A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2)

by Tony Faggioli

  “¿Mijo? My head hurts!”

  He looked into her eyes—which he hadn’t seen in twenty years, not since the last day he’d seen her alive, when she’d made him some menudo the morning before her heart attack—and was speechless. How could this be? How could his grandmother have ended up here? It wasn’t possible.

  “Yes. Yes it is. It was all the witchcraft I did, mijo. I never should’ve done that.”

  Her words were destroying him. He forced himself to speak. “¡Abuela! Stop. That’s not true. You helped people. You can’t be here. It can’t be.”

  She coughed, blood spewing from her mouth as her eyes rolled up to the sky and back to him. “Please, mijo, take my hand. Get me out of here.”

  She didn’t know.

  Napoleon could hardly breathe. The wind had picked up and was blowing harder against his face. His mind raced. How was he going to tell her that she had no hands? No body?

  She moaned and thrashed her head from side to side, causing blood to spill over the sides of the bucket and spatter across Napoleon’s face. “Mijo. I did bad things. I did.”

  “No. No you didn’t.”

  “Yes. Sometimes, to make the rent, I had to hump some of them, mijo.”

  Napoleon was stunned. He shook his head.

  “Yes,” she said, turning her head to look at him, a sickly smile now on her face. “And I liiiiiiked it.”

  “No!” Napoleon screamed. He was about to drop the bucket when a hand shot up from inside the well and grabbed his wrist, then another, and another. The arms they were attached to were pale white and streaked with blood.

  Napoleon tried to jerk away but he was too weak. Being pulled to the edge of the well, the only way to prevent himself from being pulled in was to partially collapse, allowing his chest to slam into the bricks as his chin came down hard. The rope was still wrapped around his forearm. He was trapped, and the hands that had reached out, with their long fingers, were gripping down harder and harder.

  He felt his feet slipping below him, and as his face was pulled over the edge of the well, that’s when he saw them, deep down there: creatures with elongated white faces covered in eyes, no other features, just dozens of eyes. There were two of them, peering up at him, but one of them was missing an arm.

  “¡Abuela! Please. Stop them!” Napoleon screamed.

  She’s not your grandmother.

  He heard The Gray Man’s voice before he felt him, like a cold chill, pour over his body.

  “What?”

  She’s not your grandmother, Villa. It’s a ruse these creatures use to lure you close.

  “Well, it sure as hell worked!”

  Yes. On both counts. Now hold still.

  Napoleon felt his entire body begin to fill up, as if he were a cup, with a cool, white energy.

  “What’re you doing?”

  It’s the only way we can move forwards. I’m giving you some of my energy, and in turn I’m taking some of yours. For concealment.

  “How?”

  It’s just a theory, but I think it’s a sound one.

  “A theory?”

  By doing this we’re partially canceling each other out: your humanity and my divinity. In short, I’m hoping we become an anomaly.

  The cool whiteness was more than the creatures could take; they released their grip on Napoleon and retreated back down into the depths of the well. He watched in awe as the white burned through the ropes and the bucket collapsed down silently after them, and he was thankful for that, because whatever was in that bucket had sounded so much like his grandmother that he couldn’t have taken it anymore, not another word out of its mouth.

  When he was finally free of the rope, Napoleon pushed himself away from the well and staggered away and up the hill.

  “What is this place?” he murmured in fear.

  Somewhere things only get worse, The Gray Man said in his mind. Turn around.

  When Napoleon looked down the opposite side of the hill, the source of the rumble he’d been hearing since he’d awoken was revealed.

  It was an army of demons, hundreds strong, advancing across more burning fields.

  Towards them.

  IT WAS while walking the alley behind Robert’s Liquor & Deli one last time before he left that Sheriff Conch noticed the business card. At first it just looked like a nondescript piece of paper, a random piece of trash in the middle of the alley, resting sideways against a partially crushed can of Pepsi.

  After walking over to it, he picked it up, recognizing the font immediately, though it was impossible to make out most of the logo of the Beaury County Sheriff’s Department because the card was partially burned.

  It was one of his business cards. He’d been handing them out all morning as he spoke with various people: nearby store owners, the construction crew that was down the block, and even the trash men who came by and were ordered to skip the alley this week as it might be a crime scene.

  His mind raced. Probably a dozen people in total, maybe a few more than that, and one of them had taken his card, turned their back and then burned a hole clear through it, just left of center, before crumpling it and dropping it on the ground?

  Interesting.

  There were only two types of people known to come back to crime scenes to witness the aftermath—the raw emotions and horror—of their actions.

  Pyros and psychos.

  His stomach sank. He nodded, rubbed his chin with his free hand and then pushed the thought aside for a moment. It could simply be a cop hater, or maybe someone in the crowd was a person he helped put away once, though he doubted that. He wasn’t a big city cop with hundreds of criminals he’d helped lock up. No, here in Beaury the number was more like in the dozens, and Conch rarely forgot a face.

  So, maybe whoever did this was a friend or relative of someone you put away.

  Kendall’s voice startled him. “We good here, Sheriff?”

  He turned to face his deputy and nodded. “Except for someone messing with one of my business cards, yeah, I guess we are.” He held up the card and showed Kendall.

  “What next?” Kendall asked, shaking his head.

  Conch folded what was left of the card and put it in his pocket. “Well. I went to the homes nearby. No one saw or heard nothin’. But we got a pretty good list of friends from her mom before they took her to the hospital, right?”

  “Yep. And the uncle rode off with her in the ambulance, but he already gave me the names of the other employees here, so we got that to work with.”

  “Perfect. How many?”

  “Just two. Hazel Jay and Hymie Cortez. I already spoke to Hymie; he got here just in time to take over the store.”

  “And?”

  “Says he was supposed to be off today and was asleep until a half-hour ago, when the uncle called him to get down here. Says he was home, we can ask his wife. They were both trading shifts to take care of their baby, who had a fever all night.”

  “Okay. Where’s Hazel?”

  “Don’t know. She’s not answering her phone. Hymie thinks she’s sleeping. Says she sleeps a lot.”

  Conch turned and walked with Kendall back out to the street, where their patrol cars were still parked, blocking the alley. The sun was full up now. A stray cat hopped from a trash can lid to a metal fire escape off to their left, its fur partially matted and filthy. It must’ve been sick, because most cats were clean freaks. Mandy loved them. Being her husband, that meant that Conch had to love them too, even if he didn’t. Truth was, cats freaked him out. They were too slick.

  “How many friends we got on the list?” Conch asked, shifting his gun belt on his waist, which felt a little tight. He was gaining weight again, despite doctor’s orders.

  “Six, and before you ask,” Kendall said with a smile, “four males and two females.”

  “So let’s split the males. I’ll take Hazel the sleeping coworker too. You take the other two females.”

  “Okay,” Kendall said, pulling out his cell phone. �
��I got it all in Evernote.”

  “Ever-what?”

  “Evernote. It’s an app. Helps me access my notes from any computer or device.”

  “Like a notebook that you can’t lose.”

  “Exactly. You should get it for your iPad there,” Kendall mentioned off-hand. The dig was slight. He’d been teasing Conch about his iPad since Christmas.

  “Yeah. Great. I’ll do that.”

  Smirking, Kendall read them off. Two names: Matt Barnes and Ely Joslin. Conch used his iPad to note their addresses and numbers as well. “Who do you have?”

  “I get Anna Cadenas, Holly Van Phue, Sammy Antista and Wally Brady.”

  Conch furrowed his brow. “Wally?”

  “I know,” Kendall said with another smirk.

  “Parents musta been Leave it to Beaver fans.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Google it or Weekly it later.”

  “Wiki,” Kendall corrected him.

  “Whatever. Tiki it. Wiki it. I don’t care.”

  They’d worked together six years now and in that time had grown quite close. Kendall was a good partner with a good wife and two little ones at home. At six-three he was slim but still looked like a country boy, and liked to come off all “gosh shucks” sometimes, especially to perps, but he was well ahead in the “investigative smarts” department compared to where Conch had been at his age.

  “Okay. Let’s split up. It’s eleven now. I’ll meet you at the station at the end of the day and we’ll see what we come up with.”

  “Got it,” Kendall said before walking to his car and driving off.

  As Conch made his way to his cruiser, he thought of his business card again, there in his pocket. Something about it felt off.

  Minutes later, as he drove down the street and past the businesses adjacent to the liquor store, he noticed that everyone had already returned to their lives—hustling about, doing their tasks, clocking in, filling orders. A young woman had just disappeared into thin air, perhaps only hours earlier, and already they were beginning to forget her, probably without even realizing it.

  He knew this town end-to-end and corner-to-corner. His nearest stop would be Hazel Jay, who lived three miles up the road off Crescent, then Ely Joslin, who lived a mile or so east of Hazel’s. Matt Barnes was at the county’s edge. Depending on what kinda luck Conch had with Hazel and Ely, Matt might have to wait until after lunch.

  There’d been a lot of action as of late.

  Conch had thought of Detective Villa the minute he’d said the word “Denny’s” to Kendall earlier, and now he thought of him again. It was all over the news.

  What the hell had happened? How was Villa missing, and what had happened with Kyle Fasano? Last Conch had heard from Villa, he’d called to say he was on his way back to Beaury and asked if someone could meet him and his partner, Detective Parker, at the library. Villa thought they’d missed something. Unable to meet them himself, Conch had arranged for Kendall to wait for them at the library. When Conch had asked Kendall the next morning what happened, Kendall said they had shown up, spent time digging through the library computers, and then raced out of there without mentioning where they were heading.

  “Did you ask them what they’d found?” Conch remembered asking Kendall.

  “Yeah. The white guy clammed up and the Hispanic guy lied,” Kendall replied.

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said ‘not much,’” Kendall scoffed. “There was nothing ‘not much’ about the way they hustled outta there.”

  “Hmm,” Conch said.

  Then Kendall had said something Conch doubted he would ever forget. Especially not now, after what had happened.

  Kendall had shook his head and said, “Shit. City cops, you know? They want all the glory for themselves.”

  As he drove to Hazel Jay’s home, a chill ran up Conch’s spine. Villa and Parker had gotten something alright, but it hadn’t been glory.

  Hazel Jay’s street was one of the nicer ones in town. Birch trees had been planted on either side of the road and all the homes had well-manicured lawns, one of which had a vintage lawn sprinkler lazily casting sheets of water back and forth. The house before Hazel’s had a newspaper lying in the driveway, making Conch reminisce about the good old days, when newspapers were porched by kids on bikes motivated by monthly tips instead of being tossed haphazardly by grown men out of speeding pickup trucks, as they were now.

  Seeing the address he needed, Conch parked and turned off the car. Hazel’s home was a yellow Craftsman with tall hedges and series of wind chimes hanging over the railing of the front patio. There was hardly any breeze, but there was still a small, sporadic gust here or there that allowed the chimes to cast their metallic melodies into the air.

  There was no car in the driveway. After banging on the door for a few minutes with no answer, he called the cell phone number he had for Hazel. She didn’t answer, so he left her a message asking her to call him back. As an afterthought, he walked around to the back of the house, but that door was closed too. There was no telling for sure, but the house just “felt” empty. It was possible she was in there sleeping, but he doubted it.

  Once back in his car, Conch decided he would wait a while, to see if she turned up or called back.

  It was while searching for a half-used water bottle that he saw them there: two business cards, Villa’s and Parker’s, jammed into the center console with a gas receipt, where he’d stuck them after he last saw them.

  Conch was bemused. It’s going to be a day all about business cards, then, huh?

  Villa was missing. But maybe he could reach Parker and get some answers. He might know, at the very least, which way Kyle Fasano had fled, and perhaps he knew of any connection between Fasano and Ashley Barton.

  It was a long shot but Conch still couldn’t get past the timing of things. Murders in Beaury were nearly unheard of. The last one had been five years prior, after a dispute between two meth-heads. And a kidnapping had never happened, at least to the best of Conch’s knowledge. There were runaways aplenty, most of whom came back home within a few months, and Ashley still might be a member of that last group, but there was no getting around the fact that a guy who had most likely murdered a girl in her twenties back in LA had passed through Conch’s town, and Conch didn’t like that.

  He remembered talking to Villa when the two LA detectives had hit a dead end in San Diego. He’d told Villa that his guess was that Fasano had doubled back, and Villa had agreed.

  And if he doubled back once before, Conch now mused, the bastard could’ve doubled back again.

  And there was something else: the dead girl in LA was a blond.

  So was Ashley Barton.

  This last thought forced his hand. He grabbed his phone and called Detective Parker.

  When Parker answered he sounded as though he’d aged twenty years. “H-hello?”

  “Detective Parker, it’s Sheriff Conch in Beaury. How’re you?”

  There was a brief pause, then, “Hey Sheriff. Well. Shit. I’ve been a lot better.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Only. And barely even then.”

  “Is it worth me even asking?” Conch said, unable to help himself.

  “Nope. No word yet.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  Oddly, Parker actually chuckled before answering, “Fasano bailed outta the house, Nap went after him. Then? Gone. Both of them.”

  “So I’ve heard on the news. But there’s gotta be more to it than that.”

  “It’s now its own case. So I’m not allowed to comment much. But, still, that’s mostly it.”

  Mostly. Conch bit into the word like a sour candy, but decided to let it go for now. He had his own problems.

  “Well, if you hear anything more, I’d appreciate a call.”

  “Will do.”

  “But in the meantime, I’ve got a little problem on my hands and I was wondering if you could help a bit.”
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  “Really? What’s up?”

  Conch sighed. “Well, we got a missing girl here. Blond. Early twenties.”

  “Wow. Sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, well, I got to thinkin’ that this girl and the dead girl in LA kinda match up, and we know Fasano was through here. I’m worried that since he’s still on the run, maybe he came back through town and has something to do with this.”

  There was a long pause, as if Parker were adding and subtracting his answers, before he finally replied, “Yeah. I don’t think so though, Sheriff.”

  Conch squinted. “Why’s that?”

  Again, a long pause. Conch couldn’t help it. The pauses bothered him.

  Parker finally continued, “We were in Monterey. The roads going south were shut down pretty quick, I think. At least in Carmel. That’s if he had a car, which I doubt. He fled on foot, out of the house and into a wooded area.”

  Pursing his lips, Conch thought for a second, then nodded to himself. “And your partner followed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then… poof?”

  “Yeah.” No pause this time. He evidently liked Conch thinking this way.

  “Search parties came up empty?”

  “Yep. The search dogs too.”

  “Hmm.”

  No reply, then Parker made a mistake, maybe because he couldn’t help himself, maybe because he was guilty of something: he over committed his opinion. “Look, Sheriff. This girl might be in danger… her family’s probably losing it—”

  “Her mother’s in the hospital as we speak. She fainted at the scene.”

  “Yeah, there ya go. Listen, I don’t want anyone wasting any time. I doubt very much that it’s Fasano.”

  You doubt “very much?” Well, that’s more than most cops would doubt it. You’re not being totally honest with me, Detective.

  “Well. Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You got any other leads?” Parker asked, genuine concern bleeding into his voice, which only perplexed Conch even further.

  “No. Well. Yeah. I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Probably nothing, but this morning I canvased the area around where the girl possibly disappeared. I handed out a bunch of my business cards, and, well, someone must not like me, or us, snooping around.”