Death Notice (32 page)

“I can’t see,” he said, trying to align the holes cut into the sheet with his eyes. “What happened to the lights?”

Kat called out to Lou van Sickle, who was at her post down the hall. “Are the lights out where you are?”

“Yes,” Lou yelled back. “And the phones are dead, too.”

Kat tried her own phone and heard silence in place of a dial tone. James, meanwhile, continued to writhe under the sheet. The eyeholes were now at the side of his head, somewhere near his right ear.

“Let me help,” Kat said, yanking the sheet. The movement caught James off guard, and he stumbled blindly toward her desk.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

Kat wasn’t sure if James meant the costume or being stuck in her office for the afternoon. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t do anything to change either.

The office situation was their normal Friday night routine now that Amber Lefferts was out of the picture. Troy’s death had hit her hard, and she no longer wanted to babysit James. That meant James had to spend many of his after-school hours with Kat at the police station or at Lou van Sickle’s house when Kat was busy.

As for James’s ghost costume, well, it was mandatory. Everyone from his school would be draped in similar white sheets for the parade that kicked off the Halloween Festival. All
students were welcome to march in the parade, provided they all wore the same easy but standard disguise. Kat didn’t fully understand the rationale behind the decision—something about preventing some kids from upstaging others with elaborate costumes—but since it only cost her an old sheet, she didn’t care. Plus, in the five years since it started, the March of the Ghosts, as it was called, had become the most popular part of the parade.

That the festival was taking place at all was something of a small miracle. After Troy’s murder and Art’s suicide, Kat wondered if Perry Hollow would ever fully recover. But as the weeks passed and residents emerged from their shocked numbness, it was generally acknowledged that the town had to put on a brave face, even if everything wasn’t back to normal.

An uptick in visitors had a lot to do with that. What Perry Hollow lost in normalcy, it gained in notoriety. People flocked to the town more than ever before, eager to visit the site of such heinous acts. Stores along Main Street accepted them anyway. At least, they accepted their money. And since it had been a bad year for business, the Halloween Festival was the town’s last chance to make a profit by wringing more cash out of the morbidly curious. Because of that, it had to go on.

If the storm ever stopped. When Nick arrived, he was soaked to the skin, looking to Kat like he had just showered with his clothes on.

“Lightning just struck a transformer outside the Shop and Save.”

By that point in their friendship, Nick no longer bothered with actual greetings. He was in Kat’s office so much that it sometimes felt like he was another one of her deputies. When he wasn’t at the station or getting much-needed rest at the Sleepy Hollow Inn, he was at her house, cooking dinner, entertaining James, and watching whatever DVD Kat had picked out.

At the station, Lou and Carl ribbed her about the frequent
visits. Lou even went so far as to ask Kat if she’d be wearing an engagement ring soon. Other people in town talked, too. In Perry Hollow, gossip was considered a recreational sport, and the current talk was that Chief Campbell was getting cozy with that handsome state police lieutenant.

The rumors and innuendo didn’t bother Kat, mostly because she knew they weren’t true. She had absolutely no romantic interest in Nick Donnelly, and he showed no signs of attraction to her. And although he used investigating the Grim Reaper killings as an excuse, Kat knew the real reason Nick came to town. Quite simply, he wanted a family. Kat and James were the sister and nephew he could never have.

“How bad is it?” Kat asked.

“Bad. But Carl was already there,” Nick said, his shoes squishing on the floor as he crossed the office. “And I saw a truck from the power company arriving as I was leaving.”

Kat reached for the windbreaker hanging on her wall. “I should check it out.”

“Before you go,” Nick said, “we need to talk about our taxidermist friend.”

“Caleb Fisher?”

“Yeah. I saw him at the grocery store and looked inside his pickup truck.”

“Accidentally or on purpose?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Accidentally. Sort of. And there was rope, gloves, and a handkerchief inside. Plus, he was buying duct tape at the Shop and Save.”

“That’s it? Just tape?”

“He said he was preparing to close up the house for the winter. I’ve never owned a summer home, but I’m not sure why it needs rope and gloves.”

“You’re being too suspicious,” Kat said. “It’s not illegal to keep rope in your truck. Or gloves.”

“What about the handkerchief?”

Kat slipped into the windbreaker and zipped it to her chin. “We’ll talk about it later.”

On her way out the door, she stopped at Lou’s desk and asked the dispatcher if she could keep an eye on both James and Nick until she returned.

“I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Lou said.

Kat moved steadily toward the door. Before opening it, she lifted the windbreaker’s hood over her head. Then, taking a deep breath, she pushed through the door and stepped into the storm.

Sprinting across the parking lot, she made it all the way into the Crown Vic before seeing Henry Goll. She had already started the car and was rolling out of the lot when Henry suddenly emerged in the torrent of rain. Seeing him created a bubble of fear that rose in Kat’s throat. Henry never visited unless he had a reason.

And on that evening, his reason for being there was a soggy piece of paper gripped in his hand. Kat rolled down her window as Henry approached and thrust the sheet at her.

“It’s another one,” he said.

Despite the page’s sodden state, Kat clearly saw the lone sentence typed across it.

Amber Lefferts, 16, of Perry Hollow, Pa., died at 6:30
P.M.
on October 30.

Heart hammering in her chest, Kat again looked at Amber’s name. Then she looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was ten after six. If she wanted to save Amber’s life, she needed to hurry.

Flicking on the Crown Vic’s siren, she started to pull away. Henry trotted beside the car, waiting for instructions.

“Nick is inside,” Kat said. “Tell him what’s going on. And hurry.”

“Where are you going?”

Kat picked up speed, shaking Henry’s pursuit. She yelled her destination out the open window.

“Amber’s house. I can’t let this happen again.”

She was on her cell phone before she was even out of the parking lot. Steering with one hand, she dialed with the other. The result was a right turn so tight the Crown Vic scraped a fire hydrant on the way around the curb. Kat didn’t care. She needed to reach Amber immediately.

Once around the corner, she increased the car’s speed as the phone rang once.

“Pick up, Amber,” Kat muttered as it rang a second time. “Please pick up.”

She cut a sharp left and bumped down a narrow alley. For the sake of time, she wanted to avoid the town’s main streets. Even though they were far from clogged, the rain made for slow driving, especially during a power outage.

The phone rang a third time, its buzz cut short as Amber Lefferts finally answered.

“Chief Campbell? Is that you?”

Kat answered with a question of her own. “Where are you?”

“Home. Although the power is out.”

“It’s out everywhere. Are you alone?”

Amber paused, an uneasy silence that made Kat clutch both the phone and steering wheel with worry.

“Amber?” she said. “Are you alone?”

The girl’s response was a whisper. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone was just at the house,” Amber said. “They rang the doorbell and left something on the doorstep.”

“What did they leave?”

“A bird.”

The answer made Kat’s already racing heart speed up a few beats.

“It was dead,” Amber continued. “Why would someone do that?”

Kat was speeding down a side street now. Up ahead, a Cadillac idled at the curb. Its brake lights flared a moment as the Caddy started to pull out in front of her. Kat punched the gas pedal to the floor, trying to speed past.

She almost made it.

The Cadillac edged into the street as Kat flew by. And although the vehicles themselves missed each other, their side mirrors did not. The force of the collision slammed the mirror on the Crown Vic against the passenger side window. The Caddy’s twisted downward and dangled against the door.

Turning left again, Kat kept moving. She had to. Stopping was not an option.

“Are the doors locked?” she asked Amber.

“No.”

“Do it now. Lock, deadbolt, and chain.”

“Why?” Amber asked. “What’s going on?”

Kat barked into the phone. “Just do it! And don’t unlock it until I get there.”

“Why are you coming—”

Amber let the rest of the question remain unspoken. Kat did the same with the answer. Instead, she listened to a series of snaps, creaks, and jangles as the girl locked the front door. Finally, she said, “It’s him, isn’t it? The same person who killed Troy.”

“You’re safe inside,” Kat said. “That’s all that matters.”

She glanced at the speedometer. She was going fifty-five. She jacked up the speed, pushing sixty as she reached Main Street. The Crown Vic shot through traffic, crossing the thoroughfare at bullet speed. Vehicles in both directions came to a skidding, screeching halt. Her car clipped the rear bumper of a Volkswagen that couldn’t get out of the way. The bumper tore off as the Volkswagen slid into the path of an SUV heading north.

Kat heard the collision—a symphony of shattering glass and metal scraping against metal—but didn’t look back. She kept her eyes fixed on the road.

On the phone, Amber began to weep. Kat heard the girl’s choked breathing and muffled sobs. “I don’t want to die,” she said. “Please don’t let me die.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Kat said. “I’m almost there. I’m a block away.”

She peered out the window, squinting to try to see past the rain and windshield wipers and darkness. The Lefferts’ house edged into view. Dark, just like every other home on the block.

“I’m here,” she said. “Just hold tight until I get inside.”

“Hurry,” Amber said. “Please hurry.”

Then she screamed.

“Amber? Tell me what’s going on?”

The girl’s response bordered on the hysterical, high-pitched and unintelligible. Kat could make out one word—
bird
.

“A bird?”

“I just found another one,” Amber cried.

“Where? On the porch again?”

“No,” Amber said. “Inside. It’s
inside
the house.”

Kat brought the Crown Vic to a screeching halt in front of the Lefferts’ residence. Instead of parking at the curb, she steered the car over it, across the sidewalk and into the yard. Kat leaped from the car and bolted across the lawn. The phone was still gripped in her hand. Amber’s terrified voice blasted out of it.

“There’s more of them in the hallway. Oh God, they’re everywhere!”

Halfway across the lawn, Kat dropped the phone, grabbed her Glock, and shouted directly at the house. “I’m coming, Amber! Get out of the house!”

She hit the porch at full speed, not stopping until she collided with the front door. At her feet was the dead bird Amber had mentioned. A cardinal, it had been stuffed so full that it looked like it had swallowed a baseball. When Kat kicked it aside, sawdust spilled from its abdomen.

“Amber?” She tried the door. It was still locked. “Are you in there?”

Kat didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She didn’t breathe. Pressed tight against the door, she searched for the slightest noise from inside the house. It came a moment later.

“I’m here!” Amber yelled on the other side. “I’m still here!”