That didn’t mean he was innocent, of course, but the investigation already had that “clutching at straws” feeling where they were trying to find reasons to suspect someone instead of letting someone reveal themselves as suspicious. It was a fine line, but there was a big difference.
During the war Parker had seen some stuff that would make a person’s shit turn white. It was part of the gig: you put young men into a war zone where even the local population they were supposed to be helping might be trying to kill them, and mistakes would be made. Maybe a villager’s son caught in the crossfire, or a town leader’s daughter caught in some corporal’s bed. In some cases, the guilty party was obvious. But in most cases? Not so much. Sometimes things just had to play themselves out.
He took a deep breath and immediately regretted it as he inhaled trace amounts of gas fumes and the scent of oily concrete, thick and heavy. A few people were gassing up their cars, one of them an old man in a white t-shirt who was laboriously going over his windshield with an old squeegee.
Parker felt his mind drifting back to the freeway, to the dead man standing behind his own stretcher and…
No. He couldn’t go there. Wherever “there” was.
The… being… with Nap was one thing, standing there in the driveway that night. He’d come of his own volition to stop the two of them from entering the Brasco house. Already it all seemed like a faded photograph. And still, Parker could remember the smell in the air—slightly metallic—and the warmth that burst forth from the light he had emerged from. Then? Primal awe that had nearly shut down his mind completely.
It was a moment that felt like it was meant for someone else—for Kyle Fasano, or maybe even Nap. Parker felt like the guy on the outside, looking in.
But the freeway was different. Parker realized that the freeway was his moment. It was when things were being revealed to him, and the thought, far from being a relief, was actually nothing short of terrifying.
A car horn blasted in the street as some teenagers came rolling by on their razor scooters.
Meanwhile, the old man had managed to properly smear the dirt across his windshield and was now pulling away. Nearby, a young kid with long black hair was leaning over the roof of his car, working a coin vigorously across a strip of lotto scratchers as he waited for the pump to top off his tank.
Parker chose to stare at the kid a bit longer; it rooted him in the present somehow, which was where he wanted to stay, but it was no use.
That angel by the side of the road had stared right at him.
No. Into him.
Parker felt the same way a little earlier, when they’d gone to visit Robert’s Liquor & Deli and gotten out of the car. He’d felt a soft… pull. Kendall wanted to go into the store and check out the counter area once more, but Parker had been unable to follow. There was something calling him to the alley, some remnant of a force that was fading quickly. Standing frozen on the sidewalk, he told Kendall to go on ahead, that he’d meet him in the alley.
The minute they split up, the feeling that overcame Parker surprised him: fear. The same kind you’d get in combat, when the firefight is intense and you have to split off from your tactical buddy, perhaps to outflank an enemy position or to cover a forward unit’s retreat.
He almost called Kendall back to his side.
Instead, he saw the alley and the sidewalk between it and where he was standing in a sort of intense clarity, in minute details that would’ve normally merited no notice: the blades of grass standing like sentinels between the squares of concrete that made up the sidewalk, an old-school declaration of love carved in the dry wooden post across the alley (TF + AB) in one-inch letters, the trickle of condensed water forming a snaking “s” that was moving down a piece of PVC pipe from the A/C unit on the rooftop of the store. He couldn’t see any flies, but heard one buzzing.
One of his greatest secrets, kept from the military and the department, was that he’d dropped acid once, back in high school. He’d done it to impress a girl, and then got so high he hadn’t care about the girl, or anything else, for quite a while that night.
This feeling was similar, as if his senses were on steroids.
When he walked into the alley, he knew that Ashley Barton had been here and… so had something else, someone else. A male.
He’d dragged her a bit, coming right out the back door of the building, then… no more trail.
That’s when you picked her up.
Then you carried her, which means she was out. Did you drug her? Suffocate her?
He looked at the door, then away, then quickly back again. At the bottom corner there was a scuff mark of some kind, and a small piece of lint cloth was snagged on a sliver of metal. Parker leaned over and plucked it: white cotton with a few tiny threads of color.
Her sock. Her sock had snagged on the edge of the door when he’d dragged her into the alley.
After placing it in a small, plastic evidence baggie, he moved slowly down the alley, but nothing else seemed to leap out at him. Only the feeling remained—that discomforting notion of danger, once here and now gone, but still lingering.
Kendall came out the back door of the 76 Station, shattering Parker’s memory.
“It all checks out,” Kendall said, getting in the car and tossing a bag of sunflower seeds to Parker.
“Can’t say I’m surprised. Thanks.”
Kendall started up the car and exited the station, turning right onto the street. “Just make sure you share.”
“Sure. So? What now?”
“Now I try and pretend that the scumbag owner of this place isn’t selling cigarettes and beer to minors, even though the videotape said otherwise.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. You should’ve seen him sweating bullets.”
Parker nodded. “I’ll bet. What’d you say?”
“Nothing at first. I let him stew until he gave up the ghost.”
“How’s that?”
“By going into the ‘you know, officer, just trying to make a living’ speech.”
Parker grunted. “Whoops.”
Evidently they were headed back to the station, or at least in that direction. The sun was beginning to dip.
“Yeah. When that didn’t work he went with the ‘letter of the law verses the spirit of the law’ pitch.”
Parker was just about to laugh when the word struck him like a fist. “Letter?”
Kendall seemed taken aback. “Well… yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard that sa—”
“No. I mean, yes. Of course I’ve heard it. But that’s not what I’m talking about, Kendall.”
Kendall glanced over. “What?”
Parker began rapidly shuffling through his memory from earlier. “Something today. Something in the… alley.” The words spilled out of him, as if he were conjuring up the answer that he knew was right there, under some random things in his mind.
“Hmm, okay,” Kendall replied after a few seconds.
When the answer finally came, it was sharp and piercing. “Shit! Stop the car.”
“What?” Kendall asked, slowing down for the next intersection.
“Go back to the alley! Now!”
Kendall pulled a quick U-turn and then pressed, “Why?”
Parker thought of them, like little hieroglyphics, carved there on the pole. The exposed wood had been fresh: TF + AB.
AB.
Ashley Barton. Was it possible?
He knew it was. “Unbelievable, Kendall.”
“What?”
TF.
“The fucker carved his initials there.”
TAMARA LEANED against the dining room wall and told herself to calm down.
They’d gotten back from LAX at nearly 10:00 p.m., after dropping Trudy off for her 9:15 p.m. flight. It was a long goodbye, with most of it spent trying to quiet the kids, who went from mildly upset to completely distraught as soon as Trudy’s bags came out of the trunk and the sky cab checked them at the curb.
These days, lingering at the curb for too long was not an option, but it seemed the nearby security guard knew that this was no normal goodbye: Janie and Seth were practically wailing for Trudy to stay.
At first, Tamara was proud of the twinge of jealousy that she felt; it meant that her motherly confidence that she could take care of her children was returning. But when she saw Trudy hugging the kids tightly with tears in her eyes, Tamara felt her throat tighten and her heart jump with fear too. She didn’t want Trudy to leave either and, truth be told, Tamara didn’t know how long her newly discovered self-confidence was going to last.
She had her answer now: for as long as it took to drive home and put the kids to bed.
Now, all alone in the quiet house, the only light coming from the range top over the oven in the kitchen, Tamara felt more alone that she had in her entire life.
She should’ve called in her mom. It was an option. Her mom had even tried to insist on it, but she was still only four months removed from her last chemo treatment, and at sixty-seven, she just wasn’t quite strong enough yet.
Besides, who could ever be strong enough for this madness? No matter their age, no matter how healthy they were. It didn’t matter. This house was a dark place now, fortified with shelves full of fear and walls painted with worry.
Her stomach squirmed as she rubbed the back of her neck. If only Kyle were here. Despite what had happened, she would take him back in a second now. Anything was better than facing this life alone, with fatherless children and a heart soaked with remorse.
She forgave him, mostly. He’d made a horrible mistake, but if he really was where The Gray Man had said he was, if that was actually possible, then surely he was paying an enormous price for his mistake. A far greater price than Tamara would’ve ever wished.
She coughed softly, her throat dry. The worst part was that the reality of it wasn’t dissipating in any way. She kept waiting for her rational mind to start beating at the ramparts of her insistence that she’d actually seen a heavenly angel. Thinking of the rest stop bathroom, she realized that she’d even seen him fighting with creatures that had tried to kill her. Demon-like creatures.
The types of creatures that came from where Kyle was now.
“Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath, her eyes frozen in a dead stare at the salt and pepper shakers on the dining table.
Still… her mind chipped away at the crazy thoughts of what she’d seen at the rest stop: it was just a dream, a hallucination, a stress induced mini mental breakdown. It couldn’t have been real. There was no way.
It might’ve worked if not for what had happened in front of Victoria Brasco’s house. What happened there had been witnessed by someone else too, Detective Parker, and though she’d heard on the news that he was now suspended pending further investigation, she hadn’t spoken to him once since that night. He’d been driven off in the back of one police cruiser, she in the back of another, with nothing between them anymore save their brief pact in the driveway just after what happened… happened… and just before all those sirens came blaring up the street.
It was a pact with a fellow human being based on the mutual witnessing of something entirely inhuman, a moment both shocking and somehow sacred as well: proof of heaven, right in front of them, but proof of the other place as well.
She wondered how many people on the planet lived with such proof inside of them. Not faith. No. Proof. It should’ve made the faith part stronger, easier, but it didn’t.
Because she’d seen forces of darkness now that had a license to be here, to run amok, to terrorize and do harm, that didn’t seem the least bit worried about a God or His kingdom. What did that mean?
Stop it. God has everything under control. He does. He always does.
But did He? The whole “free will” thing had always confused her, as did the “wages of sin are death” edict. In the face of these issues, of the tragedies and killings and chaos, did it mean He was around but not always there? Or did it mean he was there but not always available?
She chastised herself for her thoughts and prayed for forgiveness. He was there. She knew it. And if it was somehow true that He wasn’t always available, then surely she’d seen proof that His agents were at work. She thought of The Gray Man and a small smile crossed her face. He had been so beautiful, so raw and powerful.
Her nerves settled and she rubbed her eyes. It was time for bed. Trudy would text her when her flight got in, so Tamara grabbed her phone, went into the kitchen to turn off the range light, then walked to the hallway outside the kids’ bedrooms to check on them one last time on her way to her own bedroom.
Flicking on the hall light, she saw that Seth’s bedroom door was half-open and Tamara leaned in to find him fast asleep, his sweet little lips open as he breathed deeply through his mouth. She smiled. He was out cold.
She made her way to Janie’s bedroom, where the door was mostly closed. She pushed it open, feeling it drag softly against the carpet, and was stunned to see her daughter standing there, at the side of the bed, her face slack and eyes filled with fear, as if she’d had a bad nightmare. She had her left hand up to her chest, gripping at the neck of her pajama top. In her right hand she clutched her teddy bear, which was dangling down to her calf, which was exposed by her rolled-up pajama bottoms, the way Janie liked to sleep in them. Her feet were turned in a bit. She’d always walked a little duckfooted, but hadn’t stood that way since she was very little, and for some reason this concerned Tamara.
And then she saw the hand on her daughter’s ankle, originating from underneath the bed, and her concern morphed directly into terror.
The light from the hall was falling at such an angle as to illuminate only Janie and a portion of the bed.
But it was enough.
Enough to see the pale, white face there, one cheek against the carpet, its nose covered in wrinkles as its gaping mouth formed a large, sickening smile. It was a man gone mad from the circus, his greasy hair spilling over his forehead, his lips painted red and his eyes outlined in black and red, as if he were a clown who’d never finished putting on his makeup.
And he was looking with menacing eyes directly at Tamara.
“M-m-m-mom?” Janie stammered in a half-whisper.
Tamara, locked in by the creatures gaze, blinked and then looked at Janie. “Honey. It’s okay. Don’t move. I’m going to—”
When she looked back down at the creature, his eyes had gone so wide that it was obvious he wasn’t human, in any way whatsoever.
When he spoke, Tamara’s heart froze in her chest. “You’re going to… what?”
“Mommy!” Janie screamed.
Tamara bolted for her daughter just as the creature yanked on Janie’s leg, forcing her to her knees.
He was trying to drag her under the bed.
CHAPTER 16
KYLE AWOKE SLUGGISHLY, THE faint sound of the buzzing hornets still filling his ears.
He blinked his way to the surface of his consciousness, the sound terrifying him and forcing the slightest surge of adrenaline into his veins, which helped him to roll over partially. His face was covered in dirt, bits of it stuck to his lips and teeth. He’d passed out face down and on his right arm, which was numb now, his hand red and swollen, barely tingling as the nerves came alive again.
Looking at the force field, he saw the swarm was barely there now. Most of the hornets had fallen like black pencil shavings to the ground. A few dozen remained, relentlessly trying to get to him, their circular motion of charging, colliding, reversing and charging the force field again and again only making them weaker with each try. One by one they continued to fall.
He assessed himself and found that the pain was acute where he’d been stung. He forced himself to a sitting position, inadvertently pushing down on his left palm in the process, where he’d been stung, and there was an immediate, stabbing pain in his… brain.
It came to him: a memory. A bad one.
Of the day his mother had s
colded him for being mean to his little brother, Vinnie.
“How?” she had screamed. “How can you be so mean to such a defenseless person?”
At age five, Vinnie’s autism was fully diagnosed. But to Kyle, who was seven at the time, Vinnie was still just his little brother. He didn’t understand the need, that all the grown-ups had, to treat Vinnie differently. They were fighting over a GI Joe doll that Kyle had been playing with first. It wasn’t fair that Vinnie could just come over and grab it, just because he had some disease. Instead, their mother had seemingly lost her mind, tears filling her eyes with something more than Kyle could comprehend, and when she stomped off to the kitchen Kyle and Vinnie looked at each other and then…
“It was never the same,” Kyle said aloud to the hornets, as if they cared.
And it wasn’t. From that time forwards Kyle never saw Vinnie the same way, and no one else did either. But that was not the greatest crime, no, the greatest crime was that little Vinnie never saw himself the same way again either.
“Mom. That was wrong, Mom,” Kyle said to the empty sky of hell.
He was crying, the hot tears drawing lines through the dirt on his cheeks. Taking a few deep breaths he lifted his hands, one still half asleep and the other stung, to his knees and the memory evaporated.
The relief was short-lived. There was another sting on the back of his neck. He could feel it, swollen to the size of a golf ball, and when he tilted his head back to open his windpipe and try to catch his breath, he compressed the wound somehow and another memory came piercing in.
Of the day at the lake, when he was thirteen, swimming at the lake. It was a freezing cold day, and Kyle had just gotten out of the water when Bennie Madigan and his cousin, who was visiting from Ireland, had pantsed him. Right in front of a group of girls sitting at the water’s edge in their bikinis who looked at him in shock.
A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2) Page 15
