Hour 23
HOUR 23
ROBERT BARNARD
HOUR
23. Copyright © 2015 by Robert Barnard. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Portions of the cover art were provided by Gerd Altmann.
Mount Marshall Publishing, 2015.
Table of Contents
Jim Whiteman leaned against a guard rail, grinding his teeth and peering off into the endless miles of trees ahead of him.
Sixteen hours,
Jim thought.
Sixteen damn hours. Chloe’s gonna’ kill me.
A flash light up ahead flickered back and forth as it swept through the tangled brush. Branches and twigs crunched and crackled as the beam of light drew closer and closer towards Jim.
“If old man Baker didn’t want critters roaming around his backyard,” Jim hollered as he scanned the wilderness, “he should have picked a different spot to live.”
“Oh, come on, Jim,” a voice called back. “Most excitement we’ve had all week.”
“Crawling through shrubs and muck while lookin’ for stray dogs isn’t my definition of excitement, Min,” Jim said with a huff. “Can’t believe Ingram put us on double shifts for this kind of shit.”
“You tired, Jim?” the voice up ahead asked.
Jim heard the click of a flashlight in the distance, and was nearly able to make out Min’s slender features as the officer approached in the early morning light.
“You could have helped me look more, instead of standing up there and pouting.”
Jim scoffed. “I’ve already missed breakfast with Chloe. It’s not too late for me to get her to school. She hates taking that damn bus.”
Min tucked his flashlight under his armpit. He glanced around the thick woods once more, and squinted, as if it would somehow make him able to see through the blanket of fog that clung to the ground.
“What would you even do with it if you caught it?” Jim asked.
“If it would keep that damn farmer from calling the station one more time?” Min asked, raising one eyebrow. “I think I’d pump that little bastard full of lead.”
“You don’t mean that,” Jim said, and he laughed. “We tried our best, let’s go.”
It was more than a lack of sleep and missing his daughter that was making Jim anxious. It was the officer’s particular location that made him eager to get a move on. High atop Pigeon Hill, a mile back from the Baker’s farm, on a morning not dissimilar from this one, was where Sarah Bosk had been found a decade earlier.
Jim was just a rookie then, and though so much time had passed, he could remember little Sarah’s disappearance with ease. The eleven year old had been missing for all of eight days before some locals on four-wheelers stumbled upon her body. They found her in a ditch with a plastic bag tied tight around her head. The wildlife had found her first.
Jim’s legs turned to rubber when he was sent to help secure the crime scene. Sarah Bosk was the embodiment of every reason Jim had chose to work in East Violet instead of in the city. In New York, an abducted child was expected on the evening news; but, in the sleepy town of East Violet, that kind of thing just wasn’t supposed to happen.
The death of Sarah Bosk caused a whirlwind in East Violet. Her convicted killer, Edgar Ross, had taken responsibility for her death within hours of her body being discovered. Not that Edgar’s confession was at all necessary; the trail of evidence that pointed towards the town outcast was so damning that his trial went on to be one of the shortest in East Violet’s history. Six months and two weeks stood between Edgar Ross’s arrest and a death sentence.
Camera crews had swept through East Violet after the verdict was announced. It was something that the locals and police force were not at all prepared for or particularly in favor of. Many residents wanted the picturesque town to be known for the annual apple harvest and autumn fair, not the gruesome death of Sarah Bosk.
Once the news vans left town and the hour long documentary on the abducted girl had aired—some kind of national, primetime show as Jim remembered—East Violet once again became a peaceful town, hidden in a valley, tucked far away from the dangers lurking in New York. A place where the most exciting police work was tracking wild dogs through the back of Baker’s farm.
Min opened the passenger door of the police cruiser at the same time a call crackled over the radio. Jim was about to step inside—he always drove—before the shrill chatter and squawking of a flock of birds pierced the quiet morning air. Black crows, and a bunch of them. Fifty, maybe one hundred, all flying westward in a single formation, their beating wings thundering in the sky.
That’s…peculiar,
Jim thought. He watched the feathered creatures dart through the sky, then disappear behind the hill, as memories of little Sarah Bosk flickered in his mind.
“Hey, get in,” Min called from the passenger seat. “We gotta’ get a move on.”
Jim ducked into the drivers seat. “What’s up?”
“Call just came in. Some kind of domestic disturbance in town.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, we’re on it. Hit the lights.”
“Where in town?” Jim asked, sounding annoyed. He turned the engine of the Crown Victoria over.
“Down by Center Square.”
“Center Square?”
“Yeah.”
Jim threw his hands up. “And we’re the closest unit? We’re in the Goddamn boonies. Fifteen minutes away, maybe ten if I book it. Bullshit we’re closest.”
“We’re not the closest, but we’re the only ones not busy. Blankenship’s caught up with something in town and Esposito is at a traffic stop,” Min said. He flicked a switch that triggered strobing blue and red lights atop the car. “Let’s go.”
So much for picking up Chloe,
Jim thought.
Min had been Jim’s partner long enough to know when he was pissed, and right then, Jim’s face read as
pissed.
“Weren’t you just complaining of boring police work?” Min asked, trying to soften the mood.
“Know when to shut it,” Jim said, and he stomped the Crown Vic’s accelerator.
The police car rocketed down Pigeon Hill Road, really the only main road between the top of the hill and the valley deep below. The vehicle sped past Baker’s farm, and then Henderson High School—where Jim’s daughter would be any moment now—before continuing down the two lane road, passing nothing but rows of pine trees and the occasional farm house.
Making incredible time, the officers flew past the Xtra Mart, where Pigeon Hill Road opened up into four lanes and changed its name to Maple Avenue. Jim always thought the name change—the result of a town council meeting several years back—was idiotic. The town had voted to rebrand the roadway as it opened up into East Violet, so as to give the street an air of nobility that better matched the neighborhood around it. Maple Avenue was reserved for the part of town that had fine dining, boutiques, and well manicured parks. The Pigeon Hill moniker was left behind for the hill it was named after, and the part of town that had nothing but farmland, the homes of country bumpkins, and the memory of Sarah Bosk.
The police cruiser screeched to a stop outside of 78 Elm Lane, a large colonial home in the center of town. Jim glanced at his plastic wrist watch while Min cut the lights and sirens.
Eleven minutes. Not bad.
Jim hopped out of the cruiser first and marched towards the front of the home. Min followed close behind, surveying the area around them. Everything seemed normal enough.
Thud, thud, thud.
Jim gave three rapid pounds on the wide, cherry oak door of the manor. “East Violet Police Department. Open up.”
Jim and Min watched the windows of the home as they waited for an answer, hoping to catch someone peeping out from behind a curtain. Nothing. No sounds, no movement.
To the right of the officers were a turquoise colored Mercedes sedan and a pearl-white Range Rover, both parked in the home’s driveway. The front bumper of the Range Rover was crumpled and the hood was dented.
“Who called this in?” Jim asked.
Min said, “Neighbors. Said they heard screaming and fighting.”
“Uh-huh,” Jim said, listening carefully, his ear practically pressed against the home’s front door. “Well, I’m not about to kick down someone’s door over something the neighbors said.”
Jim sighed before giving the door one last string of heavy knocks. “Police department, open up. Now.” He sounded aggravated at having to ask twice. “Police depa—”
A hefty
thump
was heard from behind the door, followed by a frightened scream.
Jim quickly unholstered his duty pistol and grabbed the golden door knob before him, spinning it. To his surprise the door was unlocked and quickly swung open. He aimed his gun ahead of him as he entered, the weight of the semiautomatic weapon making him feel uneasy. In nearly a decade of police work, there was only one other instance in which he had to draw his firearm.
Min followed closely behind his partner, gun drawn. “East Violet Police Department. Everyone stay where you are and keep your hands where I can see them,” Min hollered. His voice cracked embarrassingly as he shouted the commands; he was overwhelmed by a sickening, metallic odor hanging in the air. The stench of blood.
“Jesus, look at that,” Jim said. He pointed at the stairwell ahead of them with his gun. On each carpeted step was a soaked, crimson stain in the shape of a petit, bare foot. The direction of the footprints indicated that whoever left them was going down the stairs, not up them.
Jim followed the bloodied prints from where they reached the landing of the stairs and trailed off forward, towards a kitchen in the back of the home.
The officers treaded cautiously as they followed the footprints. Min repeatedly announced their presence, yet never received a response.
When the officers entered the kitchen they found an elderly gentleman kneeling above a battered and imbrued woman. Jim quickly recognized the man as John Cooper, a prominent doctor in town. The woman was harder to discern, since her face had been covered in bruises, blood, and lacerations. After a short hesitation, Jim recognized her as John’s wife, Geraldine. Jim was acquainted with Geraldine; she was a secretary at his daughter’s high school.
“Back off of her, now,” Min yelled, as he trained the sights of his pistol onto John Cooper’s chest.
John disregarded the officers command and started viciously beating and attacking his defenseless wife. Pinned on her back between her husband and the kitchen floor, Geraldine squirmed. She was missing sizable patches of skin on her face. John grabbed and tore at her with his bare hands, hissing and howling between each swipe. He pulled a chunk of her right ear off in his balled up fist, then held it above his head like a trophy. Dangling between his clenched front teeth was what appeared to be a hunk of human flesh.
“John, get off of her. You will be shot.” The words left Jim’s mouth unevenly. His pistol jittered in his clammy, shaky hands.
John completely ignored the officer’s demand.
Min fired the first two shots, which pierced clean through John Cooper’s chest and landed in a cabinet door behind the kneeled doctor. John didn’t so much as flinch and continued to maul the woman pinned beneath him.
Min then fired a third and fourth shot into John; the third pierced John’s leg before glancing off of the black and white tiled floor. The fourth hit John in his left shoulder and didn’t exit. John’s body shook from the force of the impacts, but other than that the man seemed utterly unaware that he was being fired upon.
“Jesus, Whiteman. Do something!” Min barked.
Jim swallowed hard, steadied his pistol, and squeezed the trigger. The shot hit its mark, squarely in the left side of John Cooper’s head. A quick mist of pink and red filled the air on either side of John’s skull. Then, all at once, John’s motions stopped and he collapsed beside his critically injured wife.
Geraldine looked onward at the officers with an expression of pure terror. She ran her hands over the open wounds on her face, tracing the outlines of the punctures with her fingertips. She whimpered. Her gaze switched from the officers, to her slain husband, and back again to the officers.
“Help—” Geraldine croaked, before a steady stream of red foamed up around her lips, drowning out any other pleas.
“Stay still, you’re in shock,” Jim said, turning a lighter shade of white.
Min dropped to a knee beside Geraldine and crudely administered whatever first aid he knew. Behind him, Jim stuttered their location—and a need for an ambulance—into the radio clipped to the shoulder of his uniform.
“Everything will be fine,” Jim said, unsure of his own words. “Medical is on the way.”
“Do you have gloves? Or a facemask?” Min asked.
Jim patted his pockets and unzipped some pouches on his utility belt, feeling around inside of them with his fingers. “No. They’re back in the car,” he answered.
Min looked down at Geraldine. Her body had fallen limp, her breathing turned wheezy and sporadic. Every inhale and exhale was followed by an awful gurgle, until eventually the gurgles ceased entirely.
“Fuck it,” Min said, placing both palms firmly on Geraldine’s chest. “She looks clean.” With each pump, Min’s hands slid and slipped across the woman’s torso, her clothes and skin wet with blood. “We’re losing her,” Min said, noticing a deep bite mark on Geraldine’s neck. “She’s losing too much blood. There’s too much blood.”
“Medics are almost here,” Jim said.
“What the hell did we walk into? Why was he biting her?” Min grunted, still trying desperately to resuscitate Geraldine. Min pumped, and pumped, and pumped, before finally checking for a pulse. He shook his head, and said, “She’s gone.”
