Blood Stone Page 4

  “I’d be very surprised if we’re not out here for the same reasons,” she said.

  “And what’s that?”

  She shrugged. “You tell me. I don’t know exactly, but it’s dark and mad and wicked, and lives and souls hang in the balance.”

  There was something hypnotic about Summer, and everything associated with her—even her words and the cadence of her voice. A touched soul, she had an essential dreamlike quality.

  “What drew you to the mountain?” she asked.

  “A madman,” I said. “Someone’s abducting young women. Four so far that we know of.”

  She nodded vigorously. “That’s it. But he’s not just abducting them. None of those poor souls are any longer in the land of the living.”

  9

  “Can you tell anything else?” I asked. “Anything about the madman? The women?”

  “Let’s walk back toward my car and give me a few minutes to . . .”

  Without another word, we turned and began to walk back in the direction I had come from and she was headed toward when we ran into each other.

  I grew as quiet and economic with my motions as I could while still walking, and let her set the pace and gait of our return.

  There was nothing spooky or otherworldly about the way Summer worked. She just seemed to turn her gaze within and await impressions.

  I had never heard her describe herself this way, but the way I thought about it was that we all have antenna systems—hers was just more sensitive, more powerful, her instruments far more finely calibrated than most. And unlike most of us, she trusted her feelings, intuitions, impressions, gave them a weight and import not many people do.

  She was walking very slowly, moving in an awkward, stilted manner. I was trying not to get in her way. I was also trying to make sure she didn’t trip or walk into anything.

  Eventually, she slid her arm around mine and closed her eyes, and I led her down the dark, intermittently lit sidewalk while she focused on her inner explorations.

  I continued to let her set the pace. I just concentrated on keeping her on the sidewalk.

  It took us a while, but eventually we made it back around to the north face of the mountain and the inn, to more illuminations and signs of life, then down another hill and up a small road cutting back at an angle behind the inn to where our vehicles were parked.

  “They’re still here, John,” she said when we arrived at her car and she opened her eyes.

  She was still driving a beige ’68 Volkswagen Beetle that made me think of Ted Bundy.

  “Do you know where?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “It’s . . . I can’t quite get a . . . It’s confusing. They seem to be in different places. And . . . it’s like . . . two of them are suspended somehow. I don’t know. It feels like purgatory. Like they’re . . . It’s like they’re—I get the sense that they’re all here, and yet two of them almost seem to be floating or . . . like they don’t have a connection to the ground or earth. It’s hard to explain. And I could be wrong about it. It’s just the feeling that I’m getting. And it might not be literal or physical. It could be about their spiritual or emotional state. I just don’t know.”

  I nodded and patted her arm, which I was still holding. It was like I felt a certain energy in our connection and I didn’t want to break the circuit yet.

  “They suffered, John. Not . . . physically so much—I’d say he isn’t torturing them or doing anything especially sadistic—but . . . the mental anguish and . . . sheer terror of their final moments . . . is overwhelming.”

  I continued to nod, trying to take in everything she was conveying.

  “Y’all’ve got to stop him. He won’t . . . he can’t stop himself. Someone else will have to do it. He couldn’t if he wanted to and he doesn’t want to. He . . . there’s something ancient about what he’s doing. He’s . . . aware of . . . that aspect of it too. It’s the only thing in his life that brings him any pleasure, any release of the enormous burden he labors around under.”

  “Burden? What kind of burden?”

  “An existential one. The burden of someone like him just being alive.”

  “A lot of us would be more than happy to relieve him of that burden,” I said.

  “The chaos, loss, fear, and destruction he’s unleashing is nothing to compare to what’s inside him.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”

  “It’s . . . this will sound obvious, but . . . it’s even more so than you’d expect. The face he presents to the world is far different from his actual face. He’s not what he seems at all. Not at all. He’s like a . . . a skilled actor . . . playing a . . . playing the part of a lifetime.”

  10

  The man touched with madness, the one who would soon come to be known as the Stone Cold Killer, wore what he thought of as a human suit. He put it on each morning along with his mask of sanity and work clothes.

  He had always been good at pretending, at seeming to be other than what he was. He had to be to survive.

  It had begun in childhood, this game of appearances.

  His earliest memories were of being acutely aware of being different, alien, other. He wasn’t like the other kids—the adults either for that matter, though they seemed foreign to all the kids. Back then he didn’t yet know the intense pleasure of causing another pain. He just knew that the pain of others didn’t trigger in him the same responses and feelings they did in other people.

  He didn’t know why he was unlike others. He just knew he was—and that if he was going to survive, even thrive among them, he had to fool them into believing he was one of them. And from that realization until this day, that was what he had done. The shroud of humanity he wore was his Trojan horse, he was the killer hiding inside. His mask of sanity was the sheep’s skin, he was the wolf within.

  Over time he had honed his skills, perfected his craft, and now appeared about as human as everyone else.

  It hadn’t been easy, but he had applied himself. Studying emotion and expression and empathy. Watching how people react, respond, interact. He had observed humans relating to each other like a researcher monitoring lab rats, noting the outward appearance of acceptable behavioral norms, committing to memory how to mock human beings to the point of seeming human himself.

  Like certain actors he had heard interviewed, he did his best work at passing like everyone else when he was fully submerged in a character. Much more so than when he was himself pretending at normal emotions and social acceptability. So as an adult, he had always assumed an entire persona, completely submerging himself into the role of another—and the more different that other was from himself, the more convincing he could be. He could utterly vanish. All that would be left was what appeared to be an actual human being with actual humanity, complete with emotions and compassion, care and concern for other human beings.

  Over the years, he had tried on a lot of different human suits, adopting the manner and appearance of a wide variety of humans, but his current concealment was by far his best, and he planned to stick with it for a long time to come.

  And why wouldn’t he? You don’t abandon something working this well.

  11

  Bud Nelson wasn’t what he appeared to be.

  He was a middle-aged white man with a military manner, his gray hair cropped closely to his large head. He wore black slacks and a white shirt, both of which were ill-fitting and out of date, spit-shined black patent leather shoes, and black horned-rimmed glasses.

  He looked like he belonged in the sixties, like he was part of the racist, sexist, oppressive old boys club, but in sharp contrast to his appearance, he was actually a kind, gentle progressive, who believed in and practiced equality in his small department.

  “Welcome aboard, John,” he said, shaking my hand. “Frank’s told me good things. Look forward to having you on our squad.”

  “I’m happy to be here and honored to be working with you.”

  “You al
ready met Erin and Walt,” he said.

  I nodded toward them, this police partner version of The Odd Couple. He was dark and squat. She was pale and tall, towering over him. They both wore tight navy blue turtlenecks beneath their uniforms, but his accentuated how large and bulldoggish his neck was, while hers drew attention to how long and giraffe-like hers was.

  “This is Miss D, she runs the place. And this is Joe Ross—another patrol officer. You’ll meet the others later.”

  We were all standing in the small squad room waiting for Frank and the other members of the task force to arrive.

  Miss D, the secretary, was an older black lady with a short, small frame and long bony fingers. Joe Ross was a tall, quiet, awkward, late twenties white man who hunched his shoulders and was so skinny he looked concave.

  There was something hayseedy and hickish about Joe—even before he opened his mouth and the extreme Southern drawl and bad grammar tumbled out.

  His wispy hair was too long and in need of a haircut—or at least a wash, and he had questionable facial hair that was too short and patchy to be considered a beard and too slight to be considered stubble.

  Along with his appearance, his slow, Southern drawl and good ol’ boy manner, Joe Ross had been what I expected most of the department to be. It was impressive and said a lot about Bud that he was the exception, not the rule.

  “Only three others,” Walt said.

  “All dispatchers,” Erin said. “Very small department.”

  “Stone Mountain—the park,” Walt added, “has its own police and fire departments. We’re just a small town police force.”

  “Very small town,” Erin added. “But it’s a good town and a great department and a great place to start your law enforcement career.”

  “So let’s get started,” Bud said, “by catching this sick son of a bitch who’s snatching our young ladies.”

  Frank arrived with a pale, chubby, blond haired man in his late twenties wearing a Stone Mountain Park police uniform.

  “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “Been trying to coordinate everything.”

  I was sure he had been, but his stressed, unsteady manner and wrinkled and disheveled appearance suggested another reason too, and I remembered him saying he had been better the night he came in Scarlett’s. I had jumped to the conclusion that it had to do with the missing young women, but maybe something else was going on with him as well. I needed to check on him when I could.

  “This is Bobby Meredith. He’ll be our liaison with the park police.”

  “Nice to meet you, Bobby,” Bud said.

  Bobby nodded but didn’t say anything, and seemed less than enthusiastic to be here.

  “Since it looks like all the young women were abducted from over here,” Frank said, “the other agencies are going to let us handle it for now and have said we can call them in if we need anything.”

  “Where’s the . . . ah . . . bathroom?” Bobby asked. “Had too much coffee this morning.”

  “Back of the . . . ah . . . hallway,” Walt said, mocking the way Bobby had asked, though the doughy young man didn’t seem to notice—either that or he didn’t care.

  After he was gone, Frank waited until he was in the restroom with the door closed before shaking his head and saying, “Park police are giving this a very low priority. Look who they assigned us. Say we haven’t proved for sure that they went missing at the park and they don’t want a word to that effect breathed. More concerned about visitors and tourists than anything else.”

  “Other agencies dropped out too?” Bud asked.

  “More just backed off for now. They’ll jump in if we need them. Missing persons isn’t as sexy as murder or—probably best for now, anyway.”

  “You watch,” Walt said, “we start turning up dead girls and they’ll all come running—right alongside the media.”

  Bobby returned a moment later and we continued.

  “What about public safety?” Erin asked. “Don’t we have a duty to warn the young women coming out here to run?”

  “That’s exactly what we can’t do,” Bobby said. “Don’t even know for sure that’s what’s going on. We can’t cause panic over . . . a theory. If the park takes a hit, so does the town and the entire area. All our jobs would dry up and blow away in a heartbeat. We need to chill out and see what we’ve got first.”

  Ignoring him, she looked from Frank to Bud. “My question still stands.”

  “We’re gonna be searching the park for any signs of the women or clues to their whereabouts,” Frank said. “We’ll be able to do more, to insist on more, once we have more to go on. In the meantime, we’re beefing up security in the park and are gonna have extra patrols.”

  “Really seems like we should be doing more,” she said.

  I nodded. “I agree.”

  “I know,” Frank said. “I feel the same way, but—”

  Erin said, “What if we do a sting operation?”

  She was looking at Bud now.

  “I know I’m a little older,” she continued, “but I’m built like the other girls and it’s dark out there. What if I dressed like them and ran around the park at night? See if we can catch him? Stop him before he does it again?”

  “What if he does it to you?” Frank said.

  “I’m tough. I’m trained. I’ll be armed. And I’ll have backup.”

  “I like the idea,” Bud said. “Beats sittin’ around on our hands. Nobody tougher than Erin and we’ll be right there with her.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Frank said. “Seems . . .”

  “How’re you gonna feel when the next girl is taken if we didn’t at least try?” she asked. “What will you tell her folks?”

  “We’ll take every precaution, Frank,” Bud says. “She’ll be fine. And we might just catch the bastard. Think we gotta try.”

  Frank frowned and seemed to think about it.

  “I’ll head it up while you oversee the search of the park,” Bud said. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll both get lucky.”

  12

  As preparations were being made for the sting operation and a crime scene team searched the park for the missing women, Frank and I interviewed Benton Weston, Shelly’s boyfriend.

  He arrived at Frank’s office with his father and two attorneys.

  All four men had on expensive suits and ties and stylish overcoats. Benton Weston III looked a little and acted a lot like Gordon Gekko, but Benton II was no Bud Fox.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Frank said. “We really appreciate your help with this.”

  He was smiling and sounded genuinely grateful, not a hint of frustration or aggravation in his voice or bearing.

  “We don’t mind helping,” Benton’s father said, “we just hope it won’t take long. I’m missing some important meetings to be here.”

  As if in uniform, all four men wore light blue dress shirts with white collars and suspenders.

  “We’ll get you out of here just as soon as possible,” Frank said.

  “Who is this young man?” one of the attorneys asked, nodding toward me.

  “This is officer Jordan with the Stone Mountain Police Department. He’s assisting with the investigation.”

  “He looks too young to be—”

  “Okay,” Frank said, cutting him off, “let’s get started so we can get y’all out of here. Let’s start with your relationship with Shelly.”

  Benton shrugged. “Wasn’t much to it. Hadn’t been together long. Wasn’t serious. Before she went missing I was thinking about calling it off.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “To be honest . . . we were just too different. From different worlds. Ran in different circles. I hate to say it, but—and I know how bad it will sound—but . . .”

  “Without being too indelicate,” his father added, “it was a class situation.”

  “She . . . I was . . . More and more I was finding her boring,” Benton said. “And I’d like to leave it at that.”

  “Sure,”
Frank said. “That’s fine. No problem at all. How’d y’all meet?”

  “I ran into Macy’s to grab my little sister a birthday present,” he said. “She waited on me. We talked a little. Had an almost instant animal attraction. When I left I had her number. Few days later I called her up and took her out. She . . . it seemed like false advertising. You know the way some girls do. Act like they’re up for anything, but then . . . when you get them alone it’s a different story. She was way too tame for me.”

  “Boy’s a bit of a bobcat,” Benton II said.

  “Did you see her on the day she disappeared?”

  He shook his head. “Was supposed to. Planned to give her one more chance, then depending on how things went, break up with her at the end of the night. But when I went to pick her up at her shitty apartment, she wasn’t home—at least didn’t come to the door. That was it. I was done at that point. No more second chances from me.”

  “Did you go into her apartment?”

  He shook his head.

  “Had you ever been inside?”

  “She was usually out front waiting on me. Think she was embarrassed by the place. Can’t blame her. It was a real dump.”

  “So you’ve never been inside her apartment?”

  “He’s not saying that,” the attorney sitting closest to him said. “And it doesn’t matter. Move on.”

  “Look, I don’t really know anything, okay?” Benton III said.

  “Do you know what she did earlier that day?” Frank said.

  He shrugged. “Worked, I think. Then went for a run, maybe. She had a smoking hot body. Ran a lot.”

  “Where did she run?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, as if it was a completely ridiculous question. “Her neighborhood I guess. Sometimes at Stone Mountain I think.”

  He suddenly glanced over at me.

  “That why he’s here? Was she taken in Stone Mountain?”