Ruckman Road: An Alex Penfield Novel

by Robert W. Stephens

  Penfield walked into the room and stopped a few feet from the side of the bed.

  “Yes. It’s back at the bottom of the bay.”

  Atwater finally turned to Penfield.

  “How is the detective?” he asked.

  “She’s been arrested for the attempt on your life,” Penfield said.

  “That’s not what I mean. How is she?”

  “They won’t let me talk to her.”

  “How are you?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that question, either.”

  Penfield paused a long moment, and then asked, “What happened to her? Did that thing take control of her, whatever it was?”

  “You saw what I saw. You heard him speak through her,” Atwater said.

  “Is it gone now that I’ve gotten rid of his skull?”

  “I’d have to see her again, and I doubt they’re going to let me out of here for a while.”

  “If it isn’t gone, is there a way I can make it go away?” Penfield asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not even sure why it picked her to begin with. Maybe she was connected to it somehow. Maybe it will never leave her. Maybe it already has. I just don’t know.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  Atwater nodded. Penfield turned and walked toward the door.

  “It was the first time I’d seen you since those woods,” Atwater said.

  Penfield stopped right before he’d arrived at the doorway. He turned to face Atwater.

  “What do you mean?” Penfield asked.

  “When you came to my home in Richmond the other day. It was the first time I’d seen you since your father and I found you. I remember you lying in that box. He thought you were dead, but I knew you were alive. I could feel it.”

  “You told me the other night you dreamed about my kidnapping. You said you saw through the killer’s eyes. That was all bullshit. Wasn’t it?”

  Atwater didn’t reply.

  “I’ve done nothing for the last two weeks but think about it. I should have been thinking about Torres and about this case, but I haven’t. Not really. I can’t stop seeing the man with the long hair when I close my eyes. You took me. Didn’t you?” Penfield asked.

  Atwater still said nothing.

  “My father lived by his gut instinct. He said it was the only thing that kept him alive on the streets. He also said it had never been wrong. The thing is, my father was convinced you were guilty. He was so sure of it that he’d bet his life on it.”

  “Why come to me years later then? You could have eventually discovered the truth of this case on your own. It was you and your friend who found the missing files. You didn’t really need me, not in the end,” Atwater said.

  Penfield stepped closer to the bed.

  “I wanted to look you in the eyes. You see I remember his eyes. I remember him looking at me through the bars in the cage. I remember his dark eyes.”

  “Are my eyes the same as his?” Atwater asked.

  Penfield stared at the old man for several seconds. He then turned and walked out of the room. He was only a few feet out of the door when he heard Atwater yell to him.

  “You never stood a chance, Detective. You can’t kill it. You can’t arrest it. You can only seek to understand it.”

  Chapter 24

  The Interview – Part 2

  Penfield had suggested that he come to my house for the remainder of the interviews after the first time we’d met at the restaurant. My house is a short distance from the Talbot house on Ruckman Road, although the large live oak trees that border the former military parade field block the view from my porch. I’d found it a surprising suggestion on his part. I didn’t think he’d want to be anywhere near the site of the Talbot investigation.

  The weather was nice on that morning, so we decided to conduct the second interview on the wraparound porch. We ended up spending a few additional mornings on that porch. He spoke in a slow, measured voice, as if he were on trial and expecting every one of his words to be carefully examined and debated by a jury. There was a sadness in his eyes while he told the story. I would see him touch his side from time to time. I assumed it was where he’d been shot. I didn’t ask him if the injury still bothered him. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of his actions.

  “Where is Atwater now?” I asked.

  “I guess back in Richmond. Maybe he’s even dead by now. I don’t know.”

  “You haven’t talked to him recently?” I asked.

  “I saw him once in the hospital a couple of weeks after he got shot. I haven’t seen him since. I did get news from the hospital that he’d been released, but it’s been a few years now,” Penfield said.

  I paused while I debated asking the next question. Penfield’s kidnapping as a child seemed ever-present in the Talbot investigation. He’d told me earlier that he thought of Atwater almost immediately after hearing the voices that Hannah had recorded in the basement. It must have been an excruciating decision to get him involved.

  “You asked Atwater if he’d taken you. Do you believe that?”

  Penfield hesitated a long moment and then said, “My father was a very analytical man, and he was convinced Atwater had abducted me. He described for me how he and Atwater had gone down the Intracoastal Waterway for what felt like forever. He said he didn’t see how he’d ever been able to spot that cord on the tree branch if he didn’t know exactly where to look. He also said Atwater took off through those woods like a man on mission. He knew where he was going like he had a detailed map in his head.”

  “That’s what your father thinks, but is that what you think?” I asked.

  “To me, the question is ‘Why?’ Why take a boy and bury him in the ground, only to let him go? Why take the cops there when you can get him out on your own and release him wherever you want, with virtually no risk of getting caught? How was I ever going to tell the cops where to find him after that?”

  “You and your father kept tabs on Atwater for years. You knew exactly where he was when you needed his help. Now you don’t even know if he’s still alive. Does that mean you’ve put it behind you, whether he did it or not?”

  “How would I ever do that?” Penfield asked.

  He didn’t ask the question in an accusatory or angry tone, nor did his question feel rhetorical. I was left realizing that I had no idea how Penfield now felt about Atwater.

  Penfield turned from me and looked in the direction of the house on Ruckman Road.

  “Torres said she never met Talbot. At her trial, they showed the video of her coming to the house the morning he disappeared. They also showed her the footage of her coming to his house weeks before that. Her lawyer claimed the footage was doctored. I’m sure that’s what she told him. She swore she’d never been there until she and I went there together. The thing is, I don’t think she’s lying.”

  “Who would alter the video then?” I asked.

  “I should have explained myself better. I do think she was there, but I don’t think she remembers ever going.”

  “I looked her up the night after our first meeting. I saw where she got convicted of the attempted murder of Henry Atwater, but I saw nothing on the Talbots,” I said.

  “There was no definitive proof she did anything to either of them. Hannah’s death was listed as a suicide, and Joseph Talbot’s death was never even established. It’s hard to convict without a body. The bloody handprint on the window is enough to cast doubt that he isn’t still out there,” Penfield said.

  “What about Hannah’s injury to the back of her head? Don’t you think that indicates Torres hit her and then hung her from the door?” I asked.

  “Again, there’s no proof it was her.”

  “And Joseph Talbot, do you think she forced him into the bay?”

  “Something happened between them that morning. Something we’ll never know,” Penfield said.

  “Is Talbot still alive in your opinion?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he’s at the botto
m of the bay, the same place William Shackleford was until a storm brought up his skull.”

  “Did you ever find out more about Shackleford?” I asked.

  “I did more research on him after the investigation. The museum director had been right. Shackleford was stationed at Fort Monroe. He had lived in that house until a fire burned it down. That was his little girl that died in the fire. I even found her grave in a nearby Hampton cemetery. What the director didn’t know was that Shackleford disappeared a few weeks after the fire. I doubt he went AWOL. He was a lieutenant colonel for God’s sake, and it wasn’t like there was any war going on then. So where did he go? Here’s something else. I also found his wife’s gravestone beside the little girl’s. Her name was Sarah, and she died several years after the fire. She made the decision to be buried beside her daughter, but William Shackleford’s grave was nowhere to be found.”

  “What do you think happened to him?” I asked.

  “I think he was murdered, and his body was dumped in the bay. My guess is it was revenge for starting the fire that killed his little girl, but it’s really just a guess, a hunch from all my years as a detective.”

  “What is the likelihood that Joseph Talbot grows up having some strange bond to an imaginary woman named Sarah, and then the name Sarah also appears tied to the house he ends up renting?” I asked.

  “Atwater had a theory on what happened to her. I’m not sure if I believe it, though. He thinks the Talbot siblings were there, in that house, in another life. That’s why he saw the reflection of the other woman when Hannah was by the window.”

  “Hannah was Sarah and her brother was someone else connected to Sarah?”

  “Who knows? Who knows if any of it’s true?” Penfield asked.

  “Atwater told you not to look into the case anymore. He seemed to know Detective Torres had something to do with it. Have you spoken to Detective Torres since the trial?”

  Penfield shook his head.

  “What would I say?” he asked.

  Our interviews ended after a few days. It took me several months, though, to write this book, and I showed it to Penfield as I said I would. He agreed with what I had written, so you can trust that I have accurately told his story, at least from his perspective of the events.

  He did show me the video recordings of Torres interacting with Joseph Talbot. I saw her come to his bedroom the morning he disappeared. I also saw the footage of the windows exploding when Atwater tried to contact the dark force in the house, whatever that dark force may or may not have been. It’s difficult to tell from the wide angle of the shot, but I couldn’t see anything on the video that would indicate how those windows shattered.

  Penfield also played me the audio recordings from the cell phones that captured both the little girl’s voice, as well as the man saying the name Sarah. I’m not an audio expert, but it seems obvious to me that those recordings could have been manipulated by an editor on any number of audio post-production programs. Nevertheless, it’s impossible for me to know if Hannah had those capabilities and whether or not she had the time to manipulate those recordings. I’d like to also point out that the voices appeared on two different phones, both Torres’ and Hannah’s, so it seems highly unlikely to me that they were faked, at least by the same person.

  Penfield never had an explanation for the bloody handprint inside the window. The police said the print belonged to Talbot, but it would have been made after his body was spotted in the bay. Did he survive and come back to the house, only to look at Hannah through the second-floor window? What of the window height? How did Talbot, or anyone else for that matter, seemingly levitate himself or herself outside the window? And how did they manage to leave a handprint between two window panes? I still have no answers for these questions.

  The girl seems the biggest mystery of them all. It was Atwater’s belief that she was the spirit of the Shackleford child killed in the fire. According to Penfield’s description of her face, it does seem to make sense that she would have sustained those injuries in a fire. I don’t know how her voice, if that’s what it truly was, was able to be recorded on an audio recorder but not a video camera.

  The girl seemed to have a connection to both Penfield and Hannah, as she appeared to them multiple times. I have no idea, though, what that connection might be. I did go to the Hampton cemetery where Penfield said she was buried. The gravestones are there, just as he said they were. I found the marker for both Sarah Shackleford and her daughter, Catherine. I did not see one for William Shackleford anywhere in the cemetery.

  I thought about reaching out to both Maria Torres and Henry Atwater for their version of events, but I somehow felt like that would have been a betrayal of Penfield. This was his story, verified to a large extent by the hard evidence he showed me. Of course, there is much left to guess at, and I leave it to you, as the reader, to draw your own conclusion on what happened at the house on Ruckman Road.

  Penfield never told me what he really believed was the motivation for Torres’ involvement with the Talbots, nor did he ever come out and say whether or not he thought she killed them. There was also the unspoken word during our interviews: possession. Was Torres possessed by the spirit of Shackleford? If so, did it happen when she examined the skull that Talbot had shown her? I’m not even sure I believe in such a thing, but I also can’t find an explanation for why Torres would have wanted to harm Joseph Talbot. As she told Penfield, as well as the jury, she had nothing to gain from his death.

  As I write this, I reflect on something Atwater said to Penfield. He told him that he saw him drowning in a sea of black. As strange as this may sound, I don’t believe Penfield ever escaped that darkness. It seems to have followed him to this day, and the experiences of the Talbot investigation have only furthered that feeling of despair.

  Chapter 25

  Before

  There was one more thing Penfield had told me during our last interview. He relayed a dream Atwater had shared with him when he’d called him in the middle of the night. He’d told Penfield he’d had the dream for several nights in a row. This is that dream.

  Joseph Talbot rolled over in bed and opened his eyes. The sun had not yet risen, and the room was still in darkness. He could hear the creaks and groans of the old house. It had taken him a few weeks to get used to its unique noises so that he could fall soundly asleep.

  “Move forward,” he heard. “Move forward.”

  Talbot climbed out of bed. He had gone to sleep in a t-shirt and his underwear, so all he had to do was slip on his jeans, which he’d tossed on the floor in front of the nightstand the night before. Talbot exited the master bedroom and walked down the stairs. They ended in the living room, just a few feet away from the front door. He turned and looked at the large empty room. The fireplace stood at the center of the outside wall. He’d intended to use it this winter, but he’d never gotten around to it. Talbot turned and briefly looked at the small table beside the door. His house and car keys were on it, as was his mail from several days’ worth of deliveries. He thought about getting his jacket but realized it was in the back room.

  “Move forward,” he heard. “Move forward.”

  Talbot headed out the front door without his keys. He closed it behind him without turning the lock on the doorknob. Talbot turned right on the sidewalk in front of his house and headed down Ruckman Road. He turned left at the old, wooden chapel and headed down Bernard Road toward the east gate. He turned right and walked through the tunnel, which took him through the stone walls of the old fort. He saw the first rays of the morning light as he exited the tunnel and crossed the moat.

  “Move forward,” he heard. “Move forward.”

  He crossed Fenwick Road and walked to the boardwalk, which ran a good portion of the Fort Monroe property from the Chamberlin to the old officer’s club at the opposite end. Talbot stopped at the railing on the boardwalk and watched the sun rise. The sky was a mixture of dark reds and oranges, and its rays seemed to extend for miles
. He looked at the water. Its surface was smooth and dark. He couldn’t see any of the usual container ships that made their way in and out of the Chesapeake Bay.

  Talbot climbed over the railing, even though there was an opening just several feet away. He walked onto the beach but stopped after a few paces. He curled his toes and felt the cold, hard sand under his feet. The air was frigid, even without the wind, and he thought about hugging his arms across his chest, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  “Move forward,” he heard. “Move forward.”

  Talbot walked toward the edge of the sand. He’d walked across this beach dozens of times, even though he’d only lived at the fort a short time. The gentle waves lapped over his feet and soaked the bottom of his jeans. He looked out to the sunrise again. The reds and oranges were just starting to combine to form a lighter red, but the sky still seemed menacing. He thought a storm was on the way.

  “Sarah,” he said.

  He closed his eyes and thought of her. He’d waited his whole life to find her. Now she was here, and he’d never let her go. Talbot opened his eyes again and looked out to the water, which seemed to bleed into the sky and last forever. He walked a few steps until the water was up to his thighs. He pressed his palms against the surface. The water felt like ice, and the cold seemed to penetrate every cell of his body. He closed his eyes a second time and let the sensation wash over him. The wind started to pick up. It blew across the surface of the bay and wrapped around his body. Talbot ducked his hands under the surface of the water. He then brought them up to his face and ran them across his cheeks and through his hair. He opened his eyes and noticed tiny drops of rain hitting the water. He looked up to the sky and saw the dark cloud above him. The storm was here much sooner than he’d anticipated.

  Talbot looked out to the horizon again, and he thought he saw the tiny shape of a ship in the distance. He remembered sitting on the railings of the boardwalk and watching them go in and out of the bay. The sight of the massive ships moving across the still waters at night was surreal. Their massive hulls seemed to block out the night so that their shapes were a black hole against the starry sky. He walked farther into the water but stopped again when it reached his chest. The water had thoroughly soaked his clothes, and they clung to his body.