Sketched Read online

  “I’m sorry.” The voice that spoke the words wasn’t her own. It was a child’s voice, sharp with the onset of terror. “I’m sorry mother, please don’t. Please don’t leave me here.”

  “You’ll stay in there, you little pig. You’ll stay in there for the rest of the night and you’ll think about what you did. Disgusting.” The mother on the other side spat the word out, the ferocity of it sharper than a slap. “Stealing from your own family. Stuffing your fat little face with candy, I should leave you in there for a week at least.”

  “Mother! Don’t! There are things in here with me. Please don’t leave me. I’m sorry,” Piper felt the boy begin to cry, his chest aching with terrified misery. “It wasn’t me, it was the lady at the candy counter. The lady, the candy lady gave it to me, she said papa wouldn’t mind. She said he wouldn’t mind.”

  There was a sudden thump and the entire door shook. The boy fell backwards, his tailbone slamming into the concrete floor.

  “I MIND.” The mother’s voice was louder and more terrifying than anything he’d ever heard. It was as if it had transformed into something inhuman, screeching and full of unchecked fury. “I BLOODY WELL MIND. YOU FAT LITTLE BASTARD. YOU STAY IN THE DARK WHERE YOU BELONG. ROT IN THERE. ROT.”

  The door shook with every word, forcing the boy backward into the room and into the darkness. He scrambled back, his tailbone numb and burning where he had fallen.

  His bladder emptied immediately when his hand touched the shape of a foot behind him. Warmth flooding his shorts, a scream building in his throat, the little boy turned slowly.

  The light under the door slashed across the concrete floor, illuminating what looked like hundreds of pale, perfect feet standing like an army around him. He looked upward, following the light up the impossibly thin ankles and muscleless calves. There was a forest of them. They were immeasurable. The watchers in the dark.

  The scream finally broke from the little boy’s throat, rising up into the blackness, drowning out the sound of his mother’s remorseless, efficient heels as she walked away.

  ****

  “Shit, Harrison, what’s it been? Two weeks?”

  “No, it hasn’t. It hasn’t been two weeks Hill. A couple of days at the most.”

  “Yeah, no. Just let me check my calendar.” The sarcasm in the chief of police’s voice was unmistakable. “Nope. Says here the last time you managed to drag your sorry ass to work was exactly fifteen days ago. According to my word of the day calendar here, that’s over two weeks of absenteeism.”

  “I’ve been working. You know that. I took all those files home, remember? I’ve been following up leads.” Harrison looked over at the couch briefly.

  He’d managed to catch Piper’s head as she fell and had placed it on one of his late wife’s best throw pillows. Her breath was still even, her face more relaxed than he’d seen it yet.

  “I’ve been in contact with Piper Cooke. Actually, she’s here right now.”

  “The Cooke girl? The sketch artist with the bullet in her brain? What the hell are you doing with her, Harrison? I thought she moved out to the middle of nowhere ages ago. How is hanging out with her anything close to getting a handle on what’s going on around here?”

  Harrison took a deep breath. He had prepared himself for this lambasting. If he was going to get what he wanted, he’d steeled himself to put up with at least five minutes of it.

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “Look, I’ve got something I need to tell you, something that I think is going to bring us right to our perp.”

  “You better be calling me with a fucking miracle Harrison. The press around here is getting pretty wound up. We need to kill this whole “Dixon Demon” bullshit before it gets out of control.”

  Harrison lit what felt like his one-hundredth cigarette for the evening. He was quick, the masterful experience of years of addiction barely a pause before he spoke again. He looked down at the piece of paper in his hands, letting the rank smoke in his lungs steady his nerves.

  It was an address.

  When Piper had sat down on the couch, one of Laura’s imported Italian side tables before her, she had made him no promises. She told him that Adam, the gnome-y man with the kind eyes that she lived with, had been teaching her a form of relaxation since her accident. Out of options and with no leads besides three crumpled up pictures, she had quickly convinced him that she might be able to ‘go under’ in the same way she did when she was sleeping.

  “If I can do that,” she had said, fixing him with her unnaturally large eyes, “maybe I’ll draw something. Maybe something will turn up. Something concrete like another image, or an address, a phone number…anything.”

  He would’ve never agreed, if he had known what would happen. He’d seen her black out all those years ago, huddled in front of a wall of monitors with the other officers and that had been unsettling enough. But this? Within a minute of her closing her eyes, they had flickered open again and rolled into the top of her head. Those mesmerizing eyes of hers had stared out at him, her irises tucked up tight in the back of her skull. She had gone stiff. He had grabbed her then, catching her just in time. He had done his best to maneuver her body onto the couch but the jerks and twists seizing through her had made it a challenge.

  He had had to remind himself to pick up a paper and write. He had been absolutely terrified. So terrified that he had almost abandoned the project and shaken her awake.

  The voice that had come from Piper’s throat hadn’t been her own. The voice of a child, heavily marked with the hesitations and lisps of a boy of around six was somehow rising from the body of a fully-grown woman.

  The phone pressed painfully against his ear, Harrison looked at the address he had copied down as she spoke.

  “I’m running out of patience with this bullshit Harrison. What have you got?”

  “I’ve got 1255 Redwood Blvd.”

  There was silence from Hill’s end of the line. Harrison waited, one eye on Piper’s unconscious body, the other on the address paper shivering in his hand.

  “That’s what you’ve got for me? Two weeks of unexplained absence, God knows how many coverups for your hangovers, benders and general fuck ups, at least five years of frankly half-assed police work and this is your big redeemer? An address?”

  Harrison took a massive inhale of his cigarette, the ash eating down the paper.

  “If we go there. If you give this a chance, we can get the perp. There’s going to be something there. All I need is a few squad cars. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “1255 Redwood is the Entler department store, you know that, right?”

  Harrison felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Sweat blossomed on his upper lip and he exhaled. The craving for a drink was instantly insistent, a signal so strong it seemed to come from some other unacknowledged brain locked away deep in his body.

  “That’s the thing Hill. I think that’s who our Dixon Demon is.”

  The laughter that erupted on the other end of the phone was so loud, Harrison looked to Piper to see if it had woken her.

  “God, Harrison. You’ve really had it, haven’t you? I guess this is it. Is this it? Is this that turning point where I recommend a few detox joints and submit your paperwork to head office and the insurance companies?”

  The craving again, running up his spine with the urgency of any other necessary survival reflex. He found himself becoming angry, his cheeks growing tight with embarrassment and frustration.

  “No, this is the point where you listen,” he said, disappointed in the struggle to steady his voice.

  “Oh really? Why’s that?”

  “Five years ago, during the last rash of murders, when we had the escaped girl in the office with us, you remember that?”

  “I’m humoring you, Harrison, you know that right? Yes, I remember.”

  “Piper had that black out.”

  “You should’ve never put her in there. I remember that, that was the beginning of the en
d for you, if I’m correct.”

  Harrison’s cheeks felt hotter. He was right, it had been the beginning of the end. Finding her body and what was the left of the other girl had been the cork popping out of the bottle that would take up the next half-decade of his life. He felt sick.

  “What I never told you, Hill. What I never told anyone,” he took a deep breath. “Cooke drew a picture when she blacked out. I believe that picture is our murderer. I knew it then but I said nothing. The Entler family owns this town outright, what was I supposed to do?”

  “Royal Entler has been dead for years Harrison. Are you suggesting that Brynn Entler was responsible for those murderers?”

  “Not Brynn. Kingston. Their son.”

  His laughter was worse the second time. Intolerable even. Harrison held the phone away from his ear, fighting the urge to throw it against the wall. He waited for the noise to stop but Noah Hill had begun speaking through his derisive cackling.

  “That pretty boy? Jesus, that kid didn’t do anything but stand behind his parents and glare. He barely left the house. I mean for god’s sake, no one has even seen him for the last five years. Not once.”

  “Exactly. He disappears as soon as Piper’s shot, as soon as we find the girl. He was getting careless, leaving too much behind for us to find. So, he goes into hiding. He’s back, Hill. He didn’t go anywhere, he just gave us a break.”

  “Fuck off, Harrison. One address. You get this from one address.”

  Piper sighed from the couch. Harrison watched her gently rubbing her feet together as she slowly came back to consciousness.

  “No, not one address. Piper Cooke.”

  “This is just one piece of bullshit on top of the other.”

  “Listen to me,” Harrison spoke through his teeth now, finding himself dangerously teetering on the edge of losing his temper. He couldn’t give Hill that satisfaction. He was already a drunk and a waste of department time in his eyes, the last thing that would give his case any credibility was if he threw a fit. “I went to her, Hill. These murders, you knew as well as I did that we had nothing to go on. I didn’t have a choice. I had to go with whatever I could.”

  “So, you went with a cute little twenty-something artist hiding away in buttfuck nowhere. Not the best choice, Harrison.”

  “I went with the person who gave me the only I lead I should’ve followed five years ago. I went with the person who,” he sighed and rubbed his forehead. His cigarette had died, unsmoked in his hand, a tower of ash sprinkling over his fingers. “I went with the person who showed up at my door two hours ago with the same damn picture in her hand.”

  “Right. Piper is there?”

  “Yes. She’s here. And she believes that if we get to Kingston now, if we get to that address, we might be able to stop this from happening again. He’s got another two people Hill, and if we get there in time, we can save their lives.”

  “Do you have any idea how you sound?”

  “I’ll quit Hill.” His mouth was parched as he spoke. “I’ll go to rehab, I’ll do whatever you need me to do. This is the last time you’ll hear from me if this is what you want, just please. Send someone to the address. Send someone here. I've got drawings of the victims and a drawing of Kingston. Just please. I can’t fuck this up again.”

  There was silence again. A terrible weighted silence in which Harrison could hear the chief of police’s breath, soft and so calm in comparison to his, whistling in and out of his cell phone receiver.

  “You remember when we used to go to the driving range up there by you?” he said at last.

  Harrison’s stomach felt like it had lodged itself permanently in his throat.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You, me and Royal. God, he was a terrible golfer. Couldn’t hit that ball for shit. Laura, Gemma and Brynn used to watch us from the clubhouse patio, remember?”

  Despite all the nasty things he wanted to screech into the phone, Harrison managed a stilted ‘yes’.

  “Tell you what, Harrison. As a favor, out of respect for those years, I will send whoever isn’t dealing with other more pressing bullshit to head over to the Entler house. That address, the department store, that thing’s been condemned for years now. It’s practically imploded on itself, like the rest of this town. There’s no way there’s anyone there.”

  “Please, Hill.”

  “Two cops. The Entler mansion. That’s it. That’s all you’re getting. God knows I’ll probably hear from Brynn’s lawyer for invading her privacy and god knows what else, but that’s me putting my neck out for you. That’s me respecting our friendship.”

  This was going nowhere. Two cops at the Entler mansion? What was that going to do except piss off an old lady?

  “Tell you what though, if they find that little weasel Kingston at home and everything is as it should be, I’m going to be sniffing around for your badge like a pissed off coon dog, got it?”

  Harrison was already done with the conversation. Piper had sat up and was looking at him, trying to assemble her mop of neglected hair into some kind of order. She was pale, but there was a steely determination in her eyes.

  “Got it.”

  “This is it. I mean it Harrison.”

  “Understood. Thank you.” He pressed the button on his phone to end the call, cutting off the chief of police who was ramping himself up for another lecture.

  Piper drew her knees to her chest, and looked at him over the back of the couch.

  “What happened?” she asked. “How long was I out for?”

  Harrison held up the address, 1255 Redwood scrawled in sharpie ink across one of the many pieces of paper that littered the room.

  “You didn’t bring a gun with you by any chance, did you?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  * * *

  Entler’s Department Store - Dixon City

  There was a sharp throbbing in her temple, as gritty as broken glass pushing into her skin with every heartbeat. It dragged her from the cool blankness where she had been floating. Jennifer felt her misery increase as she came back to her body, piece by painful piece.

  He’d kicked her in the head. Many times. The horrid, wasted little man with the lovely smile. He had hit her once and then again and again. He had roared at her to stop. She tried to remember what it was she had been doing that had enraged him so much.

  Her eyelids felt as if they had been glued shut. She struggled to open them but found they wouldn’t respond. That was it, she had been screaming. Screaming because there was a room and he was taking her in. He told her that it was the terminus station. Although Jennifer didn’t know what he meant, there had been something in her eyes that told her that if she didn’t scream now, she wouldn’t have a chance later. She wouldn’t have a chance ever again.

  The pain in her temple increased, radiating down to her jaw. When she finally managed to open her eyes, the lights in the room felt as if they were causing her retina to retract. She blinked against it furiously.

  The same floodlights they had followed like buoys in an ocean were now surrounding her in a circle. Like she was on the set of some kind of manic student film, they shone down into a perfect recreation of an upper income suburban living room. A recreation that she was a part of.

  Her awareness now fully returned, Jennifer looked down to find herself attached to an expensive recliner. The same duct tape that covered her mouth was wrapped around her thighs multiple times, her bare skin aching against the constrictive wrapping. It was so tight that her thighs bulged on either side and her toes seemed to have gone completely numb. Both arms were taped to the plush sides of the chair as well, practically mummified in silver.

  She blinked around the strange circle he had created, taking in the careful placement of the rugs, sofas, tables and knickknacks that surrounded her. It reminded her of their set up back at the store. What was it that her mother called it? Staging. It made customers more apt to buy things if they felt like the already belonged in their home.

>   Her mother.

  Jennifer tried to squint through the bright lighting to locate her. She remembered the way her mother had been so deeply unconscious, that her body had looked like nothing more than a jumble of mannequin parts.

  There was a wet noise from her right and Jennifer turned her head, screaming against the tape that held her lips shut.

  Her mother, Dixon socialite and entrepreneur, was dangling a few feet from the floor. Her arms were spread wide on either side of her, connected to a ceiling she could not locate by cords of indeterminate length. Her legs were the same, only Jennifer could see how the ropes were wrapped tightly and knotted around two rings built directly into the concrete floor. She was stretched out like some kind of starfish, the pilates thin limbs which she had worked so hard on pulled outward to the point of snapping.