Dead and Gone

by Tina Glasneck

  “Ethan Holden?” Kate asked. “That’s who you think it is.”

  “You’re perceptive, I’ll give you that,” Anderson responded. “Yes, that’s been a particular focal point for me. He’s a bit old to be running all over town killing people, but you can’t rule it out. He shares certain qualities with Lord Halloween: he’s arrogant, cold-blooded and deeply in need of a conscience. He thinks he’s high minded, but he’s not. I watched him encourage Laurence to take stories in certain directions—ones that might sell more papers, but weren’t exactly true either. Nothing overt. Nothing you could stand up and take a stand against.”

  This time it was Quinn who was nodding.

  “He’s your best candidate,” Kate said. “But are there others?”

  Anderson responded by getting up and walking away again. When he came back, he held a monstrous file in his hand.

  “This is it, the Holy Grail,” he said. “As much information as I could collect on everyone. Ethan, Kyle, Buzz, Laurence—even Sheriff Brown is in here. Nothing conclusive on anyone. If you look hard to see if someone’s a murderer, you find all sorts of things that could prove you right. But that doesn’t mean you are. Most people make mistakes and some are even ruthless, but that doesn’t make them killers.”

  “You’re giving this to us?” Kate asked.

  “It’s yours,” he said. “If Lord Halloween kills you, he’ll find it with you. When he does, he will know who wrote it. If he doesn’t know already you came to see me, he will after that.”

  “You want a final showdown,” Quinn said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I want it to end,” Anderson said. “I’ve been waiting for 12 years. It’s long enough. I won’t just kill myself—that’s a coward’s way out. And I won’t go down easy. But I’m through waiting. Either you finish him or he finishes me.”

  “Thank you for all your help,” Kate said.

  “How could I refuse you?” he asked. “I met your mother once, working a crime story. You look stunningly like her—same blue eyes and blond hair. She was beautiful. When I saw her, it was to meet your dad. She knew your dad didn’t like to talk to reporters, but she couldn’t have been nicer to me. I’m sorry for what that man did to her. I’m sorry for what he did to you.”

  “I’m going to finish him,” she said. “I’m going to make him pay.”

  Kate and Quinn rose to leave. As they were heading out the door, Anderson spoke for a final time.

  “Promise me something,” he said. “When you find him, don’t treat him like the monster he wants to be. He gets off on that. He’s just a man. Treat him that way.”

  When they were in the car driving away, Quinn turned and asked, “What did that mean? Treat him that way.”

  “He meant he wanted us to kill him,” Kate said. “Don’t capture. Don’t wait for the police. If we get a chance, take him down.”

  “You think you could?” Quinn asked, but he already knew the answer. He had trouble imagining himself hurting anyone, much less killing them.

  “It’s not a matter of could,” she said. “When I find him, I will.”

  Kyle paused while cutting onions and waited. He was preparing dinner, but he moved slowly. He kept listening for the scanner to go off.

  There would be action again soon—he could feel it. All day he had waited for the call. A new body, a panicked police source, but nothing had come.

  He managed to finish making dinner without any unusual scanner activity. He flipped the TV on while he ate.

  He turned the channel to find some wrestling, found it and watched it without paying much attention to it. He still had one ear cocked for any squawk of the scanner.

  A loud thud came from outside and Kyle jumped out of the chair. God, he was testy, he thought. It was probably just a package being delivered. Still, he weighed possibilities in his mind, decided it was better to be cautious and moved to the kitchen. He picked up the knife on the counter, still moist from chopping onions.

  He looked outside the kitchen window and saw nothing. He could wait here, but Kyle preferred action to waiting. If someone was playing a game, let them come. He would be ready.

  He walked toward the back patio and slid open the sliding glass door. He moved slowly and quietly. He thought with some irony that this would make a good story. A very good first-person perspective piece.

  Kyle crept around the outside of his house, keeping his eyes peeled for any movement. When he got outside the kitchen, he saw it. The bushes right by the window had been trampled. Someone had been looking in.

  He held the knife steady in front of him and kept walking. If someone was here bent on mischief, they would have another thing coming. Kyle had not spent years in the service so that he could be sneaked up on and ambushed.

  Kyle came around the front of his house and saw with some shock that the door was open. He cursed himself. Had he even locked it? He should have been more careful.

  It occurred to him that his tracker knew he had been running around outside the house. Shit. Now the person was inside and he was the one skulking.

  He felt a twinge of anxiety as he crept to the front door. He should be more careful. He could even call the police. But he pushed that thought away. They would mock him for calling them out here if they didn’t find anything. He wasn’t sure he could take it. No, he would handle this as he did everything else—by himself.

  He crept up to his front stoop and slowly opened the storm door in front. It squeaked slightly and made Kyle wish that he had oiled it more recently.

  The front door stood wide open. Closing the storm door quietly behind him, Kyle carefully walked in, the knife still at his side.

  He tensed with every muscle and listened. He moved to the stairs and walked down into his den.

  Slowly, Kyle thought. I mustn’t rush. He thought about his gun upstairs, but he had not used it in years. Mostly it had been there for decoration, since Kyle had never fully embraced the weapon.

  He pushed himself up against the far left wall and crept ever so slowly forward. He checked behind him, but there was nothing. Moving forward, he edged around and looked beyond the corner, just briefly.

  Sure enough, there was a figure sitting in the chair in his computer room.

  “You can come out now, Kyle,” the voice said, startling him. “I’ve been watching you for some time. You aren’t nearly so clever as you think you are.”

  Kyle walked around the corner and instantly recognized who sat in the chair. He took a step back in surprise.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Kyle asked. “Don’t you know there is a murderer on the loose?”

  “Yes,” the figure said and chuckled slightly. “I do.”

  Even though he was draped in shadow, Kyle saw him pull something large from behind him.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Kyle asked.

  “I think you know,” the figure replied.

  Kyle realized that the man had a gun pointing at him.

  “Jesus, you can’t be serious,” said Kyle, backing up.

  There is a way out of this, he thought. I will not go down like this.

  “Deadly,” the figure said. “Don’t make a move, Kyle. Not even a sound. I knew you would be trouble, so don’t think I won’t fire first. I’m taking no chances here. But don’t worry, that is not what I have in store for you. I want to take my time with this.”

  Kyle decided that he would have to make his move soon. He gripped the knife at his right side and wondered how quickly he could throw it.

  The figure took one step toward him and Kyle made his move. He flung the knife in the figure’s direction and darted off to the right. As he started to move, Kyle heard the gun go off.

  Nov. 1, 1994

  Dear Tim,

  At least you went out with a bang. I want you to understand two things: I fully intended to kill you the other day, but I’m not going do so anymore. You have proven worthy. You were brave when most men would have been cowardly.
You signed your name to an article you knew would infuriate me, with the full knowledge that I would end you for it.

  Your words did cut to the bone, Tim. I won’t lie. But right is right and sometimes even I have to concede a point. So, congratulations, you get to live.

  There is one condition to this: you have to leave. I don’t want to keep seeing you around. Eventually, I’m bound to let my anger get the best of me. It wouldn’t be a death at the hands of Lord Halloween—they caught him, remember?—but it would be an untimely accident.

  You have three days. If I see you here again, your death will be so quick, your soul will leave your body before your corpse even hits the ground. Leave Loudoun County to me. Find somewhere else to roam. I’m finished with you.

  Sincerely,

  Lord Halloween

  19

  Sunday, Oct. 22

  “You still awake?” she asked in barely a whisper.

  “Of course,” Quinn replied.

  After visiting Anderson, the two of them had headed back to the hotel room to look through the files. They had tried unsuccessfully to find a VCR to watch the security tapes from Kate’s hotel, but the man at the front desk said there were none available. They had pored over the information until they couldn’t see straight.

  There were a host of suspects in Anderson’s file: Laurence, Holden, Kyle, Buzz, Brown, even Johnny Redacker, Kate’s family friend. Everyone had been analyzed and dissected by Anderson, but no conclusions had been reached.

  They had taken no chances themselves. Kate doubted Lord Halloween was busy following them—he was probably lining up his next victim—but the door was blocked by several pieces of furniture. They had picked a room on the sixth floor—the highest the hotel had—but even the door to the balcony was blocked, just in case Lord Halloween could somehow scale up the walls outside. Kate had also been adamant with staff—no employees were to come in under any circumstances. She had pretended it was for romantic reasons, after which the hotel manager had knowingly winked at Quinn.

  But far from making out, they had laid pieces of files all over the bed and gone through them one by one. They had briefly grabbed food and returned to the room. Finally, around midnight, Kate had suggested they sleep. After the night before, Quinn didn’t think he could, but they had carefully reassembled Anderson’s file, gotten ready for bed and turned off the lights. Before they did so, Kate had put her gun on the table next to her.

  But it still did not mean either were sleeping. For Quinn, the problem was two-fold. His dreams were as bad as real life. Chased in the real world, he fell asleep so he could be chased there too. The dreams, if anything, seemed to be even clearer now—if that was even possible.

  It was the one thing he had not told Kate about and he knew that was most likely a mistake. After all, it may have something to do with Lord Halloween. But that seemed ridiculous to Quinn. He wondered if Comizio had ever called the police and what they thought. Quinn had talked to Janus yesterday, but per Kate’s insistence, had not told him where they were or any details of the night before. Janus did not bring up the horse story, either, and Quinn was more than happy to let it drop. It meant something, but he could not for the life of him figure out what.

  If all that were not enough, Quinn had one additional problem, one he knew was neither crazy nor surprising. He had offered to sleep on the floor, but Kate had insisted he did not. It was a queen bed, she pointed out, and stupid that they couldn’t share it.

  So now Quinn was in a position he might have killed for under different circumstances—he was sleeping with a beautiful woman in a private hotel room and nobody knew where they were. The perfect romantic weekend. He thought of the manager’s wink.

  Only it wasn’t romantic. They were tired, scared and irritable, for starters. Second, they weren’t lovers. They had an air of intimacy like people who knew each other for longer than they really had—Quinn supposed being in a life or death situation would do that—but not the kind that a real couple has. They both changed separately in the bathroom and there was not even a kiss on the cheek to say goodnight.

  But the only thought that pushed away the Headless Horsemen and a certain serial killer was Kate. While it gave Quinn comfort to think of her and be close to her, it was also highly distracting, even under these conditions. He was determined to be an honorable guy. Now was not the time to bring up conversations about mutual attraction or simply try to start something. Now was the time to plan, to prepare, to strategize—and yet here she was, gorgeous and in bed with him.

  Quinn felt like he wanted to scream. If it was not his fear of an imminent and bloody death keeping him awake, it was his sex drive. What a fantastic day he was having.

  So when she asked him if he was awake, he found the question downright funny.

  “Why ‘of course’?” she asked back.

  “You know,” he said and let it drop. There was nothing to say.

  “I’m having a hard time sleeping too,” she said.

  He turned over to face her. The covers reached just to her shoulders and she was turned on her side looking at him. God, she looked good, he thought. He wondered if she ever did not look good. Even with no sleep, she was still hot.

  Quinn laughed.

  “I’m sure I can guess why,” he said.

  She smiled back.

  “That and other stuff,” she said, not wanting to get into it. Truthfully, she was having thoughts about Quinn too—more than she was comfortable with. There was no denying she was attracted to him and every time she thought about him romantically, that damn Tarot card popped into her head. The devil and lust. She had a feeling like she did not want to indulge any romantic feelings. It would make them both distracted.

  Instead, she tried to change the topic.

  “I keep thinking that our research has not gotten us very far,” she said. “We don’t know much more than we started with.”

  “I know,” Quinn replied. “It feels like we have been spinning our wheels a bit. The more I know, the less certain I feel.”

  “It feels like rats in a maze or something,” she replied. “Or bees in a box. He shakes us up and we buzz all around. But then we quiet down and wait for him to do it again.”

  “Look, it’s natural. We are both a little afraid. Okay, not a little.”

  She sat up in bed. Quinn noticed she was wearing one of his t-shirts. It did nothing to stop his attraction. Her blond hair fell down just shy of her shoulders and she shook her head.

  “That’s just it,” she said. “I’m so tired of being afraid all the time. And now I’m starting to worry that is all that we are—our fears.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “For most of my life, fear has been controlling me,” Kate replied. “Even before all of this that was true. It seems like the original human emotion. You start out in life scared of the world. Then you’re scared of the dark or that your parents will leave you or of being lost in the woods.

  “When you are older, you get scared the other kids don’t really like you, that you will never fit anywhere, that you will never find the right guy. Then you get a guy and you become scared you will lose him. You raise children and are scared something will happen to the kids. You get a good job, you are scared the bosses won’t like you or you won’t get that promotion. All through your life, no matter how mature you become, there are a million things to be afraid of. It’s the emotion most central to our lives.”

  “That may be true.”

  “People always define themselves by their jobs, their families, or God knows what else. But I think they’re wrong. I think it is what you are afraid of that defines you, that shapes your behavior and tells you what to think. Call it an existential crisis, Quinn. I am what I fear. What I fear is me.

  “And before you say it, I know that this is a weird time to be thinking of this. There are a million things that I should be thinking of and this just isn’t one of them.”

  “Actually, I think it makes perfect sens
e,” Quinn said. He sat up and they faced each other sitting cross-legged. “But I think you are wrong. Our fears are not us. It is like any other emotion. It is what we do with it that counts.”

  “But that’s just it. The other emotions aren’t dominant. I think fear is. And I think even when we believe we are controlling it, it is controlling us,” Kate replied.

  “No,” Quinn said. “Look at you. You came back to Loudoun even though it was what you most fear in the world. You didn’t run when I asked you to. We are trying to find him before he finds us. You are facing your fear.”

  “Am I?” Kate said. “Or am I just being stupid?”

  “Maybe both,” Quinn said. Before she could protest, he continued. “I don’t think fear—or any one thing—runs our lives. Sometimes it does. And sometimes it is like the white noise on a TV screen: always there, but you can tune it out. It doesn’t matter what we are afraid of. All that matters is what we do about it.

  “Take your example, the kid who is afraid others won’t like him. That is not the soul of that kid. It is how he responds to it—does he conform to be like the more popular kids or does he face the idea that they may dislike him and be himself anyway? Do you run from your past, from all the horrible things life has dished out for you, or do you do something about it?”

  “But even if we win, even if we face down this guy and beat him, I will still be that scared little girl,” she said.