Slice (33 page)

E
IGHTY-EIGHT

I
nside the Pierce house, as investigators dusted for fingerprints and collected evidence, Chief Walters took Patrick Castile aside.

“Look,” she said. “I've put my entire force on the lookout for Emil Deetz. If he's out there, we'll find him.”

Castile raised an eyebrow in her direction. “Changed your mind on the likelihood of Deetz being our man, have you, Chief?” he asked.

“I'm open to the possibility,” she said.

Castile's arrogance really ticked Walters off. He was a kid. When Walters had started out as a rookie cop, Castile was probably still in nursery school.

“And if I'm willing to keep an open mind,” she said, “I'm here to ask you to keep yours open as well.”

“Oh, really? What should I be considering, Chief Walters?”

“John Manning.”

Castile sighed, and began to say something, but the chief cut him off.

“I'm not saying he's the killer. Maybe he is, maybe he's not. I'm just saying there are questions that just won't go away and that he's never really given us satisfactory answers. You were aware that he and Heather Pierce were having an affair?”

Castile looked at her, but made no reply.

“Manning broke off the affair. Heather made some scenes. She was harassing him. And she was convinced he'd killed her husband.”

Castile still said nothing.

“It just strikes me as worth investigating why every murder has had some connection to Manning.”

“I'd hardly say there was a connection between Theresa Whitman and Manning.”

“Not that we know of.”

“Please, Chief . . .”

“Look, Castile, Manning was the last one to see Pierce alive, after beating him up. And the victim whose corpse you just carried out of here on a stretcher sat in my office not long ago and told me she was afraid of him. Come on. This is basic police work. You've got to find out where Manning is involved in all of this.”

“Look,” Castile said, moving close to Walters so he could speak softly and she could hear. “I've already told you. We are well aware of John Manning. Leave him to us.” His face hardened. “In fact, Chief, I'd say your further involvement in this case is no longer needed. We appreciate all that you and your department have done, but we'll take it from here.”

Walters was aghast. “You can't tell me not to be involved when a serial killer is roaming my town.”

“I can,” he said. “And I am.”

He walked away from her.

Chief Walters seethed.

E
IGHTY-NINE

J
essie was testing the security alarm system. She'd done so several times already this morning. She would set the alarm and then head outside, locking the new front door—a solid, heavy piece of oak and aluminum. Then she'd take a screwdriver and jimmy the lock—or attempt to open a window—or have Abby walk around inside the house. Each time the alarm sounded, much to Jessie's satisfaction. She'd then hurry back inside and turn the alarm off before the security system notified the police.

“Everything okay up here?”

Jessie looked around. Monica was walking up the hill.

“I keep hearing the alarm going off,” she said.

“I'm testing it,” Jessie told her.

“Good idea,” her sister agreed. “Can't be too safe. The news about Heather and the kids really freaked me out. I'm thinking of staying at a hotel for a while. Do you and Abby want to come?”

“I'm not running away,” Jessie said, checking the window locks for probably the twentieth time. “I'm through with that.”

There was a heavy silence between the sisters.

“Look, Jessie, I'm sorry about the other day.”

Jessie looked over at her.

“Really, I am,” Monica continued. “And I hope you'll accept my apology.”

“The apology I'm waiting for, Monica, is for the lie you told to me and to Todd all those years ago.”

“Jesus
Christ
, Jessie. Why won't you believe me that I was really pregnant?” Monica's face twisted in resentment. “You should be angry at Todd for seducing me that night.”

“He didn't seduce you,” Jessie said plainly.

Monica smirked. “Oh? Is that what he's told you? Has he been up here to plead his case? He comes to see you but not me.”

“No, Todd hasn't been here. I haven't spoken to him. But I know he didn't seduce you. I know that he was in love with me. Whatever happened that night was your doing.”

“What happened that night was that he got me pregnant.. . .”

“Bullshit, Monica. You were never pregnant.” Jessie laughed derisively. “I'm amazed at how tenaciously you're clinging to that lie.”

“I'm not lying!”

“You
are
, Monica! And I guess I understand. It's all you have. Without it, your whole marriage crumbles. Your whole
existence
crumbles! That's why you want me to corroborate your lie. But I won't do it.”

Monica's face was bright red. “All I know is that Todd has left me, thanks to you!”

Jessie turned to check the motion detector on the front-porch light. “I hope we can be friends someday, Monica. I really do. But until you can acknowledge what you did, I don't see that happening.”

“You'll be sorry, Jessie! You'll be sorry for breaking up my marriage!”

She turned and stormed back down the hill toward her house.

Jessie sighed. She sat down on the porch steps and put her face in her hands.

Within seconds she felt a light touch on her shoulder. She removed her hands from her face and looked up. Standing beside her, his small hand resting on her shoulder, was Aaron.

“Hello, Aaron,” Jessie said, smiling.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Oh, I'll be fine. Don't worry about me.”

“I don't like seeing you so sad,” Aaron told her.

Jessie smiled and wrapped one arm around the boy's waist, pulling him in toward her. “You're a sweet boy, you know that?”

“I like it when you smile,” Aaron said.

“Then I'll try to smile more,” Jessie replied.

The boy sat beside her on the step. “Where's Abby?”

“She went with her Aunt Paulette for ice cream. She helped me all morning and that was her reward.”

“Well, I can help you now.”

Jessie tousled his hair. “I'm pretty much finished. I was just testing the security system.”

“Is that because you're frightened?”

“Well,” Jessie said, careful not to worry the child, “I'm just taking precautions. You know that some very bad things have happened in this neighborhood, don't you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I want you to be careful, Aaron. You shouldn't be walking through the woods alone anymore. When you want to come visit, I want you to call me, and I'll come pick you up.”

“So you
are
frightened then.”

Jessie sighed. “Well, sometimes I am. But I'm not going to let fear overpower me. That's happened in the past. I won't let that happen again.”

“Who are you frightened of?” Aaron wanted to know.

Jessie looked at him. His dark eyes shone out at her. Yes, she could see Emil in the boy's features. Aunt Paulette was right.

“I don't know,” Jessie said honestly, in a very soft voice.

“Are you frightened of Mr. Manning?”

“Oh, no. Mr. Manning is a good man, Aaron.”

The boy was shaking his head firmly. “He's a very
bad
man.”

Jessie frowned, taking one of the boy's hands in hers. “He's not, Aaron. Once you get to know him, you'll like him.”

Aaron said nothing, just dropped his eyes to the ground.

“Aaron,” Jessie said, still holding the boy's hand, “I wish you'd tell me more about you. Where you live. Your parents . . . or whoever looks after you.”

Is it Emil? Do you live with Emil?
That was what Jessie was so desperate to know, but too afraid to ask directly.

Aaron seemed to have fallen mute. He just kept staring at the ground.

“Please show me where you live, Aaron,” Jessie said.

He looked up at her. “All right,” he replied.

They stood. Aaron walked down the steps and turned to Jessie, reaching out his hand and taking hers again. She allowed him to lead her across the grass, over the brook, and into the woods. They spoke no words. The day was bright and the sun flooded the woods through the bare trees. There was no reason for fear. None at all.

But then, just as Aunt Paulette had described, the sounds of bird song ceased.

It was completely, utterly quiet as they passed through the woods, the only sound the crunching of the leaves under their feet.

They seemed to walk for a very long time. Jessie no longer recognized the woods she had known and played in ever since she was a little girl. They seemed to stretch on forever. But she wasn't frightened. That surprised her. She wasn't the least bit frightened, not as long as she kept holding the hand of the little boy in front of her, who led her deeper and deeper into this place.

He looked back at her once, his face seeming to glow with light. His dark eyes sparkled. He smiled. Jessie smiled back.

She had the weirdest sensation of being outside her body, looking down on herself and Aaron. She kept seeing images of a boy and a woman moving through the woods from someplace high above, as if Jessie were perched at the top of the tree.

Eventually sparks of recognition returned to her mind. They were near the gorge. Locals called it Suicide Leap—a steep drop of some fifty feet down a rocky embankment. Mom had always warned Jessie on their walks through the woods that she should steer clear of the gorge. It came up on you almost without warning. The trees grew right to the edge, and then the land just gave way. Losing one's footing at the top could mean a terrible tumble all the way down to the bottom. The drop was too steep to be able to walk down, and there was very little to break a fall.

For the first time the vaguest tremble of fear penetrated through Jessie's cocoon of good feeling.
The gorge . . . is he taking to me to the gorge?

But Aaron turned and headed in another direction. Up ahead, she spotted an old shack. She thought she remembered the shack from when she was a child—but she'd thought that it had been torn down, years ago. The shack was barely still standing, no more than seven feet by eight feet, with a broken door and no windows. The wood was rotted in several places. Aaron stopped in front of the shack and let Jessie's hand drop.

The birds began to chirp once again in the trees.

“Is this where you live, Aaron?” Jessie asked.

The little boy nodded.

She stooped down, putting her arm around his waist. “You live here? Where are your parents?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I miss them.”

She placed her hands on either side of his face and looked closely at him. “No boy can live here. How do you eat? How do bathe?”

Aaron had started to cry.

“You're all alone, aren't you?” Jessie asked.

He nodded.

“Your parents . . . abandoned you. . . .”

The boy began to cry harder, falling into an embrace with Jessie. His little arms held tight around her neck.

“What mother . . . could ever abandon . . . her son?”

Jessie's heart broke.

And suddenly she knew the truth.

Somehow—in some strange, mystical, unexplainable way—Aaron was her son. She was his mother. She knew it. She felt it. Somehow he had come back to her. Her son. The son she had forsaken. The son she had wished away. The son she had let die.

“I'm so sorry, Aaron,” Jessie said, her voice shattering. “So very, very sorry.”

His little body shook with tears as she held him tight.

“You're not alone anymore, baby,” Jessie whispered in his ear, as she stroked his hair and felt her own tears falling down her cheeks. “Mommy's here.”

N
INETY

P
aulette stepped on the gas. They had to get home right away.

“Why are you driving so fast, Aunt Paulette?” Abby asked, her seat belt holding her tight in the passenger seat.

“Just because I don't want your mother to worry about us, sweetie,” she told the little girl.

In fact, it was Paulette who was worried about Jessie. They'd finished their ice cream cones and were looking in shop windows when suddenly the vision had come to Paulette. Jessie was in danger. She saw her with a dark figure—the tall, dark man had finally arrive! They had to get to her right away!

So she'd grabbed Abby's hand and rushed her back to the car, all the while frantically trying to get Jessie on her cell phone. Her calls repeatedly went to voice mail. So Paulette screeched out of the municipal parking lot and raced across town back toward Hickory Dell, praying she'd get there in time.

But what would she find? What would she be able to do against the dark man—if in fact, the dark man really was the ghost of Emil Deetz?

She turned off Ridge Road onto Hickory Dell, driving past the Pierce house, shuddering at the memory of the carnage that had taken place inside. Bryan Pierce's decomposed face still haunted her. Had the tall, dark man killed all of them? Paulette couldn't figure out why the ghost of Emil Deetz was doing all this. What did Emil have against the Pierces? Against Inga? Against Detective Wolfowitz and Mrs. Whitman? The only answer was that his spirit was trying to randomly terrorize Jessie.

And now Paulette feared he had had come for Jessie herself.

She turned into the driveway and stopped the car. Hurrying around to the passenger side, she opened the door and unbuckled Abby from her seat belt.

“There's Mommy!” the little girl sang out, pointing across the yard.

Indeed, there was Jessie. She was alive, thank God.

She was coming out of the woods.

And she was walking with Aaron, holding his hand.

“Abby, stay here for a minute, in the car, okay?” Paulette said. “I want to talk to your mother for a minute.”

“Okay, Aunt Paulette.”

She closed the car door gently and made her way across the grass.

“Jessie!” she called.

Jessie didn't reply. She just kept walking toward the house with Aaron.

Paulette hurried over to her. “Jessie!”

Finally her niece turned to look at her. Jessie's eyes seemed somewhat dazed, and they were red from crying. She seemed to look through Paulette rather than actually see her.

“Jessie, are you all right?”

“Yes, I'm all right,” she said, in a voice that seemed far away to Paulette.

Aaron stared up at the older woman.

“Jessie,” Paulette said, “I've had a vision. . . . Please believe me. I think . . . I think you . . . all of us . . . are in danger.”

“That's foolish, Aunt Paulette.”

“No, not foolish. It's—”

Paulette moved her eyes from Jessie back to Aaron.

She gasped.

The boy's face seemed different. There was a look about him, as if he was full of hatred and malice, as if he was ready to spring at Paulette like a wild dog and tear out her throat with his teeth.

Jessie had seen the exchange. “Why are you afraid of Aaron?” she asked Paulette. “There's no reason to be afraid of him.”

The boy's face was back to normal. Sweet, innocent. He offered Paulette a smile.

“Aaron's going to be living with us from now on,” Jessie said, as she and the boy began moving again toward the house.

“Jessie, no . . .”

“Oh, yes,” Jessie said, not looking back as she walked. “You see, Aunt Paulette, he's one of us. Aaron is my son.”