Blue Stew (Second Edition) (9 page)

Maddie looked at him silently with her large blue eyes, her lips sealed.

Walter hoped—but now wasn’t so sure at her lack of comment—that Maddie hadn’t been to any of the parties he’d attended recently, the ones in which he’d made it plain that the whole thing, in fact,
hadn’t
been
misguided.

Walter held up the order slip. He coughed. “So, chicken feed and chicken scratch . . . light load today?”

“Yeah,” Maddie herself sounded distracted. She, too, coughed, and then said, “I’m still sorry, though. It would’ve been nice just to have dinner with you, really. It
still
would be nice. We haven’t hung out in
so
long, Walter . . .”

Walter had to fight to keep the startled confusion clear from his face and voice. “
Yeah
. . .” he barely staved off a frown. “Here . . . let me get the bags for you.”

He retreated into the cold gloom of the warehouse.

Had Madeline Wendell just implied that she was interested in going on a
date
with him? Was she aware that he was no longer a standout hockey jock, but instead a lowlife laborer with zero prospects? He noticed that he had started down the wrong aisle; he backtracked and looped around the adjacent one.

A funny, sad thing happened in Walter’s brain then. Until now, he had seen Maddie as a beautiful, wholesome country girl, some comfortable miles out of his dreary league. But, as he struggled with the notion that she possibly had any interest in a guy like him, Walter’s perception of her got stained. So far down in the dumps was his
own
self-image that, sometimes, positive treatment by others rebounded negatively back onto them, in Walter’s feeble mind.

He had fallen under the impression that the only pretty girls he could attract were trashy, redneck, party-girl types. For this situation to compute in his brain, then,
something
had to give, and give in a serious way. So, maybe Maddie
wasn’t
the spotless angel which he had previously thought her to be? It wasn’t a hard question for his subconscious to raise, either. How well did he really know her? She
did
have a great figure; he could bring to mind plenty of stocky alpha-male hicks who would love to show her a
good time
. And if she possibly had an interest in partying with some heavier recreational drugs, who else would she think to hook up with but Walter Boyd?

As Walter stacked a sack of feed onto a sack of scratch and, with a grunt, hoisted both over one shoulder, the nerves were already leaving, along with the voice in his head insisting that he had to ask Maddie out.

Jamie, if she had been there in Walter’s mind, surely would’ve illuminated this horrible mental catch. It was a catch-22 that would’ve made Groucho Marx proud: Walter didn’t care for the kinds of girls that would have any interest in him, essentially. Even if it meant tarnishing his mental image of a girl in order to maintain this depressing outlook.

Jamie wasn’t there in his head, however, and when Walter emerged from the murky warehouse, he deposited the bags onto the bed of Maddie’s truck and said flatly, “There you go.”

Maddie looked at Walter. Walter didn’t return the look.

“Okay,” she said, softly. “Thanks.”

She drove away. Walter went back to his straw seat.

•   •   •

Separated from the road by both the warehouse and the store itself, Walter didn’t see as Officer Corey sped past Kall’s Tractor Supply, his lights flashing silently.

Officer Corey had, minutes ago, received a call from Officer Eugene Everett on the other side of town. Eugene, who’d been out on patrol, had sounded quite sure that he’d stumbled across a significant find relevant to their investigation of the horrific murders.

Officer Corey zoomed across Sutherland in under ten minutes, salivating at the prospect of a development that could unravel some of the mystery, rather than deepen it even further—as had all the
previous
developments.

He scanned the old hayfield carefully as he followed the dirt road which paralleled it. Eugene had said it was at the far end of the field, and that’s exactly where Officer Corey saw it: a cluster of haphazardly abandoned cars on the fringes of the overgrown field, Eugene’s patrol car flashing nearby.

As rough as always with his own trusty patrol car, Officer Corey jerked the wheel when he came to an opening in the trees and stone wall that lined the field—originally for haying tractors—and splashed and slogged through a short muddy stretch. He plowed along, following Eugene’s tracks over the long, golden grass, most of which had folded over under its own dead weight.

He slid to a halt only feet from Eugene, who was leaning against his own cruiser.

Officer Corey pulled himself out, shut his door, and made for the cluster of cars.

“They
have
been here a little while,” he confirmed what Eugene had speculated over the radio. The cars were parked in a muddy area near the encroaching forest where the grass hadn’t come in as thickly. Officer Corey observed how most of the tire tracks leading up to their parent tires had been erased, presumably during the night of the rainstorm, two nights ago.

“I already ran all the plates,” Eugene spoke to Officer Corey’s backside. “The owner of the VW there matches up pretty well to Victim Number Four, just eyeballing the license on file.”

Officer Corey first picked out the small grey VW and then turned, “Show me.”

On the laptop inside Eugene’s cruiser, Officer Corey gravely looked over the digital license photo of the man to which the VW was registered. He didn’t enjoy recollecting details of the pale face her had seen hanging from Paul Stanley’s sap lines, but, “I think you’re right,” said Officer Corey. “Jonathan Southman? Have you looked to see if he was reported missing?”

“Yes, he was last night.”

Officer Corey nodded. “Good. I
mean
—at least we’re getting somewhere. Any other potential matches?”

“Tom . . . none of the other victims had
faces
.”

“Fuck.” It wasn’t frustration that made him curse. “Don’t remind me. I meant, as far as missing persons reports and car registrations goes.”

“Oh. No, I’m still working on that. I just radioed the detectives. They’ll be able to link up prints and DNA samples with the folks on the registrations.”

“Good.”

Officer Corey got back out of the car, and Eugene followed. They scanned the cluster of cars and, together, sighed.

“Four cars. Five dead, assuming we ever find Number Two,” breathed Eugene somberly.

“Five cars, actually: the jeep that hit Walter.”

Eugene nodded. “This
has
to be where it all went down. Paul’s and Doris’s houses are both about a mile from here, through the woods.”

Officer Corey stood silent, contemplating.

“So what the
hell
happened here, then?” asked Eugene. “The killer—
somehow
—lured them all out to this isolated field, in the middle of the stormy night . . . and . . .
attacked?
”

“Have you looked for signs of a struggle? Or restraints, like rope or duct tape? Or weapons?”

“Not thoroughly . . . but, nothing, so far. Everything’s pretty clean.”

“Blood?”

“If there is, the rain washed it all away. Not that I’m officially trained to collect evidence . . .”

“I know you’re good, Eugene. I remember the Westfield case.”

Officer Corey started back into the midst of the abandoned cars. His head turned from side to side, unsure where to begin. He then saw something. A lone set of tire tracks, closer to the forest than any of the parked cars, had not been washed flat by the rain. He walked over to them.

The tracks were strikingly deep—deepest where he now stood—and a wide splattering of dried mud surrounded and trailed behind them as they meandered off, swerving away into the heart of the field.

Officer Corey knew that only a high-torque vehicle with specialized off-roading tires could cut trenches likes these, yet still power out of them. The scenario fitting together in his head, he now looked towards the feet of the forest. There was a shallow stone wall that lined the softening edge of the old field. Many of the rocks were of a similar size and shape as a memorable one he had pulled off of the floor of a certain wrecked Jeep . . .

“So,” Eugene had walked up behind him, “this is where Number One set off on his joyride, huh?”

“Looks like it. The Lindsey Bridge is not far from here. Evidently he didn’t make it very far.”

“Not surprising.”

Thoughtful silence.

“I’m thinking,” began Officer Corey, “what if Number One
didn’t
hit Walter Boyd because he had lost control, or because he was trying to get his attention? What if he did it for the same reasons Number Three, our suspect, meant to attack Doris?”

“Being?”

“I
told
you all what he said. He wanted to free her from the ‘illusion’—the ‘
prison
’—that is life, or whatever the fuck he meant.”

“So what are you getting at?” Eugene’s eyes were narrowing.

“I’m just thinking, now . . . what if
all
these people were just as fucked-up as Number Three, and
all
of their injuries were
self
-inflicted? Occam’s Razor, right? Go with the simplest explanation. Like we were saying when there was just Number One. There’s no sign of conflict here . . . and can you realistically imagine
one
deranged man keeping in line four grown men as he marches them through the forest, bizarrely mutilating them along the way, all in one night? And what about the ostensibly self-inflicted
bite
marks on Victim Number Four?”

Eugene scratched his head, “Well, I guess it’s just really hard to conceive of not
one
, but
five
mind-bendingly deranged psychopaths . . .”

“Hey, it’s the Internet Age. Unique, like-minded people are connecting with each other like never before . . .”

Eugene laughed grimly, “That’s certainly a take on it.”

“Have you
been
online lately? Even before all this happened, I wouldn’t have been
too
surprised to learn of a crazed, masochistic suicide cult on there, somewhere in the depths of the wild-wild-web . . .”

“I suppose we should run full background checks once we ID all the victims—see if any of them have known suicidal tendencies . . . interview friends and family, too.”

“Yes. And let’s check their cars for drugs.”

“
Hm
,” said Eugene, pursing his lips. “Some heavy narcotics
could
go a long way to sway me of what you’re saying . . .”

“Hah. Speaking of, guess who Melisa invited over for dinner tonight?”

•   •   •

Walter caught a ride back to Nigel’s after work. He showered there, and then called Melisa, worried that she might’ve already called his home phone to no avail. She hadn’t, and after reminding her of his car situation (or lack thereof), Melisa offered to pick him up at Nigel’s around six.

“That’s so weird that you’re going to have dinner at Tom Corey’s,” Nigel muttered when Walter set the phone in its charger.

Walter laughed, “I think it was more of a token offer. I don’t know if she expected me to accept.”

“Why
did
you?”