Apocalypse Island

by Hall, Mark Edward

  Jennings reached in his pocket and extracted a pencil flashlight, flipped it on, scanning the body and the room around him. A noise that he could not immediately identify startled him. He pulled his gun from his holster and did a quick three-sixty of the room. He felt his skin crawl with gooseflesh as he searched for the source of the noise, which now sounded to him like snapping electricity or perhaps frying bacon.

  The sound receded. He stood very still, waiting. For what, he did not know.

  He wanted a cigarette very badly.

  The snapping electrical noise returned, and along with it, a low-frequency humming sound, like that of a running engine. The room began to twinkle with some sort of blue phosphorescent light causing Jennings’s internal compass to go awry. He felt dizzy and disoriented, like he might fall over any second. Inconceivably he felt as if he was being watched. None of this could be possible because he did not believe in hocus pocus. But believe or not, his eyes were seeing things and his ears were hearing things and his instincts were conveying things that he could not deny.

  A ghost materialized out of nowhere and she was the same one Jennings had seen at the two previous crime scenes. And this time he recognized her. He reached in his pocket and extracted the old grainy photograph he’d taken from the archives beneath police headquarters. He pointed the light at the image on the paper and then looked back at the ghost. There was no doubt in his mind that this...ghost was her.

  “I get it,” Jennings said to the ghost. “You’re Siri Donovan and you’re dead. But what the fuck do you want? What are you trying to tell me?” She did not respond. Jennings swore in frustration. She stared at him, her hands held out before in that same gesture of appeal she’d exhibited each time he’d seen her, as though she were trying to convey a message.

  A warm breeze began to blow from a place in the room he could not determine, buffeting his hair and his overcoat. Impossible too because it was late fall, all the windows were closed and there were no fans in the room. Nevertheless, the wind came in a steady flow, warm and clammy and sick, like the wind from some dead alien planet. All the while, the engine noise became more insistent and the strange blue light brighter.

  A series of leaflets appeared out of nowhere, tumbling like errant autumn leaves on the tepid wind, and Jennings did not have to look at them to know what they were.

  Not soon enough the wind abated. The air became still as death and the blue light pulsed. Beneath Jennings’ clothes his body had become saturated in cold sweat. He reached out and tentatively touched the place where he’d seen the leaflets appear.

  And felt nothing.

  Just sick and weary and afraid. The ghost stared.

  “What?” he asked her in frustration. “What do these leaflets have to do with you? What do they have to do with Wolf and these murders? And why now, after all these years does a photograph of you suddenly materialize? Did Wolf kill you? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Did one of the other guys in the band kill you? Was it somebody else?” The ghost did not react.

  Bad fucking Medicine, all right, Jennings thought, as the anger began to swell in him like a tide. There’s something very wrong with this band. There’s something very wrong with this entire fucking case. He remembered investigating the brutal murder of their original lead singer, Johnny Redman earlier in the summer. He’d been found knifed to death in an alley behind one of the downtown clubs. Knifed just like the body of Kate Cavanaugh and all the other victims. Johnny had been a junkie and although the crime was still unsolved it was widely assumed that the murder had something to do with drugs.

  Now Jennings wasn’t so sure.

  After what he’d learned from Spencer and Robeson today he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Redman and Wolf had both been in the orphanage together, along with others who might be relevant to this case. They’d all undergone mind altering experiments by a CIA program called MK-ULTRA. They’d been fed drugs, and radiation, been injected with evil concoctions of God-knows-what, had electrodes hooked up to their bodies and undergone electro-shock therapy. Now he was supposed to believe that some of them possessed the ability to read minds and transport things with their thoughts and maybe even become invisible. ‘Cloaking’ is what Spencer had called it.

  They were just kids. They’d been used, treated worse than lab rats and then thrown out with the trash. The thought made him sick to his stomach. He wasn’t surprised that one of them had gone nuts and started killing people.

  He knew that Redman had died less than two weeks before Danny Wolf was released from prison.

  Wolf could not have had anything to do with his murder. He seriously doubted Wolf had anything to do with any of them.

  Unless.

  No, he did not want to go there.

  Reaching down he picked up one of the fliers. On it was a photograph of the four band members. He’d looked at this same image a hundred times. The member’s expressions were devoid of emotion, posed against an old brick wall, partially blackened by fire. A huge and jagged cross had been painted on the wall behind the band members in vivid red. It looked like it had been done in anger, like two ugly slashes with a sharp knife on the flank of a beast. Jennings looked from the cross on Kate Cavanaugh’s body to the cross on the flier and back to the ghost. Then it struck him like a jolt of lightening. It wasn’t the band members that were important here. It was the place where this photograph had been taken. “Is that it?” he asked, looking once again at the ghost. “Is this what you’ve been trying to tell me? Is it the place?”

  The beautiful ghost woman then opened her mouth and spoke one word very clearly. “Yes!” She said and it expelled from her like a projectile from a cannon, the force of it so great that Jennings felt a searing wind on his face. He took an involuntary step backwards. The ghost began to fade quickly and in a matter of a few short seconds she was gone.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jennings whispered. “I’ll bet the same person that drew the cross on the wall carved the crosses on all the victims.” He looked back at the photo.

  Partially covering the cross’s upright stand and a bit closer to the forefront than the other three stood Danny Wolf, his tawny skin almost electric, his piercing blue eyes, so unnatural and yet riveting in that handsome face, staring mysteriously at the camera. Then Jennings noticed an odd thing. There seemed to be a strange blue aura around Wolf.

  “What the hell?” he said, looking carefully at the photo. Must be a glitch in the film. He trained his penlight on the image. He discarded the flier and picked up another one. Same thing.

  “What the fuck is this?” Jennings whispered. “Who are you and why are you at the center of this case?” Then it struck him. It’s the island. That has to be where this photo was taken. Apocalypse Island. There’s something over there that someone is trying very hard to conceal. He bent down, scooped up all the fliers and shoved them in his pocket along with the photo of Siri Donovan.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Listen,” he said when he had the chief on the line, “I’m afraid we have another body. I’m standing right in front of it. This one’s sensitive. Yeah, it’s Kate Cavanaugh. She’s definitely dead and she’s in her home. I don’t know if she was killed here or not. Body looks to be a day or so old.”

  “What are you doing at Frank’s house?” Robeson asked.

  “Trying to find Frank, for Christ’s sake.” Jennings’s frustration was palpable. “What do you think I’m doing? He and Kate split up and he hasn’t been right.”

  Silence.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No, Rick, I didn’t. You think Frank killed her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Who then?”

  “Good question.”

  “I want you back in here, Rick.”

  “Forget about it, I’m not playing Spencer’s games. You shouldn’t either.”

  “I don’t have a choice. You may not have a choice.”

  “Oh yes I do.”

&nb
sp; “The feds aren’t fooling around this time,” Robeson said.

  “I get it, Red, but I intend to find Wolf before they do.”

  “What are you going to do, warn him?”

  “I’ll bring him in. And I’ll see that he’s protected.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “So you’re just going to fucking eliminate him, is that it? You’ve lost your mind.”

  “We can’t have this conversation now,” Robeson said.

  “Well, too bad about that then. I’ve gotta go. If you see Frank, take my advice and lock him up. If he sees Kate like this he’ll fucking lose his mind and then he will start killing people.” The chilling thought struck Jennings that perhaps he’d already seen her. That’s why he wasn’t around. He probably had Wolf in his sights right now.

  “Tell him it’s for his own good,” Jennings said to the chief, and hung up. He didn’t really expect anyone to see Cavanaugh any time soon.

  Chapter 99

  “Come on, Laura, answer the damn phone,” Jennings said as he held it tightly against his ear, his body racked with tension.

  He was in his car speeding northwest out of town toward Naples and Long Lake. Since leaving the scene of Kate Cavanaugh’s murder he’d been trying to figure out where Laura had taken Wolf. Now he thought he knew.

  He had just finished talking to Sheila Van Horne, Laura’s mother. He had not talked to her in almost ten years and he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to her now. Actually he wasn’t sure she’d ever want to talk to him again. He knew that in some small way, Sheila had always blamed him for Jack’s death. Even though Jennings hadn’t been there on the night Jack died, Sheila was well aware of the fact that he had been complicit in the cover-up of certain aspects of the investigation. But Jennings hadn’t had a choice. Word had come down from the top and it was either do it their way or take the highway. Since then he’d wished a thousand times he’d taken the highway.

  He was going on something Laura had said that he hadn’t thought much about until now. She’d let it slip that her mother and stepfather had a summer residence on a lake somewhere. She didn’t say which state. It could have been Vermont or New Hampshire or New York State, or anywhere for that matter, but the way Laura had hesitated when he’d asked made him think that it might be somewhere in Maine, perhaps even somewhere close by.

  So finally, not having much of a choice, he had made the call. As awkward as he thought the conversation might be, Sheila had been friendly and receptive, and if not for the circumstances he would have enjoyed his talk with her.

  Jennings surmised in the first few minutes of their conversation that Laura had not told her mother that she was on assignment here in Portland, and neither did Jennings mention it. He kept it friendly and light, even though his gut was churning with stress.

  “Why did you call me, Rick?” Sheila asked after they’d gotten the pleasantries out of the way.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jennings lied. “I guess I’ve been feeling guilty about the way everything went down all those years ago. I guess I just wanted to hear your voice again. Tell you that I’ve missed you.” All that was true.

  “I’ve missed you, too, Rick, and I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

  “Me too,” Jennings said and there was an awkward moment between them.

  “Is there something wrong, Rick?”

  “No,” he lied again. “Everything’s just fine. Just wanted to let you know that if you should ever get up this way, well, it would be nice to see you.”

  “Actually we get up that way several times a year,” Sheila said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Ruben, my husband, and I have a summer residence over on Cedar Lake.”

  “No kidding?”

  “We bought it about five years ago and try to get up that way for at least a month or two every summer.”

  “Oh, I see,” Jennings said, trying to sound casual. “Never heard of Cedar Lake.”

  “It’s north of Naples, about ten miles above Long Lake in Clayton Township.”

  “And does Laura spend any time there?”

  “Occasionally,” Sheila said. “She doesn’t get along well with my husband so I don’t see her that often.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jennings.

  “Oh, she and I have lunch once in a while, and we go shopping, but well, I wanted so much more for her than the path she took.”

  Jennings understood that at least part of the tension between mother and daughter was Laura’s choice of profession. “I know,” he said. “Unfortunately we can’t choose our children’s lives for them, can we?”

  “No, you’re right there, we can’t.”

  “I’m really surprised that you have a place up here,” Jennings said, hoping to turn the subject back around to their summer residence.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Sheila said, “next summer when we’re there we’ll have you up for dinner, maybe spend the night. You can meet Ruben.”

  “That would be nice,” Jennings said, although the idea of it sickened him. They said their goodbyes and hung up leaving Jennings feeling heavy in his heart and oddly hollow.

  Jennings checked the online directory and easily found the address. He programmed his GPS and took off. He tried calling the number but no one answered. On the road he tried again. Same result. He didn’t really expect anyone to answer. He hung up and tried Laura’s cell phone number, and was totally shocked when she answered it.

  Chapter 100

  “Laura, thank God I got you. Are you okay?”

  “Well, I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s something going on here,” Laura told Jennings. “The lights just went out and it’s possible that someone’s outside the house.”

  “Listen, I’m almost there.”

  “I wondered if you’d figured out where I was.”

  “I’m a detective. What did you expect? Listen to me, Laura. Don’t trust Wolf.”

  “What?”

  “No, I mean it. Is he close by?”

  “Yes.”

  “And everything’s okay?”

  “Of course everything’s okay... What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got another body. It’s Cavanaugh’s wife.”

  “Jesus,” Laura said. “You don’t think?”

  “I don’t know what to think, but you shouldn’t trust Wolf.”

  “Don’t you think you should be looking at Cavanaugh?”

  “We can’t find him. We think he might have followed you and Wolf.”

  “It had better not be that son-of-a-bitch out there. I’ll put a bullet in him.”

  “Laura, don’t be stupid.”

  “I want the truth about my father.”

  “I’ll tell you, just don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  “You know?” Laura said in amazement. “Goddamn you, Rick, you’ve always known what happened to my father?”

  “Not true, girl. I’m just beginning to figure it out.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Shut up and listen to me. Cavanaugh’s a loose cannon. I’m not denying it. There’s a good chance he found his wife before I did, and if he thinks Wolf killed her then you can bet your ass he’s gunning for him.”

  “Shit!” Laura nearly dropped the phone as a wave of despair washed over her. There was something wrong. She spun around.

  “Laura?”

  “Wolf?” she called. No response. “Oh my God!” she said, going into the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jennings.

  “Wolf! He just vanished.”

  “He knows we know.”

  “We don’t know shit, Rick.” She went to the chair on which she’d hung her weapon staring in amazement. A huge knot twisted in her belly.

  “Talk to me, Laura.”

  “He’s got my gun.”

  “Fucking hell!” Jennings said. “How could you let that happen? Stand by and don’t hang up, I�
�m just pulling into the driveway.”

  “Gotta go, Rick.”

  “Laura, don’t hang up!”

  Chapter 101

  Clouds had rolled in obscuring the moon. A warm front was moving into the area. The weatherman was talking about wind and the possibility of some late-season thunderstorms. Just great, Jennings thought as he approached the house. In the glow of his headlights it looked dark and a little unreal, as though it was lost and floating in some strange, otherworldly time warp.

  And it sure as hell didn’t look like anyone was here. No lights. No cars. No nothing. Just a black house set against an even blacker night. There was a garage. Maybe she’d put her car inside.

  He knew it was the right place because there’d been a sign at the entrance that said Van Horne and his GPS had led him right to it.

  Jennings stopped the car and got out, drawing his weapon from its holster. There was some ambient light, enough to see without using a flashlight. Good thing, a flashlight would make a great target.

  Before going to the door he began a careful search of the outside of the building, all the way around the house and garage and back to the front. He stood in the driveway gazing at the house. It was too quiet. He moved to the garage and looked in the window. Although it was dark inside he could see well enough to know that it did not contain a vehicle.

  Something was wrong and it nagged him. He began to sweat. Moving to the front entrance he saw that the security system lights were on. His respiration picked up. If there was no electricity then how come the security system was working? Battery backup, his rational mind told him. Or perhaps Laura found the breaker box and fixed it. He dismissed both notions. Wolf was on the loose and he had her weapon. If she was smart she’d be hiding. He stood at the front entrance for a long moment before it finally struck him. His heart sank. He went back in his mind to their phone conversation and tried to remember what she’d told him. I wondered if you’d figure out where I was.