by Joe Hart
“But if that pit of bones up north is tied into this, they couldn’t be involved, those people were killed a long time ago, way before those boys would’ve been old enough, right?”
“That’s because there’s someone else, someone older than them that’s behind all this. He’s a puppet master pulling strings, slipping in and out of the light. He’s responsible for everything; the murders, the disappearances, even Miles’s death.” Gray said, finally turning on the vehicle. Cool air rushed out of the vents, chilling the sweat on his skin. “The problem is, it could be anyone.”
“Are you sure about all this, Mac? Couldn’t this be coincidences upon coincidences? Couldn’t Siri and Joseph be somewhere safe together?”
“I’ll never be one to say that I can’t be wrong.” He turned to look at her. “But I’m not wrong, not this time. I don’t know who’s responsible, but all this is not by chance.”
Lynn studied his face and then nodded, her lips pressing together in a white line.
“So what do we do now?”
“We don’t do anything. You need to go home and be somewhere safe until all this passes over. In fact you should get out of town and go stay with your aunt in Illinois.”
“Mac?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not going anywhere, so quit wasting your breath and shut the hell up.”
He opened his mouth but then closed it, a smile forming at one corner of his mouth.
“Yes ma’am.”
“That’s better. Now what are we going to do?”
He sighed and looked at the afternoon sky. The barest wisp of cloud traveled across the cerulean, a pale scar cutting a path with the growing wind.
“When you run out of road, you double back.”
“What if you’re not even on the road anymore?”
Gray paused, his eyes growing distant. He threw the cruiser into gear.
“Then you make a new one.”
~
They pulled to a stop on the side of the barren road. The swamp to their right dried and decaying in wafting fingers of gray moss, beckoning them in.
They left the cruiser parked to bake in the sun and cut into the woods beneath the canopy of skeletal branches, barely shading them. Gray led the way and Lynn stayed close to him, her hand brushing his occasionally. Eventually the clearing appeared ahead and Gray slowed, moving with deliberate noise, breaking branches and twigs beneath his feet that he could’ve avoided.
The little house stood silent without a shadow behind its windows. No gun barrels poked from any holes or rested on logs that he could see. He stopped and Lynn did the same, both of them waiting, staring at the front door of the house.
It opened after a minute and Terry Yantz stepped onto the porch, a rifle tucked in the crook of his arm.
“Sheriff.”
“Evening Terry.”
“Thought I’d had my share of visits from the law for the year but I guess I was wrong. If you have more questions concerning those deaths you better be packing a warrant for my arrest.”
“Not at all. I do have a question but I can assure you, you aren’t under suspicion.”
Terry moved down the steps of his porch and stopped several paces away. He kept the rifle trained on the ground.
“Go ahead.”
“You mentioned before that you used to know someone who opted not to have his son immunized, a friend of your father?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“My father’s friend, or his son?”
“Either.”
Terry pursed his lips and shifted the rifle to his opposite arm.
“They lived north, or used to, up by the county line on some fields,” Terry said. He turned his eyes to the ground, shuffling one shoe in the arid grass. “Drucker, I believe his name was.”
Gray nodded. “Could it have been Clarence Drucker?”
“That’s him. Clarence. Hadn’t thought of that name in ages.”
“How about his son? What was his name?”
“Can’t recall now. Lord, it’s been years and we only played together a time or two.”
Terry looked at the blackened fire pit where Gray had watched him cook down rock candy for his children.
“I’m sorry, I can’t remember. I can barely remember what he looked like. Real slender kid with blond hair. But that was thirty-five or forty years ago if it was a day.”
“That’s okay, thank you for trying. You’ve been a help. We’ll leave you be now.”
Gray and Lynn walked back the way they’d come but Terry’s voice stopped them before they entered the path.
“Sheriff, I wanted to thank you for what you left the other day. You didn’t have to do that, but it was appreciated.”
“You’re welcome, Terry. Take good care of those children.”
Terry bobbed his head once and then he was out of sight as they rounded the first bend.
“What was that about?” Lynn asked as they walked.
“You mean the name or what I left?”
“Both.”
“Clarence Drucker was the landowner of the property where the body pit was found. I left some money as a token of thanks the last time Joseph and I stopped out here.”
“Isn’t that a bribe?”
Gray smiled. “Not when you’ve already gotten the information.”
“I see.”
Back on the road a massive transport truck barreled by, peppering them with a hot gust of wind and stinging grit. The driver didn’t look at them. Gray watched it go and then climbed inside, turning the cruiser on. He flicked the air conditioning to the highest setting and realized it was already there. After punching a button on the console, he waited and held up a finger to Lynn as she started to speak. Mary Jo’s voice came out of the speaker, low and hushed.
“Sheriff’s department.”
“Hi, Mary Jo.”
“Hello.”
“You have company, I’m assuming.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Mitchel and Mark?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I need you to do something for me. Research Clarence Drucker, the man that owned the land the bone pit was found on. Find out everything about him along with his son. From what I’ve been told his son wasn’t inoculated with the Line until after he was adopted. He might be the missing piece in all of this. Can you do that for me?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good.” He paused. “It’s been good working with you, Mary Jo, you do more than you know.”
“Oh, I know.”
Gray smiled. “Keep me posted.”
“Yes sir.”
He pushed the same button and the air quit humming with transmission in the cab. The cruiser’s engine idled, barely vibrating.
“You really think the Barder boys killed all those people?” Lynn finally asked.
Gray rubbed his eyes, pushing his hat back from his forehead.
“I don’t know, but they’re hiding something. They might know who’s doing this, or what happened to Joseph. I’ll have to wait to hear back from Mary Jo to see if Clarence Drucker’s son is a dead end or not.”
“How could those boys be the ones? Their father being a doctor I’m sure they all have the Line. If they have the Line, then they can’t be responsible.”
“I think maybe we’ve come to new territory. The world isn’t playing by the rules anymore because we aren’t. We change things, there’s a reaction. Ripples on a pond. I’m afraid we don’t know what we’ve tinkered with.”
Lynn sighed. “We should’ve never left the cities.”
“The cities were killing us, you know that.”
“Fast death compared to slow death, your choice.”
He reached across the car and put a hand on her shoulder, her skin so hot beneath the thin fabric.
“We’re not dead. Not yet.”
She turned her eyes to his. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.�
�
“Then take me home.”
Chapter 38
They arrived at the house an hour before sunset.
The wind grew exponentially and it tossed the top of the trees, tearing crumpled leaves and scattering them to the ground like a careless child. He thawed steaks from the freezer and made them each a drink of whisky to sip on. Every so often he would glance at her sitting at the kitchen table, soaking in her profile, telling himself that she was really there.
When the steaks were ready they sat on the deck and he tended them over the fire, turning them with the high heat like his father had taught him. They ate at the table beneath the darkening sky, baked potatoes smothered in butter, salted green beans, and toasted bread. He kept his phone close, his eyes falling to it over and over again. She noticed after a time and pulled it away from him, squeezing his hand once.
“If she finds something, she’ll call, you won’t miss it.”
The night deepened around them, flowering into a gusting dusk, the dried leaves clattering. No moon. She finished her drink and took his hand again. When she pulled him from his chair he followed. Down the steps and onto the lawn to the stream where they stopped, the small chasm barely visible in the growing gloom.
Water flowed between the banks, over a foot deep in most places.
“I forgot you turned the pump on,” he said, slowly kneeling down.
“I know most would say it’s a waste of water.”
“It’s not a waste.”
“Don’t ever let it go dry again okay, Mac?”
“I won’t.”
Her hand found his, intertwining fingers.
He stood and pulled her closer, feeling her length against him. So right, so true. He kissed her, her hair brushing his face as the wind pushed it. He drank her in and soon she ran her fingers through his hair, stroking lines through its coarseness.
She broke away and led him into the house, leaving their plates and glasses where they stood on the table, pausing only to hand him his phone. They climbed the stairs so familiar, her in front, her hand trailing back, guiding him up behind. Their room, theirs again now, not just his. Ambient light from the window coating her body as she undressed, quicker than him, lying on the bed waiting for him, skin pale and glowing in the dark.
He covered her with himself, cupped her close with everything he had, her breath in his ear, quick, quickening.
“I want a baby, Mac. Please, I want a baby.”
He moaned above her as she thrust her hips up and pulled him down, pulsing inside, a trapped butterfly beating wings of ecstasy. No words, only shuddering release as he said her name, over and over again.
They lay, still intertwined, as the house creaked around them, the wind finding holes to tune its voice. He stroked her hair as she lay against him, her heat almost unbearable, making him want to walk outside to cool off and start what they had just finished all over again at the same time.
“Did you mean it?” he asked after a long time, almost sure she was sleeping.
“Yes,” she answered. “Yes I did.”
He hugged her closer, her body somehow more tangible than it ever had been before.
“Good.”
She was quiet for a long time and then she shifted, looking up at him, her features defined with curves of shadow.
“It can’t be the same.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She studied his face and then finally settled back into place beside him.
The wind threw aside all pretenses and began to howl. The night aged and Gray fell asleep, only hearing the woman beside him breathing.
~
A sound woke him later. His eyes came open, looking through the darkness as his head came off the pillow. He waited for it to come again, either a nudging of something by the wind outside, or not.
A scrape of a footstep on tile in the kitchen.
He slid from bed still naked, removing Lynn’s arm from around his waist, reaching for the gun belt that always hung from the bedside table. His hand met empty air. He’d taken it off in the kitchen, fastened it around the coatrack near the back door.
“Mac?”
“Shhh, there’s someone in the house,” he whispered. Lynn didn’t reply. The wisp of sheets from her side of the bed.
Gray moved to the open door and peered down to the living room. Stillness, quiet but for the railing wind. Then a shadow, sidling against the far wall.
“Call for help,” he whispered and lunged out of the room and down the stairs.
Gunfire erupted from the living room and he threw himself flat, the last three stairs smashing into his ribs as he tumbled down them. Lynn screamed his name and he rolled toward the kitchen, scrambling against the floor, the tile scraping his knees and drawing blood. Bullets zinged over his back, the bright pulse of muzzle flash lighting up the kitchen enough for him to see no one stood there. Footsteps pounded toward him across the living room and he leapt for the coat rack, his fingers snagging the gun belt as he fell.
He landed on his spine, in one motion pulling out the .45 as a shadow blotted out the doorway. He fired a wild shot that ripped plaster from the wall near the figure’s head. It dove out of sight as the big pistol boomed again.
Gray’s breath came in ragged gasps that he tried to control, listening over the base pounding in his ears. He glanced to the left to where the kitchen table rested beside the front door. It stood open to the windy night, air gusting into the room. He moved that way, low, knees bent, arms stretched out before him, the long barrel of the gun leading the way. A smell wafted to him with the breeze. Gasoline, sharply pungent with each draft that coursed through the door.
He came to the archway leading to the living room. The high ceilings cobwebbed with dark, the supporting pillars adversaries themselves. He swept the room with the gun, keeping his peripheral vision on the entryway to his left. A shape lunged up the stairs and he stood, firing but only getting off one shot before a spray of gunfire came from his office alcove.
There were two of them.
The hot passage of lead brushed his face and he fell to the living room floor, rolling behind one of the wooden columns. Lynn screamed again in the bedroom, this time without words, her cry cut off as abruptly as it began. He flew to his feet, swinging his arm around the pillar and firing in the general direction of the office.
“Sheriff, drop your gun!” The yell came from the top of the stairs and he aimed in that direction as the lights came on along the stairway.
A masked man stood on the landing, one arm clutched around Lynn’s throat, the opposite hand pressing a snub-nosed auto-pistol to her temple. For a beat Gray kept a bead on the man’s head above Lynn’s shoulder and then slowly lowered the gun to his side.
“Mac, don’t,” Lynn choked out. The man holding her tightened his arm and her eyes bulged as she coughed.
“I’m the man with the gun, Sheriff, I’d listen to me.”
A figure stepped out of the office hallway and Gray took in its much-larger form, the face hidden beneath a similar hood, hands holding a short-stocked rifle.
“Drop the gun, Sheriff, last time I’ll ask nice,” the man on the landing said.
Gray stepped out from behind the support, keeping the Colt lowered but in his hand.
“You boys are out of your element here, way over your head,” Gray said, shifting his gaze from the landing to the black eye of the rifle barrel pointed at him.
“I’d be tempted to say the same thing about you. Naked old man with only an ancient pistol to hide behind.”
“How long have you been killing, Darrin?”
The man on the landing didn’t move but Gray saw the larger figure on the main floor turn his head up the stairs.
Slowly the man holding Lynn reached up and drew the mask away, revealing his handsome features.
“Darrin, what are you doing?” the larger one asked.
“It’s okay, Adam, he knows it’s
us. I have a feeling he knew for a while. Isn’t that right, Sheriff?”
Gray nodded. “I had my suspicions. What did you do with Siri and Joseph?”
Darrin smiled. “Siri’s safe. Joe, not so much. Now are you going to drop that gun or do I put three rounds through this pretty woman’s head?”
Gray hesitated, flicking his eyes toward Adam who had also drawn off his hood and was staring dumbly at him. Darrin screwed the end of his pistol into Lynn’s temple and she choked out another short scream.
“Okay, okay,” Gray said, bending his knees. He lowered himself close to the floor and set the Colt down near his feet. With one heel he slid it to his left across the hardwood.
“That’s a sport,” Darrin said, and shoved Lynn down the stairs.
She fell and rolled, the sick sound of bones connecting with treads echoing through the house. Adam was there at the bottom and arrested her downward progress with one of his tree-trunk legs. Lynn moaned and blood ran from a gash on her scalp near her hairline. Gray started across the room but Adam raised his rifle again and shook his head.
“Don’t you worry about her, Sheriff, she’ll be safe where we’re going,” Darrin said, beginning to descend the stairs.
“What are you doing with them?” Gray asked, shifting his eyes from Lynn’s unmoving form to Darrin’s face. “With all the woman and children from Widow Town.”
“Oh you caught that too? Aren’t you something? I guess Ryan was right, you’re not as dumb as you look. Well, I’d love to tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” Darrin cracked a grin and snickered as he stepped over Lynn and past Adam.
