Phobia KDP (18 page)

Herne’s breath reeked of whiskey, but his gaze was cold and sober.

“You know what today is, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes darting back and forth between Tucker and Saxon. “Today is Saturday. It’s his day to heal. Today the doctor is in.”

Cheryl Brandt’s home was only a few short blocks from the Carlisle art gallery where she worked as curator. Her neighborhood was mostly office buildings, cheap restaurants, and some old three-story homes that had been converted to apartments. Few trees dotted the sidewalks. Most had been removed when the city widened the street to accommodate extra traffic. The air was scented with pizza and fried chicken, so pungent he could almost taste the grease.

Entering her home was easy for him. Although Cheryl had locked her apartment door, it was nothing more than a basic lock on her doorknob. No bolt. No chain. Opening the door was as simple as slipping his credit card through the crack.

He wore sneakers so his footsteps were silent as he crept through her home. It was as he expected: covered in floral fabrics and ivy wallpaper. A woman who takes no time to adorn her own body must focus her need for beauty somewhere. In Cheryl’s case, he realized, she centered her aesthetic attention on her home.

He noticed that she didn’t have any plants. Living plants would require water. But a small cluster of framed photographs, mostly of an older man and woman, decorated a shelf with an ivy scroll carved into the painted wood. He looked closely and saw the family resemblance between Cheryl and the woman: the same pert nose, the same blond hair.
Her parents,
he thought. The Healer imagined the couple as they succumbed to their watery deaths, opening their mouths to scream, only to feel the weight of water as it rushed into their lungs.

Her bedroom door was slightly ajar. He’d watched her movements often enough to know that she was a late sleeper, generally awakening after nine o’clock. It was only eight.

He slipped into her bedroom and stood at the foot of her bed, watching her with the cool precision of a surgeon about to cut into a patient. Her blond hair lay in loose waves around her face. Long lashes grazed her pale cheeks. She was beautiful.

He reached down and grabbed her blankets, which were nothing more than thin cotton sheets, worn with age. With a slight tug he pulled them aside to expose the top of her foot. Then he tapped her toes with his gun.

The Glock 9mm was the same he had used to heal Charles Emmert. Years ago he had spent a night in Pittsburgh, hanging in seedy bars and meeting acquaintances. By the end of the evening he had acquired the gun, a Taser, some police-quality Mace, and an assortment of illegal drugs from a white kid dressed as a gangster.

Cheryl shifted in the bed and sighed. He tapped her foot again.

She sat straight up and looked at him, her eyes wide.

“Make a sound and you’re dead,” he said, waving the gun in her face.

She clamped her mouth shut and grabbed at the blankets, pulling them to her chin. She exposed her white panties—the only garment she wore other than a small pink tee-shirt—as she curled up her knees and pressed her back against the headboard. “What do you want?” she whimpered.

“It’s not what I want, Cheryl,” he said. “It’s what
you
want.”

“What?” she asked. Her teeth began chattering, and he could barely understand her stammers. “What are you talking about?”

“You want to be healed. To be free of your fear. I’m here to give that to you.”

She opened her mouth again. But before she could utter a sound, he slapped a piece of duct tape across her lips.

“There’s really not much of a need for chat,” he said. “I’ve heard everything you have to say on the subject. You’ve been very honest and direct in your therapy sessions. Now stand up,” he commanded.

Behind her tape he could hear sobs. Tears slipped from her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. She gasped beneath the tape, gagging and gurgling in her throat.

“Take it easy,” he said. “Just breathe through your nose. Inhale… exhale…”

She continued to stare at him.

“Get up,” he said again.

She shook her head, moaning through the tape that held her lips together.

“Would you prefer I put a bullet through your head? I promise, Cheryl. When this is all over, you’ll be thanking me. Now stand up.”

She looked at him, but there was no hope in her eyes. Head bowed, she swung her legs off the bed and stood.

“Turn around. Face the bed.”

She did as he demanded. In a few swift moves he had her hands and feet neatly bound with tape. She swayed for a moment and then crumpled to the floor.

He left the gun on her nightstand and hoisted her over his shoulder like a bulk bag of fertilizer. He guessed that the small door off her bedroom was a bathroom.

He was right.

The bathroom wasn’t roomy, but it would do. It smelled of baby wipes and Lysol spray, reminding him of the maternity ward of an old hospital. His shoes left imprints on her fluffy lavender rugs, and he made a mental note to shake out his footprints before he left. Her feet dangled in the air, and as he swung her body around to dump her into the tub, they struck some boxes of baby wipes. The boxes clattered to the floor. He dropped her unceremoniously into the bathtub, where she flopped like a fish on a pier. Her eyes were huge with panic.

“Just calm down,” The Healer said, unable to hide the irritation in his voice. He thought,
Why are they all so reluctant to be healed
?

She ignored him. Or maybe didn’t hear him. She continued to thump around in the tub, as if she were trying to throw her body out of it.

He turned the knob on the faucet. A small stream of water, barely more than a trickle, hit her foot. Her breath came short and quick, and the tape muffled her scream so it sounded like an animal screech. She thrashed her body, twisting and turning it in the slippery fiberglass.

Worried that the neighbors might hear the sound of her thumps in the bathtub, he tried to soothe her.

“It’s going to be fine,” he said. “When this is all over, you won’t be afraid of water.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. He knew panic had clogged her ears. She continued to flail in the tub.

He sighed and turned the knob on the faucet so the water flowed faster. If she wasn’t going to appreciate the
process
of her therapy, there was no point in prolonging it.

He stepped back into her bedroom and turned on her stereo, choosing a hip-hop station and cranking up the volume. Perhaps the music would disguise the sounds of her thumping. If not, maybe the neighbors would assume she was dancing. He sighed again. He’d hoped to spend some time enjoying Cheryl’s therapy. But now he was forced to speed through it. He had to be gone before someone called the police to complain about the noise.

He returned to the bathroom, where she still writhed in the tub. She lay on her back and her contorted movements splashed water on her face. He heard her gag and gasp through the tape as she inhaled water in her nose. Puddles dampened the bathroom floor, their glimmer reflecting Cheryl’s terror.

He could see her energy had drained and her movements had grown weaker. The water almost covered her stomach. Strings of blond hair, wet and slick, were plastered across her cheek. The moisture soaked through her shirt and underwear, and he could see the outline of her nipples and the patch of hair between her legs.

Her struggling slowed until it almost stopped. Her movements were nothing more than the occasional thrust of her hips. He leaned over the tub and pressed a hand against her breast, holding her body still. She stared at him with wary eyes and her nostrils flared as she breathed deeply, as if trying to inhale every last molecule of precious oxygen.

“Isn’t this what you want, Cheryl? To be free of your fear?”

She shook her head and tried to speak, but he pressed harder against her chest. Her body slipped deeper into the water and her eyes widened. She tried to struggle again, but he held her firmly in place.

“It
is
what you want, even if you don’t know it. I’m The Healer. You’re the patient. I know what’s best for you.” He paused, watching the water rise. By now it had reached the bottom of her chin. “If you want to conquer your fear, you must face it. This is the only way. It will all be over soon.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Herne pushed his tuna melt around with his fork, uninterested in the dry fish and processed cheese. Across from him sat Tucker, alternating bites of his potatoes—sliced and fried on the grill—with bites of his hamburger. Every third time Tucker chewed, his lips would separate just enough for Herne to see the mash of food in his mouth. He averted his eyes and glanced at Sherry as she dashed back and forth across the restaurant with a coffee pot, her ample hips swishing beneath her polyester pants.

Customers packed into Shady Hill Diner on Monday afternoon. This was the day everything was fresh. On Monday, the potatoes weren’t yesterday’s leftovers and the burgers had been shaped into patties that morning. By Friday, those burgers were chopped and turned into chili, and the potatoes were recycled five different ways. The food would still
taste
good, but it would lack Monday’s fresh flavor.

So folks in Hurricane liked to go out to lunch on Monday to break up the doldrums of the day. The scent of sizzling grease and frying meat drew customers into the diner’s doors.

The counter was lined with people eating sandwiches and potatoes. A few sipped coffee while sampling the pie, the only thing at Shady Hill Diner that was made fresh every day. Maude Jameson, a Mennonite widow, was paid to make the pies in her kitchen every morning. Technically, the kitchen in her farmhouse wasn’t approved for commercial baking. But no one in Hurricane was going to call the Health Department on Maude. She made the best blueberry crumb pie in town.

Herne sat and ate and went through the motions of everyday life, waiting for news. No one had yet found a body. But Herne knew one would eventually be discovered.

Tucker’s voice broke through his thoughts. “What phobia will it be this time? Fear of heights? Fear of cats?”

“It could be anything,” Herne said.

“I fucking know it,” Tucker replied. “Damn that Lochhead for not giving us more information. There’s a special place in hell reserved for shitheads like him.”

“Probably,” Herne said. “Did you have any fears when you were a kid?”

“I did,” Tucker said. “I was scared of clowns.”

“I’ll bet that made birthdays fun,” Herne said.

“Actually, my parents were great about it. They never made me feel childish or silly. If I got invited to birthday parties, they’d always call the parents first and ask about clowns. But they didn’t tell the other parents about my fear. They just said I was allergic to the fucking face paint.”

Herne chuckled.

“Anyway,” Tucker said. “I got over it, of course, as I got older. But I admit, I still find clowns a little bit creepy. I mean, it’s completely fucked up. We tell kids to stay away from strangers.
Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t take candy from strangers.
Then we force them to take candy and balloons from a very fucked up looking stranger.” Tucker paused. “No wonder kids today are fucked up. It’s clowns. Clowns fuck up our kids.”

The two men chuckled together, but Herne knew their laughter was forced.

“Good thing you got over your fear of clowns,” Herne said. “Otherwise, you might be on The Healer’s hit list.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Sure,” Herne said. “He’d dress up like Bozo and strangle you with a balloon giraffe.”

This time their laughter was genuine, though to Herne’s ears it sounded shrill and uncontrolled.
Almost like hysteria
, Herne thought.
Hysteria created from fear. Fear that we won’t be able to find the killer
.

“So what about you? Do you have any fears?” Tucker asked.

“Fire,” Herne responded. “Fire scares the shit out of me.”

“Because it killed Maggie?” Tucker asked.

Herne shook his head. “No. Not because it kills. Because it consumes.”

Tucker just looked at his friend, and Herne ducked his head at the scrutiny. He knew Tucker didn’t understand. No one understood.

The bell above the door tinkled and most people glanced over to look at the newcomer. In a town like Hurricane, where everyone knew everyone else, the newest customer might just be a cousin or a neighbor or an old high school teacher.

Lieutenant Saxon walked through the door, bringing with her a brief wave of heat as the outdoor air tried to push its way into the cool diner. A few people nodded a greeting as she passed. Some of the men eyed her curves, feminine despite the boxy cut of her uniform shirt. Most simply stared at her. News of the murders had traveled quickly through Hurricane. The police were no longer liked and honored in town. They’d become the people who couldn’t protect the public.

She slid into a chair at Herne and Tucker’s table. Her voice was low when she spoke. “Another woman has been reported missing,” she almost whispered. “But she’s not a Hurricane resident.”