Backtracker

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  Guiding Dave behind him, Billy reached for the doorknob. Slowly, he turned it; the bolt clicked and he gently pushed the door open.

  Dave's heart thundered in his chest.

  Cautiously, Billy stepped inside. He moved a hand to his waist, drew the gun from under his shirt.

  Dave kept his eyes fixed to the back of Billy's head for all of a second. As he crossed the threshold, his gaze drifted downward.

  There it was: his second corpse of the day.

  The body of a thin young man was spread over the green carpet. He wore a red flannel shirt and bluejeans. He had long, blonde hair and a trim beard and mustache. His face was smashed and lathered with blood.

  One of his eyes was wide open. The other eye was gone, replaced by a pool of glistening dark scarlet.

  His mouth gaped, as in a ghastly, silent scream. There was a fissure down the center of his forehead, a ragged split in the skin and skull.

  Dave's stomach churned; his gorge rose as he stared at the corpse. Still, he wasn't affected as violently as when he'd sighted the faceless kid in the trench. This body wasn't nearly as mutilated as the faceless kid had been; though he was repulsed and nauseated, Dave was able to look at this latest corpse without reeling into a state of senseless shock.

  Shifting his gaze to the wall above the body, he saw the imprint of the man's execution, a crater emblazoned with blood. Larry must have driven the guy's skull into the wall with great force to stamp such a huge pit in the plaster.

  Dave wondered if the man on the floor was Michael W. Moses, if he was the final target whom Larry had pledged to kill. If that was Michael W. Moses, then Larry had won, had carried out his plans before Dave could interfere.

  Maybe, Larry was done...and gone. Maybe, he was gone for good.

  The thought both relieved and disturbed Dave. He was overjoyed by the possibility that he wouldn't have to confront the killer, that he and Billy were safe and the whole frightening business was concluded; at the same time, he felt guilty for not preventing the final murder, and he felt a sense of loss when he realized that Larry's secrets might now be forever out of reach.

  Pulled along by Billy, Dave moved past the corpse and into the living room. He had to watch his step, for the floor was covered with debris.

  Near the body, an assortment of groceries was scattered-cans of soup, TV dinners, packs of cigarettes, jars of baby food; the grocery bags themselves had been crumpled up and tossed into the middle of the room. From the look of things, Dave guessed that Larry had surprised Michael W. Moses at the door, when Moses had returned from shopping; however, Dave couldn't understand why the grocery bags had been balled up and discarded. Certainly, they could have been emptied in a violent struggle...but why would Larry have taken time out to crush and pitch the bags aside? Dave thought that Larry would have been more concerned with making a hasty escape than fooling around with some grocery bags.

  After the groceries, there was still more debris. Along the wall, a chair rested upside-down atop a pile of broken pieces of wood; the splintered chunks and slats looked as if they had once been a table of some sort. Bits of glass were strewn in a wide radius around the pile, glinting in the dark green carpet. Dave guessed that the rubble was the product of Larry's assault, that there must have been a real battle between him and Michael Moses.

  Slowly, the partners picked their way through the wreckage, taking care to avoid the bigger shards of glass. Ahead, there was a doorway; Billy stopped short of it.

  Peering past his partner, Dave could see that the doorway opened onto a kitchen. He saw a stove, and more chairs like the one on the pile of wood; beyond the stove, another doorway beckoned.

  Silently, Billy guided Dave to a spot beside the entrance to the kitchen. Raising the revolver, Billy released Dave's arm, then held up a hand with palm flattened toward Dave; Billy was signaling his friend to stay put while he scouted the kitchen. If there was danger in the kitchen, Billy intended to face it alone.

  Dave was starting to believe that the danger was over, that Larry had departed and the crisis was finally at an end. His tremendous panic was actually receding; he felt himself calming, pulling back from the peak of uncontrollable agitation. As he watched Billy slip through the doorway and out of sight, he experienced only a fraction of his recent wild anxiety; he was very uneasy, but he wasn't hysterical with worry. He'd seen the body of the man who he believed was Mike Moses, and he took this as a sign that the nightmare had run its course.

  When Billy didn't immediately return or summon him, Dave didn't grow frantic. He leaned against the wall beside the doorway and dutifully waited, expecting his partner to appear at any moment. He heard Billy's footsteps in the kitchen, then silence; he didn't hear anything which would give him reason to suspect that Billy had encountered any kind of trouble.

  A long moment passed, and still, Billy didn't reappear; still, Dave heard only silence from the kitchen. He was only affected a little by this extension of his wait; he was more annoyed than worried by Billy's prolonged reconnaissance.

  When more time dripped away without a signal from Billy, Dave started to become impatient. He was sure that no mishap had occurred, and he couldn't figure out why Billy was taking so long, why he hadn't at least called for him.

  Finally, Dave reached the point where he could no longer stand still. Pushing away from the wall, he eased through the doorway.

  Looking to his right as he entered the kitchen, he quickly spotted Billy Bristol. Billy was standing stiffly; his head was bowed, his arms hung at his sides. His back was turned to Dave, and he didn't look up when Dave approached.

  Billy was looking down. He was staring at something on the floor.

  He was staring at another corpse.

  Dave took two steps toward his friend, then stopped. As he gazed at the body, he suddenly felt so lightheaded that he feared he might faint.

  The corpse in the living room had been nothing compared to this one. This body was far more gruesome than the smashed man by the front door, and was at least as bad as the faceless kid at Wolf's Rock; Dave thought that it might even be worse than the faceless kid.

  It was horrible. It was so mauled that Dave couldn't guess what it had looked like before the attack. He thought that it was a woman, but he couldn't even be sure of that.

  The head resembled that of the kid in the trench. Where the face should have been, there was an awful, bloody mess, a glistening mush. The front of the skull had been obliterated; long, black hair still clung to the scalp, fanned out on the floor, but that was the only remaining clue to the victim's original features.

  The rest of the body was equally grisly. The rib cage had been split open and pried wide, exposing the contents of the chest cavity. The abdomen looked as if it had been slashed or clawed open by a wild animal; pulp and viscera blossomed from the huge, ragged wound.

  The corpse's limbs had been butchered, as well; through shredded bluejeans, Dave could see gleaming strips of meat, pale streaks of bone. The arms had been hacked and broken in several places.

  There was more. It seemed that no bit of the corpse had been spared.

  There was much, much more...more than Dave could stand.

  Too much.

  Red and red and red and red and red.

  Choking, he clamped his eyes shut. Thrusting his hands over his face, he spun away from the atrocity.

  He still saw it; the horrific sight lingered on his lids like the afterimage of a brilliant flash. The vision was deeply imprinted, perhaps so deeply that it would never fade.

  It was too terrible to forget, too terrible to comprehend. It was too terrible to accept, too obscene to be real.

  And it was real.

  And Larry had made it so.

  As he teetered sickly, Dave heard Billy's voice. It seemed to come from far away, from a world away.

  "I don't know," said Billy.

  It was real.

  "How could someone...," said Billy, and he stopped.

  It was rea
l. It was so real that Dave couldn't make it go away.

  "How could anyone...," said Billy.

  Red and red and red.

  "How could he do it?" said Billy.

  He'd done it. Larry had done it.

  "Shit," Billy said quietly. "I wonder how many more there are in the house."

  Dave heard his partner walk away from the corpse, step up behind him; he felt Billy's hand on his shoulder.

  "Why don't you go out to the car," suggested Billy. "I'll call the cops."

  Dave didn't respond. He kept his face buried in his hands; the image of the corpse was suffocating him, pressing all around and from within him.

  "All that running around was for nothing," sighed Billy. "We still missed that son of a bitch."

  Dave saw red and red and red.

  "It's probably just as well," said Billy.

  Dave slowly shook his head...and then, he heard something.

  Startled, he jerked his hands from his face and listened. Billy had heard, too; he fell silent, and his grip tightened on Dave's shoulder.

  The sound seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the house. It was a low, steady rumbling; it continued for a moment, then stopped.

  Eyes widening with sudden terror, Dave tensed. He'd recognized the sound, and he knew what it must mean.

  The garage door had opened.

  Someone had opened the garage door.

  Larry was still there.

  He'd been there all along. Even as the partners had stolen into the place, even as they had examined the mutilated bodies, Larry had been lurking nearby.

  "Shit, man," muttered Billy. "That's him," he said, and then he moved, releasing Dave's shoulder and darting through the kitchen doorway.

  Dave hesitated, then followed his friend into the living room. He didn't hurry; he wasn't eager to see Larry...especially with the image of the latest corpse still so vivid. If not for the flickering vestiges of his resolve to protect Billy, Dave would surely have stayed in the kitchen.

  As Dave shuffled into the room, Billy sprinted for the front door. Just as he got to the door, there was the sound of a car starting up outside.

  With his gun held high, Billy burst through the door and onto the front stoop. The car's engine revved; Dave heard it shift into gear, and then he heard the tires rolling over the driveway.

  Billy paused on the stoop for just a second, then rushed down the steps toward the driveway. Worried about what he might do next, or what might happen to him, Dave picked up his pace, jogged through the front door.

  As he emerged from the house, Dave saw the silver Cadillac backing out onto the road; the car bucked from the driveway like a stone from a slingshot, then jolted to a stop. Hovering on the stoop, Dave briefly had a clear view of the man behind the wheel.

  The crew-cut and goatee were unmistakable. It was indeed Larry Smith.

  Billy sprinted through the muddy yard, but he couldn't catch up with the Cadillac. Before he could get close to it, the car lurched out of reverse gear and bolted down the road with tires squealing.

  As the Cadillac burst away, Billy leaped out onto the pavement and leveled his gun. Legs spread, both hands gripping the weapon, he sighted the rear-end of the retreating vehicle.

  For a second, it looked as if he would shoot...but then he lowered the .38. The Cadillac flashed out of sight in the direction of Cross Creek State Park.

  Turning toward the house, Billy chopped an arm through the air, summoning his partner. "Come on!" he shouted, starting for the Camaro. "Let's go!"

  Quaking on the stoop, Dave held back. The last thing that he wanted to do at that moment was chase Larry Smith; he'd had enough of Larry Smith to last him a lifetime, and then some. Thanks to Larry Smith, he'd been drawn into a nightmare circus of blood and confusion, deceit and illusion; thanks to Larry Smith, he'd seen more death in one day than he'd seen in his whole life.

  If he went after Larry Smith, Dave might see even more death...might see the death of himself and his best friend. If they managed to overtake and confront Larry, the partners might very well be subjected to the same horrific torture inflicted on the corpses in the trench and in the house.

  Dave knew that it would be foolish beyond belief to pursue the killer. He didn't want to go after Larry, not at all; whatever had driven him toward the monster, it had completely evaporated.

  His reasons for seeking Larry no longer applied. He didn't care about Larry's secrets or the truth behind his lies. He'd failed to stop Larry from killing again, so there was no need to try to talk him into a change of heart.

  It would be stupid to chase the killer. It would be crazy, the height of lunacy. There was no good reason to do it.

  There was no good reason...except for the fact that Billy Bristol would probably do it alone if Dave didn't accompany him. There was little doubt in Dave's mind that Billy would go ahead with the chase with or without Dave at his side. Even as Dave wrestled with the question of whether or not to go, Billy was starting the Camaro and pulling it onto the road.

  Reluctantly, Dave abandoned the stoop, hurried down the steps and into the yard. He couldn't let Billy go alone; even if it would cost him his own life, he would have to try to protect his friend.

  Billy blasted the horn. Leaning across the Camaro's front seat, he hurled open the passenger's-side door.

  "Come on!" he bellowed. "Hurry up!"

  Dave leaped into the car and pulled the door shut. He hoped that Larry was far enough away that the Camaro wouldn't be able to catch up with him.

  As soon as the door clapped shut, Billy floored the accelerator. Tires screamed as the car shot away from 41 Park Road.

  "Shit!" erupted Billy, his voice ringing with rage. "That son of a bitch! He was in the house all along!"

  Gazing ahead apprehensively, Dave said nothing. He kept searching for some sign of the silver Cadillac, hoping that he would never again catch a glimpse of it.

  "Damnit!" lashed Billy. "He's headed for Cross Creek! He's probably gonna' pick up 316 on the other side of the park and take off for God knows where!"

  The Camaro dove ahead at high speed, boring through the driving rain like a jet hurtling toward takeoff. Houses blurred past, and then the neighborhood was gone; the car barreled into the farmlands between Kline and Cross Creek State Park.

  Though the road wound and rippled, Billy never let up on the accelerator. The Camaro whipped around bends so fast that Dave was tossed from side to side, had to hold onto the dashboard to keep from being flung across the compartment.

  Clearing a series of curves, the car burst onto a straight stretch which provided an unobstructed view of about a half-mile ahead. The Cadillac was nowhere to be seen; Larry's head start had served him well.

  Hunched over the wheel, Billy glared at the road as if it had personally insulted him. "That son of a bitch," he said, vehemently spitting each syllable. "He really got the jump on us."

  A farm swept past, and Billy flicked his head to the left for a quick glance at the rear-view mirror. "Hey!" he barked abruptly. "Keep an eye out, man! Maybe he ducked into one of these dirt roads, and he's waiting till we go by and then he'll go back toward Kline!"

  "Okay," Dave said quietly. He realized that it was just the sort of trick that the wily killer would pull; he also knew that it would suit him fine if Larry did use such a strategy and managed to escape.

  "He's probably going for 316," declared Billy, "but maybe he'll double back. Keep an eye out just in case, man."

  Dave nodded. He wasn't going to make much of an effort to scan the area through which they were flying; if he could have gotten away with it, he would have just closed his eyes and let all the farms and dirt roads zip by unseen.

  The Camaro continued to punch onward, slashing down the straightaways, swinging precariously around the curves. The car swooped up hills and bowled through dips at breakneck speed; when the vehicle surged into and out of the deeper troughs, Dave's stomach jumped and dropped the same way that it would have on a wild
roller coaster.

  The dark, drenched countryside kicked past, the same fields and farms which the partners had seen on their way to 41 Park Road. Though he wasn't really watching for Larry, Dave kept his face turned to the side window so that Billy would think he was carefully examining the landscape. Occasionally, he shifted his gaze to the windshield and actually looked for the Cadillac on the road ahead...but the result was always the same. Wherever he was, Larry was out of sight; perhaps, he was hiding behind a barn, or he was racing back to Kline after giving the partners the slip, or he was just too far ahead...but he might as well have vanished in a puff of smoke for all that Dave could see.

  As the Camaro whipped around a tight bend, fishtailing across both lanes in the process, Dave saw the gray tree line of Cross Creek State Park. The woods began about two miles away, at the end of a long, gradual grade; from the top of the grade, a great sweep of road and land was visible, a clear panorama...but no Cadillac could be seen in that open space, no Larry Smith.

  "Shit," muttered Billy as he shot the Camaro down the grade. "I hope that bastard didn't make it the whole way to 316 already. If he beats us to 316, we'll lose him. We'll have no way of knowing which way he went from there."

  Dave didn't say a word. He was too busy praying that Larry had indeed made it to Route 316 already. Billy was right: if Larry beat them to the intersection of Park Road and 316, he could shoot off in one of two directions, leaving the partners without a clue to which way he went. Even if they did guess the correct direction, Larry could easily elude them on the many roads branching off 316.

  In a flash, the Camaro finished the grade and charged into the tree line, into the park. Almost immediately, the force of the rain diminished; though the trees were leafless, their limbs tangled thickly enough overhead to obstruct some of the fierce downpour.

  The road flexed and twisted more dramatically within the park, but Billy wouldn't cut back on the Camaro's speed. Rocketing along at seventy to eighty miles per hour, the car peeled around loops and hairpins so wildly that it often seemed ready to swing out of control. With no thought of possible oncoming traffic, Billy carelessly used both lanes, thrust the Camaro back and forth to negotiate curves without losing momentum; if a vehicle would have happened to pass through from the opposite direction, the Camaro would certainly have sailed right into it.