The Disciple

by Steven Dunne

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Then stow it and tell me about the Baileys.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. The Baileys. Four of them. Two daughters. Nicole and Sally. Fifteen and thirteen years of age,’ said Drexler, lingering over the last snippet without really knowing why. ‘Wife Tania Bailey, forty-one and her husband George, forty-seven. They were from England originally but were living full time in the States at the time of their disappearance. The husband is a chemical engineer and had been working in San Diego for two years. They were on vacation…’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said McQuarry holding up a hand and closing her eyes. ‘Did you say George?’ Drexler nodded. ‘George Bailey?’

  ‘That’s what I said. Problem?’

  She laughed. ‘George Bailey. Shit. Someone’s messing with us, Mike.’ Drexler showed no sign of understanding her. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life, that film I was talking about. The character James Stewart played was called George Bailey. He finds rose petals in his pocket that his daughter Zuzu has given him…’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I’m telling you, this is more than a coincidence. Someone’s sending us a message with these rose petals.’ ‘What message?’

  She took a pull on her Marlboro Light and thought about it. ‘I think whoever killed Caleb and Billy Ashwell wants us to know that they were killed because of what they did to George Bailey and his family. George Bailey is the key to this. Where did you say he worked?’

  Stepping out of his car in Hartington sometime after seven, Brook realised with a sinking feeling that his new neighbour was clearly the outdoors type. Framed against the dark sky, he could see the glow of a fire in Rose Cottage’s small back garden and knew that he would have to stay indoors unless he wanted to endure an evening of tedious chitchat. With winter fast approaching, Brook had wanted to maximise use of his garden while he still could, and this impediment was a nuisance.

  When he reached his door, however, he found the situation far worse than that. A note stuck out of his letterbox.

  Damen

  Having a house-warming BBQ tonight. Come and have something to eat and drink.

  Mike

  Brook hovered over the note for a minute before screwing it into a ball and binning it. At least when the tenants had kids they didn’t have time to bother him. He went into the house and neglected to turn on any lights, without quite realising why. Eventually he flicked on a small lamp next to his computer and immediately began to feel self-conscious. He kicked off his leather shoes and squeezed his feet into a pair of deck shoes before padding back into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator. It was empty except for a carton of milk, a baked potato skin, an opened can of beans and a bottle of champagne left over from his last night with Wendy Jones the year before.

  After a moment’s contemplation he closed the fridge door, but not before plucking the champagne from its cradle. He strolled next door, remembering to take a full pack of cigarettes with him. Despite his infrequent attendance at social functions in the last fifteen years, Brook remembered sufficient misery when plentiful alcohol and tobacco was not at hand.

  As he knocked on the front door, Drexler came to greet him from the side path.

  ‘Damen! Good to see you. How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m fine. How are you?’

  ‘I’m good,’ nodded Drexler, unaware of the tic of annoyance his grammar caused Brook. ‘Champagne. Thank you. That’s thoughtful,’ he added.

  Brook managed a smile as he followed Drexler round to the back. ‘The least I could do. Settling in okay?’

  ‘Pretty good.’ Brook looked around the garden of his new neighbour, half an eyebrow raised. ‘Yeah, it’s just us, Damen. Tom’s been and gone.’

  ‘Great,’ Brook muttered under his breath.

  ‘And Basil, of course.’ Brook spied the black cat gnawing away at some blackened meat on the tiny lawn. He looked up briefly to be sure Brook wasn’t about to steal his food, then returned to his meal. ‘Please sit. Wine or beer, or would you like champagne?’ smiled Drexler.

  Brook was aware now that his host was slurring slightly. ‘Not champagne, beer or red wine if you’ve got it,’ he said cracking open his fresh pack of smokes.

  ‘As you’re still in the job, how about both?’ asked Drexler, with a grin. Brook shrugged his assent and Drexler disappeared into the tiny kitchen of Rose Cottage, re-emerging moments later with a cold bottled lager and a large glass of red wine. He trotted back into the kitchen and returned with a plate of raw burgers. He slapped two of them onto the grill of the barbecue then put his feet up on a spare chair and tapped his bottle against Brook’s. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Brook braced himself for a conversation and went over his mental checklist, but Drexler satisfied himself with staring into the hot coals, punctuated with the occasional bout of burger flipping and organising the salad. When the burgers were nearly done, Drexler dropped a square of processed cheese onto one of them, and when that wilted he began to assemble Brook’s massive double cheeseburger.

  When his plate was plonked down, Brook tucked in with more gusto than he thought possible. Since leaving the city, Brook’s meagre diet had consisted of baked potatoes, beans on toast and the occasional takeaway. The unexpected pleasure of flame-grilled meat left him purring.

  When it was finished, Brook licked the ketchup, mayonnaise and grease from his fingers, wiped his hands with a serviette and sat back with a sigh.

  ‘Mike. That was the best burger I’ve ever had. Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure. Another?’

  ‘That was plenty for me.’

  Drexler nodded and took a pull on his beer, then turned back to stare at the dying coals. When the coals began to lose their heat, Drexler pulled out a small pot-bellied garden stove and lit the newspaper protruding from beneath a pile of dry sticks. It sparked into life instantly and they both got to work examining the spitting flames and taking the occasional chug on their drinks.

  ‘So you’re a writer,’ ventured Brook.

  Drexler bent his head towards Brook and smiled without parting his lips, then scrunched up his nose in an expression of scepticism. ‘Not really.’

  ‘I thought Tom said you were.’

  ‘I’m getting there. It’s a second career of sorts. It pays the rent.’

  ‘What was your first career?’

  ‘Same as you, Damen – law enforcement.’

  Brook looked up sharply. He waited for a moment but Drexler didn’t expand, either on his own career or how he knew Brook was a policeman. He was on the verge of asking him when he realised that Tom must have told him on the drive from the airport. Of course. Ask about the new neighbours. It was the most normal thing in the world to do, assuming you weren’t as dislocated from the norm as Brook.

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘California. Sacramento. It’s the state capital, just north of San Francisco.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it. But you flew in from Boston.’

  ‘That’s right. I moved to the East Coast in ′01 after my book became a hit.’

  Brook nodded. ‘What was it about, your book?’

  Drexler looked away. Brook had nearly given up on an answer when Drexler said, ‘A case I worked for the FBI.’

  ‘You were in the FBI?’

  ‘That I was, Damen. A long time.’ Drexler stared into the flames intently, before adding under his breath, ‘Or maybe it just felt like a long time.’

  Brook took another pull on his beer and wondered whether to further pick at what looked like an open wound. ‘I’ve got to take my hat off to you, Mike. I mean, you deal with things in the States that we just don’t see over here.’

  ‘Plus the bad guys have guns.’

  Brook smiled, now more forgiving about the quirks of sharing a language with another country. ‘Plus the bad guys have guns,’ he echoed. Interested now, Brook racked his brains for a way to probe further but then decided against it. He had a sudden flash of sitting with Soren
son in his study all those years ago, plied with drink, a fire nibbling at his toes, being similarly dissected.

  ‘What’s the book called?’ he finally asked.

  ‘The Ghost Road Killers.’

  ‘And should I not ask you what it’s about?’

  Drexler turned to Brook with a bitter smile. Suddenly he chuckled. ‘In case I’m scarred by it, you mean. In case I wake up every night screaming, sheets damp, brain on fire.’ He chuckled again. ‘No. You can ask me. I dare say you get people tiptoeing round you when it’s not necessary. You being The Reaper Man and all.’ Brook raised an eyebrow as Drexler laughed. ‘Sorry. You mustn’t blame old Tom. You know how it goes. It’s our job to pull this stuff out of people, and we do it even when they don’t want us to. Tom was a pushover once he’d let it slip. Besides, you’re even famous in the States – in police circles, at least.’

  Brook shrugged. ‘That’s good to know,’ he added stonily.

  ‘I’m sorry, Damen. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s been a while since I had to live and breathe the life, night and day. It always stays with you, but I guess you forget how personal it gets. And I gather some hack writer’s done a hatchet job on one of your investigations. Must be tough.’

  ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Don’t let the bastards grind you down,’ Drexler added, offering his bottle to Brook for a sympathetic clink.

  ‘The problem is, the last Reaper killing was only two years ago so it sits a little heavier.’

  ‘I hear you, man. And I know it kinda grates when you ain’t caught the guy.’

  Brook gave Drexler a piercing glance but drained his beer to cover it. Drexler immediately picked up the empty and grabbed a couple of replacements from the fridge.

  Brook wondered about the wisdom of drinking too much, especially in front of a stranger, and what’s more, a writer. It struck him suddenly that maybe their meeting was not an accident. Maybe the subject of Drexler’s next book was to be The Reaper. After all, Brian Burton seemed to be making a good living out of it, laying open Brook’s faults for the entire world to see. Maybe Drexler was jumping onto the bandwagon. Maybe moving into the same village as ‘The Reaper Detective’ was a shrewd career move.

  ‘So what are you writing this time?’ Brook asked, trying to seem no more than politely interested.

  ‘Actually, Damen, it’s a kind of sequel.’

  Brook was puzzled. ‘A sequel? I thought you said your book was about a real case.’

  ‘It is.’ Drexler smiled enigmatically at Brook.

  ‘But you’ve fictionalised it?’

  ‘No.’ Drexler continued to smile at his guest, his eyes suddenly boring into him. ‘See, we didn’t catch the guy either.’

  ‘Oh? And is that what the sequel’s about?’

  ‘Not really. It’s complicated.’

  ‘So maybe I should just buy the book. Save you having to relive it,’ said Brook apologetically. ‘There’s always one case that won’t go away, isn’t there?’

  ‘Like The Reaper?’

  Brook laughed. ‘Well, that’s one that won’t go away but The Reaper’s crimes aren’t what haunt me.’ Brook looked into the fire, remembering the decomposing corpse of Laura Maples, the rats who consumed her and the face of Sorenson, her avenging angel. After a pause, Brook said, ‘You know what’s funny, Mike?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing’s funny.’

  Brook nodded his surprise. ‘That’s right. Nothing.’

  They both chuckled and Brook was surprised to feel an unexpected surge of kinship with his new neighbour. For the next half hour they sat in silence, drinking their drinks, smoking their cigarettes and looking at the stars.

  Drexler mopped his brow and glanced over at McQuarry, who was at the edge of the clearing sucking on a well-earned cigarette. The heat was stifling in the bowl, despite the disappearance of the sun two hours previously, and the dozens of people labouring away under the fierce glare of the arc lights were visibly wilting.

  Sheriff Dupree was speaking to the lead forensic technician and pulled a blue handkerchief across his podgy red face to soak up as much sweat as possible. The Crime Scene Investigator he spoke with held a small brush in his gloved hand, the bristles of which were covered in dust, removed from newly uncovered skeletal bones. His face was covered by a mask and his whole body by a protective suit. Only his eyes and the bridge of his nose were visible, but still the beads of perspiration stood out like ball bearings. Mosquitoes and flies hovered in the hope of a meal.

  Standing below ground level, the CSI levered himself out of the trench with the aid of a hand from Dupree. He waved a hand towards the rock wall of the clearing, which had now been cleared of all the decomposing vehicles. Instead a network of trenches and body-sized holes covered the ground, and more were being marked out with tape by at least a dozen similarly attired men.

  Drexler looked over at McQuarry. She caught his eye briefly before turning away to pull another cigarette from her rapidly dwindling pack and lighting it with an urgent inhalation of blue smoke. She’d been there when they’d found the vaguely recognisable bodies of three of the Bailey family in a pair of graves – the father George, fully clothed on his back at the bottom of the pit with a large bullet hole in the front of his skull, mother Tania, lying naked and on top of him, also with the telltale star-shaped hole, this time in the back of her head. One of the girls – possibly the younger daughter Sally, to judge from her frail physique – was in a separate shallow grave next to them, also naked, also shot through the back of the head. Her corpse seemed fresher than her parents’; she’d been kept alive for days or even weeks after her parents had been executed and that, in addition to her state of undress, had clearly flagged up the nature of her ordeal. Of the other daughter, Nicole, there was as yet no sign.

  McQuarry, a battle-hardened veteran, betrayed no visible reaction but as they stood together over the tiny girl’s grave while the CSI brushed the dirt from the exit wound in her eye socket, Drexler could almost hear the tension in her body as her knuckles clenched inside her protective gloves. He could see this one troubled her and McQuarry had barely spoken since the girl had been disinterred with all the respect and solemnity required.

  She did say one thing that struck Drexler. At one point McQuarry had taken his arm and guided him towards the little girl’s corpse, still being carefully disentangled from the earth. She pointed at the girl and turned to him. ‘Take a long look, Mike. Remember that face.’ Then she’d stalked away to devour another cigarette, her back to the excavations.

  ‘How many?’ asked Drexler when Dupree was close enough to hear over the whine of the generator.

  Dupree held the clutch of missing persons reports up to his face to check, as though he hadn’t already done the math. ‘Sixteen bodies so far. From the MP reports we’re looking for at least another nine, including a three-year-old child and two … babies. Six and eight months old.’ Dupree couldn’t hold Drexler’s eye. Drexler knew then that the sheriff was a father and lowered his own head in vicarious commiseration. ‘How’s your partner bearing up, Mike?’

  ‘She’s fine, Andy. Ed’s the thinker. Just giving her some room to work the angles.’

  Dupree allowed him a watery smile. ‘’Course. Good idea.’

  ‘Any preliminary forensics?’

  ‘We’ve recovered several guns that belonged to Caleb Ashwell from the cabin so we’ll see what Ballistics have to say when we dig out the bullets. But as for trace…’ he shrugged ‘…in this heat, decomposition is a lot quicker. Some of these vics are over twenty years in the soil. The Bailey family will probably give us the best chance. They’re freshest.’ The two law enforcement officers exchanged a grim smile. ‘’Specially the girl.’

  ‘Poor kid,’ nodded Drexler. ‘It’s not hard to imagine…’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Dupree looked up at him sharply. ‘Then for her sake, try harder. Let’s give her that peace at least.’

  Drexler lowered his head.
‘Any sign of the older sister – Nicole?’

  ‘Not yet. She may yet be in here but it’s mighty crowded. We’ve found some human remains out in the forest so it seems they didn’t always bury them.’

  ‘That figures. I’d be dumping them someplace else, Andy. It’d be safer to leave the bodies in a shallow grave in the wilderness. The animals would soon cover your tracks for you. Nobody would ever find them whole.’

  ‘Then why keep any of the bodies so close to the house?’

  Drexler fixed him with a knowing eye. ‘You sure you want me to answer that?’

  Dupree looked around and shook his head. ‘Right. Keeps the jackoff closer to home. God in heaven. Maybe it’s time to put in my papers and buy a boat.’

  ‘You’ll get past it.’

  ‘Maybe. But Markleeville’s my home and it won’t ever be the same. Gonna be a pervert’s playground when this shit breaks. God knows how many ghouls and murder tourists we’re gonna get around here, getting off on this.’

  ‘Always someone knitting at an execution, Andy.’

  The sheriff blew out his cheeks. ‘Know what, Mike? If I’m reading this right, when we find whoever took out the Ashwells, we should strike them some kinda medal. Better yet, whyn’t you and Ed just go on home and forget about this case and we’ll let the people who done this to Caleb and Billy just live out their days in peace. God knows they’ve earned it.’

  ‘Billy was just a kid, Andy. We can’t be sure he was involved. He may have been coerced.’

  ‘Coerced my ass.’ With that the Sheriff spat heavily on the ground and walked back down the track and out of the clearing.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘We got three more female bodies from the clearing,’ said Dupree, putting the phone down and finishing a note on his pad. ‘That makes nineteen.’ Dupree hesitated over the next piece of information. ‘Two adult females, one naked … and one little girl. They’re exhuming as we speak.’

  He cleared his throat and looked up at Drexler and McQuarry sitting across the office. ‘Where were we? Right, Caleb Ashwell and his wife Mandy-Sue bought the gas station in 1974, twenty-one years ago. The year after that the Campbell family go missing somewhere in the state while on vacation. Their vehicle was the oldest in the clearing. It’s not a stretch to assume they stopped for gas and that Caleb, maybe with his wife’s help, maybe not, overwhelmed the family and drove their vehicle into the clearing. The bodies are buried nearby, though there’s no way of telling how long after they were attacked. Our best stab at motive so far is robbery, but I don’t need to spell out other possible motives…’