As Lee walked away from the trailer, a text came in from Pete Acker. Lee glanced at his phone’s screen as he reached his car. Acker had sent him an address, along with a message to drop everything and meet him there as soon as possible. He’d explain when Lee got there. Lee recognized the address, as would anyone in local law enforcement. It was at a rundown apartment complex clear on the other side of town, a place that was a known center of criminal activity.

  His enthusiasm suddenly on the rebound, Lee got in his Celica and sped away from Jenkins’ trailer, making it to the complex local jokesters had long ago dubbed Mos Eisley—in reference to the “wretched hive of scum and villainy” from Star Wars—in under fifteen minutes. As he drove through the complex, Lee noted numerous shady-looking young men loitering in breezeways, some of them clutching 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor wrapped in paper bags. He knew if he’d been in his cruiser they would have gone scurrying away. Instead they tracked his progress through the complex with dead-eyed stares. One especially young man, who looked like he should be in school rather than in this breeding ground for future felons, flashed him a middle finger. Lee knew this was just a taste of what the future held in store for him, now that he no longer wore the uniform.

  He arrived at the address Acker had sent him moments ahead of the deputy. When Acker pulled up in his cruiser outside building K of the complex, the young men loitering in the breezeway there abruptly decided there were other places they needed to be and vanished within seconds. Seeing this made Lee laugh. It was like a magic trick. One he was no longer capable of performing.

  The men got out of their vehicles and approached each other.

  “Who we seeing here, Pete?”

  The deputy’s head swiveled in the direction of building K, his gaze tilting upward a moment. “Guy named Scott Logan. Unit 8, second floor.”

  Lee arched an eyebrow. “Dangerous, you think?”

  “Nah. He’s in a pretty bad way, from what I hear. Has a real bad case of emphysema.”

  Acker told him the rest of it as they started heading toward building K. Prior to calling Lee, the deputy spent more than an hour interviewing a woman named Kate Hartley, who’d once been briefly engaged to Jimmy Martin, before, as she put it, he “turned into a fat piece of drunken shit”. From the beginning, Acker sensed she knew a little more than she’d wanted to let on. Though there was no paraphernalia in plain view, a strong odor of marijuana had permeated her apartment. Making her believe she might wind up in jail for possession once he took a closer look around the place—this despite his lack of a search warrant—he intimidated her into telling what she knew.

  As it turned out, that wasn’t much. She knew Jimmy had some deep, dark secret he was carrying around with him, something that weighed on him horribly and made him want to be drunk all the time. He alluded to it frequently throughout their relationship, but without ever spilling any of the details. But she thought he might have told Scott Logan everything.

  “What makes her think Logan knows anything?” Lee asked as they climbed stairs to the second floor.

  Acker answered as they reached the landing. “She says Jimmy made one serious attempt at getting sober when they were together. This was when he was in his early twenties. He was off the booze for almost a year, went to AA all the time. Scott Logan was his sponsor. According to Hartley, the two used to talk for hours in private, and he’d never tell her what they talked about. But she said he cried a lot after those talks with Logan. The crying was another reason she gave for leaving Jimmy. She called him a pussy.”

  “Sounds like a lovely lady.”

  Acker chuckled. “Lovely isn’t the word I’d use.”

  They arrived at the door to unit 8.

  Acker knocked loudly. “Sheriff’s department,” he called out in an authoritative voice. “Open up, Mr. Logan.”

  A moment elapsed.

  Then a faint, wheezing voice replied from inside. “Just a minute.”

  More than a minute passed, enough time for the men on the landing to get fidgety. At last, they heard a series of clacking sounds as multiple locks were unlatched from inside. The door came open and a frail-looking elderly man ushered them into the dimly-lit apartment. He wore a white tank top and a ratty pair of gray sweatpants that looked like they hadn’t been washed in months, if ever.

  Lee and Acker followed him into his living room, where he wheezily settled himself into a recliner and regarded them warily as he asked them why the law was bothering a sick old man like himself.

  Acker said, “We believe you may be able to help us with an ongoing investigation. You’ve heard about the murders that have happened around town the last few days, I imagine.”

  Logan pulled a hand down over his tired-looking, emaciated face and scratched at his whiskery chin. “Sure. Can’t see how I could help you with that, though.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Lee told him. “Though you may have to dig deep into your memory for the information we need.” He glanced at Acker. “Tell him what you told me, Pete.”

  Acker told the story again.

  Logan listened in stony-faced silence, staring at the old movie playing on the muted TV screen opposite the recliner. He remained silent for a long moment after Acker finished talking.

  Then he sighed and looked at his visitors. “The things a man tells his AA sponsor are meant to be kept between just the two of them. Like a doctor-patient confidentiality kind of deal, you know? Only I’ve been out of AA for a long time, and I reckon finding your man is more important anyway. You’re gonna want to look into some kid named Elliot something-or-other. He’s the one Jimmy and those other boys tortured.”

  Lee’s breath caught in his throat, his pulse quickening.

  Logan had just tentatively identified the killer, he was sure of it.

  Acker said, “Tortured? Was this Elliot a classmate of theirs?”

  Logan leaned back in his recliner, face twisting at some internal pain. “That’s right.”

  He told them the rest of what he knew.

  34.

  Two days until Halloween

  Willow Springs, TN

  Another long stretch of time passed in the darkness. As before, it possessed a nightmarish malleability. Another full day might have passed, but it was possible it had only been a few hours. Chuck had no way of knowing. All he knew for certain was he’d pissed himself a couple more times and that he wasn’t feeling well. Some kind of sickness had come over him during his latest period of fuzzy unconsciousness. He had a chill and his back and joints were aching in a way that couldn’t solely be attributed to being tied to the chair for so long. His mouth felt thick and dry and his head was throbbing.

  His discomfort was so pronounced it caused him to strain against his bonds with something resembling determination for the first time in a while. He knew there was only so much abuse the human body could take. Unless he was rescued soon or somehow managed to escape, odds were he’d die in this chair before much longer. The way he was feeling, he might well expire from illness long before Elliot got around to executing him.

  But his bonds remained as unyielding as ever. Nor could he rock over the chair. Its legs were secured to metal brackets on the floor, which had been drilled into the concrete with thick bolts. The same had been done to Karen’s chair. This made them virtually impossible to move. After a few minutes of straining as hard as he could manage, Chuck gave up the effort and resumed sobbing. His wife was unimpressed by this display of emotional distress. More noises of hateful contempt emanated from behind her gag.

  Chuck was glad most of them were indecipherable. He no longer desired her forgiveness or confirmation regarding the fate of their children. His misery had become too great. Whatever happened from this point forward, it was clear his marriage to Karen was damaged beyond repair. Of course, a part of him was still concerned for his kids, but his suffering had caused him to become disconnected from those feelings. And then there was the fact that Elliot had repeatedly shown he was a monster capable of perpetrating the most heinous acts imaginable, so the kids were probably dead. It was better not to know for sure. That way he could go to his inevitable grim fate in this place with at least the hope that they were somehow okay.

  Maybe he would see them again someday, up in heaven.

  The thought elicited a soft grunt of amused laughter. Chuck didn’t know whether he believed in an afterlife or the religious concept of some kind of eternal reward for good behavior, nor was he sure about the idea of a fiery netherworld where sinners were consigned to suffer forever. In the event such places did exist, however, it was likely he’d wind up in the warmer place.

  He deserved nothing less, after all.

  The sound of a heavy door opening somewhere beyond his range of vision came right on the heels of this thought. It was followed by the clang of heavy footsteps descending metal stairs. Elliot was emerging from his room upstairs again at long last, apparently. But another, stranger sound accompanied these noises. Elliot was humming something as he descended the stairs. The tune was immediately recognizable as “Here Comes the Bride.”

  Chuck flashed back to his last clear memory of Elliot before his latest retreat to his chambers. As usual, he’d said a lot of crazy things. Among them had been an apparent reference to Susan Rochon as his bride. That Susan would willingly marry someone like Elliot seemed unlikely. No, more than that. It was absurd. Susan was sexy, outgoing, and well-liked. Elliot was the opposite of all those things. Then there was the fact that she’d been brought here under obvious duress. Anyway, Chuck figured it was wrong to interpret Elliot’s remarks or behavior on anything like a literal level. Whatever this wedding stuff was about, it was certain to be deranged in some way.

  Elliot reached the bottom of the stairs. His booted feet clomped on the concrete in the usual loud, echoing way as he approached the circle of faint light illuminating the area where Chuck and Karen were being held. When he entered the illuminated area, Chuck saw right away that his guess had been correct.

  Oh, Jesus, he thought. That poor woman.

  The baser part of Chuck couldn’t help recalling how Susan’s mouth had felt wrapped around his cock that night at the high school reunion. She’d demonstrated an oral skill he wouldn’t encounter again until commencing his affair with Fawn Hightower years later. But Susan wouldn’t ever again be giving anyone a drunken, thoroughly pleasurable backseat blowjob.

  She was dead.

  Elliot held her body cradled in his arms. The garish angle of her broken neck was hard to miss. At some point she’d been forced to change into an old wedding dress that had seen better days. It was frayed-looking and faintly yellow along the seams. After setting the corpse gently on the floor, Elliot turned his attention to Ricky Bennet, whose body was still dangling from a chain a few feet away. He unclipped the chain from the dog collar around Bennet’s neck and pushed his corpse out of the way. After that, he retrieved Susan Rochon’s body, hoisting it up high enough to wrap the chain around her midsection and then around her neck. Once this was done, he moved back a step to inspect his work, tilting his head and frowning at the way her limp form lolled inside its makeshift harness. But then he shrugged, evidently deciding this was the best he could do under the circumstances. He continued humming “Here Comes the Bride” throughout all of this.

  The humming ceased as he let out a breath and shifted his focus to Chuck and Karen. “Thank you for being here on this special day,” Elliot said, smiling broadly. “Susan and I really appreciate it.” He glanced at the dead woman. “Isn’t my bride lovely?”

  The building’s interior was silent for a moment, save for a nearly imperceptible low moan issuing from Jimmy Martin’s cage.

  “I think she’s beautiful,” Elliot said, still smiling. He glanced at his chained “bride” again. “Though she’s been more radiant than this, I’ll admit. Has Chuck ever told you about Susan, Karen? He remembers her, I’m sure. She’s the girl all the guys lusted after back in the day. She developed early. We were all kind of hypnotized by her breasts. To be fair, they were really nice breasts. Still are, as you can see.” His smile began to slip as his voice took on a wistful tone. “From the time I first saw her, I knew there could never be anyone else for me. She was special. We were meant for each other. And now we’re finally man and wife. I always dreamed this day would come and now it’s finally here.” He dabbed at his eyes with the ball of a thumb. “Sorry, guys, I’m getting a little emotional, I guess. Alas, even the best moments of my life are always tainted in some way. She’s dead. I know that. I’m not completely crazy, believe it or not. I know we’re not gonna have a life together here on earth. But it’s okay, because I know she’s waiting for me on the other side, and I’ll be joining her shortly.”

  A little spark of hope ignited inside Chuck.

  Kill yourself, he thought. Do it now, you psychotic piece of shit.

  Of course, it was a futile hope. Chuck knew full well Elliot had no intention of going anywhere without first taking care of his other unfinished business.

  Elliot sighed. “Right, well, I’m sure you’ve both had your fill of my sentimentality. Under better circumstances, I’d put off what I’m about to do a while longer yet, but I can sense the clock running out on me. Maybe I’m wrong and it’ll yet be a little while before the cops get here, but that’s not a chance I’m willing to take. I accept that I didn’t kill thirty-one people this week, as I’d hoped. It doesn’t surprise me. It was perhaps an overly ambitious goal. And falling short in the things I attempt is pretty much the story of my life, after all. More often than not, everything I’ve ever tried has ended in tears and heartache, if not outright disaster. But I should still be able to do the last part of what I had in mind, if I hurry.”

  He moved away from them then, disappearing into the darkness somewhere behind Chuck. His rapid gait suggested an urgency that normally wasn’t there. A new sense of dread stirred within Chuck as he mentally reviewed Elliot’s words. It was hard not to read a note of finality in them. This whole horror show scenario he’d constructed for them was coming to an end, which meant Chuck and his wife were likely in the last moments of their lives.

  Chuck’s breath wheezed in and out rapidly around the thick rubber gag. His chest heaved as his heart began to thud heavily. On one level, he’d known this was coming all along, but now that it was actually imminent, he was not at all prepared for it. All the times he’d prayed for his death in order to escape the horror were now exposed for the exercises in delusion they really were. He didn’t want that. Not at all. Not ever. He wanted to go on living, no matter what. Tears flowed from his eyes in ceaseless streams until he heard a metallic clatter coming his way. He opened his eyes and blinked away the tears when he sensed Elliot moving into his field of vision again.

  The clattering sound he’d heard had been produced by a metal cart on wheels, probably the same cart Elliot had used when serving Chuck the bowl of “brain soup”. On the bottom shelf of the cart were several clear jugs of water. Piled on its surface were some neatly-folded clean clothes and a pair of shoes. There was also an extra-large container of liquid soap.

  Leaving the cart parked alongside Chuck’s chair, Elliot moved away from him and bent to the floor to pry loose the big hunting knife he’d left embedded in Ricky Bennet’s head. It came loose with a wet sucking sound. Standing up, he wiped the blade on his pants leg and glanced at Chuck before taking up a position behind Karen. Chuck’s wife stared at him, her eyes going wide with fear. Elliot wound her long blonde hair in his left hand and pulled her head sharply backward, exposing her neck.

  He placed the sharp edge of the knife against her throat.

  Chuck screamed behind his gag.

  Elliot was no longer smiling. His expression had turned hard and unforgiving. “Spare me your theatrics, Chuck. If you really cared about this woman, you wouldn’t have been fucking that whore all this time.”

  Chuck screamed again.

  Karen sobbed quietly. The visible tick of her pulse made the tender flesh of her throat quiver against the sharp blade. Seeing this reinforced her essential vulnerability like nothing else had. Chuck screamed and strained against his bonds harder than ever.

  Elliot pressed the blade deep into Karen’s flesh and dragged it slowly across her throat. Blood poured out of the slit in a thick red sheet as Karen gagged and spluttered. Elliot pulled her head farther back, opening the gash wider. He held on to her until the blood flow slowed to a trickle. Then he relinquished his grip on her hair, moved out from behind the chair, and approached Chuck.

  Chuck sobbed.

  A fresh void opened within him, the sudden, violent loss of his wife hitting him with devastating force. He sobbed and screamed until he ran out of breath. It wasn’t right that she was gone. She’d been a beautiful, vibrant, wonderful, loving wife and mother, a quality human being in virtually every way. And now she was no more. The wrongness of it was overwhelming.

  All my fault, he thought. All my fucking fault.

  He sensed Elliot looming over him and realized he was probably about to die. But then he felt Elliot tugging at the rotting pumpkin. He lifted it from Chuck’s head and tossed it aside.

  “Better?”

  Chuck screamed at him, a shrill wail of grief and outrage.

  Elliot nodded. “Right, well, I want you to know your kids are alive, Chuck. I know that’s been weighing on you. It has, hasn’t it? Well, I never touched them. Not because I’m not capable of doing something that horrendous. We both know better than that by now, don’t we?” He grunted, his face twisting in a sneer riven with deep bitterness. “No, I didn’t spare them out of the goodness of my heart. Any goodness in me died along with my brother. The cancer that had been eating away at him for years took him that same night you assholes left me tied to that tree. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Well, it took me all my life to get around to it, but I’m finally paying you back in a fitting way. I didn’t kill your kids because I want them to live with the knowledge of what you did to me, and that you’re the reason their mother is dead.” His sneer shifted, gave way to a smile again. “And I want you to live with it, too.”

 

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