The Messenger (2011 reformat) (26 page)

Stanton
groaned when he eyed the pictures. "What a high-class guy." The pictures
showed a variety of skinny, pallid broken-down women posing naked on the futon.
Broken teeth and broken lives. Any cop knew the look.

"I better
book these pictures with evidence, have somebody compare them to any Jane Doe
morgue shots," Steve said. "This case feels worse every minute."

"Guy like
that? Loner? Antisocial? He could be killing hookers and who would know?"

Yeah, Steve
thought. He wouldn't be surprised.

"Hey,
Chief? The chick at the post office say Parkins is a drinker?" Stanton
asked, nosing around the bed now. His expression crumbled at another stack of
photos on the floor, next to a pickle-can wastebasket full of soiled Kleenex.
Some of the photos looked just as soiled.

The chick at
the post office, Steve repeated in his head. He meant Jane. Steve hadn't been
able to stop thinking about her.

He shook off
the distraction. "Yeah, she suspended him for boozing on the job. He'd had
several write-ups in the past." A big metal garbage can sat in the corner
of the filthy kitchen, the kind most people put out at the end of their
driveway. Steve lifted the metal lid and whistled.

"What do
you think, Stanton? You think Parkins is a drinker?"

Stanton looked
in the can and rolled his eyes. It was full of empty whiskey bottles. "He
could start his own glass factory. You know, I drank that stuff during my first
semester of college, and I never had a hangover. Got D's in all my classes, but
I never had a hangover."

"Let that
be a lesson to you. Be smart. Stick to tequila."

They snooped
around some more, found more of the same. A footlocker full of porn videos.
More Polaroids. More cockroaches. At one point, they heard a loud clack! and
both turned with guns drawn. It was a rat that had run across the pile of dirty
dishes in the sink.

"Let's
get out of this dive, Chief. My wife'll kill me; it's making my uniform
stink."

"I'll get
someone from evidence section to come over and pick up the Polaroids. Parkins
won't be coming back," Steve estimated. "He's probably on a Greyhound
bus heading north."

"I'm sure
you're right," Stanton said. "But just to be safe, put somebody in an
unmarked outside to watch the place from the street."

Steve slapped
the sergeant on the back. "Great idea. Perfect way for you to spend the
rest of your shift."

"Thanks."

They were
leaving, but Stanton's voice halted Steve at the door. "Hey, Chief. Check
it out."

Steve turned.
Stanton was holding a scribble sheet he'd found on the kitchen counter. Steve
looked at it. "What's this? Doodling?"

The sheet had
various phone numbers scribbled on it, plus pen lines, squares and circles,
like when someone unconsciously doodles while they're talking on the phone.

"This is
really starting to freak me out," Stanton said. "What the hell's
going on in this town?"

One of the
doodles was a bell with an asterisk star for a striker.

I

I'm not that
much of a sucker, am I? Jane thought. She staved off despair deliberately,
replacing it with something close to anger. She felt utterly naive. Steve had
called her once, at about 6 pm., told her he had to work late, but he wanted to
see her, could he come by around ten? Of course, she'd told him yes, her heart
pattering.

She frowned
again at the clock radio by the bed 1 a.m., it informed her in glowing red
numerals. Five minutes later than the last time she'd looked.

She glanced at
the phone too, about every five minutes, as though that would make it ring.
She'd never felt sexier than now, in an aquamarine kimono-style nightie whose
chiffon fabric was so sheer it left all but nothing to the imagination.

What a dope,
she thought. Just go to bed. He's not coming.

The television
was on, her attention everywhere but on it. The screen fluttered in the dark
bedroom, throwing odd shapes of light on the walls.

Through the
glum thoughts, she heard a TV host saying: "...shocking multiple murders
that have recently stricken the quiet, crime-free town of Danelleton..."

Jane moaned,
sprawled anxiously on the bed. Not this again. She leaned up. One breast had
popped out of the sheer kimono top, but she didn't bother putting it back in.
Why? She was feeling around the sheets for the remote when her eyes moved to
the screen. Some tabloid show, and there was that guy again, that bearded man
that Steve was talking about last night.

Dhevic, she
recalled.

"... with
us tonight is professor Alexander Dhevic, a leading authority in the subject of
satanism in our age."

Jane looked on
with distaste. How could things ever get back to normal if they kept dragging
it up for the public in schlock shows like this?

Dhevic and the
stilted host were talking at a long conference desk. "...and much
more" Dhevic was saying in that edgy accent. "But the most-interesting
aspect of the Danelleton murders, however tragic, are their similarities to a
case that occurred in the same town, and at the same post office, twenty years
ago..."

No surprise to
her; Jane already knew the story, from Steve.

She looked at
Dhevic's face closely. He didn't look like a charlatan. Where someone like
Anton LeVay looked hokey and overstated, Dhevic looked studied, earnest. True,
the show itself was hype, but Dhevic's eyes appeared serious, full of belief.

Then...

Of course it
does, she caught herself. So did Uri Geller; that was all part of the act.
These people aren't experts in anything-they're actors who make their living
using that skill to cause people to believe their crap.

"If we
might break a moment, to let me ask you something," the host said.

"Certainly."

"Just
these rumors that you're psychic, professor, and that you've helped police
departments find serial killers, and so on. That your ancestors were fortune
tellers or what?-soothsayers for the Egyptian pharaohs." The host eyed
some papers on the desk, searching for information. "Not soothsayers
but-"

"Augurs,"
Dhevic corrected, not that Jane had ever heard the word. "And if you
believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you!" The attempt at levity almost
didn't come off, for the accent. "It is malarky, I've read the same
articles you're referring to, and there's no truth to them, I assure you. My
descendants are European, for goodness sake, as you can probably tell by the
way I speak. I've never helped police, I'm not psychic, telekinetic, or able to
communicate with the dead and such. Now, I'll admit, I can bend a spoon...with
my hands."

The host
seemed taken aback, but recovered. "I see. So actually, you're just-"

"An
out-of-work college professor who happens to have an extensive background in
history and a particular interest in the mythological history of the occult,
ritualism, and demonology. My only credentials are my books."

He sounded
credible to Jane, so credible she was bored. They began talking more about the
Danelleton murders past and present, and the suspicions of cult involvement,
when Jane turned the set off.

"I don't
need to hear this again."

But in only
moments she wished she'd left it on. The room's darkness and total silence now
reminded her how alone she was. Damn him, she thought. And damn me for taking
him seriously. I'd like to break a plank over his head. Jeez, I hope he has the
balls to call me now, just so I can hang up on him.

She settled
into bed, then lurched up almost shrieking, when the phone rang.

"Hi,
sorry it's so late," Steve said. "It was a long day."

Jane didn't
hang up on him. She faltered and said, "Oh."

"You're
mad, I can tell. I'm sorry. You've probably been sitting up all night waiting
for me to come by."

"I have
not," she smugly assured him. "I fell asleep at ten."

"I miss
you. Can I still come over?"

She faltered
again. "Steve, do you know what time it is?"

"Yeah, I
know. We were looking for Parkins all day and night. I am the chief of police,
you know. I couldn't just bug off."

"No, but
you could've called."

"I know,
I'm sorry."

"Besides,
if you're still at the station, it'd probably be one-thirty by the time you got
here. We've both got to be at work early tomorrow."

"Yeah...I
know. You go back to bed now. I'm sorry I woke you up. But I miss you." A hesitant
pause. "Can I call you tomorrow?"

Suddenly, she
felt alarmed. "Wait, no!"

"No-what?"
He sounded crushed. "No, I can't call you tomorrow?"

"No, I
mean-Come over. I'll wait up."

"Great.
And I won't be long, either. Actually I won't be any time at all. I'm not at
the station now."

"Where
are you?"

"Standing
at your front door. I'm on my cell phone."

Jane hung up
and rushed to the door. So much for breaking a plank over his head. When she
pulled the door open, she didn't say anything, she just pulled him inside and
they began to kiss. He paused a moment, to look at her in the sheer kimono, but
he didn't have much time. She was already getting out of it and alternately
pulling his shirt. Jane was on fire and she could tell that he was too. There
were no words, just desperate hands all over each other, just hot breaths being
shared as they kissed. The kimono dragged along over the carpet, rung around
her ankle, as they stumbled into the living room. Jane lay naked on her back,
her hands outstretched; he fumbled out of the rest of his clothes, and then for
the next half hour they were consumed with one another. They made love from one
end of the living room to the other, oblivious to everything around them. At
one point, Jane was lying back, her knees pressed to her face while his mouth
laved her sex, and after the first climax a stray glance showed her that she
hadn't even closed the front door... but she didn't care. The night's warm air
rushed over them. The steady throbs of peepers and cricket sounds pulsed into
the room. Later they both lay sprawled, carpet-burned and exhausted. "You
wore me out again," Steve Whispered.

"Good,"
she whispered back. "I love to wear you out."

"Hey,
guess what?"

"What?"

"The
front door's wide open."

"I know.
I don't care and, besides, I'm too exhausted to get up and close it."

"Me, too,
but..." He struggled to get up. "We still haven't found Parkins, so I
ordered a patrol car to drive by your house every half hour."

Jane laughed
at the possibility. "He'll see the door open in the middle of the night,
rush in here with his gun, and-"

"Yeah,
and see his chief buck-naked on the floor. That's one story I don't want making
the rounds in the locker room."

Her eyes were
wide on him, wide on the toned muscles and lines of his lean body. He was shiny
with sweat and so was she. She wanted to go again but knew it would be too
much. She watched him close the door and put on the chain.

"I never
would have thought it," she said.

"What's
that?"

"That one
day I'd have a naked cop walking around in my living room."

"Yeah,
well I like walking around naked in your living room. That could be a
problem."

"Why?"

"I'll get
spoiled. Pretty soon-who knows? I'll be walking around naked in your living
room all the time. You won't be able to get rid of me."

"You let
me worry about that."

After he'd
locked the door, he came back and offered his hand.

"Let me
help you up. We should go to bed."

"No,"
she whispered and pulled him back down. She wrapped herself around him.
"Let's sleep here tonight, right here on the floor."

He didn't
object, and had fallen asleep at her bosom minutes later. She smiled and began
to drift off herself...

Her eyes
darted open, just at the fringes of sleep. Something moved at the very corner
of her vision. Moonlight bathed the wall behind them. She craned her neck,
careful not to wake Steve. She squinted and focused, and she saw ...

A line. A
crooked line running from the baseboard across the floor, where its end
disappeared into shadow. She blinked, dismissing it as merely some
sleep-inspired mirage. She knew it wouldn't be there when she stopped blinking.

But it was.

What is that?

Then she heard
a skittering. Rat, she thought at once. Please don't tell me I've got rats! But
even if it was a rat, what would that have to do with the crooked line? The
sound came from the wall, and rats don't leave slimy trails, do they?