Night Terrors (13 page)

No light. No light. No light.

The light bulbs!

She thrust her hand down into the bowl of light bulbs a little too quickly, almost shattering some of them and slicing her hand open. Her fingers curled around one that had to be the right size. She rushed over to the lamp next to the couch and reached over the lamp shade to stick the light bulb down into the socket.

Almost there.

She swore she heard something in the apartment with her now, someone moving through the darkness, someone breathing heavily, someone getting closer and closer to her, ready to grab her.

She almost dropped the light bulb. Her fingers were already slick with nervous perspiration. But she got another hold on it at the last second and tried to screw the light bulb in with her trembling fingers.

If I don’t get it in this time, I’m running!

But she got it in the socket. And she twisted and twisted the light bulb. It seemed to be taking forever.

And the shuffling sound in the darkness sounded like it was closer. The breathing sounded like it was closer. She swore she could feel hot breath blowing on the back of her long hair, disturbing it slightly.

And then she was rewarded with a blinding light in her face on the next twist. She tore her hand out of the lamp, nearly knocking it over, and she turned and looked around at her apartment with wild eyes.

Nobody was in the apartment with her. No Shadow Man waiting to bury an ax into her face.

She was breathing so hard, she was afraid she was going to hyperventilate. Maybe she would pass out right here on her couch with her groceries outside her front door.

Tara moved away from the couch and stared at the bowl of light bulbs. Someone had done that. Someone had taken every bulb out of her lamps and lights and set them in a bowl for her to find, right on top of her drawing.

He’d been in here – the Shadow Man had been in her apartment.

She needed to get out of here.

She bolted for the front door, leaving the lamp on next to the couch and she left the light bulbs in the bowl on the coffee table. She also left the flashlight on the seat of the couch (it didn’t seem to work anyway). She tore the front door open and ran outside. She slammed her door shut and managed to stick the house key into the lock with her trembling hands and twist it.

She knew where she needed to go now.

Tara grabbed her two bags of groceries from the concrete walkway outside her front door and ran for her Jeep. She glanced over at Steve’s apartment as she ran, hoping he’d gotten home in the short time she’d been fumbling around with the lamp in her apartment.

But he wasn’t home.

She opened the back door of her Jeep and practically threw the two bags of wine, cheeses, and crackers into the back seat. The wine bottles clinked together hard, but they didn’t break. She slammed the back door shut and hopped into the driver’s seat. She slammed her door shut and slapped at the door lock buttons, locking all of the doors.

Now that she was safely inside her Jeep, she looked around at the apartment building and then twisted around to look out through the rear window of her Jeep at the stand of woods and brush at the other end of the parking area. She stared at the dark trees and bushes for a long moment, waiting for some kind of movement in the darkness.

But she didn’t see anyone in the darkness.

She didn’t see
him
anywhere.

Tara turned back around, trying to get her breathing back down to a normal rate. Her trembling began to subside a little and she wiped at a thin film of perspiration on her forehead.

The Shadow Man had been here at her apartment complex not too long ago, but she couldn’t feel him now.

Because he won’t let you feel him.

She hesitated for another moment before starting her Jeep. She felt like crying. She wanted to be with somebody so bad right now. There was a killer out there in the darkness somewhere, a killer who’d been searching for her for a long time. And now he’d found her.

And he wanted her to
know
that he’d found her. The light bulbs were his message.

She needed help. Maybe from the police.

Or from the FBI agent.

She dug the business card out of her purse and laid it down on the passenger seat and looked at it for a moment.

No, not yet. She’d call Lorie first.

Tara backed out of her parking space and turned the headlights on. She pulled out of her apartment complex onto the street.

As Tara drove, she dialed Lorie’s number. She needed to talk to someone who knew her, someone who knew she wasn’t crazy, someone who could help her calm down.

Lorie picked up on the fourth ring. Tara had just been preparing to leave some kind of witty message so Lorie wouldn’t worry about her.

“Hey, Tara. What’s up?”

“Lorie,” Tara said as she stopped at a red light. She knew she shouldn’t be using her phone and driving, but she felt like this was an emergency. And if a cop pulled her over, maybe that would be a good thing. Maybe he could follow her back to her apartment and look over the evidence of an intruder that was sitting on her coffee table.

But then she could picture the cop’s eyes as he stared at her. A bowl of light bulbs proved nothing except maybe a crazy woman with delusional fantasies had taken the time to remove all of her own light bulbs to prove that not only was the Boogeyman after her, but he was playing practical jokes on her.

“What’s wrong?” Lorie asked after Tara hesitated too long.

“I’ve got some wine and snacks,” Tara said and her joviality sounded false to her own ears. “I’m on my way over. We’re going to hang out and don’t try to stop me.”

“Oh Tara,” Lorie said and Tara felt her heart sink at the sound of her voice. “I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you. Mike invited me up to his place for a few days.”

She forgot to tell her. This was the beginning of the end, Tara thought. The beginning of the distance that would grow between them as she and Mike grew closer together.

“Tara?”

Tara turned left onto a side street, not sure where she was going now, but definitely not heading to Lorie’s house anymore. “It’s okay,” she said a little too quickly. “That’s great. Wow. You guys are … you’re moving fast.”

“You okay, Tara?”

“I’m … I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound okay.”

“No, seriously, I’m fine. I just wanted to get out for a little bit. That’s all. Cooped up in my place too long, I guess.”

“Why don’t you ask Steve to go somewhere with you?”

Tara nodded as she drove. “He’s not home, and anyway, I think I may have brushed him off one time too many by now.”

Lorie screamed in Tara’s ear.

Tara’s heart jumped and she was about to ask if Lorie was okay, but then Lorie’s scream turned into a fit of giggling. Tara heard a man’s voice in the background saying something to her in a low and deep voice, something possibly seductive.

“Sorry,” Lorie said. “Mike was out for a while and he just got back. He snuck up behind me and scared the hell out of me.”

Tara rolled her eyes as she drove. And for a split second she despised Lorie and wished she was Lorie at the same time.

“Sorry, Tara. I gotta go.”

“Yeah, sure. You kids have fun.”

Another hesitation on the phone.

And then: “You sure you’re all right, Tara? You don’t
sound
all right.”

“I’m fine. Never been better.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Lorie told her. “I promise. And we’ll hang out soon.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Tara hung up the phone and drove, still not really sure where she was driving to, just sure that she didn’t want to be at her apartment right now after what had just happened.

She needed to get help. Maybe she should drive to the police station and report this.

Report what? What was she supposed to tell them?

Hey officer, you know that killer who’s been butchering people the last few days; well I think he may have been in my apartment a little while ago. How do I know? Because he collected all of my light bulbs from my apartment and put them in a big bowl on my coffee table where I would find them, right on top of a drawing that I’d done in my sleep, a clue to the next murder victim.

No, it didn’t sound so great when she thought about it.

But she still needed some kind of help.

She stopped at a red light and plucked the business card up from her passenger seat.

It was time to call Agent Woods.

Detective Perry arrived at Miss Helen’s only ten minutes after the first officers were on the scene. He’d been driving and he wasn’t too far from the crime scene when he’d gotten the call. He turned his unmarked sedan around and stomped his foot down on the pedal. Jackson, in the passenger seat, held on for dear life as they sped down Highway 301.

There were two police cruisers parked in Miss Helen’s front yard. One of the cops stood by his car as Perry and Jackson walked up to him.

“One dead inside,” the cop told them. “Shot in the head.”

“Robbery?” Perry asked.

“Doesn’t seem like anything was taken.” The cop hesitated for a moment like he wasn’t sure if he should elaborate. “Suicide, maybe?” He shrugged his shoulders.

Perry and Jackson entered the house. They glanced at the other two cops who were inside and they didn’t need to tell them to get out – they hurried outside on their own, leaving Perry and Jackson alone in the front room of the house with Miss Helen slumped over on her purple table cloth.

Perry studied the woman and the table. There was a set of Tarot cards laid out and a revolver at the other end of the table out of her reach. She was face-down on the table, her arms hanging down limply at her sides. The back of her head was a gory mess, her hair matted with blood and brain. The wall behind her was a spray of blood with a few chips of the woman’s skull embedded in the drywall.

“She didn’t kill herself,” Perry muttered as he stared down at the gun at the other end of the table.

If she had shot herself, Perry thought, the gun would most likely still be clenched in her hand on the table with her finger on the trigger, the finger possibly snapped when the gun and her lifeless hand flopped back down to the table. Or the gun would be on the floor near her, dropped from her hand as soon as the bullet rocked her head and body back into her chair.

But the gun wasn’t in her hand or on the floor or on the table beside her. It was at the other end of the table, right near the edge, almost balancing there on the edge.

“Forensics will test her fingers for gun residue,” Jackson said.

“They won’t find anything,” Perry muttered. “Someone killed her. Someone came to her house, entered through that front door, sat down and shot her in the head while she sat there.”

Perry moved quickly through the house and Jackson followed him.

“Nothing looks like it was taken,” Jackson said. “Nothing even looks disturbed.”

Perry walked from the woman’s bedroom back down the hall to the kitchen. His eyes roamed over the counter, and then he opened one drawer after another.

Jackson watched as Perry looked at him.

“All the kitchen knives are gone,” Perry said. “It’s the same guy.”

Perry closed the drawer and looked around the kitchen, and then he walked back through the wall of beads to the front parlor and stood near the table, looking around.

“The knives are gone, but he must’ve taken something else,” Perry said.

Jackson glanced around at the parlor they were in, trying to see everything in a new light. Nothing seemed disturbed in the house. He looked at Miss Helen’s body a little more closely. Maybe the killer had taken something off of her body, from somewhere underneath her clothes. But he didn’t think so. Her body didn’t look disturbed. Forensics would study the body, and then it would be studied even further at the morgue. If something was taken from her, they would find out what it was.

Perry stood in the middle of the front room, still looking around. “I think he came here to take something from her house. Something specific that he wanted or needed.”

“What?” Jackson asked.

Perry shook his head, and his eyes still had that faraway look in them as he studied the floor, the walls, and the archway to the kitchen. “I don’t know what it was, but I know he took something else.”

Tara listened to the ringing on her cell phone as a horn honked behind her. She looked up at the traffic light – it was green.

She gunned the gas and the Jeep’s engine roared as it took forever to build up speed. She drove as she listened to the ringing, thinking that she would get Agent Woods’ voice mail soon.

But then he answered.

“Agent Woods here.”

“Hello?” Tara said. “Agent Woods?”

He just said that.

“It’s me,” she continued quickly. “Tara Simmons. You came by to -”

“I remember you, Miss Simmons.”

“Do you still want to talk with me about some things?”

“Yes, Miss Simmons. Very much so.”

“Are you busy?”

“No.”

“Meet me at a place called Sal’s Bar and Grill. I’ll tell you how to get there.”

Tara sat at a corner table in the upscale bar and restaurant. It was a slow night; there were only a few people at the bar and three couples at the tables. None of the customers sat near her table – she had asked specifically for a table out of the way; she even promised a big tip for the inconvenience.

She was on her second glass of wine when she saw Agent Woods walking past the empty tables towards her.

He sat down opposite from her.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” Tara told him.

“Thank you for calling me.”

A waitress approached their table and she gave Agent Woods a lingering eye and a seductive smile. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Tara watched the waitress, and she suddenly felt a little ignored. David Woods was a handsome man, there was no doubt about that, but there was more than that to him, there was a kind of power and confidence that oozed from his pores. She had to admit that she felt much safer just being near him right now.