Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  Picking at his brown bag of fries and burgers, David found the onramp to the I-64 westbound, taking him out of Charleston, West Virginia, and then turning northwest in the direction of Dayton, Ohio to catch I-70. He hoped to make it to Indiana tonight, if possible, but Richmond, a good-sized town on the border between Ohio and Indiana, would be far enough for his second day on the road; he had no idea it was so exhausting, sitting in a car all day long and driving.

  Rush was keeping him company – he was listening to Hold Your Fire now, with great songs like Tai Shan and Turn the Page. It was an outstanding CD, one of their best. Force Ten was on here – it was about an approaching storm, and the constant radio reports about Hurricane Mandy had reminded him how good that song, and this album, were. Now the songs were keeping him company in the mountains as he traveled.

  Music was strange – the circumstances in which you listen to it might change, but the songs stayed the same. If he’d told himself the last time he’d listened to this CD that the next time he’d be in another state, he wouldn’t have believed it.

  It wasn’t like he was doing anything - only pointing the car in a particular direction and pushing down on a little pedal; so why was he so tired? At least he was making progress. He hoped to get a room tonight, if he could, but then, maybe he should save his money and go another night before getting a room. Of course he had plenty of money, and saving it didn’t make up for smelling bad. He shook his head, putting off the decision, and dug into the bag, pulling out one of the cheeseburgers and digging into it.

  “Can I help you?”

  The voice, old and female and sounding eminently helpful, came from behind, and Jack instinctively began sizing her up, trying to guess what she would look like and how she would act and how she would react. A part of his mind began exploring methods of breaking her will even as Jack turned to face her.

  “Actually,” he began, “I think I’ve got it.” He was dressed nicely and seated at the library’s only microfiche reader, going through the town’s newspaper files from March of 1978, the last time he’d been in town. “I think I’ve gotten the hang of this machine.”

  She smiled at him and then leaned closer, squinting to read the title of the article currently displayed on Jack’s screen: “Robert Nolan found murdered”, the headline shouted in bold typeface. As she looked at the screen one of her hands drifted aimlessly up to her throat, circling it in a gesture that Jack supposed was meant to be comforting to her but instead looked to him like the grip of one person strangling another.

  She took a deep breath. “Oh my, I remember when that dreadful thing happened,” she said, seeming to forget about Jack for a moment, her eyes lost in the headline as she remembered the past, and one of her hands toyed with a pair of gold spectacles that hung from an ornate thin chain around her next. A moment later she looked sharply at Jack, and for the first time he wondered if this was a bad idea. “Why are you looking at that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  His mind was blank suddenly but, as usual, a lie popped unbidden into his mind and he used it. Delay her figuring it all out, if she was going to - he couldn’t afford to kill again so soon after the girl.

  “I’m researching a book on serial killers, and I think this boy might’ve been part of a string of killings on the eastern seaboard. Wasn’t there another killing just a few days before?” He congratulated himself on the cleverness of his lie, knowing that as soon as she felt comfortable she would tell him everything about the time that she could remember, and that would be infinitely more interesting than reading the articles in that poorly-written rag that this town called a newspaper. And the chance of her remembering him from before were outweighed by the chance to hear the story from a live person rather than squinting at a screen, trying to read the hazy and faded print of old newspapers.

  As soon as he said he was researching a book the woman appeared to visibly relax and looked around to find a chair to pull up. Jack stood and pulled one over for her, and she thanked him and sat down next to him. He watched her eyes for a glimmer of recognition, any hint of suspicion - anyone who had lived here back in ‘78 could conceivable remember him from before, but he saw nothing like that in her eyes.

  “Well, yes, there was another killing just a couple of days before, a dreadful, horrible thing. Actually, two other murders. One of the little boys who helped out around here disappeared a few days before Roger Nolan did, and the police found his body the day before Roger disappeared. Horrible thing, those killings were. Drove this town to the brink of craziness. But back then we had a Sheriff by the name of William Beaumont, and he was a very smart man, best sheriff we ever had. He figured out that one person was behind both of the... killings, and he also figured that the killer was an outsider, somebody that wasn’t from this town. He organized search parties, and then one night, he set up an ambush at this grocery store...”

  He sat back, relaxing, the tale washed over Jack like a new nursery rhyme, only this bedtime story held a few new twists that he hadn’t known. But it was so strange to hear the story, told anew from a different perspective - here, in this stupid little town, Jack’s last visit had taken on the aura of legend.

  At first he was worried that the old woman might recognize him because he had followed the little boy away from the library before jumping him a few blocks from here, but the woman was hardly paying him any attention - she was wrapped up in telling the story. She probably hadn’t even been in that day, though from her recollections it sounded like she did work at the library even back then. The same job, the same place for almost 20 years? Just the idea amazed him.

  Jack had forgotten about the flyers that Beaumont had posted all over the town with sketches of his face, but the years had changed him as they change all things. The picture she showed him on the microfiche looked something like a much younger version of him - close enough that if someone were to look at him and at the sketch side by side, they might make a connection, but the old woman didn’t seem to make it. Or maybe she was just too caught up in telling the story to ponder on the impossible - that she was actually explaining what had happened to the man who had been responsible. Who would’ve believed it?

  The story was almost like he remembered it, except of course that the Sheriff had gotten all the credit for running the ‘Killer’ out of town, paying for it with his own life like some kind of religious martyr - the way this stupid town idolized Beaumont made Jack want to puke. If the guy had been all that smart, he wouldn’t be dead! The story angered and pleased Jack at the same time, and some of the details that followed the story interested him even more.

  The deputy in charge of the lines of dogs and deputies that had driven him to the roadblock was now the Sheriff. The man was not very respected around town, from the impression the Librarian gave Jack, and he remembered that the guy must’ve screwed up somewhere along the line that night - the dogs and their handlers had made way too much noise, giving away their position and their strategy and allowing Jack to circle around the roadblock they were driving him towards. Beaumont had died because of that deputy’s incompetence, if you took that argument to the extreme, and now that deputy was the Sheriff. Perfect.

  The woman deputy he’d punched in the nose and then almost shot the night he’d killed Beaumont, she had remained a cop for only a few more months before quitting, retiring on some kind of medical pension. She was now a school-bus driver for the county, still a public servant.

  And when the old woman began to tell him about Beaumont and his family, Jack had to try very hard to keep still. She sat next to him, her long, aged fingers working the machine before them, punctuating her words with pictures. It was like having a walking, talking index of the history of Liberty and her people. Jack couldn’t have been luckier. For one thing, William Beaumont hadn’t started out as Sheriff, not by a long shot.

  His picture began to appear off and on the late 60’s and very early ‘70’s, occurring more and more frequently. The librarian explained again
that the man was a local hero now, a remark that caused Jack to bite his tongue almost hard enough to make it bleed, but he managed to say nothing. How many times was she going to mention it?

  Long before Jack had gunned Beaumont down, the good Sheriff had been interested in the law. He had attended school and taken many courses on police work from the local college, applying for and accepting a position as a Deputy in the Liberty Police Department.

  “That’s the same college that his son attended for a while,” the woman said nonchalantly, working the machine.

  Jack’s heart stopped for a long moment, and he forgot to breath.

  It suddenly felt very warm in the Library, as if the lights and the sun streaming in the open windows were far hotter than they had been only a moment before. Instantly this place was like a sauna, drawing out beads of perspiration on Jack’s forehead. His head swam for a long moment at the possibilities before he found his tongue.

  “Son?” he asked cautiously, almost unwilling to believe the possibility. No, Jack didn’t want to get excited. A kid of Beaumont’s?

  “Oh, yes. Beaumont’s wife was pregnant when he was killed, and she gave birth several months later to a baby boy. Pity, too. She died in childbirth, but I guess she joined William, who she dearly loved. The little boy was being raised by her sister Gloria, as her own son, and he attended school for a short time at Central Virginia Community College, the same school his father attended.”

  Jack’s mind was racing. Not quite like killing Beaumont all over again, but close. Was it too much to hope for? Jack had killed Beaumont in ‘78, so the kid couldn’t be any older than 17 or 18, could he? Beaumont’s wife had had a kid and then died, and the kid was being by his aunt. Surely he’d heard the stories of why his father had died - did he resent his father for leaving him alone to grow up by himself? Was he anything like his father, anywhere near as crafty and clever? Would HE make a suitable opponent, an adequate stand-in for his father should Jack decide to play the game again? Jack had had no father and knew what it was like to resent people you were supposed to love - did the kid hate his parents, or love them? So many questions...

  Jack looked back at the old woman. “Wow, I’ll bet he’d be interesting to talk to. Any chance I could get his address, maybe call on him?” He felt like he wanted to bolt out of here and drive straight over there and...

  She shook her head, smiling. “I’ll bet you are a very good researcher, wanting to find out everything you can. And he would be interesting to talk to, even though he never talked to or even met his father. Unfortunately, I heard that he left town for California, supposedly for good. I think he’s got friends out there, or something. Anyway, you might want to speak to Gloria, Grace Beaumont’s sister. Do you want her address?”

  “Oh, yes, thank you. When did he leave?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ll ask”. He watched as the old lady stood and walked slowly back over to the circulation counter where younger employees were checking books in and out, and it was all he could do to keep from screaming. Here was a blood descendant of Beaumont and the kid was gone, probably for good. Damn! It would’ve been perfect...

  She returned, sitting. And she had her glasses on, looking down at a slip of paper and reading the address there. Jack wondered if the glasses made any difference, and turned to collect his things - he couldn’t be recognized now, not when he was so close. If her eyes were bad, maybe she wouldn’t recognize him right away. But what if she got a good look at him and went back and looked at that police sketch - would she see his face then? “Tina over there knows David‘s girlfriend, and she said that David left for Los Angeles yesterday morning, but that he would probably be coming back soon. Evidently not too many people think he’s serious about staying away, and he’ll be back in a few months.”

  Or maybe sooner, Jack thought. Maybe the right bait would bring him back sooner. He thanked the woman for the address she handed him, keeping his head down so that she couldn’t get a clear look at him. No need to take chances, or rely on coincidence and luck this time.

  He thanked her for the information she’d given him, and promised to make good use of it.

  Meteorologists and weather forecasters across the country scrambled with their maps and charts and pounded their computer keyboards to gain access to as much new data as they could, trying to stay one step ahead of Hurricane Mandy. Up and down the East Coast, the weather patterns were so confused because the existing weather systems were being shoved out of the way by the approaching hurricane, and where the outer bands of Mandy’s rain and wind interacted with the other high and low pressure areas, severe rains and winds were battering towns and whole states. Flood watches and warnings were going up all across Georgia, South and North Carolina as Mandy slowly approached. Pictures were being beamed down to the planet every few hours by a network of weather satellites orbiting the earth, and at the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, the forecasts and satellite pictures were being rebroadcast to news stations up and down the entire east coast. The fact that the storm was moving so slowly made damage and storm intensity projection even more difficult - at any moment the storm might just slow and fizzle out, or turn out to sea.

  The high-pressure air mass that had been parked over the eastern U.S. for several days, affording the eastern states unseasonably warm temperatures, had shattered with the approach of Mandy, and now storms created by the break-up of the high-pressure air mass were bringing havoc to any semblance of true weather forecasting. It was useless to announce any local advisories because no one could pinpoint the exact locations of where Mandy would drift or where the smaller storms would appear, so a rare General Weather Alert was issued to all National Weather Service locations on the eastern seaboard from Florida to New York for the next seven days.

  Across the country, meteorologists and weather forecasters crossed their fingers and studied their data, looking for any way to predict where the hurricane would go, and they hoped they would be able to warn people about it. Or at least warn them to get out of the way of it.

  Jack double-checked the address and slowed as he reached the house. 2716 Monroe Street, and there it sat like every other house on the block, just one in a long row of homes that looked very much alike. The lights were on and he rolled the van to a stop across the street from the house, switching his headlights off. He wasn’t really sure what he was going to do here, or why he had even come here first, but it seemed like the right thing to do. He would talk to her, and kill her or take her with him. Either would bring the kid back. And she would tell Jack enough about the boy to prepare him.

  If Jack decided to play the game again, this time it would be with the boy.

  The first thing he noticed was that there were no curtains in any of the windows. Jack had a clear view into the front room of the house, and he could clearly see stacks and stacks of brown cardboard boxes piled around the scant furniture. Jack personally had no experience with moving or moving days - everything meaningful to him was contained in his van - but he could understand the need to move. He had never been one to stay rooted in the same place for very long.

  A woman of middle years strolled across one of the open windows and Jack instinctively scrunched down in his seat, even though she hadn’t even been looking out the window and even if she had been, it would have been next to impossible to see him sitting in a dark van across the wide residential street.

  As Jack watched, the woman walked between the boxes, carrying a liquor bottle in one hand and an empty glass tumbler in the other. She appeared to be having a very animated conversation with someone else, but Jack couldn’t see them. She swayed and bumped into a short stack of boxes, upsetting them, and the top box tipped over and fell. She turned and stared at where the box had fallen for a long moment and then poured herself some more of a clear liquid and knocked it back, raising the glass first and toasting the fallen box.

  She was trashed - that much was obvious. And that would make Jacks’ job a lot easier.<
br />
  Jack knew all about the history of the Beaumont family from his work in the Library earlier in the day. Beaumont was dead and his little wife had died a few months later in childbirth, squeezing out a little Beaumont runt before expiring - dying was something the Beaumont family did very well. This woman was her sister and had taken in the young boy, raising him as her own. Jack wanted to kill the boy too, but that could wait a little while. First, he had his next victim already picked out. And the boy could wait - he wanted to scare the Beaumont kid before he killed him.

  And after he killed off all of the Beaumont’s, he could forget all about this pissy little town.

  A pair of headlights turned the corner and came up the street towards the house, slowing and turning into the driveway. Jack was scrunched down again, but he could see a tall, gray-haired man climb out of what looked like a brand new car, stopping to wipe something off the shiny hood before walking up the driveway to the front door and knocking. A few long seconds later, the woman pulled the door open, still gripping the glass and curling one arm around the bottle as if it were her good-luck charm. She said something to the man and staggered back inside, and he followed, closing the door behind him.

  Jack saw nothing for several minutes. He was beginning to wonder if the two had sacked out when the lights in the house went off and the front door opened. The woman came out first, this time without her bottle and glass but wearing a thin coat against the chill. She managed to bang her shin good against the bumper of the man’s new car before making it around to the passenger door. The man locked the house up and came back down the driveway, getting out his keys before climbing in and starting up the car.

  Jack expected them to drive away immediately, but they seemed to be talking or something and then the overhead light came on as the woman opened her door and leaned out of it. His angle was blocked, but the heaving shoulders and the hand-to-the-mouth gesture when she sat back up made it obvious. She pulled the door closed as the man backed out of the driveway and headed off east.