The Uninvited (17 page)

Nick nodded, “Yep, I can live with that Chuck. I’m just sorry that I didn’t figure this out beforehand.”

“Stop apologizing. That is like you thinking that someone in the marines would have been on the Vietnamese side back in nam, man. You don’t suspect it, you don’t question it, because he is supposed to be the man that you can turn around and know that he has your six. I just don’t understand it, but I don’t think that either one of us ever will.”

“Well, Chuck, it definitely doesn’t do anything to make my heart hurt any less, man. She was such a sweet fucking kid. God, it makes me just want to do things to that man that are indescribable.”

“Well, they should be imaginable at the very least once you are done doing it to him.”

Chapter 29

Evening Ankeny, Iowa

Nick had pulled up near the Hardin residence a half hour ago. The two men had been sitting there waiting to see if someone was home and if they were if it was Matt or not. They did not want to have any conversations with him until they were where they needed to be. Nick saw the minivan leave with the wife in it and when she came back and no one helped her with groceries but the children an hour later that was when Nick pushed out of the truck, making sure that the gun was tucked under his shirt and out of sight. “Let’s go see if they are just as friendly when visitors drop in.”

Chuck said, “You sure you don’t want to wait out here?”

“No, if he comes home he’s going to have us there waiting for him. I think if the wife knows that we are waiting around at some point she’s going to see us and make a report to the police. I can’t imagine how paranoid the poor woman has to be knowing that, or at least thinking that, her husband was the man that went after killers. I would hate to think that any serial killer would want to track me down just to make a name for himself. You know, to be able to say that you took out the man that tried to take the Stranger down.”

“You are the one that knows about this shit. You just tell me what you need me to do Nick and I’ll be on your side. I really, really appreciate you doing this for me. You could have let it go. You could have let it be someone else’s problem and just called the police letting the information be handled by someone else and letting him go through the process.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that with someone like this, that if they decided to plead insanity that there wouldn’t be a really big issue about getting that plea to stick. The last thing I want is for him to live a cushy life for the next thirty to forty years inside a room painting pictures and pissing himself because he is so doped up.”

Chuck shuddered at the idea that the man would be allowed to live, and they climbed the steps, rapping on the door four times until a little boy answered wearing what looked like last year’s Halloween costume. Hardin's wife, Jamie, came to the door, pushing the boy back, yelling his full name, and he turned around running for safety.

She said, “God, you’d think with a father that was a police officer that you wouldn’t open the door for strangers for god's sake. You should thank god we live in such a nice community now.”

Nick put on his friendly face, waving. “Well, he might have seen my badge, ma’am. You remember me? I think that we met at the funerals. My name is-"

“Chief Lambert, how are you? Is everything okay?”

“Peachy, Mrs. Hardin, I just happened to be in the county for a convention and me and my buddy, thought we’d swing in and see how Matt was doing. Thought maybe we’d take him out for a cold one with some of that hard-earned money the state gives me to spend while we are away. I don’t know if you’ve met my good friend, Chuck Pendergrast?”

“No, I don’t think that I have….” She covered her face and said, “Oh my god, that young woman, that was your daughter, wasn’t it? Oh my, I’m so sorry that happened. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to hear that the son of a bitch got taken out. He deserves to burn in hell for the rest of his days. I mean, you can’t trust anyone nowadays.”

Chuck smiled uneasily. “Yes, well, thank you for those kind words. I am glad that it was taken care of as well. I would have hated to see the killer go to trial only to have them get a not guilty plea.”

Nick cut in saying, “So are we lucky enough to be able to catch Matt, sweetheart?”

“No, you know what, it seems like the further he tries to get away from police work the more hours it is that he needs to work. He said that the resources just aren’t what they were when he was on the force. He is really having to put in some serious time around this new job though just to get up and running with it. The last guy they had he said messed things up so badly that you couldn’t make hide nor hair of what it was they were trying to do on a daily basis.”

“You mind if we wait inside for him?”

“I would be happy to let you in, but this was just one errand on a list of many we got going. I can check and see when he’s going to be home if you want?”

“No, you don’t need to call and bug him.”

“Who’s calling? I got this nifty thing on my phone and all I gots to do is hit 'find Matt' on this little GPS tracker and it shows me where he is within about twenty feet. You can’t get any smarter than this here thing.”

She stared at it for a few moments and then started to laugh. “Oh my, I can’t believe that.”

“Ma’am?” Nick asked.

“Oh, he always forgets his stupid phone at home. Says right here that he is already home. He only remembers his head I think because the damn thing is attached.”

Nick held out his hand to shake hers and said, “Well, don’t you worry then. Maybe we can swing by his employer and see if he wants to go out. Just seems a shame coming all this way and not getting a chance to catch up with him.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to let him know that I saw you if you men don’t run him down first.”

Chuck smiled, thinking about this. “Well, we can certainly hope can’t we?”

“Well, good luck to you both.”

Chapter 30

Chuck and Nick waved as Jamie pulled out of the driveway with the kids in tow. Chuck said, “Christ, he doesn’t have his cell phone. Do you think that he might be out doing it right now? I would think that he’d have to give it some time before he could start out, people would start thinking eventually that there is a pretty fat fucking coincidence, right?”

Nick looked up, shaking his head. “I would like to tell you no, but I sure as hell don’t consider myself ignorant, and the fact that happened in my county the two things never dawned on me. You know if it wasn’t for all the killing and loss there is something that would actually be funny to me.”

“What in the hell about any of this would be funny?”

“The fact that I felt sorry for that poor son of a bitch. Each day and night I woke up feeling bad for what he was going through and went to bed feeling the same damn thing. I thought, you know if there was another job that I had to do if I wasn’t Chief that I would not want his job and it didn’t matter what you paid me. I came back from 'Nam and I could have lived out the rest of my existence living a meager, unentertaining life.”

“Yeah, I can’t say that turning wrenches after I put down my gun was a stressful job at all. I was just fine and I knew kind of like you that there’d always be crime, where for me there’d always be someone needing something fixed. So what do we do now, sit here all fucking night until that piece of shit comes home?”

“That, or we can go get a bite to eat so we can sit here watching with a full belly.”

Chuck said, “I really can’t say for sure that right now I’ll be able to eat.”

“Me either, just didn’t want you starving until he comes home. I know how you old timers get when you don’t get any food in you.”

“You know god damn well Lambert that I’m only three months older than you.”

“Well, from what Rosa said to Tricia, those are three important months.”

Chuck stared at Nick for a minute across the hood. He knew these were fabricated lies and after a minute his face finally broke free into a genuine smile filled with mischief. “Sorry, I couldn't help myself. Come on, we are going to get the cops called on us sitting out here with Missouri plates in the middle of an upper class neighborhood like this.”

The two climbed in. Chuck said, “I don’t know, this place isn’t screaming with activity on the street.”

The masked man appeared from the backseat before either of them could say anything. He held a pistol in each hand to the back of their skulls. “That’s why we like it here. It’s quiet boys.”

Both men screamed when the man appeared. The stranger said, “Pull out your pistol, Chief. I want to see it with your index and thumb only.”

Nick complied by reaching in and sending three shots from it into the back seat. The stranger screamed, going back in his seat and grabbing his side. When Chuck looked over to say, “You got the son of a-”

Nick’s brains and skull painted the left inside of the truck. A single bullet exploded through the window, which was covered with bits of black and gray hair. His blood and brains slowly rolled out of the large hole from the side of his head resting on his shoulder. Nick let out a final breath, leaning forward. The stranger looked down, seeing the blood coming from his side. He was unsure if it was life threatening at the moment but knew that by the grace of god, or maybe more accurately the devil, the bullet had gone in and out and would be one thing later to answer for.

Chuck screamed, in rage. His emotions were on fire and he had no wish to extinguish them. “Oh my god, Nick, Nick, oh fuck, I’m gonna cut your fucking insides out with a spoon, you piece of shit!”

“Now that’s the spirit. How are you doing by the way? Is the fact that your daughter had her head blown off and then got to have most of her remains put into a Ziploc back gotten easier?”

“I don’t have to deal with this. I don’t have to answer anything.”

The stranger sat forward in his seat. “You still live at 555 Nightvale Lane, right? You live there with your lovely wife Rosa? Let me ask sir, were you her first? I guess maybe more important, do you think that you will be her last?”

“If you touch my wife!”

“Relax, it isn’t my thing. I get aroused by ripping people’s guts out, hearing those sweet, sweet screams. Some are better than others of course, but you probably know what I mean. Let’s go for a spin. We can’t have the truck still sitting out here, after multiple gunshots. This is a nice neighborhood and my wife really likes it. Do me a favor and scoot Chief Lambert out of the way and let’s have us a little drive. I tell you what, why don’t we head out to a nice park? I always make new friends.”

“I’m not going to chauffer you to your next kill.”

“You will, or I’m going to shoot you now, drive myself down to Missouri with your two dead bodies riding shotgun, and kill Nick's wife, his children, and his grandchildren. And then I’m going to kill your wife, Rosa, but I’m going to skin her alive and send her naked, hairless body out to die in the street in front of everyone.”

Chuck opened his mouth to speak. He couldn’t even visualize what he was saying. “You’re sick.”

“Noted, now get Nicky out of the way and slide into the driver's seat. I’m sure that police were called after the first gunshot. I can only imagine that there are fifty sets of nosy eyes on us at this very moment.”

Chuck awkwardly slid Nick to his seat, climbed over him, and sat in the driver’s seat, feeling the seat squish under him and knowing what it was. The wetness he felt wasn’t something that made him feel good. Chuck put the truck in gear and pulled away slowly. The stranger said, “You take it nice and easy. Don’t go doing anything stupid, like getting in a crash on purpose. I’m a big guy and young, I’ll survive and you won't.”

"You pull out on to Highway 69 here and head north for about five miles. We’ll end up out at Big Creek State Park. They have camping and a beach; it’s really quite lovely. I went there with the kids so they could play and it was all I could do not to pull out my machete and just chop all those little delicious families into pieces right there.”

“I knew you weren’t retired. I knew that you weren’t done.”

“Why would I quit? Do you know how wonderful this is? I love my life Chuck. I couldn’t be happier and more fulfilled. Do you know how rare it is nowadays to be able to say that?”

Chuck drove, almost missing the turn but Hardin saw it and pistol-whipped him across the rear of the head. “Turn here. Do it now.”

“What’s with the mask? If you are just going to kill them, what point does it have, what purpose?”

“Oh Chuck, masks are fun. Do you know this is probably the first conversation that I’ve ever got to have with someone...before I killed them that is. The mask is scary,” He got up close behind Chuck, putting a hand over his chest and keeping the gun to his temple. “Do you feel that? Do you? Oh my god that is ecstasy to me. Now, I like to think I’m kind of a looker, so if I just came out with a machete as scary as a giant like me would be, I think it would lose something, don’t you?”

Chuck nodded slowly, feeling his heart racing, and wished that he’d just have a damn heart attack going fifty-five miles per hour down the highway. Chuck nodded because he really did see what he was talking about. “So what, you drive us out there, bury us and then take the truck somewhere to be disposed of?”

“You know that is going to be just a bit tricky now. You went and ruined my plans getting me shot. I’m going to have to go kill some unlucky bystander in the ghetto neighborhood in Des Moines now and give them Nicky boy’s gun there so everything matches up. Not going to go well with my current employer, but I’m sure that they’ll be more than understanding about it. I mean, I’ll be a hero killing the bad guy, off duty, weeks after giving up the badge, pampered by all and pitied by the wife for my pain.”

Chuck could see the campsite and since it was midweek it wasn’t very full. He knew that he couldn’t bring his problems to these people. He thought of Rosa doing the sign of the cross. Hardin saw this and said, “Don’t do anything stupid, Chuck.”

Chuck said, “We should have just called the cops. We had all the evidence that we needed to at the least open up a floodgate worth of investigations heading your way.”

Hardin went to say something and Chuck pulled the wheel to the left, sending the truck down into a ditch where it came back up looking like it was going to just drive right up the other side. Chuck pulled the wheel all the way to the left, sending the truck and it’s three occupants bouncing around like ping pong balls, bloody one’s mind you in the case of Lambert, until it skidded to a stop not twenty feet from the first camper.

Chuck was breathing heavy. He looked around when the truck came to a rest, feeling a sharp pain from the back of his lower abdomen. He looked down, seeing in the crash the gearshift knob had somehow broken off. What was left of the rod was protruding through and out the back of Chuck’s back. He looked in the back, stuck where he was in place, and said, “Oh thank god, he’s dead.”

The mask came back up slowly; blood was dripping from behind the mask down onto his shirt. The stranger shook his head no pulling up a machete for Chuck to see. The stranger drew a smiley face on his cheek and took the blade slowly, very slowly, an inch at a time, up Chuck’s abdomen and towards his neck, not stopping until his wrist was buried within his stomach. Blood began to pour from his mouth and all he could do was think of Rosa. He said, “I’m sorry Rosa, I’m so sorry.”

The stranger put a finger to his lips, shushing him, and whispered, “No, but you will be.”