Loonies (18 page)

Brian glances at the two smiling men. “You’ve got to be kidding?”

“Oh, no,” Winch said, leaning back in his chair and letting loose a guffaw. “It’s a real hoot.”

“Everyone squeals with anticipation, watching the cow wander the field, cheering her on.” Wibbels said. “It’s a gas.”

“And a good fundraiser,” Winch added in a more serious tone, pointing his finger at Brian as if to emphasize how seriously he should take this.

Brian shook his head. “And what are the funds for?”

“Well,” Winch said. “Most of the money ends up going back into the town coffers for next year’s festival.”

“I see,” Brian said.

“And a portion goes to the church,” Wibbels pointed out.

“Yes,” Winch said. “Don’t forget that. That is important to note. The church is an active participant.”

Wibbels handed Brian a couple more sheets of paper.

“Here is a list of all the activities and sponsors of the festival.”

“You can’t forget to mention the sponsors.” Winch emphasized.

“I’ll be sure not to,” Brian said.

Winch leaned forward. “And I can’t stress enough that you must promote this on the front page of next week’s edition.”

“Well, if you haven’t noticed, there has been a lot of pretty important news lately.”

“I don’t disagree. But people don’t want to just read the nasty stuff.”

Brian disagreed.

“This is our big town event,” Winch said. “It is important to everyone in Smokey Hollow. It must get its proper attention.”

Brian waved his hand. “Okay. I get the point. I will make sure it gets on the front page.” He had expected that all along, but drew a little pleasure in making the duo uncomfortable.

“Hopefully,” Winch said, “people will forget about these unfortunate events.”

As the sun set behind the water tower, dusk enveloped Smokey Hollow. Brian sat in his car in the lot at the old shoe factory across from the abandoned train station. He had arrived just before sunset, wanting to get there before Ruth Snethen, but not wanting to park at the depot. He was trying not to attract attention to himself and thought the parking lot at the deserted factory would be better. A low brick wall with iron fencing along its top separated the parking lot from the road. Parked behind the wall, his car wouldn’t be immediately visible to passersby. His view over the top of the wall was enough that he should see anyone approach the train station.

He chewed an antacid tablet, washing the gritty remnants down with hot coffee from his thermos. His stomach churned and his palms sweated. He lit up a cigarette and cranked his window down all the way. The setting sun did little to drag away the heat from the summer day. He drew on the cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. It was a good thing Darcie never rode in his car.

He watched the building across the street, wondering when the retired nurse would show up. He had so many questions swirling in his brain, and he was excited to get some answers. But he was afraid she would back out. He wished she would have let him meet with her when she called. She had too much time to change her mind.

He also wished he could have brought Noah, but that would be too much of a risk.

Brian wondered how Ruth would get to the station. Would she come by car? Walk? How was she getting around these days? The police hadn’t been able to find her. Where was she hiding? A thought occurred to him. Maybe she was already here.

She could have been hiding in the station all along, and that’s why the authorities hadn’t been able to locate her. That could be why she picked this spot. But she had called him from somewhere. Surely there was no electricity or phone service at the depot. She could be shacking out in the woods behind the station, near Thrasher Pond.  That made him think of the Knackerman’s pot of bones. He lit up another cigarette.

If she was there already, she might not wait long for him. Brian grabbed his flashlight from his glove compartment and got out of his car, closing the door gently. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette to the ground and crunched it out under his shoe, wiping his sweaty palms on his shirt.

There was a clunking behind him and he whirled around, his heart leaping.

The dark hulk of the shoe factory loomed over him, four stories high, with rows of tall windows lining each floor. None were boarded up, but only jigsaw pieces of glass remained in most. A tall smokestack at the right rose higher than the building. Some bricks at the top were missing, giving the smokestack a turret-like appearance.

Brian turned on his flashlight and shined it along the dark windows of the upper floor. Maybe this was where Ruth was hiding. There was a flapping sound, probably a bird or bat. He kept expecting the flashlight beam to catch a shadow beyond the empty windows, but he was glad it didn’t. But still, before he turned to cross the street, he couldn’t help but feel someone watching him from behind those windows.

He kept the flashlight off while crossing the street, not wanting to draw unneeded attention but also not realizing how dark it was out here. The nearest street light was out, and the next one was at least a hundred yards away. It made Brian remember that one of the resolutions the town selectmen passed to cut the town budget was to turn off every other streetlight. It seemed unfortunate that the one by the train station was the odd pole out.

The fact that the night was cloudy, obscuring what moonlight there would have been, didn’t help. A large bank of gray clouds hovered over this end of Main Street.  The clouds didn’t look dark enough to be thunderheads, which was too bad, because some rain would cool the summer heat.

A few cars drifted by on Route 113, the whooshing of their tires on the night pavement reassuring Brian that he wasn’t alone—till he realized that he might not be alone anyway.

He stepped onto the wooden platform in front of the depot, its wooden planks creaking beneath his shoes. Brian stopped. If she were inside, she would now know he had arrived. He turned on his flashlight, pointing the beam along the platform to its edge by the lonely tracks. Even by what little light the flashlight beam cast, he could see the brush growing up between rusty rails. Tracks to nowhere, he thought.

Brian shifted the beam to the front door. One step at a time, each followed by a creak, he approached the door. Should I knock? he wondered. It wasn’t like this was her home, or maybe it was. Regardless, she was expecting him. He grabbed the wooden knob and pulled. The door was wedged shut, most likely swollen from the summer heat, and it took him a couple strenuous tugs before it lurched open, almost striking him in the face.

A whoosh of stale air escaped the interior of the dark station like some trapped spirit being released.

“Hello?” he called softly, as if afraid of waking somebody. “Ms. Snethen?” Was she Miss, Ms., or Mrs.? He didn’t know. He recalled she lived alone at the house he had bought from her. “Anyone home?” He thought it odd to phrase it that way. This wasn’t anyone’s home, just a dilapidated old structure from a bygone era, whose usefulness had long passed, no matter what plans the selectmen intended for it.

He stepped inside.

Broken glass crunched beneath his shoe and he stopped, just inside the doorway. The flashlight struggled to penetrate the interior, thick with dust that danced in the path of the beam. He probed the four corners. Nobody—though the floor showed disturbances in the dust that covered it. Someone at least had been here.

Brian’s mouth was dry from tasting the dust in the air, and he licked his lips. He wanted to spit but thought it would be rude to do so. His nerves, which had tightened, relaxed a bit…he was alone. But he was also disappointed, thinking maybe Ruth Snethen had changed her mind and retreated back into hiding. He scanned the flashlight beam around.

The light caught something.

He was
not
alone.

A ticket booth protruded from the front wall, its rectangular window partly covered by steel bars open at the bottom. The flashlight beam partially lit up a shadowy figure in the booth.

Brian’s breath caught in his throat, and his stomach tightened.

“Uh,” he started to say, but could not find words. He raised the beam a little higher and realized that the person could not hear him.

The light caught the top of the figure and the pillowcase covering its head.

“God,” Brian said, blowing dust from his lips as he spoke. He took a step toward the booth, pausing before the barred ticket window. The light shined brighter now, and he could tell the person was a woman. The cloth clung to the face, outlining its features, the indentations of the eyes, the protuberance of the nose, and the shape of a mouth open in what could have been an attempt to cry out before its scream was cut off. He knew whose face was beneath that pillowcase, a face he had only seen in that picture he took the night of the Mustard House fire. “Damn.”

Don’t touch anything, he told himself, now that it dawned on him that he was in the middle of a crime scene. He actually had to glance at his hands to make sure they weren’t in contact with any part of the station. The only thing they had touched was the flashlight now gripped so tightly in his hand that he could see the white along his knuckles, even in this darkness.

He looked back at the figure perched on some kind of stool and leaning against the back wall. If the bars of the ticket window weren’t separating him from it, he might not have been unable to resist the urge to reach through the window and pull the pillowcase off. He had never been this close to violent death. Sure, he had been at many crime scenes, but he was always separated by crime tape and a uniformed presence.

Here it was just him and a dead body.

And nothing else.

Unless.…

He looked over his right shoulder, then his left, not wanting to turn around. How long ago had the killer been in here, maybe standing where he was right now? Brian felt helpless and knew he should get out of this building and call Chief Treece. But his feet felt frozen in place, as if stuck to the dust on the floor.

Move, he told himself, but he couldn’t. There was one thing he thought he should do first, before bolting out the door.

Brian’s left hand dropped to the camera at his waist. Take a picture, he thought. Not because it was something he’d ever be able to publish in the newspaper, but because he could. There was no one here to shield him from this gruesome scene. No one to stick a hand in front of his lens or block his view. Take a picture.

But to do so he had to put the flashlight down.

Leaving it on, he shoved the flashlight into his right front pocket, the beam now shooting up at the ceiling and leaving the figure in the ticket booth bathed in shadows. Brian raised his camera, making sure the flash was on, and brought the view finder up to his eye, adjusting the focus. The shrouded figure in the booth looked further away, as if he had stepped back from the window. But he knew that was not the case. He knew he was close; if the figure behind the bars had been still alive, it could have reached out through those bars and grabbed him.

He snapped the picture.  The camera flashed, exploding a bright light inside the ticket booth.

The head moved.

In that second of light that had temporarily blinded him, the pillowcase had shifted.

The flash went out. He couldn’t see. There was only the bright spot in front of him from the intensity of the blinding flash. He felt vulnerable. Those bars wouldn’t be able to hold back the figure if it reached for him.

The spot in front of his eyes shrank and disappeared. The figure was still.

Of course it hadn’t moved,
he assured himself.  It was just his imagination. It was dead, and nothing could ever make it move again.

But he could move, and that’s what he needed to do. He pulled the flashlight out and made his way to the door, half fearing that it wouldn’t open and would trap him here with that thing. He pushed, it swung open, and he escaped onto the dark platform, not daring to look behind him. The door slammed with a thick thud that echoed in the quiet, dark night.

Stay shut, he thought.

The platform creaked even louder as he ran across it. He wanted to get across the street, back to the safety of his car. The shoe factory no longer seemed ominous compared to the train depot. His heels clicked on the asphalt as he crossed the road, every sound he made amplified.

Once on the other side of the street, he fumbled for his keys, unlocked the car, and threw himself into the driver’s seat. He needed to call the authorities right away, and felt the urgency of it, but he had been holding his breath and now, as he released it, he knew he would have to wait a few seconds till he’d be able to speak and make the call.

It was just a few seconds, but it seemed endless as he sat in his car staring at the dark, silent station on the other side of the street.

Yellow police tape encircled the old train station. Brian stood by his car smoking a cigarette. It was where Steem had told him to wait after the authorities had arrived. That was fine by him. He didn’t want to go near the depot, knowing what took place inside there. He was satisfied being on this side of the caution tape and this side of the road. Though something about the shoe factory behind him left him unsettled, and he dared not turn his head or look over his shoulder. No, that wouldn’t do. He didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t see through those dark windows, and didn’t like the fact that he wondered if someone or something was looking out them at him.

No, it was better to stare across the road at all the flashing lights from the police vehicles and feel the security that so many law enforcement officials provided, even Night Shift Alvin. It made him feel less alone over on this side even though he was by himself. It provided some level of comfort, much like the smoke he just had.

He lit up another cigarette. Was it his third? No, might even be his fifth since he made the call to Noah and waited for the troops to arrive. Darcie would be furious, but maybe she would understand. She was the second call he made, and though he reassured her that he was okay, he knew she sensed something in his voice that wasn’t quite right. He had tried to sound calm, but his heart was jittery and that’s what smoking helped. It relaxed him, and he needed to relax. Otherwise he thought his heart would explode.