Hidden Bones (Dead Remaining), page 20
One of the men’s fingertips grazed his back just as he shot out through the trees and onto the highway. With a petrified shriek, he whirled around as he saw that the man had gotten tangled up in the trees that he’d been able to easily clear—there was a win for Team Little People if he’d ever seen one. He turned his attention back to the road and the approaching semitruck.
He flapped his hands over his head in an X shape. “Hey! Stop! Please!”
The semi didn’t stop, but two other vehicles were approaching about fifty yards behind it. With the man in the trees just about free, he ran toward the car in the front, jumping into the middle of the road when he feared it wouldn’t stop, deciding that he’d rather be killed by a machine than a maniac—two maniacs—any day of the week.
The car came to a screeching halt. So did the one directly behind it. Jake, wasting no time, ran to the passenger side and attempted to wrench open the door. It was locked.
“What the hell are you doing?” shouted a familiar voice.
His breath hitching, Jake looked into the face of Mayor Moulden. He rubbed his chest, having difficulty breathing, a mixture of exhaustion and panic seizing his lungs. “Unlock . . . the . . . door!”
The mayor’s hand hovered over the control. She rolled the window down half an inch. “What’s going on?”
“Please! They’re . . . coming.” And, yes, the entangled man had cleared the trees and was rapidly closing in on the mayor’s car. Hearing the blessed clicking sound of the locks disengaging, Jake pulled the door open and scrambled into the vehicle. “Drive! Please!”
The car behind them laid on the horn. At a maddeningly slow rate, Mayor Moulden frowned at the car in the rearview mirror and then turned her gaze on the man, who was now just outside her window. He examined her with his fists clenched at his sides, as if unsure what to do.
Honk-honk-honk . . .
“All right!” The mayor shot another angry look at the review mirror. She glared at the man on the street and then put the car into drive.
God bless American road rage, Jake thought, easing back into the seat and catching his breath as they sped off. It would be another minute before he calmed down enough to speak.
CHAPTER 31
Bang!
Clausen groped at his abdomen with his free hand, his skin immediately dyeing red. He gaped at Stogg uncomprehendingly—How dare you, his eyes seemed to say—then raised his gun weakly to fire at the sheriff. Stogg pulled the trigger of his gun and shot Clausen again, this time hitting him in the center of his chest. Clausen stumbled forward and fell to his knees.
Bang!
It was the final bullet that did it, a shot to the heart. Clausen fell flat on his stomach, twitched grotesquely. Finally, he lay motionless.
Eric and Susan raised their hands when Stogg turned on them. Susan said, “You don’t have—”
Stogg’s eyes brimmed with sorrow. “They already got my wife. I told them no, and they got to her . . . I should’ve done what they . . .” He shook his head, his voice choked. “But my goddamned pride . . . and now she’s dead because of me, my sweet Honeybee.”
“Sheriff, please—”
“It’ll never end.” The sheriff raised the gun toward his face, staring down the barrel. “And I won’t let them take my son too . . . tell him I’m sorry.”
“No!” Eric and Susan shrieked as Stogg pressed the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger. Eric squeezed his eyes closed as the sheriff’s brains launched out the top of his skull. He ran to Susan and cradled her in his arms, though it was really she who was comforting him.
Eventually, Eric asked, “What do we do now?”
Susan stepped back, her expression blank as she surveyed the two dead men. It made Eric feel an uneasy mixture of pride and apprehension, her ability to hold it together so well when he felt like screaming.
She pulled her phone from her pocket, nodded. “No cell service here. I expected as much.”
“What do we do about . . . them?”
She glanced at the bodies and then reclaimed her gun from Clausen. “We shouldn’t move them—not that we’d be able to haul their deadweight back to the car. All we can do is hike back and then make our calls.” Without another word, she started for the car.
Eric wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find the right words—were there any right words for times when a man committed murder and then shot his own brains out? He silently followed her out of the clearing.
At the car, Susan made several calls, reaching not a single person.
Her first call was to Howell; she left him a voice mail, outlining what had happened in a strong, steady voice. Her second call was to Jake; his phone only rang and rang, ultimately going to voice mail. She began to summarize the events for him as well but then stopped and simply told him to call her back. “Where is everybody?” she asked, frustrated.
“Cell phone service is spotty here,” Eric pointed out. “And Howell is on his way, right? You saw how remote that drive is.”
“Good point.”
“I think you should call the mayor. She’s going to wonder where we are, and she should probably be in the loop about Clausen and Stogg.”
Susan nodded and made the call, using the number on the card the mayor had given to them on the morning of the search party. She didn’t seem to know what to say once voice mail picked up. “Hi, Mayor Moulden,” she began and then paused awkwardly after identifying herself. “I just thought you should know . . . I appreciate you believing us about the lab, and the four of us hiked there . . . but, Stogg and Clausen are dead. They . . .” She looked to Eric helplessly, and he raised his shoulders at her. “I think this would be better to discuss in person. Eric and I are heading to your office now. Uh, thanks, bye.”
She called Howell back and left a voice mail informing him of their plan and of the address of the mayor’s office. “This day sure has turned upside down.”
“Imagine what the night will be like,” he answered with a dry smile.
CHAPTER 32
Mayor Moulden held up a finger to silence Jake while she listened to her voice mail. Her face remained impassive, and then she hung up.
“Man, was I ever glad to see you,” Jake said, still sounding a little breathless. His hands still shook, but he imagined they would for quite some time. “I would’ve been killed had you not stopped.”
“You didn’t give me much of a choice. No, you didn’t,” Mayor Moulden said offhandedly, keeping her eyes on the road. “It’s all about choices, isn’t it?”
“Sure . . .” What a weird thing to say, Jake thought. “I appreciate it, whatever the reason. I owe you one, big-time. Those guys, they started chasing me—I have no idea why. They have my cell phone too.”
“Your friends chose to go hiking that night, didn’t they?” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken.
He smiled uneasily. “What do you mean?”
“That’s the thing; they chose to go hiking, just like they chose to stray off the path to my lab. Nobody invited them—I wouldn’t show at their place without an invitation. That would be rude, and we live in a world where rudeness has consequences.” The mayor shook her head and then glanced over at him casually. “And how rude were you to stay in town? You and your rude little friends. You were told to leave, and yet . . .” She shrugged, clicked her tongue.
Jake sat up straight in his seat, sensing that there might be something wrong with the woman. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand at attention. Had he heard her right—her lab? Maybe he would’ve been better off in the forest with the thugs.
“People always get upset when things don’t go their way, yet nobody ever wants to accept personal responsibility. Do they?” She shook her head. “No, they don’t.”
He slowly moved a hand toward the door handle, closed his fingers around it.
She arched an eyebrow and smiled over at him, almost as if she were flirting. “Won’t do you any good. I had the interior mechanism removed—it can only be opened from the outside. Go on; try it.”
Frightened, Jake pulled on the handle, letting out a confused cry when it gave, yet . . . nothing happened. “What is this?” he yelled, yanking hard on the handle. He smashed all his weight against the door, grunting.
Nothing happened.
She laughed. “You can beat away at it all day, but it won’t do any good. And, trust me, bigger men than you have tried. Broken.” Broken separated into two words—bro-ken—to antagonize him.
“What’s wrong with you?”
She calmly reached into the compartment on her door and extracted a pistol. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she aimed it right at his face. “This, though, works just fine. You don’t want to be rude again and find out how fine, do you?”
Jake slowly raised his hands. “I do not.”
“Good boy.”
CHAPTER 33
Eric and Susan arrived at Mayor Moulden’s office and found, not surprisingly, that she was gone. Only her admin assistant was in attendance.
The assistant was about as helpful as the rest of the town. “Mayor Moulden isn’t here,” he repeated, as if they hadn’t heard him the first time.
“We understand that,” Susan said. “But do you know where she is?”
The assistant gave them a shrug that was about as close to passive aggressive as a shrug could get. “No idea.”
“Aren’t you her assistant?” Eric asked tartly, and Susan gave his hand a squeeze beneath the counter. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, he could hear her say. She’d said it to him on more than one occasion, though sometimes he felt she misinterpreted his tone.
The assistant gave Eric a hard look. “Exactly. Her assistant. I work for her. If the mayor doesn’t want to tell me where she’s going, I’m not going to question her. It’s not my place.”
“Fair enough,” Susan said with a pleasant smile. “May we wait in her office?”
The assistant shook his head. “I’m sorry; that’s not allowed.”
Eric and Susan exchanged a look. They’d expected as much. They returned to the Jeep to decide what to do next. It was freezing inside the vehicle, with the windows having been shot out. They’d taped plastic over the gaps, which was hardly weatherproofing, with the intention of getting new windows once they returned to Perrick. It would be a chilly drive home.
Eric said, “It’s like the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe here. The whole town has either gone insane or is MIA. Look, there’s hardly any people on the streets. Ghost town.”
“You want to hear something crazy?” she asked with a sad smile. “For a split second—maybe not even that long—I thought that I should call Ed for advice, because he always seemed to know what to do in these sorts of situations. Nuts, right?”
Eric shook his head. “It’s okay for you to miss him, you know. Even with what happened, it’s okay for you to feel . . . things. You’re only human. Nobody expects you to behave otherwise.”
Susan began to speak, but then her phone binged with a voice mail notification. “Must’ve gotten a call while we were inside.” She listened to it and then said, “That was Howell. They should be here any minute.”
“What did he have to say about the shoot-out?”
Susan shook her head. “Funny enough, he didn’t even mention it.”
“He’s all business, that one.”
“He is.”
After that, they gave up on making small talk, the events of the morning sinking in. Whenever Eric closed his eyes, he pictured the incredulous expression on Clausen’s face as he realized that Stogg had turned his gun on him—that he, the would-be murderer, had become the soon-to-be murdered. He saw the expression on Sheriff Stogg’s face just before he placed his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger—I won’t let them take my son too . . . tell him I’m sorry. He saw the back of his skull explode outward, his body collapse lifelessly onto the earth. These events replayed in his mind over and over, a record player needling the same measure of a song. As much as he’d been haunted by actual ghosts, he imagined that the sight of Stogg taking his own life would be something that would truly haunt him forever.
As promised, FBI Special Agent in Charge Denton Howell and presumably DEA Agent Mark Kinger pulled up next to them in the parking lot in a nondescript rental sedan. “Kinger isn’t what I expected,” Eric said quietly once they got out.
“Me either.”
Kinger was a string bean come to life. He stood well over six feet, yet he probably weighed no more than 165 pounds soaking wet. He was pale all over: thin, pale-blond hair; pale-blue eyes; pale skin. Though boyish in frame, he had the hardened face of a man of excess: a man who stayed up too late, stressed too much, smoked too much, worked until he collapsed behind his computer. Eric saw that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, something he’d started noticing on other men after his own divorce.
Howell, also not wearing a wedding ring, was exactly the sort Eric could envision kicking ass and taking names. His scalp was shaved smooth, and his gaze was razor sharp; Eric imagined that he was the sort of person who could be blindfolded thirty seconds after arriving at a new place yet still be able to describe the room right down to the artwork on the walls and the color of the tie a person wore on the opposite side of the room. His eyes were as dark and clear as his ebony skin. He was about as tall as Kinger, but twice as wide, with lean muscles gently straining the seams of his clothing. Eric felt shrimpy and inadequate by comparison.
Both men had identical bulges at their hips, which Eric interpreted as guns. He’d been wondering why Susan wasn’t also carrying, but she’d changed the subject whenever he’d tried to ask her about it. Susan, as he’d learned in their time together, tended to only shut down further when pressed about something she did not wish to discuss. It was better to let her open up on her own timeline.
After a brief introduction, Eric, Susan, and the agents went into Mayor Moulden’s office to speak again to her administrative assistant. His attitude hadn’t changed much. “I already told you—”
The agents pulled out their badges and practically shoved them under the assistant’s nose. His eyes went wide, and then his gaze shifted to the mayor’s office. He’s hiding something, all right, Eric thought.
“DEA?” he asked, bewildered, completely omitting the part about Howell being with the FBI. Interesting, Eric thought, since it showed where his main concerns rested.
“Listen to me carefully, you little pissant,” Agent Kinger said in an intimidating voice that did not seem possible for a man so slight. “If you know where the mayor is and you aren’t telling us, you’re obstructing justice. As much as you want to keep your job, I imagine you want to keep your freedom more. So help me, if I find out that you’re hiding information, I’ll see to it that you’re locked away with some very unpleasant characters. You may not go away for long, but a lot can happen in lockup overnight.”
Eric wondered how much of the statement was true, since he was aware that Howell and Kinger had flown to Clancy unofficially. Still, while even Eric was shocked by Kinger’s boldness, the assistant didn’t seem fazed. “I told you, I don’t know.”
“This her office?” Howell asked, gesturing toward the closed door at the far end of the room.
The assistant folded his arm across his chest. “You got a warrant?”
Howell turned to the couple, though he seemed to be speaking mostly to Eric. “As an agent of the law, I’m unable to open that door. Physically, I can open it, but whatever I find would be inadmissible in court, since it would be an illegal search. Because the door is closed, see.”
“Right . . . ,” Eric said slowly. “So, we have to wait to get a warrant or . . . ?”
Susan looked into Eric’s eyes hard. “We cannot enter that closed door because we are aware of the law as officials. But if a civilian took it upon himself to open the door . . .” She shrugged. “We’d be viewing the scene differently—in a legal sense.”
“Oh, geez, I’m an idiot,” Eric said, and he immediately strode across the room toward the mayor’s door.
“Hey! You can’t go in there!” the assistant shouted once he realized what was happening. He scrambled out from behind his desk, but then, oops, Kinger, Howell, and Susan accidentally on purpose got in his way.
“This is the exit, right?” Eric said loudly and in a confused voice. “I think it’s the way out.” He opened the door to the mayor’s office and gasped. “You guys are going to want to see this.”
The assistant made a panicked noise and fruitlessly attempted to flee through the real exit, the only door to the outside in the entire building, which was also the way in. “Sit your ass down,” Howell said through clenched teeth, and then Kinger rolled the chair out from behind the desk and pushed the assistant down into it. Maybe harder than necessary, not that Eric was going to notice such a thing.
“Look there,” Susan said to Eric. “Do you see the keys?”
He nodded, acknowledging the same neon-green dinosaur key chain they’d seen inside the mobile drug lab in the forest. It was hanging from the lock of an open and empty file cabinet drawer.
“The whole office has been ransacked,” Howell commented behind them. Some of the desk drawers had been pulled out completely and spilled out onto the floor. The ones that remained had the contents inside jumbled. There were also papers and files galore spread all over the floor and chairs. A coatrack sat on its side in the corner, as if a jacket had been ripped from it in a hurry.
“Where is she?” Howell demanded of the assistant.
He shook his head, looking on the brink of bursting into tears. “You don’t understand. I can’t tell you! She’ll kill me!”
“The mayor?” Kinger asked.
“Her or one of her cronies,” the assistant said with a sniff. “She runs the town.”
