Feral (6 page)

“Because he can't see me there,” she said, frustrated.

“Who is
he
?” Shannon shouted.
 
“If you tell us who he is, we can help you!”

Slowly, she shook her head.
 
“No you can't.
 
He'll kill you.”

“I used to be a cop,” Jared said.
 
“I can handle him.”

The girl looked at him, a sad smile played across her face, but she said nothing.

“If we take you back, will you tell us who he is?” Shannon asked.

The girl considered this for a moment, then nodded.
 
“Yes.”

“Shit!
 
I can't believe we're playing games with her,” Jared said.
 
“This is crazy.”

You don't have a clue what crazy is
, Shannon thought.

“Come on, Jared,” she said.
 
“I'll tell you about last night on the way, and you can tell me what I don't know about this Feral Park.”

T
raffic was light through town, but it was getting close to noon and would soon pick up.
 
It was a little heavier at the northeastern end of Riverside, the industrial area.
 
Mostly it was commercial traffic and people coming into town from the highway.
 
The heat was a constant, but the air conditioner in Jared's Chevelle made the trip tolerable.

Shannon reported the previous night's horror with a degree of self-consciousness.
 
She realized how crazy it sounded, but she was true to what happened.
 
She didn't leave anything out.

Jared listened silently, caught somewhere between belief and disbelief.
 
His sister was not an overly imaginative person, prone to flights of fancy, but the story she told was incredible.
 
Insane.

The girl sat quietly in the back seat.

Shannon ended with how she had carried the girl home earlier that morning, praying every step of the way that no one would see them.

Jared found a parking spot at the end of the industrial area and killed the motor.
 
The park's main entrance and parking lot were accessible only from the highway, but that had been blocked off years ago to keep tourists and passing travelers out of the abandoned park and its decrepit playground.

The dike, and the crumbling asphalt path that led to Feral Park, was a short walk away.

Jared told his sister the stories he'd heard about Feral Park.
 
The missing kids who had been last seen there, the phantom noises, and the girl whose death had tainted the place.

S
hannon and Jared walked with the girl between them, not holding onto her, but ready to grab an arm or shoulder should she try to take off.
 
She didn't seem inclined to do so.
 
They were going where she wanted so she seemed satisfied for now.
 
They had no idea how they were going to get her out of there again when she told them what they wanted to know.
 
They had both come to the same silent conclusion: they would handle that when they had to.
 
She could kick and scream all she wanted, there was no way in hell they were leaving her there.

As Feral Park came into view Shannon asked again, “Who are you, and who gave you my daughter's locket?”

Grudgingly, as if giving up a guarded secret, she said, “I'm Charity.
 
The man who's after me doesn't have a name; he's the Bogey Man.
 
The Bogey Man killed your daughter.”
 
She looked away from Shannon and bit at her lower lip.
 
“He said I needed new clothes, my others were falling apart.”
 
She looked up at Shannon again, apologetically.
 
“He killed my mom and took me away.
 
I think he wants to marry me,” she added shyly.

Jared almost laughed aloud at the last statement, so innocent of statement and yet obscene at the same time.
 
It was a wonder that she had retained whatever innocence she still possessed in the custody of the killer she called
The Bogey Man
.

Shannon barely heard it.
 
One phrase stuck in her mind like a fishbone in her throat.

The Bogey Man killed your daughter
.

She knew Alicia was dead, had known since her bastard ex-father-in-law called her three months ago, but now it had been articulated and she couldn't deny it.
 
The dark corner of her mind where that last grain of hope for Alicia lived had been upturned, uncovered.

And despite the absurdity of it, Shannon believed her.
 
The Bogey Man
had
come in the night and taken her daughter away.

Because that is what the Bogey Man did.

I
t was just past noon when Gordon and Charles entered Riverside.
 
The sky was flat blue, cloudless.
 
Charles drove his old Caddy, big and gun-barrel gray.

Gordon followed in his less impressive Mazda.
 
His windows were down, the air conditioner having given out long ago.
 
He listened to Paul Harvey's “The Rest of the Story,” wiped sweat from his forehead with one arm.
 
It was only June and he guessed the days were topping out at just less than one hundred degrees.
 
This was going be a bitch of a summer.

He followed Charles' practiced route through the industrial area, through downtown, to the motel where he stayed.
 
It wasn't quite a dump, but would never earn a five-star rating.
 
It was called The Riverside; aptly named since it was in Riverside, and happened to look out over the Snake River.
 
The view from Charles' room was nice if you ignored the littered gravel alley and parking lot, the dull landscape overgrown with thistle and weeds, and the crust of flotsam gathering at the river's stony shore.

The room was clean, but completely utilitarian—small, with a single bed, green shag carpet that may have been installed sometime in the late seventies, and a bathroom that was just large enough to turn around in.
 
There was a TV, but no cable.
 
Only a handful of local channels came in with any clarity.

It was what Gordon expected from Charles, a man whose philosophy was “If I'm too comfortable it's that much harder to leave when I have to work.”

Still, it was better than the car.

Gordon grabbed a change of clothes and toiletries from his old suitcase and hit the shower.
 
Fifteen minutes later he stepped out of the bathroom, showered, shaven, and changed.
 
He looked like a new man, but felt like a dead one.
 
He was bone weary, and the freshly made single bed looked like a gift from God.
 
He dropped into it like a lump.

Charles sat at a small writing desk, cleaning his gun, a daily ritual.
 
He finished with the gun a few minutes later, reloaded it, and slipped it into his ankle holster.

“I gotta go pay another week or the desk man will move us out the second we leave.
 
You stay put for a while and rest your bones, okay?”

Gordon grunted a response, and by the time Charles shut the door he was asleep.

He dreamed again.

C
harles let Gordon sleep and drove to Shannon's house alone.
 
He didn't plan on talking to her just yet; he wanted to make sure she was still there before he brought Gordon along.
 
He passed the house slowly, noting the empty driveway, and continued on for another block.
 
Then he parked and waited for a few minutes before getting out and walking back toward the house.
 
He watched every house along the way for signs of activity, for what he called the ‘neighborhood watch mentality.'
 
One concerned neighbor could put the kibosh on this little preemptive excursion.

This was not the normal order of business for him; being forward with people was his business.
 
If he spied out every potential witness or source he used beforehand, he would never have time to
work
a case.
 
Something was different about this one.
 
There was a deviation to the pattern that he did not trust.
 
His query always killed in waves, nothing for a few months, then several in a month's time before he moved on again.
 
Shannon's family had been done almost as an afterthought to the Oregon killing spree.
 
Then nothing for three months, until a few nights ago, and another one last night.
 
Before then he hadn't even been sure it was their killer.
 
The method fit his profile, but the timing was wrong.

Shannon Pitcher's case was a deviation, and deviations made Charles nervous as hell.

No one seemed to notice him walking down the street to Shannon's house, or if they did they didn't care.
 
There were no curious faces pressed to living room windows, no weekend gardeners who'd forgotten about a half-weeded row of petunias.
 
Charles guessed it was simply too damn hot to be nosy.

He turned up the walkway to Shannon's house without the slightest hesitation, and when he found the door locked, he dug in his trouser pocket for his lock pick.
 
Charles wasn't an expert lock picker, but he could get into most places if he needed to.
 
If the locks were
old
it was usually easy.
 
It took him half a minute to open the front door and slip unnoticed into the empty home.

C
harity sat alone in the playground for almost an hour, first on one of the rusty, creaking swings, then on the edge of the old sandbox, the one where they had found the girl's body.

The one I landed in last night
, Shannon thought with a shiver.
 
Something in there tripped me; something was playing with me the way a fat house-cat plays with a mouse—not because it's hungry, but because it's enjoying the game
.

Nothing happened today though; the park was still decrepit, forbidding, but not the predator that had tried to kill her the night before.

Shannon and Jared watched Charity from a bench in the weed-infested green, not knowing what to do next.

Finally, with a great and heartbreaking sigh, Charity rose and left the playground.
 
They met her just outside the gate, the spot where Shannon had found her earlier.

“Nothing?” Shannon asked.

Charity shook her head, made a small noise, but didn't speak.

Jared, hot, hungry, out of patience with the girl, said, “What did you expect, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys to fly down and whisk you away?”

“I don't know,” she said defensively.
 
“Something was supposed to happen.
 
I dreamed about it.”
 
She looked back into the playground, her expression a blend of fear and longing.
 
“I dreamed about it.
 
The kids who live there told me if I came here the Bogey Man wouldn't be able to get me again.
 
I think that's why they came here, to keep their bad people from getting them.”

“Bullshit!” Jared yelled, startling his sister out of her thoughts.
 
Charity was not startled, did not flinch back from him.
 
She crossed her thin arms over her chest and glared at him.

“Bullshit, Charity, or whatever your name is,” he said in a softer voice.
 
He looked to Shannon for help, but found none.
 
“Look, I'm sorry I yelled at you, but you need to tell us the truth.
 
Forget Bogey Men and Lost Boys, we need to know what's going on here.
 
You need to tell us who he is so we can protect you from him.
 
He killed my niece; he needs to go to prison.”

“It's not bullshit,” Shannon said at last.
 
“Something happened to me in there last night.
 
If Charity hadn't come when she did I might not be alive now.”
 
She reached over and squeezed Charity's shoulder, and the girl smiled at her, a smile that reminded her of Alicia.
 
The sight hurt her, but somehow made everything better, as well.
 
Suddenly it was very difficult for her to speak, but she swallowed hard and did anyway.
 
“Whatever lives in there would have had me.
 
When she showed up it let me go.”

Shannon realized she was about to say something that made her sound just as crazy as Charity, but said it anyway.
 
“I don't know the Bogey Man from Jack The Ripper, but I know I heard kids in here last night.
 
And music.”