Point Pleasant (12 page)

Ben jerked the phone from his ear and let out a curse. His fingers slid across the touchscreen, meaning to redial, but he froze when a fresh wave of unease crashed through him. The wind had ceased. The area around the barn was silent and still.

Goosebumps prickled his skin, and the hair on the nape of his neck stood at full attention. Though the forest was to his back, Ben suddenly
knew
that he was not alone. Natural instinct would have him look toward the darkness to see who—or
what
—was watching him, but Ben stilled the impulse. He broke into a run to the Camaro and never once turned to the forest. He leapt into the driver’s side and locked the door when he slammed it shut. After a clamber to liberate his keys from his pants pocket, Ben cranked the engine and sped off down the driveway, leaving behind a cloud of red dirt.

Ben clutched the steering wheel in a death grip. His knuckles were white by the time he reached Main Street. He pulled into the first free space he found and parked. He stared up at Duvall’s red sign with its flourished lettering and took a moment to gather himself before he got out, crossed the street, and strode across the square to the Sheriff’s Department.

The interior of the building was radically different from anything he could remember from his youth, but this hardly registered as he approached the receptionist. Familiarity niggled in the corner of Ben’s mind; he was
sure
that he had gone to high school with her, but he could not place her name. Not right then, at least.

She glanced up from a stack of paperwork and recognition crossed her face as she tucked a lock of her long brown hair behind her right ear. “Ben Wisehart,” she said and smiled. “I didn’t know you were in town. How can I help you?”

“I—” Ben started, but he lost his words. The receptionist’s pale features darkened with concern as she continued to stare at him.

The sheriff emerged from a side corridor with one of his officers. The dark-skinned man was tall and broad shouldered with a deputy’s badge pinned to his chest. Ben recognized him as Daniel Ford, a friend from high school who had shared a fondness for George A. Romero’s zombie films.

Jesus fucking Christ, did the entire graduating class join the force?

“Ben?” Nicholas asked, stilling with surprise.

Ben blinked at them for a long beat, his words gone as if blown asunder by the same sharp gusts of wind that had shaken the Freemont barn.

“What’s wrong?” Nicholas demanded.

Ben tilted his head outside. “I just went to see Jack Freemont.”

Nicholas’ brow furrowed. For a fleeting second, Ben was sure the sheriff would berate Ben for defying his earlier warning, especially as it had been less than an hour since they parted ways on the sidewalk.

“He’s dead. He hung himself in his barn.”

Nicholas exchanged an alarmed expression with his deputy.

“Are you sure?” Daniel asked.

“Pretty fucking sure,” Ben replied and turned away to swallow down the hard lump that had formed in his throat. It was not the first time Ben had seen a dead body, but it was still enough to set him off kilter.

“
Shit
,” Nicholas said. “Sarah, take Mr. Wisehart to Majors’ desk and get him to take a statement. Come on, Ford.”

When Ben looked back, the two men were gone.

The receptionist, Sarah—
Sarah Porter
, Ben recalled in a rush; they had gone on a date in high school—was at his side and directed him past the reception area to a desk in the back of the busy office. She disappeared but returned a moment later with a paper cup filled with water. “Here, have this,” she said.

He drank it all in one gulp.

Ben thrummed his fingers on the table he sat before and had a cup of cold, stale coffee at his side. He had given his statement, but he had been deposited into a small room that felt suspiciously like one used for soft interrogation. Carl Majors, a deputy with a receding hairline and an even temperament, informed Ben he was being detained for further questioning.

Two hours had passed since Majors left Ben in the room, and Ben had just started to wonder if he would need a lawyer—if he would need
Kate
—when the door opened, and Nicholas walked inside. Ben expected to be told he could leave, but Nicholas—
no, the sheriff
—shut the door and took the seat opposite Ben.

Nicholas thumbed through a file in his hands and kept his attention focused on the paperwork inside.
Probably my statement,
Ben thought.
The sheriff did not speak. For the first time, Ben noticed that Nicholas’ left ring finger was bereft. He remembered Nate never wore his wedding ring while in uniform. Something about keeping his professional life separate from his private one. Bitterness surged through Ben like the sudden swell of ozone before a summer thunderstorm.

The silent treatment was unnerving, though Ben supposed that was the point.
Make me edgy, get me to crack
. Of course, the only thing Ben was liable to spill was that he had an unpaid parking ticket back in Boston.

Nicholas finally sighed. “Do you realize that the only thing keeping you out of a holding cell right now is the fact I could vouch for your whereabouts last night around eight P.M., which the coroner is estimating as Freemont’s time of death?”

Ben blinked in rapid succession as he took in the underlying implication of Nicholas’ words. “Excuse me? Are you saying I’m here because I’m a suspect in another man’s
suicide?
” Incredulity bubbled in his tone as he spoke.

“I’m saying my officers find it odd you would blow into town, unexpected, and then one of our townsfolk turns up dead.”

“He hung himself!”

Nicholas raised an eyebrow at Ben’s outburst, but he said nothing. Ben realized the other man was waiting for him to speak again.

“Well, like you said, I have an alibi,” Ben said, crossing his arms.

“You do. But you were seen early this morning coming from the direction of Freemont’s farm. We find that odd.”

“I went to talk to Bill Tucker, okay?”

“Why?”

“It’s a private matter,” Ben replied.

Nicholas leaned forward, and he appeared more serious than Ben could ever recall seeing him. “Lizzie Collins stopped in earlier.”

Ben frowned. He had no idea what Lizzie had to do with anything.

“She said you told her about your magazine.
Jump the Shark
, was it?”

Ben did not reply.

“Cute,” Nicholas commented. “She tried to find some record of it. Said it doesn’t exist. She also said she searched your name online to try to find some glimmer of your journalism career, but she found nothing at all. Of course, I could have told her that. I’ve looked before.”

Well, hell
, Ben thought. He kept quiet and projected an intentional air of calm, though he wondered why Nicholas would have ever tried to check up on him and was glad he had never given into the pressure to join the virtual masses on Facebook.

“Now,” Nicholas said. “I think you need to tell me why you’re here, Mr. Wisehart, before I arrest you for impersonating a member of the press.”

“I didn’t realize that once you left Point Pleasant, you could never come back, Sheriff,” Ben said, keeping his voice as cold and impersonal as Nicholas’ use of ‘Mr. Wisehart.’

“You sure as hell took your time coming back,” Nicholas said. Ben stiffened at the man’s tone; Nicholas sounded bitter, perhaps even angry.

“Missed me bad, eh?” Ben replied with a forced lightheartedness.

“Ben Wisehart, you have the right to remain silent,” Nicholas said as he stood and pulled a set of handcuffs from a pocket on the back of his duty belt. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Ben snorted in disbelief. “You’re gonna cuff me, Nolan? That’s nice. Real classy.”

“You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand your rights as I have read them?”

Ben stood and held out his hands. “Go on, then.”

The handcuffs were cold on his wrists, and Ben scowled at Nicholas as he locked them into place.

“You know this is ridiculous. I didn’t
do
anything.”

Nicholas said nothing as he led them out of the interrogation room. Ben’s steps faltered when they entered the office floor. A few of the uniformed officers glanced up from their paperwork and observed the situation with detached interest. Nicholas gave Ben a sharp push from behind to urge him to move.

“Majors,” Nicholas said to catch the attention of the deputy. “Mr. Wisehart is under arrest for impersonating a member of the press. File the paperwork and throw him in a holding cell.”

Incensed, Ben clenched his jaw to keep himself from telling the sheriff to take a flying fuck off the nearest tall building.

I guess I’m going to have to call Kate after all.

Hours later, Ben perched on a narrow bench in a cell all his own. After Majors processed Ben’s information and fingerprints, the deputy had led him through the labyrinth of the Sheriff’s Department to the holding area. Ben had expected bars like something out of a Spaghetti Western, but he had been deposited into a small room at the end of a long hallway that carried the echo of footsteps on its concrete floors. He was locked behind a heavy iron door featuring a thin slot that he had stuck his hands through for Majors to remove the handcuffs. The deputy had offered a civil nod to Ben through the small window covered with a sheet of thick Plexiglas that allowed the officers to peer in on their captives before he disappeared down the corridor.

Kate had been out of her office when Ben used his one phone call to dial his sister. Margaret informed him that she would make Kate aware of the situation as soon as possible.

Ben could have called his father, but he was not going to throw himself in the way of that shitstorm.
Fuck that
. Andrew had made it clear that Ben was to keep his nose clean while he was in town, so Ben was not about to give Daddy Dearest a call from the county jailhouse.
No, sir.

The whole reporter thing was
kind
of Andrew’s fault anyway. Ben had gone too far with it, sure, but what else could he say when Mae asked? What else could he say when he knew that his father had made up an entire life for him?

Ben would have been happy to tell anyone who asked that he was a writer and that he was considering using some of the Point Pleasant legend of the Mothman in a new novel.
But no
,
dear old Dad wants it Top Secret that his only son writes scary stories for a living. The shame.

No matter how many copies his books sold or how many positive reviews his work received, Ben knew he would never earn the approval of his harshest critic. To Andrew, Ben wrote dime-store novels best used for lining birdcages. If Ben was not going to ‘do
something
’ with his life, Andrew was content to turn his head in the other direction.

“Why don’t you join the army?” Andrew asked once. “You’re still young enough, they would accept you. Salvage your life before you end up back at home or living under a bridge somewhere.”

No, Ben was not going to call his father. Not when Andrew’s fabricated excuses for Ben’s long absence were part of why he had ended up in a holding cell.

The other part,
well, okay
. That was Ben’s fault. He had poked his nose where it did not belong but at least
someone
had. If Ben had not gone out to see him, Jack Freemont would probably still be hanging from his barn rafters. He was the belligerent, unmarried town drunk who spent most of his time ranting about a supernatural creature in the woods. He was not the type to be missed, not right away.

At least I found him before he started to rot.

Ben scrunched his nose at the thought and stood to pace the cramped quarters. The memory of Freemont’s swollen blue face would be something to fuel a few nightmares for a while.

The townsfolk would probably shake their heads and say the suicide was hardly a surprise. Freemont was an isolated codger with a ramshackle farm.
Bless his weary soul
, the townspeople would say before carrying on about their daily business.

Ben wondered if there was more to it than that. Perhaps Freemont had grown tired of the sound of children screaming from the forest and the recent uncomfortable silence around his farm that seemed to foretell doom. Maybe he had been frightened of the dark figure that haunted the landscape—the figure that only he seemed to see—while the other denizens of Point Pleasant shook their heads with pity for him.

Ben thought of Tucker and hoped he was okay.

The sound of rattling keys alerted Ben to a presence on the other side of the iron door. He heard the lock click out of place, and the door swung open with a shrill creak of its hinges. Nicholas stood in the doorway.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Ben said, his tone cool and casual. “The cells are just so
roomy
.”

“Glad you’re enjoying your stay,” Nicholas said. “If you’ll stop being such a dick, I might let you out.”

“I guess I’m going to be here for a while, then,” Ben said. Nicholas regarded him in silence, and Ben took the opportunity to assess the dark rings under the other man’s eyes. “You look tired, Sheriff. You should up your vitamin C.”

“Your concern is noted,” Nicholas said with dry indifference. “I just got off the phone with Kate.”

“How is she?” Ben asked. “I haven’t talked to her lately. She’s very busy, you know. Hotshot lawyer and all.”

“She said she missed you in New York last week. When you were there on your
book tour
.”

The defensive smirk that Ben had adopted since Nicholas’ appearance finally faltered.

“So you
are
a writer, just not for a magazine or newspaper.”

Ben shoved his hands into his pants pockets and said nothing.

“Kate also said you write under a pen name,” Nicholas continued, “because Andy disapproves.”