The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville Page 18

  "Yes. But if you would let me explain--"

  "And exactly when did she arrange this?" He broke in a smile, reminding me instantly of Pierce's shit-eating grin.

  "Two days ago," I replied. "She came over--"

  "You're crazy, whoever you are," he said in a sullen voice of antagonism.

  "Stephen O'Neal," I replied calmly. "And--"

  His face turned red, as if he wasn't getting enough oxygen, and he loosened his collar. "The police are going to be mighty interested in hearing about this, Mr. O'Neal."

  "But, like I said, your ex-wife did give us permission."

  "Then answer me this." He walked around the receptionist's desk and stopped a foot in front of my face. "My wife has been dead for four days. They found both her and my daughter washed up on the bank of the Black River just this morning. So, tell me, hot shot, how could she have given you permission two days ago?" He brushed past me, knocking me off balance for a second, and stormed from his office.

  Dumfounded, I looked at the receptionist.

  "It can't be," I said to her, without expression. "I really did talk to her two days ago."

  "You're a sick person," she replied. "Sick." She picked up some papers on her desk and straightened them absentmindedly.

  As I stepped outside, Mr. Klaus shot past me in a red corvette without looking at me. He turned onto the street, squealing the tires, leaving a hefty black mark behind, and sped down the block and out of sight.

  The wind whipped in my face as I walked back to my car, reminding me that I wasn't in a dream. This was reality. But how? I thought. How can this be?

  I drove my camaro out of the credit union's parking lot and headed back to Dodsville. "Can't be," I said aloud. "Just cannot be. The bodies found can't be those of Mrs. Klaus and her daughter." I drew up the picture of Mrs. Klaus meeting us at her front gate, with the little girl in braided pigtails hiding behind her skirt. "Has to be a mistake."

  I turned onto Highway 13. Although it was still early in the afternoon, the day had become bleakly dark. The deep purple and black storm clouds loomed almost above me. Gusts of wind tried to push the camaro off the road, but I held the wheel against it. A solid bolt of bright lightning shot out of the sky and struck a tree in the forest to my immediate left. The deafening crack of thunder hit as a fury of sparks flew away from the splintered tree onto the road in front of me. I swerved reflexively, even though I was a good twenty yards away. My heart picked up speed so suddenly my chest burned a minute in pain.

  Melissa, Tabitha, and Sly were still at the mansion. The police would be there soon in search of clues, and asking some pretty difficult questions when they stumbled upon them. I would have to get there before the police did. Pushing the gas pedal down an inch farther to the floor, the camaro picked up speed rapidly. I reached eighty mph and leveled off.

  "Pierce is just going to love this," I said to myself, though the rain had begun to splatter against the windshield and did a thorough job in drowning me out.

  A sign warned of an approaching curve, and I eased up a bit on the pedal. The rain picked up even more intensity and pelted heavily down on the windshield, almost blurring my view of the highway in front of me completely. I switched the wipers to its fastest setting, though that did little good.

  The camaro hung well to the curve, wet rain and all. I had no doubt that the car could handle it. If I kept up at the current speed, I could be back at the mansion in less than ten minutes. I prayed silently I got there before the police did.

  Fate, however, was against me. About half way into the curve, as I pushed the pedal down a little bit more, something appeared up ahead in the middle of the highway. My brain registered immediately that it was a small child, and directed me on what to do next. I was upon the child so fast that I hadn't even time to feel fear.

  Instinctively, I swerved the camaro to the left, and I would have made it easily around her if it hadn't been raining. And the highway had not been soaking wet. The back end of the camaro skidded out of control, and I headed helplessly straight toward the ditch lining the side of the pavement and flew, yelling incoherently, into the surrounding forest.

  Yet, the last thing I would remember for quite some time was that of the face of the little girl in the middle of the highway.

  She looked exactly like little Clair Klaus.

  End Part One

  Part Two

  Dodsville

  CHAPTER TEN:

  Paradise Lost

  Detective Pierce stood solemnly in the coroner's room next to the bodies of Rhonda Klaus, age thirty-eight, and Clair Klaus, age five. The two corpses lay on separate tables with white sheets pulled over their heads. Only their feet protruded, as Agnus Milhaus, the county coroner, slipped the toe tags over their big toes. Only, Pierce thought sullenly, one of those toes wasn't big at all. "Don't worry," he said under his breath, "I'll catch the bastard who did this to you."

  "What's that you say?" Sheriff Ryan, the third and last of the live bodies in the room, asked, overhearing Pierce's muttering. Sheriff Ryan, a heavy-set man who prided himself on his conditioning, ran his hand through his thinning hair. This was all he needed, he thought, with elections coming up in a few months. Two more murders, and this time the victims were prominent citizens of his town. He could almost hear the rustle of discontent in the air.

  "Nothing," Pierce replied, feeling a tinge of embarrassment. He didn't care too much for Sheriff Ryan; but, then, he didn't care too much for any small town cop, who had an easy time handing out traffic tickets, but when it came to the big time crimes, they couldn't seem to get their heads out of their assholes.

  The coroner pulled back the sheets covering the bodies, one at a time--slowly, almost ritualistically. Pierce hated this part of his job. He wanted only to be out catching the bastard who did the killing. No matter how many more dead bodies he came across, he knew he would never get used to it. The nightmares would always haunt his dreams until the perp was safely locked up. On the occasion the killer got away, the nightmares went on for months--sometimes even years. This child in front of him now, he knew, would haunt his evenings for a long time.

  "Both were killed in the same manner as Del Smith," the coroner said. He pointed to the knife wounds in Rhonda Klaus's body with his middle finger. "As you can see, they were both stabbed three times: once under each breast and once in the navel." The skin had been cleaned of any trace of blood, so the ragged puncture marks were clearly visible.

  Pierce shuddered, unable to keep his eyes from the little girl, as he imagined how painful it would be to be stabbed right in the belly button.

  Sheriff Ryan cleared his throat. "Was it the same knife used in the Smith case?" he asked, also fixated on the wound on Clair Klaus's stomach.

  "Now that's a tough one," the coroner replied. "Same width, but if it was the same knife there's no way of knowing. Probably a thousand knives in Dodsville alone that would fit the wounds."

  "Doesn't matter," Pierce said, looking away from the bodies. "Same M.O. The press doesn't know about the pattern of the punctures, so no one other than our killer knows this particular M.O."

  "Or killers," Sheriff Ryan corrected.

  Detective Pierce smiled. More than one killer was possible but highly unlikely in this case. They were all three murders without motive, as far as was known, and that almost always meant a single demented mind. Of course, he couldn't expect a small time cop to know that. And he hated one correcting him.

  Pierce walked up to the five year old's body to have a good close look at her face. He knew she would be haunting his dreams for the next few weeks, and he wanted to get the face right. Too many times, the victims in his nightmares had faces without features. And that, in Pierce's mind, was even more disconcerting.

  The left eye of the five year old popped open as Pierce was staring at her face. He bumped the table slightly from his surprise, causing the right eye to pop open a second later. The horror behind those eyes was not what Pierce would have ex
pected from a dead body. It was as if they held the same terror as when her life was in the process of being snuffed out. "What the--" he said, after bumping the table and taking a quick step backwards.

  The coroner chuckled. "Happens sometimes," he said, stepping in front of a still shocked Pierce. He shut the eyes again, but they opened up into a dead stare right away. "I'm going to have to glue them," he added. "The eyes were open when the bodies were discovered, and they were fairly set after four days." He pulled the sheet back over her face, much to the relief of Pierce.

  "You're positive that they were killed four days ago?" Sheriff Ryan asked.

  "That's correct," Agnus Milhaus replied. "And they died of stab wounds, too. No sign of water in the lungs, so they could have been killed anywhere and dumped where you found them."

  "And neither one was sexually molested, is that right?"

  "No sign of a struggle, and no semen present in either vagina, but that's all I can tell you until after the autopsy. No clues on the body at all that I can find that would lead you to the killer, either."

  Ryan asked a few more questions that Pierce considered either redundant or irrelevant.

  "Call us after the autopsy," Pierce said, wanting to get out of there. He couldn't shake the picture in his mind of the little girl's eyes opening and staring back at him. Another image for his nightmares.

  Ryan followed him to the parking lot.

  "You don't have any idea who might be behind all of this?" Pierce asked as they stepped outside just in time to catch a bright flash of lightning in the western sky.

  "Not a clue," Ryan replied. "You find out anything more on that O'Neal kid?"

  "Nothing that would make a grand jury suspect him of murder," he replied. A raindrop landed perfectly in the center of his eye and he blinked it away. "The only prior on him is a time back in college when he sat stark naked in a tree in front of a supermarket in broad daylight."

  "What?"

  "Some sort of fraternity gag. At least that's what he claims on the report." Pierce kicked his front tire. All the tires were getting bald, and he'd have to change them soon. "I'm talking to him later on this afternoon. Maybe he'll tip his hat on something. If not, we're back to square one."

  Ryan opened his car door. "So what next?"

  "Why don't you drive into Black Falls and see what you can find out from Meyer Klaus. You know, if there is some link, no matter how trivial it may seem, between him and Del Smith." A long drawn-out thunder drowned out his last few words. "Anyway," he continued after the rumble had ceased, "I'm going out to the Klaus mansion and see what I can find there."

  * * *

  When the first raindrops started to fall, Tabitha Price and Melissa Anderson were swimming in the pool in the backyard of the Klaus Mansion. Sly Hadleman sat reading an Agatha Christie novel in a lawn chair under the protection of the eaves of the recreation building. He looked to the heavens as lightning flashed between the clouds above him. The crack of thunder followed almost on its heels.

  Within seconds, without warning, the wind picked up and blew the lawn chairs from around the pool, except for the one Sly had weighted down, south onto the lawn. Melissa and Tabitha sprinted out of the water and to the safety of the eaves as the raindrops turned into a hard downpour.

  Sly smiled, put a marker in his book, and placed it under his chair. "Looks as though the remainder of this day is going to be of no valuable use to us out here in paradise," he said as the girls grabbed their towels and began to dry themselves.

  "Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Melissa replied.

  "Yea, maybe we could all go on a ghost hunt," Sly said, and laughed. "How did you and Stephen fare on your little adventure last night, anyway?"

  "What adventure is that?" Tabitha asked, dragging a chair out of the rec building. She unfolded it next to Sly and sat down. "You holding out on us?"

  "It was nothing," Melissa replied. "Stephen and I went for a walk around the mansion, that's all." She couldn't look Tabitha in the eyes as she spoke. "And how did you find out about it anyway, Sly? Did Stephen say something to you?"

  The wind found Sly's novel and whipped through the pages. The marker flew out and Sly attempted to catch it, but didn't even come close. He bent over and picked up the book, placing it on his lap. "No," he said. "I heard some noises, and when I went to investigate, I happened on the two of you. You both looked like you were having so much fun, I decided not to bother you and went back to bed." He watched patiently as the wind blew his marker into the pool.

  "Where is Stephen, anyway?" Tabitha asked.

  "I'm not sure," Melissa replied, looking around for a nearby chair that she wouldn't have to run out into the elements to retrieve. "He did say something about tracking down Mrs. Klaus, though."

  The sound of a car could be heard coming up the driveway on the other side of the house.

  "Can't be Stephen," Sly commented. "His camaro's not nearly that loud."

  "I hope it's not Randy," Tabitha said, the expression on her face instantly becoming sullen.

  "So, what is going on between you two, anyway?" Melissa asked. "The way he stormed out of here yesterday it appeared you told him to take a short walk off an even shorter pier."

  "I told him I didn't want him around here at all." She paused as the engine of the car was shut off. A car door slammed shut a second later. "That better not be him. He said that I couldn't stop him from coming here to see me. So, I told him it was over between us."

  "Of course," commented Sly, looking up at the house, "he didn't believe you."

  "If that's him now," Tabitha said, standing, "then I'll make damn sure he does understand the situation." She folded her chair so it wouldn’t blow away in the wind. "Maybe I ought to go see who that is."

  "Doesn't look like you have to," Sly said.

  The back door of the mansion opened and Detective Pierce looked out. When he spotted the threesome by the pool, he stepped out on to the porch and shook his head in disbelief. He pulled his coat collar over his head and proceeded into the downpour.

  "Well, it's not the maid," Tabitha said. She stepped behind Sly, as if for protection.

  "It's that detective that's been giving Stephen such a hard time," Melissa said, moving next to Tabitha. "What does he want with him now?"

  Detective Pierce reached the overhang and let out a heavy sigh of exasperation. "I hate the rain," he said as he dropped his collar off his hat. He took the hat off and scratched his head, then brushed his hair back with the palm of his hand. "I know you," he said to Melissa.

  "What is it exactly you want?" Sly asked.

  Pierce looked the three of them over for a minute before answering. O'Neal had been with the Anderson kid just yesterday just down the street from here. Maybe, just maybe, this was the break he was looking for. "Well," he said, at length. "For starters you can tell me what you three are doing here."

  Sly cleared his throat. "I don't see why we have to answer that," he said. "We’ve not done anything wrong."

  "To me," Pierce ignored Sly's comment, "it looks like you're staying here. Is that a correct assumption?"

  "We have permission," Tabitha said, rather uneasily.

  "That's right," Melissa added. "And if you're looking for Stephen, he's not around right now. So, why don't you come back later?"

  A look of shock flashed briefly over Pierce's face, at the same time lightning decided to light up the sky overhead. So, he thought, I am on to something. "You mean to tell me that Stephen O'Neal is staying here?"

  "I don't see why that should concern you," Tabitha said. "He was invited here by Mrs. Klaus just like the rest of us."

  A sudden gust of wind interrupted Pierce's rebuttal. Though he hardly minded. Finally, he had gotten his break: a connection between O'Neal and the Klauses. Overhead, the sky was still growing darker. The worst of the storm was yet to come, in more ways than one.

  "Why don't we move this conversation to the police station?" he said, moving a few feet clos
er to the building to get away from the blowing rain.

  Sly leapt out of the lawn chair, sending Agatha Christie into the storm to fend for herself. "Now, wait just one minute," he said. Some spittle shot from his mouth and landed on Pierce's already soaked jacket. "What right do you have coming here and bothering us this way? Why don't you go back to your station by yourself and leave us the hell alone?"

  Pierce didn't immediately reply. He studied the three faces in front of him for a minute. "So," he said at length, "you really don't know what's going on here, do you?"

  Tabitha and Melissa simply shook their heads; Sly did nothing but stare back at Pierce.

  Of course they don't know anything, Pierce thought. If they did they sure as hell wouldn't still be here. "Maybe I should just tell you and get it out into the open."

  "Why don't you just do that?" Sly replied laconically.

  "Your hostess of this lovely vacation home of yours is dead."

  "What?" all three persons in front of Pierce asked at the same time.

  "That’s right," Pierce continued, wondering exactly where O'Neal had run off. "She and her little girl were murdered four days ago. Though their bodies were just discovered this morning. Now, I really don't believe you three had anything to do with it. I think your friend set you up."

  Sly held up both arms, palms outward, in front of him. "You listen to me," he said, outspoken with anger. "We were personally invited to stay here for a week by Mrs. Klaus herself. And that was only three days ago. What's more is, we saw both her and her daughter just the other day. So, somewhere along the line somebody’s screwed up."

  "That's right," Tabitha added with emphasis.

  Melissa nodded behind her, and, all of a sudden, felt sick in her stomach

  Boy, Pierce thought, O'Neal really did a job on these three. "Why don't we all go to the station and we'll sort everything out," he said.