***
Sometimes when Christina Brown felt irritable and restless, she’d go for a drive. When the kids got to be too much and her husband was driving her crazy, she’d pick up her car keys out of the crystal bowl in the foyer and head out the door. Ron knew better than to complain. She wasn’t going out drinking or meeting some man, and he knew it. It was cheaper than therapy, too, even with gas prices through the roof.
Christina just liked to drive around at night. She fantasized sometimes about putting the big Buick on the interstate and driving all night instead of going home, but it was only a fantasy. She loved Ron and the kids, she really did, and she’d never leave, but it was nice to cruise around in her air-conditioned car pretending there were no responsibilities waiting for her at home. It was the only place she ever got to be alone. She’d come home cheerful, kiss Ron on the forehead and look lovingly at the children curled up in their beds like the little angels they absolutely weren’t.
Tonight, a harvest moon hung low in the sky, colored a brilliant orange by the dying embers of the sun. Christina caught her breath at the beauty of it and drove slowly down the bumpy road. Usually she drove around in the part of town down by the mall but tonight she hadn’t felt like seeing any people, so she’d driven to McGregor and turned toward the river. She’d found a dirt road and took it; the holes in it would have engulfed a smaller car, but she’d be all right as long as she dodged the worst of them.
It was dark back here, and Christina decided that she wanted to walk for a bit; that moon was calling to her. It wasn’t as hot and sticky as it usually was, so she’d just park as far out of the road as she could get and take a little hike. It would be nice to get some exercise.
She could hear the distant sounds of the city, but mostly what she heard was the sound of the wild; the rustle of small animals in bushes, the sough of the wind through the trees, and the faraway sound of water on the shore. She loved the water; the hiss and suck of the tide, and the sparkle of moonlight on moving water always made her happy. She even liked the fecund smell of it; it appealed to some primitive part of her psyche, she thought.
Christina took a narrow path through the woods, searching for the river. She could smell the loam of earth all around her, and she breathed it in deeply. Christina could feel the stress melting out of her body, and she felt more tranquil with every step she took.
She practically skipped down a small slope. There it was, the river she’d been searching for. She caught her breath; the moonlight reflected brilliantly off the shifting water and soothed her soul. Christina stood for a long time and watched the rhythm of it all; the water bent and swayed and fell and rose again. Every once in a while a fish would jump, spraying droplets touched with sparkling moonlight, and Christina would catch her breath at the beauty of it. She should bring Ron out here some night; they could get a babysitter and sit on the bank of the Caloosahatchee and just be.
She saw something out of the corner of her eye and turned to look. A figure seemed to scuttle out of sight, and was that a giggle she heard? Suddenly Christina’s heart was thumping in her chest and the very dark that had so sustained her only moments ago felt frightening. She didn’t hesitate; she started for her car at a dead run. Christina was on the track team in high school and she was still in pretty good shape; she could run like the wind. Behind her, she heard cursing and loud noises as someone thrashed through the bushes after her, but she didn’t slow down to look. She didn’t stop until she reached her car, and she hit the button to unlock the doors while she was still running.
Christina took off too fast, fishtailing a little bit and throwing loose gravel behind the wheels. At that moment, if ghosts and goblins and witches had landed on the car and punched through the roof, she wouldn’t have been surprised. In the daytime you might scoff; when the sun shone brightly, it was easy to dismiss your fears. In the night, though, strange things could happen, and that was the time when you believed. Christina knew.
As she pulled off the dirt road and onto the brightly lit street, still driving too fast, she swore grimly to herself that she would only drive around from now on. No more getting out of the car. Not ever.
There really were monsters out there, and they had been going to eat her up. She was lucky to be alive.
Chapter Seven
Taylor Cameron was seventeen, and Florida was paradise. She’d come here two years ago, and it was so warm that she could sleep in the park nearly year-round. There were only a few nights a year where it got so cold that she had to seek shelter indoors, and there were plenty of places to do that, like the church down the street that left its doors open at night, or the shed three streets over with the flimsy lock her sweet old grandma could have picked.
Taylor bathed in the fountain summer nights and at the gas station down the street the rest of the time. The guy who worked nights let her into the employee bathroom anytime she wanted. Sometimes Ricky would even give her sodas out of the cooler and a candy bar or something, and he didn’t even want anything for it. She kept Ricky company lots of times, ‘cause the night shift got boring for him and she got lonely, too.
She panhandled or worked some little shit job during the day, or if she felt like it, she put on a bikini and headed to the beach. She was pretty and built nice and she knew it, so she’d just wiggle her butt a little whenever anyone interesting walked by. She could always find some fine young guy to buy her lunch, and sometimes she got a stay in a nice hotel out of it. Taylor loved hotels. She got to sleep in a soft bed, take hot showers, and she never had to clean up after herself. If you wanted something to eat, all you had to do was pick up the phone and they brought it to you. Once she got to stay for two whole weeks before the guy had to go home. He tried to get her to go with him, but she wasn’t about to trade Florida for Minnesota. He was trippin’ and she told him so. She sure wouldn’t mind if he came back for a visit, though, and put her up in that nice hotel again.
One of these days when she was rich, she was going to have that kind of service all the time. Until then, she’d just stay in the park. It wasn’t too bad. Beat the hell out of living in Southern Illinois, ‘cause they only grew three things there: Corn, cow shit, and rednecks. She wasn’t fond of any of those things.
She’d been miserable all her life before she left home. Her daddy was drunk all the time and his favorite sport was to beat on her and her momma. Her momma didn’t do anything ‘cept go to church and cry, but Taylor didn’t go to church and she’d stopped crying long ago. Her momma always said that God would take care of them, but she noticed that he hadn’t been anywhere around when her daddy broke her arm by throwin’ her out of a moving truck, and he sure didn’t seem to care that everybody in that one-horse town called her trash just ‘cause she was related to that disgusting old man.
So Taylor had run away as soon as she was big enough to hitch a ride out of town. She’d kissed that place and those idiots goodbye when she was thirteen, and she was never, ever going to clap eyes on it again. She hung out in Atlanta for a while, until she got word that some skinny, mean little guy name of Cujo wanted her to join his little stable of girls. He wanted her to peddle her ass on the street full time, but she wasn’t no prostitute. She was just a girl doing what she could to get by, and she knew what happened to girls who worked for men like Cujo. They smoked crack so they could stand to do what they did, and after a while they did it so’s they would have enough to pay for crack. It wasn’t no way to live, and Taylor hadn’t left one prison so she could get locked up in another. She was too smart for that.
Taylor had hauled ass out of Atlanta in a hurry, and a sweet little old truck driver took her all the way to Fort Myers, Florida. She was never going to leave, either.
She was dozing by her favorite sleeping spot, behind a low wall that bordered the park, when something woke her. She was rolled up in her little blanket on the soft grass; it was as fine a bed as any she’d ever had growing up.
Taylor was groggy when she first woke, and she was
slightly chilled. She didn’t know why she was awake, so she lay still and listened carefully. You could never be too careful when you were alone. It was only her sharp wits and her good instincts that had saved her butt many, many times.
She heard church bells toll the hour; it was midnight. That must have been what woke her, though it usually didn’t. She had gotten used to them.
Little by little, uneasiness began to creep over her. The wind picked up, swirled and moaned like some disembodied spirit, blowing a thick blanket of clouds across the moon. The park lights went out at eleven, so it was pitch-black where she lay. Though ordinarily Taylor liked it that way, tonight it seemed too spooky. When the wind died down again, the utter stillness seemed somehow worse.
She couldn’t hear any crickets or screeching bats, and where was the chorus of tree frogs? Taylor began to wish that she’d found some sweet boy on the beach today. Then she’d be sleeping in some soft bed instead of being scared to death in the park that she usually loved. She glanced around fearfully. In the dark and afraid, trees became gnarled shadows creeping up on her; signs became ghosts rising out of the ground. She was suddenly on the verge of hysteria, shivering heavily.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked herself out loud. “Ain’t nothin’ here that ain’t always here. Calm down. In a minute, you can go down and hang out with Ricky for a while, see if he’ll give you a soda out of the cooler or somethin’.”
But talking to herself didn’t help.
She heard a sound on the other side of the wall, and Taylor got the feeling that something, someone was on the other side of the wall, just waiting for her. She felt the hair rising on the back of her neck. Every nerve in her body told her she wasn’t being foolish, but she tried to convince herself so. She held her breath and heard nothing. Then she let it out with a little gasp and she held her breath and strained to listen once more. Taylor slowly became convinced that when she held her breath that the something behind the wall was being still and listening to her, too.
She heard a scraping, rasping sound, as if someone drew a fingernail across the stone of the wall.
“Who is it?” she cried sharply. “Who’s there? Quit fuckin’ with me.”
Taylor felt paralyzed. She couldn’t jump to her feet and run; she felt like she was in a nightmare. As he climbed over the wall, she was rooted to the spot with her head thrown back and her eyes staring overhead, unable to do anything to save herself. She opened her mouth and let out an ululating cry of terror, but it was too late.
Her last thought before he held her down and her lifeblood slipped down his evil throat was that she had been right. She was never, ever gonna clap eyes on Southern Illinois again.
***
John Bennett lay in wait for the other cop like a Florida panther waits for prey in the swamps -with silent, leashed ferocity. He sat perfectly still, only glancing at the wall clock occasionally.
2:40 am.
3:30 am.
When he heard the rattle of keys in the lock at 4 am, Bennett slipped behind the door. When it swung shut, he grabbed the man and swung him into the wall, hard, and then onto the floor, where he knelt on his back and forced the cuffs on him. It took only seconds to subdue him.
“You lied to me, Corey,” he said as he rolled him over. “You weren’t thinking of leaving, were you Corey? You weren’t going to get very far, because there are two other cops in the car down the street. If you weren’t so high, you’d have noticed them.”
Bennett pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Yeah, I got him,” he said after he dialed a number. “Gimme a minute, would you? I’ll let you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Corey blubbered, spittle collecting in the corners of his mouth. He smelled of stale sweat and fear, and Bennett could tell he was still high. “What are you doing, man? We work together. I’m a good cop. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Don’t lie anymore!” Bennett stuck his face about an inch from Corey’s, and he let all his rage bubble up in his eyes. He shoved the handcuffed man, not caring a bit that Corey’s head banged a time or two on the hardwood floor. “Our friends in the car won’t come in the house until I call them back, so that leaves just you and me here. I’m tired of finding bodies, Corey, and I want some answers. There seems to be a disproportionate number of female victims. I got four girls of my own, and that fact is making me very uncomfortable. I don’t want to look at one more dead woman. Talk, and tell me the truth, because I’m not very patient and I’m feeling a little violent tonight. These people are escalating, and if you’ve got any brain cells left, you’ll talk. I got ten dead in the last two weeks, and I might have been a little closer to figuring it out if you hadn’t been obstructing the investigation the whole time. You told me you ran Dan Jackson through the computer and he came up clean, but that’s not what I found. He’s not exactly Snow White, is he? You two are cozy little friends, and you covered for him. I know he called you earlier, before you went out.”
“Yeah, we got a tap on your phone,” he said when Corey’s eyes widened and his head jerked up. “I got a warrant. We also did a search here and found your little stash. Found your money, too. Been dealing, huh? Where are Dan and the rest of your psycho friends hiding?”
Corey felt a pounding in his head and a wave of shaking weakness spread over him. He retched helplessly, and Bennett rolled him over so he wouldn’t choke. It had all gone wrong, so very wrong. He’d screwed himself into a deep hole and he was never going to get out of it. Corey could hear Bennett swearing when he started crying uncontrollably and didn’t answer him.
It was the drugs, just the drugs, he wasn’t a killer, he wasn’t. He never would have done it if it hadn’t been for the meth. It was the meth. Not him.
It was the meth.
***
The pounding on the door brought Jessie halfway down the stairs, but Mrs. Davis got there first. Jessie stopped and waited to see who it was. When Sergeant Bennett stepped into the house, lean and grim, eyes day, she shook her head mutely. Jessie recognized that look; they look they all got when they came to the house to tell you bad news. The same look that the cop had when he came to tell her about her mother.
The bearer of bad tidings. The bringer of death.
She saw the color drain from Mrs. Davis’ face, saw the stricken look in her eyes, and Jessie demanded to know what happened, her voice shrill and strident. When Bennett told her, it pierced her like a stiletto through the heart.
Shannon was dead.
She could see their lips moving, but she couldn’t hear them anymore. She couldn’t hear anything above the pounding of her pulse and that awful screaming noise that was coming from somewhere. Jessie put her hands to her ears. She wished it would stop, make it stop! And then she realized that it was her, that she was the one making the noise.
Because Shannon was dead.
It didn’t matter that Shannon was taking meth, or even that she was a murderer. They’d known each other all their lives and she was the only person that Jessie had left. She stumbled down the last few stairs. This couldn’t be real, because nobody could lose all the people they cared about in the space of six months. God couldn’t be that cruel. It was just a bad dream; just another dream, that was all.
Jessie sank down to the floor, dazed and weak, dimly hearing Mrs. Davis cry raggedly above her. When Sergeant John Bennett crouched down beside her and his strong arms encircled her, she clutched at him with all her strength, because she had to hold onto something. All the people who had defined her world were gone. She was alone, her whole world was turned upside down, and nobody could blame her for holding on tight, could they? Could they?
The tears Jessie had fought for so long soaked into his shirt. John Bennett held her close, whispering softly to her, brushing his lips against her hair. She had been so brave through this whole thing, such a fighter…and so young. He helped her let go of the pain she had held for so long, cradling her
in his arms as if she were one of his own daughters; soothing her pain because he knew that he had so often missed soothing theirs. They clung together at the bottom of the stairs until Jessie had no tears left.
The kitchen was where Mrs. Davis always took her serious discussions. When Jessie’s grades had started to drop after her mother’s death, this was where they had talked about it. When she suggested that Jessie might like to see a psychologist to help her deal with her grief and anger, it had been from the kitchen that she suggested it.
The cheery room with its bright white walls, pictures of fruit and bright yellow curtains was the place Mrs. Davis felt the most comfortable, and that was where she led them now. She refused to allow anyone to speak until they all had a drink and a snack. Hard emotions took it out of you, she said, and there was nothing like a brownie and a cup of tea to set everything right again. She watched Jessie like a hawk until she took a nibble of her food. Then she took the necklace from around her neck and handed the gold cross on the delicate chain to Jessie.
“I dreamed about your mother last night, dear,” she said quietly. “Your mother told me to give you this. Though I could ignore it, I have always felt that dreams can mean something. I’d feel better if you took this and wore it.”
Jessie put the cross around her neck. Sergeant Bennett, who sat sprawled in the chair opposite Jessie and had been quiet up to this point, cleared his throat. He told her about the policeman who had been involved in the meth trade, and that they suspected he knew more about the murder of Shannon Alonzo than he was saying.
Jessie looked at him in dawning comprehension. “So you really were trying to find the killer? I heard you tell that other cop that you didn’t care about drug addicts getting killed.”
“You heard that?” he asked, flushing. “I said that to him to make him think I wasn’t looking for the killers. I was already suspicious of him by then and we were working on getting a tap for his phone and a warrant to search his house. I kept him close to me so that I could monitor him.”
He smiled a crooked little smile and Jessie forgave him, just a little.