So Insane, page 2
And the jobs would take Granger from being one of a million tiny little towns that seemed to exist for no reason other than to exist to an important economic hub. Aside from the jobs the center itself would bring, there were the obligatory highway expansions and refurbishments that would come along with it and the multitude of service and entertainment jobs that would follow after.
Granger, like Len, was growing up.
The sun, still low in its journey, sent light but no warmth over the early morning mountain chill as he hiked. He headed toward the construction site, although so far, no construction had started. They were still clearing the ground where the massive warehouse and parking lot would be built. The building itself was supposed to have nearly three acres of floor space. Tyler shook his head. That was an obscene amount of building.
As he grew close, he was surprised to hear machinery. The week before, the excavators had accidentally uncovered an old mineshaft. Usually, that meant a halt to any kind of work until a survey team could be sent in to determine if there were any structural integrity issues in the surrounding bedrock.
Then there were the rumors of ghosts. Of course, the construction crew was mainly out-of-towners, so they didn't know the place was supposed to be haunted. Not that it would matter if they did. Business was about the most adult thing Tyler could think of and had no room for superstitions and fairy tales. Still, safety was a very real consideration. Even if the powers that be didn’t particularly care for the health of their employees, the lawsuits that would follow any kind of accidental death were the stuff of nightmares for land developers.
Well, maybe they had fast-tracked the survey and determined that everything was safe.
When he reached the site, he saw that there were only a few backhoes and one bulldozer. From a distance, the echoes of the mountains made it seem like far more activity was taking place. He saw perhaps a half-dozen men in hardhats. The machines seemed almost lazy as they tore apart the ground and created piles of gravel and soil.
Caution tape covered a gash on the wall of the excavated earth where the entrance to the old mine was located. It was only forty or fifty yards from where he stood, and all of the construction was another hundred and fifty to two hundred yards away. More than enough distance for him to reach the mine without being seen.
Again, that sense of adventure came over him. “You ready to get into some trouble, Len?” he asked.
He chuckled at himself. Len would get a kick out of hearing that Tyler was talking to him when he wasn’t there. He could almost see his friends easy smile, hear the sarcastic lilt in his voice as he said, “I knew you liked me, man, but I didn’t know you were in love with me like that.”
Then again, Len was grown up now. Maybe he’d just chuckle politely while texting his wife about the grocery list. How time flied.
Tyler pressed his back against the dirt and edged his way forward, keeping his eyes on the machines and the crew as he slowly navigated down the steep slope toward the mine. No one turned to look at him, and when he reached the caution tape, he immediately slipped under it and into the gash.
As he scrambled away from the entrance and into the darkness, deja vu hit him pretty hard. He thought of Len and how the two of them would likely be hushing each other and pushing one another for each imagined noise the other made. The surprisingly adult thought came to him that those friendly squabbles were just their way of reminding each other that they weren’t alone.
“Don’t worry, Len,” he said to the air. “They won’t hear us.”
He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, pushed the switch on, and then hit the back twice to get the light to stop flickering.
As he made his way over the uneven tunnel floor, Tyler could hear strange noises coming from within. Creaking and moaning echoed through the dark corridors like an old black-and-white horror movie.
He really wished Len were with him. They would have been laughing about how creepy it all was, and the laughter would stop it from being creepy.
“Hey, Len, that moan sounded like your mom.”
“Screw you, Tyler,” he said, deepening his voice to sound like Len’s.
“Weird. Your mom said the same thing to me last night.”
“I wouldn’t know. I was too busy banging your sister.”
“That explains why she was crying this morning.”
He continued to banter with his absent friend as he worked himself deeper into the mine. The flashlight flickered again, increasing the already macabre atmosphere. “Getting’ spooky in heah,” he said, affecting the exaggerated Brooklyn accent that always left Len rolling in laughter.
A rush of cold air blew from one of the shafts to his left. Tyler shivered, not just from the cold. His flashlight flickered again, and he grunted irritably as he smacked it hard.
Too hard. The torch flew from his hand, skittered across the ground and went out. Tyler’s smile vanished, as did every good feeling he had.
If Tyler had survived long enough to make it to the surface, he would have thought that this was the moment he grew up. It occurred to him quite clearly that a man who was five weeks away from his thirtieth birthday had no business sneaking around in an abandoned mine shaft like a damned high schooler trying to find an outlet for raging hormones and latent fear of adulthood.
“All right, Len,” he said, no more humor in his voice, “time to stop being stupid.”
He dropped to his hands and knees and shuffled slowly along the floor in the direction of the dropped flashlight. The moaning coming from all around him no longer seemed exciting or even spooky. It was downright terrifying.
“Come on,” he said softly. “Where are you, you bastard?”
How was there no light at all from the surface? He had been walking for two minutes. There was no way he had made it so far into the mine that it should be so dark.
He tasted copper and realized he had bitten down hard enough on his cheek to draw blood. He opened his mouth and the click his teeth made when he closed it again echoed through the chamber like a gong.
“Come on,” he whispered again. “Come on, I know you’re around here.”
Finally, his fingers fell on a smooth, cool cylinder of metal. He made a sound halfway between a cry and a groan and leaped to his feet, fingers fumbling with the buttons. No light came when he clicked the on switch, so he swore under his breath and unscrewed the back of the housing.
There was the problem. The batteries had been knocked loose. He pushed first one down, then the other and carefully screwed the back on.
He took a deep breath and clicked the button once more. When a beam of light revealed a perfectly ordinary cavern and not a swarm of bats or a pile of bleach-white, splintered bones, he moaned again in relief.
He laughed at the sound that escaped his mouth, and said giddily, “Hey, Len, that’s the sound your mom made when I was with her last night.”
“Really? Sounds like a scared little wimp whining because he’s afraid of the dark.”
“Screw you, Len!”
His glee had returned, but beneath it was the very mature realization that he needed to get out of here and fast.
As often happened with such realizations, this one came too late to save him. He turned around and took two steps back the way he came.
Then strong arms wrapped around his chest, and before he realized what was happening, he was yanked backwards so forcefully his feet left the ground. The flashlight clattered to the ground. The beam flickered, then went out.
A soft breeze blew through the mine, carrying with it a soft moan that rose to a piercing shriek.
Then the cave went silent.
CHAPTER ONE
“Don’t tell me you don’t like dogs,” Faith said. “I don’t know if I can trust a man who doesn’t like dogs.”
“I like them well enough,” West said, “Just as I like elephants and zebras and tigers and crocodiles. Like elephants and tigers, I have no desire to own one.”
“Owning a dog is a bit different than owning an elephant,” Faith pointed out with a wry smile.
“Is it? Both creatures are intelligent. Both are self-aware and experience similar emotions as humans. They can even become mentally ill. Plenty of captive dogs and elephants show symptoms of anxiety, PTSD, depression, even personality disorders. There are studies that suggest that elephants really do have extraordinary memory that might even be superior to humans in some instances. And dogs are known to recognize members of their litter that they haven’t seen in years.”
“So you think it’s immoral to own a dog?”
"No," he clarified. "I just don't have an interest in owning one myself. I suppose as a psychologist, I have a hard time interacting with an intelligent being without being keenly aware of that being’s mental and emotional traumas.”
“And are you keenly aware of my mental and emotional traumas?”
He smiled. “Would you like the polite answer or the honest answer?”
Faith laughed, but she couldn’t help but feel a little disturbed as well. She was a generally private person where her emotions were concerned. She accepted that part of Dr. West’s job was to see those deep-seated emotional traumas and help Faith work through them, but she couldn’t help but feel a little like a bug under a microscope. “Well, just for the record, you don’t own me.”
His smile widened, baring twin rows of perfectly white teeth. “Noted.”
***
Faith opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling.
She had started to feel like the last girl in a horror series, the one that, against all odds, ended up being the last person to survive. She had endured a seemingly endless assault of death, destruction and sorrow, but she always emerged triumphant. The killer was always caught, and Faith always rode off into the sunset, her trusty dog by her side.
And that was how it was supposed to be. She was Special Agent Faith Bold, detective extraordinaire, darling of the FBI and champion of justice, one of the people who were supposed to show up at the end of the movie along with the flashing lights, not one of the hapless victims left to rot in the wake of the killer’s rampage.
Instead, she lay alone in her apartment, her body bruised and battered, her mind ravaged. Once more, a crazed murderer had beaten her nearly to death. Once more, she had come in, guns blazing, just like a hero should, and once more, the villain had reminded her that movies were just that and real life didn't discriminate between good and evil.
This time, though, she lived not because the other hero had rescued her but because the killer had decided he wasn’t done with her yet. He wanted her to know that he did own her after all, that she lived, died, thrived and wasted at his pleasure. He would kill her when he was ready, but not before he had broken her, worn her down so that nothing was left of her but skin and bones, a bleached skeleton wrapped in the shroud of her own empty existence.
With little to do but think and remember, she remembered Jethro Trammell and Franklin West, Donkey Killer and Copycat Killer, master and apprentice though as far as she knew, the two of them had never met. The only connection they shared was an affinity for torturing people to death and a special interest in a once brash and confident FBI agent.
She could see Trammell’s leer, hear his shockingly high-pitched lilt as he said, Let’s see you bleed, little girl, just before slicing the tendons of her right knee in half.
She could see West’s kind smile, his almost self-effacing condescension, as though he was aware that he was a perfect stereotype of the Freudian therapist, right down to his wire-rimmed glasses and sharply pointed goatee. She could see his contemptuous sneer as he stared down at her beaten body and lamented that she was far from the challenge he hoped she would be. She could hear his voice as he said, I want you to look around and see nothing but the shattered remnants of your life, and only when all that is left is ash and splinters do I want you to admit defeat.
These images tortured her, but they paled in comparison to the knowledge that Turk was out there somewhere in West’s clutches.
If he was still alive.
She imagined Turk being shot in the shoulder but continuing to attempt to protect her. She imagined him shot in his legs, saw them buckle underneath him. She imagined him shot in the head, in the torso, over and over, trying and inevitably failing to protect his handler, a woman whose obsession with the past had endangered him in the first place.
It occurred to her that West wouldn’t shoot Turk. That would be too simple for him. West wasn’t a killer so much as he was a sadist. He would want Turk to suffer. He would want to hear the yelps and cries, hear the growls as Turk tried to maintain his courage. He would want to see Turk struggling to fight, growing weaker with every second, his expressive eyes showing the growing frustration, then desperation, then finally resignation as West foiled every attempt at escape and revenge. He wouldn’t allow Turk to die until every ounce of fight was gone from him, until he finally accepted that he was completely and utterly at West’s mercy. West didn’t want to be the devil. He wanted to be God.
Faith rolled out of bed, gritting her teeth against the aches and pains that still troubled her. She had spent four weeks in the hospital and now two at home, and the broken bones had healed, but the bruising would linger for another month. She felt far older than her thirty-three years. What was that old movie quote? It ain’t the years, it’s the miles? Something like that.
She went through the motions of making herself breakfast. Dr. Gunner had told her that it was important to get into a routine. Doing so gave the body and more importantly the mind something to focus on other than pain.
Well, she had followed the same routine religiously since returning home. Fall asleep, have nightmares, wake up, stare at the ceiling, get out of bed, make breakfast, shower and hopefully not collapse on the couch weeping before Michael showed up.
Speaking of Michael, he was either early this morning, or she had woken late because she had just finished her pancakes and bacon when the doorbell sounded. She smiled faintly and threw a few more strips of bacon on the griddle. Michael would refuse breakfast when she offered, but he would eat it when she set the plate in front of him anyway.
If anything in her life could be said to be a silver lining after all of this, it was Michael’s steady presence as she healed. Just before going after West a second time, Michael had all but confirmed that he no longer considered Faith a friend after Faith’s obsession over the Copycat Killer had led her to accuse Michael’s fiancée, Ellie, of being the killer herself. Ironically, West had turned out to be Ellie’s ex-husband, so in a way, Faith was on the right track.
Not that Michael would ever understand that or that Faith would ever expect him to. The fact that he was here at all was a miracle.
Faith could use all the miracles she could get.
She opened the door and managed another smile, though it disappeared from her face nearly instantaneously. “Bacon’s almost finished grilling,” she said, “pancakes will be another few minutes.”
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
“Coffee’s in the pot,” she said, ignoring him. “It’s that Jamaican stuff you like.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Blue Mountain? That stuff’s like a hundred fifty dollars a pound.”
“You better not waste it, then,” she said, pouring two mugs and handing Michael one.
Michael looked like he wanted to protest further, but in the end, he just sipped the coffee and sat down. When Faith handed him a plate of pancakes and bacon, he dug in just as Faith knew he would.
She sat across from him and forced her own food down. She hadn’t really been hungry since she woke up in the hospital two months ago.
“Any news on West?” she asked.
Michael sighed. “Faith, I’m not doing this anymore.”
“He has Turk, Michael.”
He lifted his eyes to hers, and she saw in his gaze the certainty that he no longer had Turk but instead had left him buried somewhere in the wilderness.
Faith refused to believe that.
“I couldn’t tell you about West even if I wanted to,” Michael said. “You know that. Even if you weren’t suspended, the case would still be off-limits to you.”
She pressed her lips together. It was hardly a surprise that Special Agent-in-Charge Grant Monroe—known affectionately as the Boss to the agents of the Philadelphia Field Office—had suspended Faith following her consistent and flagrant disregard of his instructions to lay off the case, but it still hurt.
“If we hear any news about Turk, I’ll tell you,” Michael said gently. “So far, we haven’t heard anything.”
She nodded and shoved a forkful of pancakes into her mouth to stifle the lump in her throat. “How’s Ellie?” she asked.
He sighed. “The same. She’s all right with me helping you out, but she’s not interested in hearing your apology. Or anything from you at all.”
"Is she really okay with you helping me out, or is she just tolerating it because she feels she has no choice?"
Michael met her eyes and said, “Faith, if my wife didn’t want me here, I wouldn’t be here.”
Faith paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “You guys got married?”
“Yes,” he said, “last month.”
Faith’s heart twisted in her chest. She realized now that she had held onto the lingering hope that she and Michael might become friends again after all of this, but hearing that Michael and Ellie had married and he hadn’t even bothered to tell her beforehand killed that hope.
She managed a smile and said, “That’s good. Congratulations. I’m happy for you two.”
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