Apocalypse Island

by Hall, Mark Edward

  “They should still be there then, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Would you mind if I had a look at them?”

  “Listen, I don’t want you involved in this.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.” The phrase slipped out a little too testily and she immediately regretted her tone.

  Wolf watched her carefully. What the hell was she doing? Why was she pushing him like this? There were already too many assholes putting pressure on him. He didn’t need another one. “I just don’t think you should get involved, that’s all.”

  “I’m a big girl, Danny and besides, I’m already involved.”

  “What if it’s true?”

  “What? That you somehow have the ability to morph into some sort of freaky giant and you’re running around at night killing nubile young virgins?”

  “Hardly virgins,” Wolf said. “I knew both the dead girls, and they weren’t innocent.”

  “That wasn’t my point.”

  “I know. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. So where does that leave us?”

  “I get the feeling that the big guy isn’t the killer.”

  “Jesus, you just told me—”

  “That he was carrying dead women around. That doesn’t mean he killed them. When I’m seeing through his eyes I sense a terrible sorrow. I feel some sort of twisted compassion. It just doesn’t fit. If he’s murdering these girls then why is he so sad?”

  Laura sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Who are you really, Laura?” Wolf asked. His uneasiness with her was getting out of hand. She was asking way too many questions. “Are you a reporter?”

  She hadn’t been expecting the question so it took her completely by surprise. She couldn’t tell him the truth, of course she couldn’t. No, Danny, I’m not a reporter, I’m a police detective assigned to investigate you, find out if you’re the psychopath murdering these young women. Not yet anyway. Would she ever be able to tell him? Probably not. When he found out no telling what he might do. He would never be able to trust her. That was for certain. But everything aside, she knew that eventually he would find out, one way or another, and that would be the end of it. End of what? She asked herself, already knowing the answer to her question and feeling a little bit lost, a little bit lonely. Christ, Laura, what the fuck are you doing? When you and Brian broke up last year you swore that it would be a very long time before you got involved with anyone else. Brian couldn’t handle your job. He couldn’t handle the fact that you risked your life on a daily basis doing exactly what you’re doing now. Doing exactly what you love to do. And Christ, here you are, falling for a murder suspect. Brian was right. You’re a stupid little bitch.

  “I’m not a reporter,” she said, answering his question truthfully. “I swear I’m not. I’m just a girl who likes you.” She smiled, watching Wolf for his reaction. Did he know who she really was? Did he suspect?

  “How old are you?” Wolf asked.

  “What?” Laura shook her head in amazement.

  “I want to know how old you are.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I want to know.”

  You’re not supposed to ask a girl how old she is.”

  Wolf waited.

  “OK, I’m twenty-six.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “You’re just a kid!”

  “I am not a kid!” Laura said bristling.

  “I’m almost ten years older than you.”

  “So what?”

  Wolf threw his hands up. She was right. So what if he was older. It was a lame thing to seize upon. He needed to trust her. He had to trust someone and there wasn’t anybody else in his life. Pathetic, now that he thought about it. He had the guys in the band, who weren’t really friends at all. More like business associates and they all seemed full of contempt for him because they needed him more than he needed them. And he had casual sex with strangers. Some of them a lot younger than Laura.

  As if reading his thoughts, Laura reached across the table, took his hands in hers and said, “How well did you know the dead girls?”

  He pulled his hands back feeling strangely awkward, feeling somehow violated. “Not well,” he said. “They were groupies. I had sex with them.”

  “Do you have sex with lots of girls you don’t know well?”

  “Some.”

  “Is that how you feel about me?” Laura asked. “A groupie? Someone to have sex with?”

  “I don’t know how I feel about you. You’re the one who had sex with me, remember? I didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

  She shook her head in exasperation. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

  “If the shoe fits.” He smiled and she smiled back. And it was a relief, a tension breaker. She had nice dimples, and her soft green eyes danced with both inquiry and intelligence. Wolf liked the way she looked a lot. And better still, he liked her. She was the first person he’d met since getting out of prison that he could really talk to. The first person who really listened. She was smart and self confident, someone he could fall in love with. Jesus, what was he thinking? A few hours ago he’d had the barrel of a nine millimeter in his mouth, and now he was planning his future.

  “I think we should go,” he said, getting up.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No, but I’ve got things to do before my appointment with the shrink.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said, looking at her watch and wondering where the hell the time had gone. She’d been up since four-thirty, had only gotten three and a half hours sleep, had made a trip to Apocalypse Island and back, had fucked Wolf’s brains out, and strangely she didn’t feel at all tired. But she knew she was running on adrenaline and when she finally crashed she’d crash hard.

  Chapter 61

  On the ride back to his apartment she gave him her cell phone number. “I’ve got an apartment over on Free Street,” she said giving him her address.

  “You’re too trusting,” he said. “What if I am—?”

  “You’re not.”

  “You don’t know that. I don’t know that.”

  “I told you, I have good instincts, and besides, I can take care of myself.”

  Something told him she wasn’t kidding.

  She pulled up in front of his building and leaned across the seat for a kiss. Laura saw the spy even before Wolf said anything.

  “That asshole,” Wolf said.

  “What?”

  “I know the guy standing over in the alley,” Wolf said. “Thinks he’s fooling me.”

  “Who is it?” Laura asked.

  “The jerk that sent me to prison.”

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “The cops put him on me. He’ll get his one day. I promise you that.”

  Laura nodded. “I’d like to see you again tonight.”

  “I’ll be at the club. Come around eight and we’ll talk before I go on stage.”

  “I’d like that,” she said and kissed him again, this time deep and soulful, putting on a show for Jennings’s spy.

  Wolf got out of the car and Laura drove off.

  From the alley beside Wolf’s apartment building the other dark figure that had been watching slunk back into the shadows.

  Chapter 62

  Jennings felt like tearing somebody’s head off. He’d assigned Cavanaugh the job of keeping an eye on Wolf, and the detective had come in with a story that had literally sent chills running down his spine.

  He sat drumming his fingers, waiting for Laura to come into his office. When she walked through the door he attacked her. “You slept with him, goddamn it! What the hell’s wrong with your head?”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Laura said, stopping in mid stride and putting her hands up defensively. “Let me explain.”

  “This better be good. Damn it, I can’t believe you friggin slept with him!”

  “First, how the hell do you know I slept with him?”

&
nbsp; “You were seen entering his apartment this morning at ten-fifteen. The two of you didn’t come down for more than an hour. And when you did come down you went to Denny’s, had breakfast and talked for hours like a couple of lovers, and then—”

  “Wait a minute, Rick!”

  “No! You wait! And then you put a lip lock on him before dropping him off at his apartment. Now you’d better listen to me, detective. I said to get close to Wolf. I didn’t say to go out and fuck him. You’ve let me down. You’ve compromised my investigation and as of now you’re off the case.” Jennings was so angry his face had turned a deep shade of purple.

  Laura plunked herself down in the chair opposite his desk. She looked at Jennings, blowing her breath up into her face. “How did you expect me to get close to him, Rick? Did you mean like a sister or something? Because he’s not interested in a sister. I was doing what you asked me to do, that’s all, and you have no proof of anything beyond what your goddamn spy reported back to you. You’re jumping to conclusions. How long have you known me?”

  “I asked you to wear the wire.”

  “Last night I did, and you heard what went down. Nothing! He wasn’t interested. What was I supposed to do, just go away, because he rejected me? No. My instructions were to get close to him, so that’s what I did. I became his friend, I became his buddy.”

  “You disappeared into his apartment this morning for an eternity and you weren’t wearing the goddamn wire. How do you think that made me feel? Do you know how close we came to breaking down the door?” Jennings’ tirade halted. His purple face began to regain some of its natural color and his breathing was settling down. “Listen, Laura, your father and me were about as close as two men can be without being brothers. After he got killed you were like a daughter to me. I was there when you were born. I was at your christening and your high school and college graduations, and I never missed a birthday—”

  “I get your point, Rick. You want to protect me. Well, tell me something, why did you ask me to do this assignment? You knew it was dangerous.”

  “Because you’re a good cop, that’s why.”

  “No. I mean why me particularly? There must be a thousand good female cops in New England.”

  “I wanted an opportunity to work with you.”

  “Okay, that’s fair enough. But you haven’t seen me or even been in touch for several years.”

  “I know. But I’ve been following your career. I’m impressed with your record. You’re good. No doubt about it.”

  “You wanted to see if I was as good as my father, isn’t that right? You were testing me.”

  “Your father’s instincts were impeccable.”

  “And already you don’t trust mine.”

  Jennings frowned. “Your chief in Hartford told me you were the best undercover person he had. I’m aware of James Patrick Darby, the son-of-a-bitch who kidnapped and tortured you. I know how much courage it must have taken to endure what you did and win. That case really set a standard for you. Your reputation is now nearly legendary.”

  “Then why don’t you trust me and let me finish the job?”

  “He also told me you were reckless, that luck played as much a role in your escape as skill.”

  “I didn’t have sex with him, Rick.”

  Jennings sat back in his chair with a sigh “You’d better not be lying to me, Laura. I mean it, no more bullshit. Whenever you’re with him, I want you wired.”

  “He’s not the one doing these murders, Rick.”

  Jennings bristled. “You’re absolutely sure of that, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Jennings gave his head an angry shake. “Sorry, but I don’t share your confidence. Until we find a better suspect, I’m assuming it’s him.”

  “He’s screwed up,” Laura said. “No doubt about it. But he’s not the killer. There are too many contradictions.”

  “Tell me what you found out.”

  “Look for an open field somewhere with rusted vehicles and piles of unused construction materials. Steel I-beams, stuff like that. Maybe on the outskirts of the city near the interstate, a mile or so from a shopping mall. There might be a derelict brick building in the vicinity, back toward the woods. If you find it, check the basement. And look carefully. There might be a secret room beneath the basement.”

  “You got that from him?”

  Laura nodded.

  “What’s down there?”

  “I don’t know, Maybe another dead woman.”

  “Jesus.” Jennings picked up the phone and asked Rosemary to issue a bulletin, with strict instructions that if they found the place to stay clear until he arrived. “So, if he’s not the killer then how would he know that?”

  “He doesn’t know anything. He says it was a dream, and that’s probably all it was. But I think it’s worth a look.”

  “So do you think he’s psychic?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. He just might be. He seems to be sensitive in ways most people aren’t. I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

  Jennings sighed. “I don’t, but right now I’m willing to listen to anything that might give me a break in this case.”

  “Wolf says when he goes to sleep he dreams that he’s seeing through someone else’s eyes.”

  “Who?”

  “The big guy he mentioned yesterday.”

  “Think it explains the tracks found at the last crime scene?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So does Wolf see the big guy killing these women?”

  Laura shook her head. “Claims the big guy is carrying them, you know, like you’d carry a sleeping child. And he cries.”

  “Cries? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Wolf says he feels sad. He doesn’t think the big guy is the killer but he thinks he’s somehow connected to the killer.”

  “The way Wolf’s connected to him?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Wolf thinks the big guy is handicapped or something. He doesn’t think he can talk but he doesn’t think he’s totally stupid either. When he’s in him, or when he’s seeing through his eyes—whatever—he feels a great deal of compassion coming off him. But he’s really not sure of anything because it always happens in dreams or trances or something.”

  “You know how stupid this sounds, Laura?”

  “Yeah, but you have to consider all the other stupid stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m saying that there seems to be a lot of paranormal associated with this case. Is it all stupid? What about the ghost you and that other officer saw at both crime scenes?”

  “It wasn’t a ghost.”

  “That’s not what you told me yesterday.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve had time to think about it.”

  “Rick, you are some piece of work, you know that?”

  Jennings left his chair and began pacing the floor. “This is what I think,” he said, standing over Laura, looking down at her, his eyes narrowed to slits. “I think Wolf is one smart cookie. And I think he’s playing with you.”

  “No, Rick, you’re wrong. And you’re paranoid. Sit down and hear me out. I found out some other stuff that I think may be related to this case.”

  “I’m all ears,” Jennings said settling himself uneasily back in his seat.

  “Last night I got on the internet and looked up Apocalypse Island.”

  “I told you to stay away from Apocalypse Island!”

  “I know you did, but how can I when everything leads there?”

  “Laura, I’m not going to listen to this—”

  “I found out that there was a government installation over there.”

  Jennings narrowed his eyes but he did not reply.

  “You know, don’t you, Rick?”

  Still Jennings did not reply.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Laura said. “Tell me I’m not wasting my time because you’re withholding information.”

  Jennings remained silent.

  “If you want to k
now why these women are being murdered then you have to talk about that island,” Laura said.

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “You ever hear of the Freedom of Information Act, Rick?”

  Jennings sat forward in his seat. “You mean they’ve released documents from over there?”

  “No. For some reason that place is exempt. Tell me why documents from some of the most secret projects in the history of this country are being released, but not Apocalypse Island? What happened over there? Come on, Rick, throw me a bone.”

  Jennings pointed an accusatory finger at her. “You’re playing with fire, girl.”

  “Rick, I went over there this morning.”

  “You what?”

  “I took the ferry and I looked around. I talked to a man who claims children were murdered in that orphanage. He says two of them were his.”

  Jennings heaved a sigh. “Christ, I don’t believe this.”

  “It goes all the way back to the second world war,” Laura said. “The chatter on the web says a lot about experiments on human beings.”

  “You can find what you want on the web,” Jennings said. “Captured alien spacecraft at Area 51, a government conspiracy to bring down the twin towers. It’s all bullshit! That island was used as a fueling depot during WWII, period.”

  “If that’s true then why did they stay until the early eighties, and why is the place still classified?”

  “Who’d you talk to over there?”

  “I think he said his name was Tanis Richey.”

  “You think?”

  “He was reluctant to talk to me. He said it was dangerous.”

  “Jesus, Laura, what are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to find the truth. Something you seem to be avoiding.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Don’t you see what a perfect place Apocalypse Island would be for some sinister government project?” Laura said. “A group of people suffering all the classic retrograde cultural effects of isolation, inbreeding and over adaptation. It has a population that’s genetically altered to begin with. It’s isolated, a place that nobody wants to have anything to do with. It’s a wet dream for anyone with sinister ideas.”