Chapter 24
I WAS sitting at my desk on Tuesday morning, pretending to work. I felt like shit and ached all over and wanted to go back to bed. Three hours of sleep just wasn’t enough. Robbie was standing behind my chair, his hands hovering over my shoulders. He was trying to give me a massage, but there just wasn’t enough contact to really make a difference. It was a nice thought, though. Daisy was asleep under the desk, her body twitching every now and then as if she was dreaming of evil squirrels.
“I told you to be careful,” Robbie admonished.
“I was. I didn’t let the car hit me, did I?”
I’d had a busy morning already. I’d run the license number of the black sedan that had nearly run me over and got the name and address of the owner. I figured it was a stolen car, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check up on it. If anything came of it, I’d have to let Lieutenant Carson know. I should anyway, but I was too tired to go over to the phone and dial.
That and the fact that I felt there was some supernatural element to these killings. The only time my sixth sense flared up was when some element of the paranormal was involved. Last night it had gone into overdrive. The police wouldn’t be ready to deal with some supernatural killer. Neither was I, but I was going to try.
We had the television tuned to a morning news show. The lead story was about the latest murder. I twisted in my chair to get a better look at the set. A reporter was standing outside of Pickin’s, looking very seriously at the camera. “Police believe that the murders of the three showgirls are linked. The body of the latest victim, Renata Brown, was found in an alley here behind Pickin’s, a well-known west side nightclub.” The camera panned over to show the entrance then came back to the reporter, who went on with his story. There was no mention of the incident at the Winner’s Barn, so the girl with the afro hadn’t said anything about our escapade, at least not yet. The reporter finished his bit, and they switched back to the studio, where the male and female anchors recapped the two previous murders. There wasn’t anything new.
“So what now?” Robbie asked.
I looked at my notepad, where I’d written down the name and address of the owner of the car. Joshua Satterfield. The address was in Westfield, a suburb on the north side of Indianapolis. “I’ll go check this out,” I said.
“By yourself?”
I shrugged. “The car probably was stolen. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
“You said you’d be fine last night, and you ended up dodging cars and getting beaten up by a cement block. Let me go with you.”
“It’s up in Westfield. Not one of your usual haunts. Besides, you’re still weak. I can barely feel your hands, and you’re so transparent you look like a refugee from Disney’s Haunted Mansion. Seriously, you go out like that, and you’ll just be promoting ghost stereotypes.” I thought I was being pretty funny, but Robbie didn’t so much as crack a smile. The dead can be a tough room for a comic.
He stopped with the futile massage. “Just be careful,” he said.
“Always.”
A HALF-HOUR later I was hopelessly lost and very angry at Yahoo! Maps. Following their instructions I had traveled outside the city limits and had started down some country roads. I saw a lot of cows and a few farmers out in their fields doing whatever farmers do (farming, I assumed) but couldn’t find the road I needed. Finally I turned around in a driveway and made my way back, thinking I’d get back to a street I was familiar with and try again. Maybe I’d missed a turn or something. Then I saw a side road I’d missed. There was no street sign. I turned. I couldn’t get more lost.
About a mile down the road, the farmland gave way to woods. Trees lined either side of the road and provided a canopy, keeping out the sunlight, making the gravel road a prime candidate for an episode of Scooby-Doo. Then I came across a nearly hidden driveway. I would have missed it but for the mailbox on a post at the end of the drive. I slowed and checked. Sure enough, the number matched that for Joshua Satterfield’s home. There was no name on the box.
I turned into the drive. The dirt drive wound around a bit, and I couldn’t see a house. I had to creep because some of the pot holes were huge. Finally I had to stop moving entirely. I left the car in front of a crater that I worried would destroy the suspension and walked the rest of the way. I was wearing a leather jacket and my shoulder holster. The sun was out and the temperature was rising a little, but I preferred keeping the jacket on so that the gun was handy. I was out in the middle of nowhere, and who knew if relatives of those guys from Deliverance weren’t hanging around the area?
My feet made soft sounds on the dirt. That was the only sound. No birds singing in the trees. I couldn’t hear any critters rustling in the brush. Maybe they had more sense than me.
As I rounded a bend, I caught sight of the house. It was definitely a fixer-upper. The house was easily sixty or seventy years old and hadn’t seen a paint job in about half that time. Some of the windows on the second floor were boarded up. On the roof was a weather vane. The wind was coming from the north. Good to know. There was a garage set a little behind the house with the door closed. All the windows I could see on the garage were missing the glass. Before going up to the house, I looked into the garage. It was dark, but I could see the shape of the car inside. It was the same one that had tried to run me over. Bingo.
I took my .38 out of the holster, put it in my jacket pocket, and kept my hand on it. No sense in taking chances. I went up to the front door and knocked.
No one answered. Where was this Joshua Satterfield? His car was in the garage. I knocked again, louder. Maybe he was sleeping. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he was undead. Certainly I needed to check. I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. If Joshua Satterfield was the killer, he was a very careless one. Or maybe he just thought no one could find him out here in the boondocks.
Inside the house was dusty and stuffy. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture, and the few pieces I saw weren’t in the best of shape. Obviously Satterfield didn’t go in for the creature comforts of life.
I walked softly, but the floorboards still creaked every now and then. If Satterfield was home, he was deaf. I moved through an archway in the living room and found an old kitchen. The cabinets were mostly bare. Most didn’t even have the doors on them any longer. There was a decrepit stove and a Kenmore refrigerator that had to be thirty years old. It worked though. I could hear the hum from across the room. Curious, I opened the fridge door.
Inside were several plastic storage bags containing some sort of raw, bloody meat. Nothing else. I picked one up. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a liver. Probably a human liver, not that I’d ever seen one before. Certainly I’d never seen one in a plastic bag in someone’s refrigerator. And I’d certainly never seen one that had been partially devoured. I could see the teeth marks.
I tossed the bag back inside and started to shut the door. A sound behind me made me spin around. There in the archway stood a tall man.
He was slightly taller than me, so maybe six foot two. I placed him at 180 pounds. He was wearing black jeans and a black shirt. Not the most attractive man I’d ever met. Satterfield was clean shaven, but his face was wrinkled and scarred even though he didn’t look to be much older than me. It was like he was aging too rapidly. He had something attached to a leather cord around his neck. Whatever it was, was hidden by his shirt. His eyes were heavily lidded and the bags under them were black and sickly looking. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, and he wasn’t looking at me with happiness.
“You’re trespassing,” he said.
I shrugged. “You’re killing strippers and taking bits of them home to eat. Who do you think the police are going to be more pissed at?”
He started to lunge. I pulled the gun out and aimed it right at his forehead. He stopped in his tracks. Staring at the barrel, he laughed. “Do you think I’m afraid of your little gun?”
“I don’t know. It’s stopped you for the moment, so I’m happy. I take it I’m talking to Joshua Satterfield?”
He moved his head slightly. His dark hair was long and some of it had a tendency to fall over his right eye. The movement didn’t help shift it much. “That’s as good a name as any,” he said. “I’ve had many names in my time. Caleb’s always been a favorite of mine.” He started moving, slowly, off to his right. He moved around me so that he was in the center of the room. He kept his distance, and I kept the gun aimed. I’ll admit he really didn’t seem afraid of my little gun. He was standing right in a shaft of sunlight, so he wasn’t a vampire. What the hell was he, and would my gun be any good against him? I gladly let him command center stage. If he was impervious to bullets and attacked me, I didn’t have an easy escape path with him blocking the archway. Now at least I could run like a coward and skip out the front door if necessary.
Satterfield was almost smiling. “You’re the young man I tried to run over last night,” he said with a hint of admiration. “You tracked down my license plate.”
“Yep.”
He looked down the barrel of the gun. “You might as well put that away. It won’t do you any good.”
His words had a ring of conviction, but I still felt better with the .38 in my hand. “Want to give it a try?” I asked.
Satterfield tilted his head and stared into my eyes. It felt like my mind was being probed. I set my teeth and concentrated, thinking of only plugging him in his ugly face. His smile broadened. “You’re something different. You know that I’m not fully human and the knowledge doesn’t seem to surprise you.”
“Not particularly.”
He moved a step toward me. It wasn’t a menacing move, but I pulled the trigger anyway. The bullet struck him dead center in the forehead and went through the back of his skull. Blood and brain matter splattered onto the wall and floor behind him. He went down with a growl and hit the cracked tiles hard. He didn’t stay down, though. He got into a crouch and spun to face me, his teeth clenched. “That wasn’t very nice,” he snarled as he launched himself toward me.
It was like getting hit by a bulldozer. I didn’t even get a chance to fire again. He was quick. He shoved me back, and we hit the kitchen wall. The collision knocked the wind out of me. I could still see the bullet wound in his skull. His right hand gripped my throat, and he started to squeeze. I realized the gun had flipped from my grip when he’d bounded into me. I tried to punch him in the face, but either I wasn’t connecting, or he didn’t feel the blows. The loss of air was making things go dark. The hand holding my neck was strong, and I couldn’t break the hold.
The gun had at least affected him. The impact of the bullet had sent him to the floor like it would a regular person. True, he got right back up, even with a ventilated forehead and brain matter oozing out of the back of his head, but he had gone down for a few seconds. Maybe I could get another reaction out of him. Even if it gave me only a few seconds grace, it was better than nothing. I shot my knee into his groin.
It worked. He grunted loudly, bent over double, and moved back a foot or two, releasing the grip on my throat. I sucked in air and stumbled the few feet over to the archway. My head was spinning, but adrenaline and the survival instinct kept me going. I rushed through the living room, heading to the front door. I could hear him behind me. I didn’t look back to see how close he was. At the last second, I decided I didn’t want to mess with trying to open the door, so I veered off and ran toward the big bay window in the living room. I’d never thrown myself through a window before, but I knew what to do in theory. The answer is: don’t do it. Shards of glass ripping me to shreds would only be slightly better than getting throttled by the intestine-muncher chasing me. I picked up a rickety wooden chair and used it as a battering ram. Glass went flying, and I leaped through the hole. I still felt some glass slice my skin, but I knew by the impact of hitting the ground that I was still alive. I was aware of blood running down my face, and I had to shake a large shard off the arm of my now-torn leather jacket. If this kept up, I’d have to buy a new wardrobe. There was another cut down my left leg, but it didn’t seem serious. The scalp wound was on my forehead, and it was beginning to gush. With Killer Satterfield behind me, though, I didn’t have time to worry about bleeding to death. I scrambled to my feet and bolted down the driveway.
My heart was pounding like hell, but I could still hear him behind me. He seemed like he’d lost some ground, though. His footsteps were further away. Maybe getting out the window had slowed him down. Good. I didn’t want to tangle with him anymore. Something told me that if he got his hands on me again, he wouldn’t give me a chance to kick him in the nuts. I wiped the blood out of my eyes and ran on.
Then I did the Idiot-Heroine-In-Every-1940s-Mummy-Movie move and tripped over a fallen branch. My face went right into the dirt, and I felt the jolt sing through my body. In desperation I grabbed the offending branch and threw it behind me. I think I had the idea that it would hit old Satterfield right in the puss, and he’d fall over dead because whatever the hell kind of creature he was could only be killed by a tossed piece of wood. Okay, it was a dumb desperation move. It didn’t even hit the guy. He was further back than I’d thought. I got to my feet and ran on, rounding the bend. My car was just ahead. I pulled the keys out of my pocket and had them ready. My side had one of those pains from overexertion, and I was having a hard time seeing with all the blood running down my face. I got to the door and threw it open. Out of the corner of my eyes I could see old Organ-eater rounding the corner. I threw myself into the car and managed to get the key in the ignition without fumbling. I started the engine and threw the car in reverse just as Satterfield got to the car. He tried to throw himself on the hood, but I’d already started moving so he slipped right off. I ignored the pot holes and bounced and thudded around as I twisted back so I could see to make sure I was staying on the drive. Somehow I made it out onto the gravel road. The car slid a little, but I managed not to ram it into a tree. I threw the car into drive and sped off. Joshua Satterfield was nowhere in sight.