Roy Cohen turned on the siren briefly, trying to get the car ahead of him to pull over. He didn’t really want to wake-up the whole neighborhood, but the flashing lights on the roof of the police cruiser were not doing the job on their own.
“I don’t want to stop you, idiot. I just want to pass,” he sighed, referring to the driver in front of him. “I should pull your license until you remember how to respond to an emergency vehicle,” he said aloud, his voice full of frustration.
It was times like this Roy wished he could exercise some road-rage of his own and flip the annoying driver the finger. When the driver finally did pull over, he saw it was Jacey Sumner behind the wheel of the sporty little blue Mazda. He gave her a stern look as he drove by, killing the noise and the flashers. What the hell was she doing driving around by herself at this time of night?
Hitting a yellow light at the Main and Queen intersection, he took advantage of the stop time to call Officer Purdy.
“What’s up?” Purdy asked, answering the call immediately.
Roy fiddled with the volume on his earpiece. He was all for the hand-free cell phone law, but lately he had been having problems with the wireless signal, especially at night. There were times he wished he could just put his cell phone directly to his ear like he used to be able to do.
“Get on over to the Wildman’s farm out on county road three as fast as you can. I’m already on my way,” he answered.
“Roger that,” Purdy replied. “But I’ve still got Stan Lachey with me. Long story.”
From the back seat of the cruiser, Stan Lachey uttered a scream so loud that the Chief could hear him. “Is everything under control?”
Purdy glanced over his right shoulder into the back of the police car. “Oh for crying out loud. The kid’s got his tongue stuck through the wire partition behind the front seat,” he sighed. “LacheyI told you to sit still and keep your seat belt on. Do I have to stop this car, get out and cuff you?”
“He’s okay, right?” the Chief asked.
“Yeah. He’s just bored. I think the excitement of riding in a police cruiser wore off when he realized all the cool gadgets were in the front of the car with me.”
The Chief could hear a hollow echo emitting from Purdy’s end of the phone line and he knew that meant he was on the speakerphone. “Purd, pull over to the side of the road and take the phone off broadcast,” the Chief instructed.
“We’re solo,” Purdy said momentarily, confirming he had done so. “What’s going on?”
“You go first.”
“I left Betty Lachey at the hospital. They’re going to keep her overnight for observation and see if she’s calmed down any in the morning. Then took Stan over to my place, but Donna wasn’t home. Her sister’s baby had decided it was time to enter the world, and she left a note saying she was headed to the city to be with her. That left me nowhere to leave Stan, so I told him I was taking him on a ride-along. He was pretty stoked about it at first. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought he would have fallen asleep back there by now, but he must have caffeine in that puffer he carries. I guess I’ll take him back home with me after my shift ends.”
“I’ll try to get through to Helena and ask her to come and get him.”
“Betty’s not going to like that,” Purdy reminded him.
“Betty’s not got a whole lot of choice. We’ve got another dead body on our hands.”
“What?” Purdy asked in disbelief.
“Tara Wildman called it in. She was hysterical. I’ve tried calling Colin Dayton, but he’s got his damn phone off and Cody is apparently out of town. So it looks like it’s you and me again, at least until the morning. I saw Jacey Sumner driving around on Main. She’s driving a brand new baby blue Mazda 3. You’ll probably have to crash into her to get her to stop, but if you see her, give her Stan. I know she’s babysat for Betty before when Ryan was out of town playing ball. I had to break into the house for them once when Stan accidentally locked them both out.”
“10-4. And if I don’t run into her, and I mean that figuratively, I’ll park on the side road by the entrance to Wildman’s lane and leave Stan in the car with Country-FM on. He likes that station. I’ve had it on all night to keep him happy. Darned if the kid didn’t to know all the words to that Carrie Underwood song. He says Ryan listens to it all the time, but I find that kind of hard to believe.”
“I think our current prisoner is not what he seems to be,” the Chief agreed. “Just make sure Stan’s locked in. All the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up on this one. That’s never a good sign. I’ll see you there.”
Roy hung up and hit autodial but the phone dropped the signal.
“Helena, where the hell are you?”
The cruiser turned onto the highway and Roy hit the accelerator. There were some linehaul trailers heading south to the city, but not much other traffic. Within five minutes he had reached the turnoff. He turned his high beams on and headed slowly down the dirt road leading to the Wildman’s farm. The country road was pitch black at this time of night.
As he pulled the cruiser into the long driveway leading up to the house, he was met by two of Ralph’s dogs, who barked noisily at his arrival.
“Yeah, now you make noise. Where were you when the trouble started?” he thought to himself.
Roy slowly got out of the cruiser, and not knowing what he was about to face, had his hand ready on the butt of his pistol. He quickly surveyed his surroundings. No voices. No screams. No cries for help. Just the damn dogs.
Tara Wildman came running from around the back of the house to meet him. Her sweater was covered in what appeared to be vomit. He could smell her before she got three feet in front of him. “Wolfie, Max...shut up,” she directed the dogs. “Get back inside the house.”
The dogs stopped barking and wandered off, content that their job was done.
“Been drinking tonight, Tara?” Roy asked.
“No. I swear,” she said, gasping for breath. She glanced down at her clothes. “I’m sorry. The puke. It happened when I saw him.”
“Saw who, Tara?” Roy asked. He could see that the girl was extremely upset. Her knees were trembling, and he knew it wasn’t just because she was cold.
“That kid.” Tears ran down her cheeks, and she used her sleeve to wipe them away, her gloves also having traces of her stomach contents on them. “The one Ryan’s brother hangs around with. “I think his name is Kevin.”
Roy knew who Tara meant. The two boys had been together on Halloween when he had been called to the LaRose house after Mr. Wagner died. “Okay Tara, I need you to take a deep breath,” he told the shaking teenager. “Is there anyone else here? Anyone with a weapon? A gun? Maybe a knife?”
“No,” she insisted. “I haven’t seen anyone else.”
“Okay,” Roy said hesitantly, still trying to get a sense of what had happened. “Walk with me. Talk to me. Take me to what you saw.”
Tara moved slowly. Although she was relieved the Chief had arrived, she wasn’t anxious to go back down her driveway towards the shed. It was unavoidable, she realized, but she would have preferred to let Roy go down there by himself.
“I met Jacey downtown and we were hanging around for a while at the Roxy,” she began. “It got late and I needed a ride home, so she drove me back here. She dropped me off at the end of the driveway because she didn’t want to run into my dad. She says he scares her. Ralph had left the shed lights on, so I went around to the back of the house to turn them off. That’s when I saw the fridge turned over in the middle of the path between the shed and the barn. It’s not supposed to be there.”
Roy looked down the path. There was what appeared to be a fridge lying in the middle of the dirt walkway, between the house and a small wooden structure.
“It’s the one my dad has in the shed. He keeps his home-brew in it for when he’s fixing the tractor and stuff.”
“I see the fridge.”
“I could see the coils on the back when I got closer
to it, and then I saw my dad lying under it.”
“Is he dead Tara? Is that who you meant?”
She looked at him like he was crazy. “No, it’s Kevin who’s dead. I told you that. My dad’s arm is just pinned under the fridge. I think it’s broken. He’s wearing dark clothes, but you’ll see him when we get nearer. He’s pretty much out of it.”
Roy could now see Ralph’s form on the ground towards what would have been the back of the appliance. Tara was probably right, he thought. Ralph was most likely out of it or he would have been able to pull himself free, judging from the angle of his body and its position to the top of the fridge, which had partially landed on an old tree stump.
“I can hear him moan every once and a while,” Tara continued. “Yesterday he was talking about moving the fridge inside the root cellar so the animals wouldn’t try to open it in the winter. The raccoons got into his beer one night last winter and it made him really mad. So that’s what I thought had happened. I thought he had tried to move the fridge all by himself and it toppled over. I went around the other side of it to see if I could push it off him. That’s when I saw…” She couldn’t finish her sentence without gagging.
“Kevin Clark?”
Tara nodded, her body trembling. “I grabbed the door handle to try to get my weight behind it so I could push the fridge off my Dad, but it didn’t work because the door wouldn’t close. I looked inside to see what was blocking it, and...”
She let out a long sob before continuing. “I saw him. I got so scared I let go of the door handle and I think I hit the kid in the head. I’m so sorry.”
“Did you check if he was breathing? Kevin, I mean.” Roy asked. He knew that if Ralph had been moaning, he had been breathing. At least at that point in time.
“I live on a farm, Chief Cohen. We have a lot of animals. I know dead when I see it.”
She would, Roy acknowledged. “Have you called an ambulance?”
“No. I just called you. There wasn’t much point.”
“For your dad, Tara.”
“Oh.”
Her father was pinned under a fridge and she never called for medical aid? Roy shook his head. Things were not right in the Wildman household.
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s in Vegas with Liz Delaney and Stacey Freeman. She’s not coming back until Tuesday.”
The fridge was now only a few feet away from them and Roy could see Ralph’s breath visible in the cold night air. The air puffs emitting from his wide-open mouth were steady, and he was snoring.
“Ralph, this is Chief Cohen. Can you hear me?”
Ralph moaned in response.
“Okay, don’t move. Stay flat on your back.” The Chief lowered himself to Ralph’s level, pulling some latex gloves from his pocket as he did so. He rapidly felt over Ralph’s frame, but there did not seem to be any limbs in distress aside from his right arm, the one partially pinned between the fridge and the tree stump.
“Tara, I want you to stay here by your dad,” the Chief said, removing the gloves, stuffing them in his right pocket and reaching for his cell phone.
He quickly dialed 9-1-1.
“This is Chief Cohen. I need a couple of ambulances to come out to the Wildman farm on county three. Hang a left from the highway. It’s the last farm on the right, just before you get to Stillman’s Creek. You’ll see my police cruiser in the driveway. We’re out back, between the house and the barn. I’ve got one male, in his 50’s, possible broken arm, and one male child, status to be updated,” he looked at Tara, “presumed critical, possibly deceased.”
He disconnected from emergency services and started to walk to the front of the fridge.
“Oh God, don’t go around there,” Tara pleaded.
“Tara, I need you to watch your Dad, or turn around and watch for Officer Purdy. Don’t watch me,” the Chief directed. He could see a little leg poking out from behind the half-opened refrigerator door. He took a new pair of latex gloves from his left pocket and put them on, pausing to take a deep breath before opening the door further.
Roy knew then why Tara had thrown up. She was right. Kevin was deader than a stillborn calf. His little legs had been scrunched up into the area above the cold meat compartment. The egg tray had put a dent in his temple. It might have happened when Tara accidentally let go of the door, but maybe not. It wouldn’t have mattered. Kevin was long past feeling any pain. Cyanosis had set it, staining his little lips an unnatural shade of blue. Roy took Kevin’s pulse only because protocol said he had to.
“Dead.” Tara said. “I told you.”
Roy shone his flashlight around the ground. Frost had formed, and the only footprints Roy could immediately see were Tara’s, the ones made by his own boots, and a third set of tracks, most likely a man’s and even more likely, Ralph’s.
“Did you touch anything inside the fridge, Tara?” he asked.
“No,” Tara insisted. “I just wanted to shut it because...because nobody should have to see what I saw.”
The Chief turned towards Tara and looked at her hands. “Were your mitts on the whole time you were out here?”
She nodded.
So forensics shouldn’t find her prints anywhere on the fridge, the Chief thought. “What time did you say you left home today?” he asked.
“I didn’t say. But I left about five.”
Smart-ass, the Chief thought. “Where did you go? Did you go straight to the Topaz Cafe?”
“No.”
“Were you by yourself?”
“I told you. Jacey was with me.”
“Actually, you said you met Jacey. Did you meet anyone else?”
“Am I in trouble or something?”
Somebody’s in trouble, Roy thought. He just didn’t know who. “A lot went on in this town tonight, Tara. I’m just trying to piece it all together.”
Tara’s feet began to shuffle on the ground. Roy could tell she was trying to decide whether she wanted to talk to him or not.
“You might as well spill it, Tara,” Roy said, “because I already know who you were with earlier in the evening. What happened? Did you and Ryan have a fight? Was it about your dad?”
“I was only with Ryan for about fifteen minutes,” she said. “He wanted to come out here, but—like I want to spend my Saturday night at home.” She turned to look at Ralph, preferring not to look at the Chief.
So that much of Ryan’s story was true, Roy thought. The two teenagers had been together earlier in the evening. “What did the two of you talk about?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.
“Kevin Clark died tonight,” the Chief said patiently. “And I’m trying to establish a time line. Did you and Ryan talk about Brooke Quinlan? Is that why he came out here earlier tonight?”
He waited for her to answer. She was taking her sweet time about it, but damned if a sixteen-year-old was going to get the better of him. It would take more than a frosty night in November for that to happen.
“Maybe,” she finally offered. “Are we done here?”
“Not by a long shot.”
Roy wondered whether she was scared or just playing him. His instincts told him the latter was most likely. She was as ballsy as her father was. “If I know Ralph, he got on the phone and told half the town about what happened out here earlier. You know Ryan’s in jail, don’t you?”
Tara shrugged. “The new girl, the one Ryan calls Goth-Chic, she’s the one who told him where the body was,” she said coyly.
“Elaborate.”
“Ryan told me that she told him to come out to the old bridge.”
“Just like that? She told him to look in the water and he’d find Brooke’s body?”
“Pretty much.”
“Really? Why is it I find that a little hard to believe?”
“If you already know, why are you asking?” she said flatly.
“Maybe I want to hear your version of the story.”
“I don
’t know what happened. Maybe Ryan killed Kevin before he found Brooke. Maybe he stuffed him in the fridge while he was out here.”
“You certainly seem to want to land Ryan right in thick of things, Tara. Why is that? I’ve seen you two together before. I have the impression you’re more than nodding acquaintances.”
Tara paused. Again, the Chief could see she was hesitating before answering. The delay suggested to him that she was plotting an answer, not freely offering up one.
“I can’t remember,” she said. “Maybe I’ll remember more in the morning.”
“We’ll both be a little cold standing out here until then, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t do anything. He’s the one in jail.”
“If you’re as smart as you want me to think you are, Tara, consider this. We’ll have to wait for the pathologist’s report of course, but I’ve seen a few dead bodies from time to time. I‘ve seen everything from what you might call a ‘fresh kill’ right on up to the maggot infested remains of torso’s blown apart and left to rot in the Gulf. I’m pretty damn sure that Kevin here died well within the time frame Ryan Lachey had his wide-end planted within the confines my jail.”
“Oh.”
“So...”
“Okay,” she relented. “I thought Ryan just wanted to come down here to fool around. So I blew him off.”
Roy looked at her.
“No! I mean I told him to get lost. But obviously he was more interested in what he’d find here than what he wanted to do with me. Ryan told me Goth-Chic had a dream the night Brooke Quinlan disappeared. He said her dream told her where Brooke’s body could be found. Ryan thought it was spooky because Goth-Chic described the bridge even though she had never been here before. He wanted to check it out, but like I said, I didn’t want to come back here, so I got mad at him and I left. Ryan thinks maybe Goth Chic’s psychic or something. Personally, I think she’s just sick. I don’t like her. I don’t like the way she looks at Ryan. So that’s it. I ran into Jacey and we went to the movie and then to the Topaz. We saw Goth-Chic at the movie, but we ignored her. Can I change out of these pukey clothes now?”
Roy could hear Purdy’s cruiser arriving on the scene. He wondered what had happened with the Stan situation.
It was an unfortunate circumstance to be certain, but Purdy had no choice but to keep Stan with him as he headed out to assist Chief Cohen. He hadn’t run into Jacey Sumner or anyone else he would have trusted with the boy. Luckily, about a mile out of town the country station had faded. “Say goodnight to Carrie,” he told Stan, who immediately went out like a light. Purdy wished he had thought of turning the radio off earlier.
He parked the car far enough away from the farm that the boy couldn’t see what was happening if he happened to wake up. The row of cedars Ralph had planted decades ago as a wind barrier screened the driveway from the side road. He tested the rear doors. Stan was safely in lock-down. He took an investigation kit from the trunk and went to meet Roy.
“How bad is it?” Purdy asked.
“Bag Tara’s jacket and gloves,” the Chief said without answering his question.
“All right.”
Tara gladly threw the soiled clothes into the bag that Purdy held open. He marked it as evidence.
“Can I go now?” she asked.
“Not until we check the house,” Roy said.
“But I’ll freeze my ass off,” she whined. “I’ll be okay, Ralph’s other dogs are in there.”
Purdy pulled a tiny emergency blanket from his bag. “Throw this on. It’ll keep you warm enough.”
“I left the back door of my cruiser unlocked,” the Chief offered. “Go sit in it until we come to get you.”
“All right,” Tara sighed, secretly welcoming any chance to escape the scene.
He motioned for Purdy to move towards the fridge. “Don’t worry about Wildman. The ambulance is on the way. He’s passed out again, but his injuries are the least of our problems here. I need you to take pictures of the fridge and its contents.”
“Gotcha,” the officer said, as he walked over to the toppled appliance. He let out a low whistle. “Christ, it’s Kevin Clark. I play poker with his dad once a month. What the hell happened?”
“Tara says she found them like this. Kevin dead in the fridge and Ralph pinned underneath it,” Roy answered.
“Do the Clark’s even know he’s missing? We never got a call.”
“We never initially got a call about Brooke either, strangely enough.”
Purdy began to carefully take pictures of the fridge, Ralph Wildman and the surrounding area. Meticulously, he photographed every inch of the crime scene, reciting a few prayers under his breath as he did so.
“What did you say, Purd?” the Chief asked. Before his officer had a chance to answer, Roy’s cell phone interrupted their conversation. “Cohen,” he said. He listened for a moment. “Are you serious?” He rubbed his forehead with his fist as he tried to digest the information he was hearing. He put the phone back in his pocket. “This gets stranger by the minute. Purd, do me a favor. Make sure you’ve got few shots of Kevin’s neck.”
“I already did. Why is his neck of particular interest?”
Roy looked at him solemnly, “that was the Coroner on the line. He says he did a preliminary on Brooke and her body has been completely drained of blood.”
“What?”
“There was a slight mishap with it when the paramedics unloaded it from the ambulance. He didn’t elaborate, but apparently she didn’t bleed. Whatever happened, it made him take a closer look at her before he went home for the night. He said he saw two puncture marks on the left side of her neck. That’s it. No severed artery, no major contusion. Nothing that would cause blood loss of the magnitude that has occurred. They’ll do a complete autopsy tomorrow but so far he thinks she hadn’t been beaten, and she hadn’t been sexually molested. She had however, for all intents and purposes been partially embalmed.”
The look on Purdy’s face said it all. “You can’t be serious.”
“That’s what I said to him,” Roy shrugged. “But that’s what the chop man found.”
Purdy looked at his commanding officer. “This still doesn’t mean the older Lachey kid’s story has an ounce of truth to it.”
“Tara confirmed that Ryan went to the creek because of a dream Ellie LaRose had,” the Chief said as he walked back over to Kevin’s body for another look. “So he might have just happened upon her like he said.”
He looked at the boy, hoping for some clue as to what had happened, as if Kevin was going to get out of the fridge and tell him. “Work with me for a moment, Purd ...did you notice anything strange?”
“Stranger than Kevin Clark dead in a fridge?”
“See, that’s the first problem for me. I might have bought it as an accident if it had been someone Brooke’s age and they crawled inside the old fridge, the door shut and the death was due to asphyxiation. Kevin is...was...seemed to be... a smart kid. I remember that about him. He was full of questions about Mr. Wagner’s sudden passing on Helena’s porch the other night. He wouldn’t have climbed into the fridge. Someone put him there.”
“Agreed.”
“I also think someone brought him here. It’s nine miles into town. Bit of a stretch for a nine-year-old to bike ride, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’m following you so far.”
“Another thing I don’t get is this... Kevin was a fat little kid. But I ask you...the boy in the fridge...does he look fat?”
Purdy studied the torso. “I don’t know about fat...a little pudgy maybe.”
“So how does a fat kid become just kind of pudgy?”
“There is no politically correct way to answer that.”
The Chief knelt down beside the fridge to take a closer look. The initial shock of seeing the dead boy had worn off, and now he was able to view the body more objectively. “Look at his face. It looks drained.”
“Well, it’s safe to say he’s be
en through a lot,” Purdy offered.
“Not drained emotionally, I mean drained as in missing fluid. Kevin had pinchable cheeks the last time I saw him. There’s nothing to pinch now.”
Purdy took a closer look at Kevin’s face. “You’ve lost me. What are you getting at?”
“How much blood does a human body hold?” Roy asked.
“Seven or eight percent of its total body weight.”
The Chief looked at Purdy. “I didn’t expect you to actually know that. I was throwing it out as a rhetorical question.”
“I watch a lot of cable,” Purdy shrugged. “If you’re wondering if the coroner is going to find Kevin’s body missing all his blood, I doubt it. His face may be appearing gaunt because of his position at the time of death. Fluids tend to run south.”
The chief put on gloves and reached for Kevin’s hand. He pressed the child’s fingernail, hoping to see his nail bed flush with blood.
“That won’t work,” Purdy said. “He doesn’t have any blood pressure anymore.”
“Exactly how much cable do you watch, Doctor Purdy?”
“Apparently more than you do.”
“I know he has no pulse. I was just trying to confirm my suspicions about how long he’s been dead. His muscles are still relaxed. There’s no sign of rigor mortis. That leads me to think his heart stopped beating within the hour.” He pushed Kevin’s hair back from his neck. No marks were evident.
“That could mean the killer is still hanging around. Even watching us,” Purdy noted. He looked uneasily at the farmland between himself and the creek.
“Maybe. Ralph’s pegged under the fridge. It’s possible that he killed Kevin, stuffed the boy inside it and then got himself caught underneath trying to make his getaway. But it’s not very likely.”
The ambulances could now be heard in the distance. The Chief put their e.t.a. at a less than five minutes.
“Are you going to leave Tara here or do you want me to bring her to the station after the paramedics are done?” Purdy asked.
“No, I’d rather keep her away from Ryan right now. I don’t want the two of them talking and coming up with a different version of this situation.”
“Go home, get some sleep. I can finish this up.”
Cohen laughed uneasily. “There’s not much chance of sleeping tonight. I'll tell you what. I’ll take Stan over to Helena’s. He’ll be as safe there as anywhere. Can you head over to the Clarks? It might be easier coming from you.”
“It’s never easy," Purdy sighed. “And it might be a bit late for you to go over to Helena’s.”
“Some things can’t wait,” Roy said. “I’ve got a few questions for her granddaughter,” he said as he started down the driveway towards his car.
“Do you think she has something to do with this?” Purdy asked, walking with him.
“Ellie LaRose, Tara Wildman, Ryan Lachey, Jacey Sumner, Tom Williams...they all have something to do with this. I just don’t know what.”
Roy opened the rear door of his cruiser. “Tara, the ambulance is here. I want you to ride with your dad to the hospital. I know it’s late, but I don’t want you here at the house alone.”
“Surprisingly, I don’t have a problem with that,” Tara answered. “I’ll go over to my aunts afterwards.”
“I just remembered I’ve got a sweatshirt in the back of the trunk,” Roy said, opening it. He handed her his police sponsored softball hoodie. “It’s clean. The game was cancelled. It’ll do you for now. Throw it on. Keep warm.”
“Thanks,” Tara said sincerely, accepting the sweater.
It was another ten minutes before the police felt confident enough to leave the paramedics on their own. They made sure Tara was safely inside the transport vehicle and Ralph and Kevin had gone their separate ways before they were finally able to check inside the house. There was no sign of a struggle within the Wildman home, and they were confident the dogs would have scared off any stranger hiding within it.
“Okay,” Roy said, locking up the house. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Stan’s got to be wondering what the hell the commotion was,” Purdy commented. “He couldn’t have slept through all this.”
“I’ll come with you in case he asks too many questions,” the Chief said. “My kids were young once. I’ve had practice lying to them about what goes on in our job.”
The two officers turned out onto the side road and immediately reached for their firearms. In the darkness they could see a figure attempting to open the locked rear passenger door of Purdy’s police cruiser. The car that held Stan Lachey.
Purdy pulled his gun from his holster.
“Freeze,” he commanded. “Police.”
The figure turned towards them and laughed.
“It’s a freaking’ teenager,” Purdy noted, as he released the safety on his pistol. Given the murder scene he had just left, he was taking no chances.
“Step away from the vehicle,” the Chief said, also aiming his gun towards the teen. “I won’t ask you twice.”
“What makes you think I’m going to listen to you now?” the voice said.
“Do we know this kid?” Purdy asked.
The Chief thought about it. The voice could have been one of thousand voices he heard any given week. But the way he laughedmocking themwith a depraved chuckle, well, the Chief knew he had heard that chuckle before. He was trying to remember where. The brief second he contemplated that thought was enough for the teenager to vanish.
“Did you see that?” Purdy asked. “He’s gone. He was standing in front of us one second and gone the next.”
“I did see that,” the Chief said.
The kept their firearms in front of them as they slowly approached the vehicle, Cohen taking the left side, Purdy the right.
Stan Lachey was in the back seat, wide-awake and crying.
“Get out of the car, Stan,” the Chief said. “You’re coming with me.” He reached in and took the boy first into his arms, then taking his hand as he set him down on his feet. “Are you okay?”
“He said he was going to get me,” Stan said. “He said he was going to take me away and eat me.”
“Nobody is going to eat you, Stan.”
“He said he killed Kevin and he was going to kill me next.”
Cohen looked at Purdy. While there was a chance Stan Lachey could have figured out that something bad happened at Wildman’s farm, there was no chance he could have known it was Kevin’s body they had just found. “Did he say his name, Stan? Can you describe him close-up? Could you draw us a picture?”
“He said he was my nightmare. He was dark and scary,” Stan said. “And he smelled bad. He always smells bad.”
“Always? You’ve seen him before?” the Chief asked.
“Yes,” the boy replied. “He’s a vampire and he lives next door to me. In Mrs. LaRose’s backyard.”
Purdy looked at Cohen. “Sooo...I’m thinking Helena’s house is out of the question for Stan. I guess I’ll be taking him home tonight?”
“Under the circumstances,” Cohen agreed, “that’s probably a good idea.” He gave Stan’s hand to Purdy.
“Are you still going over to Helena’s? In case I need to get hold of you later?” Purdy asked.
Roy nodded. “Some things just can’t wait until morning.”