Dark Corner (23 page)

He only hoped that this case would not push him over the
edge.

Sighing, he walked back to the cruiser. He glanced at the
Mason house, sitting way up there on the hill.

All week, he had procrastinated visiting the house's mysterious new resident: the bald-headed, sharply dressed black
man he had seen driving around town in the Lexus SUV. He
told himself that he was too busy fighting crime to squander
energy on small-town pleasantries. But if he were being honest with himself, he had to admit that the house made him
uneasy. Like most residents his age who had lived in Dark
Corner their entire lives, he had grown up hearing frightening tales about Edward Mason's mansion. It was not easy to
dislodge images, stories, and rhymes that had been planted
in your head when you were a kid.

He got inside the car.

Snippets of childhood rhymes about the house came to
mind:

Fast Eddie's always ready, gonna tear out your heart like
it's confetti ...

One, two, buckle your shoe, or something in the Mason
place'll come get you ...

Jackson grasped the steering wheel in an iron grip.

I don't want to go up there, he thought. Lord help me, I
don't want to set foot near that place.

As he drove away, it seemed that a gravitational force
prevented him from driving toward Jubilee. He drove, instead, to pick up some doughnuts and coffee. Feeling like a
coward every block of the way.

Malcolm, the mutt that Franklin had taken a liking to in
the past year, did not show up for his morning meal. Like
one of Pavlov's hounds, the canine usually came running to
the house within minutes of Franklin filling the bowl with
Purina dog food at nine o'clock.

Franklin whistled. "Malcolm! It's time to eat, my friend!"

The dog always entered the yard from the alley, squeezing between the garage and the Dumpster. But the dog did
not appear.

Franklin frowned. He waited outdoors a few more minutes, and when Malcolm did not appear, he went inside.

Ruby sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading
the newspaper. He settled into a chair beside her.

"My dog is gone," he said.

"He'll probably turn up in a little bit," Ruby said. "Don't
worry, honey. Malcolm isn't wearing a watch, you know."

"Of course," he said, not sure he agreed at all with his
wife's opinion. He had a feeling that something terrible had
happened to the dog. Perhaps it had been struck by a vehicle,
or injured in a fight with another animal, or had eaten something that made it ill ...

Or perhaps something worse.

He did not understand the cold finger of dread that traced
along his back. It resisted rational explanation. It was a presentiment of doom, like smelling the sour odor of an imminent thunderstorm.

Malcolm's disappearance was a bad sign of ... something.

But what?

Jahlil's father required that he go to the police station at nine
o'clock on Saturday morning, to clean. Jahlil arrived on his
bicycle a few minutes before ten o'clock. Almost an hour
later than Dad had asked him to be there.

Thankfully, his father was not there to jump on his case
about being late. The deputy, Ray Dudu, was the only person
in the office. He was a nice guy, if a little weird.

"You need to start reading the real news, Jahlil," Dudu
said, as Jahlil swept the floor. Dudu raised the latest tabloid
he'd been reading. It had a lurid headline: "Lazarus in Arizona!
Man Rises from the Dead" "The Chief won't like me showing these to you, but I have a responsibility to share the
truth"

"Sure," Jahlil said. Man, what a nut. Where had Dad found
this guy?

As Jahlil pondered how to respond to the loony deputy,
his father's patrol car pulled up. Dudu hurriedly put away the
tabloids.

"Morning, fellas," Dad said. He tossed his hat on the
desk. "I ain't made no progress, really, on the missing girl.
Nobody knows much of nothin'."

"What missing girl?" Jahlil asked. It was the first he'd
heard of it.

Dad sat in his desk chair and leaned back, crossing his
fingers across his stomach. "Tawanda Gray, lives over on
Boone Drive with her grandma. She was baby-sitting last
night and has turned up missing."

An image flashed with startling vividness in Jahlil's mind:
a man putting a large, covered object inside the back of a
Lexus SUV. A package that had a pair of dangling legs.

At the time he had seen it, he been convinced that he was
not imagining things. But the fellas had talked him out of it,
saying the weed was making him hallucinate. But what if it
had really happened, just like he'd seen? What if he was the
only witness to the crime?

"You got a funny look on your face, son," Dad said. "You
know something about this?"

Jahlil chewed his lip.

He told his father everything.

"Shit," Dad said. Jahlil rarely heard Dad curse. But Dad
continued, "Shit, shit, shit."

"What's wrong?" the deputy said.

"That Lexus truck" Dad grabbed his hat and rose.
"Belongs to the fella who moved into the Mason place."

For the first time in years, the last time being the day the
doctor had announced that his mother had cancer, Jahlil
thought his father looked afraid.

Jubilee was the last house in the world that Van Jackson
wanted to visit. But he couldn't procrastinate any longer. If
what his boy had said was true-and he had no reason to
suspect that Jahlil had lied the fella who had moved into
this place was the prime suspect in the girl's disappearance.
It was Jackson's duty to question the guy, and arrest him, if
need be.

Jackson parked in front of the tall iron gates.

Clouds passed over the morning sun, cloaking the world
in grayish shadows.

It had been many years since he had last visited the Mason
place. He'd last been there to investigate a vagrant who was
squatting in the house. The guy had gotten inside through a
window. When Jackson discovered the man, he was not prepared for what he had seen. The guy feasted on dead animals
and insects: a stinking heap of crows, squirrels, beetles, flies,
and spiders were spread at his feet, like a hellish buffet.

Pull up a chair and have a bite, the man had said in a
raspy voice. There's plenty of food to go around. He bit off the
brittle head of a beetle and chewed with pleasure.

Jackson had gagged, then arrested the man. It turned out
the guy had escaped from a psychiatric hospital in Memphis.

But those were the kind of incidents that happened at
Jubilee. Nothing but bad, bizarre things.

Jackson got out of the car.

It was strangely quiet up there. The Mason place might
have been located atop a mountain, far away from human
habitation.

Jackson felt his heart whamming like a bass drum.

The Lexus sport utility was parked at the end of the long
driveway. The resident was home. Public enemy number
one.

Jackson walked to the gate. It wasn't locked. He pressed a
lever, and the gate opened with a soft squeak.

He went inside. He rested his hand on the butt of his .357
Magnum.

Pushed by a stiff breeze, the gate clanged shut behind
him.

As if summoned by the noise, a group of dogs bolted out
of the deep shadows beneath the trees. Big ones. Four of
them. They barked, snapped, growled.

Shit. Talk about a mess.

He didn't have time to make it outside before they caught
him. They were moving fast-faster than he had ever seen
hounds run. What the hell were these mutts raised on?

He snatched his .357 out of the holster. He backed up
against the fence, aiming the gun in front of him.

The dogs surrounded him in a loose semicircle. They
were a ragtag pack of mutts. They growled, thick saliva dripping from their mouths, their eyes wild and red. But they did
not attack. He figured they must have been trained to capture, and only attack if their quarry tried to get away.

He didn't dare try to run. He would never make it. In fact,
though he had the gun, he didn't feel confident about his
chances if he took a crack at the mutts. He could take down
one of the hounds with a bullet, but if they decided to attack
him, as one, he was finished.

His mouth was dry.

The dogs glared at him, as if challenging him to make a
move. Damned if they didn't look him right in the eyes. They
held no fear of him.

I ain't never seen no dogs act like this.

A man dressed in black emerged from the house. He
strolled across the driveway. He wore a long, heavy jacket, a
hat, aviator shades, boots, and, oddly, gloves. The temperature outdoors was in the low nineties. Wasn't this guy burning up in all those clothes?

But the most noticeable thing was that this was not the
man Jackson had seen driving the Lexus around town. That
guy had been shorter, and stout. He had never seen this guy
before.

As the man approached, he raised his hand-a gesture the
dogs could not have possibly seen-and the canines backed
away, as if he controlled them with puppet strings.

Jackson cleared his throat. Something damn strange was
going on here.

He lowered the gun, but he did not put it away.

"I'm Chief Jackson," he said. "I'm here on police business.

"Greetings, Chief," the man said. "How may I help you?"

The fella had an odd, untraceable accent. French, kinda,
but not exactly. Jackson couldn't pin it down.

"Nice dogs," Jackson said. The canines had retreated into
the shadows. He finally holstered the gun. "Think they wanted
to take a plug out of me"

"They might have, if I had not been present," the man said.
"You've ventured onto private property, may I remind you."

"I ain't here to snoop around. Got some police business
to discuss with you"

The man folded his arms across his chest. "I'm all ears."

Jackson took his handkerchief out of his pocket and
mopped sweat off his forehead. "Say, ain't you hot with all
those dark, heavy clothes on? Last time I checked it was
ninety-some degrees out here"

"I'm comfortable," the guy said, in a tone that invited no
discussion about his choice of clothing. "You were saying
about the purpose of your visit?"

"We've had a girl in town turn up missing. Black female,
nineteen years old. We've got a reliable witness who says
that late last night, a tall fella wearing black-kinda like
you-was seen putting what looked like a body in the back
of a silver Lexus SUV. Just like the one parked up there by
the house"

Jackson watched the man's reaction closely, looking for a
facial tick that indicated discomfort or guilt. But the man's
poker face did not change, though Jackson could not see his
eyes because of the dark shades he wore.

"If I understand this correctly," the man said, "you suspect that I was involved in the disappearance of this young
lady."

"Suspicion is kinda pointing toward you having something to do with it," Jackson said. "Where's the bald-headed
man who lives here? Kinda stocky? I saw him driving
through town a couple times."

"He is away. But he is not the man you want, Chief. I am
the one. I am guilty."

Jackson was not often taken by surprise. But his mouth
slipped open.

"You're telling me you're guilty?" Jackson said. "You're
confessing?"

"I abducted the young lady," the man said. He smoothly
removed his glasses.

Jackson gasped. This guy's eyes ... dear God. They were
like twin black holes that sucked Jackson right into them.
Jackson could not look away. A force as powerful as gravity
compelled him to stand rigid and gaze, deeply, into the
man's inhuman eyes.

Fella's done something to my mind, Jackson thought dimly.
Reached in and taken control of it, like in those Star Wars
movies, he's working ajedi mind trick on me, so help me, God.

As Jackson stood, entranced, the world receded as if
swept away by a strong tide. The only reality was the man's
eyes. Jackson no longer felt the oppressive heat and humidity. He no longer felt the ground under his feet and the
sweat-drenched clothes that clung to his body. He no longer
tasted the traces of the coffee he had sipped only minutes
ago. No longer heard the soft wind that drifted across the
yard.

The man's eyes were his world, his universe. They were
everything.

When the man spoke again, his resonant voice was inside
Jackson's head.

"Chief Jackson ... you are an honorable man and desire
to serve your people, but now you will bend to a power
greater than yourself. I required the young woman for purposes that you could not fathom in your mortal imagination.
You will not arrest me. You will not question me further. You
will not harbor any suspicion of those who currently dwell
on this property. When you leave this place and continue your
investigation into the woman's disappearance, you will direct
your attention elsewhere. When you leave this place, you
will not remember seeing me or the dogs. When you leave
this place, the idea of ever visiting this residence again will
fill you with paralyzing fear. You will not remember me issuing these commands to you. You will act upon them as
though they spring from your own consciousness.