Lunatic's Game

by Margaret Lashley

  “What skull? I’m trying to help you, Drex!”

  “Help me?”

  “Yes. With your detective license, remember?”

  “Fine. Thanks. I’ll send Paulson to pick you up.”

  I hit the gas. The Mustang spun in the sand.

  “Come on, Drex. I don’t want you to call the police.”

  I scowled at him. “You’re in some kind of trouble with the law! I knew it!”

  “No. I swear. I just don’t want my name in a public incident report, okay? Come on, I’m no killer!” He winked his swollen eye. “See? I’m too charming.”

  “Lots of psychopaths can be charming when they need to be.”

  “Fair enough. But Drex, I could’ve killed you a dozen times already if that’s what I wanted to do.”

  I jerked back in horror. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

  “It’s the best I can come up with right now. I’m almost out of breath.”

  “Who are you, really, Grayson?”

  He rubbed his eye and panted, “I’m a physicist.”

  My horror evaporated. No one could make up a story like that. Not on the fly. Not with a Tootsie-Pop freshly hurled into his eye.

  “Prove it.”

  “Uh ...” he panted. “E equals MC squared?”

  I laughed. I don’t know why. Perhaps from sheer hysteria.

  Grayson smiled. “Well, aren’t we a pair? You think I’m Ted Bundy, and you look like John Wayne Gacy.”

  I shot a glance at myself in the rearview mirror. My wig had flown off during the fracas, exposing my red, receding hairline. Last night’s mascara had melted into black rings around my eyes.

  And, worst of all, I’d peed my pants.

  And I thought my life couldn’t get any crappier.

  I laid my hands over the steering wheel, rested my bullet-riddled forehead on my forearms, and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed.

  GRAYSON HELPED ME CHANGE the tire. Actually, he changed the tire while I fixed my wig and held him at gunpoint with his own Glock. This time, I made sure it was loaded.

  Handing over his gun and changing the tire was part of the deal he’d made for me giving him a ride back to civilization. So was him coming clean with who he was and what he was really up to. Apparently, Grayson didn’t feel like dying in a crap hole in the middle of nowhere, either.

  “Why did you lie to me about being William Knickerbocker?”

  Grayson looked up from cranking the lug-nut wrench. “Because I didn’t want to leave a trail. I’m kind of a big deal in some scientific circles. If the academic board found out I was chasing Mothman, let’s just say it could put a damper on my fragile credibility, if you know what I mean.”

  “So why the whole private investigator bullshit?”

  “That isn’t bullshit. I am. A private investigator, I mean.”

  I sneered. “That seems highly implausible.”

  Grayson wagged his eyebrows. “Perhaps, yet it remains tantalizingly within the realms of theoretical possibility.”

  “I guess being a physicist pays for your hobby hunting monsters?”

  “More like the other way around. Physicists don’t get paid jack. That’s why I quit, kind of.”

  “So you really can make good money as a P.I.?”

  Grayson shook his head. “It’s always about the money with you.”

  “I’ve got bills to pay. Big bills. Hospital bills.”

  “How much?”

  I grimaced. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to call them back.”

  Grayson frowned. “I detest doctors. No. I take that back. I detest the Western medical model.”

  “Why?”

  “The whole thing is based on being dead.”

  My eyebrows converged below the crater in the middle of my forehead. “Huh?”

  “Long story short, about four hundred years ago—”

  “Hold on. You said ‘short.’”

  Grayson grinned and tightened the last lug nut. “Once upon a time, the Pope sanctioned this French guy Descartes to dissect cadavers for scientific purposes. Now, the entire Western medical model is based on the premise that we’re nothing more than a biological machine made out of meat. Believe me, we’re a lot more than that.”

  “You mean that we have a soul? I thought you were a physicist, not a preacher.”

  “We don’t have a soul, Drex. We are a soul. The body’s merely a semi-material manifestation for our exploration and experimentation in third-dimension reality.”

  “Okay. Now I believe you’re a physicist. Can you say what you just said in English?”

  “Basically, you can’t drive a car without a foot on the gas pedal. No foot, no car, no go. See?”

  “Kinda ....”

  “Look, enough lessons for the day. What say we head over to the A&P, like you planned in the first place?”

  “Okay. But I want to know more about—”

  “Quantum physics?”

  “No. How you made your money as a P.I.”

  “You do have a persistently one-track mind, Ms. Drex. To the point of dogged determination, one might say.”

  “When I’m interested in the subject, yes.”

  “Good. Your motivation is money. Mine is mystery. Pursuing ‘monsters’ as you call them, takes persistence. And determination. And discretion. Extracting evidentiary material on the esoteric is a huge challenge.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “I want to be the first person to prove their existence beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  I frowned. “Excuse me, but going back to that whole bell curve thing you mentioned the other day. Do you think the intellectual collective is ready for the truth? About Mothman and the like, I mean?”

  “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I have to come up with a better version of the facts before it can become the new truth.”

  “And if it becomes the new truth, it becomes the new reality? Or is it the other way around?”

  Grayson grinned. “And I thought you were just a pretty face.”

  I smiled. No one had called me pretty since Grandma Selma passed away. I didn’t like to think I was vain, but his compliment felt damned good.

  “So should we gather some provisions before we head to your first stakeout?” Grayson asked.

  “Sure. What do you usually eat when you’re tailing someone?”

  “What most lovers of the unexplained eat. Cheetos.”

  My nose crinkled. “Cheetos? Why?”

  “Because no one’s ever been able to scientifically prove what they’re made of. Plus, they have the added bonus of glowing orange in the dark.”

  I shook my head. “To the A&P it is.” As I shifted into first, a thought hit me. “What about the skull I saw in the woods? Shouldn’t someone know about it?”

  Grayson locked eyes with me. “I suspect someone already does.”

  I reached for my phone. “I’m going to call Paulson.”

  “Do what you want. But if it were up to me, I’d wait until after our stakeout. It might not be safe for Paulson to go out into the woods alone. He’s going to need backup.”

  “But shouldn’t we warn him? We’re goofing around looking for some Mothman freak when there could be a psycho killer on the loose.”

  “Who says the two things aren’t interrelated?”

  My mouth fell open. “You think they are?”

  Grayson shrugged. “In the world of quantum physics, Drex, everything’s interrelated.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  WHILE GRAYSON WANDERED the aisles of the A&P grocery store in Waldo, I snuck into the restroom to call Beth-Ann for a reality check.

  “Hey, you got a minute?” I asked.

  “Just closing up shop. I swear I think I may be the only person on the planet still doing permanent waves.”

  “Listen, you were right about Knickerbocker. He was using that name as an alias. He said he did it to keep under the radar with his colleagues. His real name is Nick Grayson.
”

  “Nick Grayson?” Beth-Ann’s tired voice picked up a lilt. “Now there’s a name I can work with. Still, too bad he’s bald.”

  “He’s not. His head was shaved. His hair’s growing back.”

  “Does this mean you’re calling dibs on him?”

  “Geez! No. I was calling because ... I don’t know whether to trust him or not. We went out to Bullet Point, you know, to shoot a few rounds. I found a skull in the grass.”

  “What?” she nearly choked. “A human skull?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at it. I ... uh ... kind of freaked and ran. Then Grayson shot out my tire—”

  “He what? Good grief! Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It was all a big misunderstanding. I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “You listen here, Ms. Roberta Drex. You stay out of the woods with that guy! He could be a madman. Like that Unabomber dude. He could have been living in the woods in that camper for years, getting crazier by the hour!”

  “That’s what I thought, too. At first. But if that were true, he could’ve killed me by now.”

  “Maybe he’s playing games. Building your trust.”

  “But why?”

  “Who knows? Blood sport? Why do psycho killers do anything they do?”

  “He says he’s a physicist.”

  “What? Like that pi-R-squared crap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh. If I were a serial killer, I’d pick an easier cover. You know, like a restaurateur or janitor or something. Physicist seems like a weird choice for an alibi.”

  “So maybe he’s okay after all?”

  “I dunno. Please, tell me you’ll be careful, okay?”

  “I will. I’m going on a stakeout with him tonight at nine-thirty at the Stop & Shoppe.”

  “A stakeout at Artie’s?”

  “It’s a long story. Have you ever heard of the Mothman?”

  “The Mothman? Yeah. But what’s that got to do—”

  “I gotta go. Call me at ten tonight, would you? To make sure I’m still alive?”

  “Absolutely. Be safe.”

  “YOU’RE GETTING CRUMBS on the upholstery,” I said to Grayson as he crunched on a handful of Cheetos. “You know, that isn’t the healthiest stakeout food in the world—or the stealthiest. You’re leaving a trail of goop all over the place.”

  We were sitting in my Mustang by the side of the road, in the dark, with weeds up to the windows. On the opposite side of Obsidian Road, the fluorescent lights of the Stop & Shoppe gave off a bluish-white glow in the gloom, as if the place itself was some sort of lost, ghostly spirit.

  “Huh. You’re right,” Grayson said. He waggled his orange fingertips at me. “Could you imagine committing a murder with Cheetos fingers? No way to make a clean getaway.”

  I crinkled my nose. “Gross.”

  Grayson grinned. “Max Planck had it right when he said the world we perceive through our senses is only a tiny fragment of the vastness of Nature.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I doubt he was talking about Cheetos crumbs. Who’s Max Planck, anyway?”

  Grayson shot me a stunned look. “You don’t know who Max—oh, how sad. Everybody knows Einstein. Poor Max Planck. Every bit as brilliant a physicist, yet cast to the second shelf of history.”

  I blew out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, I hate when that happens. Poor Max. Was he another starving physicist, or did he become a P.I. like you, to pay the bills?”

  “Neither. Max did all right for himself without a second job.”

  “How nice for him. You know, you still haven’t explained how you got all that cash in your glovebox.”

  Grayson shrugged. “Like they say, ‘Do what you love and the money comes.’ The pursuit of the mystical and unexplained is what makes me feel alive, Drex.”

  I shot him a sour look. “Yeah? Paying the rent makes me feel alive. Or, at least, it gives me the fleeting feeling I might survive for another month.”

  He laughed. “You’re such a cynic. Okay. Let’s just say I found something that was worth a lot of money to the right client.”

  I perked up. “What kind of client is the right client?”

  “I only have one criteria. My client is always H.B.”

  “H.B.?”

  “Highest bidder.”

  “You mean there’s more than one nutcase out there interested in this stuff?”

  Grayson sighed. “I’m glad to see you’re keeping an open mind. You’d be surprised how many people want to get their hands on evidence that defies conventional explanation. With rarity comes great value.”

  “So what was it you cashed in ... excuse me ... collected evidence on?”

  “Sorry. That’s on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Come on, Grayson!”

  Grayson made the school-boy motions of locking his busted lip and throwing away the key.

  I snorted. “You’re such an idiot. Okay. I give. What does it take to be privy to this secret information?”

  “Trusting me, for one,” Grayson said sarcastically. “And being a partner.”

  “You have partners?”

  “Had.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “You don’t need to know.”

  Jerk!

  I turned and looked out the windshield so Grayson couldn’t see how pissed off I was. I held a pair of binoculars to my eyes and focused in on the Stop & Shoppe. After adjusting the viewfinder, I realized I was staring right into Artie’s big, fat butt-crack. I groaned in disgust.

  “What now?” Grayson asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Look, sorry about the Cheetos crumbs,” he said. “But if you want to be a P.I., you’re going to need a different car anyway. This one is way too conspicuous. You need some kind of gray, late-model, blend-into-the-scenery kind of vehicle.”

  “Oh. You mean like an old, algae-covered RV?”

  “I’m on vacation.”

  “For how long? That thing looks like you’ve been camping in it since the Y2K scare.”

  “Okay. You have a point. But as far as RVs go, no one would ever suspect what I’m doing in it. Your Mustang here is the equivalent of me riding around in a shiny red bus with Monster Hunter on Tour emblazoned all over it.”

  Apparently, every single thing about my life was wrong. Even the stupid car I was driving. I was more than ready for a change of subject. “What time is it?”

  “Nine twenty-six.”

  “Getting close to nine thirty. Let’s concentrate on the Stop & Shoppe for now.”

  “Good idea.”

  We sat in silence, binoculars trained on the dilapidated old gas station. Nothing happened. Unless you counted Artie lifting up a butt cheek to fart. I checked my phone. It was 9:57 p.m.

  Grayson’s cellphone pinged. He looked at it, then over at me. “It’s Vanderhoff. She’s getting a phone call.”

  I smirked. “Maybe it’s Matlock.”

  Grayson grinned and put his phone on speaker.

  “Penelope? Is that you?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Why, it sure is, tiger.”

  The voice was Vanderhoff’s. In sexy mode.

  Yuck.

  “So nice of you to call,” she said. “I was just thinking I’d have to go to bed all by my lonesome tonight.”

  The man laughed huskily. “Well, we wouldn’t want that. Are you wearing those sexy little red panties of yours?”

  “You know I am. And now they’re getting all w—”

  I reached over and clicked off the phone. “I don’t want to hear any more. I already threw up in my mouth a little.”

  Grayson laughed. “Phone sex operators. Always the ones you’d never suspect, am I right?”

  I grimaced at the vision my mind was trying to form. “Well, at least now I know how she supplements her Social Security check.”

  “What say we cruise through the Stop & Shoppe for a six-pack to celebrate?” Grayson said.

  “Celebrate what?”


  “Your first stakeout.”

  “But it was a bust.” I cranked the engine over.

  “Yeah, but we sat in the car for over twenty minutes without killing each other. That should count for—” Grayson’s eyes shifted to the Stop & Shoppe. “Hold on! What’s that?”

  Grayson lifted his binoculars to his eyes and trained them on something across the road.

  “It’s Artie,” I said. “Good grief! He actually got out of his chair!”

  “No,” Grayson whispered. “Up on the roof.”

  I tipped my binoculars up slightly. There they were. Those red eyes again, just like two nights ago. “Oh, my—”

  I never had a chance to finish my sentence.

  Suddenly, the red eyes dipped, then headed right at us. In the dim light of a quarter moon, a huge, bat-like creature swooped down over the car. As it passed over us, I stuck my head out the driver’s side window and watched it disappear over the treetops behind us.

  “What was that?”

  “Mothman.” Grayson looked as stunned as I was. “Let’s see if it landed in the trees behind us.”

  My mouth twisted. “Are you out of your mind?”

  Grayson shrugged and opened the car door. “Depends on who you ask. Are you coming?”

  I grabbed his arm. “Wait. It could’ve been higher in the sky than it seemed. Maybe a helicopter. You know, chasing an escaped convict.”

  “Sure. If the convict could fly.”

  My phone buzzed, scaring the bejeebers out of me. Grayson broke free of my grip and disappeared into the woods. I clicked on the phone.

  “You still alive?” Beth-Ann whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see Mothman?”

  “Uh ... thanks for the call, but I gotta go.”

  I clicked off the phone.

  Had I? Had I really just seen Mothman?

  My skin began to crawl. I suddenly realized I was alone. In the dark! With my window open! I grabbed the crank and pumped it furiously. Nothing happened.

  “What the—?”

  My freaked-out brain finally fired, reminding me the windowpane had fallen inside the door at Bullet Point. Wait. Was that part of Grayson’s plan all along?

  I reached over and scrambled to roll up the passenger side window. Something grabbed my shoulder from behind. I let out a scream, whirled back around, and landed a blind punch on whatever had a hold of me.