“Two, I think.” She coughs again and I let her sit up on her own.
That’s great. As if this weren’t bad enough, now there’s another fire to put out. ”Do you know who they were?”
“I just saw a couple of guys earlier. Julie would know. Where is Julie?” She looks around expecting to see her here with me. I really wish she were.
The cat I’d heard in the parlor was now on the floor next to us, rubbing its small black head into Leslie’s hand for attention. She picks it up and starts absently petting it as I help her to her feet.
Frank steps into the doorway and I almost knock him back out it before I realize who he is.
“Hey! Take it easy.” He steps into the kitchen and he’s followed by Piper. She’s bandaged up but it looks like she’s dressed to kick somebody’s ass.
“I picked her up on my way here. She called me while I was driving and I told her Julie was in trouble and we were headed here. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.” He looks out into the front of the house and around at the floor, “What happened here?”
“Calvin Hocker.” I say the name and he stares at me with disbelief.
“But he’s in jail.” Frank’s where I was a few minutes ago, I just have to let him catch up.
“Evidently not anymore.”
Frank walks further into the house surveying the damage. I can hear him cursing softly as I find a chair that isn’t crushed and set it on its legs for Leslie.
She sits down with the cat in her lap and I turn to look at Piper. She looks like she’s spoiling for a fight. I’ve never seen this side of her. And I thought I liked her enough before. I still don’t think she needs to be out here getting hurt again before she’s really had a chance to get better. I’m going to say something to her about but before I can she sees my expression and cuts me off.
“I may not be perfect, but I’m all done lying around in bed and rotting, especially if you and Julie need me. I’m a big girl, V, trust me.”
Frank walks back into the kitchen and flips the light switch up and down for effect. “This is gonna take some time to fix back up.”
“I’m more concerned about my girls right now.” We both already knew that but I feel like I have to say it.
“I called around. Some of them are at Mercy Hospital. I did what I could on the phone to start covering for this, but our bankroll is starting to run a little thin.” This is his polite way of telling me that I need to transfer some more money into his account. Yet another thing Julie does for me.
I pull him off to the side and let Piper stay with Leslie in the kitchen. I don’t want to worry them anymore than they already are. “Did you talk to Julie?”
His shocked expression answers before he does. “No. She isn’t here?”
“I haven’t been upstairs yet, but I don’t think there’s anything up there I’m gonna be happy to see. I know there’s nothing alive up there.”
Piper steps in from the kitchen. She’s obviously been listening to us. ”I’ll go check.”
Frank gives her his pistol and tells her to be careful. She looks at him like he’s crazy. We both watch her start up the stairs and Frank turns back to me with the look of an ultimatum.
“Look, I know you don’t like police involvement here, but you need to let me bring Lewis in on this, even if it’s off the books. He needs to know that Calvin was here. I know you want to keep the girls and yourself out of trouble, V, but I also know you want them to be safe, and you can’t be here to protect them all the time. Look around.” I think it hurt him more to have to say that than it did for me to hear it.
I know he’s right.
I sigh and look back at Leslie sitting at the table. She’s hurt because I wasn’t here. Calvin is trying to ruin my life for whatever reason, and the girls are getting caught in the middle.
Piper returns, and looks shaken but not badly. “It’s rough up there, and there’s blood, but no one dead.” She adds as an afterthought, “No Julie.”
I’m not sure if that’s good or bad news at this point.
“Frank, you need to call and find out if you can get someone out here to get the power back on. Piper, clean off a couch or something for Leslie to lie down on. I’m going to see how bad the basement looks.”
Grabbing a broom, Piper walks to the front of the house with determination. I turn to look at Frank, phone in hand, and tell him what I don’t want to make a big deal out of in front of the girls.
“It gets worse. There were a couple of clients here when this went down. I don’t know who they were yet, but that’s got to get taken care of too.” I know that really made his night, he looks deflated.
“Look, you’re right. Call Lewis. Keep him out of the house as much as you can, but do what you have to do to keep them safe.” He’s nodding, which means he’s already working on a plan of action. That much is good. “I’m gonna call Garrett and get him to give me a hand.”
That hit him like a brick to the face, and I know it as soon as the words hit the air between us.
“I’ve got to get to the bottom of this, and keep more of this from happening. I think he can help.”
Frank is nonplussed. He feels like I’m replacing him with Garrett, like I’m not counting on him enough. It’s not the case, but his fragile ego, while important to me, isn’t as important as protecting those I care about.
I head down to the basement to find that it’s been untouched. Taking stock of my liquid food supply in the back of the wine closet, I find I’ve got enough preserved to last for a couple of weeks with the house not operating. After that though, I’m back on the streets hunting for my meals.
This insanity has to stop.
***
Frank orders a coffee and tells the waitress he’s expecting a friend who’ll likely have coffee as well. Then he looks out the window and rolls over in his mind what he can and can’t say. He wonders when it was that life got so complicated.
The diner on Twin Pines Road is open twenty-four hours a day, and is only two blocks from Mercy Hospital. It’s the ideal spot to meet Lewis to discuss what he can about Calvin. He even believed that until he got here.
They’ll be the only two people in the place and the staff seems low on things to do with their time.
He just came from the hospital, checking on the girls. None of them are hurt bad enough to really be worried about. But the point is that they got hurt. He can’t help but feel almost as responsible for that as V does.
The sorest spot for both of them was still that no one knew what happened to Julie. He’s got two of his crews at the house now, one on the power issue, and the other just cleaning the place up. For what he pays them to not ask questions, he‘s okay with having them go to work at three in the morning with no warning. He’s never had a complaint.
Lewis’ sedan turns slowly into the lot and Frank can tell he just got out of bed. While he has no issue with waking up the people he has on payroll, his former partner is another matter.
As the sun is rising he tells Lewis, off the record, that Calvin was at the house tonight, he hurt a lot of people, and really tore the place up.
“Frank, listen to yourself.” His hushed tones are obviously to keep the service staff from overhearing, but his tone is cutting. “Look at the kind of people you’re working with. You used to be one of the best. I was proud to call you my partner. We made a difference back then, man. What happened to you?”
They’ve had this talk before. It never goes well. If Frank were still on the force he and Lewis would likely be living together by now. They had so much in common, and Frank found it so easy to get caught up in how passionate he could be, but it always comes down to an ideal world versus reality.
“I was proud of being who I was back then, Dave, but then it got to me. Watching the people we put away walk. Watching the difference we made be undercut by legal loopholes and judges who didn’t want to put people away, bad people walking from serious charges because of overcrowding in the jails and prisons.” He’s explained this dozens of times, and in every way he can conceive of. He’s cited examples and pushed Lewis’ face in the facts but he would not see them.
“You are working with those bad people now, Frank! You’re working for one of the worst.” He said it because he knew it would bite. He couldn’t stand how much Frank cared about her.
“You don’t know everything.” He was trying his best to stay calm. This wasn’t why he’d called him here. ”You don’t know about her. And right now, catching this maniac should be your first concern.”
“I’m concerned about catching him, I really am, but I’m also concerned about you.” Lewis stands and drops cash on the table. “What happened to you, Frank?”
THE OPEN MARKET THEATRE SITS
one block off of the riverfront in Downtown Pekin. I’ve been to see plays here more than a few times. As local theatre goes, for small towns like this, it’s really not that bad. Tonight though, I’m not here for a show.
The building was originally built for an open air market, thus the name, but it sits next to several other locations of historical significance to the community of the restless dead, or so I’m told. Garrett supposedly tracked a few spirits that move regularly though this area, and he’s supposed to be meeting me when he’s done with whatever he’s doing with them.
I’ve met Lucy down here by the theatre more than a few times myself, so I’m more than willing to accept that he’s right about the area’s spirit traffic. Right now it’s not the thought of ghostly activity that’s bothering me, I’m more edgy now because he’s late.
I try to call him and get voicemail. “Hey, it’s V. I was supposed to meet you at nine and it’s almost ten. I realize that spirits probably don’t worry about time, but I do. Call me back when you get this.”
I hang up the phone and look down to put it in my purse. When I look up I see him walking toward me. Great, now I seem like an overanxious girl. Wonderful.
“Ignore the voicemail I just left you.” I say it with a big grin so he’ll think I’m being cute. Why am I so nervous?
We walk to where I’m parked and I offer to drive. It occurs to me as I’m starting the car that we only set up a meeting, I hadn’t actually told him why I wanted to see him, and yet here he is.
I spend the next thirty minutes driving aimlessly around beautiful downtown Pekin, and explaining to Garrett who Calvin Hocker is and what he’s done to my house. I let him know about Carl and Jake and the body snatching from the cemetery and then I tell him that I want his help. Amazingly, he says he’ll do it.
The location of Calvin’s house was one of the things I happened upon while rooting through the head of one of his nitwit cronies. I suggest we go and see if he’s there or if we can find any information on where he might be; maybe we can also find out what they’ve done with Rachel’s body along the way.
He agrees and seems concerned for Rachel’s body as well. This guy is unbelievable. I just hope he really is what he seems to be.
The house is in the county, middle of nowhere actually, and it has a long gravel driveway. If there’s anyone there they’ll see us coming a mile away, so I park on the road and tell him to sit with the car. I’m going to walk up to the house and if all is clear then I’ll call him to bring the car.
He likes the plan, he just insists that I be the one to stay with the car. I don’t like not being there first hand if anything happens, but he’s insistent and it’s not a bad feeling to be protected every now and again, so I agree.
I wait for fifteen minutes and it’s unbearable. I’m going over all the bad things that could have happened to him for the eightieth time when he calls and tells me it’s clear.
Pulling up to the house it occurs to me that anyone can see the car from the road, so I pull around behind an outbuilding and then join Garrett on the back porch.
I snap off the knob and push the door open as quietly as I can. We both walk in and I’m impressed by how quiet he is for a man of his size.
When we find the door to the basement I motion that I’ll go down and he should go on searching this floor. We split up and I do my best to quietly descend the creaky rotting stairs into the musty basement.
It doesn’t take long to find a room on the far end of the basement that Calvin was obviously using for a makeshift office. There are two computers, a filing cabinet, some camera equipment, and a photo printer.
Going through the desk I’m amazed at the amount of cash this little hick has on hand. I stop counting stacks of bills when I get over one hundred grand. There are photos in the bottom desk drawer and spreading them out on the desk I see that they’re of Frank, Julie, Garrett, and myself.
Now I’m confused. I just had to explain to Garrett who Calvin was, but it seems Calvin knows all too well who he is.
I shove the cash and the photos in my bag, and open another drawer when I hear glass crash on the floor upstairs. I bolt for the stairs and sprint up them, arriving in the living room in time to see Garrett roll off of the body.
Calvin is staring wide-eyed at the ceiling and lying completely motionless. I listen and I don’t hear a heartbeat. He’s not breathing either.
“Don’t you think this’ll make it kinda hard to question him?” I blurt out, as there seems to be no need for stealth anymore.
“He attacked me. I was defending myself,” he answers indignantly.
“And you were scared of that little guy. He looks like he was in rough shape before he even got here. I mean look at those…”
We both notice that Calvin is full of bullet holes. I assumed when I saw Leslie shoot him that he was wearing a vest or some kind of body armor. There’s no way this guy should have been able to do anything to anyone except bleed on them.
“Okay, that’s fucked up. Let’s finish searching this place and get out of here.” I start to head back to the basement but Garrett grabs my arm.
“I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s what you were looking for.” He points to a wooden crate in the corner. I lift the lid and see Rachel’s face looking up at me. It’s heavily decayed but it’s her.
I don’t even have time to say anything before it’s the night we met all over again. An invisible sledgehammer hits me in the face and knocks me to the floor. Only now do I notice the shadows moving independently through the room.