by C. A. Shives
Cold fear soaked her in a way that the damp basement had not been able to permeate. He curled his hand into a fist and she braced herself, knowing what was coming. But even the prior knowledge did not prepare her for the thud of pain that reverberated in her skull, as if he'd pounded her brain with a sledgehammer. She fell backwards onto the hard floor, unable to feel anything except the throbbing that thumped in her head.
“It hurts, doesn't it?” he asked. “Imagine how I felt the time your boyfriend beat the shit out of me on the soccer field. Just because I missed a goal during gym class. Just because he was an asshole.”
“He wasn't my boyfriend,” she said, her voice a tremor of pain and fear.
Trout ignored her and reached into the pocket of his pants. He pulled out a white sock and a bar of soap. To Charlotte, the soap looked very big. And very hard.
As Trout slipped the soap into the toe of the sock, he said, “They make these weapons in prison. Impact weapons. Cons are creative types. You should see some of the shit they can make out of a toothbrush and a piece of paper. But they're also stupid. Some of them believe the myth that hitting someone with a bar of soap won't leave bruises. Of course it bruises. A lot.”
He held the open end of the sock in one hand and spun it in the air like a pinwheel, the soap stretching the cotton into a long tube.
“It hurts to get hit with a bar of soap in a sock, bitch. Hurts a lot. Of course, nothing like the pain you and your asshole friends have caused me over the years. Still, it's a start.”
Trout pulled back his arm and Charlotte raised her hands to protect her face from the swing of the soap. She felt the first stinging blow on her thigh, and she screamed at the impact. The agonizing pain felt like fire on her leg. As she grabbed at the spot he had struck, she felt another whack on her shoulder, the soap pounding her tender flesh with a heavy thud. She screamed again and started sobbing, curling her body on the floor in a protective ball.
“I'm not really hitting you that hard,” Trout said. “We've got plenty of time to play this game, and I don't want you dead yet.”
She tightened her jaw to stop the screams that threatened to escape. As she felt another strike of the soap swinging against her leg, his words echoed in her head.
I don't want you dead yet.
She wondered if, by the end, she'd be praying for death.
CHAPTER 7
NOVEMBER 5 – MONDAY AFTERNOON
Lori Sims from TV News 4 interviewed Thad Allen on the television screen. An askew tie was the only sign of dishevelment in the plain man's appearance, but his tension was apparent in the tightness around his mouth and eyes. Lori wore a mask of professionalism framed by impeccably coiffed blond hair as she questioned Charlotte's husband.
“Do you think your wife is still alive, Mr. Allen?” Lori asked as she thrust the microphone toward his face.
“I hope so, Miss Sims. I hope so.”
The television screen went black, and Herne turned to see Sherry, his waitress, standing by his table with a remote control in one hand and a coffee pot in the other. “I can't stand listening to that Lori Sims woman,” Sherry said as she poured Herne another cup of coffee. “She's so fake. She comes into the diner sometimes, and she always has special requests for her meal. No mayonnaise. No gravy. No butter. If she wants some fancy schmancy food, she shouldn't be coming here.”
Herne glanced at his plate. The half-eaten slippery ham potpie was a Shady Hill Diner specialty and a regional favorite: slices of dough simmered in a broth of ham, onions, carrots, and potatoes. The resulting dish looked like a pile of inedible slop. But it was delicious.
“Want some pie this afternoon?” Sherry asked. “Maude just brought in a fresh batch of cherry cobbler.”
Maude Jameson baked the pies for Shady Hill Diner in her farm house. Local rumors claimed the Mennonite woman refused to share her recipes with anyone—even her daughters. Maude's pie was responsible for many of the spare tires carried around the midsection of some Hurricane residents.
Herne shook his head. “No, thanks, Sherry. I've been eating too much pie lately.”
Sherry winked at him, her wide grin displaying a few missing teeth. “You still look good to me, Art,” she said before she sashayed to the kitchen. Her hips—a little too wide for her black polyester pants—swung generously with each of her steps.
Herne smelled Elizabeth's signature scent of cucumbers and melon when she approached behind him. He continued to stare at his plate as she slid into his booth, her cargo pants slipping on the smooth green vinyl. He had felt the thump of his heart—just one heavy beat—when he realized she was near, and he pressed his palms against the hard top of the table to control his reaction to her presence.
She grabbed his hands and gripped them tightly in her own. “Is Charlotte dead?” she asked. He could feel her fingers trembling with anxiety. “You can tell me the truth. Do you think she's dead?”
“No,” he lied. “I think she's alive.”
“Will you find her, Art?” Pleading. Begging. The need in her words apparent in the tightness of her soft voice.
“I'm trying,” he said.
Elizabeth leaned back in the booth, shaking her head at Sherry when she appeared with a coffee pot. Like all seasoned waitresses, Sherry had learned to read body language. She knew when she was serving a happy party, a fighting couple, or a disgruntled customer. Herne knew she saw the tension in his shoulders and the frown on Elizabeth's face. Sherry silently walked away.
Elizabeth traced small circles on the table, her fingers running along the scars that had been etched in the surface by careless slips of a knife. She wore no cosmetics, but her skin looked youthful beneath the harsh lights of the restaurant, even though her fortieth birthday was only a few years away. Her red-rimmed eyes told the story of a woman who wept, but Herne didn't see any tears. “Rex doesn't have time to look for Charlotte now,” she said. “There's been a murder.”
Her laugh, short and barking, sounded bitter to his ears. “Of course, he can't ask you to help him solve the homicide case,” she said, “because I've already taken you for myself. It's selfish of me, I know, to do this. To you. To him.”
“And to yourself,” he said.
She shrugged, the callous move incongruent with the usual elegance of her gestures. “I don't care what it does to me,” she said. “Charlotte was like a baby sister to me. In some ways, I raised her. Maybe we've grown apart over the years, but she'll always be family to me. I don't have much family, Art. Just like you.”
Faces flashed in Herne's mind. People he had lost. His parents killed in a car accident. His sister murdered by a jealous boyfriend. His wife dead in a house fire. He knew the loneliness of having no one.
“I know I shouldn't have asked you to do this,” she continued. “I know it hurts you.”
“It's too late to ask me to stop,” he said. “I've already started. Now I'll see it through to the end.”
She nodded, her brown eyes bleak. “I know you will, Art. Maybe that's why I asked you to do it. Because I know you'll find her. One way or the other. Alive or… dead.”
He didn't want to ask about the murder that Rex was investigating. Didn't want another case that might consume him. He could already feel his control slipping as he sought Elizabeth’s cousin. Already felt the pull of the booze and pills and darkness. But the words left his mouth before he could stop them. “Who was murdered?”
“Gabe Vanderbilt,” Elizabeth replied. “I don't know anything else about it. They just found his body this morning at The Keystone Motel.”
“A motel?” Herne furrowed his brow. “Could be a drug deal that went sour.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Maybe. All I know is that Rex is going to be too busy investigating Gabe's murder to spend any time looking for Charlotte. In fact, I think Rex believes that Charlotte is already dead. You don't, do you?”
It was the second time she had asked for his opinion about Charlotte's current state of health. The first time, He
rne had lied to her. He saw no reason to tell her the truth now. “There's a good chance she's alive,” he lied. “I'll find her, Elizabeth. I promise.”
His mind echoed with all the promises he had made but hadn’t kept. The promises he made to his wife. He promised to keep her safe. Promised his work as a cop would never interfere with their lives. Promised she'd never have anything to fear.
But he carried the sound of her screams with him every day. And every night.
“The funny thing is,” Elizabeth said, “Gabe was Charlotte's prom date in high school. That was years ago, of course. Ten years or more. But I guess that's the way of small towns. Everyone knows everyone else.”
Herne nodded. Elizabeth was right. Hurricane was, in many ways, like one large extended family. But Charlotte's disappearance and Gabe's murder felt like too much of a coincidence to Herne. And his previous years as a cop had taught him one thing: never trust a coincidence.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Keystone Motel sat on the edge of town, the only inn in Hurricane except for Aunt Greta's Bed & Breakfast. A neon vacancy sign flickered sporadically on the door to the main office, signaling a short in the electrical connection. The single level hotel featured twenty rooms that could be rented for $40 a night. You get what you pay for, Herne thought as he pulled his black Ford pickup into one of the motel's parking spaces. The faded brick walls and the flimsy wooden room doors spoke tales of drug addicts, sordid sex, and broken dreams.
Herne unzipped his black leather jacket as he walked toward Room 9. Though the cool autumn air immediately chilled his body, he knew that he'd grow warm while examining the crime scene. He didn't bother to wonder if the warmth was due to the bodies in the room or his own excitement in his veins. He just walked briskly.
Officer Daniel Johnson stood at the door of the room. His eyes swept over the parking lot, as if he expected a monster or boogeyman to leap from behind the shadows of the parked cars. He nodded to Herne, acknowledging him, and twisted his broad torso to let him pass through the door.
Tucker and his lieutenant, Kathleen Saxon, stood next to each other in the room. A small wisp of a woman, so thin she was almost insubstantial, snapped photos of the body. Her name was Fiona, and Herne had seen her when he’d helped with police cases in the past.
The medical examiner, Paul Lee, fiddled with his black bag. He appeared reluctant to approach the body.
At first, Herne didn't see the blood that soaked the sheets or the body that rested lifeless on the bed. Instead, he noticed that Tucker and Saxon stood so close to each other that they were almost touching.
Tucker turned his head and narrowed his eyes. “Art. What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Nice way to greet an old friend,” Herne grumbled.
“I didn't ask for your help on this case,” Tucker said. “And we just found the body an hour ago. The press doesn't even know about it yet. So how did you find us?”
“The victim was Charlotte's prom date,” Herne said. “Elizabeth found me.”
Tucker frowned. “You think it's related?”
Herne shrugged his broad shoulders. “Maybe. It's worth looking into.”
Tucker sighed and stepped away from the bed, providing Herne with a better view of the body. “Christ,” Tucker muttered. “I hate this shit.”
Gabe Vanderbilt was naked on the bed, still handcuffed to the headboard. From the waist down, he looked like a man waiting for a lover. From the waist up, he looked like a gutted deer.
Glistening entrails dangled from his abdomen, a tangled mess of blood and bile and tissue. His mouth hung open, frozen in the silent cry of death, revealing his swollen tongue. Blood had seeped through the wounds in his eyes and soaked the sheets like a backdrop of horror.
Herne closed his own eyes, tasting the terror Gabe had felt when his body had been slashed open. The searing pain would have been dulled by the knowledge that death was imminent. Only after the blood poured from his belly and his organs spilled from his body would uncontrollable panic have begun.
The crime scene was saturated with an air of dread and fear and death. But to Herne, the room felt like home.
“I didn't know Vanderbilt was Charlotte's prom date,” Tucker said. “Jesus, that was a lifetime ago anyway. But he and Charlotte did work for the same company.”
Herne raised an eyebrow. “Really? Did they work together closely?” As closely as you and Saxon? Herne thought.
Tucker shook his head. “Charlotte was an office manager for Hayes Construction. Vanderbilt was a foreman. He spent his time out on jobs. I'm sure they interacted some, but not much. I'll have Saxon look into it further. She’ll keep you informed.”
“She needs to check on a guy named Jeffrey McNeil, too.”
“Why?” Tucker asked.
“Because he might be involved.”
Tucker stared at Herne, his eyes probing. Herne knew his friend wanted to ask. Wanted to know why McNeil might be important. But Herne wasn’t ready to spill the beans about Charlotte’s lover. Not yet.
Finally, Tucker nodded. No questions. “Did you hear that, Lieutenant?” he asked.
Herne looked at Saxon. Her short black hair and boxy police uniform did not disguise the attractive woman beneath the masculine packaging. Bright blue eyes, full lips, and subtle curves screamed femininity, despite her attempts to hide it.
When Saxon spoke her voice was low and rich, and Herne detected a new element in it. She sounds pissed, he thought.
“I got it,” she said.
“So what else can you tell me?” Herne asked.
“The body was discovered this morning by the hotel manager,” Saxon said. “He said he walked in to clean the room and change the towels, and he found Vanderbilt just like this.”
Herne glanced at the stained bedspread, the worn carpet, and the dusty drapes. He doubted the manager had been planning to clean the room. He doubted the manager ever cleaned.
Paul Lee—Hurricane's medical examiner, coroner, and town physician—moved beside them. “Well, this is a nasty one,” he said. “It looks like the killer handcuffed the victim to the bed, inserted a knife directly above the pubis, and basically eviscerated the victim.”
“Vanderbilt was a big man,” Tucker said. “The killer must have been fucking gigantic to overpower him enough to get him handcuffed.”
“Maybe Vanderbilt was a willing partner in the event,” Herne said.
“Willing to get his guts cut out of his belly?” Tucker asked.
“Perhaps that was part of the event he didn't see coming,” Herne answered.
Tucker nodded. “I see what you mean. Maybe he was doing a little kinky sex play that got out of hand.”
“Or he may have been drugged first,” Lee offered. “I'll know more after the autopsy.”
Tucker talked to Saxon. “We need to do a sweep of this room for evidence before Lee can look at the body. Call Miller and have him come in. I want to do this with our own people. Keep it quiet. There's no need to create a damn panic in town yet. For all we know, this was just a drug deal that went bad. Right?” Tucker looked at Herne with the question in his eyes.
Herne stared at the motel bed. He looked at the victim’s unseeing eyes. He saw the cheap motel light glinting on the viscous fluid that congealed inside Gabe’s belly. He could almost feel the rage that had driven the hand of the murderer.
Herne shook his head. “This wasn't a bad drug deal,” he said. “This was personal.”
~ ~ ~ ~
Darren Pittman's stained white sweatshirt and ragged blue jeans blended with the dingy interior of the hotel office. He leaned back in a ripped office chair as his glance darted back and forth between Herne and Tucker. He knew Hurricane's Chief of Police. Had seen him around town and had even called him once or twice when trouble broke out at the hotel. But he'd never seen Artemis Herne in person. Herne reminded him of a bull dog he'd once owned: thick, strong, and dogged. Pittman eventually took the dog behind the hotel and shot it in the head. It
had been too damned mean.
“Gabe Vanderbilt was a local man,” Tucker said. “Any idea why he would want to rent a room from you?”
Pittman licked his thin lips before replying. Experience had taught him that it was usually best to cooperate with the cops. But if he told them about his deal with Tammi, his free blowjobs would be gone forever. And God knew his wife was never going to suck his cock. “I dunno,” he said. “I don't ask questions. If a customer's payin', then I give 'em a key.”
“Did Vanderbilt often rent a room from you? Had you seen him before?”
Pittman shook his head. “Never seen the man before in my life until I walked into Room 9 this morning and saw him laying there with his guts coming outta him.” Pittman shuddered at the memory. He watched a lot of horror movies. Loved the slasher ones where the hot little pussy got nicked by a crazed killer's knife. But the blood in Room 9 hadn't looked like the bright red blood from the movies. It had been brown. Brown and dark and thick with death.
“So who rented the room?” Tucker asked.
Pittman shrugged.
Herne leaned forward and grinned. To Pittman, the flash of Herne's grin looked like the snarl of an angry wolf. He almost expected to see blood—red blood—dripping from his teeth. “Listen, Pittman,” Herne growled. “It doesn't take a genius to see what kind of operation you have here. Dirty. Foul. I wouldn't even kennel my dog here. Maybe you're dealing. Maybe you're running the games. Maybe you're pimping. I don't give a shit. But you better tell us the truth about Vanderbilt, or I'll tear the truth out of you.”
A shimmer of perspiration gleamed on Herne's bald head, drawing Pittman's attention to the jagged scar on the man’s forehead and the enjoyment that glinted in his eyes. Pittman realized he'd been wrong. Herne wasn't just a mean bulldog.
He was a mean bulldog on the edge of sanity.
Pittman wasn't a smart man. He hadn't finished high school. Hadn't married a good woman. The only reason he managed the hotel was because his do-gooder brother felt the need to dispense charity to his wayward sibling.
