VOICES: Book 2 in the David Chance series (Suspense, Mystery, Thriller)

by Hileman, John Michael

  “What else am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just funny.”

  “I’m glad my misery makes you happy.”

  “Why don’t you just do what you can, and let the messages sort themselves out?”

  David drove his fist into the bulletin board, sending index cards and tacks flying. He stormed off down the aisle. She watched him depart and chewed a little harder on the end of her pen.

  “Are you terrorizing the interns again?”

  She smiled when she heard the voice. It was the sound of her husband, Brad Knight. She could already smell his cologne enveloping her. She looked back over her shoulder and was immediately greeted by the tight fibers of his light-blue dress shirt. She followed the marble-white buttons up to his strong chin, to his beautiful, blue eyes.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be home packing for your trip.”

  “I had a couple of things I wanted to wrap up here before I go, besides, my flight’s not till later.” He looked across the room. “What’s gotten David’s undies in a bunch?”

  “He’s getting messages again and having some post traumatic stress.”

  He came around and stood in the aisle, sipping on his coffee. “Messages? You still believe all that?”

  “You still don’t?”

  He gave a mischievous smirk. “I never said I didn’t believe. I said I was surprised you did. I was also surprised when the rest of the city went right along with you.”

  “Not everyone.”

  He took note of the grit in her tone. “Someone giving you flak?”

  “Not me. David. You know that man who killed his girlfriend in Milton and blamed it on his son? We were at the crime scene this morning, and there were some serious bad feelings coming from our boys in blue.”

  “They gave him a hard time?”

  “Some of them still believe he’s behind the terrorist bomb plot.”

  “Hmm, so that’s why he’s frustrated. Should I talk to him?”

  “No. I think he just needs some time to work it through. He has a lot on his mind, you know, with his job here stagnating, and dealing with the loss of his best friend.” Her mouth snapped shut.

  Her slip of the tongue did not go unnoticed, however. If it had, in a weird way, she would have been disappointed, disappointed in Brad.

  He looked at her casually. “Lost his best friend, huh?”

  “Yeah. It’s been real tough on him,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t press the issue, but knowing full well he would.

  “So—why did he share this best-friend thing with you and no one else? He could have gotten time off from work for that.”

  She slid her chair back, and stood. “Not everything is a network of secrets and lies, Brad,” There was a smolder in her eyes and a pucker in her lips.

  They faced off. “Are you withholding information from me?” he said, warming his words to let her know that, in no uncertain terms, he was onto her and looking forward to the game he would have to play to extract the information.

  She dragged her nails lightly across the fabric covering his arm as she passed by. “Maybe,” she said with a playful tone.

  The adversarial reporter relationship was one of the spices of their marriage. Though it was safe to tell Brad that David’s best friend was the notorious Alex Blackstone, she would enjoy fending off his attempts to extract the information well into the foreseeable future.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When Jon finally stopped running, he was several blocks away from the 7-Eleven in a quiet neighborhood, with no pedestrians and hardly any cars. He leaned his forehead against a black, iron fence, in the covering of a line of bushes, to catch his breath. Sweat ran off his brow and dripped on his forearm. He moved the iPad to the side to protect it and wiped the sweat from his upper lip on his black sleeve.

  Now what? he thought. He had no car, not much money, and if it wasn’t enough that the police were hunting him, now there were assassins too. Could it be any worse? Jail was starting to look like the only option because he couldn’t live in hiding forever. He kicked the dirt and gripped a rung of the fence and shook it violently. “WAS MY LIFE NOT BAD ENOUGH FOR YOU!”

  He wasn’t sure who he was yelling at, if anyone at all. He might have been yelling at himself. There were so many bad choices he had made. If he had been a different person, a better son, maybe his dad wouldn’t have turned into a drunk, maybe his mom would have stayed. If he hadn’t been so shy, maybe he wouldn’t have isolated himself from almost everyone at school, except two social rejects he could barely call friends. If he was not so weak, he could have run away from it all a year ago and avoided all this. Any life was better than this life. Anywhere was better than here. But now there was nowhere to run. The police in every state would be looking for him. His future had four cement walls and bars for windows, or a bullet.

  He slid down to a squat, and his mind slid into a numb empty void where only the word bullet existed. It floated like fog in the midst, as only a word. There was no longer any meaning attached to it. It was a mystery, begging for him to look inside and have its secret revealed. He let it float there, just out of reach. This was an exercise he had perfected, a form of psychological detachment that helped him to relax. With ease he slipped into his bubble of protection, his peaceful void of darkness, quietly panting in the shade of the bushes. But he was not alone.

  A phrase materialized in his mind. “Move over a little,” it said.

  Was it talking to him?

  “About ten or so,” said another voice.

  “It came to telling fifteen,” said a third.

  These were random; he was sure of it; they had a different feeling to them.

  Then a deeper voice said, “We are many.”

  Jon let the voices play. Each phrase offered hope. Perhaps one might even offer a solution.

  “Don took it.”

  “I left it.”

  “But you took it.”

  “Show him.”

  “Under the sun.”

  “In plain view.”

  “Finch, finch, and finch.”

  “Under the stone of the sun.”

  “He’s coming.”

  The last phrase made Jon’s eyes flick open. Who’s coming? He pressed his back against the hard rungs of the iron fence and peered through the bushes. A car was approaching. He could hear it but couldn’t see the road clear enough to get a glimpse of it. Was it the blue car? Were the voices warning him to run? He gripped the fence and shifted his weight to see out a larger opening. The blue car came into view. Instantly, he felt exposed, as though he had stepped out into a spot light. He recoiled and burrowed farther into the bushes.

  Please, please, please, don’t see me.

  He listened as the engine grew louder. With each passing second his urge to bolt grew. There was no way they could miss him. It was broad daylight, and the bush offered hardly any cover. He had to run. This wasn’t like being in the tree at night with his father searching through the darkness. He was a sitting target, in plain view.

  The sound of the engine was almost upon him, and his terror escalated to a frenzy. If it reached him, there would be no chance of escape. He had to leap the fence. He had to do it now! But there were spikes on top. Would he make it? It was too late, the car was upon him.

  Was it slowing? Did they even have to slow? They could shoot him from the car at that speed. He gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. His only hope was that one shot would hit its mark and end his life instantly. He didn’t want to suffer in agony.

  Please make it clean!

  Jon’s eye opened a slit, and he watched the car pass by, almost in slow motion. For the briefest of moments, he was fully visible to the car and its occupants, but it was not the blue sedan from the 7-Eleven. This car did not have the tinted side windows—and he was fairly confident that the other car didn’t have a window sign reading, “Baby on Board.”

  He let out a long breath of relief, but
then his mind replayed the phrase that had caused him to leap to the conclusion that his life was in danger. “He’s coming.” Now it felt flat and hollow. Why would the assassin be coming for him? The police were scouring the area for the blue sedan. It wouldn’t be casually trolling the neighborhoods looking for him.

  He got to his feet and brushed himself off. Although the last phrase had been random, did that mean the rest of the phrases were random? The voices were telling him to find Hunter Brook; something was buried there, maybe something that could help him. But he had never heard of Hunter Brook.

  He grabbed his iPad and slid a finger to unlock it. In the upper left corner a little white dot indicated that the tablet had found a Wifi signal. It was weak, and possibly password protected, but it was worth a try. He activated the maps program, and slowly the map appeared on the screen in chunks.

  The signal was enough to get the job done. He typed Hunter Brook into the search—and waited. Finally, a little red pin marked it on the map. It wasn’t a brook. It was a street, Hunterbrook Street, and according to the map, it was one street over. If he followed the street he was on, it would bring him to French, which connected to Hunterbrook.

  A straighter route, however, would be to climb over the black, iron fence and cross through the Plainview Cemetery that was marked in dark grey on the map. His eyes brushed over the name of the cemetery again. Plainview. The item that was buried wasn’t buried in plain view, it was buried in Plainview. He didn’t have to go around, he needed to go inside. The thought produced an immediate reaction.

  I’m not digging anything up in a cemetery! You gotta be out of your mind! He was desperate, but he would never be that desperate. Besides, he didn’t have a shovel. Maybe he didn’t need one. Maybe whatever he was meant to dig up was not buried deep.

  He followed the black, iron fence and made his way to the entrance to the cemetery. If it did come to the point where the voices led him to dig up a dead body, he would simply refuse and move on from there.

  The sign with its curly, metal border and gothic shape had an air of mystery, as though ancient secrets were held in this place of stone, marble, and gently rolling hills. In the daytime it was friendly and inviting, with its oak trees and network of babbling brooks which emptied into a duck pond with lilies, reeds, and grass.

  He walked along the meandering, tar path until a large, marble stone with the name FINCH caught his eye. Next to it was a smaller stone that also had the name FINCH, and beside that one was a small, flat stone that said Finch. “Finch, finch, and finch,” he said in his mind.

  He read the names: Charles, Martha, and Thomas. Father, mother, and son. It was buried under the son!

  He crouched down and looked at the small, thin stone. Was there something buried under it? He could probably lift it easily enough. His eyes snapped up and looked around as the thought hit him. There was a family several rows over, and a women taking flowers from her car six rows back. He’d seen the groundskeeper drive his electric cart to the main building a few minutes ago so he was probably still inside.

  He slid his fingers behind the back edge of the stone and pulled. It was heavier than it looked, but it lifted. He checked again to see if anyone was looking in his direction, then pulled as hard as he could and flipped the stone onto its face, revealing a dark patch of moist earth and a long brown worm.

  He scraped at the earth and felt something hard just below the surface. A few more swipes revealed metal with patches of rust. Was it a box? Was it treasure? He looked up again. No one appeared to take note of his activities, so he dug at the light covering of dark dirt until the entire dimension of the object was visible. Whatever it was, it was solid metal and there was a round eagle stamp on the top, partly obscured by the soil caked to the metal.

  It wasn’t large enough to hold a body, even a baby’s body. And he had never heard of someone having ashes buried in a metal box—though he guessed it was possible. He tilted it on its side and brushed the dirt away. On the front of the rectangular container was a metal handle, and in the lower right corner was an inscription on a raised copper plate. It said Norfolk County Savings and Loan. It was a safe deposit box. Excitement and paranoia hit him simultaneously. Again his eyes scanned the cemetery grounds.

  A young girl in a flowered dress with the family was watching him, but she had not raised an alarm. She only stared, like a quiet specter, observing his actions with detached interest.

  He set the box to the side, out of view of the little girl, and brushed the excess dirt back into the hole. Eventually the girl looked away, and he took the opportunity to flip the stone back onto its spot. It balanced on the rim around the hole, covering the hole completely.

  Across the sea of tombstones, he caught a glimpse of the groundskeeper on the move again. How would he ever get this box out of the cemetery without being seen? The closest covering was a group of trees back toward the entrance. Could he make it there before the groundskeeper came back around?

  A voice spoke. “Should we tell him to run?” It sounded less like a voice and more like a thought. But the thought was not his own.

  “Run, now,” said another.

  He snatched the box up and ran toward the tarred path and the patch of trees beyond. The woman with the flowers had gotten into her vehicle and was slowly creeping down the access road. The family had all turned to watch him, but no one said a word as he jogged through the stones, holding the box in a football carry. It might have been partly due to the smile he forced onto his face. He imagined a smiling man jogging with a box would be less suspicious than a scared man jogging with a box. His theory appeared to be working. There was no attempt to stop him.

  He made it to the trees and gave a look back, half expecting the groundskeeper to be racing toward him in his cart, but there was no pursuit. All but one of the family by the gravestone had gone back to their ceremony. The tall father figure had left them and was walking toward the main building, possibly interested in knowing why a young man with a dirty, metal box was jogging around the cemetery—but by the time they investigated, he would be long gone.

  He took off through the woods, home free—until he ran into the spiked, black fence.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  David typed in a search for Special Agent Collins, but only gibberish came up in the search list. He typed in Agent Cooper. There were a couple of hits regarding the recent bomb threat in Boston, but nothing of any value. Their involvement in this murder case had weighed on his mind all the way back from the crime scene. Why would the FBI be involved with a local homicide? And what did Collins mean by supernatural? If David called and asked, would he get a straight answer? He slid the card from his pants pocket and pulled his cell phone out. There was one way to find out.

  In short order the phone was ringing. “Hello, you’ve reached the Federal Bureau of Investigations. If you know the extension of the party you are trying...” He stabbed the numbers for Collins’ extension and after a long pause there was a click. “Agent Collins.”

  “Yeah,” stammered David, “this is David Chance.”

  “Hello, David. Did you get another message?”

  “No. But I was wondering if I could ask you a couple questions.”

  “You can give it a shot,” he said.

  “Why don’t you think I’m a nut case like everyone else?”

  “Direct and to the point, I like that. It’s a fair question.”

  There was a subtle pause, and David filled the gap. “You risked a lot trusting that I would come up with something on that crime scene. Weren’t you worried about your credibility?”

  “David, the department I work for at the Bureau is pretty much the laughing stock of all law enforcement. I’m used to the ridicule. It comes with the job.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Well, a little of this and a little of that, but mostly we hunt aliens—at least, that was our original mandate. It’s broadened since 1947.”

  “To include what?”
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  “Everything weird.”

  “Like me,” he said.

  Collins laughed. “I’ve seen weirder than the likes of you, Mr. Chance.”

  “Are there others like me?”

  “Sorry, that’s classified.”

  “So you’re saying there are.”

  “No. I’m saying it’s classified. I’m not allowed to discuss any case currently under investigation by my department unless the individual I am speaking with is directly connected, and even then it is on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Are you at least allowed to tell me how you think this Blake murder is connected to the supernatural?”

  “I wish I was. The last thing I want to do is alienate the one person who can possibly help me the most, but the nature of this situation is volatile; it’s best if you don’t know the details, for your protection as well as your family’s. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ve told you more than I tell most people. Usually I just pretend that I have a boring job chasing down things that don’t exist and let people have their laugh, but I didn’t imagine you’d buy that.”

  “Well...” David paused a moment.

  “Yes?”

  “If you want my help, you need to let me know what I’m getting myself into.”

  “I wish I could, but my hands are tied.”

  “C’mon. You have to give me something. I could be putting my life in danger, and who knows who else’s. Last time my family was kidnapped.”

  “For now, David, just wait for the messages to come. If you need backup, give me a call. I can’t do anything else for you at this time. If you get anything else, you have my number, otherwise, I’ll be in touch. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.” The line disconnected.

  David dropped his hand to his lap. Great! That helped a lot. How easy it was for everyone to tell him to wait. They weren’t the ones whose already-fragile life could be thrown into life-threatening turmoil at any moment. They weren’t the ones who had to deal with the repercussions of obeying the messages. As he sat fuming, his eyes rested on a yellow pad someone had left next to the computer. It was covered with scribbled words. David’s eyes bounced from the bottom to the top, and a message formed. Care package 25 Main.