Homecoming, page 18
The house had shocked her with its sensory overload, a smell embedded into the very foundations of the house, and it endured even now.
She had expected to feel a rage towards the man who'd done something so terrible that her mother had sought to flee him in the middle of the night. Whatever the reason for her mother's leaving, and she had to guess that it was her father, he had never reached out, not once in twenty-five years. But that night was seared into her memory: the fleeing, her mother’s terrified face looming over hers. The drive away had been hurried as though they were being chased, and yet down the years, whenever she'd tried to pry answers from her mother, she'd never given her a reason or an explanation. The only glimpse she'd had into the reasons why was the occasional moan of her mother in her sleep, muttering her fear that he might find them again.
Sitting in the house that she'd grown up in, she had decided that she once she left here, she was going to fly to Florida, sit down with her mother and not let her out of the conversation until she had the answers she'd wanted for the last quarter of a century.
“Belle? You still there?”
The voice startled her again, and she realised that she'd been sitting silently for several long moments lost in her own thoughts.
“Yeah, sorry; the radio cut out there for a second,” she lied. “What's up?”
“Ms Pope caught a radio call from the station. Apparently, there’s been more trouble out at Travis McNichol’s place because they've been trying to raise him without success”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Not sure, but there’s also some other news spreading around town as well that doesn't sound so great.”
“Such as?”
“Well according to Ms Pope, she was speaking to Mrs Anton who told her that she'd heard from Mrs Collette that she’d heard...”
“Mason? Why don’t you cut to the chase because this could take all day?”
“Isaiah King had his keys confiscated at Murphy’s and still hasn't been back to collect his truck. Missed his shift at the Institute too apparently. First the sons disappear, then the dad too?”
“Okay. I’ll swing by the paper first. I've got some things to do there.”
“Belle?”
“Yes.”
“I'd go to the station now if I were you to find out what's going on. Right now,” Mason added ominously, and Belle found herself turning the SUV around and wondering just what the hell was going on in a town where nothing ever had.
“Maybe you're right,” she acknowledged.
“I mostly am,” came the unhappy reply.
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CHAPTER 14
Curiouser and Curiouser
By the time that Belle walked into the police station, she did so with perfect timing.
The gathered group comprised Tara, her underling Marko – given the uniform – and an older man sitting at the dispatcher desk who she assumed was Frank.
There was an Asian woman in a white doctor’s coat standing in an office doorway, and Belle could see a man lying on the sofa inside with a heavily bandaged head.
The three station employees were huddled around the radio as Nathan's unmistakable voice crackled out over the airwaves.
“Say that again, Nathan,” Tara said, leaning into the speakers as she held the mic. “You’re breaking up.”
“MCNICHOL FARM!” the distorted yell came back, and everyone flinched.
“What the hell are you doing out there?” Tara demanded with concern in her voice.
“Cattle check-up day. I was supposed to meet Travis here, but I can't find him anywhere, but...”
“But what?”
“Tara, there’s a barn full of dead chickens here. A right bloody mess.”
“Nathan, I need you to listen to me carefully. I want you to get back in your truck and head back to town. I want you to do it right now.”
“What are you talking about?” He laughed.
“There’s... well there’s some strange shit going on, and we’re told that there has been trouble out there.”
“What kind of trouble? Because all I've seen so far is...” His voice trailed off and went silent.
“Nathan? NATHAN!” Tara yelled into the radio.
“Yeah, sorry. There’s a fire, I think. I can see some smoke drifting up from the lower fields. I think there’s a barn down there if I remember rightly.”
“Nathan, get back to town.”
“I’m going to take a look. Might be some folks in trouble.”
“Don't do that!” she exclaimed loudly. “Dan’s on his way, and I want you to get out of there.”
“But Travis might be down there. I’m going to take a look.”
“NATHAN, GET BACK IN YOUR TRUCK RIGHT GODDAMN NOW!” Tara yelled angrily.
“Okay, okay. Geez,” he moaned.
“Look, Nathan, things are happening here, okay? We’ve got a dead body and a suspect in custody who is saying some crazy shit about stuff that may or may not have happened out there.”
“Out here?”
“Yes. Tell me, are there any signs of people at all? Vehicles? Men in... some kind of military uniforms?”
“No. Like I said, there’s not even any sign of Travis or Jennings, let alone anyone else. Why, what's your suspect saying happened out here?”
“Like I said, crazy shit. The guy we’ve got came in voluntarily but with a gun in his jacket and a body in the back of his car. He reckons that he saw multiple men in black fatigues getting murdered by... well, by some things.
“Things? What sort of things?”
“Like I said, crazy shit. Okay, get in your truck and head back to town.”
“I can wait here for Dan.”
“No.”
“Hey! Look, Tara, I'm not completely helpless. Surely you don't want Dan out here alone if there is something going on?”
Belle watched on as one of her childhood friends worried about the other. There was a deep love between Tara and Nathan, and not for the first time since her return, she envied them their connection and wondered what it would be like to be the object of Nathan’s eye.
No one had spotted her presence yet, and she didn't want to alert them to it. Given her current town position as owner and operator of the Herald, she guessed that her childhood friendship privileges would only stretch so far before Tara threw her out.
While the attention in the room was all centred on the radio, Belle followed her instinct and crept further into the station and then down a side corridor where she could listen in without being spotted.
“Okay,” Tara finally relented. “But you listen to me, Nathan, like you've never listened before, right? You sit in your truck with the engine running and if you see anything, anything weird, then you get the hell out of there okay?”
“You got it, boss,” he replied, and Belle could picture the smile on the other end of the radio. “Say, do I get a badge now? Do I get deputised?”
“You’re an idiot, and I love you,” Tara ended the call.
“I'm on my way,” Belle heard Marko say without being asked, but she had spotted the holding cell sign pointing down the hallway and decided to risk following it.
The motto in her professional life had always been to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. It was a philosophy that had served her well and led to many an exclusive interview that she would not have otherwise gotten. Now that Tara apparently had a suspect with a story, she wanted to hear it.
She made her way quietly along the hallway and then down a flight of stairs until she reached the holding cells. There were three small square boxes with iron bars on the fronts and only one was currently occupied.
A somewhat nondescript man was lying on a bed with his eyes closed. There was a patch of bandaging taped to the back of his head and a slight bloodstain was showing through.
“You know it’s impolite to stare,” he said without opening his eyes, startling her.
“Sorry,” she found herself instinctively muttering and hating the feeling that she’d immediately lost the initiative.
The man sat up slowly and gently swung his legs off the bed. He raised a hand to the bandage on his head and touched it tentatively.
“You should congratulate your friend in there,” he said gingerly. “It's been a while since someone got the drop on me. Didn't even see it coming,” he finished quietly to himself.
“Who are you?”
“Hell of a town you got yourselves here. Quite the welcome party you guys throw,” he replied, ignoring her question.
“Something tells me you might have deserved it.”
“Maybe you're right, or maybe not.” He smiled. “Or maybe I deserve a lot worse.”
“What did they arrest you for?”
“They? You're not a cop?”
“Do I look like one?”
He looked at her for the first time now, drinking her in fully.
“No, no you don't. Actually, you don't strike me as a local either.”
“My name is Belle Morton. I’m a journalist.”
“But not a local one.”
“No… well, kind of, lately; it's a long story.”
“They always are.”
“And you are?”
“Vanek.”
“Just the one name? Not even a whole name?”
“Josef Vanek,” he clarified.
“And what brought you to Wellspring?”
“The fishing.”
“I’m sorry, fishing?”
“Yep.” He shrugged.
“At this time of year? Forgive me if that rings a little hollow.”
“Let it ring however you choose, but that’s the truth.”
“So what got you locked up? Catch too many trout? Invalid fishing licence?”
“Murder,” he answered.
“You killed someone?”
“Thrown in here for murder. I didn't say that I did it.”
“You want to clarify that for me?”
“Why should I?”
“Because I'm not a local. I was once but not anymore. I’m an outsider now, just like you, and if you want anyone to take your story seriously, then you've got to talk to someone. What better way to get your side of things out there than to talk to the owner of the local newspaper? I could print your story, maybe get the town to listen? Maybe even my best friend, the town cop who threw you in here?” she said, stretching the truth more than a little.
“Why the hell not?” He sighed after a long pause of consideration.
“So you were up at Travis McNichol’s place?”
“I was passing by.”
“Lot of trouble up there lately.”
“Lady, you don't know the half of it.”
“So tell me.”
“There are things in the forest.”
“What kind of things?”
“The dangerous kind, the rip-you-to-pieces kind. I saw some military guys get torn apart; these men were heavily armed with fully automatic weapons, and they all got cut down.”
“Really,” she scoffed.
“Look, Belle, I don't have any reason to lie right now.”
“There is always the prospect of saving your own ass?”
“Maybe. It is a speciality of mine, after all, but it is one that I stupidly chose to ignore. You know, I could have been out of this town by now, out of the storm and back into civilisation without anyone being any the wiser that I was ever here. But no, I had to grow a goddamn conscience and do the right thing; don't ask me why because I don't know. So here I am, trying to be the good citizen, and where does it get me? Locked in a damn cell with a monster headache for company!”
“What exactly did you see out there?”
“Well to start with, Travis found a severed finger in a chicken barn where all of the poultry had been ripped to pieces. Oh, and he also couldn't find the other guy who worked there… Jennings, I believe his name was. Not hard to put the two things together
: found finger, missing farmhand.”
“What else? You said that you saw some kind of... things?”
“Like I said, things. They look like people, but they sure as hell don't move like them.”
“How so?”
“Faster, stronger. Seemingly able to shake off machine gun bullets, or at least unless you get up real close.”
“So you killed one, that’s what you're saying? The body in your car is one of these things?”
“Not me. I'm innocent of all potential charges. One of the soldiers emptied a full clip into her face… that seemed to do the trick.”
“You know how crazy this makes you sound?”
“Of course I do. But there were more of those things. As feral as that girl was, no way did she cut down a whole unit alone. No, there are more out there and your whole town is in danger, especially if no one is going to take me seriously.”
Belle pondered the guy for a while. She had interviewed enough criminals in the past to know when they were lying, or at least to be able to make an educated guess. The man in front of her seemed to be on the level. At the very least, he believed what he was saying – she could feel that coming off him in waves of angry frustration.
“Military?” she mused aloud.
“Excuse me?”
“You said that the men looked to be military?”
“So?”
“So there’s a medical research centre just outside town. It’s run by the military, some kind of secretive project.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. There was also a very large green camo truck that came thundering through town in a real big hurry a short time ago.” She nodded, mostly to herself. “There was a break-in a couple of months ago out there too, you know, right before people started turning up dead.”
“Seems like a pretty big coincidence,” he agreed. “Also seems like something that you should be telling your friend there,” he said, nodding over her shoulder.
She turned around slowly to see Tara standing there. Her friend’s face was screwed up in an expression of pure anger.
“Hey,” Belle said awkwardly.
“Hey yourself,” Tara replied coldly. “You checking out the accommodation? I do have a vacancy,” she said, pointing to one of the empty cells.
“Sorry, but...”
“But you're not sorry. Look, I'm sure that down in London it's considered common practice to screw over just about everyone you meet in order to get a story, but that's not how we do things here, or have you forgotten that?”
“Something is going on here, Tara, something off-the-charts weird and you know it.”
“It is out of the ordinary, I’ll give you that for sure, but this one's buddy just woke up and had a few choice things to say about him.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the fact that they were hiring Travis McNichol’s barn to store drugs in… you know, the same place where Tommy O'Reilly was killed. Nathan’s out there now, and he says that neither Travis nor Patrick Jennings are anywhere to be seen. Oh, and there’s a load of slaughtered chickens… and that barn? The one that he rented?” Tara said, jerking a thumb towards Vanek. “Well apparently someone's burned it down according to Nathan.”
“Something big is going on here, Tara. Can't you feel it? Something is way off here.”
“I thought that you journalists were supposed to deal in facts.”
“Facts? You’ve got dead people, missing people, all kinds of craziness going on, and the Institute is right slap bang in the middle of all of it. Oh, and apparently you can throw Isaiah King into the missing mix along with his two sons who I'm guessing still haven't turned up yet?”
Tara’s silence told her all she needed to know.
“You must have heard about the army truck that went through town to the Institute? Is it really so far out there to think that the break-in up there might be why they've got a sudden influx of reinforcements? What if something wasn't taken during the burglary? What if something got out?”
“That’s a pretty fanciful notion.” Tara nodded along. “But I think it's far more likely that a bunch of drug dealers using our town as a storage depot killed anyone who stumbled across them.”
“That's true,” Vanek admitted, making Belle turn towards him again.
“What?” she demanded.
“Oh, I wouldn’t hesitate to put down anyone who jeopardised our operation, but that’s a sideline to what's really going on here, and if you don't listen to me, then you’re all going to end up dead,” he stated.
“Did you kill Tommy O’Reilly?” Tara asked.
“Nope, that wasn't me. I did have to shoot Travis, though. His body is still out at the farm, but scout’s honour that was self-defence. My boss, Mr Kline, showed up out there and things went... well they went south in a hurry, I'm afraid.”
“So you're a murderer,” Belle stated, unnerved by the man's cold statement which was seemingly devoid of any emotion.
“That one was most definitely self-defence.”
“That one?”
“Well I did have to deal with some photographer woman. That really was most unfortunate. She seemed nice.”
“Tina Bolton?” Belle exclaimed, thinking about how she had never got a chance to meet the Herald’s resident shutterbug.
“If you say so.” Vanek shrugged back.
“Why would you admit that?” Belle asked, shaking her head.
“To make you understand that those are the only ones that I killed. The others… the others that are missing? Those are all down to those things out there, not me.”
Belle turned to Tara.
“What? I'm supposed to believe that he killed two people but not anyone else?” the town constable said in disbelief.
