“What’s up, Brad?”
“The good news is that the forensics lab broke into Mary Kane’s phone. The bad news is it doesn’t lead anywhere. She never called anyone, and hardly anyone ever called her. There were only two incoming voice calls in the week before her death. We called the originating numbers. One belongs to a retired librarian in an assisted living place in Virginia. The other was from the service department of the Kia dealer in Bastenburg, letting her know she could pick up her car.”
“Any texts?”
“Two, from some kind of nocturnal birding club.”
“She saved the texts?”
“Yep. One was a membership renewal reminder. The other was about a website where you can listen to different owl hoots. These people are big on identifying owls by their hoots. You figure that’s why she was out on her porch in the middle of the night?”
“Makes as much sense as anything else.”
“So, I guess just a harmless old lady in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Gurney said nothing.
“Bottom line, her phone was a dead end. Sorry about that.”
“Investigations are full of dead ends, Brad. It’s the nature of the beast. How’s the press conference going?”
“The conference room is packed. Department personnel had to make room for the media people and their equipment. I don’t think the chief was expecting anything this big. But maybe he should have been. When a guy who’s supposed to be dead pops out of a coffin and starts slicing throats, you gotta figure the press is gonna eat it up.”
Slovak’s view of the situation was still on Gurney’s mind when, moments before arriving home, he got a call from Morgan.
“Hey, Dave. I know you don’t have a TV, but could you take a look at the media websites tonight, especially RAM News?”
“What will I be looking for?”
“After I read my statement, there were questions. The RAM reporter, Kelly Tremain—her attitude gave me a bad feeling about how they’ll handle the story. I’ll be checking myself, but I’d appreciate your perspective.”
“Sure.”
“You have my cell number. Also, there’s a meeting tomorrow morning at ten sharp with the village board. Lots of concerns, and they want as much of an update as we can give them.”
“Should be interesting.”
“More likely a total horror.”
“Slow down, Mike. Linda Mason’s body hanging from that front-loader was a total horror. Tomorrow’s meeting won’t be a total horror.”
He heard Morgan sighing.
23
By the time Gurney had rounded the barn and was heading up through the low pasture to the house, it was nearly eight thirty. Dusk was beginning to decline into night. As he was parking the Outback by the side door, there was just enough light remaining for him to notice garden stakes and bright yellow string demarcating a rectangular area adjacent to the side of the chicken coop.
He got out of the car for a closer look. The marked-off area looked to be about twelve by twenty feet. Possibly, he thought with a touch of dismay, the right size for an alpaca shed.
When he went into the house, he sensed the unique silence that seemed to fill it when Madeleine was out. There was a note on the refrigerator door.
If you haven’t eaten already, there’s asparagus in the fridge, shrimp defrosting on the counter by the sink, and a box of farro by the rice cooker. I should be home by 10:00 p.m.
Love, Me
The note made him smile. Like most contacts with Madeleine, it nudged, at least for a moment, the rest of his life into perspective.
He went to the bathroom, washed his hands and face, kicked off his shoes in favor of a pair of slippers, did a few stretching exercises to loosen muscles that had stiffened in the car, and returned to the kitchen.
After reading the directions on the box, he put farro, water, butter, and salt in the rice cooker and turned it on. He shelled the shrimp and put a handful of asparagus spears in a bowl for the microwave. Then he went into the den and woke up his laptop.
It was 9:01 p.m. when he accessed the livestream section on the RAM News website.
The graphic pyrotechnics of the opening teasers were underway. Over a strident drumbeat soundtrack, letters were whirling in from all sides of the screen to form headlines:
—RAM NEWSBREAKER—
HORRIFYING MURDER SPREE
DID SATANIC KILLER RISE FROM THE DEAD?
Those words burst into jagged pieces, only to reform in a second series of headlines:
RURAL TOWN TERRIFIED
MAN STRUCK BY LIGHTNING BREAKS OUT OF COFFIN
VICTIMS’ THROATS CUT
These words in turn flew off the screen, revealing a TV news desk under a red-white-and-blue RAM logo. A neatly groomed TV anchor was sitting at a three-quarter angle to the camera, holding a pen and gazing with concern at his clipboard. Gurney recognized him from RAM’s overheated coverage of the White River murders. His anchor partner at the time was Stacey Kilbrick, a RAM star who suffered an on-screen breakdown at the gruesome finale of that case.
As the camera moved in, he lowered his clipboard, looked up, and began speaking in a voice that seemed too thin to support the gravity of his tone.
“Good evening. I’m Rory Kronck. We have a huge story for you tonight regarding the terrifying events in the once-tranquil village of Larchfield, New York. Our own Kelly Tremain is there right now. We’ll get her live report in just a moment. First, I’ll bring you up to speed on this mind-boggling situation.”
He turned in his seat to face the camera head-on. “Our story begins on a stormy night with Billy Tate—a known practitioner of witchcraft—climbing onto the roof of his village church. As he was spray-painting a satanic symbol on the steeple, he was struck by lightning and hurled to the ground below—killed instantly, according to the county medical examiner. His body was moved to a nearby mortuary. His next of kin arrived in the wee hours of the morning and asked that the body be placed in a closed coffin, pending a decision on its final disposition. The closed and latched coffin was placed in a storage unit, where it remained throughout the day.”
Kronck paused for dramatic effect. “Later that evening something bizarre occurred. Billy Tate came back to life. RAM News has obtained a copy of the video from the security camera at Peale’s Funeral Home. The sounds you will hear are those of Billy Tate attempting to break out of that closed coffin. A word of warning. If you suffer from claustrophobia, you may find this extremely disturbing.”
The mortuary video had been edited down to its key moments—from the first muffled sounds inside the storage unit to the eerie emergence of the hooded figure into the embalming room, his unsteady movements, his breaking into the glass case and removal of the scalpels, and his disappearance out the back door.
Gurney was wondering how RAM had gotten hold of the video—who had leaked it, with what motive—but those thoughts were interrupted by Kronck’s next comments.
“That’s the second time I’ve watched that video, and I still find it bone-chilling, especially the end, when Tate goes off into the night to begin his gruesome murder spree. It’s like a scene in a horror movie, except this is real—tragically, frighteningly real.” He shook his head, as if he were being forced to face the depravity at the fringes of humanity.