Authors: Carolyn Arnold
Chapter 20
He swept his flashlight across the dirt path that was littered with small twigs and leaves from the surrounding trees. The weather had been unpredictable lately with high winds setting in without warning. He heard the trees howling above him, but the voice made it through the rustling leaves, reprimanding him, and scolding him.
You are a failure.
You have to make amends for this.
Be a man and make it happen.
You let it come to this.
You were careless.
I knew you didn’t have it in you. I knew all along.
His heart beat rapidly. Something snapped behind him.
He spun, casting the pinpointed light to the bushes. They shook. Something was in there. A few more steps, taken while walking backward, he kept his eyes on the shaking leaves. Was the source of the voice here to haunt him?
The doctors told him it lived in his head—the source of it simply a mental condition. But there were moments when it was so real that he swore he could reach out and touch the root of it, as if it were coming from a living being.
He hated coming out here at night. It gave him shivers down his spine and tickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He swore he could feel each of them rise in sequence.
“Go away.”
The bushes stopped moving.
“I mean it. Go away!” He turned and hurried his pace. There was more noise behind him. There was a pounding in his ears.
The voice was closing in on him, advancing from behind and the sides.
“Go away!”
You are a loser!
He plugged his ears—one with his free hand and the other while holding the flashlight. Its beam now cast off-center from the trail.
You are never going to be a man!
The voice surrounded him now, as if inside his mind. He needed the constant ridicule to stop and leave him in peace.
“The graves lay silent. The graves lay untouched.” He repeated the chant aloud hoping it would keep the voice at bay, and it seemed to be working. Only a few more feet, and he would reach the burial sites. He heard the river before he saw it.
He fell to his knees. The flashlight dropped to his side. He pulled on his short hair and let out a scream. He wasn’t this man, not the one he had become. How did it all get started? He couldn’t remember now.
“You! You did this to me.” He rose to his feet, the light casting out in a half circle from him. He spun, looking into the woods, into the bushes. “This is your fault!”
You made this happen.
Prove you’re a man this time.
“No! No more women. It has to stop—”
You will never stop. This is who you are. This is when you’re most happy.
Flashbacks paraded in his mind, all the women, all the rapes, and all the murders that took place, that he had orchestrated—or had he?
“You do this. Not me.”
He crumpled to the ground, his head level with his knees, and he curled inward. His hands were fists, and his arms wound around him—still there was no comfort to be found.
The grave that had belonged to Nina Harris had, in fact, been disturbed. The ground, now dry, had served as a mudslide to the river and revealed his horror. He had lost one.
Shaking, he rose to his feet and visited each of the other sites. None of them had been disturbed.
I told you—too close to the river.
“Shut up!” He spun again, trying to find the source of the voice, even though he never would.
You can’t do anything right. You never could.
The voice laughed at him.
He held his hands over his ears. He couldn’t seek asylum anywhere. The voice would find him. He dropped his hands. “I will prove to you I can.”
You are a loser!
“I will!”
He chose to ignore the rustling in the bushes and the trees on his way back to the drive shed. His mind focused on one thing—proving himself a man.
Chapter 21
The Earth and Evergreen Restaurant could have been a remodeled funeral home, but I never shared that opinion with Becky. With its cream stucco exterior, wood shingled roof, and a tower at the back side, it also had the appearance of an old, modest church.
Inside, it was like Becky had said. They liked their military. Patches from police departments from all over the world were mounted to the ceiling, and Marine Corps plaques were on the bulkheads. The flooring was a green carpet overlaid with a plaid runner. Everything dated back decades, from the dark wooden bar, to the tables that matched, along with spindle-backed chairs.
“Well, you were right about the prime rib.” I stuffed in another forkful. “Very good.”
Becky smiled and turned away.
I swallowed. “Guess it was rude of me to talk with my mouth full.”
“No worries. You don’t like to take your time with your food, though, do you?” She glanced at the plate that had been set in front of me only a few minutes ago. There were barely two forkfuls left.
“Maybe you should be a profiler.” I smiled at her.
“Oh, please.” She further dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand. “As if I’d want your job.”
“You never know. The paycheck—”
“Yeah, probably stinks and isn’t anywhere near what you deserve. Just like the position I’m in, but I deal with less sickos than you would.” She lifted her coffee mug to her lips.
She hadn’t ordered anything to eat, saying that her stomach couldn’t handle food within two hours before bed. I found irony in how eating would disturb her sleep but coffee wouldn’t. She said she drank it more for flavor than for any effects from the caffeine.
“Oh, I don’t know, you get used to it.” I put the last of the prime rib in my mouth. With the swallow, I knew I might regret my decision to eat so heavily this close to calling it a night.
“Really? I thought you were still under your probationary period.”
“I am, but trust me.”
“Yeah.” She bunched up a napkin and released it on the table. “A lot of sickos in a short amount of time.”
“Yep, pretty much.”
Her eyes glazed over again, like they had at the station.
“You never get used what these people—if you want to call them that—do to other people. It would almost be easier to accept an evil spirit at work rather than that of a fellow human being.”
“Coming from the man who analyzes the human psyche.”
“No, it’s true. While illness and preconditioning play a role…” I let my words drift into thin air. I thought about how this job had changed me. Before my first case, the one that had the team and me in Salt Lick, Kentucky, I didn’t even want to think about spirit creatures. Now there was a dark side of me that contemplated how involved they were in our daily lives—how much control they held over our thoughts and our actions.
“You know why I told you that, back at the station?”
I put down my fork and knife and pushed the plate away. “Not really.”
“You were probably wishing you were someplace else.”
“Never.”
“Yeah, right.” She pointed a finger at me. “It’s written all over your face. You’re not a good liar, Brandon.”
“Call it a weakness.”
“Huh, I would have called it a strength.”
There were a few seconds of awkward tension between us, the kind that existed in a halt of banter between strangers, unsure of which direction to steer the conversation, whether to continue down the path it started on or take an entirely different course.
She broke the silence. “I told you in order to give you a bit of understanding into the mindset of these women. You are so focused on the unsub, and what he is or isn’t, what his past was or wasn’t. I think it would be easy to overlook the victims’ mindsets.”
“What are you thinking exactly?” This woman intrigued me. She was a combo of beauty and brains.
“A man cheats on his wife, big deal. Maybe it’s even a sign of being a man, getting out there. The world idealizes them as being worldly and sophisticated. Even though, in a lot of respects, women have advanced in the twenty-first century. We can vote now.” She took pause to toss out a sardonic smile. “However, women are still viewed as inferior. Wages for women continue to be less than their male counterparts. Women are expected to remain fit and active, while men can let themselves go around the middle.”
“Hope you don’t think less of me for eating all that just now.” I laughed, and she tossed the bunched-up napkin onto my plate.
“No, be serious here.”
“I’ll try.” I wasn’t in the mood to be serious. I was fed, though hungry. What would it be like with another woman? I had only been with Deb and Paige. Modern society would view me as naive and inexperienced. I liked to think I had values. With that thought, my failed marriage and images of Paige’s naked body mingled together.
“These women were all married. Respectable, right? I mean a lot these days don’t even go as far as making a commitment. Whether people adhere to their vows or not isn’t what I’m focusing on. But there had to be some level of morals there for them to enter into a marriage.”
“Amy Rogers married a rich, powerful man. Sydney Poole was the wife of a prestigious lawyer who owns a firm. It could have been something as simple as them seeing dollar signs. Women do like the finer things.”
“I take it you have experience in that regard?”
I took her question as a challenge. “I know for a fact.”
“What? You? Married?” Her grin faded when I didn’t form one. “Oh.”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Continue.”
“Okay.” She drew out the word. “Let’s assume they married for love as well. Women do adore being doted on, no matter how independent we claim to be, and we still gush inside when we get a dozen roses.”
“Good to know.”
“I don’t think you’re that naive Agent.” Her eyes drifted from mine to the table. I didn’t think she possessed an ounce of shyness. I was wrong.
“What more are you thinking?”
“Just that these women had some sort of moral compass. If they cheated, perhaps they felt neglected. This other man, possibly your unsub, was there to fit the bill.”
With her saying that, things aligned. “You think that the man we’re looking for may have had connections to the men initially and not the women? You are a genius. He saw these women weren’t getting the attention they needed at home so he saw it as his opening.”
Becky leaned back into her chair, the wood creaking with the movement. “Could be. So, would I make a good agent?”
I flagged down our server and ordered a beer. “Hope you’ll join me.”
She consulted her watch. “It is getting late.”
“Come on, one beer, and it’s on me.”
She nodded. “Sure, why not? Beer and coffee. Interesting combination.”
She laughed, and the sound of it transformed into a soothing resonance. Becky Tulson was already beginning to feel like a close friend.