Unseen (9 page)

She visualized Letton, saw the hot need in his eyes.

“I’m going to kill you, you bastard,” she whispered harshly.

Edward Letton woke with a snort and a gasp. Demons were running around inside his head. They were spinning. Chortling. Poking fingers at him and laughing like hyenas. He was in hell. He was dead. Or dying. Suffocating.

Slowly he opened his eyes. His mouth was slack and desert dry. There was a tube running from his nose. No. Into his nose. Oxygen. He was being given oxygen because he was…in a hospital…and he could feel pain, though he was oddly dissociated from it. Drugs. Demerol, maybe, or something like it.

What happened?

He couldn’t piece it together. It was too much. He’d been at work but that was on Friday. And then there was—

A soccer game.

He drew a quaking breath of fear and tried to look around. Did they know? He’d been in the van. Oh, God. The van.

Fuzziness ruled his head. The damned drugs. He was in a hospital bed but he couldn’t remember why. How long had he been out? Had he
said
anything? Did they
know
?

He struggled to move but his body screamed at even the slightest twitch. He was breathing hard, though he’d scarcely done more than squeeze his eyes closed, sucking up the oxygen, in some kind of real mess here.

What had he done? What happened? How had he ended up in a hospital?

Faintly, as if viewing it from a long, long distance, he saw the young girl with the slim legs and blue shorts. She was so beautiful. He wanted to rub against that firm, nubile flesh. But he knew she wouldn’t allow it. That’s why he’d brought the van.

The van. He’d worked so hard on the van. Long hours, away from Mandy. Hiding out in the garage, listening with active ears in case she should enter the garage uninvited, surprising him. The sweet danger of that had given him almost a constant erection. If she caught him fitting out the van, what would he say? Would she believe him? Would he have to take her as his first victim, just to keep her quiet? He despised her. Her big tits and fat, cellulite-filled ass. But she was a necessary part of the equation. His cover. His loving wife.

But she never came in the garage. Couldn’t be torn away from her reality TV shows. That one where a bunch of shrieking women went after the rich guy really turned her on. She about wet her pants when those guys gave the girls roses. If she’d had an ounce of sexuality herself, she might have given herself a rub and tickle, it turned her on so much. Unfortunately, that would never happen. Mandy liked chocolates, and an occasional gift, though he could never afford the diamonds and furs she salivated over. Maybe if he could, she might have tried to at least enjoy their monthly hump and bump, but she pretty much just waited for it to be over. Just closed her eyes and waited while Ed did his thing. One time, by God, she’d started softly snoring. Out cold. That was about the last time he’d been able to even get it up for her.

She was too round.

Too old.

But girls…they were beautiful. Lovely, lovely thighs and ankles and flat chests with skin drum-taut, and narrow little wrists.

It was a sickness; he knew that. He didn’t care. Ed had waited all his life for something for himself. When was it Eddie’s turn, huh? And he wasn’t going to wait anymore. He was going to take what he wanted. What he needed. What he deserved!

But…what had happened? He was in deep shit, here, he could tell, and there was a murky memory of something bad…

Damn drugs. He was sinking under them, but at least that would mean the pain would go away. He was hurt. He needed to heal.

He could see that lovely, lovely girl reaching for the soccer ball…

In his dream he reached back.

Lovely…

Chapter Six

The interior of the truck reeked. Reeked with her evil odor. Reeked with her death. His eyes watered but he refused to cover his nose and mouth. He wouldn’t give the witch the satisfaction.

And she was burning now. Burning. Her sick, filthy flesh melting from her body.

He drove away as fast as he dared. He’d found a place for her. They would discover her and soon. Her scent alone would draw them near, but the fire would pinpoint the location from afar.

He had a long way to go before he was safe. The other witch’s haunts were over an hour’s journey from his home, closer to two in the summer when vacationers headed to the beach. He didn’t know what had brought her to the town of Quarry, but it was where he’d found her, where he intended to find her again.

Quarry.

His lips flattened into a cold smile.

His quarry.

Carol Pellter really had nothing more to add to her story but she was bent on keeping Will’s interest as he sat across from her at the dining table of her parents’ house. Her mom looked both weary and annoyed. Now that the danger was past, their daughter’s obsession with the event was something she wanted to switch off but just did not know how.

Carol’s tale was sounding less and less like a suspected kidnapping and probable sexual assault case, and more and more like an epic fairy tale where Letton was an ogre bent on destroying everything good and hopeful in the world and Carol was a princess/swashbuckler who saved one and all.

Will pretended to listen closely to her description of Letton, which stopped just short of him possessing horns and cloven feet, while trying to direct her tale-telling toward something a little more productive. He’d already concluded that this trip to meet with her was a waste of time, but he liked her and sensed that her need to keep the attention on herself stemmed from loneliness, the kind suffered by children whose busy parents signed their kids up for every athletic event, every academic tournament as a means of overcompensation. She had no brothers or sisters and possessed an imagination that boggled. Will sought to guide her through the events of the morning of her near-abduction in an attempt to draw her back from fantasy.

“Do you remember anything about the silver car?” Will asked, though Carol had been thoroughly questioned a number of times already. Each time her story became a little more exaggerated.

“It came speeding up then BAM! He just went up in the air and landed back on top. Then he bounced off. There was a lot of blood.” She’d been squeamish and white-faced the first time she’d told the tale. Now she didn’t bat an eye. “He was kinda moving his legs and arms, like he was gonna get up and chase me like a zombie!” She shivered, eyes wide. Will could see her adding that to her fairy tale. The Princess and the Zombie.

“You said it was silver. What about the wheels?”

“The wheels?”

“What kind of rim did they have? Chrome, shiny? Or, dull, maybe black?”

“They were just wheels. Round.”

“Any kind of logo? Name of the kind of car? Like, Ford or Toyota or Jeep?”

“It was just kinda old.”

“How did you know that?”

“I know cars,” she said, like he was the biggest idiot on earth. “My dad drives a BMW and my mom has a Ford Escape.”

“All right. Do you know what kind of old car it was?”

“The kind people don’t take care of.”

“Meaning…it had dents?”

“The color was not good.”

“The silver was more gray than—shiny?”

“It was orange.”

“Orange?”

“Like on the back. I saw it when she zipped through the lot like a bat outta hell!”

“Where did you see it? The back of the car? Like the trunk?”

“No, the protector bar. It was kinda bent and—”

“Rusty? The bumper was rust-covered?” Will guessed. Carol had said before she thought the car was old, but she’d never said it was orange before.

“Yeah, that’s it. Rusty. The bumper was rusty. Does that help?” she asked, keying into Will’s sparked interest.

“Maybe. Those are the kinds of things that help when you remember them.”

“I’ll keep remembering,” she assured him. “Maybe I’ll remember some more tomorrow. Can you come by?”

“Carol,” her mother sighed.

“Mom, I’m helping!” she declared, right back.

“I’m not sure I can stop by again tomorrow, but you can always call me,” Will said.

“Okay.” She turned her head and peered at him sideways. “You’re not just humoring me, are you?”

“Carol!”

“No,” Will assured her. The mother turned three shades of scarlet on hearing her daughter mime her and her husband’s own words. “You never know when something might help.”

Carol shot her mother a
see there
look as Will’s cell phone rang. Excusing himself, he stepped onto the Pellters’ front porch and punched the talk button. “Tanninger.”

“Will, there’s a fire out by the Laurelton Airport,” Barb told him.

“Uh-huh.” He waited. Since the strip of land euphemistically known as the Laurelton Airport was outside the city limits, it was within the Winslow County lines and therefore the sheriff’s department’s jurisdiction. But fires were the fire department’s problem.

Barb enlightened him. “Dead body at the scene. Looks like whoever started the fire was trying to burn the body.”

“Homicide?”

“Yep. ME’s heading to the scene. But from what I’m getting, that body’s been dead awhile. At least a week. Female.”

“Someone trying to cover up the crime.”

“Most likely.”

“Okay, I’m on my way,” Will said.

“I’ll meet you there.”

Gemma opened her mailbox and was relieved to find a new bank card. She’d made the trip to the bank to access her funds, but hadn’t yet gone for her driver’s license. The thought of a picture in her current bruised state had really squelched her desire to abide by the law. For now, she was driving without it. If she got pulled over, tough. She would just deal with the consequences.

Even though most of her memory had returned—she could recall a lot of her growing up years although specific details were still hazy—she was at a complete loss about her recent past. She didn’t remember any part of chasing out of LuLu’s after some unidentified man. The only piece that seemed to stick out was eating oatmeal and cinnamon three days before she woke up in the hospital. Anything before that came in fits and starts, but with Macie’s explanation of her on-again/off-again brain, Gemma had accepted this annoyance as part of her own weird makeup.

Still, she’d been desperately trying to remember who she’d chased after, out of LuLu’s. Was it that pedophile, Letton? Was she the person who had deliberately run him down? Would she do that?

I would if the target were Charlotte.

She thought about that hard. She would kill to save Charlotte.

She smiled faintly as she thought of Macie’s daughter. Eleven years old. A truant. Tough as rawhide, with endless energy and a smart mouth. Charlotte was a truth-teller. For reasons she couldn’t explain, Gemma could remember nearly everything about her. She identified with Charlotte, who, though her mother loved her dearly, was independent in the way of only-children and loners. She lived with Macie, but she also lived in a wider world. Everyone around Quarry knew Charlotte. She rode her bike all over the place and knew more about the town’s gossip than was probably healthy. Like some forgotten memory, Gemma recalled that Charlotte had learned things about people, things she’d then told Jean, who had used them in her predictions. That betrayal had pissed Charlotte off.

If someone like Edward Letton were after Charlotte, Gemma would have no qualms about running the bastard down. She could remember the emotion—the fury—that had consumed her as she banged out of Lulu’s that day. She’d followed him to his home…no…place of work?

“Where’s the car?” she asked aloud to the empty room. She’d looked in all the outbuildings on the off-chance it was there, but there was no sign of it.

Tossing the mail on the front table, she extracted her bank card. She was using an older purse that had nothing in it but two tubes of lipstick and a stack of ballpoint pens. She dropped the bank card into it and decided it was time to buy a new wallet.

“And where’s my purse? And who dropped me off at the hospital?”

It was extremely frustrating—
extremely
frustrating—that she couldn’t recall those facts.

The phone rang and Gemma hesitated before answering. “Hello?”

“It’s Sally, Gemma, dear. Thanks for calling me back.” Her tone added the word
finally
, though she didn’t say it. “When can I have my appointment?”

Sally Van Kamp. Gemma had been forced to return her call, then had been thrilled when the woman’s answering machine had clicked on, giving her a chance to bob and weave. She had no interest in giving the woman a reading. None.

“Hello, Sally. I just wanted to let you know that I’m not scheduling any appointments right now,” she began regretfully.

“What? You can’t be serious. Jean, rest her soul, has been gone for nearly a year, and you’ve put me off and put me off. Your mother would never have treated me like this!”

“I’m recovering from a—car accident. I just got out of the hospital,” Gemma said tightly. Okay, it was almost a week ago but Sally didn’t have to know that.

“Oh.” She was momentarily flummoxed. But then she swept on, “I’ll bring you over some of my chicken casserole. Just the thing. Perk you right up.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Oh, my, my, yes, I do! I’ll see you this afternoon.”

She clicked off and Gemma was left holding the receiver. She didn’t want to deal with Sally. She didn’t want her time used up. Before she started work at the diner she wanted to finish a few things. Threads left untied.

With that in mind she headed upstairs to her bedroom and the research books with their underlined passages.

The Laurelton airstrip was a narrow line of hard soil, mowed grass, and a Quonset hut terminal, if you could call it that, painted white. Flags snapped in a frisky breeze, and the sun glared down, a fierce, yellow eye.

The smell of burned flesh caught on the breeze as Will climbed from his patrol car and Barb got out of the other side. Burned, putrefying human flesh. Barb wrinkled her nose in distaste as they circled past a state patrol car and the Quonset hut, and headed in the direction of the group of vehicles clustered around the back of the airstrip.

A fire truck stood off to one side and several men and one woman were looking down at a black tarp, presumably the body. Around them was an area of burned field grass. The fire had luckily been extinguished before it could do greater damage.

“ME was on the other side of the county,” Barb said. “Don’t see him yet.”

They approached the group. The state patrolman’s name was Evans and he shook Will and Barb’s hands. He introduced the other man—gray-faced and looking about to faint—as Freddie Delray, an airplane mechanic, and the woman, middle-aged, heavy-set, and sharp-eyed, as Maggie Long-worth, the Laurelton Airport’s resident everything. She didn’t seem particularly moved by the burned body or the god-awful stench, but Freddie was having a hard time.

“Freddie found the body,” Patrolman Evans explained. “Called 911 and I was first available.” He pointed to the fire truck where one of the firemen was leaning against the front bumper. His partner was inside the truck, talking on a cell phone. “There wasn’t much of a fire. Freddie saw it immediately and ran out with water before it got going. Nothing really to put out.”

“Coulda been bad,” Barb observed.

“Real bad,” Evans agreed.

Will said, “Can we see the body?”

“Okay, but get ready.”

Freddie made a squeak of protest and looked away, swallowing hard, but Maggie leaned forward as if dying for another look.

The charred body was of a woman. It had been doused with water, undoubtedly by Freddie, who took the moment now to simply collapse onto the ground and retch up his lunch. The body had been set on fire but there were also two circular dots burned on the chest.

“Cigarette burns?” Barb asked.

“Maybe ritualistic,” Will said.

“What the hell does that mean?” Barb asked the question but looked reviled.

Maggie said, “He’s sending a message, maybe.”

Both Will and Barb looked at her, then at each other, then down at the body again.

“Looks like the fire was a diversion?” Evans guessed.

“From what? He left the body here for us to find.” Will turned to Freddie, whose head hung forward though he was on his feet again. “How long ago did you put this out?”

“An hour. Forty-five minutes? I don’t know.” He spat onto the dirt.

“She’s been dead awhile,” Barb observed.

Will leaned forward. “What would you say? A week, maybe?”

“Smells like it,” Evans murmured.

Will gazed around the fields, then over to the Quonset hut. There was no activity. The airstrip could have been abandoned and practically was. From where they stood, someone could easily have set the fire, walked back to a waiting vehicle and driven away without being seen by a soul.

“So, he killed her, marked her with a cigarette, kept her hidden for a week then brought her here to burn. He chose this place because there’s no one here.”

“We’re here,” Maggie protested.

“There are no windows in this direction.”

Maggie frowned at Freddie, as if it were somehow his fault.

Will glanced from the Quonset hut to the fields beyond. They gave way to heavy brush almost immediately from where they stood. It was the far western point of the airstrip. There was nothing for miles and miles behind them but untended brush and scraggly trees, giving way to timber in the far, far distance. “Coulda started a major fire.”

“Why draw attention to himself?” Barb asked. “If he’d just buried her, she might not have been found for a while.”

Will gazed down at the young woman’s body. “I think he likes to burn.”

It was three o’clock when Sally rang Gemma’s front doorbell. Gemma heard it from the den, where she was lost in thought, having read more passages in her books on borderline personalities, pedophiles, and various and sundry brain sicknesses, until she felt slightly ill. Gemma answered the door still lost in that world, but seeing Sally brought her back to earth with a bang.