Cold Dead Past (13 page)

"Are you into horror stories?  I see you do the crossword.  You must read a little bit.  I’m a horror writer. ‘Razor Blades’, ‘Dark Wind’.  Stuff like that."

"Naw. My wife likes that kinda stuff.  I’m more a Tom Clancy man.  I like to think."

Jay’s mental laugh meter registered an eighty-six. His lips curled up into a smile.  He held out his hand to the deputy and said, "Jay Putnam.  Hey, I bet your wife has my book at home.  Maybe we could work a deal."

The deputy’s eyes rolled back in his head and shifted from side to side as he thought for a moment. "Come to think of it, I think she did say somethin’ about you.  You’re local, aren’t you?"

"Well, I used to be.  Now how about that deal?"

"I don’t know, Mr. Putnam.  I could get into a heap of trouble." He looked over his shoulder as Troy Dexter dropped a trash can at the back of the office with a bang.

Jay leaned in and with a conspiratorial air said, "Well, no one has to know.  I bet your wife would love to have a copy of my new book.  Autographed.  It would make you a hero.  Am I right?"

The deputy stopped to think and it was at that exact moment that the patch of sweat that had congealed in the hairs at the base of Jay's spine decided to form into a large droplet and roll slowly down the crack of his ass.

"Mebbe so.  What kinds of things were you interested in knowin’?"

When Jay came out of the station twenty minutes later, Abe was dozing in the back seat.  He woke with a start when Jay slammed the door.

"Jesus, man!"

"I didn’t talk to Gary."

Meg checked her watch. "But you were in there for, like, half an hour."

"I said I didn’t get to talk to Gary. He was asleep, so I greased one of the other cops pretty good."  He said, over his shoulder, to Abe, "You owe Mrs. Benita Swanson an autographed copy of my book."

"I’ll take care of it.  I know where to bill you.  What did you find out?"

Jay pulled on his gloves, wiggling his fingers to make sure they were snug. "They’ve got nothing.  They tore that house from top to bottom and didn’t find anything like what we’re loooking for."

Meg hadn’t run the heater in the time he’d been inside and his mission had left him soaked in perspiration.  He could feel his clothes, cold and clammy against his skin.  He turned to Meg. "Hey, could you turn up the heat in here?"  Then he turned to Abe and held out his hand. "Give me a cup of that high test coffee, then."

Meg started the car and turned the heater up full blast.  As Abe poured Jay’s drink, he said, "Well, then, back to Plan A."

             
                                          CHAPTER 24

That evening, Jay was back out in the bitter cold waiting for Meg to pick him up.  This time, though, he was better prepared for the weather.  He had forsaken the designer shoes for a thirty dollar pair of work boots from Payless and hit the Wal-Mart for some heavy wool socks and a parka.

Still, though, he paced. "Plan A. Shit."

He shook his head.  This whole thing was a nutty idea concocted by an old crackpot in a bookstore.  That’s what Jay wanted to believe.  Gene was the one who did it.  The dreams were all a coincidence.  Frank wasn’t back.  And Haddonfield was the same rosy Land of Oz he’d lived in when he was a kid.

When Meg finally arrived, she threw open the passenger door of the car. "Ready?"

She looked in her rearview mirror and pulled away from the curb.  "You know," Jay said, "I have nothing against the police, but I don’t think that even Gene would be foolish enough to put whatever we’re looking for in his underwear drawer."

"Abe said he had some more research to do.  I think it’s going to be a late night.  He pulled out that box of booze bottles he keeps in the back room."

Jay rolled his eyes. "Well, I guess he isn’t expecting us to have any trouble."

"He said it’s something to do with Frank’s makeup.  He’s always killed at night.  Nocturnal.  No idea what he does during the rest of the time he’s awake, but apparently he gets hungry on a schedule."

"Just like a baby."

"Abe thinks that tonight we should be safe."

"Since when did you become such a big believer in Abe?"

"Well, he’s really all we’ve got, isn’t he?"

They drove the rest of the way to Gene’s in silence.  Jay was half-expecting Frank to jump out from the side of the road.  The xenon lamps on the car threw out a bright light that caused harsh shadows.  It left pitch dark pools in the spaces between and behind the trees which stood like sentinels along the edge of the road.  Anything could be in there.  Jay shuddered.

The Jordans had built their house in the middle of nowhere.  The only way to reach it was via a crowned county road that snaked through the hills above the town.  It was barely two lanes during good weather.  If you weren’t careful in the snow, you could easily slide off into a ditch and be stuck until the next county plow came by, which could be hours.  Or days.  Jay shuddered again.

"Take it easy, would you?"  His foot mashed into where a brake pedal would have been if he were driving.  Meg had always had a lead foot and she was going at least ten miles an hour faster than allowed for by the driving conditions.  Jay could feel his whole body tense. His fingers dug into the side of his seat cushion.

"So, did you remember the flashlights?" he asked.

He cringed when she took one of her hands off the steering wheel and reached back behind his seat.  When she pulled it back, it held a heavy plastic sack which she dropped into his lap.

"Ouch!  Jesus, Meg!  Watch what the hell you’re doing."  She just laughed, which irritated Jay. "You’re really nuts, you know?  Slow down a little.  Please?"

The whir of the engine died down to a low drone as she let up on the accelerator.  Jay dug into the sack and pulled out two Mag Lites.  Big, expensive ones and the batteries to go with them.  He struggled with the heat-sealed plastic packages.

"Whoever invented this fucking packaging should be shot," he grumbled.

He spent the rest of the trip with one eye on the road while nervously fumbling around with the batteries.  She slowed the car to a crawl and then coasted past the drive when they reached the house, shutting off the lights and braking to a stop about twenty feet up the road.

They looked toward the house.  The porch light had been left on, but there weren’t any signs of activity.  Just some crime scene tape stretched across the driveway.

Jay turned to Meg. "Well, it looks clear."  She started the car and did a quick three point turnaround, driving right through the crime scene tape as if it were the ribbon at the end of a marathon.  They parked at the back of the house in case there were any sheriff’s patrols. The rear of the house was dark except for what looked like an automatic nightlight shining in a corner of the kitchen window.

The first thing Jay noticed when he stepped out of the car was how quiet it was.  Living in the city, he’d forgotten how the snow could deaden the sound and how empty the woods seemed in the winter.  There weren’t even sounds from night birds like the owls, which still would have been around.  Godforsaken.  The term had a real meaning here.  He could just imagine Gene living here, alone, for years.  Maybe it was wrong to give him a bad rap over what he’d done.

Jay shook off that idea.  Any sane person knew instinctually that what Gene had done was wrong.  Dead is dead.  It doesn’t matter how lonely you are or what feelings of guilt you may have.  You just don’t fuck with the laws of nature because you miss a member of the family.  That’s what memories are for.  If there were such a thing as evil, then the process by which Frank was returned to the world of the living was it.

Suddenly, the two of them were hit by a blinding white light.  They hadn’t noticed the police cruiser sitting in the shadows next to the old garage.  Gary had sent the Dexters out to "guard" the crime scene as part of their ongoing rehabilitation.

The twins, hoping to get back to what they considered real police work, called headquarters and hustled their charges into the house to wait.  Meg sat with her arms wrapped round herself, her coat laid out on the floor as she sat on the front hall steps.

Jay leaned against the wall next to the door rubbing his wrist where Roy Dexter had grabbed him and yanked him along through the snow.  Now the Dexters stood in front of the door, eyeing him and Meg vacantly, sneers curling their carbon copy lips.

The hulking twins jumped out of the way as the door opened and Gary's voice boomed out, "What the hell are the two of you doing here?" He hadn't been expecting anything to actually happen at the house once Gene had been taken into custody. When the Dexters had called, he was in the middle of his first deep sleep since Charlie Harper had been killed.

"We heard that you arrested Gene," said Jay.

"That doesn’t answer my question."  Gary's eyes turned all steely and his jaw was set tight like an overwound watchspring. "Well, it doesn’t matter why you’re here.  We’re in the middle of a homicide investigation and you’re going to have to leave.  Right now."

Jay pulled out of his slouch. "This isn’t some common murderer you’re dealing with, though, is it?  He tore the hearts from his victims’ bodies, am I right?"

A momentary ripple of confusion and uncertainty ran across Gary’s face. "How did you know that?"

Instead of answering, Jay headed down the front hall toward the parlor.  Next to a hanging, yellowed sheet of wallpaper was the door to the cellar.

It was scarred and peeling, painted a dull brown, and on it was a feed store calendar with a date circled.  It was the same day and year that Frank had died.  It fluttered through his mind that it wasn’t just Frank who had died that winter’s day.  The whole family had and now Gene had brought things full circle.

Jay grasped the scratched, black enameled knob and felt it slip about a half-inch out of its socket as he twisted and pulled.  The door was so out of true that the corner ground against the hardwood floor, leaving a track scraped into the floor.  The hinges gave out the rough sound of metal grinding against metal.

"Where are you going?" demanded Gary.

"If I remember right, this is the way to the cellar."

"Get away from there!"

Jay took a step forward and down, testing the first step by lightly bouncing on it. "Yeah, this is it."  He ran the palm of his hand along the blank plaster surface of the wall to his right until he found the old twist switch for the lights, which gave a "pop" as he turned it.  A bare hundred watt bulb at the foot of the stairs flickered to life.

He disappeared down the creaking, swaying stairs before Gary could reach the doorway to stop him.  Gary gave Meg a look, to which she returned a shrug, and headed down into the cellar with her close behind.

Jay glanced over his shoulder to make sure the others were following. He almost tripped over the discarded head of a lawn sprinkler as he came off the bottom step onto the bare dirt floor. "Shit!"  He kicked it reflexively with his foot and sent it crashing into a pile of old aluminum cooking pots just a few feet away, where it registered with a "clang".

The ceiling was low, with the joists for the floor above uncovered, causing the light from the single bulb to scatter in odd patterns over an accumulation of old kitchen utensils, lawn mower parts, books, and more that had been collected into piles that spilled into the outer darkness near the stone cellar walls.

Jay held his palms up in front of his face.  He had braced himself against the filthy walls as he came down the stairs and they were covered with dirt and grime.  He felt a hand come down firmly on his shoulder and give it a squeeze.

"Okay," said Gary. "Let’s get back upstairs."

"Oh, come on," said Meg. "You might as well let us have a look around.  We’re here, after all."

Gary flipped on his flashlight and played it over the piles of junk. He stopped to think for a moment. "Okay, I guess it won’t hurt anything."

Meg slipped her way past him. Jay pulled the Mag Lites from his pocket and handed one to her.  They switched them on and stepped off into the rubbish.  Meg bumped up against one of the piles of newspapers and it collapsed, throwing up a cloud of dust.

She coughed, waving her hand in front of her face, and said, "God, what a mess."

Gary stepped up beside her and ran his light up and down her body to make sure she wasn’t hurt. "I guess he didn’t believe in being tidy.  The whole house is like this.  Piles of stuff everywhere."

"I don’t think it was just Gene," said Jay. "Did you notice that calendar on the cellar door?  The date?"

"Yeah. Kinda creepy.  As if things just stopped," replied Gary.

Jay waded into the piles of junk through one of the few clear paths, the high-intensity beam from his torch cutting into the gloom.  He was watching where he stepped and missed seeing the large cobweb that draped his face like a caul.  He banged his knuckles on one of the joists as he swung his hand up to rub away the web. His flashlight flared wildly along the rotted wood of the floor above.

"You okay, there, man?" asked Gary.

"Yeah, yeah.  Just a little dirtier."

Jay and Gary walked side-by-side until they reached an open space in front of the furnace.  Gary reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes and a book of matches. He shook the pack, but it was empty. He crushed it in his hand as he took a look around him at the maze of junk. "Mebbe now would be as good a time to give them up as any, anyways."

He opened the heavy cast iron, grated door on the old coal furnace and tossed the crushed pack into it.  When he slammed the door shut, instead of a metallic sound, it was more like the thud of something heavy landing on a plush carpet. Great, thick flakes of rust broke off where the door and side of the furnace met.

"What’s so important?" Gary asked.

Meg joined them. As they talked, the flashlights in their moving hands continued to probe like searching fingers. "We don’t think that Gene is the man you want.  Well, whatever it is…"

Her voice trailed off as she realized that maybe the idea was still a little too ill-formed and crazy to be accepted by the uninitiated.

Jay started to head back into the surrounding rubbish and thought better of it.  When he turned back around, the beam from his flashlight hit the furnace, which looked to him like Shiva. The ductwork reminded him of the goddess' arms. She had supported the house above and all its contents for a long time and looked tired.

Jay examined the furnace as he decided to make the leap that Meg could not. "Gene may be stupid.  Even mean.  But you can’t honestly believe he could kill people.  He was a bully and had to run to Frank whenever he got into trouble."  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Meg shaking her head.

Jay nodded as he said, to her, "It’s okay, honey."  He turned back to Gary. "We think that Frank’s the one you should be looking for."

"You know, you don’t really need an insanity defense for trespassing.  Frank’s dead.  You were there.  You saw it."

Jay acted as if Gary hadn’t spoken and turned to Meg. "I don’t think that there would be enough open space down here."

 
"Not from what Abe was saying," she replied.

 
Jay headed for a corner of the cellar, calling back to Gary over his shoulder, "Well, he’s back. Gene went a little too far with the brotherly love bit. I'm dying to hear your explanation, though."

Gary cleared his throat and said, "I figure Gene’s using the

hearts as part of some sick ritual.  Some sort of satanic stuff."

Meg pulled an empty plastic gallon jug from a bin next to her and held it to her nose.  The stink caused her to wretch. "I think I’m going to be sick."  She headed back to the stairs and sat down.