Authors: Wendy Potocki
Foster looked down at his hands. He’d been so sure that this was a waste of time, but from Manny’s statements and demeanor, they might have gotten here in the nick of time. One more week of holding old secrets in and he might have exploded.
“Went missing? So you don’t believe she left town to get married?”
“Hell, no!” he flatly rejected.
“And why is that?” Todd continued.
“Because I knew her. That girl was about as ready to get married as a honey badger is to join the priesthood. She had sex with me about a week before she went missing. Does that sound like somebody that was in love with someone else?”
Foster and Todd examined each other’s faces for confirmation they were thinking the same thing. They were. Todd cleared his throat ready to ask the next question.
“No, I don’t, but if she didn’t elope, what you think happened?”
Manny’s fingers pinched at the corners of his eyes, “I don’t know,” he admitted, his head resuming its motion. “I just know it had something to do with that … that … skeleton.” The last word barely audible, Foster and Todd weren’t certain that they’d heard it correctly.
“Excuse me?” Todd interrupted, wanting to make sure.
“Skeleton,” he confirmed, starting to get nervous. Fidgeting, the chair squeaked in response. The quiet in the diner made everything seem a little surreal, the bizarre subject only enhancing the vibe.
“Oh, I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m not. It’s what The Innocents were all about. We were young and rebellious, and the old legend about Death was kind of cool. ”
“You thought Death was cool?” Foster asked, not understanding the logic or reasoning.
“Sure,” he replied, scanning their blank faces. “I see you don’t get it. Look, Death was the great equalizer. After all, everyone is going to die—even people that think they’re these big shits and don’t have to answer to anyone. They’ll have to answer to him, won’t they?”
It made sense the way he was explaining it. Teenagers were all about resenting authority, and here was someone that not only resented authority, but rid the world of it in one fell stroke. They nodded in agreement.
“I can see that,” Todd conceded.
“Yeah, me too,” Foster agreed. “Rich guy thinks he’s above it all, but he’s not. And then there’s this poor suffering person that …”
“Death helps out by ending his suffering. Exactly,” Manny explained. “That’s what it was about—from my friend’s perspective anyway. For me, it was a chance to get together in the woods, dress up, and scare people. It was all so stupid.”
“And the sacrifices?” Todd pried.
“You mean, the animals? We weren’t doing them. We’d find things once in awhile, but it didn’t have anything to do with our group.”
“You know that?”
“I suppose it’s more an opinion, but as far as I know, none of those guys were capable of doing what we were finding. If they had been, I would never have invited Barbara to join the group.”
“You asked her?” Foster asked.
“Sure did. She was sort of giving me the eye, and I wanted to be super cool, so I started talking about my group, and … well, I invited her. Talked it over with the other guys and they were all fired up about having a female member. I never would have done that if they’d been killing cats and dogs. Babs was a real animal lover. She would have freaked.”
“Okay, so she gets invited in and then what?” Todd pressed.
“We let her attend a few meetings and then made up an initiation. The one we made the guys go through was too rough.”
“Let me guess, you decided to leave her alone in the woods.”
“How’d you know about that?” he asked Todd, his eyes squinting in curiosity.
“Her mother, Midge.”
“Oh, right, right, right. Good old Marjorie. Very nice lady, but she really was out of touch with her daughter, and that is the understatement of the century,” he emphasized. “So we met up and made Babs recite some of our incantations.”
“Incantations?”
“Just some Latin phrases, or was it Italian? I don’t even know, anymore.”
“And where did you get them from?”
“The rites? By the guy that formed The Innocents.”
“And who might that be?” Todd asked, prepared to write the name down.
“Irwin.”
“Irwin who?
“Don’t know. I don’t,” he insisted.
“Okay,” Todd said, sliding his notebook back in his pocket. “Go ahead.”
“So Barbara was ready to leave, but we told her to stay put. You see, we bought this Halloween mask that looked like a skeleton. Gus had a cape with a hood, and so he brought it along to scare the shit out of her. If it got out of hand, we’d tell her, but before then, we were going to hide and watch the fun.”
“Okay,” Todd said.
“So we left her, but she didn’t stay where she was supposed to. She started walking. We followed, thinking that it would be even better this way. Death was actually supposed to meet people on paths they walked. It was perfect. The problem was that we had to get Gus in position, and it was dark and we were having trouble seeing.”
“And you couldn’t turn on a flashlight because ...” Foster stated.
“She’d see us. Exactly. So we were following and we got separated. Next thing I knew, Gus approached her and said our phrase—only it wasn’t Gus.”
“How did you know?”
“Costume was all different, but the kicker was when Gus came up next to me.”
“What?”
“Yeah, the mask was in his hands, and he whispered about someone else getting to her first.”
“And who did?”
“Don’t know.”
“It wasn’t a member?”
“Nope. That’s what Gus thought at first. It’s why he found us—to check to see if the plan had changed, but it hadn’t. We were sort of stunned and trying to figure things out when she freaked out. Ran away screaming bloody murder. Course we were idiots. We thought it was pretty funny. Until …”
“Until what?” Todd inquired.
“Until we met him for ourselves. We were trying to find Barbara, when that guy approached us. He was wearing a hood and black cape and …” he said pausing, running his fingers through his gray hair.
“And what?” Foster asked, intent as Todd was in finding out the answer.
“Well, he started out by using our phrase.
‘Momento mori.’
When he’d done it with Barbara, we hadn’t thought much about it, but when he repeated it to us, we got mad. I mean, who the hell was this guy to go around saying lines from our secret rituals? Anyway, at some point we remembered that we had our flashlights with us. So we turned them on, and one of us, I think it was Dougie, shines his right into this guy’s face to see who he was—but he didn’t have one.”
“Didn’t have one what?” asked Todd.
“A face. He was a skeleton.”
Todd and Foster exchanged glances, refocusing on Manny. Todd’s brows tensed, almost meeting in the center, while Foster scratched his hairless chin.
“He must have been wearing a mask, don’t you think?” Todd rationalized.
“Had to be. Skeletons don’t walk or talk,” Foster agreed.
“This one did. I know what I saw, and it was a skull. We ran out of the woods so fast that I don’t even know why we didn’t crash into a tree.”
“And you think Barbara got scared and left Holybrook?” Todd asked, not understanding his logic.
“No, I think she’s dead. I think that damned skeleton got her.”
The two officers jerked back from the table. Not sinking into the fantasy, they rejected it in toto. Todd held in a chuckle. He didn’t want to get Manny upset, but the tale was wild. While they’d just been kids, he was surprised that Manny didn’t know better.
“Okay, then why did this skeleton kill her and not you? You said he said that phrase, ‘
Momento mori’
to you?”
“Well,” he started, hesitating until he was sure they were listening, “things aren’t over, are they?”
“What?” Foster exclaimed in frustration.
“Don’t you get it?” Manny countered, becoming more agitated. “The game … it’s still running.”
“There is no game,” Todd asserted. “Except for the one you were beaten at. Most likely it was somebody just trying to scare you like you were trying to do to Barbara.”
“No, you’re wrong,” Manny spouted, lunging forward, his arms banging down and causing a loud boom. “We know what we saw and we all saw the same thing! The group broke up after that. There were no more meetings. Now if you’ll goddamned excuse me, I have a wife to go home to.” Standing, he stormed towards the door. Opening it, the wind howled as he pulled the cap over his head waiting for the two non-believers to leave him the hell alone.
Chapter Fifty-three
The next morning, Manny’s words were still rattling around in Todd’s head. Completely ridiculous for people to be carrying around dumb memories for that long, it was even worse for them to allow it to affect their lives. Entering the station house, he noticed the boys from D.C. hurriedly packing up files. Hoisting the latte bought at the town’s chic designer coffee house, he gave an air toast to Foster, summoning him to his desk. The seasoned professional returned the favor with the mug filled with station house brew, settling down comfortably in a chair pulled close for the chat.
“What’s going on? The boys finally find that skeleton mask that’s driving Manny crazy?”
“Hope so. Must have been a good one to fool him for this long,” Foster quipped, sucking down caffeine.
“I feel like such a jerk thinking we were going to learn something. At least I found out why nobody had talked to him. It was because he had nothing to say.”
“I wouldn’t feel that bad. It was fun waiting out in the cold with you. Gave me an inkling of what a stakeout would be like. If we’re ever called on for that kind of surveillance, we’re ready.”
“You’re right. And that story will make a good chapter in that book you’re planning on writing. Crazy kids in the woods—being chased by a skeleton speaking Italian. No wonder it’s haunted him this long.
Romance languages will do that to you.”
“Don’t think it’ll work. It’s the plot for every third slasher film released. Surprised those idiots didn’t really hurt themselves by tripping over their own feet.”
“Well, at least it got them to stay home. Not sure their parents were thrilled about that, though.”
“Yeah, all but one. Feel really sorry for Barbara’s mother. Must be hard when a kid doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“Agreed,” Todd responded, noting a federal agent cart another cardboard box filled with papers out the door. “So what’s going on?”
“Big doings. Last night while we were diddling with our spoons, they received preliminary results of blood traces found in Carol Hilliard’s car.”
“Blood traces? I didn’t even know that …”
“Yeah, I know,” Foster interrupted, patting Todd’s arm apologetically. “They wanted to keep it quiet and by quiet they meant not telling you. Sorry.”
His anger not ratcheting as high as it normally would, he had mixed feelings about being left out. After all, there was good reason for reaching that decision. God, he’d been so wrong.
“Anyway, the blood samples were identified as those consistent with Brent.”
“Oh, you gotta be kidding me!” he said, slamming the front legs of his chair down. Pushing himself forward, he ran his hand over his face trying to remove all traces of guilt about acting like a fool.
“Given the nature of that discovery, coupled with the blood results, they’ve charged both mom and daughter with murder one. Course they denied any knowledge of how or when Larabee’s blood could have gotten there.”
“Naturally.”
“And mommy went along with her daughter’s cock and bull story in trying to place the noose back around Jack Harris’ neck. Claimed the blood must have been transferred, because guess what? She suddenly remembers that she picked him up hitchhiking on the night Larabee disappeared. Problem for her and her psychopathic daughter is that Jack Harris was attending a rock concert about 150 miles away, and was seen by over 5,000 people. Unfortunately for the Hilliards, he and about 10 other members of the audience were brought up on stage to play air guitar.”
“Argh!” Todd cried, leaning back in his chair and banging himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand. Ace had it right all along. The discovery of the blood in the Hilliard vehicle sealed the deal. No getting around hard, cold facts. And here he’d been trying to get them to waste time searching Mulligan’s car.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he berated himself. The chastisement over, he fixed his attention on Foster. “Christ, I’m a goddamned moron.”
“Hey, our sniffers sometimes cause us to go off on tangents. No harm done.”
“Still … I was a hindrance and I don’t like feeling like that.”
“Yeah, but the process won out in the end. You gotta trust the process, Todd—and the people you’re working with. It’s why it was right you brought me into things. We kept each other honest.”
Todd clamped a hand on his good buddy’s knee.