Night Wind

by Stephen Mertz

  "When I was home, I had to get out and do something."

  "I was going to point that out."

  "Why do you think someone has the telephones tapped?"

  "Because something this big, involving the deaths of all those people . . . if there is a guiding hand, they'd want to keep a close tab on things. Monitoring communications would be a basic step. That's why, if this far-out scenario of mine is the case, and we're trying to get a handle on it, we cannot trust the phone lines in Devil Creek."

  "Everything linked together," she said slowly. "I'm having trouble with that. Mike, I know how strongly you feel about Paul. I hope you're not overreacting."

  "If that's the case, no one will be happier than me."

  "You've got to admit, your scenario sounds paranoid."

  "A placid little town, a beautiful setting, miles from nowhere, and all of a sudden, in one week's time, all bloody hell breaks loose." His frown deepened. "How many people dead? A town pulled apart at the seams by festering, debilitating fear and distrust. Does that just happen?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Robin, my gut tells me that things like this, this concentrated and intense, don't just happen. An old Indian who isn't around anymore thought there were evil spirits coming to Devil Creek. It's beginning to look like he was right."

  "Now that is stretching it."

  "That's what I thought. What I think now is that it's stretching it to think that this string of tragedies is nothing more than a freakish coincidence. My gut tells me that something here is way out of whack. Maybe I was a newspaperman for too long. Or a soldier for too long. But I put a lot of stock in what my gut tells me."

  "I've noticed."

  "And if there's one chance in a million that Paul's disappearance is in any way connected with what we're talking about, my way of doing something is to find a phone that isn't tapped."

  "How do you know you can trust the phones at the truck stop?"

  "If someone has the town under surveillance, they've been able to do so and avoid detection even with all the heavy attention Devil Creek's getting from the authorities and the media. That means they've got a small, concealed listening post." He tugged thoughtfully at an earlobe.

  "Whoever's monitoring the phones would want a contact inside of the community. Someone no one would suspect. Someone to monitor that human factor; the sort of things telephone taps don't reveal." He slapped the palm of one hand against the steering wheel. "I can't get over the vague impression of some kind of crazy experiment going on. I mean, in terms of a behavioral study, Devil Creek offers almost laboratory conditions because it is so isolated."

  "This person on the inside," Robin said. "It would have to be someone that everyone in town knows and trusts; someone at the center of the social and business scene."

  Lines of concentration appeared, etched into Mike's expression. "Most folks around town were born and raised here. I don't want to agree too much with the folks who suspect me, but they've got a point about one thing. It could be someone who's been around here just long enough to be trusted."

  Her gaze moved to the night being probed by the headlight beams. "Mrs. Lufkin told me that you and Paul and I were the first people to move to town since Charlie Flagg moved here a year ago."

  "Charlie's been acting stranger and stranger ever since this began."

  She thought about that. "So has everyone else in town. No, it can't be Mr. Flagg. He came to Paul's and my rescue that first day when we got here, when we were being hassled by the Caldwells. Charlie Flagg is the one who sent me to Mrs. Lufkin to rent that house."

  "And I work for Charlie. I know what you mean. I like the guy. Everyone does. Maybe that's my point. I'm not sure, either."

  A light flickered deep within her subconscious, and she found herself saying, "There was one strange thing that I noticed when Mr. Flagg stopped to help Paul and me. I guess I just never gave it much thought, but now—"

  For the briefest moment his eyes left the road, studying her. "Tell me. We're grabbing at straws here. Anything could help."

  "It's just that, well, I haven't thought about it since it happened, but . . . Mr. Flagg was driving from the direction of town when he stopped to help. He got rid of Bobby and Tobe. And then, after he helped us, he made a U-turn and drove back into town. That's kind of strange, isn't it?"

  Mike nodded. "Almost as if he was watching you from a distance, maybe with binoculars from higher ground. When he saw what was happening, he made a point to drive out and assist you." He repeated the gesture of striking the steering wheel in frustration with an open palm. "I really don't get any of this."

  "Mike, I just want Paul to be waiting at home when I call, to tell me that he got lost or he's sorry but he met some new friends and they were playing video games or watching some stupid movie and they forgot about the time. Maybe he met a girl. Maybe my son is falling in love."

  "Robin, stop. Don't lose it now. We can't afford that. You know if that were the case, Paul would have called home before this. As for you and me, if we don't know who to trust except each other, that means we're going to have to depend on each other."

  "You're right." She inhaled a deep breath, tried counting to ten but got impatient by five. "I'm sorry. So okay, we're giving serious consideration to an experiment and or a conspiracy. If people like that got their hands on a child after the things they've already done . . . Mike, are we going crazy? Can any of this really be happening? Maybe you and I are in the grip of the same distrust and fear and paranoia you were just talking about."

  Up ahead was the turnoff for the rest area. Picnic tables, black and slick in the rain, were near rest rooms and a pay phone under a single amber light.

  "Call home," he urged. "If Paul's not there, we'll get something to eat, I'll make my call and you can keep trying home from the truck stop,"

  "I don't know if I can eat. My stomach's in knots." He brought the Jeep to a stop beside the pay phone.

  "Robin, you should make yourself eat. You're running on adrenaline now, but tomorrow you'll want to be wide awake for the search, and running on empty won't take you very far. If you can't get a night's sleep tonight, at least give your body some fuel to run on."

  "I'll try." She stepped from the Jeep. "After I call home."

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  At five-thirty, Ben Saunders met in a Town Hall conference room with his deputies and the local men and women who would lead the volunteer search and rescue teams. A light dusting of snow had fallen on the mountains during the night. The sky had cleared to the north with patches of red tinting the blue here and there amid gunmetal gray clouds. Sunlight pouring in through the conference room's eastern windows did nothing to alleviate the chill of the room, nor did the smell of coffee from a percolator.

  Ben stood at the head of the conference table. A forest service map of this corner of the county was spread out before him. The others stood clustered around while he finished using a red felt-tipped pen to mark off and assign the search grids.

  "Volunteers will be showing up at the base camp at 0600. We'll be there and set up by then. When the volunteers start arriving, divide them into the proper-size groups and aim at having everything operational by 0700."

  That was about it. People finished their coffee, slipping into their coats and jackets.

  Ben caught sight of Myra Kartchner in the doorway. He went over to her. "Myra, what is it? You look upset."

  Myra Kartchner was the small-town version of a society matron: in her sixties, wide of girth, rosy-cheeked, given to wearing prim ankle-length skirts and white blouses. She had taken the dispatcher job after the last of her children left home for Brigham Young University in Provo. She and her husband owned acreage west of town. At the moment, her normally rosy cheeks were ashen and her eyes were sad. "There's been another one."

  "Oh, hell. Every available officer I've got is out there covering the streets. When we got past midnight, I thought we'd made it through a night. Well, who was it?"
r />   "Connie Silva."

  "Oh, no."

  "A neighbor just reported it."

  "I'll get Ray and we'll roll. Notify the proper agencies."

  Myra's normally rosy cheeks were alabaster white. "I know the agency numbers by heart. But, Chief, there's something different this time."

  "What?"

  "There's a witness. A neighbor says she saw the killer leaving the Silva house."

  "Do we have an ID?"

  "The neighbor says yes, but she wouldn't tell me over the phone. She sounded extremely reluctant to say anything. You'd better hurry."

  The witness was a jowly, fifty-eight year old woman named Mrs. Rogers. Her hair had been in curlers, her vastly overweight form wrapped into a threadbare terrycloth robe. She had a voice made raspy by years of whiskey and cigarettes. But her eyes had been sober, troubled, and unsure when they'd spoken minutes earlier.

  Ben had taken one look at what the killer had done to Connie Silva, then had turned away and leaned against a tree to take in large gulps of oxygen. He hadn't puked, but he'd come close. Then he'd crossed the street to see Mrs. Rogers while Rinehart checked in on the neighbors Mrs. Rogers had left Connie Silva's children with after finding the body.

  "When I heard the sound of breaking glass from the direction of Connie's house, I looked out my window," the neighbor lady told Ben. "At first I thought maybe I hadn't heard anything after all, but I watched the house for awhile anyway, and that's when I saw him. He left Connie's house. He passed under the street lamp. He was walking fast, but I saw him clear enough. There wasn't anybody stirring in the neighborhood except for me and him."

  Ben hoped he was doing a professional job of concealing his impatience. "And who did you see, Mrs. Rogers?"

  "There's just one thing more, Chief Saunders, and you'll understand when I tell you."

  Ben did a marvelous job of not reaching out with both hands and throttling the old biddy. "Yes ma'am, and what would that be?"

  "I want you to promise me you'll be the one to get him," said Mrs. Rogers emphatically. "I want you to promise me you won't turn this over to them outside police fellers with their fancy suits and them modern cars that you can't tell apart. Devil Creek has always looked after its own. That's the way it ought to be now."

  "Yes ma'am, I promise. Now who did you see?"

  Reverend Kroeger's wife had passed away ten years earlier. The Reverend maintained the home they'd lived in, a ranch-style house on a lot adjacent to the church grounds. Ben braked the police cruiser to a stop behind a late model New Yorker parked in the driveway. He and Rinehart stepped from their car. The yard was splashed with cool sunshine that burnished the well-trimmed lawn and shrubbery in shades of gold.

  Ben touched the hood of the New Yorker. "Not even warm. This car hasn't been anywhere."

  They crossed to the house. The frost had melted, leaving the grass with a spongy texture. No one was in sight. A few cars were parked in the church lot, most likely staff or some of the congregation showing up early to get things ready for Sunday services. A kid pedaled past on a bicycle, tossing newspapers into yards.

  No one responded to Ben's knock on the front door. Rinehart's hand was on his holstered pistol, his eyes watching their surroundings. Ben scanned the house. The draperies were drawn. The doors were shut.

  He said to Rinehart, "You take the back. I'll take the front. I've been here a couple of times. The Reverend's wife and my wife were friends. There's a hall that runs straight from the front to the back door. We'll be able to see each other."

  "Funny," Roy said. His eyes were diamond-hard and unemotional, with all the humor of a marine caught in the middle of a killing field. "I've known Reverend Kroeger since I was a kid. My folks aren't church people, but I've seen him around town so often I guess I never gave him a thought. That old gal, Mrs. Rogers. You think we can trust her eyes?"

  "I looked into her eyes," said Ben. "I believe her." He drew his service revolver. Rinehart did the same. "Be ready for anything, son."

  "I am," said Roy. "You know what really pisses me off?"

  "Tell me."

  "It's going on 0600. The search and rescue is kicking off for those boys on the mountain. Instead of helping out over there like we should be, we have to deal with this scumbag."

  "So let's make fast work of it."

  Rinehart crossed the driveway, passed the New Yorker and disappeared from sight around the side of the house.

  Ben held his pistol down as unobtrusively as possible against his leg. He looked through the glass window set in the door, down the length of the hallway bisecting the Reverend's house. Seconds later he saw Roy, who returned his nod from beyond the glass of the rear door.

  Ben rapped his knuckles sharply on the Reverend's front door again.

  "Reverend! This is Chief Saunders. I have a deputy with me. We need to speak with you. Please open the door."

  Then he heard for the first time the weird, ululating moaning sound that could have been mistaken for last night's wind that had rattled every window in town as it moaned down off the mountain. This was a human sound, a primal moaning, unidentifiable as either animal or human, coming from somewhere within this house but sounding distant, as if it came from the bottom of a pit far, far away.

  Ben tried the door. It was unlocked. At the rear of the house, Roy also let himself in. They advanced cautiously and met in the living room. The interior of the house was sparsely furnished, meticulously maintained. There was an immaculate, antiseptic feel to the interior, as if no one really lived here. The whimpering sound was louder inside the house.

  Ben followed his ears, which led him down a short corridor past a step-in closet opposite a room with a washer and dryer, beyond which were the stairs to the basement. The moaning—painful, plaintive, mournful—came from down there, at the bottom of those stairs.

  Rinehart watched Ben for instructions. Ben silently motioned for Roy to follow. They started down, descending step by creaking step into the musty, close, dank smell down where a faint light burned. From somewhere beyond their range of vision, beyond the bottom of the stairs, the moaning became a weeping.

  A desperate voice was crying, "I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry . . ." over and over again as if in fervent prayer.

  Ben reached the bottom step, setting foot on the dirt floor of the cellar, his pistol held in a two-handed Weaver grip, ready for target acquisition. Rinehart held a similar position several paces away, covering him. It was a typical cramped basement: a musty clutter of old boxes crammed with junk beneath a low ceiling.

  Reverend Kroeger was kneeling near the furnace. He wore clerical black.

  Rinehart gasped. "God in heaven."

  "More like hell on earth," said Ben. He lowered his pistol.

  Kroeger was beating his thin, willowy chest with his clasped hands, his features a bright purple, his entire body trembling, his eyes clamped shut. In a voice racked with pain, he resumed the anguished moaning that sounded to Ben, even in the confines of the basement, like that night wind. Then the moaning became words again.

  "Forgive me, God. It made me do those things . . . the beast. . . . Forgive me, Father. Forgive me!"

  The Reverend then began mumbling the Lord's Prayer; breathy, gasping, anguished. The front of his trousers were soaked with fresh blood that glistened in the faint glow of the bare bulb suspended from the ceiling. Two things were on the dirt floor near him.

  A steak knife, slick with blood.

  And Reverend Kroeger's raggedly severed manhood, lying there like a small, strange dead animal.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Paul awoke with a sob.

  His first thought was that he hoped no one heard him. The jolt of pain that woke Paul also made him smack his head against the low rock overhang where he'd spent the night. He bit his tongue, not making another sound. He told himself that he must get his bearings. The whistling of the wind had been constant throughout the night, the wailing of the wind hurting his ears and making the cold w
orse, even beneath the rock formation that provided a windbreak.

  He delicately parted his jacket and shirt. He didn't want to, but forced himself to look at his wound. The gash where the bullet had grazed his side was redder than it had been last night. The area around it was an ugly purple color. The blood was caked black. It hurt more than anything he could remember, even more than that time back in Chicago when he'd lost control of his bicycle and scraped his hands raw when he'd slid across the gravel. That pain had been bad, but this was much worse. He stretched his legs. At first, his calves ached from having been held in one position throughout the night. He scissored his legs back and forth as much as he could in the narrow space beneath the overhang, wiggling his toes in his sneakers. He fluttered his fingers. He hadn't gotten frostbite.

  The call of wolves had carried to him while he'd tried to sleep, and twice something else had tugged him from restless sleep: a rumbling sound he knew from the movies. The rotors of a helicopter! A searchlight had swept within fifty feet of where he hid.

  He had not left his hiding place.

  The men who killed Jared and Mr. Flagg were after him. He'd seen movies where the bad guys worked for secret U.S. agencies that no one knew anything about, buried deep within the government. What if the men who had killed Mr. Flagg and Jared were with such an agency? If they and the man in the white smock were with the government, they wouldn't want any living witnesses to what they'd done. They'd call in helicopters to look for him, to find him and kill him. So he stayed where he was both times when helicopters had flown by. He had not gone out and waved to them like everything within him wanted to. His only hope was to try and make it down off the mountain on his own.

  He should never have gone with Jared. He should have learned his lesson last week when Jared had taken him to spy on the Caldwell brothers and that girl. Yesterday, he should have gone hiking with Mike, like they'd planned.