“Uh, yeah, thanks. Sorry about the mess.” He waved his hand feebly in the direction of the doorway where he’d lost control of his stomach earlier.
“Don’t worry about it,” Damon replied. “A sight like that isn’t an easy one to take.” He shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately, when you’re in a position like mine you get used to it after a while.”
Sam didn’t reply. He was barely listening. He knew that he should be paying attention. He was probably in a whole lot of trouble, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His thoughts were a confused jumble, like a swarm of bees around a hive.
He realized suddenly that the sheriff had asked him another question.
“Uhh, pardon me?”
Wilson eyed him calmly. “I asked if you knew the victim.”
Gabriel!a voice cried in the back of Sam’s mind. “Yeah. He’s…” he began, and then corrected himself. “He was a friend of mine. I work here, this is my floor.”Forgive me, Gabriel! How could I have known it was all true?
“Are you friends with most of the patients entrusted to your care?”
“Some of them,” Sam replied.
The heavy stench of death filled his nostrils as the ambulance attendants walked past carrying a stretcher on which sat a number of body bags. Sam’s gaze followed them the length of the hall until they disappeared around the corner.
Damon waited until he had Sam’s attention again. Then he asked, “Do you know who killed Mr. Armadorian?”
Yes!Sam’s mind cried, and for a moment he was afraid he’d be unable to prevent himself from telling the sheriff all he knew, that his mouth would disobey the commands his mind was sending to it and the whole sorry story would be revealed, but some rational part of him was still functioning. He knew that if he told the sheriff what he suspected, he’d only wind up at the county hospital awaiting a psychiatric exam. He managed to squelch his desperate need to unburden himself and answered the question in the negative.
Sam’s inner turmoil did not go unnoticed, but Damon gave no indication that he’d seen it.
If Sam might know something that could help the investigation of the murders, then Damon was duty-bound to bring him in for questioning. The mayor and the public were screaming for him to make an arrest and end the killing spree that was rapidly turning their town into a frightened community of hermits, too scared to leave their homes. He couldn’t arrest Sam just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but bringing him down to the station house for questioning wouldn’t violate any of his civil rights. Something stayed his hand, however.
Maybe it didn’t make much sense, but in his gut Damon was certain that Sam had no connection to the murders. While there was no evidence yet linking this one to the others aside from its sheer savagery, Damon was certain that they were all connected. They had to be. There was no doubt in his mind that all four murders were committed by the same person. Or animal, if he were to use Strickland’s theory. While Sam’s appearance tonight might indicate he knew something about the murders, not for a moment did Damon believe that Sam was capable of committing them. It took a certain maliciousness to kill in such a brutal manner, and his gut reaction told him Sam wasn’t capable of that.
Which left him back at square one.
Except for whatever it was that Sam knew.
Damon watched as Sam dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and stuck one between his lips. His hands trembled as he tried to light it, and after three unsuccessful tries the sheriff took pity on him and lit it for him.
Sam weakly smiled his thanks.
Damon came to a decision. “Look, Mr. Travers. I get the feeling you know a bit more about all this than you’re letting on. I’m giving you a chance to come clean right now. Is there anything you wanna tell me?”
Sam merely shook his head. “Is it okay if I go now? I’m not feeling all that great and…”
Damon cut him off. “Yeah, all right. I’m sure the whole situation has been a shock. There are a few other questions I want to ask you about Mr. Armadorian, but they can wait until the morning. I’ll expect you in my office sometime tomorrow, all right?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Sam turned and began walking down the corridor. He’d only gone a few steps when Sheriff Wilson called out to him.
“Mr. Travers?”
Sam turned back around to face him.
“The stairway to the locker room is this way,” the sheriff said, indicating the other end of the hall with an outstretched hand.
For a moment Sam was completely confused. The locker room? What the hell did that have to …? Then he remembered the cover story he’d told Deputy Collins. He smiled weakly, doing his best to cover his lapse. “Thanks. In the midst of all this I guess I forgot why I came here.” Sam turned and walked back past Wilson and down the hall in the other direction. He knew the sheriff wasn’t fooled.
Damon watched him go, then walked down the hall and reentered the room where the old man had died. He stared at the splattered bloodstains while the crime scene technicians went about their business around him.
Jesus H. Christ!he thought.Who the hell could do something like this?
The mutilation of the Cummingses had been bad. The memory of the man’s head stuffed into the toilet bowl rose in his mind, but he quickly shoved it away again. It was bad enough that he saw it in his dreams; he didn’t need to see it while he was awake.
Yet that horror had been something he could understand. It was sick, sure, but normally sick, if that made any kind of twisted sense. Mutilation of a victim’s body wasn’t all that uncommon in psychotic killings.
But this….
This was beyond anything he’d ever seen.
The poor guy had been torn to shreds, for Christ’s sake.
He shook his head.What kind of animal am I after? How the hell did it get in here without being seen or heard? How intelligent is this thing?
Sheriff Wilson’s right hand unconsciously slipped down to caress the butt of his service revolver.
There was one question he did know the answer to, however.
What do you do with an animal that is running wild in the streets?
Damon smiled grimly.
You hunt it down and kill it.
Sam felt like he’d been caught up in a giant whirlwind that was hurtling his body relentlessly forward without his control. He sat slumped on the floor in the basement locker room, his back resting against the cool metal of the lockers. He was doing his best to stop the palsied trembling of his body, which had started as soon as he’d sought refuge there.
He wasn’t having much success.
The events of the last hour had been too much for him. His mind and his body were numb with shock. It was hard to believe that Gabriel was dead. He knew it was true, yet a part of him resisted the notion.
Sam was overwhelmed with guilt. There was no way he could deny the fact that he had killed his friend. He hadn’t harmed him physically, but in his own mind he was as responsible as whoever had actually performed the violence. He had dismissed his friend’s fears as the harmless ramblings of an old man rapidly approaching senility, even when there had been no evidence that Gabriel had begun in any way to lose touch with reality, and that had killed him as surely as if Sam himself had wielded the knife.
If he’d listened, he might have been able to save him. He and Gabriel could’ve faced the old man’s enemy together. Gabriel might have survived.
If only he’d listened!
But he hadn’t, and Gabriel had paid the final price for Sam’s own ignorance.
With his heart aching and filled with guilt, grief finally broke through. His face in his hands, Sam wept long and hard, his shoulders hitching with the force of his sobs.
After a time, grief slowly gave way to anger.