Authors: Anthony Izzo
Evil Harvest (23 page)
“Get out. Now.”
He left before he wound up with a bullet in the back.
The phone conversation with her brother had left her saddened and angry. Donna wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, then dried it on her hospital gown. The cup of water she had thrown across the room lay on its side against the baseboard.
She couldn’t have been more stunned if Jesus Christ walked into her hospital room and sat down to watch
Wheel of Fortune.
She knew Bobby was cheating on Rhonda, but for him to view her death and the burning of their home as a liberating experience made her wish she could choke him through the phone line.
Wheel of Fortune.
She knew Bobby was cheating on Rhonda, but for him to view her death and the burning of their home as a liberating experience made her wish she could choke him through the phone line.
Ed Rafferty walked into the room, thumbs in his belt loops. He paused for a moment, legs spread, feet planted shoulder-width apart, like a gunslinger entering a saloon. The day wasn’t getting any better.
Who was he trying to impress? she wondered.
He stepped forward, hit the water on the floor, and slid. His hand shot out and he gripped the door handle, regaining his balance. Donna stifled a laugh.
“Good afternoon. Officer Ricci, right?”
“You forget my name already?”
The man looked like he’d been beaten with the ugly stick. He had a crooked nose and squinty eyes, and his mouth was a thin slash.
“Mind if I shut this door? I have some police business to discuss with you.”
“Go ahead.”
He shut the door, careful to step around the water on the floor this time.
“I’m glad you came to see me, Chief Rafferty.”
“Oh?”
“I was actually planning on paying you a visit when I got out of here.”
“Then it looks like we’re on the same page.”
He came back over to the side of her bed and stuck his hands in his pockets, all except for the thumbs, which poked out like sausages. She was still lying on her side, looking up at him; she felt vulnerable. She pushed herself up so that she was sitting against the partially reclined bed.
She tried not to wince from the pain.
“You were in the Barbieri house when it burned.”
“That’s right.”
“What the hell were you doing in there?”
“Finding you a murderer.”
“Is that so. Who?”
“Name was Charles Dietrich. Thin, blond, a junkie. He killed my sister-in-law.”
“This isn’t your jurisdiction, Officer Ricci.”
“That’s
Chief
Ricci. I extended you the courtesy.”
Chief
Ricci. I extended you the courtesy.”
“Still isn’t your jurisdiction. Even if it was, you had no business being in that house.”
“Maybe I didn’t. But I found the killer.”
“How do you know he was the killer?”
“He admitted it to me. I believe his words were ‘I killed that whore.’ ”
“What happened to this Dietrich?”
“I chased him through the house. I blacked out. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“My men on the scene didn’t find a body. They didn’t see anyone leave the house either.”
“I’m not making this up. Did they find my gun? I had it on him and he slapped it out of my hand.”
“No gun.”
“Don’t you care that someone was killed in your town?”
He smirked, then turned away from the bed, looking at the floor. He started pacing back and forth across the room.
“I’ll investigate this on my own, Officer Ricci. If you’re smart, you’ll keep your nose out of my business.”
“You don’t seem to be doing much investigating. No leads, no clues. And I just named the killer.”
He continued to pace. “What else did you see in that house?”
“What?”
“You saw something else in that house.”
“You’re full of shit.”
He was on her in one stride, gripping her bandaged arm and squeezing. She gasped, unable to draw a breath for a moment.
“I know what you saw in there. And you know what you saw.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You can deny it if you want. If you go telling anyone else what you saw or what happened, I’ll come looking for you.”
He squeezed harder, her bones feeling as if they might turn to powder if he squeezed any more. Donna yelped. Gritting her teeth she said, “I’m not hard to find.”
He clenched his teeth. He was almost nose-to-nose with her, still gripping her arm. The smell of him was too much. The same smell that was on Dietrich after he turned into the creature.
It became clear that Jill Adams was right; Rafferty was one of them.
“Stay the hell out of my town. And not one word to anyone about any of this, bitch.”
A vein pulsed over Rafferty’s eye, and his face flushed.
“Let go of my arm.”
“Promise me you’ll stay out of this.”
“Can’t do that.”
He squeezed even harder. She thought she felt some stitches rip.
He’s really going to break my arm,
she thought.
He’s really going to break my arm,
she thought.
Drawing her head away from him, she slammed it forward, mashing his lower lip. There was a crunching noise and she felt a stab of pain in her forehead, but it was better than the pain in her arm. He let go of her and reared back, his hand covering his mouth.
“You little—”
The door opened and Donna’s nurse, Brenda, walked in. She looked at Rafferty, then at Donna, unsure of what was happening inside the room.
“Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” Donna said.
“I was just going,” Rafferty said.
He put his hand to his lip, got some blood on his fingertips and then looked at them as if to confirm the fact that he was bleeding.
“What happened in here?” Brenda said.
“I slipped on some water. You ought to clean it up,” Rafferty said, and walked out the door.
“I’ll get one of the aides to clean it up.”
Donna’s left arm was bleeding, a bright red splotch seeping through the bandage from Rafferty ripping her stitches.
“We better take care of this as long as you’re here,” Donna said.
“How’d you do that?”
“Bumped it on the bedrail.”
“Just like the police officer slipped on the water. I don’t believe either one of you.”
“Believe what you want, as long as you sew me the hell back up.”
C
HAPTER
21
HAPTER
21
When he thought his hands would stop trembling, Matt let go of the steering wheel.
He was parked outside of 109 Chestnut Street, home of Sally Perski.
He wiped his damp palms on the front of his jeans, and then the sweat from his brow. The air-conditioning in the truck was going full tilt the whole way over here, but he still dripped perspiration.
The Reese woman was in severe denial, and if he had pressed her, he may have wound up with an extra orifice in his body. He wondered if she believed him and was pushing the truth away, or if she completely refused to accept the notion that her daughter was dead.
Despite the fact that he had nearly pissed himself when she leveled the gun at him, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Rafferty and his band of goons would lie to her, tell her there were no leads in the case, that her daughter had simply disappeared. The witnesses would be intimidated, threatened or removed, and the story would die out, one more person who simply vanished from Lincoln’s streets without a trace.
He got out of the truck and walked up the weedy, cracked walkway to the front porch, which sagged as if an invisible giant were using it for a footrest.
He climbed the steps and stood in front of a wooden screen door. The screen inside the frame was rusted red and had a tear in it. He looked around the porch and saw a wicker couch, now missing its cushions.
After ringing the doorbell, he waited for a moment.
A toddler with a mess of curly blond hair scampered to the door and looked up at Matt. His baby gut hung over his diaper.
“Hiya!” he said, and darted out of sight.
“Brendan, don’t answer the door!”
Sally Perski appeared behind the door. “You’re that guy from the park.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“You’re not a detective.”
“How’d you know?”
She crossed her arms and put her weight on one leg, hip thrust out as if to say “here’s how I know.” “The police told me there’s no detectives in Lincoln.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you, but we needed to know what you saw.”
“Why?”
“To find out what killed that girl.”
“It wasn’t a person, was it?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I’ll tell you if you want to talk to me.”
She measured him with her gaze. “You’re not some kind of pervert or weirdo, are you?”
“I let my membership to the perverts and weirdos society expire last month.”
She looked behind her, and looked back at Matt. “Okay, come in.”
He entered the living room, half expecting to find the inside as run-down as the exterior. The beige rug had vacuum tracks on it, and the room smelled of peach-scented air freshener.
The furniture was the same sandy brown as the rug, and a massive oak entertainment center covered one wall, a thirty-five-inch television encased inside. The entertainment center was flanked by a cherry grandfather clock, which gonged twelve times.
“Have a seat.”
Brendan darted into the room, a toy fire truck clasped in his arms. He came up to Matt, held up the truck for inspection and chirped, “Cuck! Firecuck!”
“Brendan, sit down,” Sally instructed.
He wobbled to the center of the room and plopped onto his rear end in a manner only a two-year-old could without having a sore tailbone for a week.
“I’m keeping an eye on him. My mother’s at work.”
“Only brother?”
“One’s enough.”
“Be glad you have him.”
“I guess I am.”
“Good.”
She went into the adjacent dining room where a red Eureka vacuum stood, its cord unraveled like a snake. She picked it up and began winding it around the prongs on the vacuum designed to hold the cord.
“What happened after you left the park?”
“One of the cops took me to the police station. I waited in a little room for a while. I don’t know how long because I didn’t have my watch on.”
Rafferty’s tactics hadn’t changed, as Matt remembered that small, dank room and the fear he had felt the day Rafferty threatened to kill him if he talked about the murders. “Do you know which cop you talked to?”
“The one who drove me there had red hair. The one I talked to at the station was big and ugly.”
“Do you know his name for sure?”
“I forget his name but he told me he was the chief.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not at first. He was nice at first.”
She finished winding up the cord and rolled the vacuum into the kitchen. When she came back in, she had a can of Pledge and a dirty white T-shirt, presumably a dust rag.
“I’m going to clean while we talk. My mom’ll be pissed if the house isn’t clean.”
She aimed the can at the end table and pressed the button. Polish hissed out. Using the rag, she rubbed it into the wood surface.
“What did he tell you?”
“He was pissed when I told him about the detectives. He told me there weren’t any detectives in Lincoln.”
“How about threats?”
“He just told me not to talk to anyone. But he looked all crazy and messed up. Like he was about to lose his temper.”
She finished dusting the end table and moved to the entertainment center, wiping down the television screen.
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not really. Like I said, he started off nice and then got nasty. I was sort of scared.”
Brendan looked up at his big sister, momentarily interested in her cleaning activity, and then went back to rolling his fire truck back and forth on the rug.
She stopped dusting and looked at Matt.
“What did I see in the park?”
“This is gonna sound nutty, but you saw, well, creatures.”
“I don’t think you’re nutty. I told the police chief they were men. But I know they weren’t men. No men look like that.”
“There’s a lot of Them in town, Sally. They live under people’s skin.”
“Is that why so many people smell?”
“Exactly.”
The girl noticed the smell of them, which he speculated was something not everyone could detect. If everyone in town could detect the strange odor of the beasts, they would know something was not right with a good portion of Lincoln’s townspeople.
Maybe certain people were born with the ability to detect the scent, and the same people might not have that much trouble believing that the creatures existed.
“What are they?”
“I don’t know for sure. But they’re very dangerous. You make sure not to walk through that park by yourself. Don’t go anywhere by yourself.”
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“And watch out for Chief Rafferty. He’s one of Them.”
“I noticed he smelled funny too.”
“I’m gonna go now, so you can finish your housework.”
“You can hang around if you want to.”
“Thanks anyway, but I don’t think your mom would be too crazy about finding a strange man in the living room,” he said. “Be careful, Sally.”
Matt got up and Brendan said, “Bye-bye!” and waved his hand enthusiastically. Matt reached down and ruffled his hair.
He was at the door when she asked him, “How do you know about these things?”
“I had a bad experience with them when I was about your age. I also sat in that little room at the police station and had the police chief threaten me.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Talk to your mom about getting out of Lincoln.”
He opened the screen door and stepped into the heat.
Rafferty jammed his finger into the elevator’s L button and pressed hard, turning the skin under his fingernail white.
The doors slid closed.
His visit with Donna Ricci had been infuriating; no one told him what to do in his own town or talked back to him, especially another cop. This was his turf.
He’d lost his temper again, first with Clarence then with Ricci, nearly snapping her arm in half. If he didn’t get control of himself, he didn’t know what would happen.
People will die, that’s what will happen, Ed. Just as sure as shit, people will die.
The only positive thing that came out of the meeting with Ricci was he could now pin the murder of the Barbieri woman on Charles Dietrich. And since Dietrich had burned in the fire, he didn’t have to worry about anything going to trial. As an added bonus, he doubted anyone would miss Dietrich. Missing junkies didn’t show up on the side of milk cartons.
He wanted Donna Ricci out of his town, and if there wasn’t so much shit hitting the fan right now, he would’ve made sure she disappeared. He would have to gamble for now that she wouldn’t talk about what she saw in the Barbieri house. He didn’t think even a dumb bitch like her would ruin her career by spouting off about monsters chasing her through a burning house.
The elevator slowed and stopped. The L button lit up, the doors opened, and Rafferty stepped around an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She had a cast on her right leg, and Rafferty bumped her as he passed.
“Ow! You clumsy asshole!”
He decided he would play polite; he didn’t need anymore incidents at the moment. “Excuse me, ma’am. Are you okay?”
“Watch yourself.”
Maybe when you got that old you didn’t care what you said to anyone, cops included.
He walked past the security desk and the guard, a man with the name James on his tag, nodded to him. A boy of about twelve hopped past him on crutches, his mother walking beside him, haranguing him for going skateboarding.
Walking past the emergency room entrance, he spied her out of the corner of his eye.
Jill Adams, hair done up in a ponytail, wearing a green top and white pants. She hadn’t seen him, so he slipped behind one of the columns in the lobby. She was hunched over a laundry cart, sorting through a pile of hospital gowns.
She hadn’t been on his mind this morning, but seeing her had jarred his memory a little; he wanted to pay her another visit and scare the hell out of her.
Jill Adams had some fire to her, and he liked that. It would be a challenge to take her when the Harvest came. She would put up a fight, and that got him a little excited. Intimidation was his favorite tactic, but once in a while it was nice to get one that fought a little and then crush them like a cockroach.
She took one of the gowns off the cart and then turned and walked down the long emergency room hallway.
“See you soon,” he said.
Jill climbed the porch steps and looked at her watch. It was ten to four and Matt was coming at five o’clock to pick her up. That would leave her plenty of time to shower and change, as well as have a tall glass of something cold.
She had no air-conditioning in the car, and she knew when she got in the house, she would have to literally peel her clothes off.
Pulling her keys from her purse, she unlocked the door and went upstairs. She set the keys and her purse on the kitchen counter, then took the pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator.
She took out a glass and poured herself a tall one.
Something was odd in the kitchen but she couldn’t figure out what it was. There was something out of place, not the way she had left it this morning.
“What the hell is bothering me?”
Unable to place what was wrong, she took her lemonade and went into the living room. The light on the answering machine flashed and she pressed the Play button.
“Hi, Jill, it’s your mom. You do remember your mother, don’t you? I’m the one you haven’t called in over a week. Call me back if you haven’t forgotten my number.”
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