Ryan sat on the edge of the single bed, eating some giant sunflower seeds that Officer Purdy had slipped him through the bars of his jail cell. He was trying to spit them into the toilet but they were a little too big, and by the time he had licked the salt off, a little too soggy, to work well as a projectile.
This wasn’t Ryan’s first time in the town jail—there had been the broken window incident at Old Man Wagner’s when he was ten and Betty wanted to teach him a lesson—but this was a whole different thing. The police were taking the situation much more seriously.
Purdy had taken Ryan’s wrist watch from him, along with his belt and his shoelaces, when the teenager first arrived. Ryan supposed Purdy was making sure he wasn’t going to try to commit suicide.
“If I really wanted to kill myself,” he argued with the officer, “I could give myself a death wedgie with my tightie-whities. Did ya ever think of that?”
Purdy evidently didn’t find this funny. “I’d wipe that smile off your face, Lachey. You’ve got nothing to smirk about. Shorts off.”
“I didn’t know you wanted to see my ass,” Ryan pushed back. “Should I be nervous?”
“Why don’t you spend some time thinking about what you’re going to tell your mother when Chief Cohen brings her here. Maybe you can come up with something better than the vampire story you were babbling about when we brought you in.”
Ryan’s face turned red. “I didn’t do anything. I apologized for the broken window when I was here half a decade ago, and I’ll apologize to the Quinlan’s for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I had nothing to do with Brooke’s death.”
“You had the body in your arms. You were caught ‘flagrante delicto,’ as they say.”
“That sounds—just wrong.”
“It’s a Latin legal term. Get used to it. You’re going to be hearing a lot of it.”
“De-lickto my butt. What’s with all the Latin today? Did everyone wake up and think, hey, let’s talk a language nobody knows? I’m not into doing it with a dead anything. And she was already dead when I got there.” Ryan insisted. “It was... what do you call it? Circumstantial.”
“Good luck with that one,” Purdy replied, leaving the police station. “How old are you now, Ryan? Murder automatically ages you in the court system.”
Ryan shuffled his feet and ran his hands across his bald head. The hair was beginning to grow back, forming a rough layer of stubble, but he knew asking for a razor was out of the question. “You can’t fucking believe I really killed her?” he stammered.
“It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t believe at this point,” Purdy said, taking his winter coat off the hook by the front door, barely glancing at Ryan as he did so. “I’ll be back in a half an hour. I hope you like toaster strudel, because that’s what you’re getting for breakfast,” he said, letting the front door to the station slam behind him.
Ryan glanced at the television above Purdy’s desk. It had been left on, and Ryan was happy that the last station Purdy had watched had been the sports network. With any luck, the nightly highlights would keep him occupied until he got back. He didn’t like the places his imagination was beginning to take him. Boredom in jail, he realized, was depressing.
He swaggered over to the stainless steel toilet to take a whiz. He was glad there was no one else around. The cell didn’t offer any privacy and he wasn’t looking forward to the time he was going to have to take a shit. He hoped it wouldn’t be when Betty was around.
He sat on the edge of the bed and contemplated what he was going to say to her. There was no good way he could tell her the events that happened earlier in the evening.
“See Ma,” he practiced “I went there to try and save the girl, but I got into a fight with this vampire—who I could have taken any other night if I hadn’t wrecked my shoulder during the game—and things just kind of got out of hand.”
“I am so fucked,” he admitted, realizing that wasn’t going to work. He stretched himself out on the bed and watched some television. The freedom of being able to change the channel whenever he wanted to was now a thing of the past, and it was just one more thing making him irritable.
Forty-five minutes later he heard the police cruiser pull up on the gravel driveway next to the jail. It was Chief Cohen who came into the building first. He stood in front of Ryan and began to say something, then reconsidered. It was a little late to try to knock some sense into the teen. They were both probably too tired to listen to reason.
A few moments later, Officer Purdy led Betty Lachey into the cell area. “Lucky for us, your mother says you like toaster strudel. I got you four flavors. Take your pick.” He offered the brown bag to Ryan, who shook his head negatively.
“Prick,” Ryan wanted to say aloud, but instead he looked sheepishly at Betty. She had been crying, he knew, because her black mascara was running down her cheeks. Ryan couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his mother cry. Now she stood before him, looking at him in a bleary-eyed way, as if she was sedated. Zombie sedated. Ryan chuckled nervously at that thought. He was starting to sound like Stan.
“I didn’t do it, Ma” he finally blurted out. That was all he could think of to say that made any sense. She looked at him with a sullen look which told him that for her, this was way too much to handle.
“What am I going to tell your brother?” she whimpered. “He’s in the back of the police car scared out of his wits. Getting dragged down to the police station at this hour of the night. What were you thinking? He looks up to you.”
“What did you bring him here for?” Ryan asked.
“Because there was no one to leave him with. Mr. Wagner’s dead. He won’t go to the LaRose’s. I couldn’t just leave him alone. I thought there was a child killer on the loose.” She looked forlornly at him and said softly “I didn’t know it was you.”
Ryan felt like he had been stabbed in the heart.
“Alleged child killer,” Purdy pointed out. “Just so we’re all clear here.”
“Betty,” Roy Cohen said, giving Purdy a look of disapproval, “to be fair, we haven’t gotten to the bottom of the story yet. I have to tell you though; it’s not looking too good.”
“What happened, Roy?” she asked quietly, afraid to hear the answer.
He told her the events as they had unfolded earlier at Stillman’s Creek, without telling her Ryan’s version of the story.
“We’re waiting for Ryan here, to get his facts straight before we take his statement. He seems a little confused by the ordeal.”
Betty felt sick to her stomach. “You have done some stupid things in your life, Ryan Lachey, but never in a million years would I have thought you were capable of something like this.”
“I’m not capable. I’m never capable, except at football. You always tell me that. This isn’t any different,” Ryan pleaded. “I just had a feeling I knew where she was.”
“Shut-up until I can get you a good lawyer,” Betty managed to whimper. “I’m going to have to mortgage the house for this.”
“You might consider legal aid,” Purdy offered. “Murder trials can drag on.”
Betty’s knees began to buckle. “I think I need to sit down,” she said, grasping her chest with her right hand.
“You need to see a doctor, Betty,” Cohen said as comfortingly as he could. Her doctor was most likely Dr. Quinlan, the dead girl’s father. That was now out of the question.
“I’ll take her to the hospital,” Purdy told Chief Cohen, as if reading his mind. “I’ll drop Stan off at my house along the way. I’m sure Donna won’t mind looking after him under the circumstances.”
“Thanks,” the Chief said, watching his officer lead the emotion-wracked woman out the door. He turned to his prisoner.
“You have left your mother speechless,” Chief Cohen said sarcastically. “I’ve known her all her life, and I can honestly say I have never seen that before.”
“What was I supposed to say?” Ryan asked. “Was I supposed to tell her that Wa
cko-the-teenaged-vampire did the nasty deed? Do you think that would have made her have more faith in me?” He shook the cell bars angrily. “I am not a violent person.”
The irony wasn’t wasted on the Chief. “I can’t begin to help you if you don’t tell me the truth,” Cohen sighed. Ryan’s version of the events leading up to having a dead body in his arms hadn’t been the weirdest story Roy had heard in all his years of policing, but it sure as hell came close. He hoped that in the morning, Ryan would come to his senses.
“I’m sticking to my story,” Ryan insisted.
“Unless you’re trying to cop an insanity plea, I’d spend some time thinking about what really happened, son.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything until I get a lawyer,” Ryan argued. “That’s what’s really happening.”
“You’re beginning to annoy the hell out of me,” Cohen snapped. “Are you forgetting that when Officer Purdy and I arrived at the scene, Wildman was standing with a rifle pointed at your head? You’re lucky he was in a good mood and didn’t blow your brains out. He’s not a friend of yours on your best day. As it stands now, he’s a witness for the prosecution.”
“So?”
“So—I’d start thinking about the events that led you to Stillman’s Creek tonight and come up with something a jury will believe.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Ryan said, his voice filled with rage. “I found her. I told you that. You know Wildman has it in for me. He was pretty much calling me a pervert in front of the whole town Saturday morning. He knows more than he’s telling.”
“Are you saying Wildman somehow framed you?” The Chief looked Ryan straight in the eyes. He was hoping that Ryan was about to shed new light on the crime.
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m not a liar. Well, maybe sometimes I stretch the truth around Tara, but not about something like this.”
Cohen thought about that. In all the years he had known the teenager, Ryan had been boorish, intimidating and often stupid, but never much of a liar.
“Then why did you go there, Ryan? Can you tell me that much? Were you planning to meet someone else?
“Ellie had a dream,” Ryan said. “I told Tara, and Tara sent her old man after me.”
“Slow down,” Roy demanded. “Why would Tara send her dad after you? Were you planning to have a little rendezvous with Tara out by the water? Was that why Wildman went to the bridge?”
“How the hell should I know? Maybe he’s stalking me. Go ask Ellie LaRose. Ask her about her dream.”
It was disturbing to the Chief to know that Helena LaRose’s granddaughter might also be involved in this. She had been in town less than a week and already she was pinging on his radar.
“What exactly did Ellie LaRose tell you?” he asked.
“Just forget it,” Ryan said, putting his head in his hands. “Right now, I’m pretty much wishing I had never met Ellie LaRose. Or her mom.” He glanced at the Chief and stopped short of adding Helena to the list. “Go ask Tom. Tom was there.”
“At the creek?”
“No. When Ellie told me about the dream. Tom was there then. I talked about it later, with Tara. Go talk to them.”
“Why don’t you just tell me about this dream?”
“Because you already don’t believe my story. See if they back it up. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job or anything, but don’t you want some collaboration?”
“You mean corroboration?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll be doing that,” the Chief assured him. “It is a little suspicious that Ralph Wildman just happened upon you when he did.”
Ryan looked hopefully at the Chief. “So, you believe me?”
“No. You were right the first time. I don’t believe your cockamamie story. But,” he hesitated, “I’ve arrested hundreds of criminals, and a few murderers in my time, and I have to say that something is off. I’m not sure you did it. If you took some LSD—blue tabs or four-ways or whatever else you want to call it—before you found her, now would be a good time to tell me. It would somewhat explain your story.”
“My scholarship is on the line,” Ryan replied, “I’ve got a physical coming up and I’m subject to random drug testing. I never did mushrooms. I don’t do crack. I’m not going to blow my pro ball career for a few hours of induced happiness. I want to make the pros and get out of this hellhole town. Things happened just like I said they did,” he insisted. “I maybe had a couple of beers before I had the argument with Tara. I got them from Betty’s fridge, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her about it, because I’ve got other problems right now.”
Roy had known that. He could smell it on Ryan’s breath when he arrested him. But he hadn’t appeared to have been drunk. Just under-aged. The lesser of the alleged crimes.
“That’s why I’m also not sure you didn’t do it,” Cohen sighed. “The one thing I am sure of, is that the only place you’re safe is here behind bars. Because by morning, once the news starts to spread, half the town is going to want you dead. You’re not just a murderer in their eyes, you’re a child killer. So think about that for a while, and then decide if you want to remember what actually happened.”
The Chief’s cell phone went off, and he immediately pulled it from its belt holder.
“You should download a ring-tone like the theme song from Hawaii Five-O,” Ryan commented. “Da-da-da-da-da-dah-, da-da-da-da-dah..., he sang. “What? I have the Ventures version on vinyl. They weren’t big on words.”
“Troy Police. Cohen here,” he said, ignoring him.
The voice on the other end of the line was talking in such an animated tone that Ryan almost overheard the Chief’s conversation.
Cohen realized this and turned his back on him. “Calm down, Tara.”
Ryan, hearing Tara’s name, tried to listen more closely, but the Chief was already walking towards the door. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.” He turned to Ryan. “Stay put. I don’t know what’s going on in this town. But you’d better be here when I get back.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do anything else?” Ryan asked, perplexed. “I’m locked behind bars.” He shook his head. Had the whole town gone insane?
He heard the Chief start the car and turn on the siren.
“Dude’s in a hurry,” Ryan thought to himself. He could see the cruiser lights began to flash through the station window, drawing his attention to an outside world that at least for the moment, he was no longer a part of.
A dark form moved stealthily past the window. The sight of it forced an uncontrollable shudder down Ryan’s spine.
“Not you again. Come in here, you fucker,” Ryan yelled. “Let me finish you off.”
As soon the words had left Ryan’s mouth, he felt the room grow cold. A mouse that had been eyeing the strudel bag on Purdy’s desk aborted the mission and made a quick dash back into the safety of a hole in the baseboard.
“Bright lights, say goodnight,” the voice said, as the jail lights were dimmed, and the television turned itself off. “Haven’t you heard? Too much TV rots your brain.”
“What the hell?” Ryan asked, turning around to see the teenaged vampire standing before him once again.
He held the remote control in his pasty-white hand. “I’m super-dead, not super-human,” he shrugged, tossing the remote out of Ryan’s reach. “Thanks for inviting me in. I like what you’ve done with the space.”
“How about I stuff something in your mouth?” Ryan taunted, throwing a right hook in the vampire’s direction.
The night creature spun around on his heels and blocked Ryan’s fist, following through with a left upper cut to Ryan’s cheek, which left the football player momentarily stunned and bleeding profusely.
“Aw, shoulder still hurting you? Isn’t that the excuse you’re using?” his adversary mocked.
“Fuck,” Ryan cried out, his hand going to his face to move the flow of blood away from his mouth. He cowered as the vampire moved towards him, ru
nning his icy finger under Ryan’s chin to collect the run-off of fresh blood as it trickled down his profile. “What do you want with me?”
The vampire dripped the dark red fluid down his own finger and into his mouth. The taste was unpleasant to him, and he immediately spat it out. “Vintage Lachey has corked.”
“Fuck you.”
“What is this obsession you have with that word?” he asked amused. “If I don’t want to drink you, I certainly don’t want to fuck with you. Not in that sense, anyway.”
“Get out of my cell you blood-sucking pervert, before I take you down.”
“You're hardly in a position to take me down. Look at you, all caged up like some animal in a zoo,” he sneered. “Are you hungry Ryan? Is that why you’re cranky? He patted his own stomach. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he teased, his voice rising up an octave, “I've got that ‘stuffed myself with turkey’ feeling. Like I drank a gallon of tryptophan. I almost need a nap.”
Ryan swallowed hard. The vampire did look a little less gaunt than the last time he had run into him. Not that he cared about his health. He sensed his visitor was not there to make idle conversation with him. “What are you talking about?”
“The Nouveau Beaujolais I had an hour ago,” he said, laughing to himself. “I had your little nerdy brother’s friend. Don’t look so disgusted. He's was tasty for a nine-year-old.”
Stan only had one friend. “Kevin? You have Kevin?” Ryan stammered.
“I’m starting to get a taste for children,” he explained, as if it were no big deal. “Oh get that look off your face. I don’t do anything with them sexually. What do you think I am? A monster?” He laughed demonically at his own joke.
“You’re a fucking nut case.”
“We’re all murderers in some fashion,” he contemplated. “Meat eaters are murderers, vegetarians are murderers. Something has to die for every living being to live. Mother Nature is the original serial killer.”
“You’re a cannibal.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“You’re a fucking nut-case cannibal.”
“I’m not the one in jail, Ryan,” the vampire said calmly, removing some dirt from his beneath his thumb with the nail of his pinky finger of the other hand. “I really need a manicure.”
His nonchalance made Ryan loose control again. He gathered his strength and took another swing at him. “I don’t believe you, you oversized mosquito,” he said as he threw the punch.
“Missed me, missed me,” the vampire sang. “Now you have to—oh, forget that part. You’re definitely not my type. Blood type I mean. I would have brought a photo, so you could see Kevin’s sorry little ass, but you know us vampires, not big on cameras.”
“What exactly is your problem?” Ryan asked.
“You’re not very bright, are you, Ryan? I’m a vampire. Most people would consider that enough of a reason to not dwell on what is or isn’t my problem.” He gave Ryan a look of distain.
“Leave Kevin alone.”
“I will. I promise. He’s already dead.”
“What?”
“Careful now, Ryan. How much do you really want to know about the death of Kevin? Aren’t you already in enough trouble for knowing too much about my ‘leftovers’?”
Ryan paused. The vampire had a point. Having to explain how he knew about another murder was probably not in his own best interest.
The vampire laughed. “Oh all right, if you insist. I’ll tell you. We’re just like buddies now, aren’t we, Ryan? Sharing secrets. See... Kevin, was it? Kevin was walking home alone from the orthodontist—kind of a waste of money, under the circumstances—and I was feeling a little peckish, so I snuck up behind him and took him.” He raised his arms in the air and shrugged, indicating, “what else could I do?”
“Why the fuck would you do that?”
“Why? I’m following the hundred-mile rule for my food. Everyone has to be green these days, Ryan. Happy planet and all that.” He looked at the stainless steel toilet. “That looks cold. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with things like that anymore.”
Ryan looked away. There was a lump forming in his throat the size of a baseball. He almost wanted to cry. But he hadn’t done that since he was Stan’s age, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do that now.
“He was a scrapper, Ryan. You should see the nail marks on my back. He fought me tooth and nail as they say, but in the end he was no match for my prowess,” he bragged, licking his lips in remembrance.
“You really fucking killed him?”
“I didn’t mean to. I wanted to keep him just barely alive so I could have a food supply for a few days. But let’s just say refrigeration isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I forgot he couldn’t breathe locked up in one.”
“You locked him in a fridge?”
“Well, my mom always said not to play in them. I guess now I know why.”
“Your mother is a bitch,” Ryan snarled.
“See, that’s what you and I have in common,” the vampire snapped back. “We both have issues with our mothers. Betty’s no bucket of daisies, is she? But at least she’s still alive. That’s why you’re going to help me. You understand my position.”
“I’ll never fucking help you.”
“I’m thinking you will, Ryan. Not that I’m a physic or anything.” He shook his head. “I’m not. That would just be a little too much, wouldn’t it? Having to deal with a vampire that could see the future?”
“Okay, I’ll bite—what’s your mother got to do with all this?”
“My mother,” he replied, “is dead. Dead-dead. No living for eternity for her. She was murdered. Oh, some say she was killed in self-defense, but from my point of view, which is the only one that matters to me, she was murdered. I need to avenge her death. And that’s where you come in. And by the way, never say ‘bite’ to a vampire. It gets us all excited.” He stared down at the floor. “They keep this place pretty clean, don’t they?”
“Not that I ever would help you,” Ryan protested, “but as you’ve pointed out, I’m in jail. A lot of good that will do you. And by the way, you’ve got the attention span of a gnat.”
“You really, really, aren’t that bright, are you?”
“You really, really, are pissing me off.”
“Let me explain how things work,” the vampire said with mock indifference. “You’re in jail because that poor excuse for a farmer—Haystack Wildman—found you with the little girl’s body. Now, I can’t have my new best friend in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. That would just be wrong. So in a way, I’ve done you a favor by killing again. This time I left the body where someone else would find it. And you see, Ryan, I killed Kevin when you were already in jail. They’ll have no choice but to let you out. And then you’ll owe me one.”
“I told you I would never help you. Whatever your sad story is.”
The vampire became irate. “That’s where you’re wrong, Ryan. You will help me. You’ll help me because by the time you do get out, I’ll have you nerdy little brother. I’ve been watching him. I’ve been watching your whole damn family, your whole damn street. And you know what the really demented part is? I don’t even really want him. He’ll just keep me amused until I get what I really want.”
“And that would be...?”
“Revenge, Ryan. You might think you understand that emotion, but it’s really something you need to experience first hand. That’s why your brother is going to be my little pawn. And when you bring me my treasure, we’ll make a little trade.”
“For what?”
“For the girl. It’s always about the girl.”
“Why don’t you just go get whoever you really want yourself?”
“Because they’ll know. They’ll know if I’m tracking her down,” the vampire sighed. “They took something from me, so I need to take something from them. But they’re stronger than me, so you’ll have to find a way to get me what I want. A queen for your pawn. Bring me the girl you
call Goth-Chic.”
“But...”
“That’s all,” the vampire said. “I don’t care how you do it. If you want to see your brother alive again, you’ll find a way.”
His message delivered, the vampire shifted through the bars on the open window, leaving Ryan alone in the cell to contemplate what had just transpired.
As hard as it was for Ryan to believe that Kevin was dead, he couldn’t help but recall the words that Stan had said on Halloween. “You wait until Kevin goes missing and winds up on the news, then we'll see,” he had said.
“Shit,” he thought. “What if the little squirt has been right all along? What if there is evil lurking in the LaRose backyard?” He shook the bars ferociously. “I have to get out of here.”
Again he saw a shadow cross by the window above Purdy’s desk and for a moment Ryan thought the vampire was coming back. He was relieved to see it was Tom peering at him through the iron bars that crossed the window frame.
“What the hell’s going on, Ryan?” Tom asked. “Jacey just called. She said Tara’s going around shooting her mouth off that her old man caught you with Brooke’s body. You didn't really kill her, did you?”
Ryan detected a note of uncertainty in his friend’s voice. “What the fuck? You know I didn't kill her. You were with me Halloween night.”
“What made you go down to Stillman’s Creek?”
“Because I’m a fucking moron. I DON’T KNOW. I was just thinking about what Ellie said. Her stupid dream. It seemed so real to me then, the places she was describing. I couldn’t get it out of my head, and I thought I could help. Well fuck, Tom. She was right. The body was right where she said it would be. In the dirty, slimy cesspool that is Stillman’s Creek. You’d have known that if you had come with me.”
“I’d be in jail if I had gone with you.”
“At least I’d have someone to talk to. Where the hell have you been tonight? You have no idea what I have been through.”
“I too, have been fishing in shark infested waters,” Tom insisted.
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I can’t explain it in four sentences, so I’m not even going to try.”
“Well, could you try to get me out of here? Go tell Cohen what happened. Tell him about the dream. Tell him I didn't do it.”
“Okay, okay,” Tom said, trying to calm Ryan down. He noticed the large sweat stains beneath Ryan’s armpits, a certain sign. that. Ryan was more worried than he was letting on.
“And go get Ellie.”
“Uh, Ellie...why?” Tom cringed.
“Tell her I know. Tell her I saw him,” Ryan urged.
“Saw who?”
“Jacob who-who and the sharpened fang. Tell her I saw her fucking vampire.”