EYE OF THE STORM
by Sara Reinke
Published by Sara Reinke at Smashwords
Copyright 2006 Sara
Reinke
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincident and beyond the intent of the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.
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He
who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes
also into you.
―
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond
Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
CHAPTER
ONE
In the dream, Paul Frances meant to cut off the girl’s fingers one by one, using what looked like a stainless steel set of gardening shears.
He could see her terror as he walked toward her. Her large blue eyes, tear-filled and ringed with smeared mascara, grew wide, and her voice escaped in high-pitched frantic mewls as she shook her head slightly back and forth.
“Vthhnnooo,” she pleaded. She couldn’t be more articulate, thanks to the gag in her mouth: a hard rubber ball held in place with straps of black leather that were belted around her head. He’d found it at a sex shop, in a fetish-toy discount bin.
Perfect, he’d thought, as he’d bought it.
The girl sat in a straight-back wooden chair that looked like pictures of early electric chairs he’d seen in criminal justice textbooks. It had arms with manacle cuffs built in so that her wrists were firmly bound. She wiggled her hands, twisting desperately enough that the edge of the cuff scraped her wrists raw and open.
“Vthhnnooo,” she mewled again. “Theeeess…!” No, please!
She was naked, her pale skin pebbled with goosebumps. He saw her clothes lying in a tumble next to the chair, the remnants of a blouse with pale blue and lime green vertical stripes, a lacy bra, khaki skirt, bikini-style panties. He’d cut them off of her piece by piece when he’d first delivered her there―the slowness of his actions, the methodical deliberateness with which he had undressed her had terrified her.
Her feet were crossed and lashed together. The end of a length of piano wire, a crude garrotte looped taut about her throat and also bound her ankles. Every time she moved her legs, the noose around her neck tightened. She’d fought him enough to that point that the wire had cut through her skin in a thin, bloody seam. It had drawn tightly enough against her windpipe to leave her snuffling for breath. Her attempts to cry at him in implore quickly waned as she struggled to suck in air.
She’d been there for days, bound to the chair. Two lanterns set on opposite sides of the large room provided dim but adequate illumination. The ceiling was covered in crumbling, ruined plaster. The painted concrete walls were faded, chipped and cracked. The floor was littered in plaster and debris; he could hear it crunching beneath the soles of his shoes as he walked toward her.
Perfect, he thought.
He had found the shears on a small metal tray resting atop a wheeled dolly, like the sort dental hygienists use to wheel their supplies around examination rooms. There had been an assortment of picks, knives, scalpels and instruments there, all immaculate and glistening in the stark white light.
Perfect.
He felt no reservations about what he was about to do. Nothing in his mind screamed at him to stop―not even the part of him that had been a seasoned police officer, a homicide detective, for more than fifteen years. She couldn’t pull her hand away, and he slipped the sharpened blades of the shears around her index finger.
She pleaded with him, her voice sodden and choked for breath, stifled around the ball. Paul flexed his hand, closing his fingers around the trigger grasp of the shears. He felt a moment of tension as the powerful blades closed, and then a sharp, wet, satisfying snict!
For a moment, less than a second, there was nothing but silence. And then he heard a soft whap as the length of her severed finger struck the concrete floor below, the faint scrape as the manicured tip of her fingernail hit the ground.
The girl began to scream. Nearly choked or not, garrotte or not, she found the breath and voice to shriek hoarsely. She thrashed in the chair, shrugging her shoulders and when she tried to kick her feet, the line of piano wire whipped tightly. Her cry immediately dissolved into a strangled wheeze.
Perfect.
Paul slipped her middle finger between the blades. There was nothing she could do to prevent him. He knew it. She knew it, too. He looked at her face just as he folded his fingers inward again, closing them around the grasp, and to his surprise, he saw it was his younger brother, Jay in the chair. The blond girl was gone, and Jay was there, his large, dark eyes glassy with pain and fright and shock, his breaths gasping and feeble, his teeth cutting deeply into the flesh of the rubber ball, his lips lined with a thin froth of frantic saliva.
“Theeeesss…!” Jay whimpered, as Paul closed his hand, bringing the blades of the shears together. Please…!
Snict!
* * *
Paul sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes flown wide, his body covered in a clammy sweat. His breath was caught somewhere in his throat, a loud, sharp gasp, and for a moment, he had no idea where he was. All he could hear was that soft, resounding snict! and all he was aware of was the sensation in his hand, the tension against his palm as he had closed the blades of the gardening shears together against Jay’s finger.
That it had been a nightmare at first eluded him. If he’d suffered nightmares in the past, his wife, Vicki, would always wake him up. He’d groan aloud or squirm too much, something to let her know his distress and she would dig her elbow into the meat of his belly or the small of his back to rouse him.
After a long moment, he realized. He remembered.
There is no Vicki. Not anymore.
He was in bed―not the bed he’d shared with Vicki for twenty years, but a different one, a new bed in a small apartment he called his home. There was no Vicki anymore. Their divorce had been finalized last month, but their separation had occurred almost a year ago.
Ten months, Paul thought, shoving the heels of his hands against his brows. Ten months, three weeks, two days and fourteen hours.
“Jesus,” he whispered, kicking the covers back from his legs. A glance at the bedside alarm clock told him it was shortly after midnight. The night had only just begun, and he wasn’t going to be able to sleep through another moment of it.
Again.
“Terrific,” he muttered. He rose to his feet and shuffled out of the bedroom. He stopped in the bathroom and relieved his bladder in the dark, with the door standing wide open, his free hand propped against the wall and his eyes closed against a monstrous headache he could feel stirring behind his eyes.
Again.
“Terrific,” he muttered once more. He realized his niece Emma was asleep across the hall, and the nosy spattering might disturb her. He flapped his hand behind him and swung the door closed just in time to muffle the flush of the toilet, and the unceremonious clang as the toilet seat dropped closed again. It had been a long time since he’d had to conscientiously remember to do this, and yet he still did it everytime by habit. Vicki trained me well.
Emma was his brother, Jay’s six-year-old daughter. She was staying with Paul while Jay and his new bride, Jo, were honeymooning in the Bahamas. They would be gone for two weeks, and had left only two days before.
Paul went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. He stood, holding the door wide with his hand, bathed in the bright, golden glow of light spilling from within. He surveyed the contents for a long moment before pulling out a bottle of beer.
Uncle Paul, you don’t have much in here ’cept beer, Emma had noted with a frown of disapproval on her first night in his company. When he’d pointed out that he had hot dogs in the fridge, and some week-old Chinese leftovers, her frown had only deepened. He’d taken her to the grocery, and, under her direction, stocked up to her satisfaction with a healthy assortment of apples, bananas, bread, cheese, turkey bologna, milk and more.
Looks like a person lives here now, he thought, nudging the door to the refrigerator closed with his hip. There’s a nice change. He twisted off the bottle cap and tossed it into the trash can in the corner. He tilted back his head and drained nearly half the beer in a few deep gulps.
His living room opened out onto a miniscule balcony onto which he could manage to stand upright and out of the rain in some modicum of comfort. A “hibachi terrace,” the apartment manager had called it, meaning it was wide enough to wedge a hibachi-sized grill on, but not much else.
Paul eased the sliding glass door open and stepped outside. He’d slept that night as he had every night of his adult life―bare-chested and in a pair of pajama bottoms. Spring had nearly waned to summer, but the night air was still cool against his skin. He lit a cigarette and drew in a deep drag. He exhaled heavily, watching the smoke huff from his lungs in a sudden, billowing cloud. Emma would scold him if she caught him smoking. He’d promised her he’d quit nearly a year ago, but hadn’t. She didn’t understand. Things went from bad to worse, and from there, they just kept getting shittier, he thought. But you couldn’t explain things like that to a kid―things like divorce and alimony and visitation arrangements.
Or cutting off people’s fingers, a quiet voice in his mind whispered, and he closed his eyes as a slight shiver slid through him. The dream had been bad tonight. Really damn bad.
Again.
He’d grabbed his cell phone from the coffee table in the living room before coming outside. He flipped it open and dialed his brother. He didn’t know if Jay could get cellular service in the Bahamas, but figured it was worth a try. After five rings and a burst of static, Jay answered, his voice hoarse and decidedly breathless. “Yeah?”
“Are you on top or bottom?” Paul asked, the cigarette wedged in the corner of his mouth.
“At the moment? Neither,” Jay replied. “We just finished with the latter, and Jo’s in the bathroom, freshening up before the former. What’s going on?”
Jay knew his brother well enough to be completely unalarmed or perturbed by his call, just as Paul had known he would be awake to receive it. “Nothing,” Paul said, dragging in on the cigarette again, listening to the paper hiss as the edges burned back, feeling the scrape of smoke against the back of his throat.
“You’re smoking,” Jay observed.
“I am, yes.”
“I know it’s moot to keep pointing this out, but I didn’t raise you from the dead so you could kill yourself with that shit.”
Thirteen months ago, Paul had taken a bullet in the chest, a straight shot delivered nearly square to his heart by a serial killer nicknamed The Watcher. Paul had died within five minutes of receiving the wound. His wife, Vicki, had been there to see it; she had watched him die.
And then, she’d seen him come back to life―even though she couldn’t or wouldn’t admit it.
Jay Frances could raise the dead. One touch was all it took to restore life to even long-since cold flesh. Paul had always known about his brother’s extraordinary ability, and on that day thirteen months ago, he had experienced it for himself.
“Emma’s fine,” Paul said into the phone, ready to change the subject, unwilling to think about that for too long, much less talk about it. Just like Vicki.
“I know,” Jay said. “You wouldn’t call me with bullshit small talk if she’d cut off her finger or something.”
His words, meant in jest, sent a new shudder through Paul. The cigarette dropped from his hand, tumbling to the decorative hedges below.
“Paul?” Jay asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Paul said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I think so. Probably. Hell, Jay, I don’t know.”
He’d called Jay because he’d wanted the comfort of his younger brother’s voice. Jay was all he had left in the world. Their parents were dead, and now Vicki was gone. She’d taken Paul’s daughters with her―sixteen-year-old M.K. and fourteen-year-old Bethany.
The dream had frightened him more than he was willing to admit, and he had called because he wanted Jay to tell him it was nothing; that even though it was the third time he’d had that dream―for three nights, he had imagined torturing the blond girl cuffed to the chair―and that on that evening, he’d imagined Jay’s face as he’d cut off her fingers, that he was not going insane.
“It’s alright, Paul,” Jay told him gently, and at the kindness in his voice, the quiet measure of his words, Paul felt his eyes flood with sudden tears.
I miss you, Jay, he thought.
“Thanks for that, kid,” he whispered hoarsely. He heard Jo’s voice through the phone as she returned to the bed. “I…I’ll let you get back to your wife now. Sorry I bothered you, man. It’s nothing.”
“You didn’t bother me,” Jay said. “Fifteen minutes earlier or later and yeah, you’d have been bothering me, but for now, we’re good.”
Paul managed a laugh, shaking his head. “Talk to you later.” And then, because the image of Jay’s eyes from his dream, filled with fear, glazed with pain and shock, flashed through his mind, spearing his heart, he added, “I love you, Jay.”
I would never hurt you, Jay. Jesus, not for anything. Not for the world. I promise. I swear to Christ.
“I love you, too, man,” Jay said.
* * *
“Lieutenant Frances, do you see any patterns in the recent increases in violent crime in the city?”
Paul blinked at the pretty young reporter in front of him, snapping out of a weary, absent-minded reverie. He was exhausted; three days with less than twelve hours of sleep total were beginning to take a toll on him. And he’d admittedly been distracted by the glimpse of flesh visible where the top buttons of her blouse lay undone and open, draping her collar back in stylish but casual fashion toward her shoulders. Her white shirt was open just enough to award a glimpse of cleavage visible in that narrow margin of space, with her pert and decidedly perky breasts just beneath. He had imagined for a fleeting moment, that in the stark light from the camera nearby, that he could see somewhat through the linen of her blouse, and just make out the floral details in the lace trim outlining her bra cups.
“Lieutenant Frances?” she asked, cocking her head at an angle and raising her brows expectantly. Susan was her name. Susan…something. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. He’d never met her before. She wasn’t the usual newshound Channel 11 sent to the municipal center to interview him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head once. He was too damn old to be oggling. And she was too damn young. “Patterns, you said?”
The reporter, Susan, nodded. “In the recent increase in violent crimes in the city,” she offered by way of prompt. It wasn’t a live interview, or else Paul would have been in deep shit for his distraction. “You studied the same sorts of trends before cracking the Watcher case, and found a pattern no one else had identified. Do you see anything like that today?”
Paul smiled. She was a newbie, then. Probably fresh off the truck from college. The seasoned veterans of the local news scene never mentioned the Watcher case anymore. That was old hat; yesterday’s stale headlines. Every once in a great while, he still fended a phone call or email inquiry from a documentary filmmaker or Discovery Channel program director wanting to interview him briefly about it, but otherwise, it was long since a closed file.
New reporters, however, seized upon it eagerly, just like Susan. The Watcher had been the kind of case to make or break careers. It had sure made Paul’s―he’d first been promoted to the head of a task force assigned to apprehend the Watcher, and then, once the case was through, he’d been named Lieutenant.
And then stuck here, in Public Affairs, another goddamn talking head for the department, he thought, glancing beyond Susan and her cameraman toward Jason Stewart, his partner―a kid no older than Susan. Some reward.
“I think the recent homicides indicate an increase in drug-related activities in the city,” he said to the camera. Jason craned his head to catch Paul’s attention over the cameraman’s shoulder. He held up a piece of paper, waggling it at Paul. Mention the tip line again, it said.
Get bent, Jason, Paul thought, frowning slightly. “Statistically, violent crime rates rise as the weather gets warmer. We’re no different than any other major metropolitan area.”
Susan pouted in unconscious disappointment. Paul could literally read her mind from the momentary―but admittedly adorable―expression. There went my big scoop for the day.
Sorry, kid, he thought, resisting the urge to remind her that not having a serial killer loose on the streets was a good thing, by most people’s definition.
“Okay, I guess that’s it, then,” Susan said, as the camera light went out, and Paul blinked down at his toes, letting his eyes readjust without the blinding glare. When he looked up, there were still little polka-dots of shadow traipsing across his line of sight, and Susan, the pretty young reporter, was smiling brightly at him, her disappointment passed. “Thank you, Lieutenant Frances. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.” She held a Channel 11 microphone in one hand, and thrust out the other. “It’s really been a pleasure to meet you. I saw you on Good Morning America last year. The Oprah show, too.”
He accepted her handshake, folding his fingers against her small, cool palm. To his surprise, she met his grip firmly, offering him a hearty pump, and not the limp-wristed, delicate sort he was anticipating.
“You’re new with 11?” he asked, and she nodded.
“I just started last month,” she said, and then she laughed, rolling her eyes. “I know, fresh-faced girl, big new city…it’s very ‘Mary Tyler Moore.’ Everyone keeps telling me. Whatever the hell that means. I’ve been assigned the municipal beat, so you’ll probably be seeing a lot of me.”
She offered him her card. Susan Vey, it read. Again, Paul found himself all-too aware of the tantalizing view down the front of her blouse. Again, he caught himself noticing how pretty she was, and how young she was―and just how damn long it had been since he had been with a woman.
“I…I’ll look forward to it, then,” he said to Susan Vey.
As she walked across the broad, granite-tiled foyer of the municipal building toward the revolving glass doors, Paul found himself mesmerized by the click-click-clack of her high heels against the polished stone floor, and by the gentle, side-to-side swaying of her shapely buttocks beneath her skirt.
“You gotta love the newbies,” he murmured.
“I hear you,” said the cameraman with a laugh from beside him. He was loading his heavy camera into a padded carrying case, being mindful not to tangle the long, looping coils of wires as he did. Susan Vey was new, but this guy―David somebody or another―wasn’t. Paul had seen him before, plenty of times. He was a good-looking kid in that stereotypical, blond-blue-eyed, Midwestern way. He and Paul had worked together long enough to exchange brief but friendly banter whenever they crossed paths.
“Yeah, well, at least she’s got a nice ass,” Paul remarked. What was David’s last name? he wondered. He knew it; David had told him at least a hundred times. It was right on the tip of his tongue…
“She’s my sister,” David said dryly, his expression shifting, growing less than amused. Almost simultaneously, Paul remembered―and bit his teeth against a groan. David Vey. Jesus Christ, there goes my foot in my mouth. Not to mention his foot probably up my ass.
Paul blinked at him, feeling immediately stupid. “Uh,” he said. “Sorry.”
He turned and ducked into his department, his face flushed. “You didn’t mention the tip line,” Jason said as Paul breezed past his desk.
“Yes, I did,” Paul replied. “Earlier in the interview. Twice at least.”
“Hey, McGruff,” said a homicide detective named Dan Pierson, leaning into the office doorway as he sauntered by. “Nice interview. I heard every word. I especially liked the line about her ass. You think that’ll make the cut?”
“Yeah, get bent, Pierson,” Paul replied, smiling in friendly enough fashion as he flipped the other man off. There had never been any love lost between Paul and Dan Pierson―and that was putting the matter kindly. What had started out as a not-so-friendly rivalry before the onset of the Watcher case had only grown more heated and bitter from there, and in the end, Paul had nearly seen Pierson fired for insubordination.
Pierson shook his head and laughed, disappearing from the doorway. As much as he despised Pierson, Paul wished like hell he could follow him upstairs to homicide. It wasn’t that the public affairs gig was bad. There wasn’t much work involved in it at all. After the Watcher, Paul had found himself an unwitting and instant celebrity. He’d done the local and national media circuits for months, and Robert Allen, the mayor, along with the entire city council had decided he should become some kind of spokesperson for the Metro Police Division. He’d received the Lieutenant appointment and a hefty raise. He had his own office with a nice window view, and a private parking place. It was a comfortable living, and that was precisely why Paul hated it. He’d been a cop the grand majority of his life. It was all he knew. There had been a time when nothing in the world had mattered more to him than his job.
Putting him in public affairs had been pretty much like putting him out to pasture, at least as far as Paul was concerned. Whatever enthusiasm he’d felt for his job, whatever ambition or satisfaction he’d taken in his work, was now all gone.
Why do they call you that, Uncle Paul? Emma had asked when she’d heard one of the other detectives call Paul “McGruff.”
It’s a joke, kiddo, that’s all, Paul had replied. You know, McGruff, the cartoon dog on TV.
Oh! Emma had exclaimed, her eyes widening with comprehension. Oh, McGruff! Take a bite out of crime! She’d beamed in delight.
Glad one of us is happy about it, Paul thought. The other cops called him McGruff because they knew, just like Paul did, that his promotion had emasculated him. The name was a joke, but worse than that, Paul’s job had become a joke. He had become a joke.
Jason was a pain in Paul’s ass. He was one of those kids who had studied anything other than law enforcement in college, but then decided he wanted to be a cop when he grew up. Jason had enlisted in the force, but had never served a day in uniform or out on the streets.
“But the whole segment was supposed to promote the tip line,” Jason protested, rising to his feet. “How the community can pitch in to help us solve crimes, how common citizens can become uncommon heroes, just by―”
“I have to go,” Paul said, walking into his private office in the back of the department. He leaned over his desk and hooked his blazer off the back of his chair. He glanced at the photos of M.K. and Bethany by his computer screen and felt his heart momentarily ache. The girls came to spend every other weekend with him, and he could talk to them whenever he wanted to on the phone, but that wasn’t the same as seeing them day in and day out, being a part of their world. He felt like little more than a spectator now, a cordial stranger to them.
“Go?” Jason asked, as Paul walked past him again, brushing close enough to force the younger man to scramble back a step. He had a dark, tousled mop of hair that never seemed to be combed, and preternaturally large blue eyes. Both features, along with his short stature and slight build, lent him a nearly adolescent appearance. Paul fought a constant urge to card him.
“Yes, go. I have to pick up Emma from school.” Paul shrugged on his jacket and glanced at his watch. “I’m late, in fact. See you tomorrow.”
“But I―” Jason hiccuped in protest. Paul closed the office door smartly on him, cutting short his reply.
He walked briskly across the foyer and nearly plowed headlong into a woman walking hurriedly in the opposite direction, her arms laden with file folders. She was juggling these, an overloaded attache case in one hand, a paper cup of coffee in the other, and her cell phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. Everything fell in a loud tumble to the floor when she and Paul smacked together, and he yelped, dancing backwards as café latte splashed against his pant legs.
“Damn it―!” he snapped.
“I’m sorry!” the woman exclaimed, dropping to her knees and snatching up the coffee cup. The latte was spreading in a quick pool on the floor, and she grabbed at her fallen papers and files, trying to rescue them from ruin. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even see you. I was busy checking my messages, and I’m late for a meeting…”
Her voice faded as she looked up at him. She smiled, her pretty mouth unfurling, softening immediately within him any aggravation he might have ordinarily felt. “Hi, Paul,” she said.
“Hi, Brenda,” he replied, genuflecting and helping her collect her things. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. My God, it’s been a long time. A year, hasn’t it?” Dr. Brenda Wheaton was the state assistant medical examiner. Her office was located in the building adjacent to Paul’s. When he’d worked as a homicide detective, he’d enjoyed the pleasant occasion to see Brenda frequently.
“Almost,” he said.
She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he’d shamelessly harbored a crush on her even before he and Vicki had ever parted ways. But he had been married, and Brenda had been married, and that was all there had ever been.
Brenda had a long sheaf of creamy blond hair that she wore almost constantly in a ponytail fettered from the nape of her neck. She had large, dark brown eyes and almost elfin features. She was from Kentucky, “the backwater, Bluegrass hills,” as she liked to say, and she had the most wondrous, lilting, melodic accent he’d ever heard.
She always smelled good to him, too, some kind of light, floral perfume she favored that lingered in the air around her, even after she’d leave a room. How a woman could spend her day conducting autopsies and surrounding herself with death, and still smell so absolutely wonderful was beyond Paul’s comprehension.
“I’m sorry about your pants,” she murmured. “I’ll pay for the drycleaning. Just send me a―”
“Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s alright. It’s my fault. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
He helped her rise to her feet, offering her his hand and letting her slip her palm daintily against his. He offered her the stack of file folders he’d collected from the floor, and she smiled as she took them from him, balancing them against her hip. “So how have you been?” she asked. “How is your wife?”
“Divorced,” he said. He meant it as a joke, but it came out sounding bitter, and Brenda’s smile faltered.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said almost simultaneously, his voice overlapping hers. “I didn’t mean that like it sounded. It happened awhile ago.”
Ten months, three weeks, three days and two and a half hours ago, in fact.
“Me, too,” she said, and when he blinked in surprise, she held up her left hand momentarily, demonstratively to display her bare ring finger. “It’s a long story, but it was for the best. I guess you know how that goes.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. Brenda’s divorced? he thought, surprised. “Well, hey, if you ever feel like commisserating together, maybe over dinner or something, we could…”
He hadn’t asked a woman out since Vicki had left him. Hell, he hadn’t asked a woman out since he’d first approached Vicki more than twenty years ago. But some things never changed and as Brenda’s bright expression faded, Paul fell silent, immediately sensing he’d just made a monumental ass out of himself.
“That’s really sweet of you, Paul,” she said. “But I…I’m sort of seeing someone.”
“Oh,” Paul said, nodding, stepping deliberately back and away.
“For about three months now,” she said. “A detective in the homicide division…”
“Oh,” Paul said, inching toward the doors, his shoulders hunched, his eyes cut toward the floor.
“Maybe you remember him? Dan Pierson?”
“Oh,” Paul said, feeling momentarily punted in the balls. “Yeah, I remember him.”
What in the hell could she possibly see in Pierson? Three months was a long time in the dating circuit. That took you definitely past the point of casual dinners and amicable pecks on the cheek. He tried not to think of Pierson kissing her, squelching his fat, greasy lips against Brenda’s, or running his hands, his thick fingers up and down her trim, slender body, caressing her curves. The idea that Pierson might be sleeping with Brenda, slipping between her sheets and thighs every night, left Paul vaguely nauseous and more than vaguely dismayed.
“But I’d sure still like to―” Brenda began, and then a folder, which had been wedged precariously at best among the stack balanced at her hip tumbled to the floor, scattering a mess of autopsy photos around their feet. “Damn it!”
“I got it,” Paul said, kneeling again. He scooped the photos together and froze when he glimpsed a stark headshot of a corpse lying against the stainless steel autopsy table.
Mascara remained, smeared and apparent on her cheeks. Her skin was the color of putty, a waxen, lifeless grey. Her face was dirty, blood-spattered and bruised. A gag had once been wedged in her mouth tightly enough before her death to leave the corners of her mouth torn. Her pale blond hair was matted with dirt and particles of broken plaster.
“Vthhnnooo,” she had mewled at Paul in his dream the night before. “Theeeess…!” No, please!
Paul jerked, dropping the photographs as if they’d bitten him. He scrambled to his feet, wide-eyed and stunned breathless. It…it’s not possible, he thought. It was a dream. Just a goddamn dream…!
“Paul?” Brenda asked, alarmed by his stricken expression. She’d started to genuflect, to collect the pictures, but rose again, stepping toward him. “Paul, what is it?” She cut her eyes toward the spilled photos, and then looked at him again. “Do you know her?”
“I…I don’t…” Paul said quietly. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the headshot. It had fallen to the ground, but the girl’s lifeless face continued looking up at him. Her eyelids hadn’t been fully closed. He could see the milky whites of her irises, thin crescents visible beneath the overhang of her lashes. Just a dream! his mind screamed. It’s not possible! It was just a dream!
“She’s a Jane Doe brought in this morning,” Brenda said, leaning down and lifting the photograph, holding it out toward him. “I’ve got missing persons running a check on her, and I’m sending her dentals to the state lab. I can’t pull prints from her…”
No, Paul’s mind moaned at this. Oh, God, no, it’s not possible
“…because someone cut off all of her fingers, and they weren’t found with the body.” Brenda tucked her fingertips beneath his chin, forcing his gaze to snap away from the picture. “Do you recognize her?”
“No,” Paul said quietly, hoarsely. He stepped back, ducking away from her touch. “No, I…I don’t. Just for a moment, she looked like someone…and I thought…”
Brenda’s brows lifted in gentle sympathy. “You don’t see these for awhile, and the shock of it feels brand new, doesn’t it?” she asked. It took him a moment to realize she thought he was acting strangely because he’d gone soft since leaving the homicide division; that the images had affected him.
More than you know, Brenda.
“Yeah,” Paul told her, forcing a smile. He held her files while she stooped, shoving the autopsy photos into the folder. She stood and smiled as he presented her with her papers again, that broad, strained smile still affixed to his face.
“You sure you’re okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. He hooked his thumb toward the doors. “I just…I gotta go. I’m keeping tabs on my niece while my brother’s on his honeymoon…”
“He got married?”
Paul nodded. Christ, the last thing he wanted to do at the moment was exchange small talk. His stomach had twisted into a thick, painful knot, and he was afraid that at any moment, he was going to vomit. He was shaking; he folded his arms and stuffed his hands beneath the crooks of his elbows lest she notice. “Yeah, he’s off in the Bahamas, and his little girl’s staying with me. She’s due out of school…” He spared his watch a glance. “…now, so I’d better…”
“Sure,” Brenda said, nodding. “I’m running late, too. I should go myself.”
Paul nodded again. He turned and walked briskly toward the doors, his gait stiff. “It was good to see you again, Paul,” Brenda called after him, but he didn’t turn or acknowledge her. He barely made it outside―through the revolving door and then cutting an immediate left. He clutched the balustrade of the terrace overlooking a row of decorative hedges and then retched.
CHAPTER
TWO
“So how was your day at school, kiddo?” Paul asked Emma.
She went to a private school out in the suburbs, someplace small and close-knit and far more expensive than Paul would ever pay. It cost his brother, Jay, nearly as much to send Emma to one year at the Sacred Heart Academy as it had been for Paul to attend one at college. Three years earlier, Emma’s mother, Jay’s first wife, Lucy had died, and Jay had done some major investing with the life insurance money―not the least of which had been setting up a trust account so that Emma could attend private, expensive schools for the rest of her days.
She sat in the passenger seat of his Explorer, the seat belt drawn in a taut diagonal across her white blouse, her hands folded neatly in the lap of her green-and-blue tartan uniform skirt. “It was okay,” she said with a shrug, her dark eyes turned out the window, watching the scenery go by.
He could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t being totally truthful. He leaned over and tugged on one of her ponytails. “You want to tell me about it?”
She shrugged again, but sighed in resignation. “Jamie Alcross told me the Bahamas are in the Bermuda Triangle,” she said. “He showed me on a map. He told me ships and planes get lost in the Bermuda Triangle all the time. They disappear, and all the people with them, and no one ever finds them. Planes, Uncle Paul. Daddy and Jo went to the Bahamas on a plane.”
“But, Emma, we’ve talked to your daddy since they arrived in the Bahamas. Jo, too. They’re both there, safe and sound.”
Emma sighed again, rolling her eyes. “Yes, but they have to get on a plane again to come home,” she said.
He blinked. She’d caught him off guard, and just when he’d figured he had the whole problem solved. Goddamn it.
He looked out the windshield again and drummed his fingers momentarily on the steering wheel. “There’s no such thing as the Bermuda Triangle, Em,” he said at last. “It’s just a story people made up.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s like monsters,” he said. “Flying saucers, Bigfoot and haunted houses. None of that stuff is real.”
“How do you know?” she asked again.
He glanced at her. “They teach us that in police school.”
Emma’s eyes widened momentarily, and then she giggled. “No, they don’t.”
The corner of Paul’s mouth hooked wryly. “Yes, they do.”
“If haunted houses aren’t real, then ghosts aren’t real,” Emma said. “And if ghosts aren’t real, how come Grandma comes and talks to me sometimes?”
Paul’s smile faded. Emma had been little more than a baby when his mother, Delores had died, and yet Emma claimed to have dreams about her. She had told Paul that Delores Frances told her things, showed her things. It had been Emma’s predictions―given to her, she claimed, by the ghost of her dead grandmother―that had helped Paul crack the Watcher case.
And if ghosts aren’t real, why in the hell was I dreaming about that dead blond girl, imagining I was the one who cut her fingers off? ’Cause that’s all it was―my imagination. Just a dream.
Wasn’t it?
He turned away from Emma, looking out the windshield again. “There’s no such thing as the Bermuda Triangle,” he said again. “Your daddy and Jo are going to be just fine.” He glanced at her again briefly. “I promise.”
She looked back out her window. He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. This time last year, she would have accepted his explanations of things without hesitation or question. But every passing year brought Emma closer to that point in life when children came to the dismaying realization that grown-ups weren’t always right; that they could lie, cheat, steal and hurt. Or worse, just be wrong, he thought glumly.
“Daddy says he wants to buy a house there,” she said after a moment, pointing out the window as they drove past a large hillside. At the top of the hill stood a crumbling, hollowed-out building shell, the sprawling, dilapidated remains of an old hospital. A big billboard had been erected at the bottom of the hill. Letters that had been painted in red, white and blue spelled out: Coming Soon! Liberty Heights ― Townhomes, Patio Homes and Luxury Single-Family Houses!
“That’s the old Liberty Sanitarium,” Paul said. “They’re supposed to be tearing it down soon, starting new construction by the summer.”
He hadn’t realized Jay was considering buying property there. He might have to wait awhile, Paul thought. It was no great secret that Milton Enterprises, the contracting company that had purchased the land and planned to raze the existing building to begin work on the new subdivision, had run amok of local historical preservationists who hoped to save the ruins on site. The impending lawsuits and red tape could keep construction at bay for at least another year.
“What’s a…sani…tarium?” Emma asked, carefully sounding out each syllable in the unfamiliar word.
“It’s like a hospital,” Paul replied. “They built them in the old days, like in the 1920s, for people who had tuberculosis.” She looked both puzzled and unwilling to try wrapping her six-year-old tongue around that one, and he laughed. “It’s a sickness, like the flu, only it’s much, much worse.”
“Do people die from it?” she asked.
“They did, yeah, way back then.” Tens of thousands of people had supposedly died in Liberty Sanitarium, in fact. In its hey-day, it had been considered the most state-of-the-art tuberculosis treatment facility in the United States. The truth of the matter was, most people who entered its halls as a patient never emerged. At the height of the tuberculosis epidemic, it was rumored that one person an hour died there. A special network of tunnels and chambers had been constructed beneath the building so that workers could store and transport bodies off the premises without the other patients seeing just how many of their fellows were dying.
“What does it do?” Emma asked. “Toober…tooper…coolis…”
“Tuberculosis,” Paul interjected gently. “I’m not really sure. I think it makes it hard for you to breathe, like a bad cold.”
“Or smoking,” she added pointedly.
Paul did not miss the thinly veiled hint. “Or smoking,” he agreed.
* * *
Emma looked out the window as Uncle Paul continued driving. They had passed the Liberty Heights billboard, but traffic was thick, and they weren’t moving very fast. If she squinted, she could still spy a glimpse of the red, white and blue lettering through the trees behind them, just above the letters on Paul’s truck mirror that read Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.
She remembered the first time her daddy had driven her past that sign, and had pointed to the hilltop. “We’re going to look at houses there,” he had told her. “They haven’t built any yet, but they will soon, and then we can buy one. What do you think?”
He had been smiling. She knew the idea of buying a new house, making a new home with Jo made him happy. He hadn’t been happy in a long, long time―not really happy, not even when he’d said he was, not even when he’d smile. He had missed Emma’s mommy. It was like when Lucy had died, it had scraped something out inside of Daddy, leaving him raw and hollow and sad in places, and nothing had filled those holes until he’d met Jo Montgomery.
“It’ll be closer to school for you,” Daddy had told her. “And closer to the new hospital where Jo’s working now.”
They lived at Jo’s house, but it was small, and Daddy wanted something bigger. He and Jo were thinking about having a baby. They hadn’t said anything about it to her, but Emma knew still the same. Sometimes she could tell what people were thinking. Her grandmother would tell her. And Grandma had told her they wanted a baby.
Emma worried that maybe they wanted one because she’d been bad, and they weren’t happy with her anymore. She was afraid sometimes that Daddy would love a new baby more than her, and that he’d forget about her. Grandma had told her that wouldn’t happen.
He loves you, lamb, more than anything or anyone in the whole, wide world, Grandma had whispered inside Emma’s mind, and Emma had closed her eyes, imagining Grandma’s smiling face. He always will.
Grandma had promised, but Emma still wasn’t sure―just like she still wasn’t sure she wanted to move into a new house at Liberty Heights. Daddy had showed her a picture he’d printed off the internet―a floorplan, he’d called it, and he had pointed to a big open square on the page that he said was going to be her bedroom.
“It’s the biggest one on the whole second floor, besides mine and Jo’s,” he said. “See how big that is?”
Emma had smiled and nodded because Daddy was happy, and she had wanted him to think she was happy, too. He’d promised her she could get a puppy when they moved, and that had made her feel a little more enthusiastic about the prospect of a new house, but she still had her reservations.
She had felt uneasy a lot lately. She had been worried about her daddy. Something bad is going to happen, Grandma had told her, just before Daddy and Jo had gotten married. Her grandmother usually spoke to her in quiet, kindly tones, even when she had something grim to tell Emma, but when she’d said this, she’d sounded frightened. Sometimes she only knew bits and pieces, things she could offer to Emma in hints and warnings. This had been one such occasion.
A storm is coming, Grandma had said, and in her mind, Emma had been able to see Grandma standing in the sideyard of the Kansas farm where her daddy and Uncle Paul had grown up. Grandma stood with one hand on her hip, the other drawn to her face so she could shield her eyes as she looked out across the flat plains toward the horizon. Emma had followed her gaze, and had seen a line of ominous black clouds, far off in the distance, a creeping shadow spilled across the proscenium of the sky. A storm is coming, Grandma had said again. Something bad is going to happen, and your daddy is going to be hurt.
This admonition had not been followed with anything like unless we stop it, which is what Grandma usually said. This led Emma to think―and fear―that maybe Grandma knew something she wasn’t telling Emma; that she hadn’t said anything else because there was nothing that they could do to stop it. Or we’re not supposed to.
“So what do you feel like for supper tonight, kiddo?” Paul asked, drawing her attention away from the truck’s sideview mirror.
“I don’t know,” she replied. Uncle Paul would never let anything bad happen to Daddy, she thought. Uncle Paul was a policeman. He was a hero on TV, just like McGruff the Crime Dog in the cartoon commercials. Bad things had happened to Daddy just last year, but Uncle Paul had saved him. A bad man had tried to hurt them, a bad man called the Watcher. Uncle Paul had stopped him. He was gone now, but what the boy at school had told her that day about the Bermuda Triangle had only made her worry worse. What if there were bad men like the Watcher in the Bahamas? How could Uncle Paul stop something bad from happening to Daddy if he was all of the way in the Bermuda Triangle?
“We bought those chicken nuggests the other day,” Paul suggested. “Some macaroni and cheese, too. What do you say?”
“We probably ought to have a vegetable, too, Uncle Paul,” she told him pointedly, looking at him. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to Daddy, she thought again. I know he wouldn’t.
He smiled at her and nodded once. Until they’d gone to the grocery store together on the night of her arrival, his definition of vegetables had apparently consisted of canned baked beans. “You’re probably right,” he said.
* * *
“Hey, lamb. How are you?” Daddy asked her later on that evening.
Emma sat on Paul’s couch, holding his cell phone against her ear with both hands and smiling with relief to hear Jay’s voice―happy and unhurting―from the other end.
“I’m fine, Daddy. How are you?”
He chuckled, sounding surprised by her question. “I’m good. Are you and Uncle Paul having fun?”
“Yes.” Emma glanced across the room toward the doorway leading into the kitchen. She could see Uncle Paul walking back and forth, his shadow pooled beneath him on the white linoleum floor. He was talking on the cordless phone to M.K. or Bethany. Or maybe Aunt Vicki, now that she thought about it. His brows were narrowed, the corners of his mouth turned downward as he spoke, like he was aggravated or mad.
“Guess what we did today?” Daddy asked. “We went snorkeling. You know what that is? It’s like scuba diving, only you don’t bring an air tank with you. You don’t go very deep.”
She thought about asking him if he realized the Bahamas were in the Bermuda Triangle, but pressed her lips together and decided against it. Uncle Paul had told her the Bermuda Triangle wasn’t real, and Daddy probably thought so, too. She didn’t want him to think she was being silly.
“We had a spelling test at school,” she said. “Mrs. Adams said it was a surprise.” Emma hadn’t thought it was a very fun surprise, though, and neither had most of her other classmates.
“How’d you do?”
“I spelled orange wrong.”
“Well, that’s okay. It’s a hard one,” Jay said.
After she finished talking to Daddy, she sat on the couch, kicking her heels against the side and listened to her uncle. He’d moved from the kitchen into his bedroom, but his voice was still sharp enough to overhear.
“…that crap, okay, Vic? I’m not a fair-weather parent―I work for a goddamn living. And since I’m still paying most of the mortgage on that goddamn house, I think I should have a say in whether or not my sixteen-year-old daughter gets to date.”
Uncle Paul was angry. He was angry a lot now. The lonely, empty place inside her daddy was gone, but now there was one inside of Uncle Paul―only his was a lonely, angry place. Sometimes it seemed to Emma like it threatened to swallow him whole. He and Aunt Vicki had gotten a divorce, and even though Daddy had explained to her that this didn’t mean they’d stopped loving one another, or that she couldn’t see Aunt Vicki or her cousins, M.K. and Bethany anymore, Emma still knew that Uncle Paul was angry and frightened because of it. He missed them.
“Thanks, Vicki,” she heard him say, his voice dry and mean. “Thanks a hell of a lot. Yeah, you, too.”
There was a loud clatter as he slammed the phone down against something. “Bitch!” Paul snapped and Emma jumped, wide-eyed. She had never heard her uncle say that word before, and especially not about Aunt Vicki. She sat absolutely still against the sofa, holding her breath, listening. She suddenly wished she hadn’t hung up the phone on her daddy. She didn’t know how to work Paul’s phone to redial him, either.
She heard Uncle Paul sigh heavily, and then the scrape of his bedroom window opening. She heard a soft snict! and knew that he’d lit a cigarette. He tried his best not to smoke around her. He usually went outside, or at least on the little balcony off the living room.
After a long moment with no other sounds, Emma slipped off the couch. She tiptoed down the short corridor, past the open doorway to the little bedroom she was using, and toward the larger master bedroom. The light was off in the hallway, and in his room. Night had fallen outside, and there was no illumination whatsoever except for the glow of a streetlamp outside seeping in through Paul’s open window.
Emma peeked around the doorway and saw him sitting there, silhouetted in shadows, draped in pale smears of light. He looked out the window, his shoulders hunched almost wearily. She watched him lift the cigarette to his mouth and take a long drag on it. As the cinders glew brightly, momentarily, she could see his face. His brows were furrowed, his mouth turned in a frown.
He looked like a stranger to her, someone she’d never seen before. Again, she thought about that raw, angry, empty space inside of him, the place left by the divorce. It’s like it’s eating him up inside.
“Uncle Paul?” she said softly, hesitantly.
He glanced up at her, his posture suddenly stiffening. “Hey, kiddo,” he said, his voice somewhat hoarse. He reached behind him, flicking on a lamp, and Emma blinked, momentarily dazzled by the sudden yellow glow. “You through talking to your daddy?”
Once her eyes adjusted, she could see that he was smiling at her, his face softened and kind again―the way it always was. The hard-edged and frightening stranger she’d seen sitting in front of his window was gone.
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
Paul stood, cupping his cigarette against his palm, as if he didn’t want her to see it, even though the stink of smoke was apparent in the air. He walked past her toward the bathroom, and she watched him drop it into the toilet.
“How’s he doing?” Paul asked, flushing the commode and stepped back into the hallway. “Are they tired of sun and sandy beaches yet?”
“No,” she said. “He…he said they went snorkeling today. It’s like scuba diving, he said, only you don’t bring an air tank with you.”
He smiled as he walked past her. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. She heard glass beer bottles jangle musically together as he reached for one. “Why don’t you go ahead and brush your teeth, get your pajamas on?” he said.
She nodded, grateful for the excuse to duck into her room and close the door. Uncle Paul seemed alright now, but she could still picture him in her mind, the angry look that had twisted his face as he’d sat alone in the darkness. It’s like it’s eating him up inside. “Okay,” she said.
* * *
Paul dreamed he was in a crowded nightclub. His conversation with his wife
my ex-wife, she’s my ex
had left him frustrated and angry, and in the dream, this manifested itself in the furious, pounding rhythm of deafening techno music as it shuddered in the air around him and thrummed in the floor beneath his feet. The club was dimly lit, except for the dance floor, which he could glimpse around people crammed about him in sticcato, brilliant pulses of neon-colored lights. The air in the club was thick and hot and moist, stinking of cigarette smoke and perfume, spilled beer and sweat.
He imagined that as he shoved and shouldered his way through crowd, he caught a glimpse of his daughter, M.K., dressed in low-riding jeans and a halter top that was more of a bandana than a blouse. He spied her, but then the crowd surged around him, obscuring her from his view and he knew he was dreaming. There was no way in hell M.K. was in a nightclub. He was dreaming of her because he’d been arguing about her with Vicki, his ex-wife earlier that evening.
Paul, if you’d like to tell her she can’t go on dates during her weekends with you, that’s fine. Those are your rules. But during the week, she’s here with me, and we go by my rules―and I say she can go out with this boy on dates. I’ve met him and his parents and he’s a perfectly respectable young…
He shook his head, forcing Vicki’s words from his mind. That’s not why I’m here. Though in the dream, he had no idea what he was doing in the bar, he knew there was a reason for his presence, something he was only momentarily forgetting. It’ll come to me.
He edged his way to the bar and leaned over the edge to flad a bartender. The wooden proscenium of the bar was sticky against his skin. He could see himself, his reflection in the bar’s mirrored backwall. He ordered a double-shot of Jack, no splash, no rocks
When the hell is the last time I drank whiskey? Fifteen years ago? Twenty? Surely to Christ before Vicki and I got married
and fished his cigarettes out of his pocket while he waited for the drink.
“Can I bum a light?”
He turned to find a young woman standing next to him, shoved into nearly intimate proximity by the sheer, staggering force of the crowd. She was slender and small-breasted, her nipples outlined through the thin fabric of her white, spaghetti-strap camisole top. She wore a red skirt with a hemline that barely covered her buttocks, and a waistline that fell below the defined curves of her hip bones. She had short-cropped, icy blond hair worn in a deliberate tousle around her face, and for a moment, her resemblance to his wife nearly struck him breathless―Vicki, twenty years ago, when he’d first met in her college, first wanted her, first fallen in love with her.
The young woman held an unlit cigarette between the two forefingers of her right hand, and she smiled at him hesitantly. “Can I bum a light?” she said again, pitching her voice to a near-shout to be heard over the din of the music. “Someone walked off with mine.”
She was beautiful, and Paul felt a sudden, powerful jolt of lust. She was twenty years younger than him, at least, but all at once, that didn’t matter to him at all. “Sure,” he said, and her smile grew more relaxed, less tentative. She leaned forward as he held out his lighter. He cupped his hand to shield the flame, and watched as she lit her cigarette.
“Thanks,” she said, exhaling a quick, smart stream of new smoke.
“No problem,” he replied. The bartender returned with his whiskey, and Paul fished his billfold out of his pocket. The girl remained at his side, sharing the cut-glass ashtray between them, and he glanced at her. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Christ, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d used a bullshit line like that, but he must not have delivered it too cheekily, because the blond girl smiled again, meeting his gaze and keeping her eyes fixed on his. “I’d like that, thanks.”
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