“Don’t attach any social or commercial significance to it,” Maybury said. “It was the biggest thing we could get for twelve hundred bucks. We haul a lot of stuff around.” He fished in a pocket, retrieved a wrinkled stick of gum, stared at it for a moment, unwrapped it and stuffed it into his mouth. “Francesca told us you have a problem. Want to tell me about it?”
Ford left to oversee the day’s activities as Gerhart and Maybury settled down across from each other at Gerhart’s desk. It took the Chief twenty minutes to outline the problems of the last few weeks. When he finished, Maybury sat and thought for a moment, then he raised his eyebrows and looked directly at Gerhart.
“You know,” he said, “except for Francesca, you don’t have a logical leg to stand on.”
Gerhart frowned and sat straight up in his chair.
Maybury grinned brightly and held both hands in front of him, palms toward the Chief. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’d be more skeptical if there were twelve little old ladies who all saw their dear, departed husbands. In the first place, Francesca is unique. When she speaks, we listen. Second, whatever is going on here is very subtle, in spite of all the weird happenings. But, as you pointed out, these episodes seem to be escalating. Tell you what. First thing I want to do is snoop. Incidents like those you’re experiencing are usually caused by something that happened in the past. How’s your local library?”
“About what you’d expect in a town this size. You might have better luck up in Perry, if you’re going for local history, but the best bet is Tallahassee. Have you got a motel room yet?”
“Nope.”
Gerhart reached for the phone. “Let me get you a room. We’ll take care of it. Keep track of your expenses and we’ll take care of those, too. Just don’t eat too much pheasant under glass. The town budget won’t stand it.”
“No problem,” Maybury said, standing. “I’ll get started. Just point me toward the motel so I’ll know where to sleep.”
When Francesca deVouziers had visited Gerhart three days earlier, first she dropped her bombshell, then offered assistance. She explained her “gift,” as she called it, then promised to leave if Gerhart wasn’t buying. He stared at her for a moment, weighing her sincerity. Then, inexplicably, a vision of a pilotless vacuum cleaner in Roberta Valentine’s living room flashed through his mind. “Go on, Ms. DeVouziers, I’m listening.”
She explained about the psychological beating she had suffered at the mall and how she knew that something evil was infecting it. Then she leaned back and waited while Gerhart worked to absorb what she had told him. Finally, he nodded his head.
“I believe you. I’m not sure why, exactly, but there is something going on. There have been too many accidents and strange happenings. They can’t all be coincidences.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll appreciate any help you can give me. They didn’t teach us anything about this sort of crime at the Academy.” He leaned back and smiled, trying to make a joke out of it. Francesca read between the lines. This policeman was worried.
“I can’t do anything, personally. This is way out of my league. But I know a psychic research group that may be able to help.”
“Are you staying in Trinidad long?”
Francesca shivered slightly. “No. I don’t think I can stand another encounter like the one I had. I was just passing through anyway.” She stood and reached a slender hand across the desk.
Gerhart stood and shook the hand. “Ms. DeVouziers, I appreciate you taking the time to come in. I had no idea where to start.”
Francesca smiled brightly, showing perfect teeth. “It’s been a pleasure. You’re one of the few people who hasn’t laughed in my face the first time I mention my gift. I’ll see if I can reach my friends for you. Good luck.”
Maurice Rouen called Gerhart the next day.
“Francesca deVouziers said you are having some sort of problem down there.”
“You could say that,” Gerhart answered. “She told me you were an expert on…things.”
There was a chuckle on the other end of the line, then Rouen laughed aloud. “Things. I like that. Nobody wants to say ghosts or spirits or demons. Things. Got to remember that. So, what’s happening, Chief Kable? It is Chief, right?”
“Yeah. Here’s the picture.”
Gerhart spent five minutes outlining the disturbances in the mall. When he was finished Rouen was silent for a moment.
“Okay,” Rouen said. “We’re in a Winnebago right now, somewhere between Great Falls, Montana and the North Dakota border. Just a second. What? Oh. My wife says we just passed through Winnett. I still don’t know where we are. I’m going to call a buddy of mine who’s down around Meridian, Mississippi someplace. Name’s Archie Maybury. He should be wrapping things up there in a couple of days. I’ll see if he can’t run down and talk to you. Maybe he can get a handle on something.”
“Do you have people all over the country?”
“Yeah. All eight of us. We go where the action is. Just a bunch of fun loving folks, that’s us. Ha. My wife is making obscene hand gestures. Listen, Chief. We’re a nonprofit bunch. We run on a slim grant, donations and such. Do you think you could cover some of Archie’s expenses? Just the basics.”
“No problem. I’ll think of a way to slip it past the board.”
“Great. I’ll give him your number and you guys can make the arrangements.”
“Mr. Rouen, I appreciate the help.”
“Call me Maurice. We ain’t helped, yet. But you’re welcome.”
Maybury returned two days later. He wasn’t smiling. “I couldn’t find a damn thing,” he said with a shake of his head. “I don’t get it. Usually, it doesn’t take any time at all. There’ll be an ax murder, or an Indian mound, or a massacre, something in the past that I can sink my teeth into. I never researched anyplace as fast as I did Trinidad. I looked through the newspaper morgues and the libraries. I dug through a lot of stuff at the library in Tallahassee. Man, do they have stuff to dig through! But near as I can find out, there weren’t any Indians around here to speak of. They were all farther south or up north. This place is more devoid of human history than anywhere I’ve ever been.”
Gerhart leaned back in his chair. “So, what do we do now?”
Maybury spread his arms, palms up. “Now that I’ve got a little background information, let’s take a look at this mall of yours. I don’t like to go into a location cold.”
Maybury drove the old Cadillac around behind the mall and stopped near the service entrance to the food court. He and Gerhart climbed out and Maybury went to the rear door of the hearse, opened it and rummaged about in the back of the vehicle.
“What’s all that stuff?” Gerhart wanted to know.
“Mostly modified electronic surveillance equipment of various types. I’ve also got a gas powered generator so I can run it out in the boonies.”
He fished a black box the size of a large car battery out from under an old blanket. It had three dials and a pair of meters on one side, a jack with a set of headphones on the top and an electric cord that came out of the back. Maybury and Gerhart stepped through the door into the food court storeroom. Maybury found a wall socket and plugged the box in. Then he slipped the headphones on and flipped a switch.
Archie Maybury screamed and yanked the headphones off. Gerhart gaped at him with surprise. Maybury grimaced and rubbed both ears with the palms of his hands. Finally he took a deep breath and looked at Gerhart.
“Wow. My ears are still ringing.”
Gerhart closed his mouth and swallowed. “What happened?”
“This is sort of like a decibel meter,” Maybury said, pointing to his box. “Psychic energy is similar to brain waves. It generates tiny amounts of electricity. But the amount is so small you can’t pick it up with commercial equipment. That’s why we have to make our own. Usually, when I first turn this on, I don’t get anything. It has to be tuned like an old short-wave radio. That’s what the knobs and meters are for. But, man! The
re’s something here, all right. I’ve never heard the receiver scream that way.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Maybury said, “that whatever is in here is stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced. I don’t like it. I think I’d better call Maurice.”
Byron Skjelgaard chewed a large hunk of cheeseburger and stared through the big plate glass window at the street outside. He wished he was already in Atlanta. It was just too damn hot and humid down here, and the story he was chasing had dried up and blown away like dandelion spore. He hoped with all his heart that the rumor about the Atlanta aliens was worth the drive. He really needed the money. He picked up his cup and slurped at the rest of the cold coffee.
When the lime green hearse with the big tailfins flashed across his line of vision, he sat motionless for a moment, wondering why it looked familiar. Then he jumped up, dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter next to his half-eaten cheeseburger and ran out the front door, leaving an astonished waitress holding the coffee pot tilted above Skjelgaard’s abandoned cup.
By the time he hit the sidewalk the hearse was gone. But Trinidad wasn’t that big. Skjelgaard leaped into his old Camaro and goosed it up the street as fast as he dared in the wake of the hearse. His haste was rewarded with a glimpse of the big vehicle as it turned into the parking lot at the mall. Now that his quarry was once more in sight, Skjelgaard took a deep breath and slowed to a legal speed. As he got closer he was able to make out the license plate. It was from Minnesota. Grinning broadly, Skjelgaard trundled along after the hearse at a good distance until it pulled up behind the mall. Then he whipped the Camaro into a parking space and settled down to see what would happen next.
Byron Skjelgaard liked to think of himself as a crafty and clever freelance investigative reporter. Most of those who knew him thought of him mostly by his initials—B.S. One of his former bosses had even gone so far as to dub him Skulldead. Fortunately, the nickname didn’t get out. Skjelgaard’s grandfather was the founder of the only Danish language newspaper in the Midwest. The paper gained quite a following in the waning days of the 19th century. But by 1920, most of the Danish speaking population didn’t any more, so Anders Skjelgaard switched to English. But the subscriptions dwindled anyway so Anders finally threw in the towel. His son, Walter, had to find a job elsewhere. He went to work for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and ultimately gained a reputation as a talented newspaperman, one with integrity. Byron watched his father, Walter, reap the benefits of his talent and yearned to be just like him. But he simply didn’t have the proper mental equipment.
Byron Skjelgaard was fired first from the Globe-Democrat, where he was hired on the strength of his father’s performance, then in rapid succession from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Tribune. He tried the Kankakee Journal in Illinois, the Southeast Missourian in Cape Girardeau and a series of Corn Belt locals in central Iowa. One afternoon as he sat in a bar and wondered how to pay the next month’s rent he heard two of the other patrons discuss a lad of eight or nine who had become locked in an abandoned refrigerator for several hours. While waiting to be rescued, the boy had found a sealed jar of pickled pigs feet sitting next to him in the fridge. He tried eating one and deemed it unfit for human consumption just as his frightened mother opened the door and hauled him out.
Byron Skjelgaard penned the story of the youth, labeled it “Boy Trapped in Refrigerator—Eats Foot” and sent it off to one of the supermarket tabloids. Nobody was more surprised than Skjelgaard when a check arrived by return mail along with a letter requesting more of the same. Skjelgaard had found his niche in life.
Skjelgaard definitely had a nose for weird news. He had stumbled across the lime-green hearse several years earlier in Madison, Wisconsin where it was parked in front of a Victorian mansion. He called in a favor from a member of the Wisconsin Highway Patrol and discovered the vehicle was owned by a group of psychic researchers. Although he didn’t find a story that time, Skjelgaard figured people in such an unorthodox line of work would ultimately be good for something. He filed the description of the hearse away in his catchall brain for future reference. Considering what his job paid, Skjelgaard couldn’t afford to forget anything.
A half hour later the two men Skjelgaard was waiting for came out of the mall and drove away. When the hearse drew up in front of the police station, the reporter pulled to the curb and watched the passenger disembark and enter the building as the hearse drove away. Skjelgaard shut off his engine and climbed from the car.
When he flashed his press card at the girl in the reception area of the police station and asked to talk to someone concerning the problem at the shopping mall, she avoided his gaze and told him she wasn’t aware of any problem at the mall. Her inability to look him straight in the eye told him she knew otherwise. Byron Skjelgaard left the police station and went in search of a cheap motel room.
Skjelgaard spent three days digging through old newspapers at the library and talking to waitresses, barbers, store clerks and anybody else who would stand still for more than thirty seconds. At the end of those three days he knew as much as anybody about what had happened at the mall since it was built. Then he returned to his motel room, sat down at his laptop and went to work.
Chapter Thirteen
October 10, 2004
Virginia Kable felt that she amounted to something in the community. She didn’t want to think about where she would be today if her husband was still on the force in Orlando. It would be better, of course, if Gerhart was Mayor of Trinidad. Virginia intended to push in that direction the minute Gerhart was pushable. But right now, she was busy being Chairperson of the cancer fundraiser and wife of the Chief of Police. It was only a week until the kickoff dinner dance at the country club.
Virginia Kable—as was fitting for the most important woman at the event—was determined to be the belle of the ball. A new dress was required. Although she didn’t put any stock in Gerhart’s opinion that something strange was happening at the mall, she had stayed away. There were times when it was prudent not to cross her husband and she had sensed that this was one of them. It had something to do with his tone of voice.
The problem was that she had shopped the area dry without finding the appropriate dress. Even a trip to Jacksonville one Sunday had proved fruitless. The only place left where she was certain to find what she needed was Chateau de Rachelle—in the mall. And screw the Chief of Police and his tone of voice.
Virginia climbed into her Volvo station wagon and backed down the driveway.
Rachel Kinder had opened her exclusive shop in downtown Trinidad despite dire predictions of bankruptcy from both her ex-husband and her bookkeeper. But she held the theory that a shop would be really exclusive only if it was somewhat remote. After all, everybody knew about the stores in Tallahassee and Jacksonville, but how many ladies shopped in Trinidad? It took a while but her theory proved to be sound. Her out-of-town clients—she refused to think of them as customers—mentioned only to their closest friends that they purchased most of their up-market gowns at an exclusive shop in Trinidad. A lot of the ladies knew nothing of the tiny coastal community but were willing to drive any distance in order to dress like a princess. When the news of the new mall hit the paper, Rachel Kinder was one of the first in line to talk about renting a store. She secured the most remote location in the mall, around the corner from Bonmark’s at the end of the corridor. The rent was quite a bit lower than the rest of the stores and she would still be rather hard to find.
Exclusivity doesn’t come cheap. Most of the women of Trinidad could feel the tug at their purse by merely walking past Chateau de Rachelle. Virginia marched in the front door and through the shop toward the room at the rear where they kept the finest gowns.
As the door opened, Caroline Lambert was standing at the counter next to the cash register. She looked up from an invoice and frowned slightly as she watched Virginia stride through the shop toward the rear. Caroline was one of Rachel Kinder’
s first employees and had waited on Virginia many times in the past. But today, the woman’s presence made her uneasy. Her mind flashed back to her first meeting with Virginia.
When the Kables had moved to Trinidad, Virginia needed someone to help clean the house they bought. Caroline Lambert answered the call. In retrospect, it seemed to her that Virginia had demanded a great deal from her. And the more she thought about it, the more she was sure that Mrs. Snooty Kable had taken advantage of her. Scrubbing toilets. Mopping floors. Polishing windows and counter tops. Grunt work. She seethed now at the thought of the indignities she had suffered at the hands of this bitch.
Caroline tossed the invoice onto the counter and stalked toward the back room. Virginia was examining something strapless in a pale blue.
“May I be of assistance, Mrs. Kable?” Caroline inquired with a saccharine smile.
Virginia spent the next forty-five minutes trying on dresses. Caroline thought the stupid cunt would never be finished, but finally she settled on a satin model in wispy peach and spent the next few minutes turning this way and that, admiring herself in the mirror. Caroline, in the meantime, had an idea.
“I’ll be right back, ma’am,” she said, leaving Virginia to her narcissism.
Caroline went out to the jewelry case and selected a heavy, solid gold necklace from the locked section of the case. When she returned, Virginia had unzipped the dress in preparation to removing it.
“Oh, just a moment,” Caroline purred. “Why don’t you try this with the dress?”
Virginia glanced around, smiled. “All right. Zip me back up.”
Caroling pulled the zipper up and slipped the necklace around Virginia’s neck. Then she gripped each end firmly, pulled it tight and kicked Virginia’s feet out from under her. Caroline rode the Chief’s wife to the floor and twisted the necklace tighter. Virginia tried to get a grip on the necklace but failed. The women thrashed about on the floor, Caroline determined to hang on, Virginia frantically kicking and scratching. It took almost five minutes for Virginia to stop struggling. Caroline held on another three for good measure.
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