We spent ten minutes clearing each room, upstairs and down, before we were both satisfied of two things: One, Alexander wasn’t anywhere to be found, and two, there were no messages carved into the walls or left in file folders.
“Think he sent us here to give himself more time to set things up?” I asked once we were back outside.
“I don’t think old Alex wouldn’t be fully prepared before inviting us to his party. He wanted us to see something here, we just haven’t seen it yet.”
I pulled out the Android phone I had found beneath the boulders at Straus’s cabin, and took a careful look at the pictures again. I didn’t see anything remarkable in the picture taken of the house we were standing in front of, but the picture of the seemingly deceased medical examiner got me thinking.
“Could be this place is the first place Alexander came to after his time in the morgue. I wouldn’t be surprised if the medical examiner is buried someplace around here.”
Ralph released a heavy sigh. “What concerns me about your statement, Derek, is that you probably are correct. And, since there weren’t any visible messages inside this old house, I am afraid we will find our next message buried with the aforementioned examiner.”
“Meaning we need to find where she buried, dig her up and see what Alexander buried with her to keep her company?”
“I am afraid so,” Ralph said. “The good news—if there is any regarding our next task—is she’s been buried quite a long while and we’re not likely to dig up anything more morbid than her bones.”
“I’m sure she has family and friends who’d like to know what happened to her and to give her a proper burial.”
“All the more reason to find her remains.”
The summer sun was still spilling plenty of light in the area, so we started off searching the grounds. Whenever I’m trying to find something someone else lost or hid, I try to imagine myself in the scene. That day, I stood next to where I had parked my car, imagined I was the medical examiner who had driven Alexander to this dilapidated house and parked in the same spot I had. Next, in my imagination, I watched Alexander kill the poor woman, then drag her body out of the car and into the woods nearest the car. I figured Alexander would have been tired and probably more than a little bit sore after his time in the morgue, and figured the last thing he wanted to invest energy doing was dragging a body a long ways.
I walked maybe fifteen or twenty steps into the wooded area lining the overgrown driveway, pulled out the Android phone and took a careful look at the picture of the dead woman lying beside what I believed would soon have become her grave. There wasn’t much to go on in the picture, except for the base of a white birch tree in the top right corner of the picture. Using the picture as my guide, I swept my eyes around the area till I found a few white birch trees standing another ten steps deeper into the woods. Next to those trees, was a fairly flat stretch of earth.
“Did we bring a shovel?” I called to Ralph who was searching on the other side of the driveway.
“That would have been an excellent thing to have brung and one I would have insisted on bringing had I known we’d get into digging up some ground.”
“So, I take that as a ‘no?’ ”
“I’ll saunter up towards the house and see if I can see one laying around. You find some piece of ground worthy of digging up?”
“Just working a hunch,” I replied, then fell to my knees and started scraping the soft dirt with my hands.
Ralph came to my side five minutes later, holding the rusty blade of a shovel. “I could not find the handle or a strong enough looking stick to use as a handle.”
“I’ll make it work.”
I used the shovel head to make short work of digging up the ground. I went down a solid two feet before moving my excavating location over a few steps. The new location proved fruitful.
There’s something shocking about seeing the pale ivory color of a bone when digging in a place where there shouldn’t be and pale colored ivory bones. I cleared away more of the dirt from the bone and found another. The more I cleared, the more ivory shocks I discovered.
“That looks to me like the makings of a human rib cage,” Ralph said as he stood behind me. “Not sure how you figured out where to find her, but...”
“Help me clear away this dirt.”
________________________
The sun was getting low in the sky by the time we cleared away enough of the dirt to see the entire skeleton. Though the light was muted, we could see the doctor had been wearing green hospital scrubs and bright yellow-flower patterned bottoms when she was killed and buried. We also could see an Altoid candy tin which had been shoved into her mouth. The examiner’s fully exposed teeth, which still were whiter than those of most of the smoker’s teeth I’ve seen, released their hold on the tin without resistance.
I handed the tin to Ralph for him to open as I stayed on my knees. Since Lucy died, I’m not what you’d call a religious man, but this poor woman deserved something kind to be said about her. I whispered a prayer I remembered learning when my parents made me attend Sunday school when I was around ten years old:
In your hands, O Lord,
we humbly give our sister.
In this life you embraced her with your tender love;
deliver her now from every evil
and give her eternal rest.
“There’s about a dozen mints left in this can,” Ralph said. “Not sure I’d want to eat one but you’re welcome to them.”
“No thanks,” I said as I stood up and brushed the dirt off my knees and hands. “Anything else tucked inside?”
“As a matter of fact there is. Seems Alexander had been planning this whole thing for quite a long while.”
“What message did he leave us?” I asked.
Ralph was holding the thin-paper wrapping, which once served to shield the mints, up to his eyes. He turned, gestured for me to follow, and walked back towards my car. “I need a bit more light to more clearly make out what he scribbled onto this paper.” He held the paper up for a few more seconds, then handed it to me. “See what you think of it,” he said.
I took the paper, and read; “Dr. Elizabeth McConnell. 8835 Jefferson Street, Fort Lee, NJ.”
“Pretty clearly her name and home address,” I said.
“That much is clear, Derek. My question is whether you think we need to make a trip down to Fort Lee or the heartless wonder had the decency to let whomever came across her remains know who she was?”
“I can’t imagine he’d return to her home,” I said. “Plus, it’s been nearly a year since she’s been missing. Highly doubt no authorities went through her home with a fine toothed comb. No,” I said, turning to face the shallow grave of Dr. Elizabeth McConnell. “I don’t believe Alexander is telling us to go to her home. I think—and this is hard to say—he actually felt bad about killing her and sent us here to find her remains so that she can have a proper burial.”
“Yeah, old Alex is all heart, isn’t he. But, it’s most likely true,” Ralph said. “Doesn’t make me like him any more or want to put a slug between his eyes any less.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Whenever my parents planned a trip that involved a long car ride, my mother would always plan out things to talk about, games to play or things for me to read to help pass the time. She would space them out strategically and seemed to have a sense when I was getting bored of just sitting in the backseat of the family sedan. She’d sense when I was about to start complaining and right before I’d ask the dreaded question every parents hates to hear, “Are we there yet?” she’d either hand me back a game to play, a snack to eat or ask me a question about some topic she knew I’d be interested in talking about. When Ralph and I started out trip, I knew we were going to have a long drive from Prattsville, NY to the Straus family cabin in Indiana. That’s why, using my mom’s “long drive” strategy, I waited till we were a few hours from Prattsville before I asked him to reach into the back
seat and to grab the file folder off the seat.
“I came across this in the file cabinet in Straus’s office. Give what’s inside a quick read.”
“You came across a file folder and waited till now to share it with me?”
“Looking back on my decision,” I said. “I guess I should have shown the folder to you earlier. But, If I thought the file contained information we needed before leaving the cabin, I would have had you read it already. It’s just more doctor’s notes and one comment in the margin written by Alexander.”
Ralph twisted in his seat—not an easy task for him with his expansive girth—grabbed the folder, then, without saying another word, began reading the contents. He read for a good hour, making only occasional sounds which I wasn’t sure were made out of interest, confusion or disappointment with me for not sharing the folder sooner. This was, after all, a criminal investigation and Ralph was the only member of our team of two who had an official badge, title and and legal right to be chasing a known murderer.
“Sorry about not letting you know about the folder, Ralph,” I said when I noticed he had finished reading.
“There were plenty of notes in that file,” Ralph said, seemingly dismissing my apology, “and the only one that seems relevant to me is the note Alex wrote about him being a heart. I’m thinking the doctors from Hilburn gave up on trying to figure out what was keeping him alive and instead decided to use him for experiments.”
“Seems that way to me, too,” I said. “Alexander’s life certainly couldn’t have been at all enjoyable. I almost can understand his desire for revenge.”
“Yup, me too. But that doesn’t mean we should end this trip of ours and let him do whatever it is he’s planning on doing. He needs to be stopped. He’s too far gone in the head to do anything with him except kill him. And Derek?” Ralph said in a disturbingly quiet voice.”
“Yeah?” I replied.
“How about you and I agree to not keep anything related to this situation to ourselves from now on? Based on what we know about Alexander Black and considering the ample amount of planning he’s obviously put in to this play of his, secrets kept could be fatal.”
I knew right then there was only going to be one of two endings to Alexander’s play: Either Ralph, Thomas, Bri and I would be dead, or he would be. It was as simple as that.
________________________
Ralph called Officer Will Franklin a few hours after we had left Prattsville. I could only hear his side of the conversation, but his message was clear.
“Officer Franklin, I do apologize for calling you so late. But I need you to listen to me as closely as your ears can allow for. Derek Cole and I are headed out to that cabin in Indiana to take care of this business we got forced into. I figure we should tie things up in a day or two; no longer unless things don’t go as smoothly as we are hoping for. If you don’t hear back from me in two days, I need you to contact the state police...No, I don’t want you to tell them everything. Just the location of the old house in Prattsville. They need to collect the remains of the medical examiner so her family and friends can put her to a proper rest...Telling them about Straus’s cabin in Indiana ain’t going prevent nothing at that point. You just let them know where we were headed to, but don’t go telling them everything you know...Because I do not want you implicated in this scheme of ours...Hell no, son. This ain’t your hatchet to bury. This has to be done by Cole and me and no one else. You need to stay where you are and do your job. You running out to Indiana won’t do a lick of good for no one...I know, I know the state will have plenty of questions, but I need you to only tell them about the medical examiner’s remains and that Cole and I went chasing down an old ghost...Now that is a true statement, Officer Franklin and one that, if it comes to fruition, will be rather unfortunate for me and Cole. But if that happens, I’ll be deceased and won’t be too bothered about taking the heat about keeping this whole Alexander Black case to myself.”
Ralph and I were truly on our own.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The space between two and three in the morning has an ominous reputation. Those who are involved in paranormal investigations often report the most “unexplainable” events during this sixty minute snapshot. Police departments around the world see their most bizarre and dangerous calls around 2:40 in the morning. While I was in the Army, there were countless nights when my MP unit was told to, “Stand by” and to be, “Ready to roll” at a moment’s notice. Usually, this “ready” status was precautionary, but there were many nights when my busiest hour of the day was between two and three in the morning.
Special Forces, both ours, our allies and our enemies, prefer the dead of night to run clandestine operations. The thinking behind conducting operations during the two to three hour is that the targets of a particular operation are either enjoying their deepest level of sleep or would be a few hours into their night shift and would be struggling to ward off sleep’s attack.
There’s a stillness to all things during that hour. Even the air seems pregnant with potential; waiting for the slightest of sparks to ignite, converting potential into actuality. As Ralph and I drove towards Long Beach, Indiana, the two o’clock hour felt as if it was teeming with tensions desperate to be released. We were still at least six hours outside of Long Beach; only halfway through our journey, but a course feeling of finality hung in the air between us. As if some inevitable being of destiny was drawing a deep breath, then waiting for release.
“You asleep?” I whispered, silently praying Ralph would answer.
“I seem to be suffering from an acute case of insomnia,” Ralph replied.
“What do you think we’re walking into?”
“Hell. I believe you and I are driving into hell, my freelancing friend. Now, wiser men would spend this driving time to better map out and plan our approach, but those same wiser men probably wouldn’t be making this drive in the first place.”
“I have this strange feeling he knows we’re on our way. I know that sounds impossible, but...”
“I feel it, too,” Ralph said as he straightened up his posture. “You know, after that night down in Hilburn, I will admit I had more than an occasional thought about Alexander being more than what those doctors diagnosed him to be.”
“Like what?”
“Like the type of being who can know things that people shouldn’t be able to know. I still have an awful difficult time believing the doctor’s explanation about how he’s alive. Now, that last folder you graced me with your decision to allow me to take a look at, suggests Alex’s entire muscular structure acts like a heart, but even that is just too far our for a simple minded guy like me to even approach understanding. Trying to figure out how Alex is alive is like trying to pick up the clean end of a piece of dog shit: There just ain’t no way to do it.”
“I’m not gonna tell you I haven’t had the same thoughts about him,” I said. “I’m not ready to say I think he’s Satan’s spawn or anything like that, but, there’s something keeping him alive and it isn’t his body.”
“I once read a story about a man who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Doctors gave that fella three months to live but, son of a bitch, the man lived nearly five years. On his death bed, someone asked how he was able to survive so much longer than what any doctor thought he had left to live. And you know what that man said?”
“No idea.”
“He said he hated his brother so much that he just made up his mind to stay alive longer than his brother. His brother died two days before he did. Maybe Alex is being kept alive by hate and hate alone.”
“And if your story and Alexander’s are similar, he may feel he’s about to die and wants to make sure he sees his brother die first.”
“That’s something not too hard for me to wrap my head around.”
Though I had the foresight to turn down the ringer volume, when my iPhone rang, I nearly drove the car into a ditch and Ralph bounced his head off the passenger’s side window.<
br />
“Sure is a good thing we aren’t too jumpy,” Ralph said. “Who the hell is calling at this hour?”
I took a moment to catch my breath then glanced at my phone’s screen. “It’s Thomas O’Connell,” I said.
“I do not think this is going to be a happy call.”
I slid my thumb across the screen to answer the call, then pressed the “Speaker” key. “Derek Cole.”
“That son of a bitch has Bri. He called me. He told me he has her.” Thomas O’Connell’s voice was not foreign to me, but I had spoken with him enough to confidently say I’d recognize it nine out of ten times. But this voice—charged with a swelling anger and crushed small with fear—was one I did not recognize.
“Who is this?” I demanded.
“Damn it, Cole, it’s Thomas O’Connell. You know who it is.” He paused. I could hear his breathing stop as if locked deep in his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was thin and streaked with a newly added sense of dread. “Are you with him? Are you with my brother?”
“I’m not with Alexander, Thomas. Sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice at first. Tell me what happened.”
His voice returned to the same hallowed tone of terrorized dread. “I went to pick up Bri after I spoke with you earlier today, but she wasn’t there. I didn’t worry too much because Bri’s kind of forgetful. You know how artists can be sometimes? So, I called her but she didn’t answer. I waited at her apartment for a while, then I started to get nervous. After a few hours, I went to the police, but they said there’s nothing they could do till she’s been missing for a full day. Those assholes started asking me questions about if Bri and I were having problems or if I had given her any reason to take off. I wasted almost two hours with them. Assholes were thinking I did something to her. I would never do anything to her.”
Still Heartless: The Thrilling Conclusion to Heartless (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 5) Page 13
