by John Russo
CHAPTER 31
Detective Bill Curtis had a gut feeling that the theft of the Haleys’ dead bodies and the murder-suicide, or whatever it was, at the Lopezes’ home were somehow interconnected. Why, he asked himself, did all these strange goings-on have teenagers either at the center of them or else tangentially involved?
Things had definitely gotten weirder in Chapel Grove, ever since the outbreak at the Rock ’n’ Shock sixteen years ago. Ordinarily, police work was tough enough, but the Plague of the Living Dead had thrown so much fear and confusion into the mix that it was hard to know which end was up. To make matters even worse, Pete Danko seemed unwilling to take certain investigations as far as they ought to go. Either he yanked cases away from Bill and handled them himself, or he stopped Bill from going after things that Bill badly wanted to pursue. Bill had to ask himself why. And what might Dr. Traeger have to do with it? What did she know that she wasn’t saying? Was she hiding something or not?
Bill was still bugged by the way events had unfolded, beginning with the theft of the contaminated needles. The official explanation of the contamination had seemed fishy to him, and at the time he would have tried harder to unearth more facts, but first he had had to face the immediate urgency of vanquishing the undead and then, in the aftermath, the desperate struggle to rebuild some semblance of normality in his town and in his own life while he and Lauren were about to have their first child. In any case, he’d had nobody to back him up, least of all Pete Danko, who was acting, then and now, more like a barrier than a facilitator.
He was nagged by thoughts of how he had been sent to sign out a patrol car while Pete dealt with Jamie Dugan on his own, without any witnesses except maybe Dr. Traeger. What had happened to Jamie after he confessed to causing infected hypodermic needles to get into the hands of the Hateful Dead? How much might Dr. Traeger know about Jamie’s ultimate fate?
Were all these questions part of the same puzzle or not?
First and foremost, Bill needed to protect his own daughter, and more and more it seemed that the circumstances surrounding her were nebulous and perhaps dangerous. If Tricia Lopez had anything to do with the deaths of her baby brother, then Jodie should not be hanging out with Tricia or any of that girl’s friends. Especially Darius Hornsby. The boy had been in trouble from grade school on up. He was suspected of much more than anyone could prove. But somehow he always managed to skate.
Bill figured he had to risk trying to interview Dr. Traeger again, even though he might get himself fired or demoted. She had been nice to him that other time, sixteen years ago, but then she had ratted him out to Pete Danko. He mulled it over for a couple of days, then took action and phoned her. Just like before, she readily agreed to see him. Once again they met in her office at the institute, and he hoped that she had mellowed over the years and would not turn on him.
Sitting in front of her desk, the same one of gray steel that he remembered, he began by saying, “Look, Doctor, I’m going to level with you. The chief doesn’t know I’m here, and I hope you won’t tell him. I just want to clear up some things. The Haley family needs closure.”
With a wry smile she said, “I know their bodies are missing. Surely you don’t think I had a hand in it? Like the grave robbers in an old Boris Karloff movie?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Bill said. “I’m not big on fictional horror when I have the everyday kind to deal with.”
“We do sometimes use cadavers for medical purposes,” Dr. Traeger said. “But we obtain them through proper channels.”
“Well, here’s what I’m wondering about,” Bill said. “That fellow Jamie Dugan, do you know what happened to him?”
“Why would you worry about that after all these years, Detective?” she said with what sounded like genuine surprise.
Bill said, “There are so many things that seem off-kilter. Things I can’t explain, can’t get to the bottom of. And it’s been going on for a long time.”
“It’s the plague. Fear makes people do strange things. Nothing is normal anymore, and won’t be, until I can find a way to eradicate it.”
“Can you tell me more about your research methods? Is there any chance that those stolen needles got infected right here at the institute?”
“No chance at all. I told you and Pete Danko the truth, and I told the truth in my press conferences as well.”
“But it’s exactly what you might say if you were doing something illegal here. Or if not strictly illegal, perhaps controversial.”
“No comment.”
“Does Pete Danko know more than I do?”
“Again, no comment.”
“Why are you stonewalling me, Dr. Traeger?”
“This interview is over. And if you don’t leave right this moment, I won’t uphold my promise not to tell on you.”
She whipped out her cell phone as if it were a weapon she could use against him.
He said, “You might have all the education, all the smarts and apparent sophistication in the world, but I suspect that you’re more immoral and unprincipled than you let on.”
For a long moment he enjoyed the shocked and flustered look on her face. Then he got up and left her office, certain that she’d be talking to Pete Danko before he even got out of the building.
CHAPTER 32
Pete Danko took the call from Dr. Traeger on his secure line, and she recounted her conversation with Bill Curtis, making sure not to leave out any salient details.
He said, “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but we’re going to have to eliminate him. Why did you even agree to meet with him? That was unwise, Doctor.”
There was menace in his tone, and she got the hint that she herself might easily be eliminated along with Danko’s lieutenant. Her mouth went dry and she was stunned to silence.
Danko filled the void with more menace. “You should have let me know he was coming there. We could have dealt with him right on the premises. Don’t you still have some hungry ones in the cages?”
“Yes, a half dozen.”
“Al Capone’s boys used to rub people out and feed them to the pigs. They kept a hog farm about a hundred miles from Chicago, for that precise purpose. You already have quote-unquote patients, human garbage disposals, who can serve that same function for us.”
“Maybe I can lure him back here by telling him I’m ready to cooperate.”
“No, he might see through that.”
“Then what are we to do?”
“I’ll have to stage something at an advantageous time and make it believable. I’m not going to dress him down, like I did once before when he tried to pick your brain. I’ll let him believe you never even talked to me. But I’ll be biding my time for a proper shot at him.”
“You’re going to literally shoot him?”
“I don’t think you really want to know.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” she said, and terminated the call.
CHAPTER 33
Even with the new tube of salve Dr. Miller gave Jodie, that stupid scar on her arm was still itchy. She tried not to scratch it when she was with her brand-new friends, Brenda Kallen and Kathy Traeger. Fleeing from a hot day in the classrooms of Chapel Grove High School they were wearing their school uniforms: tartan skirts, starched white blouses, and “sensible” black laced-up shoes; it was the dress code, and they hated it. Kathy hated it the most and was even more rebellious than Brenda, and on days when she wasn’t going straight home after school but was going to hang out somewhere, like maybe the Play Room where they played video games, or the Snack Shack where they hung out and eyed the boys, she would duck into the ladies’ room at the school and change into a T-shirt and jeans that she kept in her book bag.
As the girls bounded down Chapel Grove High’s long flight of concrete steps, Jodie’s arm was so itchy that she had to scratch it through the bandage, even though she didn’t want to. Brenda and Kathy smirked at each other when they saw her doing it. She blanched at that. She always felt way inferior to
them, even though they were only about a year older. They seemed more worldly, more sophisticated than she could ever be. No wonder! They had grown up free of the threat of anaphylactic shock, free of the bother and worry of having to carry an EpiPen every single day of their lives.
Jodie kept scratching even though Dr. Miller had told her not to. Her arm kept itching insanely. She wished she could rip the bandage off and really go at it, even if she made herself bleed. She almost swore at Brenda and Kathy when she saw them exchanging smirks, as if they somehow knew why she couldn’t stop scratching and weren’t about to tell me her reason.
“Hey! Wait up!” someone called out as they scampered the rest of the way down the steps onto the broad sidewalk. They stopped and turned. It was Tricia Lopez. She hustled to catch up with them. Then she winked at Brenda and Kathy when she saw Jodie scratching and said, “We know what that’s all about, don’t we!” Then the three of them giggled and smirked as if they knew more about what Jodie was going through than she did. It irked her that they seemed to delight in their superior knowledge while keeping her in the dark.
Brenda said, “Jodie, are you coming to the Honor Society meeting tomorrow after school?”
“I don’t know. I was going to. But I don’t feel well right now. I hope I’ll feel better by tomorrow.”
Tricia looked at her and said, “Arm’s itchy, huh?”
Kathy said, “Prob’ly running a fever too, girl. You look flushed.”
“Yeah, I feel hot all over,” Jodie admitted, failing to suppress a shudder. “I’ve got the chills, too. Sometimes my old scar itches like mad, and other times it feels like it’s on fire.”
“Oh-oh!’ Brenda said. “You’re gonna start . . . you know.” She winked and giggled.
Jodie said, “You’re kidding!”
Tricia said, “Uh-uh, Jodie honey.”
Kathy chimed in with, “Well, you’re old enough, aren’t you? Relax! You’re entering womanhood, as my dad would say. Better late than never.”
Jodie said, “If that’s what it is, why would it make my arm itch?”
This made them laugh, and she was actually glad. She thought that if they got a kick out of her wisecracks it’d make them like her more. She desperately wanted them to like her, and it mostly seemed like they did, but she wasn’t absolutely sure of it.
“When I got my period,” Kathy said, “bright lights really bothered my eyes, even my skin. I felt like I was itching and burning all over. But it went away after a few days. My dad gave me some medicine. I know you go to Dr. Miller. What did he give you?”
“Some kind of salve. But it doesn’t seem to help much. It feels like it’s festering.”
Kathy said, “Tell your mom to call my mom at the institute. She’ll give you a prescription that’ll really help. At least I think she will.”
“How’s your father doing?” Brenda asked Tricia.
“He’s still on life support,” Tricia said, with a snort. “He was going to make me and my mom move to Florida, and now we won’t have to.”
“Why would he want to do that?” Brenda said. “All your best friends are here!”
She stopped and stared at Tricia, her hands on her hips. As usual, she wasn’t carrying any school books, and neither were Kathy or Tricia. Kathy didn’t even have her book bag with her, the one that she hid a T-shirt and jeans in.
“Hey, Jodie,” Kathy said. “Why don’t you friend me on Facebook?”
“I’m not on it.”
“You’re not? You have a computer—what do you use it for, just schoolwork?”
“Well, that and playing games and stuff. My dad doesn’t want me on it all the time. And he keeps warning me about predators. What can you expect? He’s a cop.”
“Booo!” Brenda moaned. “He’s on your back all the time?”
“No, that’s my mother,” said Jodie.
“What about Facebook?” Kathy asked. “Can you friend me there? Or if not, can I friend you?”
“I don’t have Facebook.”
Brenda said, “You’re out of it, girl!”
“You’ve gotta get on Facebook and Twitter,” Tricia said. “I’ll show you how. Your mother and father can’t stop you. Just don’t let them know.”
“They’re afraid it might interfere with my grades.”
Jodie’s three gal pals always got good grades without studying much, and Jodie got good grades too, but she had to study more than they did. She liked being on the honor roll right along with them. They got called the Four Aces by some of their classmates. When Jodie told that to her dad, trying to make him proud of her, he said there used to be a singing group by that name back in the fifties and sixties. That was way before even he was born, so Jodie didn’t know how he even knew about it, except he used to listen to a radio station that played old-time music, because he was into history a lot, even the history of music.
Tricia said, “Sometimes parents need help doing the right thing. Like on the Florida move. I wasn’t about to leave my BFFs!”
“Every now and then a blind pig gets an acorn,” Kathy said.
They all laughed.
Tricia said, “The bullet is still in his brain. Didn’t kill him, but made him a vegetable. In my humble opinion he’d be better off dead.”
“Gosh, don’t you like your father?” Jodie exclaimed. “You talk about him as if he’s a stranger.”
Tricia said, “Well, I guess I’m still kinda in shock . . . numbed out . . . it doesn’t seem real to me. I was lying on a beach towel in my bikini, and my mom was putting paper plates, napkins, and stuff on the picnic table, and my dad was grilling hot dogs. I thought I must’ve heard him wrong when he dropped the bomb about how we were moving to Miami in time for the next school year! My mom said she loves it here in Chapel Grove and she wasn’t in favor of leaving, so I thought that’d be the end of it. But it wasn’t. My dad said his company was transferring him and he would be getting a promotion, and he had to take it. He said Emilio would grow up in a nice warm climate where he could play baseball year-round. My dad played minor league ball, but he got hurt and never made it to the big leagues, and he had fantasies of my little brother living out his dream for him.”
Kathy said, “How could he know that your baby brother wouldn’t want to be a teacher or a scientist or something?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” said Tricia. “Anyhow, my dad’s pipe dreams went up in smoke . . . unless he comes out of his coma without any brain damage.”
A horn honked as they reached the next corner, and Darius Hornsby pulled over to the curb in his silver van with all the satanic symbols on it. He yelled for Tricia to come over to him, and they talked, out of earshot, while Jodie stood on the sidewalk with Kathy and Brenda. All of a sudden Darius flashed her a smile—at least she thought he did because for a split second he seemed to be looking right at her. She saw his dimples, and felt her face turn red. The arrogant snob! He was so damned sure of himself, so terribly handsome and cool—and she despised him! She started fidgeting and scratched at her bandage, even though she didn’t want to.
Tricia called out, “Darius wants to take me to the hospital to see my dad!”
Brenda and Kathy nodded at her, and then she got into the van and waved good-bye.
To her surprise, Jodie suddenly felt jealous of Tricia for being with Darius, even though Darius wasn’t her boyfriend or anything.
CHAPTER 34
The next morning, when Bill Curtis came into the station, Pete Danko informed him that Umberto Lopez had died in the ICU without regaining consciousness. He said, “It pretty much puts the kibosh on any further investigation, Bill. I assume you agree.”
It was rare for Bill to be asked if he agreed or disagreed on any of his boss’s decisions concerning the disposition of cases. So he was taken aback a little. “We could hammer on the wife and the daughter,” he suggested. “But I believed Hilda when she said she was in bed. As for the daughter, she’s a hard nut to crack.”
“You suspect Tricia of something?” Pete said, with a sharp look.
“Just uneasy about her,” Bill parried, “but I can’t say exactly why.”
“Don’t hit me with any crappy hunches,” Pete said. “This is the scientific age, remember? Fingerprints, saliva samples, DNA.”
“We don’t have any of that,” Bill said. “We only know that we have a dead father and a dead baby.”
“There’s nowhere else to go with it. So, case closed, conversation over,” Pete concluded.
And he walked down the hall to his own office and closed the door.
Bill mulled over the fact that there had now been three strange deaths that Pete didn’t seem all that interested in pursuing: the fall down the stairs of Daniel Traeger, what looked to be a suicide by Bert Lopez, plus the apparent crib death of his baby son. Furthermore, the Traeger case involved a girl of seventeen, Traeger’s daughter Kathy; and the Lopez case involved a girl of sixteen, Tricia. But the true extent of their involvement seemed unknowable.
Bill had found out that Kathy Traeger and Tricia Lopez had been close friends as far back as grade school. And they both hung out with Brenda Kallen, who may have had something to do with the bodies of the Haley family going missing from her father’s funeral home. But again, Bill couldn’t prove it. So far, he hadn’t found the missing bodies, and he didn’t even know who else to question about them or where to go next.
He wished he could get a warrant for Tricia’s, Kathy’s, and Brenda’s cell phone records so a police department techie could examine them and triangulate the towers that the phones might have pinged off of, on the night the bodies were stolen. But he didn’t really have sufficient grounds for such a warrant. He clung to a vague hope that if the corpses had been dumped somewhere, maybe somebody would stumble upon them and call it in.
