Riverwatch (21 page)

Sam didn’t reply. He was barely listening. He knew that he should be paying attention. He was probably in a whole lot of trouble, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His thoughts were a confused jumble, like a swarm of bees around a hive.

He realized suddenly that the sheriff had asked him another question.

"Uhh, pardon me?"

Wilson eyed him calmly. "I asked if you knew the victim."

Gabriel! a voice cried in the back of Sam’s mind. "Yeah. He’s…" he began, and then corrected himself. "He was a friend of mine. I work here, this is my floor." Forgive me Gabriel! How could I have known it was all true?

"Are you friends with most of the patients entrusted to your care?"

"Some of them," Sam replied.

The heavy stench of death filled his nostrils as the ambulance attendants walked past carrying a stretcher on which sat a number of body bags. Sam’s gaze followed them the length of the hall until they disappeared around the corner.

Damon waited until he had Sam’s attention again. Then he asked, "Do you know who killed Mr. Armadorian?"

Yes! Sam’s mind cried, and for a moment he was afraid he’d be unable to prevent himself from telling the Sheriff all he knew, that his mouth would disobey the commands his mind was sending to it and the whole sorry story would be revealed, but some rational part of him was still functioning. He knew that if he told the Sheriff what he suspected he’d only wind up at the County Hospital awaiting a psychiatric exam. He managed to squelch his desperate need to unburden himself and answered the question in the negative.

Sam’s inner turmoil did not go unnoticed, but Damon gave no indication that he’d seen it.

If Sam might know something that could help the investigation of the murders, then Damon was duty-bound to bring him in for questioning. The mayor and the public were screaming for him to make an arrest and end the killing spree that was rapidly turning their town into a frightened community of hermits, too scared to leave their homes. He couldn’t arrest Sam just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time but bringing him down to the stationhouse for questioning wouldn’t violate any of his civil rights.Something stayed his hand, however.

Maybe it didn’t make much sense, but in his gut Damon was certain that Sam had no connection to the murders. While there was no evidence yet linking this one to the others aside from its sheer savagery, Damon was certain that they were all connected. They had to be. There was no doubt in his mind that all four murders were committed by the same person. Or animal, if he were to use Strickland’s theory. While Sam’s appearance tonight might indicate he knew something about the murders, not for a moment did Damon believe that Sam was capable of committing them. It took a certain maliciousness to kill in such a brutal manner, and his gut reaction told him Sam wasn’t capable of that.

Which left him back at square one.

Except for whatever it was that Sam knew.

Damon watched as Sam dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and stuck one between his lips. His hands trembled as he tried to light it and after three unsuccessful tries the Sheriff took pity on him and lit it himself.

Sam weakly smiled his thanks.

Damon came to a decision. "Look, Mr. Travers. I get the feeling you know a bit more about all this than you’re letting on. I’m giving you a chance to come clean right now. Is there anything you wanna tell me?"

Sam merely shook his head. "Is it okay if I go now? I’m not feeling all that great and…"

Damon cut him off. "Yeah, all right. I’m sure the whole situation has been a shock. There are a few other questions I want to ask you about Mr. Armadorian but they can wait until the morning. I’ll expect you in my office around eleven o’clock, all right?"

"Yeah. Okay." Sam turned and began walking down the corridor. He’d only gone a few steps when Sheriff Wilson called out to him.

"Mr. Travers?"

Sam turned back around to face him.

"The locker room is this way," the Sheriff said, indicating the other end of the hall with an outstretched hand.

For a moment Sam was completely confused. The locker room? What the hell did that have to�? Then he remembered the cover story he’d told Officer Collins. He smiled weakly, doing his best to cover his lapse. "Thanks. In the midst of all this I guess I forgot why I came here." Sam turned and walked back past Wilson and down the hall in the other direction. He knew the Sheriff wasn’t fooled.

Damon watched him go, then walked down the hall and re-entered the room where the old man had died. He stared at the splattered bloodstains while the crime scene technicians went about their business around him.

Jesus H. Christ! he thought. Who the hell could do something like this?

The mutilation of the Cummings had been bad. The memory of the man’s head stuffed into the toilet bowl rose in his mind, but he quickly shoved it away again. It was bad enough that he saw it in his dreams, he didn’t need to see it while he was awake.

Yet that horror had been something he could understand. It was sick, sure, but normally sick, if that made any kind of twisted sense. Mutilation of a victim’s body wasn’t all that uncommon in psychotic killings.

But this….

This was beyond anything he’d ever seen.

The poor guy had been torn to shreds, for Christ’s sake.

He shook his head. What kind of animal am I after? How the hell did it get in here without being seen or heard? How intelligent is this thing?

Sheriff Wilson’s right hand unconsciously slipped down to caress the butt of his service revolver.

There was one question he did know the answer to, however.

What did you do with an animal that was running wild in the streets?

Damon smiled grimly.

You hunted it down and killed it.

*** ***

Sam felt like he’d been caught up in a giant whirlwind that was hurtling his body relentlessly forward without his control. He sat slumped on the floor in the basement locker room, his back resting against the cool metal of the lockers. He was doing his best to stop the palsied trembling of his body that had started as soon as he’d sought refuge here.

He wasn’t having much success.

The events of the last hour had been too much for him. His mind and his body were numb with shock. It was hard to believe that Gabriel was dead. He knew it was true, yet a part of him resisted the notion.

Sam was overwhelmed with guilt. There was no way he could deny the fact that he had killed his friend. He hadn’t harmed him physically, but he was as responsible in his own mind as whoever had actually performed the violence. He had dismissed his friend’s fears as the harmless ramblings of an old man rapidly approaching senility, even when there had been no evidence that Gabriel had begun in any way to loose touch with reality, and that had killed him as surely as if Sam himself had wielded the knife.

If he’d listened, he might have been able to save him. He and Gabriel could’ve faced the old man’s enemy together. Gabriel might have survived.

If only he’d listened!

But he hadn’t, and Gabriel had paid the final price for Sam’s own ignorance.

With his heart aching and filled with guilt, grief finally broke through. His face in his hands, Sam wept long and hard, his shoulders hitching with the force of his sobs.

After a time, grief slowly gave way to anger.

Gabriel’s death would not go unavenged, he vowed to the empty air around him.

With the backs of his hands, Sam wiped the tears from his face and rose slowly to his feet. Knowing the police might still be outside, he knew he had to maintain his appearance, particularly in the light of Sheriff Wilson’s obvious suspicions. He went to his locker and spun the combination, intending on removing the extra coat he kept there to support the story he’d told the Sheriff and Officer Collins. When the lock clicked he yanked open the thin metal door and froze, staring at what lay inside.

A thick package wrapped in brown paper rested on the top shelf inside the locker. Sam’s name was scrawled across the front in Gabriel’s script.

The package hadn’t been there the day before yesterday.

It was just a simple package, no bigger than a couple of paperback books.

Yet something about it sent chills racing up and down Sam’s spine.

He had the distinct impression that it had been waiting there for him; waiting there in the darkness of his locker, quietly, patiently, like a spider hanging suspended in its web.

He stared at it for several long moments, his heart beating painfully in his chest.

Very slowly he reached in and picked it up. He held it gingerly, half expecting it to scuttle swiftly out of his hands.

It did not.

It merely sat there, its very presence seeming to mock him, daring him to open it.

A voice in the back of his mind told him to toss it back into his locker. Better yet, straight into the nearest trash can. It’s probably nothing important anyway, the voice said. Get rid of it. Forget you ever set eyes on the damn thing. Let it sit there and rot until there’s nothing left but a thin film of fuzzy mold growing in its place.

Ignoring the voice, Sam took a deep breath, ripped the package open, and peered inside.

The black face of a videotape stared back at him.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Revelations

Jake awoke.

He lay flat on his back in bed, his eyes straining to see in the darkness. His muscles tensed, and he was surprised when, a second or two after awakening, he realized he was holding his breathe.

For several long moments, there was silence.

Just when he’d convinced himself that he was imagining things, the loud pounding that had awoken him resumed.

The front door, Jake realized distantly.

He glanced at the glowing hands of his watch.

Who the hell was banging on his door at two a.m.?

Finding his jeans where he’d dropped them beside the bed, Jake swung his legs out from under the sheets and pulled the jeans up over them.

The knocking continued.

"Hold your damn horses. I said I was coming!" he called in the direction of the front door.

The pounding had awoken Loki and now the dog added his barking to the din.

"Quiet boy!" Jake said as he rounded the corner and snapped on the foyer light. Loki stood in front of the door, barking furiously, but when he saw Jake he backed off and settled down.

The sudden quiet left in the wake of Loki’s silence was interrupted a second later as the pounding resumed for a third time.

Jake lost his patience. He turned the lock, disengaged the bolt, and threw the door open violently.

"Look you stupid son-of-a…"

He got no further.

The flood of words leaving his mouth trickled to a stop the moment Jake realized who it was standing on his front steps.

It was Sam and his friend was a mess.

The knees of his jeans were stained with mud and grass. His shirt was buttoned improperly and on its front was a long streak of drying vomit.

Sam looked up and Jake knew something terrible had happened.

At last he found his voice. "Sam! What the hell happened?"

Travers smiled sadly. He opened his mouth to answer, but got no further.

His chin dropped, his shoulders slumped, and without uttering a sound he collapsed directly into Jake’s arms, unconscious. The beer can he’d been holding behind his back clattered to the floor.

"Aw shit, Sam." Caruso muttered as he manhandled his friend into the apartment and out into the living room.

As they passed through the foyer something slipped out of Sam’s half-tucked shirt and fell to the floor. Loki scooted in and retrieved it as Jake dumped Sam unceremoniously onto the couch.

Jake struggled with his friend’s limp body for a few moments until he’d managed to get the soiled clothes off him. He tossed these into the wash and then got a spare blanket out of the hall closet to cover him up. He retrieved the beer can from the floor, then went outside and looked in the window of Sam’s car. The other five cans of the six-pack were on the front seat, still in their plastic binding. Satisfied that Sam wasn’t going to die of alcohol poisoning in the middle of the night, Jake went back inside.

Loki was lying on the floor, gnawing on his newfound toy, whatever it was. His own hangover forgotten in the excitement, Jake reached in and pried whatever it was from between the dog’s jaws, ignoring the low growls that he got in return.

"Shut up, boy," he replied distractedly as he turned the object over in his hands.

It was a videotape. There was no jacket and no writing on the label; nothing to identify what it might contain.

Jake’s curiosity meter rose a notch.

He walked into the kitchen, the dog trailing eagerly at his heels. "See what you did, Loki?" Jake said as he held the tape in front of the dog’s nose and indicated the saliva hanging from it. "You got slime all over the tape. How am I supposed to watch it now, huh?"

The Akita whined as if in apology.

"Yeah, I know. You just couldn’t help it, right?" The banter with his pet helped take his mind of Sam’s condition and he relaxed a little as he cleaned the outside of the video tape.

Jake returned to the living room, slipped the tape into his VCR, and switched on the television. Settling comfortably onto the floor with his head against the cushion of the couch behind him, he sat back to watch the show.

The face of an old man filled the screen as the tape began to roll, and without having to be told Jake knew this was Sam’s friend from the nursing home, Gabriel. The man smiled and began speaking.

"Well, Sammy. If you’re watching this we both know it’s too late to do anything for me." He smiled grimly. "Don’t worry, my friend. I’ve waited a long time for this day. Longer than you could ever know. My time is up, but I’m afraid that yours has just begun."

Jake leaned closer to the television, his interest aroused. The old man was talking as if he’d passed away. Could that be why Sam was so upset? Because Gabriel had died?

He glanced over his shoulder. Sam looked half dead himself. His head was thrown back at a strange angle, his mouth agape. If it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of his chest, the illusion would’ve been perfect.