Charlaine Harris (69 page)

Tolliver put his arm around my waist to help me along, and we stumbled down the remains of the drive that led beyond the house to the barn. I could catch a glimpse of Manfred's car on the track that ran behind the property.

And I felt the vibration, the stirring in my head. A very fresh body. “Oh, no,” I said, “oh no no no.” I began to run, and Tolliver had to grip me under my shoulder to keep me up. The sheriff caught fire when she saw my distress and she and the deputy pulled ahead of us easily. She drew her gun, and I don't even know if she realized she was doing it.

We all screeched to halt when we entered the dilapidated barn.

Tom Almand was standing in front of the stalls at the rear of the barn. He had a shovel in his hands. About three yards in front of him, Manfred was keeping to his feet with great effort. He was bleeding from the head. Manfred had his own weapon, a short-handled spade. It was so shiny and new I suspected Manfred had bought it that very morning, maybe on the way to the barn. He hadn't gotten in a lick yet.

“Tom, put the shovel down,” the sheriff said.

“Tell him first,” Tom Almand said. “He came in here to attack me.”

“Not true,” Manfred said.

“I mean, look at him, he's a freak,” Tom said. There was a snarl on his narrow face. “I live here.”

“Tom, put down the shovel. Now.”

“There's a human body here,” I said. “There's a body here
now
.” I just wanted to be clear they understood. I just wanted them to get that asshole Tom Almand out of the way.

Manfred took two more steps back from Tom, and put his spade on the floor.

And Tom ran at Manfred with his shovel raised to strike.

The deputy shot him first, and missed. Sheriff Rockwell managed to get him in the arm, and he screamed and crumpled.

Tolliver and I stood against the wall while the deputy rushed forward to cover the bleeding counselor, and Manfred fell to his knees, his hands clasped to his head; not to indicate surrender, but because his head was injured.

We started forward to help our friend, but the sheriff said sharply, “Stay back! Stay out of the scene!” and we did. She was calling for ambulances on her radio, and when the shovel was beyond Tom Almand's reach, she handcuffed him despite his bleeding arm, and searched him very thoroughly. No weapons. She told Tom Almand about his rights, but he didn't respond. His face was as blank as it had been at the church the other night. The small man had gone somewhere else, mentally.

“Do you still feel a body?” she asked when that was done. It took me a second to realize she was talking to me, I was so wrapped up in the tension of what had just happened, the fear that Tom Almand would charge someone again, the possibility of Manfred being critically injured. I didn't worry about Tom's arm wound at all. He might bleed out before the ambulance arrived, and that would be fine with me.

“Yes,” I said. “There's a very fresh body. Can I show you where?”

“How close do you have to come to this man?”

“I have to go to the first stall.”

“Okay, go.”

I very carefully worked my way around the tableau of bleeding men and law enforcement to get to the opening to the stall. I stepped inside on the old straw and began kicking it aside. It kept falling back into its original position, so I began picking up handfuls and tossing them over the side of the stall. “Tolliver,” I said. He was at my side immediately, helping. The shovel or the spade would have come in handy, but I knew better than to suggest it. “Isn't this a latch?” I asked.

Tolliver said, “I wish we had a flashlight,” and one landed on the floor beside us. Sheriff Rockwell had had one on her belt. Tolliver turned it on and aimed it at the boards at our feet.

“Trapdoor here,” Tolliver said, and the deputy cursed. I guessed he'd been one of the ones who'd searched the barn.

Tom laughed, and I looked out at the tense group of people in the barn. For about a dime, the deputy would have kicked him in the head. His body language spoke loud and clear. I could hear emergency vehicles approaching, and I wanted to open the trapdoor before they got here and there was even more confusion.

Tolliver found the latch quickly. It was very strong, I guess to hold out against battering from below.

We did need a shovel to open it, and without asking Tolliver went across the barn to take Manfred's. We stuck the spade in the little opening and pried. After Tolliver got it up a little, I held the spade with my good hand while Tolliver grasped the edge and swung back the trapdoor. It was very heavy, and we found out why—there was insulation liberally tacked on the underside, which would muffle any sounds from below.

I looked down into a kind of pit, maybe six by six. Probably eight feet deep, it was reachable by a steep wooden ladder. The dead body of Chuck Almand lay at the foot of the ladder. He was staring up at us. The boy had shot himself in the head. What drew the eye first was the terrible damage to Chuck's head.

Behind the corpse there was a naked boy chained to the wall. His mouth was duct-taped shut. He was whimpering behind it, and he was looking over his shoulder and up at us with an expression I never want to see again. He was spattered with Chuck's blood and I suppose some of his own. There were cuts on his body, and the blood there was crusted and black. The cuts were swollen and red with infection. He had no blanket, no jacket, nothing, and he'd been in the pit with the corpse all night.

I ran out of the barn and vomited. One of the ambulance drivers rushing in stopped to check on me, and I just waved my arm to indicate the interior of the barn.

After a few minutes, Tolliver came out. I was leaning against the peeling wood, wishing I were anywhere but here.

“He killed himself so you'd find him,” Tolliver said. “So you'd find out what his father was doing.”

“So I'd have a corpse to find,” I said. “Oh, Jesus, he took such a chance. What if I hadn't come back?”

“What if Manfred hadn't decided he had to check the barn again?”

“Do you think Tom Almand's known where Chuck was all this time, since he reported him missing?”

“No, but I guess he didn't have a chance to come out here to check. That other counselor asking to see Chuck made Tom report him missing.” Tolliver shuddered. “I never want to see anything like that again.”

“He sacrificed himself,” I said. I couldn't get my thoughts together. “And it was almost—almost—for
nothing
.”

“He wasn't thinking good,” Tolliver said in a massive understatement. “And he was just thirteen.”

The stretchers went by, Manfred's first, his face white as death and his eyes open and blank.

“Manfred!” I called, just wanting him to know that someone who knew him was near, knew what he had done. But his face didn't change.

Tom Almand came out next, his eyes closed, his lips in a strange smile. He was now handcuffed to the stretcher by his good arm, and there was a bandage on the arm that had been shot. I hoped he'd been shot good, and I wondered if Sheriff Rockwell had been truly trying to hit his arm. It had been an alarming moment, but then, that was what law enforcement people trained for, right?

Maybe the arm was best. Maybe the people he'd wounded the most, or the survivors he'd wounded most, could get something out of his trial and conviction. Surely he'd be tried and convicted, wouldn't he? We could follow it in the national news. The media loves a serial killer trial, whether the killer being tried is gay or straight, black or white or brown. There's no discrimination in that field.

I realized I was thinking crazy, and I also realized we had no place here. But the two SBI agents were running across the back lane like the barn was on fire with a baby inside, and they weren't about to let us go. Stuart and Klavin weren't out of breath, because they were fit agents, and they stood right in front of us. “You're here again,” Agent Stuart said. He had on proper gloves and an L.L. Bean heavy outdoor-guy coat, and gleaming boots that went halfway up his calves. If he didn't look like the little mountaineer! Klavin was a bit more downscale, with a battered waterproof coat that had seen several years of use and a knit cap that had earflaps.

“He killed himself,” I told them. They would want to know.

“Who?” I thought Stuart was going to shake me, he was so anxious to know everything.

“Chuck Almand. He killed himself with a gun.”

Klavin said, “Who was in the ambulance?”

“Tom Almand and Manfred Bernardo,” Tolliver said.

They looked at each other blankly. “The kid's dad and the psychic's grandson,” Tolliver said.

“She died last night,” Stuart said.

“Yes, she did. And her grandson almost died today,” I said.

“The last victim is alive,” I said, and they were in the barn so fast you couldn't see them for the smoke.

“Why haven't they brought him out?” Tolliver leaned and looked in, but then he gave up. He didn't want to go in that barn again, and neither did I.

“Maybe they can't get him unlocked,” I said. Tolliver nodded. That seemed reasonable.

“Wonder who he is,” Tolliver said after a long moment. The weather might be much better than it had been, but it was still cold standing out there, and we had nothing to do.

I turned to Tolliver and hugged him. His arms slid around me, and we stood there in the bright cold day, clinging to each other. “We'll find out,” I said, my lips against his neck. “It'll be in the papers, or on the news.” The tortured body, slumped against the wall, the bloodstains everywhere. The poor dead boy on the floor of that miserable pit.
Jesus, God. This is not what you intended people for.

I hadn't thought in Christian terms for a long time, and I was surprised to find myself thinking in them now. And I hadn't rebelled, either, hadn't had the “Why, God?” thoughts. Those were bad, those were pointless. Of course, I'd never found such atrocities, so closely linked, in adjacent graves.

“Chuck saved that boy's life,” I said numbly. “He provided a dead body for me to find.”

“Do you think he really cut up those animals?”

“Maybe his dad made Chuck do it, hoping Chuck would follow in his own footsteps. Maybe Tom thought if Chuck was guilty of
something
he'd be less likely to report his dad.”

“Xylda seemed pretty sure Chuck did it.”

“I'd hate to think she was wrong in her last big reading.”

“Me, too.” Tolliver sounded grim. “You think her loathing of him was what drove Chuck to tie everything up this way? I mean, everyone at the same time looking at him with such disgust, such dislike? And his dad acting right along with them. When he knew better, and the boy knew that.”

“Chuck was a hero. He survived living with a father that killed boys for fun.”

“But he didn't tell anyone.”

“Maybe he didn't know, until the animals were dug up. Maybe then he realized his dad was the one killing the boys, or maybe Tom told him then. Like, ‘Everyone thinks you're evil and sick now, so I'll show you something really evil and sick! Like it?'”

“Or maybe he knew all along,” Tolliver said, more realistically. “Maybe he kept silent because he loved his dad, or was scared of his dad, or because he kind of liked torturing the animals and felt he and Tom were two of a kind. Maybe he even helped, with the boys. There must have been times it would have been handy to have an extra pair of hands. Some of the boys were big, and heavy. Football players. Adolescents who'd gotten their growth. Frankly, someone as little as Tom Almand, I don't know how he managed it.”

“But Chuck put a stop to it.” I buried my face in Tolliver's jacket. He ran his fingers through my hair, taking care to avoid the shaved spot on the left side of my head. He patted me. It was intensely comforting.

Finally they brought the last victim out. He was covered with blankets, there was an IV running already, and he was strapped to the gurney. His eyes were closed, and tears were leaking down his filthy face.

“What's your name, son?” Sheriff Rockwell was asking.

“Mel,” the boy whispered. “Mel Chesney. From Queen's Table, up near Clearstream.”

“Mel, how long have you been down there?” said Klavin, keeping pace on the other side.

“Two days,” he said. “Two days. I think.”

And then he said, “I can't talk about it.”

I didn't blame him at all.

The boy had been there yesterday when we'd had our confrontation with Chuck. If Chuck had just told us then…but his father had come in, and maybe he simply couldn't. I wondered if Mel Chesney had been in the hole when the police were digging up the animals. Oh, God, that was too bitter to think about.

I was sure every law enforcement person on the scene was wondering the same thing. Mel Chesney had been down there for hours by himself and then with a corpse, thinking all the while he was going to be tortured to death. It was almost a miracle he hadn't died of hypothermia.