The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (19 page)

“You couldn’t see the termites,” I said. “So you had to look for the termite cathedral.”

Quick looked at me. “Translation.”

“The affected know they’re affected and can somehow tell when others are. When Leonard started snooping for Turner originally, he wasn’t sick yet so he didn’t have that built-in radar for locating friends and enemies.

“So what if someone liked knives? That wouldn’t be enough. Leonard needed to find more complex behavior.” I thought of Turner. “Maybe this same person that liked knives had suddenly started attending anti-gun rallies.” Then I thought of Witherspoon. “Maybe the person attending anti-gun rallies was now calling out of work and not bothering to clean his apartment for weeks at a time.”

“He looked for patterns of behavior to weed them out,” Quick said.

Leonard nodded. “And I was good at it. Wrote the book for Turner.”

“What was the end game?” Quick said.

“Turner told me we were witness to the world’s greatest social experiment and that we’d be famous one day.”

“You believed him.”

“I had no reason not to.”

I said, “What about when some of these people turned up dead?”

“I didn’t look back in time at the already IDed. My job was to find the new ones.”

“You expect us to believe that mountain of bullshit?”

Leonard shrugged.

Quick said, “How does the disease work? Is there a period of dormancy?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know what causes it?” Quick said.

He shook his head. “Something local.”

“Speaking of your playbook,” I said. “Where is it?”

Leonard tapped the side of his head. “And no, you can’t see it.”

Quick and I looked at each other.

Quick said, “We can’t waste any more time.”

“Agreed.”

I touched Leonard’s arm with the gun.

He fell out of his chair screaming.

Quick got on top of him. The heavyset private detective tried to roll out from under him. I jumped on Leonard too and we pinned his arms and legs.

I had a free hand.

I used it to put the gun in Leonard’s face.

The gun wasn’t loaded, but I didn’t need to tell him that.

“Where are all your friends?” I said.

He was screaming between gritted teeth. The sight of the gun point blank terrified him. Sweat slid down his face, burying itself in his jowls. His eyes were wild.

“Talk!” Quick shouted.

“Okay! Okay! Okay! STOP! STOP! STOP!”

I stopped. But we both stayed on top of him.

Leonard was breathing heavy like he’d just had to chase a bus. “We’re drawn to parks…you’ll find some of us there.”

“Doing what?” Quick said.

He looked at us like we were the crazy ones. “Playing frisbee.”

“Where’s Megan Turner?”

He didn’t answer.

“Do you know where she is?”             

“No! We don’t! We just know they like to dance.”

“Where are they dancing now?” Quick said.

“We don’t know!”

“Where have you looked?”             

“Everywhere in town! They can’t leave town!”

I said, “Why not?”

“There is no why! Or why not!”

“How many are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many?” I jammed the gun into his neck.

“Two thousand, maybe more.”

***

We put Leonard back in his cell.

He was a sniveling, crying mess. Quick slammed the bars and locked them. The police station was abuzz. Uniforms ran in and out of the building while the phones blew up. In the front by the desk sergeant a man started screaming and it took four cops to pin him down.

Quick and I went to the office where Manetti, Pater, and Eamon were waiting. Quick shut the door behind us.

“Coming apart at the seams,” Quick said.

Thunder boomed and I felt the rattle of the earth being zapped. The lights in the station blinked a few times then came back up to full power. I could hear the rain hammering the building.

Pater said, “Detective Quick, may I propose a joint effort?”             

Quick smirked. “I was asking for that two days ago, asshole.”

Pater didn’t apologize, nor did he come back with anything. He just moved forward. “Our model projects that the knifers are greater in number than the gunners. You have more resources at your disposal than I do. I would suggest you and your men go to the parks and start looking for these people, while my team and I continue to look for Megan.”

“How can I trust you?” he said.

“You can trust me.” I took out the gun and waved it around.

Quick put his heel on the desk and hiked his pant leg. He had a switchblade strapped above his ankle. He offered it to me.

I felt the normal mistrust and unease around knives. They brought back bad memories. My brother Tim had died in my arms, a knife plunged in his midsection.

I’d taken a blade too. It had come perilously close to my aorta. In my worst dreams I can still feel it going in, just a little pain at first then a flood of agony.

And the one who’d put the knife in me was standing five feet away in the same office.

Eamon watched me curiously.

Was my unease at baseline? Or was it indicative of something more, the disease process lurking…

I took the knife and held it up. Quick watched me. Pater and Manetti watched me.

Eamon watched me.

I gave the knife back to Quick. “I told you, you can trust me.”

“How can we trust you, Detective?” Manetti said.

I jumped in. “Quick was fine when we were barnstorming Leonard a few minutes ago.”

Quick held the knife out for all to see. His hand didn’t shake. There was nothing in his face except grim determination.

“I’m good. Eddie’s good. If everybody else passes, we have a deal.” Quick put the knife on his desk.

The rest of the team was able to pick up both the knife and the gun they were carrying.

Quick put his switchblade away and opened his office door. “I’ve got thirty uniforms. If they can hold a gun and a knife, I can trust them. Is that about the size of it?”

“It is,” Pater said.

“Find Megan and her people. When you do, get them far away from here. I’ll round these other folks up. But that’s putting a band-aid on it.” Quick folded his arms. “How long does this last?”

We all looked at Pater.

“It could be over tonight. It could be over in a month.”

Quick nodded at me. “Keep in touch.”

“You too.”

***

We were in the van. Pater in the back with Eamon, Manetti in the driver’s seat. I was riding shotgun.

We were still parked in front of the police station. It was raining so hard we could barely see.

“Emergence,” Pater said.

“What do we know about Megan’s people?” Manetti said. “Let’s start talking.”

“Guns,” Eamon said. “They like guns.”

“Tasers,” Pater said.

“They know each other, and they know the knifers,” Manetti said.

“They faint,” Eamon said.

“They’re dancing,” I said. “They like to dance.”

“We checked all dance halls, big places where they could do that sort of thing in large groups,” Manetti said.

I wouldn’t let it go. “Megan drew that picture of people dancing. Dorothy Young held that old-fashioned dance contest last year…they’re dancing somewhere.”

“That would be in keeping with the dancing manias of the Middle Ages,” Pater said.

“Yeah, but where?” Manetti said.

I pictured Megan’s drawing in my mind. Tried to recall the details of the background again. Maybe it would lead us somewhere.

But all I could remember were the people dancing. They each wore the same vacant, soulless expression. And they weren’t dressed like they were in a ballroom. They were dressed casually.

And they were moving fast.

I remembered the motion lines around all the people, like they were spinning furiously on the dance floor. Their speed was exaggerated though. Nobody could dance that quickly. In the drawing, it was almost like they were running with their arms around each other, not dancing. Megan had kept the picture in her roller skates box.

Roller skates.

I’d seen a similar, empty box at Dorothy Young’s house. And she’d mentioned that place where they’d held the dance marathon.

Now it was obvious.

“They’re at a skating rink,” I said.

***

Manetti rode with me in the corvette. The rain was coming down sideways. The wind tried to push us off the road. The speed limit was fifty but it was worth our lives to go forty.

I was going forty.

“How can you see?” Manetti said.

“I’m using the Force.”

Manetti was working the GPS. “We’re getting close.”

“Lights out before we get there, right?”

“Right.”

The wipers were no match for the deluge. They just pushed the water around, not really clearing the windshield.

It was after nine and the full weight of the last few days bore down on us.

“You know, one of these days, the guy that hires me is gonna turn out to be on the level,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Long story.” Too damned long, too damned infuriating. Some of my clients had turned out to be assholes. I needed to hire a screening service.

“Guys that hire you are underestimating you,” Manetti said.

“Story of my life.”

“I did too.”

“Don’t get all mushy on me, Agent Manetti.”

“I’m not apologizing, just stating a fact.”

“Good. I was afraid we were gonna talk about our feelings.”

“It’s an advantage, to be underestimated. You should use it.”

“I do. It’s no advantage upfront when I’m negotiating fees.”

“Fair enough. But you’re a guy that doesn’t worry about money.”

I laughed. “I worry about money all the time. I’m doing okay but a few dry months and I’m living paycheck to paycheck.”

“What I meant is, you’re worried about doing the job right first, and the money second.”

“Especially now. Because I won’t see one red cent on this job.”

“Pater can work something out. And stop thinking about Turner. It was righteous.”

“That’s just a word.”

“An accurate word.”

Accurate, yes. But enough? “I know, but it only goes so far.”

“It doesn’t get you where you need.”

“Close, but not enough.”

“Close is all you can get sometimes.”

“This isn’t horseshoes and hand grenades.”

“Half a mile, take it slow.”

I eased down to twenty-five miles per hour. The windshield fogging now, on top of the rain. Manetti let go of the oh-shit bar. She was soaked. Her long black hair was plastered to her and dripping. She was checking the action on her gun.

Helluva woman when she wasn’t trying to prove so damned much.

She pointed to a sign I couldn’t even read. “We are officially outside of town.”

“I know. It’s the only thing that doesn’t make sense about this place.”

“So how did Megan get them to come here?”

“If they’re here.”

“I hope they’re here. We’re out of time.”

“The skating rink is a good place to hide, being closed five years.”

Manetti said, “I have a feeling you’re right about this.”

“Yeah, it feels right.”

We looked at each other. She had to be thinking the same thing I was. If this felt right to us, maybe we were just like Megan and her people. Maybe we too were
drawn
to this place.

“It’s up here on the right,” she said.

In the rearview, I couldn’t even see Pater’s van. I pulled off the road onto the soft shoulder and put on my hazards so they didn’t drive right into the back of us. Through the downpour I could just make out a big old sign.

Eastman’s Skating Rink.

“It sits off the road a little bit,” Manetti said.

“Good.”

“Big parking lot.” She looked at me. “We have to cross a lot of open space to get to the building.”

“They won’t see us coming in this downpour.”

The wind rocked the corvette.

Pater spoke through the earpiece. “We stopped about two hundred yards behind you.”

“Okay. I’m going inside. Everybody wait out here,” I said.

“Eddie, this is no time to be macho.”

“If I’m wrong about Megan and her people, I don’t want anybody getting killed.”

Pater said, “You’re willing to bet your life on this?”

“You asked me that before. I was hoping I didn’t have to. But I guess I do.”

Manetti said, “This is bullshit. I’m going in with you.”

“No w—”

She jumped out of the car.

***

Pater had night vision goggles for us. Of course he did. We had them on and were watching the skating rink.

We stood inside a thin stretch of trees surrounding the parking lot. We stuck to them as the rain hammered everything. My feet were sinking in the mud.

“Looks quiet,” Manetti said.

It was a wide, two-story building and it was dark. The front doors were boarded up. There was a long row of windows near ground level that were boarded too. No light from inside. There were no cars in the parking lot. No signs of any life.

“Now what the hell do we do?” I pulled off the goggles.

“I thought you were in charge.” She flicked a smile my way.

I gave her one right back. “I thought I wasn’t.”

The rain had drenched us. I was sunk up to my ankles in the mud.

“Guess we go up and knock,” she said.

“And hope I’m right about Megan’s people.”

We came out of the trees and ran hunched against the wind across the parking lot. I didn’t slip, though I tried to plenty of times.

Nobody shot us. Nobody came out to greet us. If there were a hundred people in that building, we wouldn’t have heard them it was raining so hard and thundering.

We got out of the rain and hovered by the entrance. All four doors were boarded up. Manetti reached for her piece. I shook my head.

She gave me a look.

“Leap of faith.”