Chapter 12: That Means a Lot
Orla returned to her apartment after a very surreal and taxing night. She was glad to be home, having abandoned a frustrating evening of keeping her patience in check with her less than congenial employer. Before turning the key in the lock, she noticed a gleam of light flickering erratically under the space below the door. The average person would assume this as nothing more than forgetting to shut off the lights before leaving the house. But, lately, normalcy wasn't a luxury she could afford. After a few weeks on the…no, after a few days on the job, she knew that nothing was ever going to be what it seemed. Instinct motioned for her hand to grip the PKE Meter on her utility belt, but then remembered that she left her equipment at Doom Patrol HQ. It's just as well; the night had turned out to be one insuferable scheme of events after another. Why would forgetting the one device that could save her life be any different?
When she opened the door, she was somewhat relieved to see the television on. If anyone living or dead was prowling around her apartment, they wouldn't be dumb enough to attract the neighbor's attention. Though, stranger things have happened and she wasn't taking any chances…especially not in this city. And where was the babysitter?
"Okay, yeah, that chick is so fired," she thought. Orla grabbed the nearest thing by her side; her kids'baseball bat leaning against the closet. She had told them often enough, not to leave it lying around because someone could get hurt. Now, she was ready to give them a raise in their allowance when she needed it the most. The television was set to TV Land on channel 38. An old episode of the campy 1960's Batman was on, evidenced by its ridiculous sound effects and Cesar Romero's high maniacal laughter.
As she closed the door, her eyes fell upon the little girl curled up in the La-Z-Boy at rest in the middle of the living room. It was Joanie, attempting to reap the full rewards of a ten-year-old's descent into a conundrum of weekend escapism. She was so small that her mother hadn't noticed her sleeping in the chair until now. She put down the bat and smiled as she shouldered her daughter, brushing back the hair that covered her face.
After leaving her husband and the difficult migration from Orlando, Orla and her children had spent some time at her father's house in Blackwood, New Jersey; a temporary settlement until she found steady employment. The living arrangements weren't easy, but, she didn't have a choice and made the most of it. Her parents had been divorced for a while, nearly five years. She understood all too well how hard it was for them to come to terms with the end of their marriage. Her own had somewhat paralled her parent's in a way. Just like them, she chose commitment at an early age. But she learned the hard way that young love comes short on wisdom. Some people are better off separate rather than together. Her mother and father still talked, but that was Orla's first lesson that you couldn't go observing life through…
"rose colored glasses," Orla whispered to herself.
Joanie stirred a little bit.
"Huh? Mom?" she said listlessly as Orla placed her in the room she shared with her younger sister Mykel.
"Oh, you're awake", Orla answered as she began tucking her in bed.
Joanie blinked as she looked at her mother.
She had her father's eyes. Fate can be cruel.
"How was work today?" Joanie asked.
Orla nodded. "Pretty good", she answered, quietly so as not to wake up Mykel. "Had a lot of fun. Met a cheerleader. How was your day?"
"My teacher told us about a field trip to the zoo on Tuesday."
"Oh really? Are you excited?"
Shrugging, Joanie flashed a Cheshire grin. "She said it's the biggest in town."
"I think it's the only one in town, sweetie," Orlad added.
"Do you think its even bigger than the one in Orlando?"
"Maybe. But, we'll talk about it more in the morning." Orla bent down and kissed Joanie on the forehead. "Goodnight, kiddo."
"Goodnight mommy."
She closed the door behind her, as she quietly made her way to her bedroom across the hall from her daughters.
The move hadn't been as foolhardy as her father believed it would be. Even she once admitted that uprooting her family so she could pursue a career in the northeast was a risky venture and that it would be financially tight as they adjusted to a new life. But she and the girls were familiar with change and the chaos that came with it.
Just as Orla had been used to several years ago, before Joanie was born.
Her mother had always said she was more like her father, "as stubborn as a mule", to which Orla had always taken that as a compliment. Unzipping her flightsuit to reveal a vintage Prince and the Revolution t-shirt and blue jeans, she counted off the odds weighed against her:
Single parent raising two children –check.
One income household–check.
A job that might not have much of a future–yeah, babe, nice goin'.
And she grinned.
She sat on her bed for a moment and peered at the sprawling Philadelphia cityscape through her window. She wasn't in the same complex as Tim and Hide, but wasn't too far from their area either. Erin lived two floors down from Orla; she had done her best to make sure that the team wasn't that far out of reach from each other in case of an emergency. But some complexes weren't as accommodating as others.
A she understood, Salina stayed at headquarters, making that a point as she dropped Orla off at her apartment building when it was asked where she was spending the night.
Orla shook her head. She didn't understand too much about what had happened the year before. Speaking with Rob about it, she knew that Salina wasn't always this distant, that she'd been far less cold and aloof.
And she also knew that something had happened to affect how she is now.
But Rob and Erin wouldn't say another word about it, and Orla was fine with leaving it at that.
But the thought still lingered.
Chapter 13: Dead Men Tell No Tales
"Excuse me."
In the tedium of the nightshift, caught between reality and nodding off to sleep, the nurse wasn't aware of the voice calling at the front of her desk.
"Excuse me."
She sniffed, now awake, "I'm sorry, miss. Can I help you?"
The woman in front of the desk couldn't help but notice how distinct the nurse's voice was, reminding her of a certain feisty Brooklyn redhead.
"Yes, I'm looking for the room of Jessica Marie Chaney."
The nurse eyed her suspiciously.
The woman knew this as she stood casually, trying to not look the part.
"Are you family or friend?" the nursed asked.
"Neither. I'm part of the investigation that involved Ms. Chaney and the bizarre events that led to her mother's death. I'm aware she was brought here for protec…"
She corrected her self before finishing her sentence.
"…observation."
The nurse leaned back in her chair and looked her over carefully, unconvinced that she was who she said she was.
"Do you need credentials? If you'd like, you're welcome to call Detective Madison to confirm my involvement."
She knew she had said the magic word when the nurse's expression changed.
Her hand reaching towards a clipboard, the nurse flipped several pages before she landed on the name.
"Chaney. Room 182. Down the hall. You have fifteen minutes."
"Thank you."
The nurse rolled her eyes and then searched her files for Detective Madison's business card when the visitor, Dr. Salina Duran, had walked down the corridor out of view.
xxx
For a moment, Salina considered forgetting all about Jessica Chaney and going home. Her hands shook as she reached into her pocket, holding onto the contents within. She was about to turn to the women's restroom to calm her nerves, but then stopped when she saw her reflection in a window of the bridge connecting the east and west wings of the hospital.
Jesus…, she thought.
She stroked her hair behind her ears and wiped the sleep out of her watery eyes.
Salina took a deep breath and changed her mind against what she was nearly about to do. The object fell back to the bottom of her coat pocket as she regained composure. Dr. Duran sighed and proceeded for Jessica's room down the hall.
Her senses were assaulted by the scent of Valium that wafted through the hospital. It was pungent on top of a rather sickly, sweet unknown odor coming from down the corridor.
Her footsteps echoed off the bare hospital walls, as the occupants of the west wing slept soundly or met their 'final sleep'.
She came upon room 182; knocked softly and silently opened the door, so as not to startle it's resident.
The room was dark, with the shades drawn and pulled to as far as they could reach the floor. The television had been covered with a thick blanket, as if the viewer no longer wished to see what was being displayed on the screen. A tray of food lay at the bottom of the bedside stand, virtually untouched. A piece of foil laid nearby, illuminated by what little light pierced through the shades.
"Miss Chaney?" Salina spoke into the darkness.
She heard something stir, but no one answered.
"Miss Chaney, hello I'm here to…"
Continued silence.
"I'm here to help."
Jessica spoke, "Go away."
"I will, but if you'll allow me a moment I can explain why…"
A metal object clanged loudly on the floor.
"What part of go away don't you under–"
"Jessica, I know about your father. I'm not a cop, but if you don't talk to me I can't help you or anyone else who might be a victim because of whatever your father has done."
"Who are you?" Jessica asked.
"My name is Duran. I'm with the Ghostbusters. We were called to look into what happened to you and your mother this past Monday and were told our assistance was needed due to the nature of the crime. "
"Doom Patrol? Is this a joke? Do I look like Casper the fucking ghost to you?" Salina heard the familiar sound of a lighter being ignited, and then saw the fluorescent orange glow of a cigarette against the silhouetted backgrouond of the drawn shades.
"I didn't think they allowed smoking in this hospital", Salina said.
"They don't", the voice answered solemnly. "Shit, I'm young, I might as well die blazin', right? So, why do you want to know about my father, unless you're one of them?"
"One of who?"
"One of those people my father always hung around with." The voice moved away from where it had been standing to a corner of the room, nearer the bed, where Salina was able to make out the outline of a girl in her late teens or early twenties of medium height and build, but only just barely. "You know, he wasn't really my father. My real father died after I was born and Larry Chaney just simply married my mother."
"Were they in love?"
"I don't know. A sympathy between them, maybe? My mother lived most of her life on a commune in upstate Connecticut. You'll know the one, if you ever look it up. Her parents were hippies who believed in freedom, and weren't afraid of 'expresing' that to other people."
"Like that, huh?"
"You got it. They believed that we were children of the earth. Like fuckin' Adam and Eve."
"Except with more sex, if can I gather."
"You're good at this guessing game, Ms. Duran", the voice said laughing.
Salina said nothing.
"Okay…no sense of humor. Anyway, when my mother was pregnant with me, she left the commune and went to New York with my real father, who wasn't into my mother's culture but tolerated it enough for a while. I don't know too much about him, and hell if I know what she saw in Larry Chaney."
"You said there was a sympathy..."
"Yeah...Larry might as well have been an earth hippie himself. He'd had a hard life, from what he would tell me, and wasn't much for being social with others. Course, that is, if you want to count the animals around our house as friends."
"Animals?"
"He loved them as if they were his own children", the voice continued. "He fed them, brought them into the house. If they were injured, he'd nurse 'em back to health. It was like he had a bond with them that he wasn't telling us. And quite frankly I didn't want to know more than that."
"Was your mother ever involved in your...stepfather's activities?"
"To a point, she was, but really wasn't into what my stepfather dug."
"Is that why he killed her?"
"How the hell should I––," Jessica paused and looked at Salina. Even through the staunch tone of her voice, she could sense her interrogator was noticeably shaken up and surmised that she had been tense long before she entered the room. Both women were on edge for jutifiable reasons, but the young woman surmised that Dr. Duran's were more than trepidation.
"I'm sorry. I must sound like a prick," Jessica apologized.
"It's okay."
"I don't know. I don't have an answer to that."
"What about the beast that attacked the first SWAT team that entered your home? You never mentioned anything about a dog or anything of the like, but you just told me that your stepfather had a fascination for wildlife. Why didn't you tell the police the same thing?"
The girl was silent for a moment before she spoke again. Jessica started to grow impatient.
"I don't like repeating myself, Ms. Duran. I already told the police. If I knew more, I would tell you. I never kept tabs on Larry."
"I'm a little curious––"
"No shit."
"But there's a lot that doesn't add up. I have a few more questions if you don't mind indulging me a little while longer."
"Yes, that's nice isn't it? You're not the only one who wants answers. Well, then maybe you can answer a question for me. Think you can give me my life back?"
Salina didn't know what to say.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. I know you want to help, Ms. Duran, but you can't. I already heard that same song and dance from the other detective who came to you. So, don't bother."
Salina stepped towards the sound of her voice. She'd heard that Jessica had been frantic, to the point where until Wednesday, she had been given a daily dose of Thorazine and Valium. There was something terribly wrong here.
"Don't come any closer", the voice said.
"Miss Chaney...Jessica…"
"Stop! Look, you saw the basement didn't you?"
Confused, Salina nodded. "Yes."
"Go back. If you want answers. You'll understand then."
"Why can't you tell me what I want to know right now?"
Jessica sighed in the darkness. "You said you're a Ghostbuster, right?"
"Right, but what has that..."
"You wanted to know about my stepfather a little bit more, go back in the basement. You didn't look hard enough."
"But why won't you tell me yourself?"
It was then Salina saw why Jessica had moved closer to the bed, once the faint glint of polished metal caught her eye. The troubled youth had pulled it from underneath her pillow, all the while as she continued talking to Salina.
Salina heard the cock of the hammer of a gun click back.
It all makes sense now. The food. The foil.
"It's a raw potato, isn't it?"
"They don't need to know what I'm doing. It's crude, but an effective silencer."
"How did you get that through––"
"Does it really matter?"
"No, Jessica. There's another way."
She shrugged. "Yeah, maybe", she said nonchalantly, though her voice cracked as tears welled up in her eyes.
"Please, you don't have to do this."
"Fate begs otherwise, Ms. Duran."
Salina lowered her head. "Then can I ask one last question?"
"What?"
"May I see your face?"
"Mm-mm. No." Jessica swallowed. "But, I guess for once in my life I'll be a good little girl. Look, here's a head start."
She stepped forward, into a small glimmer of light that had allowed her to see Salina and thrust out her hand. It was discolored, showing small swarthy patches of brown and gray appearing on the skin. What Salina mistook for lumps were really tufts of thick dark hair appearing on the surface of her wrist. It was also bonier than a normal human appendage, with the middle finger protruding slightly from the hand.
She looked at the young victim for the last time.
"Please leave now."
Salina stood silent.
"Leave." Jessica's voice quivered.
Salina backed away slowly, then closed the door behind her. She did not look at the nurse as she left the hospital.
Nor did she turn around when she noticed a bright flash of light from Room 182 out of the corner of her eye.
Chapter 14: Tanaka and Bondo—Hard Traveling Heroes
"You know, you're liable to give yourself brain damage if you keep that up."
Hide heard the comment, but he paid Tim little mind as he continued to rap his head against the cool steel bars of the county jailhouse. As he rested his forehead between the bars, he took a look at the strange, new surroundings in which he now found himself incarcerated:
A square office, painted an off-white color that just screamed that hideous cream hue that Rachel had painted the offices back in Florida. Piss and vinegar offended his nostrils as it rose from the toilet in the cell he and Tim were forced to share.
The deputy on duty was a stout Filipino man with a potbelly that spilled over his belt buckle. The homely-looking law official was watching a rerun of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" on a small black and white television. His rotund frame jiggled when he laughed. Hide frowned as his forehead sank lower down the bar. This whole night had been a nightmare from start to it's eventual DeMille finish. The only thing missing, he thought,was someone to come in and SET HIS HAIR ON FIRE WHILST RAPING HIS MOTHER UP THE ASS.
"Hey man! Can ya turn that down! Some of us are trying to sleep!" Tim yelled. He was laying on a cot, his back to Hide as he stared at the wall.
"Pipe down", the guard said and turned the set up louder.
He rolled over to look at Hide, who was now sitting cross-legged in front of the jailhouse bars. "What's eatin' you?"
Hide looked over his shoulder and glared at Tim. "After everything that's happened tonight, how can you honestly ask me that with a straight face?" Tim stood up and walked over towards the sink, examining his weathered face in the mirror as patches of his graying beard sprouted on his chin.
"Damn I need a shave", he said.
"Unbelievable..."
"What? What else do you want me to say?"
"You think this is some kind of game don't you? That you're just coasting through life on luck and the misguided answers and prayers of the Virgin Mary?"
"I thought you were an atheist..."
"GODDAMIT THAT'S NOT THE POINT!" Hide was standing now as he looked at Tim. Everything, starting from the moment he had been arrested up til now, had been eating away at his conscience. Now it was spilling over in a torrent. "These people are going to keep us here unless we get bond. Which, I doubt, our fearless leader is gonna provide for us because we're fucking broke!"
"Relax, man. Rob'll come through for us."
"It's past four in the morning on a Saturday! Who the hell's gonna' get out of their beds to bail a couple of assholes out of jail?!?"
"Now take it easy there, Tanaka. You're starting to rant..."
"Hey! I told you to pipe down in there!" the guard shouted.
"NO! You pipe down! And I'm offended by your lack of customer service in this joint. Not even a mint on the pillow," Tim denounced.
"You", Hide asserted as he turned his attention back towards Tim.
"What?"
"This is all your fault!"
"My fault?"
"Are you that dense! It was because you just had to play Prince Valiant and jump to the aid of that dollar store whore when you could have left her and that jacked-up bastard back at the bar!"
"Oh, and you're so innocent? I'm not the one who 'Sandmanned' the motherfucker with a poolstick in the back of the head", said Tim simply as he crossed his arms.
"THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT!"
"THEN WHAT'S YOUR FEUD, MAN!"
"HEY! Keep that shit down in there or I'm gonna throw you two in Solitary!"
"Can't you see we're having a civilized conversation here? Know your role and shut your mouth!" Tim resounded back at the guard.
"Now listen Hide. I think what you need is probably just to get a little bit of shut-eye." He said calmly, putting his hand on Hide's shoulder. That was it for the angry Asian. He could feel every muscle and sinew in his body tighten as adrenaline rushed to his fist, connecting it with the side of Tim's face as knuckles rattled the redneck's teeth.
Tim stumbled back a little bit, grabbing the side of his mouth. For a split second, he could feel his own rage bubble to the surface as his right fist clenched and unclenched. But then that disappeared as he confronted Hide stonefaced.
"It shouldn't be like this", Hide said turning away from him. "I was supposed to be somebody, not some monkey in a cage."
Tim mellowed down and laughed. "And what's that make Buford T. Justice over there? Dian Fossey?"
"Sure, laugh it up. I wouldn't expect you to understand anyway. There's a million things I could have done with my degrees. I could have gone on to work with Schrodinger at the Berlin Institute, or even in New York at the Forbes Building."
"Think Tanks?"
"Yeah."
"And what's the appealin' thing about those?"
"I'm among my own kind."
"Robots."
"What?"
"That's exactly what you science types are. Cold, unfeelin' robots, with their thumbs up their asses, whose only belief is logic over compassion."
"That's not true."
"Then tell me what the hell you're getting your tits in a twist for? The way I see it, all a man needs in life is three squares a day, a roof over his head, a good payin' job, and if he's lucky, a good woman to share all that with. Fame and wealth ain't nothin' but a flash in the pan, unless you're Hef shacking it up with six blondes a night."
Hide looked up. "That's not all there is to it is there?"
"Not really. Everything else is though. Fuck all that being-where-I'm-supposed-to-be-bullshit. The way I see it, you made your choice Tanaka. And you could have fixed it a long time ago, but you didn't. At your own discretion, you chose to continue doing whatever the hell it was that you did before you came here and you're still roughly doing the same thing now." Tim stopped a minute to catch his breath. Do you get what I'm saying?"
Hide nodded. "It's almost as if you're a Yoda at five a.m. Since when did you become a Psychoanalysist?"
"I've watched Dr. Phil once or twice," the older man admitted. "But, you keep that between us or you'll have fuckin' problems."
He looked away for a moment, just to think. Tim was right, of course. He'd had every opportunity to leave being a parapsychologist behind. He just hadn't taken them. Would he, now that he was realizing how much of a mistake it was, turn his back on it this late? What could he do if he quit? Get a real job until he was picked up by one of the teams he mentioned? That wasn't likely, at least not in the foreseeable future.
"Tell me something, Tim", Hide said. "What was it that you were doing before you decided to...do this gig?"
"Nothin'. Just coastin' along on luck and the misguided prayers of the Virgn Mary." Hide grinned at the joke and sighed. "See, despite what you might think, I didn't waste my life. My old man wasn't a great guy but I respect him because he taught me, my brothers, and my sister how to fight. He'd always say 'Life ain't gonna be served to you on a silver platter'. He was right and I take that lesson to heart every where I go. He wasn't able to see me get accepted into the USAF and make somethin' of myself, but I think somehow I eventually managed to make him proud. After that, I mostly just drifted on my pension, and a couple bad steps sorta' led me here."
"Air Force huh?", Hide said. "I just don't see it."
"They teach you some shit in there that'll blow your mind. You watch. Rob thinks he's onto something with that EC unit thing of his. Wait till I drop what I know on him."
x x x
He heard someone whistling outside his cramped quarters. Barely mobile, he turned his head in the direction of the window, as an ethereal moon shone down on his face. Larry Chaney looked at the shadowed form outside, gliding amongst the trees and the sky as though it were silk. He licked his lips hungrily as he attempted to move closer. The police had made sure that Chaney wouldn't give them trouble, placing shackles on his wrists, ankles, and legs.
He snapped them all, the links falling to the floor, illuminated against the maddening backdrop of the moon. "It's about time you arrived. My patience was wearing thin."
Chris apologized, his mood a diverse vagary of boldness and apprehension. He was in his uniform, tattered as it were and a telling sign of his whereabouts for the last several days.
"I managed to get down here as fast as I could when I heard what happened on a radio."
"In other words, you were covering your ass again."
Chris didn't like the way the conversation was going. "The master sent me..."
Chaney nodded. That was all that needed to be said.
"Here", Chris said as he hauled a black bag up to the cell window. "I brought this for you."
The prisoner probed the contents inside.
"All this just to become one of us? Why the betrayal to your race?"
"Look man, I've taken enough crap in my life. I didn't even want to be a policeman. My dad made me do it and look where I am now? I don't even drive a squad car. I'm a pathetic pencil pusher."
"You are so weak."
"No, I…"
"Silence! True power is earned, not deserved."
The disgraced officer said nothing more.
Chaney continued. "Go now. Time is of the essence. We will meet later."
Chris turned away from the window as he disappeared back into the shadows of the fading night. The prisoner glanced inside the bag again. He thought there was too much here that wasn't necessary. But, Chris would not have gone to the trouble of making sure that his eventual escape went off without a hitch.
But there were, as always, things that troubled Chaney's mind.
The human, for one thing. The one who had assaulted him at the bar, made him look like a fool.
He was still in his cell, as he smelled the air. He attended to his current priority. But soon enough, his vengeance would take precedent over all.
x x x
"Well, If I knew you two were gonna' end up playing Cliff and Norm, I'd have gotten here sooner. How're you holdin' up, fellas?" Rob laughed as he limped into the office, leaning on a metal cane he had fashioned.
"Eh, we're alright", Tim replied. "A little thirsty though. Deputy dog over there has been a terrible host. On the other hand, you look like hell, man."
"Don't even start. Get me outta bed at four in the morning, and haul my ass down here to bail you both out for having more fun than a sailor on New York leave. Next time I'm sending Erin to be your babysitter. I'm sure she'd just love to tell you all about her political views."
Tim held up his hands innocently. "Fair enough."
"Yeah Rob", Hide said. "Just bail us out will ya?"
"Yeah. These walls man...they're starting to make me think funny things about soap and pistols."
"Alright, alright. Calm down," Rob said as he turned towards the jailer. " 'scuse me officer…," Rob looked at the deputy's name on his badge. "Monroyo."
"Yeah?"
"I'm here to pick up a couple of gentleman that were involved in a slight altercation this evening. I believe it's those two there." The jailer turned his head slightly to look at the now smiling Tim and Hide.
"So? You want me to gift-wrap 'em for ya?"
"Funny. But if you can tell me how much it'll cost to get 'em out of the cooler and off your hands, it'd be much obliged."
"Ninety-five for the Chink. Seven-hundred and fifty for the Punk."
"What the living fu––?!?" Tim shouted, perturbed at the obvious bias against him.
Rob held up his index finger in demand for Tim to be quiet while he pulled out his checkbook. He knew Erin was going to have a field day deducting this come February.
Just then, the building shook as an explosion rocked the premises all around, causing debris to fall from the ceiling and the lights to fail. Rob went to the floor, his cane loosened from his grip as Tim and Hide held on to their cell bars.
"What in the name of?" the Jailer screamed as he ran back to Solitary, passing Tim and Hide.
"Yo!" Tim shouted as he got to his feet. "What about us? If we're going up like the Twin Towers, at least give us a chance!"
"I don't think that's the problem", Rob said. Scrambling for his cane, he found an alternate pair of keys at the sheriff's desk and tossed them to Hide's open hand.
"What was that? Some kind of bomb?"
"Couldn't have been", Hide replied as the tumblers unlocked the cell. "There's nobody in here but us and Brock Lesnar down in the clink."
"DAMMIT!"
All three turned their heads to look down the hall at the jailer as he scrambled up towards them. "Sonovabitch blew the entire wall out."
Rob raised an eyebrow. "Nice to see my tax dollars put into the capable hands of our city's finest. Someone escape?"
"I'll be damned if it ain't that", the jailer said as he went to his desk and reached for a phone. Not surprisingly, the blast had damaged the lines, causing a torrent of expletives to exit from his mouth. He turned to the three off-duty Ghostbusters, as sweat dotted his forehead. "You boys keep this under your hat okay? I have to get some things looked at."
"Yeah, it's gonna be real easy to keep quiet about a giant hole in the wall along a busy metropolitan street", Tim remarked sarcastically.
The jailer wasn't amused. "Get the hell outta' here! And if I catch you mooks here again..."
"Then you'll be catching my foot up your...oomph!"
Rob grabbed Tim by the collar and out the door.
Chapter 15: A Link to the Past
Salina was not thrilled to find herself at 1118 Crescent again. Her previous misgivings about the house hadn't quite left her so soon. She was tired, a fact proven by her now bloodshot eyes. But there was just something missing about the whole case that didn't sit well with her.
Her conversation with Jessica Chaney had confirmed that. There was more that was needed, more that she had to know. It no longer bothered her as to who Larry Chaney was. That was all elementary. The question that now flashed in her mind like a green neon sign was: what was Larry Chaney?
The house had earlier been locked up by the authorities. That didn't mean that Salina didn't know a thing or two about the art of lockpicking. Taking a pin out of her hair, she fiddled a little bit with the lock before the sound of a dink signaled her entrance into the condemned suburban estate She turned the knob and walked through as a cold gust of air encompassed her and refused to let go. She shook it off and closed the door behind her. Failing to bring a flashlight, Salina had to make do with the sparse light of the moon to guide her, but she was able to move about the house until she had found herself standing at the door of the basement. Detective Madison had earlier shut the guiding light down for the evening.
She took a deep breath and opened it. She hadn't noticed it before, but there was a faint, yet bitter, odor seeping through from the basement. Descending down the stairs, Salina took careful notice of everything she was seeing again, making mental notes to herself. The dampness of the walls chilled her fingertips, sending goosebump rippling up and down her arm.
A rat scuttled across her feet when she reached the bottom of the stairs. Facing the stone slabs, she stood there for a moment looking at them, allowing Jessica's words to sink in.
"You'll understand then."
Understand what? Salina thought as she walked around the slabs. By themselves, there was nothing glamorous or even remotely unique about them, aside from the anamoly of their very existence in that room. She walked around them, counting each one. Six in all, each one facing the other to form a complete circle. Looking down at her feet she located the pentagram that Madison had earlier pointed out. She touched it and immediately felt a sense of electricity surge up her arm, as if it were a battery.
But again, the symbols used on the pentagram itself were not unique to give off that much power. The dried bloodstains could very well have been from a sacrifice, but whose and for what purpose? To radiate evil as it was? The Detective had said a series of missing persons had been linked to the area, but why? Salina felt her head beginning to pound, the frustration jackhammering a migraine into her head.
She leaned against one of the slabs, looking around, hoping the answer would come right at her. The pieces were in front, but why couldn't she understand what significance they played?
It was then that she saw it, barely noticeable and tucked underneath one of the slabs. Kneeling, she pulled a pair of tweezers out of her pocket and removed it from it's surroundings.
It was hair.
Bringing it closer to her face, a pungent odor arose from the tufts, causing Salina to gag, but she didn't turn away from it.
What caught her eye was the color.
The same as the tufts growing on Jessica's hand.
She looked back down at the pentagram, and a thought occurred to her, of the ancient Druids of lore and their bizarre rituals to appease their deities. She thought of the blood that would often result from these rituals, of the evil that she studied and read about in her past travels to Staffordshire, England. Until she started her profession as a crypto-zoologist, she never believed they truly existed.
She was reminded of the old tales of battles between good and evil, a fragile balance that always hung by a thread that could only be resolved with the blood offered to the Druids gods. She thought it over…
Their gods.
Chaney had a hard life. He would have wanted to find some place to belong with someone who could give him an answer, a piece of hope that he was lacking in his life: love and acceptence.
Turns out he actually found it; it was coming faster than Helter Skelter.
And unlucky for anyone in his path, he was going to do everything in his power to keep it that way.
Salina suddenly heard the shuffling of feet as she looked up into the darkness.
For the second time tonight, she stood in the crosshairs of a gun primed for fire.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
Chapter 16: Hair Of The Dog
"I can't believe they took my car" an agitated Hide said as he closed the front passenger door of Statler's Cadillac Escalade . "It's a loaner from my cousin, Asuma. Jesus, he's gonna' be royally pissed."
"Easy," Rob asserted. "Or you'll worry yourself into an early grave. Your ride is at the impound."
Tim interrupted. "Just go downtown and get it in the afternoon; it'll still be there. It ain't like you were driving a Mercedes."
"Yeah. Thanks. That really assuages my fears. One thing's for sure."
"What's that?" Rob asked.
"I'm not trusting this…this…", Hide could barely get the words out while pointing to a yawning Tim.
"Your sentiments are well-noted. You can thank me later," Tim retorted.
Rob shook his head. "Well, I'm about to head back and get some shut-eye. You guys coming to the office in the morning?"
"Pfft. You kidding?" Tim mocked as he stretched his muscular arms. "I'm sleeping till Doomsday."
Rob grinned and hobbled toward the front door of the apartment complex.
"Hey, Rob," Tim called.
The cane-bound technician turned around before he stepped inside.
"Thank you. Not a lot of folks would have bailed us out. We owe you one," He continued as Hide went to hail a taxi to return home.
Rob replied, "I'll remember that."
xxx
Room 316.Tim hit the twenty dollar couch that he'd bought from a GoodWill stand facefirst; the cushion shot dust everywhere as he collided with the surface. He resided in a cheap two-hundred-dollar-a-month apartment. Not bad, but realized he should have got it for less when he had the chance.
Roaches crawled over the walls, the lighting was bad, and there was little to no air conditioning. Because of the deplorable condition of the plumbing in his building, the water was muddy and undrinkable. Tim had become accustomed to heating bottled water over a stove for warm baths and cooking food when he needed to. There wasn't any furniture in the place when he got it either, though with the exception of the couch and a TV set that belonged in the Nineteen-Eighties sitting on a crate, he hadn't done much with the place yet. He got breakfast, lunch, and dinner from either the hot dog stand around the corner or at Schmu Goo's Chinese Take-Out. A bag from Schmu Goo's sat on the countertop, containing congealing shrimp and rice combos, along with a tub of soup. This wasn't exactly the rent-controlled and well-off facility that his employers had in mind. In fact, it wasn't at all what they offered. Erin had tried to find something suitable to Tim's liking, but they couldn't settle on an agreement. It was a matter of convenience over taste. Tim said he didn't need much. Just a place to stay. And even when the team offered him residence in the highrise, he respectfully declined the offer. He wasn't a cheap bastard, but had his reasons for saving money and willingly forsaking the amneties of living in comfort. Besides, he relished his bachelor lifestyle and wouldn't have it any other way.
Bandit trotted in, whining at the sight of his master, then came up to him and licked his face. Tim knew what this was about. He hadn't fed the dog in almost eight hours.
"Cut me some slack Bandito", he said tired. "I've taken a lot of shit today." But Bandit's whining continued until Tim sat up wearily and rubbed his tired eyes. His body felt sore from the work he'd done that night.
"Okay, okay. You win. Come on."
Bandit panted as he followed Tim into a dining area. He may not have bought much for himself, but Tim did make sure that Bandit at least was taken care of.
He wasn't one to think about things in his downtime, but looking at Bandit, he wondered whether or not the dog represented a part of himself. The part that didn't have any real friends growing up in Waynesville.
Oh, he didn't look at his childhood with much fondness. His father wasn't an abusive man, but was distant most of the time to his four children. Emotionally, maybe, but never physical. He taught the kids discipline at an early age, creating a strict doctrine of rules and regulations for the children to follow, and it was the rebellious younger child Tim that broke every single one of those rules and regulations.
He'd told Hide only a part of the story, about how his father didn't think he would amount to much. Certainly that was the way he felt most of the time. Aside from his brothers Derek and Phil, and his sister Cammy, Tim grew up without any friends, consistently bullied for either being too small or too pathetic to do anything.
The nickname, "Timmy the Turtle", hung around his neck until high school, when he'd finally decided he'd had enough. Or rather, it was his father who made the decision, taking Tim aside one day and driving them both down to O'Shea's, the local gym in Waynesville owned by Willy O'Shea, the meanest son-of-a-bitch that Tim would meet until his drill instructor. The old Irishman and Tim's father took the boy and made his body. Sure he was still a little slight and kind of doughy. But Tim's father knew he had something. "Hurtin' bombs", he said, looking at his youngest son for the first time with some pride.
His Sophomore year, he broke the nose of a kid who cut in front of him in the lunch line. Later, he would take on two kids at once who invoked the name "Timmy the Turtle" for the last time. Tim had finally gained his respect, but he was, still, alone.
He looked down at Bandit, who had just finished licking the bowl clean and had the look in his eyes that he wanted more."Aw screw it," Tim declared as he poured another round for his pet.
Reflection wasn't his style anyway.
xxx
The manager at the front desk lay there, dead. Bleeding from the wound to his throat and leaning over the desk, the phone remained clutched in his hand.
The predator ascended the stairs slowly, blood dripping from his claws.
He had found and followed his prey and felt deep within him the bloodlust that his master had long said he'd possessed.
Years of rage and repressment laced his blood. In his delusion, he saw the source of his agression in front of him with an ire of digust, as he looked within his dismal soul, and loathed with intense distain all that he once was.
He paused and heard a sound near his left ear, lunging quickly ahead of it.
An old woman opened her door, taking a peek outside as she often did at this hour, before reading her Bible.
She felt a gust of wind pass her by, sending a chill down her spine. But there was something else that bothered her. Something that she couldn't quite put her finger on. She looked towards the darkness, and felt her sudden dread radiating from it's assumed oblivion and quickly closed her door.
The predator continued. Sniffing the air, he trailed his quarry's scent toward Room 316.
Larry Chaney was near...
xxx
