught on camera was a damn raccoon. It was getting into the late afternoon. While she waited for Pete to leave his house, she wolfed down some jerky, the familiar salty taste filling her mouth. As she chewed she leaned her head back against the seat, almost wanting to drive off. But then the faint crunching sound of gravel rang out as Pete walked out of the house to his ratty truck in the driveway. The engine revved. He pulled out and drove down the road.
Morgan flung her half-eaten jerky bar, took a deep breath. This was it. Go time. She put on gloves, a baseball cap and huge black sunglasses. She grabbed her kit from the trunk and dashed to the house.
Scuttling along the bushes, she made her way like a snake through the fence, to the backyard. Why there was a deflated bouncy castle amidst the piles of trash back there, she didn’t have time to guess. She stepped around the decaying furniture in the patio and made her way to the back entrance of the house: a standard white door with a window that led to the kitchen. She crouched up next to it. She unzipped her break-in kit, a black duffle bag with all kinds of tools and gadgets in its endless pockets. There were flashlights, night vision goggles, small lock picking hooks, single ball lock picks, double ball picks, half diamond picks, diamond double sided picks, C snakes, L Snakes, a smorgasbord of tension wrenches, a collapsible crow bar, voice-activated micro recorders, trackless shoes, a noise reducing precision glass cutter—she had it all. Now, to put it to work.
She reached up to the door and accidentally nudged it with her elbow. It opened with a loooong slow creeeeeek—he had left it unlocked. She shook her head in disgust—she brought all those tools for nothing! “Pete, you friggin’ idiot,” she muttered to herself.
She crept in and quietly closed the door behind her. The place was a landfill, with mountains of trash everywhere. There was a rotting green couch in the kitchen for some reason. Dishes were stacked on the table along with boxes of old magazines—what kind of magazines, she didn’t want to know. In the living room there was about the largest TVs she ever saw. One thing that did concern her was that there were stains on the carpet that looked like dried blood. She took photos of the stains and even cut some fibers of the carpet and put them in a small bag and back into her kit.
She made her way up the stairs. She couldn’t bring herself to even step into the mess of a bathroom so she went for the bedroom instead—it would be more useful anyway. This room was no different, it was just a bed surrounded by a sea of trash, but she was shocked to see that inside were two dozen cats, tails held high, bright eyes fixed on her. She stood there staring and they stared back. Pete from Pete’s Grill it turned out, was a crazy cat lady. She gazed around the space. In the back of the room there was a door that she imagined was a closet. The master bedroom. Closets and dressers. That’s where everyone always kept their secrets. So she put one step forward and noticed that the cats all stood from their belly perches in unison. She took another step, and they inched up still more, their backs curving, their tails held high.
A chorus of high-pitched hisses was building in the room. Their eyes began burning an eerie red. What the hell? Morgan looked around with a mixture of confusion and dread—was there not anything normal in this town? The cats seemed possessed, the red eyes glowing like tiny infernos. Morgan’s brows twitched in confusion.
�
��What…” A single drop of sweat beaded on her forehead.
She took a slow, creaking step toward the closet and ALL HELL broke loose.
RRRRRAAAAAAAA! The cats hissed and jumped at her, claws out, teeth out, little furry paws whipping with rage.
“Ah! Get off me!” Morgan shouted as she desperately shook off cats, one that was raking at her face, another three or four that were latched onto her legs. The pat pat pat of claws digging into her, the mwraaaaaarrr of wailing as they jumped on her one after the other. She had never been one to hurt an animal but they were really going after her, so she grabbed the one that was latched onto her face and flung it across the room. It spun like a baton in mid air and crashed into a lamp, knocking it over with a thud. The spinning cat landed on its feet of course, and scuttled off.
Morgan swatted at herself like she was fighting off a swarm of bees. She shook the last cat free just as she made it to the closet door and stepped inside it, shutting it behind her. It was almost pitch black in there but at least she had a door between her and the cats. She could still hear their little claws digging into the wooden door. She took a deep breath and felt the stinging on her face where she got clawed. These were some demonic cats, the little bastards—by this point she accepted that this town had things that were far from normal, and the rules of the world she knew no longer applied. This was already a disaster, but she might as well look around for a moment before she got the hell out of there.
She set her black kit down, didn’t have to bother with a flashlight since there was a light in the closet that she switched on. It was mostly full of old electronics and clothes. She rifled through everything but didn’t see anything that aroused suspicion. If only there was something, a bloodied shirt, a weapon, anything. Then she found something strange, behind a pile of clothes. It was a ceramic bowl filled with buttons, keys, loose string and… human teeth. Unless a single person had lost dozens of teeth, these were all from multiple people. She was just getting over the shock when suddenly she heard something: noise inside the house, coming from downstairs. A chill ran up her spine. Who could be in the house? As far as she knew Pete lived alone. Whatever it was she had to think fast and act even faster.
She flung the door open to a barrage of hissing, was about to charge through the room but stopped halfway when she realized that now the sound of footsteps was coming up the stairs. This was bad. This was really, really bad. She wasn’t afraid of Pete. She was confident she could beat him half to death. It was the fact that, what then? The breaking and entering charge would just be the appetizer; the main course could have her locked up for a decade or more.
She ducked back into the closet. Flicked the light off. The door to the bedroom opened with a creek. This just kept getting worse. A full on sweat was turning her navy baseball cap black around the rim.
“Hello my sweets!” Pete’s voice resounded in the room, getting back a round of complaining meows. “Have you all been getting rambunctious again?”
Morgan peered through the crack in the doorframe, could make out Pete straightening up the lamp. He was wearing his work clothes; maybe he had forgotten something and would soon leave. Morgan kept absolutely, perfectly, still. The cats kept meowing at him in complaint.
“Yes, I know I left you all alone again. I’m sorry, but daddy’s got to go back to work now,” Pete pleaded with the cats. They shrieked even more. “Alright fine, just for a minute.” He hoisted up one of the felines, a big furry ginger one, its body dangling like an accordion as he brought it up on the bed and sat. “Ariel, you get to cuddle now.” He hugged the cat tight despite its hisses. “Alright Snow, come on,” he said and brought up a black and white cat, then did the same with “Pocahontas” and “Belle.”
Morgan had to clench her hand over her mouth like a vice to keep from laughing. She would have thought her fear at being caught would have kept her from laughing at all, but it only made it worse, it created a kind of manic tension in her. Tears were beginning to pool at her eyes and her face turning cherry red. Her body was beginning to tremble with laughter, and she took in deep choking breaths to keep a flood of guffaws back. This was the most bizarre thing she’d ever seen.
The cats went on hissing and complaining, so Pete stood. “Alright, what is it already?”
The cats responded by gathering in front of the closet. Hissing and clawing at the door. Morgan recoiled back. She wasn’t laughing anymore. Now she only had a few seconds to think of what to do.
“What? What’s in there?” Pete asked, a little curious and a little impatient.
Morgan’s mouth went completely dry. She felt the rattle of the floor as Pete walked over to the closet. This was it. Think. Think. Think.
The closet door flung open.
Panic pumped in her veins, and her shoulder, arm, and fist became an explosion of kinetic energy. She slugged him with strength, but more importantly, with accuracy. She nailed him right on the corner of the chin, sending a jolt down his nervous system that the human body chain could not handle, and he crumpled.
She only had seconds before he recovered—this was Morgan’s chance. She grabbed her kit, leapt over Pete’s prone body and made a run for it. But the damn cats were waiting for her. A furry storm of hissing and clawing erupted. She hurdled over them like an Olympian.
She slung the kit on her shoulder and worked the window frantically. She slid it open while simultaneously kicking back at the herd of felines to keep them away. They looked like one big writhing mass of fur as they went at her. She perched up on the window ledge. Digging her boots into the stucco on the outside of the house with all her strength, she strained to lower herself as much as possible before she let herself drop from the second floor. She grit her teeth, her knuckles going white with strain, then let herself fall.
Morgan landed on the walkway with a smack. Her legs took most of the impact, but she still fell over, her head clattering off the pavement. She was now between the side of the house and the wooden fence surrounding it. The adrenaline didn’t let her feel pain; she just scrambled up and ran toward the front yard to make her escape.
As she made it to the front of the house she made sure to walk with her face down, acting as if she were just a stroller on the road, but with a quick pace. She made it to her car down the road, slammed the door behind her. She breathed the biggest sigh of relief. Took off her sweaty baseball cap and sunglasses. Her hair was a wild mess as she caught a look at herself in the mirror. She revved the engine.
Suddenly she saw Pete run to his truck, start it and screech out of the driveway. Was he going to the police? Making a run for it before the police showed up? It was decision time again. No. He wasn’t going to the police. An innocent person does not have a bowl of human teeth in their closet, much less all the other freak things. The sensible thing to do was to get the hell out of there and drive off. But Morgan was not sensible. She was on the hunt. Once she fixed on her prey, there was no stopping until she caught it. It was how she did things. It was who she was. If he really was driving off because he thought someone was onto him, he could be disposing of evidence, or meeting up with his accomplice, Zak. In his panic he might blow the case entirely open. Morgan was going to tail him. She had to.
She began driving. Gave him plenty of space. Even if she lost him temporarily, she had her tracking mind on, and he wasn’t getting away. About ten minutes into the drive, the sun went down, and the sky turned pitch black with no moon. It would be harder in the dark of night, but she stayed on his red taillights as they weaved through the country roads. Her suspicion grew as he drove into the forest preserve, where she had first encountered Zak.
She almost drove past a small dirt road that veered off the concrete. But the faint lights of Pete’s truck and the faintest smell of exhaust in the air caught her attention. She slowed down and pulled onto the dirt road. Her tires crept over the dirt, with small wisps of it kicking up under its rolling weight. She parked her car. From what she could tell of the terrain, this wa
s a dead end road. How far it went into the forest was a whole other question.
Up ahead there was a canyon. She walked toward it. Through thickets of maple trees. Further down the road she saw the glint of Pete’s parked car in the moonlight. Her alarm was so heavy it felt as if a stone dropped in her stomach. But she was too far in now. As an investigator she was a bit of a predator herself. Finding out everything about her target. Using subterfuge, using intelligence, information, cunning. Stalking her prey. Sometimes it was as if an instinct drove her—she actually hungered to catch her mark. That switch had been flipped, and there was no turning back now. There was no police, no time, no help, it was just her against these monsters.
She felt for her gun. Crept forward, ducking low to the ground, using the thicket of trees as cover. She studied Pete’s truck, felt the heat emanating from its hood.
She crept further into the forest, could see by bent grasses and snapped twigs where Pete had walked into the forest. The average person had no idea how to hide their tracks, and Pete wasn’t any different if he was trying.
She made it to the canyon, stayed behind the cover of a tree. She spotted the reflective light of a watch on a wrist, moving down in the canyon: it was Pete. Spying on him, she watched as he opened a sewer grate, and walked down into it as if it had stairs. What the hell was going on in this town?
Pete closed the grate behind him. Reassuring herself by feeling her gun tucked in her belt, she descended into the small canyon. Her feet carefully navigated the rocky steps.
The grate seemed normal, cold metal with a slab of concrete around it, but what was it doing out here in the middle of the forest preserve? She listened and heard footsteps echoing in the cavernous tunnel underneath. They eventually faded as they walked further into the unknown underground.
She had come this far. She pried open the grate. Gripping a small flashlight with her teeth, she slowly descended the metal ladder. She dropped down to the solid floor of the tunnel. Shone her flashlight. The tunnel was made of old stone, and it went far down until it curved into darkness. She worked up the nerve and walked forward, her steps caressing the ground as silently as possible.
