Littlefield: Two Supernatural Thrillers Read online

  “You sure buried my sexual assault charge.”

  “Hell, Cindy, your own paper was afraid to run that incident report. There was just not enough evidence to make an arrest, much less get an indictment from the Grand Jury. He would have sued you and half the county.”

  “Well, I hope one day he squeezes your tit and see how you like it.”

  Littlefield let his gaze flick to her chest. Not that he had to do much letting. His eyes seemed to take off of their own free will, like other parts of him did whenever crazy women infected him with sweet madness. “Budget Bill’s an upstanding citizen,” Littlefield said. “He’s got a right to develop Mulatto Mountain. Maybe people like you think it’s immoral—“

  “People like me? And just what kind of people is that, Sheriff?”

  The sheriff took his feet off the desk and sat forward, but she didn’t back away as he’d expected. She was less than a foot from him, much too close for a professional relationship or to respect personal space.

  The sheriff swallowed hard. “All I’m saying is he follows the law, and I follow the law. Check with the planning department. He has all his permits and he even took out a bond for the road.”

  “Can’t you block the site in the interest of public safety?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  Cindy twisted her lips and sighed out one corner of her mouth, spreading fine tendrils of her hair. Maybe she knew how fetching the mannerism was and used it to keep him off guard. But the sheriff got the impression she wasn’t as calculating as some women he’d known. She genuinely seemed not to notice the effect her simmering, subtle sex appeal had on men.

  Or maybe Littlefield was just an old pervert. He’d been called worse.

  “I monitor the scanner, remember?” Cindy said. “Crime beat? So how’s Officer Perriotte?”

  “Fine. He’s under observation. But I guess you knew that already.”

  Her smile would have made the Grinch proud. “Privacy laws kept the hospital from giving out his condition,” she said. “But I have my sources.”

  Bat your goddamned eyelashes and you could win over Marcus Welby, House, and Dr. Doolittle. “No visible injuries.”

  “Just some head trauma. On the inside.”

  “That’s undetermined at this point. Could be stress, epilepsy, hell, even low blood sugar.”

  “Three shots fired.”

  “That’s undetermined, too.”

  “Doesn’t that trigger an internal investigation? I’m assuming your officer was the one who fired the shots, since Sandy in records said no incident report had been filed.”

  Littlefield had not yet got around to filing an incident report simply because he wasn’t sure which lie to put on it. He’d been hoping to avoid it altogether, even though Hardy Eggers, Mr. Ayinari the Pakistani store owner, and Willard all knew the police had been on the property responding to a complaint. And those three boys . . . .

  He stood, towering a foot over Cindy, and she backed up half a step. “I’m looking into it,” Littlefield said through tight lips.

  “You looking into the Jangling Hole while you’re at it?”

  Littlefield forced a laugh that sounded like he was choking on a biscuit. “Not you, too, Cindy. Why don’t you save that one for your Halloween feature? You know, where you crank out some cheesy local ghost story and pretend it’s in the interest of serious paranormal research.”

  Her blue eyes sparked ice and then fire. “I do my job and you do yours.”

  “That’s all I want.”

  “Just like you did in Whispering Pines in 2002,” she said.

  The sheriff’s lips worked like a trout trying to learn French.

  “I did some checking,” she said. “You covered that one up pretty good, but I found a few people willing to go off the record. So is Archer McFall still considered a missing person?”

  “That case is cold,” he said, though in his heart it was as closed as a coffin lid on a rotten corpse. Not that McFall had been considerate enough to actually leave a body. Well, he’d left behind several bodies, but not his own, though Littlefield believed he didn’t really own one, just borrowed them from time to time.

  “You have a lot of holes, Sheriff. In your stories, and in your soul.”

  She turned and marched to the door, her tote bag pressed against her side.

  Please, God, don’t let me look at her ass.

  Even though he didn’t believe in God any longer, the prayer was answered. Or maybe he was just upset enough that whatever odd light she’d aroused in him had been darkened by the curtain of self-doubt and fear.

  He rummaged around in the bottom drawer of his desk. His fingers brushed against the cool bottle with its greasy liquid. This would be a hell of a time to give in to the habit.

  No, not a habit. ‘Habit’ is for normal people and nuns. I’m a plain old garden-variety, C-grade drunk. For people like me, it’s not a habit, it’s an occupation.

  Littlefield shuffled some papers on top of the bottle and continued digging. The newspaper clippings on the McFall case were sparse and mostly centered on Sheila Story’s accidental death in the line of duty. In fact, McFall was barely mentioned in connection with the death. The incident report said Littlefield and Story had been responding to a public disturbance call at McFall’s church when Littlefield’s patrol car plunged into the river. The newspaper and the incident report both contained the truth, but Littlefield had been around long enough to know the truth never told the entire story.

  He glanced at the color photo of Sheila that had run on the front page of the Times. It had faded with the years, and the Times had never been known for its print quality, but those honest blue eyes seemed to appraise and taunt him from beyond the grave: “Come on, Frank. Something weird is going down and you’re pretending everything’s normal. But I know you too well. You’ll just close me up in the drawer and leave the past in the dark where you think it belongs.”

  He dropped the clipping and slammed the drawer shut.

  Drop it, Frank. There’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for a set of footprints that ends in the middle of nowhere.

  Yeah, and the Tooth Fairy was coming to steal everybody’s Halloween candy, too. He put on his Stetson cowboy hat and pulled the brim down so it shaded his eyes. He’d donned the headgear during the last campaign and his popularity had swelled. Now he wore it on all but the most blustery day, and it didn’t hurt that the stiff suede covered his ever-expanding bald spot. The hat also had the effect of improving his posture because he found himself holding his shoulders back so the headgear was better balanced.

  He’d wanted to check on J.R. before turning in, but he had one more stop to make first. Two of the boys were unidentified, but the store owner had tabbed Dex McAllister from a mug shot. Of course, misdemeanor shoplifting rarely merited such a time-consuming investigation, but Littlefield wanted to get this little mystery under wraps and pray that Bill Willard and his silent partners blasted the Hole to hell and gone before anything went poking its head out.

  “I’m on call tonight, Sherry,” he said to his dispatcher as he headed for his cruiser.

  Despite a smoking ban in all public facilities, Sherry kept the office in a menthol fog, compliments of Kool 100’s. Since she’d been on the county payroll longer than the politicians who’d voted in the policy, no one had ever had the guts to take her on. The smoking had given her face a tough, leathery quality, and two brown acorn eyes stared back like those of a cigar-store Indian.

  Sherry would gossip but only with people she could trust, and that particular circle was small. Fielding calls during 32 years of night shifts, she’d heard dirt on every family in Pickett County at one time or another. But Littlefield wasn’t ready to share his theory that something supernatural was stirring on Mulatto Mountain. For real, not legend.

  “Any word on J.R.?” she asked.

  “No, but I’m going to check on him and pay a visit to the McAllisters.”

&n
bsp; “I never had no use for that Dexter,” she said, taking a draw on her cigarette that left a good half-inch of ember. “The little twerp would just as soon skin a cat as pet it.”

  She let the ash dangle for a moment and watched the sheriff as if daring him to challenge her on either the civil violation or her unprofessional opinion of a juvenile delinquent.

  Littlefield adjusted his hat. “The most we can get him for is trespassing and shoplifting. And the shoplifting charge probably wouldn’t stick. He took a pack of smokes and that kind of evidence disappears fast.”

  She sucked again and now the ash was over an inch long and sagging. Her hand was poised over the computerized dispatch equipment. Littlefield didn’t understand the technology, but it had to be upgraded every few years, when he practically had to get down and blow off the commissioners during budget season to secure the funding. A blizzard of gray flakes probably did little to enhance the equipment’s longevity.

  “Well, you tell J.R. I’m going to drop him by a sweet potato pie tomorrow,” she said, managing one more draw before tapping her cigarette in a ceramic cat ashtray. Her hand was so steady, she probably would have made a decent surgeon, except her patients would turn up with high rates of lung cancer. As for J.R., if he consumed some of her award-winning pie, he was likely to see a cholesterol boost and a heart attack before he was discharged.

  “10-4 that,” he said. “Got five on the night shift?”

  “Yeah, Wally’s running late but he’s got the hemorrhoids so he’ll probably be doing a lot of standing around.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Cindy Baumhower sure is a bitch, ain’t she? What kind of name is that, anyway? She a German, or a Jew?”

  Since Sherry had no use for the smoking ban, he figured there was little use in bringing up anti-discrimination policies. Besides, in Sherry’s view, being a reporter trumped any shortcomings inflicted by race or religion.

  “She’s just doing her job.”

  “But does she have to do it so damn loud?” The cigarette was back in her mouth as punctuation.

  “Call me if there’s anything big, or anything to do with the Willard property,” he said, reaching for the door.

  “The Hole, you mean. Call if anything crawls out of the Hole.”

  He parted his lips, trying to grin, but instead spoke through stiff lips. “Halloween’s still a couple of weeks away.”

  “The Hole don’t wait for Halloween.”

  “Good night.”

  She stabbed out her cigarette and was firing up another by the time he entered the cool, clear air of Titusville. The town twinkled with green and orange light, the Main Street businesses long since closed but the display windows casting their commercial allure onto the pavement. The sheriff’s office was on the edge of the municipal limits, and Titusville proper was the jurisdiction of Chief Rex “Boney” Maroney.

  If only the town had annexed more land and expanded its borders, then Mulatto Mountain and the Hole would be Maroney’s problem, not Littlefield’s. Once the million-dollar homes in Bill Willard’s development were constructed, no doubt the greedy town council would want to tap the tax base there, but whatever was hiding in the Hole would be stirred up by then.

  And it would happen on Littlefield’s watch.

  The McCallisters lived on the west end of Titusville in a little community known as Greasy Corner because of the three gas stations and mechanic’s garage that used to mark the intersection. Two of the gas stations had gone belly up and, after the expensive process of digging up leaky underground tanks and removing contaminated soil, the properties now featured a McDonald’s and a Mitsubishi dealership. The mechanic’s garage was still there, but the business had been converted to a quick-lube joint that changed your oil while you read crinkled sports magazines. The lone intact business had changed corporate overlords several times, and the pumps that had once sold gas for 19 cents cash on the barrel now took credit cards and offered a discount on Super Slurps.

  As he turned onto Taylor Lake Road, Littlefield decided that Bill Willard had the right idea: take what you could and then catch the next stage out of Dodge. If he kept driving, he’d hit the Tennessee line in half an hour, and Tennessee was a long enough state that he’d put Mulatto Mountain and its weird tinkling noises far out of earshot. But he’d stuck it out through the death of his little brother and Sheila Story and a handful of other people over the years, and he figured that whatever was up there in the sky moving around the stage pieces was hungry for a showdown.

  And Littlefield was one of the pawns on the board.

  “Howdy, pilgrim, I’m the law around here,” he drawled in a parody of Saturday-matinee actors who’d donned the tin star long ago.

  But he wondered what would happen if he took his brand of law up to the dark peak of Mulatto Mountain and shouted a challenge into its cold cleft of stones. He kept the cruiser over the speed limit to burn off some adrenaline.

  The bowling industry must be booming, because Mac McCallister’s house was a good 3,000 square feet, with a three-car garage on one end, a neat row of rose bushes and oleander girding the brick walls, and a new bass boat tucked under a canvas cover in the back yard. But exterior order and value didn’t always extend into the living room or family closets. Littlefield had knocked on many nice white doors and delivered bad news, court summonses, or arrest warrants.

  Nan McCallister opened on the first knock, squinting due to her cheeky smile. “How are you, Sheriff? You come for a contribution to the Benevolence Society?”

  The sheriff looked down, hat in his hands. It seemed Nan had been under the knife again, and her chest was up there around 44 or so. No way could he step inside without brushing against one of the inflatable marvels.

  “Is Dexter here?”

  The smile faltered only slightly. “He’s playing videogames in his room.”

  Littlefield looked up at the second story, but all the windows there were dark. By the time he’d finished his visual reconnoiter, Mac had appeared behind his wife, signature bowling-ball belly stretching out a tank top, a sweat-beaded beer in his hand. “Howdy, Sheriff, got time for a tall cold one?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not my wife,” he said, swatting her on the ass and causing her to jump, though her smile stayed in place. “I’m talking about a beer.”

  Littlefield swallowed. “No, thanks. I don’t drink.”

  Mac peered from under bushy eyebrows. “Since when?”

  Littlefield saw no reason to go into his sobriety date and subsequent recovery, but damned if that beer didn’t smell sweet and yeasty. “Can you get Dexter for me?”

  “Dex? What’s he done now?”

  “I just want to talk to him.”

  “That’s what you said the last three times, and once he left in the back seat of your patrol car and the other two bought my lawyer a new Harley-Davidson.”

  “He’s suspected of shoplifting,” Littlefield said. “A store owner ID’ed him. Since this is his first time, I can probably let it swing light, since I doubt we’ll have any evidence besides one person’s word. But there’s something else.”

  Mac stepped in front of his wife. Neither had invited him in. “This ain’t about the Hole, is it?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Dex said he and the boys were up there fiddle-farting around and all hell broke loose, cops with guns firing shots and such.”

  “We had…an incident.”

  “I thought he was pulling my leg,” Mac said. “He’s got his old man’s sense of humor. Ain’t that right, Nan?”

  Nan smiled as if everything was always right. She fondled the golden cross that hung down onto her obscenely enhanced bosom. “He sure doesn’t get it from his mother.”

  “If I could just have a word with him,” Littlefield said.

  “I don’t know about that,” Mac said. “Seems like I might have grounds for some sort of reckless endangerment or something. A civil suit. You can’t just go around
shooting at innocent boys.”

  “Police have immunity when in the legal pursuit of their duty.”

  “Well, you ain’t talking with him until I’ve talked with my lawyer. Unless you got a warrant.”

  Littlefield could probably round up a magistrate and cobble together a warrant on the cigarette heist, but by then it would be after midnight. It wasn’t like Dex McCallister was a flight risk.

  “Can you bring him by my office tomorrow? I promise the shoplifting will go on the scrap heap, but I would like to talk with him. He’ll be in and out in time for ice cream.”

  “Sure, sure. And come by the alley sometime. Roll one on the house.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Nan beamed at that, as if anyone who enjoyed bowling was a child of God, goodness, and light. Then again, the sport had paid for the bowling balls behind her nipples, so Littlefield figured she’d done her time behind the counter. Bent over or not.

  As Littlefield returned to his cruiser, he gave one more glance at the house. Dex was clearly silhouetted against a lighted upstairs window, nose pressed against the glass. The boy pointed his index finger at the sheriff, thumb raised in the universal symbol for a gun. He mouthed three popping noises and grinned as if he’d actually gotten his sense of humor from a serial killer instead of his father.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cue the midget and send in the clowns, let’s get ready to rumble, the freak show is about to begin.

  Daddy was drunk again, and Mom had strapped on the battle ax and gone in like the female version of “Braveheart,” and Bobby expected blood to flow as freely as it did in any Mel Gibson-directed epic. Bobby thought about sticking his head under the pillow or clamping on the headphones and turning up the stereo to Def Plus. But, like the sound of a cruise ship’s bow scraping along the brutal edge of an iceberg or a car’s braked wheels squealing before impact, the Eldreth warm-up act sparked that same compelling electricity. You could cash out your ticket for a ringside seat, but the show went on just the same.

  Bobby pushed away the comic books piled on his desk. As creepy and weird as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was, it couldn’t compete with the Elmer and Vernell Variety Hour, and the opening act had something to do with a pack of matches Mom had found in Daddy’s jacket pocket. Which was even funnier because Daddy didn’t smoke.