Titus woke up with the taste of last night’s bad decisions fresh in his mouth. He forced himself to get out of bed and do two hundred push-ups before he took a shower, in an effort to sweat out the liquor.
Marquis was on the couch when he came downstairs. He didn’t bother trying to wake him as he headed out the door. He got in the SUV and headed for the office. The windshield had the hint of a frost around the edge. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees overnight. Overcast skies gave the whole county a washed-out countenance. It was like he was watching a faded print of a silent film as he drove through the back roads and headed for the main highway. Titus thought it matched the spirit of Charon, now that a killer had made this place his abattoir.
As Titus pulled into his designated parking space at the sheriff’s office, the alert on his cell phone sounded, indicating he had an email.
Dear Sheriff Crown,
The board has no objection to your plan for added security. However, we hope you will be mindful of the optics of a more robust police presence. We don’t want to discourage attendance for Fall Fest.
Sincerely,
Julie Narrows
Vice-Chairman of the Charon Board of Supervisors “They really don’t get it,” Titus said to himself.
* * *
* * *
He went inside and headed for his office.
“Hey, Titus, Denver bonded out about an hour ago. The magistrate had Steve and Davy bring him over to the courthouse and they let him go from there. Steve wanted me to make sure I told you,” Cam said.
“Did he ever consent to give us a DNA sample?” Titus asked.
Cam shook his head. “Nope. He lawyered up after you left. You think it’s him, Titus?” he asked, pleaded.
Titus didn’t let his frustration bubble up to the surface. “I don’t know, Cam. But if we can get a DNA sample, we can rule him out or arrest him,” Titus said. He thought Cam was representative of the rest of the county. They wanted assurances, they wanted the man with the star to tell them the monster was defeated. They wanted magical answers from him, when he had to deal with real-world circumstances.
He went into the office and sat down behind his desk. He could feel that weight Pip had mentioned like a yoke on his neck. He went over a few other emails, reviewed the gas expense reports, checked the arrest log from last night, updated the sheriff’s office’s social media page with a request for information about Elias’s murder. It felt strange to attend to the mundane and the profane at the same time, but that was a defining aspect of the job.
The day crawled by at a snail’s pace. Trey was keeping an eye on Denver, but so far all he’d done was walk to the Tall King convenience store, buy a case of beer, and drink himself into a stupor. Dayane Carter was still unaccounted for and no one seemed to have any idea where she might be. Steve called in a report about two kids spray-painting graffiti on a headstone at the First Corinthian’s cemetery celebrating the “Weeping Willow Man.”
Thanks, Davy, Titus had thought when he got the call.
Titus called his three peers in Queen, Red Hill, and Gloucester Counties, respectively, and asked for any assistance they could give for the Fall Fest in two days. Queen County rebuffed him almost as a matter of course, but Red Hill and Gloucester promised to send three deputies each.
Not enough. Not nearly enough, Titus thought, but it was all he was going to get, so he tried not to dwell on it. As the dark began to rise, Titus stood from his desk and popped his back as he looked at his bulletin board.
“Everything you need to solve a crime is already within your grasp. It’s like you are putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a snowstorm. You have to take a step back and see how everything fits together,” Special Agent Tolliver used to say, before Red DeCrain’s wife and kids blew him into a million little pieces.
Titus stared at the board.
It was there. He just hadn’t stepped back far enough yet.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Virginia. You doing okay?” Kellie said.
“I’m fine. Sorry about the other night. Everyone was on edge,” Titus said.
“It’s okay. I was just … well, I’m glad you’re okay. I was calling because I wanted to let you know we finished editing your portion of the episode. You wanna hear it?” Kellie asked.
“I guess I should, so I can make sure you don’t make me look bad,” Titus said.
Kellie laughed. “There’s a lot of things I can do, but making you look bad isn’t among them. I can send you the file, or you can stop by here and listen to it.”
Titus didn’t say anything.
He could just take the file. Have her paste it into a text message and be done with it.
He could do that.
He could also go over to her cottage and hang out with her and Hector. Maybe talk about old times. Maybe just breathe for a moment. Sure, Kellie would ask about the case, but they could also talk about the time she got locked out of the apartment in her underwear. It wasn’t like he was going over there to hook up. Even if Hector wasn’t a part of the equation, he was in love with Darlene. That was a vow he wouldn’t break for anyone.
This was just two old friends talking. This was just Titus taking off the star for an hour or so and allowing himself a brief respite from his atonement and, really, was that a bad thing?
“I got a couple more hours here, so that’ll make it around ten, is that too late?” Titus asked.
“No, that’s perfect. Want me to grab some lamb chops for dinner?” Kellie said.
“Kellie…”
“Okay, okay, too soon. See ya later, Virginia.”
TWENTY-SIX
Todd’s Inn sat, like so many old homes and former plantations, at the end of a long circuitous driveway covered in crushed oyster shells and lined by lush dogwood trees. Titus thought Charon was a county made of rivers and long driveways. The driveway was also lined by soft amber landscape lights every twenty feet or so. They created an ethereal glow that seemed to spill over the road like St. Elmo’s fire. Eventually he came to the actual Todd’s Inn, a two-story structure overlooking Spill’s Creek. The driveway split into a fork in front of the inn. The left fork stretched out toward the cottages that sat in the clutch of Todd’s Wood. The fork to the right took you down to the cottages that overlooked the creek. He’d texted Kellie and she’d said they were in cottage number fourteen. A sign nailed jauntily to a tree told him that cottages one through fifteen were to the left. Titus turned his steering wheel accordingly and drove past cottages one through thirteen. All of them were dark as the Pit. Lucy Todd hadn’t even turned on the porch lights for the unoccupied dwellings.
Titus’s headlights bounced off the back of Kellie’s van, then spilled across the cottage itself.
That was when he saw the open door.
Titus moved fast. He put the SUV in park, hopped out, and drew his gun all in one motion. An open door didn’t necessarily portend doom, but one open this late at night when the temperature had dipped into the forties wasn’t a detail to be taken lightly.
He held his gun in a tactical grip. The door wasn’t just open, it had been kicked in with such force the doorframe had split. In the dark the gentle bleating and whistles of nightingales and whitetails with heavy bellies and all the other forest creatures that only stirred at night were momentarily drowned out by the relentless pounding of his heart. It felt like it was slamming against his rib cage.
“Kellie?” Titus yelled, alternately feeling foolish and hopeful. If she was here, she was probably hurt and she couldn’t answer him. If she wasn’t here, his words were useless and she was in danger.
Titus moved into the cottage proper.
Hector was slumped against a wall with his hands on his throat. Blood was seeping through his fingers and gurgling from his mouth. Titus moved to help him, when he heard a scream.
He heard Kellie scream.
He ran through the living room and into the kitchen.
“FREEZE!” Titus screamed so loudly his chest hurt.
There was a man standing in front of what appeared to be a closet or pantry in the kitchen. He was dressed in all black. Black jeans, black sweatshirt, black gloves taped to the shirt at the wrists.
The man was holding a red-stained bowie knife.
He was wearing a leather wolf’s-head mask.
He had stabbed the knife into the door of the closet. Titus could see the hole it had made. Now he was rigid, with the knife held above his head. Kellie was screaming from inside the closet.
“GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND!” Titus yelled.
The man in the wolf’s mask didn’t move.