A body hung between them.
This one fresh.
“Oh, God — no, no! She’s fooling around,” Art said.
Hayley didn’t think she was. Compelled, she moved forward, and as she did, a horrified scream froze in her throat.
It was Tiffany... the body was Tiffany. Her eyes were still open, but it seemed a river of blood poured from her throat and down her shirt and her jeans... still dripping to the ground. She was strung out with arms and legs fastened to the ropes, like a creature caught in a spider’s web...
A creature with a gaping wound at the throat, so deep it almost severed her head from her body.
Hayley had the sense to shove her hand into her jeans for her cell phone.
“Oh, God! It’s real this time!” Art breathed. “There, oh God, there... on the ground. There — it’s Bobby McGill... on the ground, but not strung up yet, and...”
“We have to get him; he may not be dead.”
“Oh, my God, oh, my God—”
“Stop!”
She wasn’t sure if it was an instinct or something she had seen in a movie, but Hayley slapped him hard in the face, shoving her phone at him. “Dial 911 and get the others out! 911, now, and be coherent!”
“They won’t believe—”
“When they hear the sirens, they will.”
“He’s still in here. Whoever did this, he’s still in here!” Art whimpered.
“Go!” she snapped, and she hit him again. “Dial.”
The second hit did it. Art dialed 911 as he walked, and then ran, away. Hayley barely noticed; she was staring ahead, but Bobby seemed to be alone on the ground.
Of course, shadows were everywhere.
It was after midnight in the Barclay Cemetery.
She moved forward, carefully at first, keeping her eyes on Bobby where he lay on the ground and not on Tiffany — where she remained in the air, dripping blood.
She reached Bobby. There was no blood on him; he just lay there, as if he had been hit.
“Bobby! Bobby!” she whispered fervently.
His eyes opened. He stared; then he screamed.
“Bobby, stop! He — whoever — they’ll hear!”
“Dead, dead, dead, Tiffany... he slammed me on the head, he wrenched her away. I saw it while I was falling, oh, I saw it, saw him rip up her throat, oh, God, oh, God—”
“Bobby, get up. We need to get out of here. The cops will be here soon, but we must get out now, okay, come on, come on!”
“Out to your cousin’s house, can’t go that way!” Bobby said, indicating the closest exit. “I think he went that way, came in that way... has his stuff, his rope, whatever, that way. Oh, God, Tiffany!”
“Come on, Bobby, come on!”
Half-leading him, half-carrying him, Hayley got him to move. She headed straight down a path at first, moving fast.
But she sensed something, someone behind her.
She angled in among the tombs, taking a winding path, barely aware of the funerary art now — the angels and saints, guardian dogs, flower urns, and gargoyles.
Bobby started to trip in a nest of weeds; she straightened him and realized they were coming up on the Judith McCafferty family vault and she prayed silently the killer had not come upon the lowly veteran seeking shelter there.
She paused, gasping, leaning against the enclosure there for a minute. Bobby was heavy; he was trying to move, he was just staggering, probably from the knock on his head. She could see blood on him now; a thin trickle that fell from a big knot on his temple.
Bushes were rustling near them.
The killer, she thought, had discovered Bobby gone.
And he was coming.
She eased out carefully, and then she froze. He was there. Right there in front of her, just feet away from the plaque that honored Judith McCafferty.
She didn’t know what she had expected. A human being, yes, but one with jagged teeth and drool sliding from his lips. Ugly and frightening in appearance...
He wasn’t ugly; he was just a man. Maybe six-feet-even, with brown hair now slightly askew over his forehead, light eyes, and an easy smile that seemed especially heinous as he was dotted in blood. His shirt was flannel; he wore jeans. He was perhaps twenty-something, maybe thirty... and, without the blood, he might have been appealing, charming even... someone Tiffany wouldn’t have hesitated to speak with.
He carried a huge knife. The moonlight caught upon it, but it didn’t shimmer.
It was covered in Tiffany’s blood.
“Well, hello there,” he said softly. “So, you’re the one who stole chubby-boy from me while I was setting up my trap. Well, that means some really special care for you.”
Bobby slumped in her arms.
She wasn’t sure if it was his injury, or if he’d just passed out cold.
She stared at the man, the killer in her midst, torn.
Her desire to live was almost overwhelming. And yet somewhere inside she knew if she left Bobby to die, she might not ever be able to really live again.
“Hi there, yourself,” she managed. “Sorry I stole fat boy. But, hey, not to worry — the cops are on their way. You might want some more fun, but you don’t have time for any more fun. You need to run — now!”
“Leave this lovely cemetery?” he asked her. Then he laughed. “You really think any of your idiot friends managed to call the cops?”
“Yes,” she said. “Now, I can see where you doubt that, but... really. You need to run.”
He smiled. A deep, deep, self-pleased smile, and he took a step toward her. She backed against the wall of the tomb, unable to hold Bobby. She needed to run, run fast, but...
“Oh, I am going to have so much fun—”
He broke off abruptly. He just stood there; Hayley had heard something, but she didn’t know what. Something, a strange sound, as if...
As if he had been the one struck on the head.
She stared at him, barely daring to blink. He suddenly fell forward, and in his place, she saw the shaggy homeless veteran she had spoken with earlier.
“Go! Grab your friend and go,” he told her. “I don’t know how long he’ll be out.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you—”
“Go!”
She nodded and reached down for Bobby, determined she was going to get him to go on a diet. She slapped him — she was getting good at slapping — and he groggily came to.
“We have to go.”
He nodded.
He got to his feet. And with him, Hayley ran the best she could. But as she reached the center of the “crossroad” in the cemetery and saw the gate to Marcy’s backyard not far ahead, she heard sirens screeching through the air.
Art had managed to dial 911. Help was coming.
And even as she dragged Bobby forward, Tommy and Frank came running out of the yard, taking him from her, yelling that they needed to get in, lock the gate, lock the doors!
They did so, locking the back door just as the first police car ripped into the front yard.
It turned out their haste at that point hadn’t mattered. The police had found their serial killer, Matthew Marin, back at the McCafferty vault, right where he had fallen.
He had been alone.
Hayley wanted to know where her homeless friend had gone. She explained over, and over again that he’d saved her and Bobby by cracking the killer over the head with something.
A piece of a broken gargoyle, fallen from the arch over the McCafferty vault.
There was no sign of anyone else in the cemetery. Police combed the place — there was no homeless man.
She insisted that there had been. But they were all exhausted and reeling. Parents were on the way; the police had finished with the questioning; the medical examiner had to come, which somehow seemed like an oxymoron to Hayley — coming to a cemetery to do a preliminary examination on a corpse.