Thomas Prescott Superpack (8 page)

Got her? Oh, my little practical joke. I’d strategically placed thirty fly traps throughout the house. If you aren’t familiar with a fly trap, they unravel from the ceiling about three feet and are covered in a half tree sap-half Elmer’s glue type concoction. I’d gotten three of them stuck to my face on the way out and I’d hung them. “Well thank you Lacy Prescott. That means a lot coming from you, although it’s easy when your prey is deaf, dumb, and blind.”

“Just blind you prick. Where did you get the parts, they feel so real.”

“What parts? They’re fly traps; I picked them up at the hardware store.”

“No, the body parts in my bed. They feel so real.”

As she said the words I knew my worst fears had been realized. Tristen Grayer was back.

Encore in October

Chapter 12

My autonomous nervous system kicked in and my body couldn’t decide whether to fight or flight. So I stood still, like a deer in headlights. No wait, Alex was shining the friggin’ spotlight in my eyes again.

She said, “Oops, sorry,” and ran into the house.

I flipped my cell open and dialed Caitlin. She picked up on the third ring, “This better be good.”

Caitlin should have asked, “Where?” The only reason I would be calling at 11:30 P.M. on a Monday night would be to report a murder or put in for a late night sex romp. Where covered both bases. I cleared my throat and said, “My house.” She was silent, the reality of the situation piercing her skin. When it hit marrow, she asked, “Are you there?”

“No, I’m thirty minutes out.”

She didn’t ask where I was, and if she had, I would have said the dentist. Lucky for me, this wasn’t the time for questions or comedy routines.

Caitlin said flatly, “I can be there in twenty.”

I flipped the phone closed and saw I had unconsciously made my way through Alex’s house and was nearing her front door. Alex had absconded somewhere and I hoped she would understand my leaving without a proper so-long, farewell, arrivederci, miss-me-miss-me-now-you-have-to-kiss-me.

I b-lined it to the Range Rover, rammed the key in the ignition, threw the car in drive, slammed down the gas, then slammed on the brakes, nearly crippling Ms. Tooms in the process. Alex hit the hood with both hands and threw open the passenger door. Her chest was heaving as she said, “I’m coming with.”

I would have thrown her out, but it would have wasted valuable time, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t mind her presence. She apparently knew where I lived and directed me through a shortcut even Hillary wasn’t wise to. (I would later go on to name the route, “The Lewinsky.”)

I kept my foot down on the gas and after two minutes I was rocketing up the ramp to I-95. Once safely on the highway, cruising at the breakneck speed of a hundred and ten miles an hour, I attempted to get my cell phone out of my pocket. It was a futile effort and I said, “Dial this number.”

Alex pulled a cell phone from her pocket, sending something small and metallic onto her lap. She said, “Shoot.”

I rattled off the number and she handed me the phone. After the first ring someone picked up on the other line and I said, “Where are you?”

Conner’s voice shot through the phone, “I’m on my way to your house. What the hell is going on? Lacy wouldn’t tell me shit.”

I told him the situation and I could hear the pistons in his Camaro flex their muscles. It wasn’t safe to talk on a cell at a hundred and twenty miles an hour, so I hung up and concentrated on the road. I handed the phone to Alex, who was fiddling with the small metallic object, and for what it’s worth, didn’t appear to be peeing her pants. At some point, I picked up one of Maine’s finest, his twinkling lights cascading off the tunneling trees in my rear view.

The exit sign told me I had two miles until my stop, the three cop cars on my tail told me I would probably be on the next edition of
World’s Greatest Police Chases
. Fifty seconds later, I exited and the three cops followed suit.

Oh no, someone must have broken into the Lighthouse Museum
.

I covered the next three miles in record time, leading the parade of lights through a number of treacherous turns, slowing down when I hit my street. It was one thing to run over a hitchhiker on the freeway, it was another to run over your neighbor’s curfew-breaking-pot-smoking-teen. I found my inlet and skidded to a halt behind Caitlin’s red Pathfinder. I bounded out of the car and immediately heard someone yell, “Down on your knees. Hands up.”

Someone else yelled, “Fuck off, I live here.”

Someone
didn’t like
Someone Else’s
answer and the next thing
Someone Else
knew, they had their face buried in the leaves and their arms wrenched behind their back.
Someone Else
tried reasoning with them, but it was hard to get across the message there was a dead body in
Someone Else’s
house, with a mouthful of dirt, leaves, and grubs.

A woman’s voice rang out, “If you don’t get off that man this instant you’ll be writing traffic tickets the rest of your life.”

Oh, Caitlin. Sweet, sweet, Caitlin.

I thanked my lucky stars and the cuffs flew off. Caitlin had on a pair of dark khakis and a light Bangor Police Department parka with the words
Medical Examiner
stenciled on the left breast pocket. Alex was at her side, and both brushed a couple leaves off my chest.

I asked, “Where’s Lace?”

Caitlin cocked her head toward the house, “Conner called and said the two of them were in the back looking for Baxter.”

I wasn’t sure if I were supposed to introduce Alex and Caitlin, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t care if they ever met. I started a trot to the house and yelled over my shoulder, “How long have you been here?”

“I must have pulled up right before you. I was on my way up the stairs when Alex grabbed my shirt and said you were being arrested.”

Alex?
These two were on a first name basis? Did I miss something? I filed this information away somewhere in a folder marked
Relationships
in my cerebral cortex and said, “So you haven’t seen the body?”

“Nope.” Caitlin’s mood did not convey there was actually
a body
to be seen.

The front door was open and the three of us filed through, heading for the stairs. Halfway there I turned and started for the back deck. Corpses rarely, if ever, up and leave the scene of crime. Plus, I needed to see firsthand Lacy was safe.

Caitlin and Alex followed me out to the beach where Lacy and Conner were visible under the moonlight thirty yards away, both shouting Baxter’s name at the top of their lungs. Lacy heard us approach and raced in my direction. She was clad in a pair of yellow pajamas with snoring teddy bears. Let’s just put it this way, if the blood soaking Lacy’s pajamas had been hers, she’d be running about a quart and a half low.

Caitlin swallowed hard, it almost appearing as though she had an Adam’s apple under the soft moonlight, and said, “I’m sorry Thomas. I should have believed you.”

Lacy didn’t seem overly distraught about the possibility there was a dead body in her bed, but the idea Baxter was missing was evident in the tears dribbling down her cheeks. This was probably one of the few situations in which it paid off to be blind.

I yelled to Conner thirty yards up the beachfront, “Have you been up there yet?”

He walked slowly up the beach towards our group. “Nope. Lacy was frantic when I got here and I’ve been looking for that little shit since. She won’t even let me wash the blood off her hands for Christ’s sake.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw Caitlin yelling into her cell phone.
That’s it, load up the apology bus. Single file please.

Lacy wanted me to help with the pug search and I told her I’d be more than
willing once I took a gander at her room. I walked back into the house. Caitlin
and Alex were nipping at my heels while Conner was evidently stuck with doggy duty for the
time being. The three of us made our way through the house and up the beige carpet stairs. I was two steps from the top when I heard Alex’s
wispy voice state, “Walking upstairs, no sign of blood.”

I turned around and saw Alex speaking into the small metallic object. I’d been
too preoccupied earlier to heed I’d allowed the enemy into the castle. Not allowed
even, escorted. I yanked the tape recorder from her hand, pressed Stop, and
watched the tape cease spinning. “I can’t let you up there Alex. I don’t know what
I was thinking even letting you come here tonight.”

I watched Alex until she was out of sight and put the tape recorder in my
pocket. Caitlin and I continued up the stairway and into the hall. My heart was
pounding in my throat and I blinked my dry eyes before taking the final steps
into perdition.

I eased the door open; the door reverberating lightly off the oak trimming in
the obscure blackness. I inhaled deeply, pulling every inch of the room in through
my nostrils. My sister was a neat freak and the room usually reeked of Windex
and ginger potpourri. Tonight it carried the acrid taste of blood, like biting on a
penny. I flicked on the lights and my eyes converged on the bloody mess of limbs
scattered on the once white down comforter.

Caitlin and I looked at each other in
aversion. It was real.

I walked to the bed and saw lying smack-dab in the middle of the carnage was
our fugitive in question. Call off the search party. I plucked the seven pound scab from the carnage. Baxter awoke and did
his best guard dog impression, three successive yelps.

Yeah buddy, but where were you when this was happening?

I wrapped Baxter in an old T-shirt and walked into the hall where Alex was
leaning backward on the top stair straining to hear. I handed the blood-caked-narcoleptic-guard-pug to her and said, “Maybe you can help Lacy give this guy a
bath.”

Alex took the pug, wrinkled her nose, and asked, “Is it bad?”

“Yes.”

She sensed this was the extent of her details and started down the steps holding
Baxter like he was a canister of plutonium.

I walked back into the room and
joined Caitlin next to the queen sized bed. I did a quick inventory of body parts
and came up with twenty-one differentiated body segments. Then assembling the
parts in my mind I came up with a compact, well-shaped woman, 5’6” to 5’8”,
between 120 and 130 lbs. The woman’s head was facing down at the top left corner of the bed, her dirty blond hair matted down to her spongy red scalp. Caitlin and I met eyes and she asked, “You want me to?”

Yes. “No.”

I slowly turned the woman’s head over on the bed. It was similar to waiting for a carousel to come full circle with a sniper on it. The face was barely recognizable, painted red with blood. Her nose was smashed flat, her eye sockets pulpy black concaves, and her left cheek bone protruded her gaping mouth. I staggered two steps backwards and held myself up using Lacy’s ragged dresser, the air being sucked from my lungs like I was attached to a vacuum.

Caitlin asked, “Who is she?”

It took me a couple seconds to fight back the salmon swimming upstream in my esophagus. Through clenched teeth, I said, “Jennifer Peppers. I was engaged to her a couple years ago.”

I shook my head, my eyes falling on the wall opposite Lacy’s bed. It took me a couple seconds to realize what I was looking at. Or more accurately, what was looking at me.

Caitlin followed my gaze and gasped, “Holy shit. Are those her eyes?”

Chapter 13

I took two steps towards the lifeless, vacant eyeballs protruding Lacy’s wall.

I’m assuming the vast majority of you have never seen an eyeball when it isn’t resting peacefully in the socket. The shape of the human eye is elliptical, with all the wiring hanging out the back. They look like tiny squids to be frank. Through each eye, a nail had been pounded expertly through the pupil, plastering the optic nerve and his relatives outward like rays emitting the sun.

Jennifer had these magnificent hazel eyes; taking on a tawny lemon hue one day and a metallic bronze another. Now her eyes hung in a copper limbo against their bloody landscape.

I followed the stare of the inanimate eyes to the mangled limbs piled high on the bed. I stated, “He wants us to know Jennifer watched her own death, watched her own life be taken from her.”

Caitlin said from somewhere, “Tristen Grayer with a twist.”

I nodded. This was certainly a new development.

I walked around the room for the next ten minutes, taking three rolls of mental photographs. Jennifer’s eyes had taken on a Mona Lisa quality, seeming to follow my every move within the small room. I’d seen my fair share of death as a homicide detective. Yet when it’s someone you knew personally, emotionally, sexually even, it’s different. I kept thinking; it couldn’t be real, Jennifer Pepper’s couldn’t be dead, Tristen Grayer couldn’t be back.

I laughed at my naiveté; Tristen Grayer wasn’t back. He’d never left. He’d always been waiting in the shadows, lurking. Now, he’d struck at the heart of the castle, killing someone special from my past.

We made our way downstairs as two men dressed in white jackets, with Bangor Police Department inscribed on their back, walked through the front door holding a collapsible gurney. A gurney? What did they think was up there? They needed a box. A big fucking box.

Caitlin directed them to Lacy’s room and the two of us walked out onto the front porch. The fresh air took on a cleansing property, and I suddenly wished for a torrential downpour. Unfortunately, it hadn’t rained in about three weeks and I surveyed my yellow lawn. There were six cop cars, three Bangor and three Penobscot County Sheriff parked in a semi-circle; their lights dancing on the grass up near the outskirts of the nearest oak where a band of onlookers had formed.

Through the kaleidoscope of lights, Alex appeared and walked up the drive. She wiped her hands on her pants and said, “Your sister just left with Conner. She wants you to call her and let her know where you’ll be staying the night.”

I hadn’t thought of this little nugget. I sure as hell couldn’t spend the night here. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if I could spend another night under the roof. Too much death. One woman gets killed, hey let’s get different drapes. Two women get killed, hey let’s get a different state.

Apparently, Caitlin had already contemplated my sleeping quandary and said, “You’re welcome to stay at my place. It’s only a block from Lacy and I’m sure she’ll want you nearby.”

Case open-and-shut, right? Wrong.

Alex did not concur with Caitlin’s analysis of my sleeping quarters and rebuked, “You know it’s only me in that big house. You’re welcome to crash in any of the guest bedrooms.” She added, “You have to drop me off anyhow.”

Caitlin didn’t seemed pleased with this information and pointed to a group of four cops, “Oh, sweety, I’m sure one of those nice gentlemen would be kind enough to drop you off.”

I told Alex I would drop her off, but I needed to be near Lacy, and it would be best if I stayed at Caitlin’s. Speaking of which, Caitlin would have to play coroner for the next couple hours and I asked her for a house key. She removed her key chain from her pocket and was attempting to expunge her house key when she asked, “Don’t you still have the key I gave you?”

Yes, it was in my glove compartment thirty feet away. “No.”

Caitlin looked at me suspiciously. Alex looked at Caitlin suspiciously. I looked suspiciously at my feet.

Caitlin handed me the key and retreated into the house. Alex and I buckled into the Range Rover and I navigated through the barrage of police cars. One of the police officers who’d tackled me threw me a salute and I saluted him back, only my hand was out the window and my thumb, pointer finger, ring finger, and pinky wouldn’t stand up.

Once on the frontage road my curiosity overcame me. I asked Alex, “How did Caitlin know your name?”

She raised her thin eyebrows slightly, “I interviewed her for the book. I interviewed everybody involved with the case. Well, almost everybody.” She smirked. I dismissed this and said, “Caitlin never said anything about any interview. All she said was that she spent a week compiling her account of the events.”

“Yeah, with me.”

“When?”

“I’d say around the beginning of November.”

“Where?”

“MCM.”

What a coincidence, last November I’d been doing quite a bit of hanging out at Maine Coast Memorial hospital, albeit, I was in a coma. I was stunned and said, “Don’t tell me you interviewed her in my room?”

“I had to.” She looked like she wanted to stop there, but I think there was something in the small print of the X-chromosome contract and she added, “She wouldn’t leave your side.”

I thought about these last five words for the duration of the drive.

I pulled through Alex’s open gate and parked on her doorstep, her rosebush to be exact. She
said meekly, “Can I have my tape recorder back?”

I’d forgotten I’d confiscated her tape recorder and extracted it from my pocket. I checked to make sure it was still off and handed it through the window. “Sorry I had to take it, but from my standpoint you’re the enemy.”

I watched Alex recede into the house, then drove to where I’d parked earlier, picked my bumper from its leaf burial, and threw it in the trunk. Making my way down her drive, I noticed her gate had taken the liberty of closing. I pulled up to the sensor box and the gate stubbornly played dumb. I hit the green intercom button and said, “Alex, could you open your gate?”

Alex’s voice broke the static, “Only if you promise to go sailing with me on Saturday.”

I was being optimistic in hoping the case—case being Tristen Grayer—would be in custody or dead by this point and said, “It’s a date.”

The gate creaked alive and I took the minute and a half to pick my passenger side mirror from her garden. I threw the mirror over my shoulder into the hatch turned car-part cemetery and slipped through the gate. This was my first chance to be alone and all the emotions I’d felt at the crime scene came flooding back. There’s a dam built in my brain that separates all the good I’ve encountered in my life from the bad. Jennifer Pepper’s death was a lot of water to take on by an already unstable barricade. Anyhow, a large chunk of dam chipped off that ride home.

I ran through the visual pictures of the crime scene. The last shot of Jennifer’s eyes was nagging. In the past, Tristen had taken the women’s eyes as souvenirs. Why the sudden change? Boredom? Maybe, but doubtful. Tristen Grayer was a serial killer, but he didn’t fit the serial killer mold. His killings were methodical and impulsive, or for lack of a better term, he killed with an organized spontaneity. Tristen Grayer was the ultimate paradox, a killing conundrum.

Tristen Grayer was scary as hell.