Night Terror (15 page)

Cooder shook his head slowly.

“Cooder, I need to ask you something.”

“Okay, Virg.”

“You didn’t hurt that boy, did you?”

Cooder stared right through him.

“Cooder?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“No, Virg. I never hurt anybody. You know that.”

“Yeah, Cooder. I do know.”

“I didn’t, did I?”

The pleading look in Cooder’s eyes told Virgil all he needed to know. It would have killed Cooder to learn that he’d ever hurt
anyone.
He could no more have done anything to Zach Bock or Timmy Merrill than Virgil could. And even stretching his imagination, turning Cooder into an
accidental
killer, Virgil just couldn’t see Cooder pulling it off. He’d have walked right up to the first passerby and confessed.

“You don’t think I hurt him, do you, Virg?”

“No, Cooder. No. I don’t think that.”

“Okay.”

“Do you know Merle Coonts?”

Hesitation.

“No.”

“Never heard of him?”

Another hesitation.

“No.”

Virgil explained as well as he could to Cooder where the Coonts place lay. Until he was reasonably certain Cooder had a picture of the location in his mind. “You must have been by there a hundred times.”

Cooder nodded.

“Do you think the boy might be there?” asked Virgil. “Somewhere in that basement?”

Cooder shrugged.

“You never had bad feelings about that place?” asked Virgil.

Cooder frowned. “I don’t know, Virg. I seen bad things.”

“Yeah,” said Virgil, fighting down his frustration yet again. “I know.”

“There’s no eyes in the mask,” said Cooder. He seemed to be genuinely confused by that revelation.

“How long have you been seeing these bad things, Cooder?”

Cooder shrugged. Virgil hadn’t really expected an answer. Cooder’s version of time didn’t match anyone else’s. But Virgil had to try. He had to know what time frame he was up against. Maybe Cooder and Audrey and Babs really
were
experiencing some kind of communications that he couldn’t understand. Maybe there really was a small boy locked up in someone’s basement. If there really was a little boy, even if it wasn’t Zach Bock, how much time did he have to find him?

“Do you have a phone, Cooder?” asked Virgil.

Cooder nodded.

“Good,” said Virgil, making eye contact. “If you see anymore bad things, you call me, okay? All you have to do is dial 911. You understand 911?”

“Yeah, Virg. I know. 911.”

“Good,” said Virgil, heading back to the car. “Anything you think of, you call. You hear?”

Cooder followed Virgil to the cruiser like a curious bear.

“Sure, Virgil. I’ll call.”

“Good,” said Virgil, leaning on the top of the cruiser.

“I’ll call from Zeke’s store.”

Virgil frowned. Zeke’s store was three miles up the road. “Just use your phone.”

“Doesn’t work.”

Virgil sighed, shook his head, and climbed back into the car. As he pulled onto the highway, he glanced in his rear-view mirror and noticed a dark Ford sedan about a half-mile
back. But the car was driving slow and pretty soon it was lost from sight.

Virgil drove the long way back to town from Crowley along the route that would take him by the Bocks’. He drove slowly past their driveway, watching the hill ahead as the Coonts barn appeared like a snake rising out of a hole in the ground. As he passed by the front of the house, Merle stepped down from the old side stoop, headed for his truck. Without thinking, Virgil spun into the drive, cutting him off. Merle stood frozen in place, a big goofy mannequin. The way his bottom lip drooped, he reminded Virgil of Cooder. But Merle was bright enough to hire a real estate salesman as a buyer’s agent. Bright enough to have the means to buy a place that wasn’t even on the market.

Virgil climbed out of the cruiser and sauntered around to Merle’s side. Merle looked like a kid meeting a cop for the first time. Not afraid, really, but maybe a little.

“Hello, Mister Coonts,” said Virgil, both hands on his belt.

Merle nodded. He was in his fifties, six inches taller than Virgil, and outweighed him by a hefty margin. His work boots looked like giant clubs. He wore a frayed old flannel shirt and worn but clean khaki pants. You wouldn’t be able to pick him out of the crowd in a truck stop, but standing in the middle of the gravel drive beside the cruiser, he looked somehow out of place.

“I talked to you a year ago,” said Virgil, looking for recognition in Merle’s eyes. Merle frowned, then nodded.

“The Bock boy,” said Merle. “Yeah, I remember, Sheriff.” His voice was deep and resonant, but hesitant.

“Yeah. The Bock boy. I was just wondering if you had come up with anymore information you could give me on that.” Virgil didn’t really think Merle would have anything more to say on the subject. But after the fiasco in Audrey Bock’s cellar, he felt like he owed it to her to at least stop and ask. The sun glinted off glass and he glanced into the barn at a fairly new Chevy sedan. It seemed as out of place as the satellite dish on the barn’s roof.

A dark sadness settled over Merle’s dead brown eyes. “I don’t know nothin’.”

Virgil tried to spot anything fishy in Merle’s body language, but the big man didn’t move, no twitchy fingers, no odd angle to his head.

“Would you mind if I had a look around your house?”

“For what?” asked Merle. Now his big arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Just to take a look at your house and maybe your cellar.”

“You got a warrant?”

“Do I need one?” asked Virgil, bluffing.

Merle stared at him. Suddenly the big man didn’t seem so sluggish. His eyes appeared quicker, more alert. When he uncrossed his arms, his large hands fell away to his sides like a pair of baseball bats, and Virgil tightened. In that instant, he had been certain that Merle was about to strike him. But then the feeling disappeared as Merle shrugged and turned back toward the house. Merle chugged up the steps and into the tiny foyer, stopping to let Virgil pass. Virgil watched him like a hawk, but Merle made no overt moves, simply led him from room to room.

Virgil had seen a million old New England farmhouses. Every one was different and the same. They’d started out as one- or two-bedroom structures, with a brick chimney. Then the kids came and the owners would add on. Over the better part of a century, a house might grow from little more than six hundred to well over three thousand square feet. The homes ran the gamut from working farms that had been in families for generations to ramshackle abandoned structures in the middle of the woods to elegant renovations used in the summer by flatlanders escaping the city.

But Merle’s house had the air of a building that had been used by transients. The messy kitchen and one back bedroom were the only rooms that had any feel of being lived in at all. One closet held three sets of pants, a few work-shirts, and another set of boots. A TV sat on the dresser. Not one photo graced the walls. Why would a single man who lived like Merle insist on owning such a large old house?

“Come on,” said Merle, hurrying from room to room as Virgil peeked into empty closets and under dusty mattresses. “Let’s get this over with.”

Virgil shrugged, his hand resting as casually as possible on the butt of his pistol. He was making sure he did not let Merle get behind him.

But the house itself got behind him. The walls were a dark presence, surrounding him, watching him. Waiting. But for what? He and Merle rounded a corner to face the cellar stairs and Virgil stopped, resting his hand on the wide molding.

“Go ahead,” said Merle. “You want to see the cellar, don’t you? Isn’t that what you’re really here for? You think I kidnapped Zach Bock and have him locked up in the basement or something.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Mister Coonts,” said Virgil, noting that Merle remembered the boy’s first name.

“Yeah, right. Go on, check out the damned cellar.”

“All right,” said Virgil. He pulled the door open and waved Merle ahead of him, down into the dark, junk-filled cellar that was nothing like Audrey and Richard’s.

The narrow, stone-walled space was low and cavelike. The floor was cold concrete and the entire space was filled, floor to joists, with old boxes and crates that seemed far too ancient for Merle to have brought them in. They were probably left by the previous owners, with only a narrow, winding passage through them. Virgil felt his fear of cramped places starting to act up. His palms got sweaty and his mouth went dry. But he wasn’t going to show his unease to Merle.

The light through the one tiny window was almost nonexistent through the layers of grime, and Virgil wished he’d brought his flashlight with him. It made a good backup weapon as well as a light. He kept his eyes glued to Merle’s back.

“Turn on a light,” said Virgil, his words fluttering like moths through the cellar.

Merle shook his head without turning. “Burned out,” he muttered, moving away. “Come on.”

Virgil tried to catch up, but Merle knew the basement better than he. When Merle disappeared around a pile of boxes, an alarm sounded inside Virgil’s head and he slowed. His fingers
tightened on his pistol, and he used his free hand to touch a box here, shifting a pallet there with the toe of his boot.

Empty. They were all empty. Why would anyone keep so many boxes? A stray beam of light from the window allowed Virgil to read the label on one of the crates. Cattle feed. He could smell it now. The sweet odor of sorghum still clung to the old cardboard after all these years. At one time the boxes must have been filled with burlap bags of feed. So they had belonged to the original owners. Merle was just too lazy to haul them to the dump.

“You coming or what?” Merle’s voice skittered through the maze, and Virgil was at once happy to know that the big bastard wasn’t lurking around the corner, but also disconcerted to learn that Merle had gotten so far ahead of him. A rat stuck its head out from between two boxes right beside his left hand and he slapped at it.

Perfect.

Finally the claustrophobic confines of the basement opened out into wider gloom and Virgil was happy as hell to pass into it. But the size of the darkened space held its own dangers. He couldn’t make out
anything
in the gloom and the echoing sound of Merle’s boots on concrete told him the space was very large. His back tight, fingers taut, he searched for Merle. Realizing at the same time that he made a nice target framed in the doorway—even as dark as it was—he took a step to one side.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the shadows, he could just see the outline of run-down cattle stalls. That meant that somewhere the basement must stick out of the surrounding slope. There had to be another door. A way for the farmer to have brought his livestock in. But Virgil couldn’t make out the far walls.

“So,” said Merle, startling Virgil.

Merle sat ten feet to Virgil’s left, atop what looked to Virgil to be an old steamer trunk resting against the wall. Merle’s legs were crossed in front of him, and the bastard made a sweeping gesture across the wide-open expanse of the barn basement. He seemed to be pointing at one thin dusty ray of sunlight filtering through the back wall that Virgil could just make out now. As though Virgil might want to inspect
that.

“Be my guest,” said Merle.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Virgil took the opportunity to search the entire perimeter of the barn, stopping to give the old barn door a shake, peering closely into each stall, sniffing, finding nothing. Even so, he had an odd certainty that there was something here, that Merle was hiding
something.
An unseen presence so deep-seated that it was part of the ground beneath his feet. It was as though the concrete, the foundation, the old cracked beams overhead were moaning at him, trying to tell him something in some language he couldn’t understand. It raised the hairs on his arms. He ended his search standing in front of Merle, who still sat like a prim schoolgirl atop the old trunk. Virgil wondered that it could hold his weight. He also wondered if Merle always sat that way, with his legs tightly clenched.

“Seen enough?” asked Merle.

“What’s in the trunk?” asked Virgil.

“Old clothes.”

Old clothes? The one item that sat in this entire expanse of emptiness held old clothes? Virgil found himself wondering if the original owners
had
moved the boxes into the house basement. Or did Merle have some reason to want this huge expanse of hidden open area? What possible use could he put it to?

“Open it.”

“You don’t have a warrant.”

“I can get one soon enough,” said Virgil, stretching out his bluff.

Merle glared at him for a moment, but then he stood up grudgingly and lifted the shiny combination lock.

Why lock up a bunch of old clothes?

Merle spun the cylinder on the lock, placing his body between Virgil and the trunk. When the lock clicked open, Merle flipped the trunk lid back and stepped aside. Inside, just as Merle had said, was a pile of ratty clothes. Virgil rummaged all the way to the bottom, but there were nothing else inside. Why in the world would anyone lock up old clothes? Maybe his imagination was running away with him. Maybe Merle was just a harmless kook.

“Afraid someone will steal your shirts?”

Merle glared at him. “You want to see anything else?”

“Thanks for the tour,” said Virgil, wondering what he could have missed.

“You know your way out,” said Merle, nodding back toward the cellar door.

Virgil glanced over his shoulder and a chill shot through him. No way he was going to pass back through that long maze again. He squinted down the length of the barn.

“What’s out back?” he said, nodding toward the barn door at the far end of the cellar.

Merle shrugged. “That way’s out,” he said, nodding once more toward the tight little cellarway.

Virgil shook his head. “I’m going out the back door.”

Merle’s frown became ugly, but he headed off across the floor. “Suit yourself.”

Virgil followed, hating the sound of their footsteps echoing away in the darkness. The barn cellar was large enough, but the darkness made it seem tight nonetheless. Merle stood beside the door, sheltered in the shadows, and Virgil gripped the rusted handle and jerked. The door rattled but held in place and Virgil noticed another lock, this one a heavy brass, keyed number.