Peak Road - A Short Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 10) Page 4

  “You Jon Stanton?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Sheriff Dolly Briggs. Kristen told me this is about the Werewolf killings. That right?”

  “It is.”

  “What’s a cop from Honolulu doing out here lookin’ at those?”

  “I came out with a friend, Mickey Parsons. He’s helping the FBI with the investigation, and I’m helping him.”

  She stared down at the card. “They’re just sending everybody out here for these, ain’t they?”

  I got the impression that the sheriff felt as though we were invading her territory. I hadn’t thought she would care, given the nature of the case, but clearly, she’d been burned by investigators in the past. The FBI had a way of steamrolling local law enforcement and making them feel insignificant. That drove detectives to withhold evidence, even sabotage investigations.

  “Listen, I’m just a cop. That’s all. One of the feds thought I could add something to this, and that’s the only reason I’m here.”

  She handed my card back to me. “The FBI couldn’t do anything twenty years ago, and I doubt they can do anything now. You’re wasting your time, Hawaii Five-0.”

  She went back inside. I tapped my card against the steering wheel then tossed it on the passenger seat before pulling away.

  9

  I went to the diner. Tables were set up against the walls of the narrow space, and I chose one of the barstools at the counter. A waitress, an attractive young girl with a tattoo on her wrist, smiled at me.

  “You’re new here,” she said.

  “Just visiting.”

  “I’m Jennifer.”

  “Jon.”

  She leaned forward in a way that showed her cleavage. “So what can I get for you?”

  “Just an orange juice, please.”

  She winked. “Comin’ right up, hon.”

  She couldn’t have been older than nineteen, but she acted as if she were thirty. I had noticed that in small towns the girls became women much more quickly. When she came back with my juice, I asked, “How long have you lived in Peak Road?”

  “I’m a lifer. How long you here for?”

  “Probably just a week.” I took a sip of juice. “What’s it like growing up here?”

  She chuckled. “It’s fucking boring is what it is. Never anything to do. Even if you wanna see a movie you have to go over to Baxter, down the freeway. Ain’t nothing to do here but get drunk and get high.”

  “Lotta drugs here?”

  “Yeah, meth and pot mostly. People here don’t have much money, so we don’t see too many coke heads, but there’s some. Kid in high school OD’d on the stuff. Stopped his heart right there at lunch.” She leaned forward again. “Why you care so much about the town? Most folks don’t wanna know nothin’ about us.”

  “I’m helping with something and just trying to get a feel for things.”

  “Whatchu helping with?”

  “The Werewolf killings.”

  Her face changed. The interest faded and was replaced by fear. “You shouldn’t be helping with those.”

  “I heard he killed an entire family. Don’t you want to stop him?”

  “You can’t stop him.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated for a second, as though she wanted to tell me something, then bit her lip. “Juice is on the house. Lemme know if you need anything else.”

  I sat in the diner for a long time. Jennifer didn’t interact with me again. But I heard her tell the cook, a man who was clearly the owner, that she was taking her break. She pulled a package of cigarettes from a purse behind the counter and headed outside through a back door. I left a twenty on the counter for her underneath my glass and waited until the cook was busy before sneaking out the back door.

  Jennifer leaned on the building, one foot up against it, as she blew out a puff of smoke.

  “You old enough to be smoking?”

  She grinned. “Twenty years old next week. Twenty years of life, and I ain’t done shit with it.”

  I leaned against the brick wall of the building. “My grandpa used to say that any day above ground is a good day.”

  “Yeah, well, your grandpa never lived in Peak Road.”

  I grinned. “Why’d you get so uncomfortable when I asked about the killings?”

  “We don’t talk about it. No one does.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.”

  “Seems like something you’d want to talk about so we can stop them.”

  She inhaled another puff of smoke and blew it out of her nose. “You a cop or something?”

  “I am.”

  “Where from?”

  “Honolulu.”

  “Hawaii? I would do anything to go to Hawaii. I seen pictures online. It looks like the Garden’a Eden.”

  “As close as we can come, I guess.” I stared out at the traffic passing us. Several drivers rubbernecked as they passed. “There’s this volcano on one of the islands. It’s inactive, so you can climb up to the lip. While you’re climbing, you pass every type of environment the earth has. You see desert, you see snow, jungle. Then when you get to the lip of the volcano, you look down, and it’s pure red and black. The heat just from there can singe your eyebrows off. It’s like you’re looking at the center of the earth, something people weren’t meant to look at.”

  She thought for a second, rubbing her cheek with the back of her thumb. “So you’re takin’ me back with you when you go, right?”

  I smiled. “Depends how much you help me.”

  She exhaled, tossing her cigarette on the ground, then stepped on it. “You won’t find him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it ain’t a man you’re lookin’ for.”

  10

  I let Mickey sleep for several hours. After driving back toward Las Vegas, I found the town of Baxter about forty-five minutes away. At the movie theater, I bought a ticket to some science fiction movie, the only movie playing, and bought popcorn and a drink. The theater was dark and smelled stale. No one else was there, which was fine because that allowed me to think.

  I thought, of all things, about Hanny and Julie, and I wondered what they were doing right now. Probably running around on the beach after dinner. The thought of her gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long while: butterflies.

  I got a text from Mickey, saying he was up, and I left the theater and drove back to Peak Road. On the drive back through the thick woods, I stopped at the tollbooth, and a man stepped out and looked into my car. He had greasy hair that came down to his shoulders and a name tag that said Roger.

  “You headed back in?” Roger asked.

  “I am.”

  “Ain’t talked to you and your friend. Where you guys from?”

  “We’re just here helping out on something.”

  “Them killings, ain’t it?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Damn sad. I knew the Noels. Good family. They moved here ’bout five years ago and fit right in. Just a damn shame the Lord would do somethin’ like that.”

  “It is.” I paused. “How long have you lived here?”

  He smiled. “My parents were born in the hospital in Baxter, and so was I. Don’t see no reason to go nowhere else. People is the same everywhere.”

  “They certainly are.”

  “Well,” he said, tapping the roof of the car, “don’t forget about the curfew, and have yourself a safe stay.”

  “What curfew?”

  “The booth. We close up at nine. No one in or out.”

  “No one can come in or out of the town after nine?”

  “No cars can. This is the only road in.” He walked back to the booth.

  The room Mickey got was on the first floor, and he was lying on the bed watching television. He turned it off when I came in.

  I sat in a chair by the window. “Did you know this town doesn’t let any cars in or out after nine?”

  “I did. It’s actually illeg
al to do something like that, but I think the sheriff and mayor were the ones that instituted it. Why?”

  “Just seems like an odd quirk. I’m sure there’s people in the town that work elsewhere. What do they do if they have to work late?”

  He shrugged and rose from the bed. “I don’t know. Maybe the locals know another way in.” He stretched his back. “I’d like to go visit the sheriff and look at the murder book for the Noels.”

  “I thought you’d already have it.”

  “No.”

  “No one from the Bureau made one?”

  “There’s no one from the Bureau here, Jon. It’s just us. Kyle let me know about this as a courtesy, but he didn’t send anybody out. Said the feds had no business getting involved unless they were invited, and we weren’t invited. It’s a bullshit excuse. He didn’t want to waste the manpower when Las Vegas Metro is a couple hours away. He wants them to take care of it.”

  “Are they going to?”

  “Far as I know, the sheriff hasn’t requested any help.”

  I looked out the window. “She thinks she and her one deputy can handle this?”

  “Appears so. How’d you know she only has one deputy?”

  “I went and visited her. Not exactly the friendliest encounter.”

  “Well, friendly or not, she’s got all the evidence. I’ll drive.”

  When Mickey parked in front of the sheriff’s office, I turned to him and said, “We have somebody to visit tonight.”

  “Who?”

  “I met a girl who told me what the people here think about these killings. She says her mother would have more information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “She says it’s a real werewolf, not a man. And that her mother has seen it.”

  He didn’t say anything for a second. “Well, what else are they gonna think? It’s easier to explain it that way than one of their own doing this.”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts and goblins, Mickey. I think few people in this town are going to open up to us, and this girl has offered to. We need to take her up on it.”

  He shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  We got out of the car and went inside. Kristen behind the desk had her coat on and was holding her purse.

  “Sheriff here?” Mickey asked.

  She sighed. “Hold on.”

  This time, she called back on the phone, and Sheriff Briggs came out a second later.

  “Sheriff, I’m Mickey Parsons. I’m a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Yeah, I figured. I met Hawaii Five-0 here already.”

  “Yeah,” he said, glancing at me, “well, we need a moment of your time.”

  “Where’s your badge?” the sheriff said.

  I was surprised Mickey had lied. He wouldn’t have been allowed to keep his badge after he retired, unless it was a special retirement badge. But I had heard that like local law enforcement retirees, the retired agents often obtained replicas. I was expecting him to pull one out when he said, “Can we talk in your office, please?”

  We followed the sheriff back to her desk and sat down across from her. The cluttered office had only a small window, which looked out onto the parking lot. A motivational poster with a kitten hung on the far wall.

  “I’m actually retired,” Mickey said. “I was the original special agent on the Werewolf killings twenty years ago. I worked with another Sheriff Briggs then. Your father.”

  She leaned back in the seat. “That so?”

  He nodded. “And I seem to remember something about his oldest child who had just gotten a driver’s license for the first time while I was out here. I thought it was his son, but I guess he was referring to you. Your father was stressed about that.”

  She grinned. “Yeah, he hated the fact that I could drive. Thought I’d go racing up the streets and crash into somebody. We get few accidents here, so I don’t know why he would think that.”

  “You were his oldest child. Only a parent could understand something like that.”

  She swiveled slowly in her chair, going one way a few inches then the other. “I’m guessing you’re here because of the Noels.”

  “Why didn’t you call the Bureau for help?”

  “Because you guys did so much last time?”

  I watched Mickey to see if that stung, but he didn’t show any reaction.

  “I did all I could last time. So did your father. We worked night and day, but there just wasn’t anything there. Forensics wasn’t what it is now, and for how brutal the killings were, the killer left little evidence behind.”

  She sighed. “I know. My daddy always said that was the case that kept him up at night. He told me he knew it’d happen again. That someone that could do somethin’ like that wouldn’t just stop.”

  “Is your father still around?”

  “He passed three years ago.” She looked at me then back at Mickey. “I put in a request for help from Las Vegas Metro, if that’s what you’re wondering. They said they’d get back to me, and it’s been four days. I haven’t heard anything. They’ll probably get around to sending someone up here eventually.”

  Mickey hesitated for a moment, keeping eye contact with her. He maintained his relaxed and open posture, showing her he had nothing to hide and was trustworthy.

  “We’d love to take a look at what you have and see if we can help. The two people that know this case best were your father and me. If you don’t want the help, tell me now—and we’ll leave.”

  She stared at him. A moment of silence passed between the three of us. I stared at the scar on her hand and couldn’t tell what it was from, whether it was a burn or a laceration. She gave me a look and angled the scar away from me.

  “No, I want your help,” she said. “I’ll have Kristen give you what we have so far. The funeral was last week, and I ain’t diggin’ up those bodies, just so you know.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Save your thanks. I don’t think you’re gonna like what you see.”

  11

  The sheriff gathered everything her department had on the Noels’ case: one large murder book, along with keys to the home, which I had asked for. Mickey looked through it at the station, then we took the book and left. Since there was nowhere else to eat, we went to the diner.

  It seemed that once darkness had fallen, the people in the diner had simply moved to the bar across the street. We nearly had the place to ourselves. Jennifer was gone, and only the cook and one server remained. Mickey ordered toast and coffee.

  He began going through the murder book in silence, and as a courtesy, I let him. The case was his, regardless of whether or not he still wore a badge. So I read articles in the New York Times and the Honolulu Star. I texted Jon Junior to see how he was—he responded much more reliably to text than a phone call—and he texted back that he was good. I told him I missed him, and he said he missed me, too, and that he wanted to come out to Honolulu for the summer.

  After half an hour, Mickey closed the book. He sat in silence for a moment then pushed it over to me. “It’s the same. Identical in almost every respect. The forensic tech was a borrow from the Baxter PD and was decent, but not great. They did find some fibers on Mrs. Noels, enough that it indicates she was smothered with something. Didn’t die from it but had something over her face and mouth while he tried to rape her. Neither one of the other two families had that.”

  I sat looking at the murder book.

  “You’re not going to read it?” he said.

  “I’m going to read it tonight. Somewhere else.” I checked the clock on my phone. “You coming to Jennifer’s with me?”

  He nodded, sipping his coffee. “Chasing werewolf stories wasn’t exactly how I pictured my retirement.”

  “Better than shuffleboard.”

  Jennifer’s home was a one-story rambler in a neighborhood without a single fence. When the town was built, they probably knew nothing would rea
lly happen there and hadn’t seen the need for precautions like fences. After the original killings, I bet at least some people put up fences, along with alarms on doors and windows if they could afford them.

  We parked on the street then crossed the lawn up to the door. I knocked and waited a few seconds before knocking again. Jennifer answered and smiled at me.

  “Come in,” she said.

  “This is Mickey.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  She led us into the living room where the furniture was covered with transparent plastic. A velvet painting of Elvis Presley hung on the wall, so large the frame nearly blocked the window. I knew I’d seen something similar but didn’t remember where.

  “My mom should be out in a sec.”

  We sat down on the sofa, and Jennifer sat across from us on a futon. She lit a cigarette and watched us.

  “You don’t look like a cop,” she said to me. “You look like a beach bum.”

  I grinned. “I guess I’m both.”

  Her mother came out, wearing a thick sweater though it wasn’t cold. Without offering to shake hands, she sat down, took a cigarette out of Jennifer’s pack, and lit it. She took a pull and let the smoke out through her nostrils, just as I’d seen Jennifer do.

  “Thank you for speaking with us,” I said, realizing I didn’t know Jennifer’s last name or her mother’s first name.

  “Jennifer said I should. Don’t mean I’m gonna,” the woman said.

  “Did she tell you who we were?”

  “Cops. Same as the rest.”

  “The rest?”

  “Cops and reporters. One reporter came out some years ago and said he was writin’ a book ’bout the killings and would I talk to him. I said hell no, I wouldn’t talk to him. I don’t want my name in some book with that sick son of a bitch still out there. He said the man was probably dead ’cause it’d been so long, but it turned out I was right.”