Laws of Nature -2 (20 page)

"Maybe they had other things in mind for you," the specter suggested.

The words were ominous. Jack glanced around for the dead girl's ghost, but she was gone. His gaze came to rest on Artie again, but he could not look for long at those eternal eyes.

"What are you - "

"You don't have time to run," the ghost said. "Just wipe your prints off the guns and toss them. You're about to have company."

Jack's mouth hung agape for a second or two. Then Artie told him he should hurry. With a muttered curse, Jack turned to Molly.

"Someone's coming," he said as he pulled off his shirt. "We've gotta wipe down the guns and get rid of them."

Even as Jack started to do just that with his shotgun, Molly was shaking her head.

"But . . . we could just run."

"He said we don't have time. Too much noise. They'd catch us," Jack told her. His voice had dropped to a whisper. They had no way of knowing how close the newcomers were.

Molly did not ask who "he" was.

Jack used both hands to fling the shotgun into the brush on the other side of the chimney, then lifted the pistol and clip out and did the same thing. Molly used the bottom of her long shirt to clean her prints off the shotgun, then dropped it at her feet. Jack picked it up, using his shirt, and tossed it for her.

Molly had just pulled out her pistol and belt-clip when a flashlight beam caught them both where they stood.

"Police!" shouted a voice. "Throw down the weapon and both of you put your hands up."

Jack's heart sank. It was the sheriff. They stood over the ravaged corpse of a teenaged girl. Molly had a gun in her hand. She tossed it away as Sheriff Tackett and Deputy Vance approached across the clearing. Jack and Molly both put their hands up.

The body,
he thought. A tiny sigh of relief escaped him. They had a dead Prowler on their hands, and another in the woods. Two or three more down by the school. No way could the sheriff think they were involved in any of this.

Then Jack glanced over at the edge of the clearing where they had left the dead body of the massive, red-furred Prowler, and his heart went cold and silent.

He stopped breathing.

The monstrous corpse was gone.

The Buckton police station was a stone and mortar affair with a bit more flair than many of its 1940s contemporaries. The town hall, with which the police station shared a parking lot, was a much larger structure that made the junior building appear to be a carriage house in comparison. It was small-town America at its finest, with a memorial to locals lost in America's wars right in the center of a small green island between the buildings.

Any other night, with the stars shining above and a few lights still burning in both buildings, Molly would have thought it was quaint.

But she was not in the mood for quaint.

Unlike so many of the kids in her Dorchester neighborhood, and even some of the students she had gone to Catholic school with, Molly Hatcher had never been handcuffed before. She had never been arrested until now. A twisted, sarcastic voice insinuated itself into the back of her head.
At least you did it up big,
the voice said. Molly knew it was her own sub-conscious, trying to make light of her situation. But she wasn't going for it. Suspicion of murder; possession and discharge of unlicensed firearms. Nothing light about their predicament at all.

And the only weapon they had at their disposal was the truth.

Molly and Jack had remained silent on the short ride back to downtown Buckton and the police station. Their eyes met several times, but Molly found that her throat was dry and did not think she could speak even if she had any idea what to say. They rode in the back of the sheriff 's car, and the man's eyes almost burned in the rearview mirror, with the flash of streetlights strobing across the windows, reflecting into the interior of the car.

Deputy Vance had followed in his own car, and that gave Molly the tiniest spark of hope. Though he seemed a bit odd, and possibly not very bright, she liked Deputy Vance.

The sheriff, on the other hand . . . she was not even certain he was human.

As soon as the two patrol cars came to a halt in the parking lot, Molly and Jack were hustled into the station as though there might be reporters lurking around, ready to ask questions. Or, she thought, even some sort of co-conspirators waiting to break them free. She only wished she had some co-conspirators.

In the movies and on television, the police always split up the suspects to question them separately, see if their stories could be shaken. Molly figured Sheriff Tackett didn't watch much TV because he marched them right down the hall on the first floor to the back of the building with the pure anger of his physical presence alone.

Molly was first through the door. The room was about fourteen feet square with bars on the windows and a long wooden table in the middle with five metal chairs around it. The table itself had been defaced over the course of years by pens, pencils, pocket knives and markers - even a few burns from lighters - so that it now looked like the average truck-stop bathroom wall.

"Sit down," the sheriff ordered. The first words he had spoken since getting them into the car.

Jack bristled at the instruction. Molly watched as he turned on the two officers. Vance laid a hand on his nightstick, but there was a frown on his face that said he didn't understand any of this. Molly thought that was good. If he did not understand, maybe he would be willing to listen. Tackett, though, was another story.

When Jack stood up to him, the sheriff only smiled thinly, like he wanted Jack to do something stupid.

"Hey," Molly said, voice soft, cracking from lack of use.

Jack glanced at her, then sighed. "You gonna take these cuffs off ?" he asked the sheriff.

Tackett hesitated a moment, then nodded for Vance to release them. The deputy's keys rattled as he unlocked the handcuffs.

"Have a seat," the sheriff instructed.

The metal chairs scraped on the linoleum floor as they sat down.

The window beyond the metal bars was open and a sweet summer-night breeze blew into the room. Tackett turned and pulled the door shut, closing all four of them in the room together, and the wind died. It became still in the room, and Molly could almost feel, almost smell, the tension. Deputy Vance leaned against a wall, his arms crossed.

Sheriff Tackett was a man past his prime, his gut protruding over his gun belt, his mustache hiding his upper lip in a drape of steel gray, his hair receding. But despite that outward appearance, he fixed them in a piercing gaze as though his eyes might leak acid at any moment.

With a sudden movement that made Molly flinch, Tackett pulled out a metal chair and sat down in it. He slumped a little, but regarded them with cruel indifference. Jack did not flinch. He just waited.

"So, you're tourists?" Tackett asked.

Jack sighed and glanced at Molly. He shrugged slightly, as if to tell her it did not matter what they said.

"Yes," Molly replied. Her eyes ticked toward Deputy Vance, who gazed at her with open curiosity.

Tackett grunted. "Tourists. But you knew Kenny Oberst was dead before anyone else. Except maybe Kenny. You're up in the woods, loaded for bear - "

"Those guns weren't ours," Molly interrupted. "Those others you picked up, I don't know where they came from. But the one I was holding when you came into the clearing? I had just found it on the ground and picked it up."

Deputy Vance stepped away from the wall. He walked across the small room scratching his head, but he did not look at anyone, only at the bars across the window.

"We heard shots. A lot of them. That's what drew us to you," the deputy said. "No one else was in that clearing except you and the dead girl. But let's set her aside for a second. What do you think we'll find when we tow in your vehicle and search through it?"

Jack glared at him, turned his head to stretch his neck muscles. Molly heard a pop from his neck and shivered.

"We get a phone call, right?" Jack asked.

"Right," the sheriff replied. His smile was nasty. "But not just yet."

"I want a lawyer," Molly said quickly.

"Don't we all?" Tackett replied. "You'll get one. But first we're just chatting a little. You two don't mind, right? I mean, you're just tourists. You didn't do anything.

Didn't fire any guns. Didn't murder Ned Meredith and his daughter."

Jack crossed his arms and glared at the sheriff. It was a contest. Neither of them was going to give an inch. Molly turned to look at Deputy Vance again, and she could sense him sizing her up. He was not as dim as she had thought. In fact, she was beginning to think he was a lot smarter than anyone would guess, and a lot better at his job. That might be their one hope.

"We didn't kill anyone," Jack said, voice cold and emotionless. "We went up there to save that girl's life. Risked our own lives."

"And you did this unarmed?" the sheriff asked quickly.

Jack frowned, about to argue the point, but then he realized what the sheriff had done; he had almost gotten Jack to admit the guns were theirs. That was a charge that would stick, no matter what else happened. Jack gave the sheriff back an eerie mirror image of his creepy smile.

There's something so shuddery about the sheriff,
Molly thought. As though, at any moment, he might lose it completely.

"He was a friend of yours, this Ned?" Molly asked.

Tackett's face reddened. He stared at her as though he would hurt her. "Yes. You could say that."

Vance sat on the edge of the table. "What were you two doing at the library after hours anyway?"

Jack grinned at him. "Getting frisky."

Molly blushed and looked away.

Vance waved the words away. "Bullshit. You two aren't a couple. You told me that yourselves. And even if you were, you've got a room at the hotel. So, again, what were you doing there?"

Slowly, Jack reached up to scratch his head. Then he stood up from the table and walked toward the barred window in the back. He glanced out at the stars.

"We got lucky," Jack said, back to all of them. "We were driving around, just checking out the town. It's nice up here, but I don't have to tell you that. We went down the wrong road and drove into the library lot to turn around. We heard screaming, glass shattering, and we got up to run toward the front doors just as they came outside with the girl. I'm guessing her father was already dead inside. They ran off with her into the woods, and we followed. Her screams led us to that clearing, but by the time we got there, she was already dead."

"And these mysterious killers, they had the guns?" Tackett asked, nearly spitting with his disgust at what he perceived as an outrageous lie.

"They tried to kill us. They missed. We got lucky, I guess," Jack replied. Then he turned and glared at the two lawmen. "If you could call this luck."

Tackett stood and stalked across the room toward Jack. The sheriff glared at him, tried to force him to make eye contact. Finally Jack turned to meet his penetrating gaze.

"You killed the girl," Tackett said, voice cold. "You killed Kenny Oberst. And I'm wondering if you have an alibi for two other recent murders up here."

Jack sneered at him. "For Christ's sake, Sheriff, even you don't believe that. So why do you have us locked up in here?"

"Why don't I believe that?" the sheriff asked, incredulous.

Molly's eyes lit up. "The blood."

"What?" Deputy Vance asked.

"There's no blood on our clothes," she went on. Then she turned to gaze at Jack and the sheriff, and knew it was true. "If we had killed that girl, we'd be covered in her blood. We're not."

Tackett's nostrils flared and he lifted his chin slightly. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded map. "I found this in your pocket, Jack." He unfolded it.

Molly cringed. On the map were all the marks they had made when charting where the Prowlers had left the corpses over the years. It was a map of where murders had been committed in the area around Buckton, going back decades.

"I'm not going to ask what the
x
's are just yet. For now, answer me this. These three," he pointed to a small cluster on the page, "they're at the old Bartleby place. That's where we arrested you. Want to explain that?"

Deputy Vance stepped up to study the map, then glared at them both. "They told me they'd stumbled on that place hiking the other day, and were trying to find it again so they could have a picnic there."

Jack only glared at them. "There's no blood on us, Sheriff. How do you explain that?"

"Maybe I don't have to. You're in this. You were the only ones there. And I know those guns were yours. You can't even tell us what these killers supposedly looked like."

A shiver went through Molly, but Jack only laughed. He walked back to the chair, shaking his head, and sat down again. When he glanced up at the sheriff and Deputy Vance again, the almost perverse smile was still there, but his eyes were filled with pain. This was the Jack she knew, the boy she had been through high school with, the one who had worked so hard and lost so much and never been anything but good because he didn't know how to be anything else.

The moment he revealed that pain within him, Molly knew that he was going to do something stupid.

"Jack - " she began, trying to caution him.

But all caution was gone from him.

"You never asked us," Jack said. His eyes went from Tackett to Vance, and then back. "How come you never asked us before this? What they looked like, I mean. I'm guessing it's because you already know."

Molly stiffened. She had her own suspicions about the sheriff, for a lot of reasons, but she doubted that bringing them up was the wisest thing to do.

Especially if they were true.

The gray box of a room seemed to grow smaller around them. Tackett crossed his arms and stood officiously over them. Deputy Vance glanced back and forth between his boss and his suspects with an expression of utter confusion on his features. But it was clear he sensed that something unusual was going on here. A weird energy crackled in the room.