Piercing the Darkness Read online

  “Hey, come on, now . . .”

  The camera kept clicking.

  Ziegler raised an eyebrow. “I understand you’re a widower. So you live at home alone with your children?”

  Tom was indignant. “That’s it! I’m leaving. Good night.”

  Ziegler threw questions at Tom’s back as they followed right behind him toward the front door. “Is the state considering your children as possible victims as well?”

  Tom jerked the door open and glared at them for a moment.

  The camera caught his angry expression.

  Ziegler was satisfied. “Thank you very much, Mr. Harris.”

  JUST ACROSS THE street, Despair sat on the roof of the Bacon’s Corner Library and Gift Shop, a forlorn beanbag of melancholy filth, whimpering over his wounds and watching the two squad cars speed away.

  “Oh, there they go, there they go. What now?”

  Several other dark spirits were with him, staying low, muttering, hissing, slobbering in agitation. They were a motley band of tempters, harassers, and deceivers, suddenly half as strong, half as numerous, and full of anguish over the recent, terrible defeat of their comrades.

  Despair was living up to his name. “Lost, lost, lost, all is lost! Our best are gone, all vanquished but for me!”

  A sharp slap bounced his round head against his shoulder. “Stop that whimpering! You make me ill!”

  “Terga, my prince, you were not there!”

  Terga, the Prince of Bacon’s Corner, resembled a slimy toad with a fright wig of black wire and two rolling, yellow eyes. He was indignant, and kept scratching his gnarled head purely from an itch of frustration. “Failure, that’s what it was. An abominable display of ineptitude!”

  Murder was quick to object. “Had the mission succeeded, no doubt you would have been the first to praise it!”

  “It did not, and I do not!”

  Deception tried to objectively assess the debacle. “Our forces were strong, and I’m sure they fought valiantly, but . . . the prayers of the saints are stronger. The Host of Heaven are stronger. They were waiting for our warriors, and they were ready. We severely underestimated their numbers and their power. It’s quite simple.”

  Terga spun around and glared at Deception, hating his words, but knowing the astute demon was quite correct. He paced, he fidgeted, he struggled to comprehend what was happening. “We have moved against Tom Harris and the school! The Plan of the Strongman is unfolding at this very moment. It is underway, right now! But here you are, lamenting a rout and telling me that the Plan could be marching headlong toward destruction, and all because of this . . . this . . . woman?”

  Deception thought about the question, and then nodded. “That would be a fair assessment.”

  Terga rolled his eyes toward the sky and wailed his fear and frustration. “Destroyer will have all our hides for this! Those who did not fall in this rout will certainly fall under his sword!” He counted the demons around him and came up shorter than he wanted. “Where is Hatred?”

  “Gone,” they all answered. “One of the first to fall.”

  “And Violence?”

  “In chains in the Abyss, I imagine,” said Deception.

  “Greed? Lust? Rape?”

  He only got forlorn stares. He looked out over the town, and his head just kept twitching from side to side. He could not fathom what had happened. “Such an easy task . . . a simple little murder . . . We’ve all done it before . . .”

  Despair moaned, “When the Strongman finds out . . .”

  WAP! Terga bounced Despair’s head off his other shoulder.

  “He must know!” said Divination.

  “Then tell him!” said Terga. “Go yourself!”

  Divination fell silent, hoping some other demon would speak up.

  Terga snatched a fistful of Despair’s baggy hide and held him up like a trophy. “Our envoy!”

  They began to cheer, their talons clicking their applause.

  “No . . . not the Strongman!” Despair whined. “Is not one thrashing enough?”

  “Go now,” said Terga, “or the Strongman’s will be your third today!”

  Despair fluttered crazily into the air. One wing was still battered and bent.

  “Go!” said Terga. “And be quick about it!” Despair hurried away, whining and wailing as he went. “And when you’re through with that, go back to the woman and continue your duty as you should!”

  Some snickers caused Terga to spin around. A few small spirits cowered, looking up at him—they’d been caught.

  “Ah,” said Terga, and they could see the slime on the roof of his mouth. “Fear, Death, and Insanity, three of the woman’s favorite pets! You look rather idle at the moment.”

  The three demons looked at each other stupidly.

  “Back to your posts! Follow the woman!”

  They fluttered into the air like frightened pigeons, clawing after altitude.

  Terga wasn’t satisfied. He slapped several more demons with his wings. “You too! All of you! Find her! Torture her! Terrorize her! Do you want Destroyer to think you are the worthless lumps you are? Correct your blunder! Destroy the woman!”

  The air was filled with roaring, fluttering wings. Terga covered his head to keep from getting clouted with a wild wingtip. In only moments, they were gone. Terga looked down the street, down the road that would take the squad cars to Potter’s farm.

  “Our sergeant isn’t going to find what he expected,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER 3

  IT WAS GETTING dark when the two squad cars rumbled down the gravel driveway to the Potters’ house. The aid car was already there, its doors flung open, its lights flashing. Fred and Cecilia were out on the wide front porch waiting for the police, holding each other close. They were strong, rugged people, but tonight they were obviously shaken.

  Mulligan locked the wheels and slid to an impressive, slightly side-skidding halt in the loose gravel, then bolted from the car in time to emerge like a god from the cloud of dust he’d stirred up. Leonard waited for the dust to blow by before getting out—he didn’t want it all over the seat when he got back in the car.

  Ben pulled to a careful stop behind the first car and got out in calm, businesslike fashion. He was being overcautious, aware that his emotions were on a thin edge.

  Mulligan was already talking with one of the paramedics, getting the lowdown. The paramedic had just come from a little farmhouse across the field. Ben could see two more flashlights sweeping about in the darkness over there. Apart from that, there were no lights.

  “Deceased,” said the paramedic. “Dead at least an hour.”

  “Okay,” said Mulligan, clicking on his big silver flashlight, “let’s go.”

  He headed into the field, swishing through the wild grass with long, powerful strides, his nightstick swinging from his hip, his belly bouncing on his buckle. Leonard and Ben followed close behind.

  “It’s that Roe woman,” said Mulligan. “Sally Roe. You know anything about her?”

  Leonard assumed the question was directed to him. “Very little, Harold.”

  “I think she’s one of those weird types, some kind of leftover hippie, a loser. Guess she decided to end it all.”

  Ben was probing his brain as they continued toward the dark farmhouse. Sally Roe. The name didn’t register.

  “All right,” said Mulligan. “There’s the goat pen. Spread out a bit, you guys. No hiding behind me.”

  They came out of the field, crossed an unused, heavily weeded roadway, and came to the goat pen. The fence was crude and aged, made of rusted wire nailed to split rail posts, with a creaking gate hanging crookedly on one good hinge and one loose one. The gate was still open; all the goats were now corralled over at the Potters’. Two emergency medical technicians were standing outside the pen, putting away their gear.

  “She’s all yours,” said one.

  Ben glanced around the pen, shining his light here and there, just checking for anything unusu
al, not wanting to disturb it. His eye caught a spilled pail of goat feed near the door of the goat shed.

  “Hey, check that out,” he said, pointing with his light.

  Mulligan ignored him and charged right across the goat pen and into the weathered, tin-roofed shed, leaving a big manured footprint in the middle of the spilled feed. Then he stopped short. He’d found something. Leonard and Ben came up behind him and looked in through the doorway.

  There she was. The dead woman. Ben couldn’t see her face; Mulligan was in the way. But she was dressed all in black, and lay on her back in the straw, her body and limbs twisted and limp as if someone had wadded her up and thrown her there.

  Ben shined his light around the inside of the shed. The beam fell on a plaid shirt next to the body. Apparently Mulligan hadn’t seen it. He reached in and picked it up. It was stained with blood.

  “Hey, Harold, look at this.”

  Mulligan spun around as if rudely surprised. “Cole! Get back to the Potters and get a statement from them!”

  “Yes, sir. But take a look at this.”

  Mulligan didn’t take it—he grabbed it. “Go on, get over there. We can handle things at this end.”

  Leonard was shining his light at the woman’s face and Ben caught his first glimpse of it. She was young and beautiful, but dead—violently dead. The expression on the face was blank, the eyes dry and staring, the shoulder-length black hair a tangled shadow upon the straw.

  Ben didn’t know he was staring until Mulligan hollered at him.

  “Cole! Have you seen enough? Get moving!”

  Ben got out of there, and hurried back across the field to the Potters’ house. His mind was racing. This was going to be a bigger case than they’d thought. The appearance of that body, the bloodied shirt, the spilled feed, the obvious violence . . .

  This was no suicide.

  The aid crew drove away in the aid car, their work completed. Ben put on a calm demeanor as he went up the porch steps. The Potters heard him coming and immediately came to the door.

  “Hi. I’m Officer Ben Cole.”

  Ben extended his hand, and Fred took it.

  Fred stared at Ben just a little. “Have we met before?”

  “No, sir. I’m new in Bacon’s Corner. I’ve been here about four months.”

  “Oh . . . well, welcome to the neighborhood. Things aren’t usually this exciting around here.”

  “Of course, sir. Uh, with your permission, I’d like to get a statement.”

  Cecilia opened the door. “Please come in . . . Ben, was it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Fred and Cecilia took their place on the couch and offered Ben a chair facing them. He took out his notepad.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Oh . . . fair,” said Fred.

  Cecilia just shook her head. “Poor Sally.” Tears returned to her eyes. “This is just awful. It’s terrifying.”

  Ben spoke gently. “I . . . understand it was you who first found her?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you touch her or move her in any way?”

  Cecilia was repelled by the very thought. “No. I didn’t go near her. I didn’t even look at her face.”

  “About what time was this?”

  “About 6.”

  Ben jotted these items down. “Now, why don’t you just tell me everything that happened?”

  She started telling him about the goats being out, and about the nanny goat trying to butt her, and then tried to remember what she did to get that goat back to the pen, and then a strong opinion took precedence over her narrative and she blurted, “I think somebody killed her!”

  Fred was shocked at that, of course. “What? What gives you that idea?”

  Ben had to get control of this. “Uh . . . we’ll work on that when the time comes. But for now you need to tell me what you saw . . . just what you saw.”

  She told him, and it wasn’t much different from what he himself had seen. “I didn’t want to see her that way. I just didn’t stay there.”

  “Okay. Can you tell me the victim’s full name?”

  “Sally Roe. She was such a quiet sort,” Cecilia said, her face full of grief and puzzlement. “She never said much, just kept to herself. We enjoyed having her for a renter. She was clean, responsible, we never had any trouble from her. Why would anyone want to hurt her?”

  “So you can’t think of anyone who might . . . have some kind of grievance or grudge against her?”

  “No. She was a very private sort. I don’t remember ever seeing her having company or visitors.”

  “Can you think of anything else that may have seemed out of the ordinary?”

  “Did you see the feed spilled on the ground?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Someone may have jumped out and grabbed her.”

  “Uh-huh. Anything else?”

  “I saw a long piece of rope in her hand. Maybe it was to tie the goats, I don’t know.”

  Ben noted it.

  There were loud footsteps on the porch. It was Sergeant Mulligan. He let himself in, and removed his hat.

  “Well, folks, it’s been quite an evening. We’ve seen a real tragedy here. Got their statement, Cole?”

  Ben rose and looked over his notes. “Just what Mrs. Potter saw initially. I suppose—”

  Mulligan took the notes from Ben’s hand and looked them over.

  Ben finished his thought. “I suppose once we check the house and comb the area we’ll have more to go on.”

  Mulligan didn’t seem to hear him. “Umm. Okay, I’ll get these typed into the report.” He pocketed Ben’s notes and told the Potters, “Guess she hung herself from the rafters of the shed, who knows why.”

  “Hung herself?” said Cecilia in surprise.

  “How about any suicide notes? Did you find anything like that around?”

  Cecilia was still taken aback. “No . . . no, I—”

  “Well, we’ll be checking the scene over tonight and maybe we’ll find something.” He headed out the door again. “Cole, go ahead and call it a day. Leonard and I will check the area over and wait for the coroner.”

  “You say it was a suicide?” Ben asked, following him out the door.

  “Cut and dried,” said Mulligan.

  “Well . . . maybe.”

  Mulligan got impatient with that kind of response. “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

  “Well, you saw what it looked like in there . . .”

  “Yeah, I saw it all, and you didn’t.”

  “But Mrs. Potter did. The body wasn’t hanging when she found it. It was lying in the straw just like when we first saw it.”

  Mulligan turned back toward the rental. “Go on home, Cole. Don’t worry about things that aren’t your responsibility.”

  Mulligan headed across the field, cutting the conversation short. Ben went back to his car and sat in it with the door open, flipping through his notepad. He clicked his pen and started scribbling some notes to himself, things he wanted to remember: “plaid shirt with blood . . . position of body suggests violence . . . spilled feed . . . rope in hand, not around neck . . . victim not hung . . .”

  JUST OUTSIDE CLAYTONVILLE, Sally turned off the highway onto an obscure, overgrown and rutted road that meandered deep into the forest, winding around trees and stumps, passing under low limbs, dipping into black mudholes, and making the old pickup buck and rock with every new pothole, rut, bump, and turn. This road—or maybe it was a trail—had probably been used by surveyors and developers, but now was kept in existence only by kids on dirt bikes and perhaps an equestrian or two. Maybe somewhere back in here she could find a good spot to abandon the truck.

  She finally found what looked like a turnaround or dead end, a short section of once-cleared area the dirt bikers hadn’t found yet, quickly being reclaimed by the thick brush. She cranked the wheel hard and let the pickup push its way forward, plowing through the brush and flattening the weeds that
rose in front of the headlights.

  Far enough. She turned off the lights and shut down the engine.

  And then she sat there, her elbows on the wheel and her head in her hands. She had to hold still for just a minute. She had to think, to assess the situation, to sort out thought from feeling. She didn’t move for a minute, and then another, and then another. The only sound was her own breathing—she was conscious of every breath—and the steadily slowing tink, tink, tink of the engine cooling. It occurred to her how still it was out in these woods, and how dark it was, and especially how lonely it was. She was alone in the darkness, and no one knew.

  How poetic, she thought. How appropriate.

  But to the business at hand: How about it, Sally? Do you keep going or do you give up? You can always call them, or send them a letter, and just let them know where you are so they can come and finish the job. At least then it will all be over and you won’t have to wait so long to die.

  She drew a long, tired breath and leaned back from the steering wheel. Such thoughts, Sally, such thoughts!

  No, she finally admitted to herself, no—I want to live. I don’t know why, but I do. I don’t know how much longer, but I will. And that’s all I know for now.

  That’s all I know. But I wish I knew more. I wish I knew how they found me . . . and why they want to kill me.

  She clicked on the dome light—it would only be for a second—and reached into her jacket pocket for a small object. It was a ring, ornate, probably pure gold. She took a close and careful look at it, turning it over and over in her fingers, trying to make out the strange design on its face. It made no sense to her, try as she might to understand what it could mean. For now, she only knew one thing for sure about this ring—she’d seen it before, and the memories were her worst.

  She clicked off the dome light. Enough sitting. She put the ring back in her pocket, took the keys from the ignition, and opened the door. In this deep, surrounding quiet, the dry, dirty hinges seemed to scream instead of groan. The sound frightened her.

  The dome light came on again, but then winked out as she closed the door as quietly as possible, which still amounted to a pretty loud slam. Now the only light in the middle of that thick, forlorn forest was gone. She could hardly see, but she was determined to get out of these woods even if she had to feel her way out. She had to get moving, get someplace safe. She pressed on, fighting the brush as it pulled at her legs, scratched her with its thorns, jabbed at her out of the dark. Somewhere ahead was that old roadway where the ground was still bare and walkable. She only had to find it.