“You mean the red mist and stuff?” Unconcerned with social niceties, the kid wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Tell you the truth, Mr. Stryker . . . it all seems like sort of a dream.”
“I’ll bet.” Dev dug in his pocket, pulled out his card, and handed it to him. “I make my livin’ checkin’ that sort of thing out. Write books about people’s experiences with paranormal events and phenomenas. I’d like your perspective.”
The boy took the card but didn’t look at it. “I recollect your name now. Heard my daddy mention you a time or two.”
Since Dev’s opinion of Robbie Joe’s daddy was handily reciprocated, he didn’t dare ask for more details. Instead he pulled a slim miniature recorder out of his pants pocket and held it up so the boy could see it. “Mind if I ask you a few questions then? With the recorder on?”
A measure of enthusiasm showed in Robbie’s expression for the first time. “Are you gonna put me in your book?”
“Depends on whether I get enough material while I’m in Buffalo Springs to interest my editor in the project,” Dev hedged. Everything inside him shied away from using the events in this town for a new release. It was too intensely personal. And way too painful.
But even that nonanswer was enough to loosen the teenager’s lips. He embarked on a highlight of the events of that night, and Dev listened without comment until the boy ran down. Then he said, “Let’s back up to those lights you saw. The ones you thought were the guys’ flashlights.”
Robbie had worked his way through the package of cookies and was making serious inroads on a second Twinkie. Dev didn’t know whether to congratulate him on his intestinal fortitude or hand him a Tums.
“Yeah, I thought the guys were behind me. Just funnin’, y’know? But then I figured, shoot, it could be fireflies. Probably was, just like I told Becky.”
“So these lights were the size of an insect?”
Robbie scratched his head with the edge of Dev’s card. “Well . . . no, they were bigger than that. Like I say, they looked like they coulda been from flashlights, except dimmer, y’know? Like maybe when the battery’s runnin’ low. But in some parts of the Smoky Mountains, they got those special fireflies that all glow at once, don’t they?”
“Synchronous fireflies,” Dev said absently, thinking about what the boy had revealed. “So you’re sayin’ you only saw one light at a time?”
“Sometimes there was just one and sometimes there’d be a bunch of them hoppin’ around. Just like bugs do. That’s what I’m sayin’. The biggest one was like four inches or so. But then when I saw the smaller ones, they were half that.”
“And the lights were solid white?”
Robbie started to speak and then paused. “Tell you the truth, Mr. Stryker, I’d be makin’ it up if I told you I noticed. They made me think some of the guys were there, and then I started thinkin’ about
that
, not what the lights looked like.”
Dev didn’t press. Becky had insisted the lights had a violet ring around them—she’d been very specific about the color—but he wasn’t going to relay that to Robbie and influence his opinion. Instead he drew him out at length about the fog the boy insisted had come out of the ground, starting at his feet and winding around his body before spreading across the entire area.
“I heard Butch Tippon saw the red mist, too,” Robbie added. He was clearly anxious to prove he wasn’t imagining things. “And Becky said Silas Parker and Wally Greenberg did, too.”
Dev had heard the three men’s names as well and, in fact, had already talked to those men, and at least five others who had made similar claims. If their accounts were to be believed, given their separate locations at the time, the red mist had covered an outlying area of town of at least five miles. Dev made a habit of eating breakfast every morning at The Henhouse because there was no better place to overhear interesting tidbits like that to follow up on.
He saw the boy glance at his watch and, taking the hint, switched off the tape recorder. “I’m guessin’ you need to be getting’ back to work soon.”
Tilting the soda to his lips, the kid guzzled from it like a fraternity pledge on hell night. Once he’d lowered it, he said, “Yeah. And my daddy will check up on me to be sure I’m here all night.” His voice held a dejected note. “I got grounded on account of going to Ashton’s Pond after dark, which is bogus. Hardly none of my other friends did.”
Here was a topic which Dev could fully appreciate. He’d experienced that particular parental punishment frequently himself as a teenager. “It’ll pass. You’ve still got most of the summer ahead of you.”
“Yeah.” Clearly unconvinced, Robbie Joe stuffed the remaining candy bar and bag of sunflower seeds in his pants pockets and rose. Dev hoped it would be enough to sustain the boy until he got off work. From what he’d witnessed, he had his doubts.
“Good talkin’ to you.” Giving the boy a clap on the shoulder, Dev left him as Robbie crumpled his trash and two-pointed it into the nearby waste can.
“Nice meetin’ you, Mr. Stryker.”
Barely restraining a wince, Dev headed home. Having a kid address him like that was a none-too-gentle reminder of the passage of time.
There were other reminders, of course. He considered them as he strolled back to Benjamin Gorder’s house. There had actually been a few unfamiliar faces in town since he’d arrived five days ago, despite the fact that he made it back here three or four times a year to see his granddaddy.
And there had been others missing. Mike and Mona Reed had retired and moved to Chattanooga. Crystal Meinders had married—for the third time—and gone to live in Clayton with her truck driver husband. Since Crystal had given him his first French kiss in seventh grade and an eye-popping lesson on the female anatomy, he regarded her kindly enough to wish her luck this time around.
He passed a familiar picket fence and felt his heart grow a little heavier. Time was when he used to take a stick and run it the length of that fence, just to hear the racket. Got chewed out regular for it, too, and one summer had to give it a coat of paint because his granddaddy had agreed with Ida Trivett that he’d probably worn the paint clear off just with his antics.
Ida had died the past winter at the age of eighty-four, and her death made him all too aware that his time with his granddaddy was running out. Of course, Benjamin was five years younger than his neighbor. But his last stroke had left him weak enough that moving him into the assisted living facility had been the only solution.
The time would come when his closest family in this town would be gone. He gave a stone on the sidewalk a kick, just to see it bounce and roll, and considered that future. He’d been born in Buffalo Springs. Had spent most of his summers here. Had even attended the local high school. Would the connection weaken with Benjamin’s death?
Not likely. He turned up the narrow walk to the neatly kept story-and-a-half home with its wide front porch. This town had a grip on him. It always would.
At least until he could put the past to rest once and for all.
He went inside and booted the computer, bringing up the voice-recognition software that would surely go down in history as one of the most useful inventions known to mankind.
Removing the recorder from his pocket, he rewound it, then pressed play. The computer would type up the notes of Robbie’s interview, and all Dev would have to do was clean up and edit the passage when it was finished.
He hooked a nearby stool with his foot and dragged it over. Settling back in the computer chair and putting his feet up, Dev listened to the interview with a critical ear. No new information had been garnered, but he’d talk to every teenager who’d been in those woods before he was done, and interview any other person in the area who claimed to have seen the red mist.
He’d already decided Silas Parker was fabricating. His accounts didn’t match any of the others and was spare on details altogether. Dev was used to separating fact from fiction as he traveled around investigating reports of paranormal phenomena. It wasn’t unusual for people to claim they’d experienced something they hadn’t. Dev almost preferred it to the ones who were purely convinced they
had
, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Toeing off his shoes, he crossed one foot over the other and idly watched Robbie’s words dance across the computer screen.
According to Mark, the sheriff’s department had determined that none of the other teenagers had been behind Robbie Joe and Becky in those woods. None had shown up on the scene for at least several minutes after the two had found the body, and they’d come from a different direction altogether.
As for the firefly theory . . . Dev listened again as the boy verbally tried to persuade them both that insects could have made the lights the kids had seen. Although he hadn’t tried to convince the boy differently, Dev discounted that idea as well.
A more reasonable explanation, he thought, folding his arms behind his head and contemplating the familiar hairline crack in the dining room ceiling, was that the lights had been reflections of some sort. Or that they’d come from someone else with flashlights behind them, as Robbie had suspected, not wielded by his friends, but by someone who hadn’t yet come forward. Maybe even the killer himself.
Dev had suggested as much to his cousin, and to his credit, Mark had seemed to take it under consideration. But it had been easy to see that the sheriff hadn’t put much stock in the theory.
Of course, he could wonder about a whole different direction altogether and contemplate whether the lights were in fact spiritual orbs.
He’d encountered countless “evidence” over his career that reputed to be exactly that—balls of light that were physical manifestations of a spirit’s energy. Of course he’d mostly debunked such happenings. Those showing up on photographs could too often be attributed to poor lighting, reflections, or camera malfunction.
But he wasn’t a total disbeliever. Not by a long shot. During the course of his career he’d seen things, heard things, that couldn’t be explained away by facts or the physical world. Been scared out of his long pants a time or two, he admitted without embarrassment. And had learned along the way that most so-called paranormal events could be explained by science.
Others had to be accepted as something else.
The pounding on his front door put an abrupt end to his ruminating. Dev’s feet hit the floor, and he rose as the first shout was heard.
“Stryker! Get on out here so I can speak at ya!”
The voice was vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t put a face to it before swinging the front door open.
He recognized the man standing on the porch with little enough effort, though. Banty Whipple—nicknamed for the banty rooster he resembled—was red-faced and looked ready to chew a strip off someone.
Dev propped one hand on the doorjamb and rested the other on the doorknob. “Afternoon, Banty.”
The other man looked like he’d sucked a bag of lemons. “My name’s Robert.”
“ ’Course it is,” Dev said agreeably, although if he’d ever known the man’s given name, he’d long since forgotten it.
“Heard you was talkin’ to my son over to Easley’s Supermarket. Clem over to the Gas ’n’ Go saw ya. Said it looked like you two had yourselves a nice long conversation.”
“We did,” Dev said, growing more mystified. He crossed one stockinged foot over the other. “Nice kid. Favors his mama.” Which was plain good luck any way you looked at it.
“Stay ’way from him, you hear me?” Banty slammed his palm against the screen door for emphasis. “We needed to give permission to the sheriff and those state guys to talk to him. Even had to sign somethin’ before the media folks could get near him. So who the hell do you think you are to waltz up and sit him down pretty as you please and fill his head with nonsense?”
“Well, the fact is, Ba—Robert,” he corrected himself, “I’m not the law and I’m not the press. So technically I don’t need your permission to pass a few minutes shootin’ the breeze with your son.”
“The hell you don’t!” The second assault on the screen door came from Banty’s fist. “My kid’s not gonna be one of them weirdos you write about spoutin’ crazy talk about haints and zombies and whatnot.”
He was about to point out that he’d never written about zombies—although he would if he found an interesting case—but the man’s next words had the statement drying in his mouth.
“Don’t know as I’d want him talkin’ to you under any circumstances.” Banty spit his chew on the porch in disgust. “Hell, ever’body in these parts know what you come from, what your daddy was. Maybe some folks can ferget that sorta thing, but I ain’t one of ’em.”
Dev slapped his palm on the screen door and pushed it open so abruptly that Banty had to back up a few steps to avoid being struck by it. “Care to expand on that?” he said in a deadly controlled tone.
The shorter man thrust out his jaw. “Yer daddy’s a killer. Can’t deny that even if you want to. And now we got us another murder ’round here and who shows up? In Buffalo Springs, havin’ your family ’round is plain unlucky for some folks. I ain’t the only one thinks that way, neither.”
“Thinkin’s not your strong suit, Banty.” Dev took another step toward the man. Felt his fingers curl into fists. “Never was. Now you’ve had your say. Better leave before I kick your ass.” Although he saw the car roll in front of his house, he didn’t take his eyes off the man in front of him.