Echoes (Whisper Trilogy Book 2)

by Michael Bray

  “Henry, please, I didn’t mean any offense. You pay me to advise you. It’s not personal. I’m just looking out for your best interests.”

  “And I appreciate it,” Marshall said with a smile. “Now why don’t we forget all about harassment and who wields the moral compass, and get down to business?”

  “Sounds good to me. Sorry, Henry.”

  “Forget it,” Marshall said, draining his paper cup and tossing it out of the window. “It just shows you take pride in your work. I admire such dedication. Now I have another meeting to attend to, so I’ll have to cut this one short.”

  “Understood,” Goodson said, eager to get out of the car.

  “Remember,” Marshall called after him, “meet me at six tonight. Don’t be late.”

  Goodson nodded and stood watching as Marshall reversed and drove away down the hillside and towards town. He glanced down at the hand-scrawled address in his diary, and wondered exactly what Marshall had in mind. Whatever it was, he suspected it wouldn’t be pretty. He pulled his phone out of his jacket and scrolled through until he came to the number he was looking for. He hesitated. As loyal as he was to Henry, it was nowhere near to the point of putting his own career at risk. He had to look out for number one, and make sure if things did go to shit, he would look like a victim rather than conspirator. He looked at Marshall’s car growing smaller as it made its way down the twisting mountain road, a rooster tail of dust trailing behind it, and smiled.

  Yes. He would keep taking a salary from Henry for as long as he could, however it made sense to put some kind of contingency in place, a backup plan to keep himself squeaky clean if things should go too far.

  Decision made, he pressed the ‘call’ button and lifted the handset to his ear, waiting for it to connect.

  “Hello,” he said as the line crackled to life. “I wonder if you could connect me to Councilor Rollins please. I have to speak to him urgently.”

  He waited, listening to the awful hold music. “Edgar Rollins,” the sharp, authoritative voice said on the other end of the line.

  “Good morning councilor, my name is Winston Goodson, and I wonder if I could arrange to meet with you.”

  “I’m very busy right now. Perhaps you could arrange something with my secretary for late next week?”

  “This is about councilor Marshall and his hotel proposal.”

  The line was silent for a few seconds, before Rollins spoke again.

  “What about it?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it over the phone, let’s just say it’s important. So important it could stop this project in its tracks.”

  “I see,” Rollins said. “Are you available for a lunch meeting this afternoon?”

  Goodson smiled. “Absolutely.”

  “My secretary will make the arrangements. This better not be a waste of my time.”

  “Mr. Rollins, believe me. This is something you will definitely want to hear.”

  III

  Scott toyed with the idea of calling the others to come and meet him mostly because he was unsure if he was overreacting. He was also wary of having to put up with any of Alex’s usual shit about his concern for his friend. He started to chew on his thumbnail – a habit he grew out of as a kid but which had inexplicably come back. He could see Alex, Carrie and Emma crossing the park to meet him. Even from a distance he saw Alex joking and screwing around, making Scott think he probably shouldn’t have asked him along.

  “There’d better be a good reason for this Scotty,” Alex said as he sat on the bench.

  “You sounded stressed on the phone. Is everything okay?” Emma asked, sitting beside Alex. “Where’s Cody?”

  “It’s him I want to talk to you about actually.”

  “Why, where is the freak?” Alex said.

  Emma glared at him and turned to Scott. “What happened?”

  “Ever since we went there, to camp up at the circle, he’s been acting strange. He’s not himself.”

  Emma managed to stay neutral despite vivid flashbacks to the visions she’d experienced in her tent.

  “He’s always been weird,” Alex said with a grin. “I told you all along.”

  “He’s not weird, he just thinks you’re a dick,” Scott snapped.

  “Yeah? Well the feeling’s mutual.”

  “What happened to him, Scott?” Emma cut in.

  “You know how he was acting odd when we first arrived at the hotel?”

  “Yeah, I remember. He didn’t seem himself. All that weird ghost talk.”

  “Yeah, exactly. Anyway, since we came back he’s been acting odd. All withdrawn. He won’t go out; he barely speaks to anyone.”

  “Yeah, I tried to call him a few times,” Emma said. “He didn’t answer the phone.”

  Scott nodded. “It was the same when I tried to get in touch. I went over there and his mother asked me if he was on drugs or something, because he’d been acting all kinds of weird and they don’t know what to do. They asked me to follow him and find out where he was going at all hours, and so I agreed, because I was curious too.”

  “What did you find out?” Alex asked.

  “He’s been going back there, to the clearing in the woods.”

  “What for?” Emma asked, a chill radiating through her.

  “I have no idea. He just stands there in the middle of the clearing, perfectly still. He doesn’t move or anything. It’s fucking weird.”

  “Have you talked to him about it?”

  “What can I say? I don’t even know how to approach the subject. I need your help.”

  “Where is he now?” Alex asked.

  “He’s up there now, or at least I assume he is. I called his house this morning and his mother said he’d left early and refused say where he was going. I’ve followed him up there a couple of times now. Its freaky, it really is.”

  Scott looked at his friends in turn, surprised to see that even Alex appeared to be concerned by these latest developments.

  “You say he’s up there now?” Alex said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I say we go up there and ask him what he’s up to.”

  “I don’t like it up there,” Emma said before she could stop herself.

  “It’s weird alright,” Alex replied. “Scott will tell you though, we did the Ouija board and everything. There’s nothing up there. Maybe it’s just something in the atmosphere which makes people more sensitive to it, I don’t know. I say we go up there and see what’s going on.”

  He stood and stretched, then turned to them. I’ll go get my car and run us up there.”

  “You want to go now?” Scott said, completely unprepared for such immediate action.

  “If we want to confront this, we have to catch him in the act. Now is as good a time as any to do it.”

  IV

  Goodson’s watch showed him it was 5:58pm. He was parked outside a quaint looking house on the outskirts of Oakwell, without a clue as to what he was doing there. He looked at it, trying to see anything which might give him a clue as to why Marshall him told him to be there, yet the house betrayed nothing out of the ordinary, and if anything, it was quite nice. Neat garden, pale green paintwork, Ford pickup in the driveway, it screamed middle-class suburbia. Goodson could imagine the homeowner mowing the lawn in summer and whistling a merry tune whilst children played in the street to a backdrop of birdsong. He suspected all the neighbors would know everyone living here, greeting each other with friendly smiles, or chatting about the previous night’s football game and how their respective children were performing in their little league baseball teams. It was a world away from his own overpriced apartment complex where it was normal practice to pass people in the halls without so much as a nod or meeting of a gaze. Sorry, much too busy to talk. Work to do, places to go.

  Marshall’s car pulled in behind his, and Goodson got out of his own to meet him. He followed the councilor while he opened the gate, walked down the path and knocked on the door.

  The man
who greeted them had an air of familiarity to Goodson, although where he knew him from he couldn’t say. He was tall and gangly, with strawberry blonde hair spiked in the front. He stared at Goodson and Marshall through cruel blue eyes which were harsh and unwelcoming.

  “Mitch,” Henry said with a wide grin, holding out a hand, which was reluctantly shaken.

  “What are you doing here, Henry?” he said, and then looked past him to Goodson. “And who’s this?”

  “I think it might be better if we talked inside,” Marshall said, His grin growing wider.

  “This isn’t a good time.”

  “Oh, this won’t take long. If you prefer, I can go into this right here on the doorstep within earshot of your neighbors.”

  Mitch hesitated, then stood back and fully opened the door.

  “You’d better come in.”

  Goodson and Marshall followed the man into the house. The man walked through to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and grabbed himself a beer. He didn’t offer his guests a drink, and Goodson was starting to think that they were less than welcome.

  “What is it you want Henry?” the man said with a sigh as he snapped open the beer and took a long drink.

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “I thought this was over. We agreed.”

  “Things change. This is an unusual situation.”

  “I had a feeling you’d be dropping by ever since I heard about this hotel of yours.”

  “It seems my reputation precedes me,” Marshall said with a grin.

  “A lot of people think it’s a bad idea. They say it will be the final nail in the coffin of this town.”

  “That’s the thing with people,” Marshall said with a wry smile. “As I was telling my colleague here just this morning, they get all worked up over nothing.”

  “Maybe,” Mitch replied as he turned his gaze on Goodson. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “This is Mr. Goodson,” Henry said as Goodson held out a hand. The man looked him up and down, merely nodded and took another sip of his beer, then looked back at Marshall.

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I need you to dig up the stuff I asked you to bury.”

  Marshall was cool and calm as he said it, and Goodson was shocked at how the words seemed to make Mitch shrink in his seat.

  “You said it was done. You said it would never come up again. You know how much I risked, Henry.”

  “Relax, I’m not asking you to put yourself at risk. Believe me, neither of us wants this to go public.”

  “Damn right. It would be a catastrophe.”

  “Which is why I intend to take the greatest of care. I wouldn’t have come here if there was someone else, Mitch. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  “What do you need?” Mitch said with a sigh.

  “I want you to tell Mr. Goodson here about what really happened at Hope House the night of the fire.”

  “Is he trustworthy?” Mitch asked, glaring at Goodson.

  “Would I have brought him here otherwise?”

  “Fair enough,” Mitch said, heading into the next room. “You’d better sit down.”

  Goodson and Marshall sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Mitch to return. He came back with a brown envelope which he tossed on the table.

  “It’s in there. Everything you need to know.”

  “What is it?” Goodson asked.

  “Mitch used to be one of Oakwell’s finest. He led the investigation into the Hope House fire,” Henry said as he loosened his tie.

  “I thought the case was cut and dry.”

  “Not as much as you might think,” Marshall said with a grin. “I think Mitch can explain it better.”

  “I really don’t want to go over this again, Henry.”

  “Please, it would sound so much better coming from you.”

  Mitch sighed again and joined them at the table. He opened the folder and pulled out a series of photographs and tossed them across the table to Goodson. He picked them up and wished he hadn’t looked. They were images of blackened and charred human remains. A sprig of blonde hair was all that remained to identify any sense of human anatomy.

  “Those are the remains of Freddy Briggs, otherwise known as Donovan,” Marshall said as Goodson looked through the other photographs taken from various angles.

  “The official report stated he was killed in the fire which he started with the intention of murdering the Samsons. It was put down as an unfortunate accident, however that wasn’t exactly how it went down, was it Mitch?” Marshall said with a faint smile on his lips.

  Mitch hesitated, looked at Marshall, then at the folder.

  “I suspected pretty much immediately there was more to it. You don’t do my job for as long as I have without getting a kind of gut instinct about certain things. Although the Samsons swore Donovan attacked them and set fire to the house, the evidence said otherwise.”

  “What kind of evidence?” Goodson asked, setting the grisly photos face-down on the table.

  “First off, the circumstances of the fire. The fire department established the gasoline was poured around the inner rooms of the house first and a trail left towards the door, yet we found the body in the sitting room. If Donovan had done it himself, he would have had to have left a trail to the door, gone back into the main bulk of the house to set it ablaze, then just stand there and wait to die.”

  “It’s unusual, I’ll give you that,” Goodson said. “But everyone knew the guy was a nut. He had a psych record as long as my arm. Maybe he was crazy enough to do it and just sit there and burn.”

  “Maybe,” Mitch said, as he rummaged through the folder and slid a document across the table to Goodson.

  “That’s his autopsy report. The coroner found Donovan had signs of trauma to the face, as well as a stomach wound consistent with penetration of some kind of stabbing weapon. We also found faint evidence of strangulation on the unburned portions of his neck.”

  Mitch pulled another photograph from the folder and handed it to Goodson.

  “We found that near the body.”

  Goodson looked at the picture. It was a charred handmade crucifix.

  “We had it examined and found not only did it match the wound on Donovan’s stomach, the wood also contained fingerprints. One set belonging to Donovan. Another set to Steve Samson.”

  “Are you saying Samson killed Donovan?” Goodson said, glancing at Marshall who seemed to be enjoying the show.

  “It looks like a possibility. Maybe it was in self-defense, who knows. We found his prints on the gas can too. My theory is he found Donovan after he’d intruded; the two got into a scuffle, and either by accident or design, Samson kills Donovan. He panics and starts the fire to burn away any evidence.”

  “It sounds plausible, although I don’t understand why he wouldn’t he just get the hell out of there? You saw the way he looked after the fire, he was a mess.”

  “Yeah, it puzzled me too. This is the best I could come up with. The two tussle. Samson stabs Donovan in the stomach and thinks he’s dead. He panics and starts to pour the gas all over the house to hide the evidence. Donovan though, isn’t dead. He comes round just as Samson starts the fire. Samson can’t afford for Donovan to tell what happened, so even though the fire is burning, he goes back in and the two fight again, this time their battle culminating in the sitting room where Samson finally overpowers Donovan and strangles him. By this point, he’s also burning up. The house is ablaze. He leaves Donovan’s body to burn and charges through the house and slams through the glass kitchen door and into the snow, which is where we found him.”

  “That’s exactly it.” Marshall mumbled.

  “Say again, Henry?”

  Marshall blinked, and squirmed in his chair. “Nothing, just thinking aloud. Go on.”

  “Well there’s nothing more to say on it anyway. It’s my best guess as to how things went down. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way defending Donovan. He was a viole
nt, murdering psychopath. I just don’t think the Samson’s are as clean cut in all this.”

  “Why wasn’t this reported? Surely this was grounds for some kind of an investigation?” Goodson said.

  Mitch glanced at Marshall, who chose his words carefully.

  “Try to see it from the town’s point of view. We’d already been hit with a lot. You have to remember, it’s different here. In the city, murder and death are normal. Here in Oakwell, it is – or was – a lot more sedate. We took certain steps to try and protect the town all in the interests of the greater good.”

  “You covered it up, didn’t you?” Goodson said, looking from Marshall to Mitch.

  “Cover up isn’t the wording I would use…” Marshall said.

  “It looks a hell of a lot like it to me Henry.”

  “Try to see it from our side will you?” Mitch said. “Donovan had already killed two people the night of the fire. God knows how many others over the years. Can you imagine what it would do to the town if we opened this up to a full investigation?”

  “Besides,” Marshall cut in. “This went a lot deeper than anyone had realized. Long-time residents were involved in this, people who were pillars of the community. All of them were guilty of turning a blind eye to everything which had happened there since it was built. Investigating it would only bring trouble to the doors of good people who didn’t deserve it. This way was better. Damage limitation.”

  “Donovan was already dead,” Mitch said as he put the photos back into the folder. “Henry convinced me it was better for the greater good if we fabricated the report and pin everything on Donovan. It would give us some closure and at least give the town a chance to recover.”