Red Rain: Lightning Strikes: Red Rain Series #2

by David Beers

  The words didn’t register in Diane’s head. She knew someone was speaking, saw the mouth moving, heard the phrases passing around her ears, but none of the words meant anything to her—as if Tremock spoke Mandarin.

  “Excuse me?” she said. “Can you just say all that again?” Diane didn’t care if the man thought she was kidding. She wasn’t. She needed him to say it again so she could grasp at least some of it.

  “Your husband has been very close to two murders recently. Has he said anything about them to you? Has he mentioned speaking to me or my partner at all?”

  John? Murder? The two words rang in her head like large bells … clanging around as if some maniacal leprechauns swung up and down on their ropes.

  “I need you to leave,” she said, staring straight into the detective’s eyes, but not seeing him at all. “Thank you for stopping by.”

  “Mrs. Hilt, I’d like to speak to you more about this, if you don’t mind. It’s extremely important.”

  “I’d like you to leave.” Diane stood and walked to the front door, not waiting to see if the man followed, not even thinking that he might remain, only knowing that she had to open the door so that he could leave.

  The detective stopped just before he stepped through the door. “Please, Mrs. Hilt, take my card and call me when you’re ready to talk.”

  “Goodbye, Detective,” Diane said, not taking the card he extended.

  She shut the door once he stepped outside, then turned and leaned against it. She stood for a second, staring into her foyer, seeing the pictures and plants that watched this place for years.

  Tears rushed to her eyes and Diane collapsed to the floor, not sliding down the door, but simply falling, landing on the foyer floor. She didn’t bring her hands to her face, but sat and sobbed.

  Murder.

  John.

  Murder.

  John.

  The words shouldn’t connect, but the bells clanged away in some sick discordant union inside her head. She didn’t understand it, didn’t understand what the hell the cop was talking about—how could any of it be possible? Yet, she cried, the emotions from the past weeks unloading because of two words that she couldn’t join together.

  * * *

  Alan knew what he just did.

  The woman, Diane Hilt, was devastated right now, probably questioning everything in her life. Perhaps even existentially. One didn’t simply stand up and dust themselves off after the news Alan delivered.

  He didn’t like that he had done it, necessarily.

  But the action itself had been necessary.

  Alan drove his car, heading back to the office, but his mind wasn’t on the road at all.

  Perhaps reflexively, to place a cooling balm on the fresh wound in his conscience—or perhaps only circumstances took his mind elsewhere—but either way, he thought of Teresa.

  He saw her blood. Whenever he thought back to that night, the first thing he saw was Teresa’s blood everywhere. Alan knew well that different people would have different memories of the same event, so perhaps the blood wasn’t that prominent—but, no matter, his mind would never shake it.

  He held her in his arms, her life leaking away.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Hold the fuck on, Teresa.” His voice was low despite the adrenaline coursing through his veins and the tears flooding his eyes as heavily as her blood did his arms.

  Alan lifted her up from the ground, not feeling her weight in the slightest. He tried to cradle her head against his arm, not wanting it to slump backwards .

  He ran, seeing nothing—not the road, the street lamps doing their best to light up the night, or even her car. He followed some intuition of where the car was, and that carried him.

  “Hold on. Hold on,” he said over and over.

  Teresa didn’t say anything as he ran, just wheezed out breath in a way that Alan had never heard before.

  He reached the car and realized he couldn’t get Teresa’s fucking keys out of her pocket and carry her at the same time.

  “One second, just hold on,” he said as he gently laid her on the asphalt, fished her keys from her pocket and opened the back door. Again, he picked her up, and leaning into the car, put his partner across the backseat.

  As soon as he placed Teresa in the vehicle, he moved like a locomotive driven by a madman high on coke. He burst into the front seat, starting the car almost before his ass touched down. The microphone in the cruiser at his mouth as the tires squealed on the wet street.

  “Officer down! Officer down! Heading to Piedmont Hospital!”

  He dropped the mic and didn’t hear a word that came back over it, only focusing on moving the car faster and faster.

  “Teresa! Do you hear me? Teresa, hang on we’re almost there!” he shouted from the front seat, unable to see her face. He couldn’t hear her breathing either. The wheeze had stopped.

  Christ Fucking Jesus don’t let her die, he thought.

  He scraped three cars as he pulled into the emergency lane at the hospital, not noticing a single one.

  The paramedics were there, waiting, white coats and stretcher ready.

  He jumped out of the car, swinging open the backdoor as the paramedics rushed over. He leaned in and put his arms around her, pulling her out, hoping that the lifelessness he held was simply unconsciousness. He took her from the car and paramedics grabbed her from him.

  They moved fast and Alan followed right with them, completely covered in blood. He listened to them talk, spewing out all the information he had, where she was shot, how long ago, the words running from his mouth without any control on his part.

  Teresa’s eyes were closed, her dark brown skin looking more and more like ash with each passing moment.

  “Sir, you’ll have to wait here,” someone said, stopping him with a strong hand to the middle of his chest.

  Alan tried to keep going, but the man held on, and he could only watch as they pushed the stretcher further into the hospital.

  He sat in the waiting room, dried blood sticking to his skin and staining his clothes. An hour later the word came through that Teresa hadn’t made it.

  Alan cried alone in the waiting room and when her husband showed up, they cried together.

  And now, as he pulled into the police station, Alan cried again.

  8

  Present Day

  “You’re going to tell me what the fuck is going on, and you’re going to tell me right now,” Diane said.

  The tears had dried and her wet eyes were replaced with stone. She felt no vulnerability as she spoke to John over the phone, only a raw rage that could swallow suns with its intensity.

  “What are you talking about?” John said.

  “A cop showed up here. Detective Tremock. What is he talking about, John? Murder? You’ve been interviewed by the police?”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” John said. “That fuck came by the house?”

  “He left an hour ago.”

  “He’s crazy, Diane. That’s why I haven’t told you about it. Look, yes, a guy named Paul died. He goes to meetings with me. I met him by chance at a Starbucks and then someone murdered him later that night. Then a guy that works on a completely different floor than me, in a completely different department, that I’ve never fucking met, is murdered. This cop thinks I did it.”

  Diane’s anger didn’t dissipate. She didn’t think John murdered anyone, not after the initial shock of what the cop said. What she wanted to know was why he hadn’t told her a single bit of this.

  “Awesome, John. Police interviews. Were you thinking about telling me when they arraigned you at trial, or did you want to wait until a conviction?”

  “You’re overreacting,” he said.

  “Overreacting? You’re lucky the locks haven’t been fucking changed. Did you talk to a lawyer yet?”

  “No, Diane. There’s no reason to. I didn’t murder anyone. There’s no evidence that I murdered anyone--just this crazy cop who is now showing up to my goddamn house.�
�� He sighed. “I guess I better get one now. He’s out of his mind. Literally.”

  “We’re starting therapy this week. Next, if I can’t get in until then. I don’t want to hear anything else about it, John. That, or I’m taking the kids and we’re leaving.”

  * * *

  “A lawyer might not be a bad idea,” Harry said. “Not the only idea, but it might keep us safer.”

  John looked at his phone for a few seconds, having heard Diane disconnect instead of saying goodbye.

  “A fucking lawyer?” John said.

  “Well, man, you’ve been doing a lot of talking, but not a lot of action. Tremock isn’t playing around. He thinks you killed that cunt partner of his and he’s going after everything he can think of. What do you want me to say?”

  John and Harry stood inside their gym’s locker room. John had been on the treadmill while Harry flexed in the mirror next to him, gabbing on and on about how they had to act soon. John kept his headphones in, running hard, trying to block out the fat, dead guy doing double overhead bicep poses.

  And then Diane called.

  Now, sweat drenched, John sat down on one of the benches in front of the lockers.

  “What do you know about him?” John said. He saw no sense in arguing about what Harry did when he slept, especially since he had to argue enough with Diane when she saw him fucking leave at night.

  “I’ve seen a bit. It’s not as easy as you might think, trailing a cop. He works around the clock. Truth be told, I’m not sure he sleeps. Two kids, both girls. A wife.”

  “Can we do it?” He looked up at Harry, a smile blooming across his face.

  “Of course we can kill him. We can kill anyone we want.”

  “If we kill him, we can leave the girl alone, right?”

  “Ha!” Harry laughed out loud. “Always the saint, John. Always trying to save someone from something that you would do whether I was here or not. No. Hell no. We’re getting both of them. For two reasons, one, because we fucking want it, and two, because if one of those people live, you’re in trouble when this goes to trial.”

  John looked down and shook his head.

  How had it gotten this far?

  Is this what his mom saw? Is this what she feared? Him sitting here in an empty locker room, during his lunch break, talking to a dead man?

  “Stop. Just stop. Why ask yourself such pointless questions? We’re here and there’s nothing that can be done. It’s time to start cleaning up the mess, John. It’s time to have a little fun.”

  John stood up and wiped his head with the towel.

  “I’m going to finish you when we finish this, Harry. I want you to understand that. Whatever it takes, we’re done.”

  “John, I think when we finish this, there’s a good chance we’re both done, buddy.”

  9

  A Portrait of a Young Man

  Lori held fire in her hands. It burnt. It wasn’t excruciating yet, but there it sat, engulfing her hands while she watched. She knew where to find water, how to douse the whole thing and put an end to it.

  Yet, she held the fire, because the fire was John, and she couldn’t snuff out his life.

  “He’s an interesting boy, Lori,” Dr. Vondi said.

  “I told you,” she said, sitting on Vondi’s couch, knowing that John had sat there too, only a day ago.

  “Well, I’m not sure you described him as interesting, but there are certainly things we need to discuss. I’m not going to break any ethical codes by talking to you, but I think that we can deal with some of your issues based on what he’s telling me.”

  “My issues?”

  “Your thoughts on who he is, Lori. Your thoughts on him being your mother reborn. On basically being insane.”

  Lori smiled. “You don’t believe me, that’s what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, Lori, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t believe you. But I think he might.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re having a negative psychological effect on him. I’m not sure of the severity, but anything at this age, will become more apparent as he gets older. There will be damage.”

  Lori didn’t say anything as the two of them looked at each other. Had she thought Vondi might see the same thing as her? Had she believed that after talking to John, Vondi would see her mother, just as she did? That he would see her holding this flame?

  Because he didn’t.

  “Did you find a dead animal, something that looked tortured, behind your house?” Dr. Vondi asked.

  Lori’s eyebrows raised. It took her a few seconds, but she finally nodded slowly.

  “And you blame it on him? You think he did that?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “Why do you think he did that? What in your head immediately goes to that?”

  Lori stood up for the first time in Dr. Vondi’s office. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t stay seated anymore. Vondi didn’t flinch as Lori walked to the window on the right.

  “Let’s say that I’m wrong,” she said. “Let’s say that I’m crazy, that some chemical imbalance is driving me to think these things about my son. You need to know I love him. More than anything else in my life. More than Alicia or Scott. But let’s say I’m wrong. You’ve spoken to him. You said he was an interesting boy. What’s interesting about him to you?”

  Silence followed the question but Lori didn’t turn around. She basked in the quiet. Letting Vondi’s silence validate something inside her, the piece that wouldn’t be quiet or go away—that kept saying Clara wasn’t done. She might have skipped a generation but she lived inside John, unable to infect Lori either psychologically or genetically, but sure to pass on somehow.

  “Dr. Vondi?” she said.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “I know. What’s making you think so hard?”

  “He won’t tell me everything, I think, if I had to put it into words,” he said. “He’s holding something back; most kids are shy at first, but this isn’t shyness with him. He’s keeping it from me, and he knows it, and I think he knows that I know. If any of that makes sense.”

  Lori smiled, though no happiness could be found in it.

  “And what do you think he’s keeping from you?”

  “I don’t know yet. Again, I’ve only seen him a few times.”

  “Okay,” Lori said. “Let’s keep this going and see if you can figure it out.”

  10

  Present Day

  Father Charles woke, drenched in sweat. His cover tried sticking to his body as he peeled it off. He swung his legs out of bed, breathing deeply with huge swallows of air.

  “God, please make it go away,” he prayed aloud. “Please make it stop.”

  God didn’t answer the priest, only silence and the images still moving through his head like a ghastly horror movie. Father Charles hadn’t stepped foot into a theater showing something like that since he was fifteen, yet he could only see blood, and only hear screams.

  He had woken up like this for the second night in a row, unable to fall back asleep last night and knowing he wouldn’t be able to again tonight.

  “Why have You given this to me?” he prayed again. “I cannot handle this. I cannot do anything for this man, nor the people he harms, and yet You brought him to me. Why?”

  His breath continued in huge gasps as he tried to block out the images in his mind.

  Cutting of flesh.

  Bloodletting.

  Pain, awful pain running through so many people.

  And behind it all, the one cutting, the one holding the knife—John Hilt, with an insane smile across his face, blood splattered across his cheeks.

  He couldn’t go on having nightmares like this, not if he wanted any kind of life. He didn’t think the dreams would stop, because his conscience wasn’t going to let him shirk this as he had before.

  “What do You want me to do?”

  And in that way, he and John Hilt were similar, as God answered neither of them.


  “Fine. Fine,” the priest said, growing angry with his maker. If God wouldn’t intervene, then this rested in the hands of men, and that was just another way of saying, Father Charles Rapport’s hands.

  The priest stood from the bed and walked into his living room where he found his phone charging. He picked it up and found John Hilt’s number. What was he going to do? What could he do? Father Charles didn’t know, exactly, only that he couldn’t continue seeing those things when he closed his eyes. And that if he did nothing, he wouldn’t stop seeing them.

  He pressed John’s number and put the phone to his ear. The late hour didn’t even cross his mind.

  “Hello?” John answered.

  “Where are you?” the priest said.

  11

  A Portrait of a Young Man

  The world was moving fast for John and he didn’t understand much of it. John was plenty smart, he knew it and those around him did too, so intelligence had nothing to do with why he couldn’t understand what was happening to him.

  His mother seemed to know better than he, and yet, neither spoke about it.

  Like Harry.

  Neither of them said a word about what happened at the beach house, and everyone else around John—from his dad to his classmates—treated John as if he somehow survived cancer. They felt sorry for him. They wanted to help. Everyone was so nice.

  Except for his mom.

  How did she know?

  John told the psychiatrist that his mom thought he had something to do with Harry’s death … but he didn’t think the psychiatrist believed him, not totally anyway. It was true, though, even if his mom hadn’t said a word about it.

  Everyone wanted to know if John was okay, but he felt fine. Almost. One thing he couldn’t quite deal with: the dreams and what they meant. The dreams he spoke about with the psychiatrist were really happening, and John didn’t want to talk about why he couldn’t save Harry.