Black Forest, Denver Cereal Volume 5 (3 page)

Aden looked at Bob then at Samantha. She
smiled at him. He looked back at Bob who nodded.

“
I don’t know where I was
born,” Aden started. He swallowed hard.

“
We’ve looked but we’ve
never been able to find a birth certificate for him,” Bob
said.

“
After Gary’s… trouble, my
parents changed their name every six months or so,” Aden said. “I
was enrolled in school under a lot of different names. The last
name I used was Mark Smith. We moved all over the West. I wasn’t
their oldest or the youngest child. I was somewhere in the middle
but I’m not really sure where.”

“
Your parents had a lot of
kids?” the older detective said.

“
I guess so,” Aden said.
“They had adult kids and little kids like me. Or something like
that. I never knew if some of them were their kids or cousins or
just around. There were a lot of people around all the
time.”

“
Ok, go on,” the older
detective said.

“
I tell people that I came
home from school one day and my family had moved,” Aden said.
“That’s not exactly true.”

“
What is true?” the young
detective asked. The older man gave him a stern look and he
shrugged.

“
I was released from
juvie.”

“
For?”

“
Breaking and entering.
Robbery. Bob was my probation officer,” Aden said. “Bob was going
downtown so he agreed to take me to my parent’s apartment. They
were gone.”

“
Had that happened
before?” the older man asked.

“
Sure,” Aden said. “But I
always knew where to catch up with them. I didn’t this time. Or
maybe I didn’t want to. That last time in juvie, I… got interested
in other things. I read Tom Sawyer and The Hobbit. I had some
therapy. I had the sense that life could be… different than the way
we lived. I… let myself drift away from my family.”

“
We arrived at their last
residence and they weren’t there,” Bob said. “I let him stay on my
couch that night and then set him up at a halfway
house.”

“
I changed my name to Aden
Norsen,” he said. “Aden means fire. I wanted to burn up the past,
my past. Norsen… well it seemed to fit.”

“
Since there were no
records, it was pretty easy to enter him into the system as Aden
Norsen,” Bob said. “His last conviction was under the name Mark
Smith. Mark Smith was listed as an alias for Aden.”

“
It’s not here now,” the
young detective said.

“
I have a copy of the file
at home if you need it.”

“
We may,” the young
detective said. “Please continue Mr. Gilmore.”

“
Please,” Aden said. “My
name is Aden Norsen.”

There was a tap on the glass of the window
and the Sergeants looked at the glass.

“
Norsen, sorry,” the young
man said.

“
Now you know who he is,”
Samantha said. “Why don’t you cut to the chase? It’s late and the
man has a lot of other things on his mind.”

“
Where did you get the
pendant and necklace?” the older detective asked.

“
After I stayed with Bob,
I was placed in foster care,” Aden said. “I didn’t like my first
house, so I left. I had enough experience being homeless as a kid
and it wasn’t that big of a deal. I stayed out a couple of years
until one January.”

“
One January?” the older
detective said.

“
I don’t remember the
year. I had a bunch of friends,” Aden said. “We stayed under the
Speer Bridge mostly. Did drugs, drank, begged for change, stuff
like that. It wasn’t bad until January, maybe two or three years
after I’d been out.”

“
What happened?” the older
detective asked.

“
One of the guys got
really drunk and froze to death,” Aden said. “We were all picked up
and locked up for a while. I saw Bob again. He reminded me about
the new life I’d said I wanted. And he was right. I got a new
placement and a job at a grocery store. I stayed there until I got
my GED.”

“
How does this relate to
the pendant?” the younger detective asked.

“
When we were under the
Speer Bridge, a guy would come and bring us food,” Aden said. “He’d
bring pots of soup, sandwiches, stuff like that. Sometimes, when
the guys weren’t doing well, he’d take one of us with
him.”

“
Did they make it back?”
the older detective asked.

Aden nodded.

“
But?”

“
The guy had regulars,
favorites,” Aden said. “They never talked about what happened while
they were with him. They just said he was weird but gave them money
and drugs. Sometimes we’d pressure a guy to go with him so we could
have more drugs.”

Flushing, Aden dropped his head in his hand.
Bob put a hand on his back for support.

“
It wasn’t my finest
moment,” Aden said.

“
Did you ever go with the
guy?” the older detective asked.

“
No,” Aden said. “He
seemed to know I was a Gilmore. He called me Gilmore, in fact. He
was terrified of my family. Rightly so. I was terrified of my
family.”

“
How did you get the
necklace?” the older detective asked.

“
The guy who froze to
death?” Aden asked. “He was my best friend. I met him in juvie. I
took the pendant from him after he died.”

“
Why?” the younger
detective asked.

“
I wanted to remember my
friend,” Aden said. “He was the only family I’d really ever
had.”

“
This friend. Did he have
a name?” the younger detective asked.

“
I called him ‘Daf’
because he did a great Daffy the Duck impression,” Aden said. “He
was one of Bob’s too.”

He looked at Bob.

“
His name was Wilson
Zacarian,” Bob said. “He was found dead in January, 1990. Froze
outside on one of those record cold days. The police rousted all
the bridges to get the homeless out of the cold. They picked up
about ten homeless boys. They were high and drunk so they put them
in lock-up.”

“
Family?” the young
detective asked.

“
His family picked up his
body,” Bob said.

“
Did they ask about the
pendant?” the older detective asked.

“
The necklaces were given
out by the creepy guy,” Aden said. “All of his favorites had one.
If the necklaces were gone, the guys got in trouble. Bad. Daf lost
his one time and we looked for it for days. We finally found it
under a rock or something. He’d put it there when he was
high.”

“
Did this guy know you had
one?”

“
No, I don’t think the guy
ever knew I had a pendant.”

“
Does the creepy guy have
a name?” the older detective asked.

“
Not that I remember,”
Aden shook his head.

“
You boys didn’t call him
anything?” the young detective asked.

“
Jude,” Aden said. “We
called him Saint Jude.”

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY-FIVE

The Entity

“
This Saint Jude,” the
older detective paused for effect. “You’d recognize him if you saw
him again?”

“
I’ve seen him off and on
through the years,” Aden said.

“
When was the last time?”
the older detective asked.

Aden fell silent. He rubbed his forehead
then his face.

“
Sir?” the younger
detective asked.

“
Sorry, I’m sure you think
I’m stalling,” Aden said. “I got knocked around in prison. I’m
mostly all right but sometimes my brain kind of seizes when I’m
anxious or upset. Saint Jude is not my favorite topic.”

“
You have in your records
that Mr. Norsen received a brutal beating from his brother, a
violent serial felon who was mistakenly assigned to the minimum
security facility where Mr. Norsen was sentenced,” Samantha said.
“Give the man a minute to think.”

“
I don’t think time will
help,” Aden said. “I don’t know when I saw him last or where. I’m
sorry. I never like seeing him. If I saw him yesterday, I’d forget
it.”

“
Did you see him
yesterday?” the older detective asked.

“
No. I was at the hospital
all day yesterday,” Aden smiled. “That I’m sure of.”

“
But you’d recognize him
if you saw him again,” the older detective said.

Aden nodded.

“
I need you to speak,” the
older detective said. “For the record.”

“
Yes,” Aden
said.

“
Would you be willing to
go on record with this information?” the younger detective
asked.

“
Yes,” Aden
said.

“
Let’s move on,” the older
detective said. “Did he ever take you anywhere?”

Aden shook his head. He dropped his head
into his hands and rubbed his eyes.

“
Sorry, I haven’t had a
lot of sleep lately and I need to get back to my wife,” Aden said.
“You said something about going somewhere?”

The younger detective looked at his partner.
The older detective nodded and the younger man left the room.

“
You’ve heard that
Detective O’Malley found Jeffy before he died,” the older detective
said.

“
I’m sorry. I haven’t
heard anything,” Aden said. “My wife was in and out of the hospital
all last week. She had our daughter almost two months early on
Friday. I’ve either been at the hospital or taking care of my kids,
her siblings…”

“
Aden’s been out of the
loop, Detective,” Samantha said.

The younger Detective returned with a stack
of photographs. He laid out a picture of the large house on the
Barn’s property.

“
Have you ever seen this
house?” the young detective asked.

“
May I?” Aden
asked.

He picked up the photo to get a closer
look.

“
Sure, I’ve been there,”
Aden said. “I lived there for a while. I moved out around the time
I met Nuala. My band used to practice there.”

“
Would you mind going
there tonight?” the younger detective asked.

“
Tonight?” Aden asked. He
shifted uncomfortably. Not sure what to say, he repeated,
“Tonight?”

“
We need to move fast,”
the older detective said. “According to the coroner, the serial
killer will pick another victim in the new few hours. We think the
house plays an integral role in the killer’s rituals.”

“
Did you check the crypt?”
Aden asked.

“
Crypt?” the younger
detective said.

“
In the basement chapel,”
Aden said.

“
The killer won’t be able
to use the barn…” the older detective started.

“
The barn?” Aden’s
eyebrows shot up with anxiety.

“
What is it, son?” Bob
asked.

“
The house… that barn…
They’re haunted,” Aden stumbled on his words. “Horrifying.
Especially at night.”

“
But you lived there…” the
young detective said.

“
Doesn’t mean I want to go
back,” Aden said. “Ever.”

~~~~~~~~

Sunday night — 9:40 P.M.

Seth looked up when Ava came into the room.
He instinctively smiled at her. She flushed a little. The Chief of
Police cleared his throat.

“
Technician Alvin,” he
said. “We’re in the middle of…”

“
Detective O’Malley asked
me to inform him when we’ve finished our analysis of the pendant,”
Ava walked toward Seth. “The pendants are similar enough to be made
by the same company but different enough to be made decades
apart.”

“
So Norsen’s story fits,”
Seth’s Captain said.

“
Yes sir,” Ava said. “The
Jeffy pendant is newer and made out of pewter. It’ has ‘Made in
China’ stamped on the back. The pewter is consistent with Asian
pewter with a higher percentage of tin. Say ninety-seven percent or
so. The Norsen pendant is also pewter, but was made in the US. The
pewter is consistent with European pewter with less tin, say
between ninety-two and ninety-four percent. The Jeffy pendant is a
little softer, more malleable so it bears a few wear marks.
Norsen’s pendant is undamaged after all these years.”

“
Different factories, same
pendant? Or different pendants?” Seth asked.

“
The pendants were made
on, if not the same mold, a similar mold,” Ava said. “You can’t see
it in this light but there’s a small defect in the mold. A crack or
possibly some design flaw. We believe the mold is either exactly
the same mold that made the Norsen pendant or a mold made from the
original mold.”

“
We’re looking at the same
company making similar products?” Seth asked.

“
Right,” Ava said. “We
believe it’s the same company making the same product. They are not
produced off shored in China. We looked online and found these
pendants with these same steel chains for nine dollars.”

“
Cheap pendants,” the head
of CBI said. “I wonder how many he bought.”

“
We have a person working
on that, sir,” Ava said. “We were able to contact the factory in
China. They’re sending us information about the company they make
these pendants for. We’ll know tomorrow who sells them in
Denver.”