Night Terror

by Chandler McGrew

  “Thanks, Sam. We’re all right.”

  Sam nodded, waddling along to the door. “Audrey’s too sensitive. She feels things you and I don’t. It’s a mother thing. That can be a wonderful gift sometimes. At other times it can be the worst kind of hell. It’ll drive a woman crazy. I know I watched it eating at Aggie.”

  “You got that right,” said Richard, stepping out into sunlight that held no warmth.

  21

  THE BELL-LIKE BAYING of the hound shattered Virgil’s thoughts. He glanced over the bridge railing, down toward the creek. The big black-and-tan bounced on the end of his thick leather leash like a puppy, but Bill Keens, the dog’s trainer, glanced up at Virgil and shook his head.

  “He’s just excited,” said Bill. “He gets frustrated when he can’t find anything.”

  “Nothing?”

  “If that boy was here, Sentry would have picked up something, even after all this time,” said Bill. “This dog’s got a nose like Jimmy Durante. I think the bastard just dumped the bike here.”

  “Give it a little more work,” said Virgil.

  “Okay,” said Bill, turning reluctantly back toward the woods. “But I’m telling you it’s a waste of time.”

  Virgil watched Bill and the dog disappear into the trees. He hadn’t informed Tom Merrill about the bike yet, and he wasn’t about to call for a full search if even Sentry couldn’t find anything.

  The bike was Timmy Merrill’s all right. The boy had his name on a personalized plate underneath the seat. But the bike did nothing except lend credence to the voice out of Babs St. Clair’s mouth, and Virgil meant to talk to her about that this very day. He didn’t know if Babs was playing some kind of game or whether they’d all been the brunt of some weird coincidence. But someone was going to explain to him how he ended up finding the boy’s bike right where Babs had said it would be.

  Virgil had been up off and on all night, getting Doris water, cleaning her bedpan, feeding her pills. She was resting easier before he left, but he felt even more done in than usual and the day had just started. The only thing that kept him going was his desire to bring the kidnapper of Timmy Merrill and Zach Bock to justice before he died.

  It was the same bastard both times. He felt it in his gut. Two different assholes hadn’t come into his county and committed the same crime four years apart. If Babs knew something, by God, she was going to tell him.

  He took the long way back to town, looping around by the Bock house to see if anything stirred in his head. Sometimes that happened, like he could hear a click and then things would fall together in his brain. Maybe passing by the scene of that crime would stir a recollection or tie two odd strands of information together in a new way.

  He rounded a sharp curve and started to ease past a parked Buick sedan when he spotted Dan McNeil off on the shoulder, driving one of his real estate signs into the rocky ground with a small sledgehammer. Dan waved and Virgil pulled over in front of his car.

  He sauntered across the shallow drainage ditch, smiling. Dan was one of Virgil’s staunchest supporters on the Board of Selectmen, and Virgil figured he was about the most trustworthy real estate agent in the area. Virgil and Doris had bought their house from Dan when he’d first gotten his license.

  “Catching any bad guys?” asked Dan, giving the sign a final whack and dropping the hammer onto the ground. He wiped sweat off his bald head with a light blue handkerchief that matched his shirt.

  “Not lately.”

  “How’s Doris?”

  “About the same. You know.”

  “Yeah. You doing all right?”

  Virgil glanced around at the thick forested area. “Yeah, fine. Living day to day. Whatcha selling, trees?”

  “Five acres of prime property. Heavily timbered. Private. Water frontage.”

  “Water frontage?”

  “There’s a small stream back through the woods,” said Dan, winking. “You look worn out, Virg.”

  “Bad night.”

  “Tell Doris our prayers are with her.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure that’ll mean a lot to her.”

  “What are you doing out this way?”

  “Just cruising. Say, you haven’t seen Cooder around, have you?”

  Dan frowned. “No. I haven’t been looking for him. Are you?”

  “Not really. I was just wondering.”

  “Why?”

  “He said something strange the other day. You know Cooder. It probably didn’t mean anything, but I still want to talk to him.”

  “Talking to Cooder is a waste of time.”

  “I know. But if you see him, give me a call. Okay?”

  “Sure, Virg. Want me to detain him?” Dan gave Virgil a sly look and Virgil smirked in reply.

  “A call will suffice.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with the Bock boy, does it?”

  Virgil stiffened. “Why would you say that?”

  Dan shrugged. He gave the sign a shake to test it, then looked back at Virgil. “You’re in the neighborhood, that’s all. And I know that one bugs you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Virg, everybody that knows you knows. Those two boys have been eating at you since they disappeared. You’re the only one who never noticed how obsessed you are.”

  Virgil’s voice rose a notch. “Obsessed?”

  Dan put both hands out in front of him, shaking his head. “Don’t get me wrong, Virg. Folks like having a sheriff they think really cares about them. But some of us worry that maybe you’re getting hurt by it. You hear me?”

  “Not that I don’t appreciate your concern, but I’m just doing my job.”

  “Sure, Virg. I didn’t mean anything by it. Hell, those two disappearances tore up everybody in the community. My wife cried every night for a month after Rosie killed herself.”

  Virgil nodded.

  “I get the creeps myself everytime I come around this area, to tell the truth,” said Dan. “Can’t see why anyone would want to live here.” He glanced at the sign and changed his tune. “Not that it’s a bad area. Just thinking out loud.”

  “Most folks up this way have lived here all their lives. Some for generations.”

  “Everybody but the Bocks and Merle Coonts.”

  “The Bocks’ neighbor?”

  “Yeah. The old farm just this side of Richard and Audrey’s place. You know the one. Merle’s semi is out front all the time. Merle bought the house two years ago.”

  “I didn’t know Merle bought the place. I thought he must be in the family and had taken it over.”

  “Merle had me find the owners. I worked as a buyer’s agent,” said Dan.

  “A buyer’s agent?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes people are looking for a particular property that might not be on the market, so they have an agent find one for them and they make an offer. That old farm had been sitting there for years. The owners got it in an estate and they lived in Florida. They didn’t want to fix it up and they were tired of paying taxes, but they still stuck us.”

  “Why didn’t you find another one? The county’s loaded with run-down old houses.”

  “Merle didn’t want another one. He wanted that one.”

  “Why?”

  “Beats me. I told him the same thing. Hell, I could have had him a new home built on prime property for what he paid for that place.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Go figure. I don’t argue with the customer. I closed the deal and it was fast and clean. Slam-bam and there’s my commission.”

  “Where did Coonts come from?”

  Dan frowned. “Out West, I think.”

  “And he moved all the way to the backwoods of Maine and couldn’t live without that old farm?”

  “Evidently.”

  “Who financed the house?” asked Virgil.

  “He paid cash.”

  “How does a trucker end up with that kind of money?”

  “I didn’t ask, Virg. That
’s really not my business.”

  “You had to be curious.”

  “Curious, sure. Inquisitive, no. I’m a salesman. The wrong question in my business can queer a deal.”

  As Virgil climbed back into the cruiser, Dan tossed the hammer into the trunk of his Buick and walked up alongside Virgil’s window.

  “Merle Coonts is a nice enough old boy, Virg. Don’t read too much into him buying that house. I mean, where was he the day Zach Bock disappeared? You questioned him, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “And?”

  “He was out of state the day it happened. On a run to the West Coast.”

  “So he’s clean.”

  “Yeah,” said Virgil. Coonts had produced his logs and they had backed up his story. Virgil had gone so far as to call one of the delivery points. Merle had been there, just when he said he had.

  Virgil drove away deep in thought. When he rounded the next curve he found himself staring at the Coonts place. Why would a man spend as much money as Merle had on the house and then leave it in such a state of disrepair? The corners were all out of plumb, boards were popping off the walls. The place looked like it would collapse in the next high wind.

  He watched the farm disappearing in the rearview mirror, waiting for the click, but nothing happened. So he stopped at the end of the Bocks’ driveway and stared at their nondescript little ranch house. Audrey had surrounded the place with sculptured hedges and shrubs. To Virgil, the place had a Hollywood feel, the way the shrubs blended into the gardens and the rock borders flowed around the trees, but he didn’t know that much about landscaping. Richard was going to need to get out the lawn mower pretty soon, though, or he’d have a real job after the first good rainstorm.

  Virgil pulled up near the side stoop, half-hoping that no one was home. But when Audrey’s face appeared in the window, he smiled. She opened the door too quickly and Virgil shook his head and held up one hand. He should have known what she’d think. Her sudden frown darkened a face that was meant to shine. That saddened Virgil. What the devil was he doing here anyway?

  “Hello, Sheriff,” she said, stepping back into the kitchen as he climbed the stoop. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sit,” she said, bringing a carafe and cups to the table. “Richard’s gone to work.”

  Virgil accepted a demitasse cup from Audrey, holding it self-consciously in his big hands. He and Audrey eyed each other, neither knowing what to say. Virgil figured the truth might be a start.

  “I don’t have any real news, Mrs. Bock,” he said. “I’m not even sure why I’m here.”

  “Audrey,” she said, nodding. “That’s all right. I’m glad to see you.”

  She acted artificially calm to Virgil’s mind. Her smile seemed glued on.

  “How have you been?” he asked.

  “Getting by. It’s been a little more than a year.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “I was in the hospital.”

  “I heard.”

  “They gave me some medicine.”

  He followed her eyes to the bottle beside the salt and pepper shakers. “Does it help?”

  “It makes me feel better. I don’t have so many… nightmares.”

  “I guess it’s good for you, then.”

  “I thought I saw Zach, you know,” she said, staring straight through him.

  She seemed hollow somehow, and Virgil thought of Doris, fading away before his eyes. But he and Doris had grown kids. Grandkids. He and Doris had had a life. Richard and Audrey Bock’s lives had been ravaged before they’d had a chance to start.

  “In that window,” she said, pointing across the sink.

  Virgil stared at the sunlight glinting on the glass and, for just an instant, he, too, thought he saw something reflected there. “But you don’t see it now? With your medicine?”

  She shook her head. “I thought I saw him in the fountain out back too. But that was before I started taking the pills.”

  “How’s Richard?”

  “He’s all right. He’s at work now.”

  It didn’t sound like she remembered telling him that already.

  “I wish I had more to tell you, Audrey. I wish with all my heart I could have done more.”

  “You did everything you could, I guess. It wasn’t you. It was me.”

  He frowned. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Audrey. Don’t ever think that. It was something that was going to happen and it did. There was nothing that you could have done. You couldn’t be there with Zach all the time.”

  “It was me,” she whispered. “I did it. We didn’t close the door.”

  “What door, Audrey?”

  “We didn’t close it all the way and it got open again and now Zach’s gone. It’s my fault. I should have kept it closed.”

  Her voice was artificially calm, like her eyes. But the words were those of a mother crying alone in the dark, calling for her son, blaming herself because there was no one else to blame.

  “What door?”

  “The door to the basement. Where the little girl was.”

  “What little girl?”

  “The other little girl.”

  “What other little girl?”

  Audrey buried her face in her hands and shook her head. “I don’t know!”

  She seemed to have crossed over into someplace where Virgil couldn’t reach her. But something about the conversation reminded him of the weird dialogue he’d had with Babs, the way he seemed to be talking to more than one person. He sensed that there might be real answers here if only he knew the right buttons to push.

  “Who’s the girl, Audrey?”

  She squinted, as though trying to see down a long dark tunnel. “I don’t know who she is.”

  She chewed her lip so hard Virgil was afraid she’d bite through it. He glanced at the bottle of pills, wondering if she needed another one or if she had taken one too many.

  “She’s locked up in the basement,” she whispered. “She can’t get out.”

  “Who, Audrey?” It all sounded so crazy. Virgil wondered if he should carry on with the conversation. Was it possible he was hurting her, driving her into madness? Playing with a person’s mind was something a shrink could take responsibility for. Virgil didn’t want to. But Audrey wouldn’t stop now.

  “She won’t let the little girl go.”

  “Who has the little girl?”

  “My mother.”

  That didn’t sound like a hallucination. It sounded like a certainty. But the look in her eyes told him she had just discovered it. She stared at him as though waiting for confirmation.

  “Your mother locked a child in her basement?”

  When she spoke, he knew his reading of her was right. She had just realized what had happened. Or just remembered it. If it had really happened. “Yes,” she said.

  He stared at her face and tried to remember what Audrey had looked like during the search for Zach. Naturally she’d been distraught, wild-eyed, but now he had a sense that she was looking through some wall that he couldn’t even make out. She looked as though she was exhausted, just the way she’d been exhausted on that day a year ago.

  Was it true? Was her mother some kind of child abuser? Or was Audrey herself insane? And if she was, was it remotely possible that she’d had something to do with Zach’s disappearance? He didn’t want to believe that, but he knew mothers did sometimes get rid of their own children for whatever reasons.

  “Why would your mother do that?” he asked, leaning closer.

  “I don’t know. I followed her into the basement. It was dark and cold. I could hear the little girl crying. The dog was barking outside and I followed the voices.”

  “Followed them where?”

  “Into the room. Into the little room in the cellar.”

  Virgil glanced at the window and noticed that the glint of sunlight was gone from the glass. Shadows deepened in the woods outside and the kitchen was gloo
my and chill.

  “What happened there, Audrey? What happened in that little room?”

  Her eyes flashed and her face tightened. “I don’t know!” She clinched her fists and pounded her thighs until he gripped them and forced her to look him in the eye. Finally she focused on him and slowly her face softened. “I don’t know,” she repeated as he released her hands, both of them embarrassed by the intimacy.

  She seemed to be back with him, but he had no idea of where she had gone. Could her mother have possibly done the things Audrey said? Or was it the drug talking? Could Audrey have been deranged all along?

  “What did your mother do to you, Audrey?”

  “Nothing,” she said. She stared at him as though that remark, too, had been as much a revelation to her as it had to him. “She didn’t do anything to me.”

  “But she locked a little girl in her basement?”

  Audrey frowned. “I think so.”

  “Did she know that you knew?”

  “She found out that night. She saw me.”

  “What did she do?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Audrey… Do you think this has anything at all to do with Zach’s disappearance?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly.

  “How could it?” He was delving into completely unknown territory.

  “She has him,” she whispered. “I think she’s going to make him disappear.”

  “Has who?”

  “Zach. She’s going to make him disappear. Then she’ll say he’s gone.” The last words seemed forced from her lungs.

  “Disappear?”

  She shook her head, growing more agitated. “After she put the little girl in the basement, the little girl went away.”

  “Went away where?”

  “I can’t remember!” she screamed. “It’s all gone!” She pounded her temples and Virgil reached out and took both of her tiny hands into his giant mitts again.

  “Calm down, Audrey. Just tell me what you remember.”

  It took a moment for her to focus again. “Tara came and I went away.”

  “Went away where?”

  “Home. With Tara.”

  “Your aunt Tara? The one who came to stay with you when Zach was taken?” Virgil remembered her. She’d been the kind of person that takes over quietly in a crisis and makes sure the bills get paid and the lights are on when it gets dark and everyone gets fed. She was a striking woman, a gray-haired, older copy of Audrey. But the deputies had told him that there was a ruckus later and the aunt left. Virgil figured the pressure had built up pretty high in the little house. No wonder.