Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted (28 page)

E
verett Wilson was
glad of the Thermos his wife had given him for his previous birthday. His coffee was almost as hot now as when he had left camp shortly before dawn. At the time, he had figured Lizzie had been a little unimaginative in her choice of gift, not that he had said so. But now, well, he could see the logic of her ways. Not that he would say so. The woman already held the deeds to being right.

He sipped the black liquid and leaned back against the rocks, savouring the morning light as it filtered through the branches and made the creek sparkle and shimmer. He turned his head slightly to watch his son. EJ was standing waist deep near the opposite bank with his broad back to his father. Everett liked to watch his son fish; hell, he liked any time he had with the boy these days. Boy, he shook his head. No, not any more; EJ was twenty-five years old. He was no boy. Where did the time go?

‘How you doin’, son?’

‘I know he’s in there.’ EJ leaned back and cast his line under the trees overhanging the bank. There was a trout in the shadows as big as his arm and by god EJ was planning to nab that sucker before the day was out.

Everett grinned at his determination. There would be no real shortage of good fish if they were patient. These waters were rich with fish, the woods teeming with wildlife. It was rare indeed to find too many folk around these valleys. It took time to get to the main campsites by road, another day to hike all the way up through the woods to the last official camp, and the best part of the morning to reach the site where Everett and his son had bivouacked the night before.

Still, it was worth the trek, Everett thought, feeling the contented glow of a man at peace with his surroundings. He had four days stretching before him with his son – four days of peace and quiet, of tranquil fishing and hiking. It almost made up for the rest of the year he was stuck behind the counter at the second-hand electrical store he ran with his wife, Lizzie.

Almost.

EJ drew back his line and cast again.

‘He still not biting?’

‘Nope,’ EJ said, glancing back over his shoulder, ‘he’s pretty stubborn.’

‘He’s plenty full is all.’

‘Think I ought to change the lure?’

Everett shook his head. ‘Nope, he’ll come up for it, you wait and see.’

‘If you say so.’

Everett was pleased his son still sought advice from him. He finished his coffee and threw the dregs onto the grass. He packed the Thermos into the rucksack he carried and retied that to the branches nearest where they fished. ‘I got to take a leak. Be back in a second.’

EJ grunted, keeping his gaze on the shadows where he figured the big trout was resting.

Everett crossed the pebbly bank and stepped through the trees. Though still early, the heat was cloying and he could feel the sweat trickle down his spine to the light cotton pants he wore beneath his waders. Gnats buzzed and zinged about his head, but they did not bite. Lizzie had provided him with an excellent repellent, better than the stuff he had used the year before and that was for darned sure. Another thing he would be keeping to himself.

He unhooked the straps and lowered the waders to below his knees. He peed onto a patch of poison ivy and sighed with relief.

He was shaking the last drops off when he caught a glimpse of something in the undergrowth. He leaned forward and squinted, not entirely trusting his eyes. He pulled up his straps and forced his way through the thicket. He stopped and squatted, still trying to make sense of what he was seeing, for before him was a body, small, covered in dirt and leaves and bits of grass.

‘EJ!’ he called. ‘Come here quick!’ He knelt down and carefully removed some of the debris. He heard his son come crashing through the undergrowth.

‘
Dad?
’

‘Over here, I found a body. I think it’s a woman.’

EJ slammed to a halt next to him. ‘
What?
’

‘A woman’s body, look.’

‘What’s she doing out here?’

‘I don’t know.’

EJ reached for her, but Everett caught his hand.

‘Maybe we ought not to touch her.’

‘Is she dead?’

Everett’s head snapped back. He hadn’t even checked. He gingerly laid his hands on the woman and rolled her over onto her back.

‘She’s been shot with an arrow,’ Everett said, shocked despite himself. He’d seen many a hunting accident over the years, but nothing like this.

‘She’s not stiff,’ EJ said.

‘She’s been in the water I reckon, rigor might have worn off.’

‘If she was in the water how’d she come to be up here on the bank?’

‘Well I don’t know.’

Everett moved her arm, pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and used it to clean some of the dirt and mulch from the woman’s face. He bent his face and listened. After a moment he jerked upright. ‘I think she’s still alive.’

Everett took the woman’s hand in his and searched for a pulse. Her skin felt cold and clammy. Unbelievably, he felt it; it was faint and unsteady, but a pulse nonetheless. ‘She’s got a pulse. She’s alive.’

EJ got up and ran back to their bags. He returned moments later carrying the towel they used to dry their equipment and his cell phone.

‘I thought you wasn’t going to bring that thing fishing?’ Everett said, before he could stop himself.

EJ took no notice of his disappointed expression. ‘Hello? Emergency Services?’

Everett turned his attention back to the woman and folded his fingers over her wrist. ‘Hold on honey, you’re safe now.’

M
ike and Ace
waited at the cabin all night, taking turns sleeping, but Caleb Switch made no appearance. The following morning when Ace opened his eyes, he saw Mike seated at the workbench, crestfallen.

‘He’s not coming back.’

‘No,’ Ace said, stretching, ‘it ain’t looking likely.’

‘We’ve wasted so much time here.’

‘We did what we had to.’

‘At least we can let the cops know about this place now.’ Mike stood and walked to the busted-out window. He stood for a moment, looking out over the yard. ‘How many bodies do you reckon are out there?’

‘Hard to say. More than fifteen though.’

‘Think their people wonder about them still?’

‘I imagine so.’

‘I don’t understand why anyone would do something like this. Why her? Why Jessie?’

Ace moved an unlit cigarette around his mouth. His tattoos glowed blue in the light of the rising sun. ‘You won’t ever understand the kind of person, Mike, and you ought to be glad about that.’

Mike turned to look as his brother. He looked scared and angry and tormented. ‘You saying you understand him?’

‘Him? No. But I’ve known men like him; men who can kill and maim as easy as breathe, men who don’t hold with mercy. They don’t even understand the concept.’

‘Did you learn this when you were inside?’

Ace shrugged. ‘Inside, outside – there’s no wall that can hold evil.’

‘There’s got to be some reason.’

‘There probably is, but not one we’re gonna know. These people ain’t like us, his own sister said the same and she—’

Captain raised his head and cocked it.

Ace stopped talking and pressed his finger to his lips.

Captain stood and tilted his head this way and that. His tail started to twitch. After a moment, he threw back his head and released a long, mournful howl. Mike stared at him, feeling the hairs rising on his arms at the sound.

‘What the hell is he doing?’

Ace stood and walked to the broken window, he looked out and cocked his own head.

‘Sirens,’ he said.

‘Huh?’

‘Sirens.’

‘I don’t hear nothing.

‘Me neither, but got to be, that’s what sets him off.’

Mike’s shoulder slumped. ‘Let’s go, we need to find the nearest town and put in a report on this place.’

‘You sure you want to do that?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Once the cops are involved that’s it, this place will be done. This link to him will be cut.’

‘Don’t you get it, Ace?’ Mike asked, his voice steeped in misery.

‘What?’

‘It’s already done. She’s gone.’

Mike climbed out through the window and walked around back to where they had hidden the truck from view.

Ace looked around the silent room, with Captain awaiting his instructions. He gathered his weapon and one or two items that did not belong to him and followed after his younger brother.

They drove back down the mountain in silence. The nearest town was Rhee, so Ace aimed the truck in that direction, his foot to the floor most of the way.

Outside the police station, Ace sat in the truck with the engine running, watching the comings and going through the door.

‘Well, might as well be done what needs to be done.’

‘Them other people he buried. They got family somewhere, people wondering where they are and what happened to them. They deserve an answer. They deserve peace of mind.’

Ace nodded and turned his head to watch the street.

‘You coming in?’

‘No, I never did like this kind of place.’

Mike climbed out. He hitched his jeans up on his waist and climbed the steps to the station like the condemned climbing the steps of the gallows.

Ace turned on the radio and listened to a local station playing some god-awful crap. He did not change the station; for some reason the music seemed fitting. He drank a lukewarm coke and let his arm dangle from the window thinking of Jessie and the man he now had to try to find. If Mike was right and Jessie was gone, Ace swore a silent pledge that he would do everything in his power to make that wrong right again.

He drained the last of his coke as Mike came flying through the door, his face wild. He ran towards the truck so fast he slammed against it with his hip. Ace jerked upright.

‘What is it?’

‘There was a woman found earlier this morning, up in the woods! They took her to the county hospital.’

‘Alive?’

‘I think so.’

‘Jessie?’

‘I don’t know, she’d no ID on her, but initial reports reckon she’s in her thirties.’

‘Where’s this hospital?’

‘Next town over.’

‘Well, get in.’

A large woman in a police uniform came out onto the steps.

‘Mr Conway? Mr Conway sir, I’m going to need you to come back here and give a proper statement. Sir?’

Mike jumped into the passenger seat.

‘
Mr Conway!
’ the officer called.

‘Ma’am, I’ll be at the hospital,’ Mike yelled out of the window. ‘You send someone that way and I’ll write out and sign any damn thing you like!’ He turned to Ace. ‘What the hell are you waiting for? Drive. 
Drive!
’

Ace slammed the truck into reverse, braked, spun the wheel and tore out of there, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

A
t first the
pain was intense and shocking. She felt movements, or thought she did but could not be one hundred percent sure. Only the pain was real, but after a while even that dulled.

Jessie floated, swimming in and out of the world. She had many dreams and heard voices, some close, others distant and fading. She thought she heard her own name being called, but when she tried to locate the caller she drifted through space and time until she was more lost than before.

Pain entered and left as if on a whim. Between the jolts she saw faces, people she knew, talking over her. She saw her parents in the distance, standing hip to hip under a chestnut tree, sunlight dazzling behind them. She walked towards them but never gained an inch and then they too began to shimmer and fade.

‘I want to come with you,’ she said, beginning to cry softly. ‘I’m here, I’m here.’

When Jessie opened her eyes Mike was the first person she saw. He was seated ramrod straight by a window, staring out into space. Her tongue was so swollen it scraped against her teeth when she tried to say his name. She swallowed painfully and tried again.

‘Mike.’

She had barely whispered it, but he turned to her and broke into a smile. He looked exhausted and gaunt. The skin seemed to hang from his cheekbones like felt.

‘Hello there.’

She tried to make sense of her thoughts; they jumbled about too freely to catch. Finally, she managed to snag one.

‘You’re here.’

‘Yep,’ Mike said. ‘I’m here. I am right here and I am going nowhere.’

She tried to understand how this was possible. But thinking made her head hurt and after a while she drifted back to sleep again.

The next time she woke she was a little more lucid. Mike was still there.

‘Hey lady,’ he said.

She began to cry and could not stop. She felt Mike’s hands on her forehead.

‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’

‘I … how are you here?’

‘We were here when you were found, next town over. Ace figured out who had you.’

Jessie furrowed her brow. The faint sound she thought she heard when she first opened her eyes returned.

‘You were found in the woods, by a river. Don’t you remember any of it?’

‘I … remember climbing. There was a man … he had a beard.’

‘His name is Caleb Switch.’

She digested this news, or tried to do so. Knowing what he was called made little or no impact. So he had a name. What did that change? She wondered why she felt so light-headed. Before she could figure it out she was gone again.

She woke up a while later hearing muffled voices. Something told her to keep still. She listened. She identified Mike’s voice even though he was speaking very softly. His tone, however, was furious.

‘I already told you I don’t know where he is, I 
already
 told you. He drove off out of here and didn’t tell me where he was going.’

‘He’s a witness. He can’t just drive off when it suits him.’

‘He’s gone, that’s it.’

She couldn’t make out the next part of the conversation. Then she heard a male voice she didn’t recognise say, ‘You need to make a formal statement, and to do that you’ve got to go back to the station…’

‘I am going nowhere. You hear me?’

‘Sir—’

‘Keep your voice down.’

More mumbling, fierce and protracted, then … ‘I don’t give a shit. If it weren’t for Ace, they wouldn’t even know where to start looking. He has enough information to find this guy if he’d get off his ass and look.’

‘She can give us an eye-witness description.’

‘Are you deaf? Don’t you think she’s been through enough?’

Jessie shifted and managed to raise her head. Mike and a man in uniform were standing at the door to her room.

‘Mike?’

Mike turned in her direction. ‘Jessie?’

‘Please … let him in.’

‘You don’t have to talk to anyone. I told them everything I know about where you were held.’ Mike came to her and took her hand in his. At his touch Jessie began to weep. She did not know why, only that she could not stop.

‘I will not let anything happen to you,’ Mike said, speaking with such fierceness his voice broke. ‘I promise you.’

Jessie felt his hand tighten on hers. She opened her eyes again, her vision blurred from tears. ‘Get the Sheriff.’

‘Sweetheart, all of that can wait.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘What?’

‘If he’s out there, I’m not safe. None of us are.’