Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2) Page 16

  “I’m actually feeling a bit sick, if I could be honest. I came over to let you know I’ll be leaving.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. You need me to drive you home? Or you can always stay the night.”

  “Thanks, but if something is catching on I’d rather be at home than spending most of the night in your bathroom,” she smiled, and pulled herself slowly away from his embrace.

  “I’ll drive you,” Brody interrupted, and screwed on the bottle cap to his water bottle.

  “It was a great evening, Wayne, I will call you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “Did you enjoy the evening?”

  “I did, thanks for asking. I hoped you liked it too, Mary?”

  “It was an introduction to all your friends and what your life looks like. It was interesting,” she answered.

  “Yeah, just bad timing with the news about Bauser next door. I had no idea that had happened.”

  “Right,” her fingers rinsed underneath the water in the sink.

  “How did you know?”

  “They told me when they came out crying, carrying her to the car yesterday morning.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know, you always seemed bothered by the dog when we were eating dinner. Didn’t seem like you liked it too much anyway.”

  “Not it, she. And I enjoyed her very much, just not in front of people. Mostly talks at night, through the fence.”

  “Well, now you have to find yourself another nightly hobby. She’s not there anymore.”

  He stared at her erratic washing of utensils under the tap, and for the first time she seemed oddly careless.

  “Plates are done,” she turned and smiled into his face, then wiped her hands on the towel by the stove. “It’s been a wonderful day and I’m tired. See you in the morning.”

  He heard the door slam to her bedroom upstairs before he moved himself from the bar stools and over to the stairs making sure she was not anywhere else but in her room.

  The towel dangled by the stove as he walked over and ran his fingers across the ridges of the fabric, thinking. The house lay quiet, and he found himself used to walking outside in the backyard at this time of the night. Not so much anymore. Not at all. Now the night smelled of death, and an inability to halter any despair Bauser might have felt right before the attack. His finger nibbled at the towel until he noticed his nail was scraping at something resembling old food particles and he found it impossible not to grab it for the laundry room.

  The hamper was overflowing and he smiled recalling the sounds he had heard earlier in the evening walking by the very same laundry room, noticing not only one female voice in pleasure, but two, resembling Jayce’s and someone he hadn’t heard before. In wishful thinking it was one of the two girls Bryce had brought over, and he smiled at the idea that Bryce had no clue one of them not interested in him at all.

  He remembered how it had made him smile knowing his small laundry quarters could become the most erotic and secluded paradise someone might need. It hadn’t made it any worse when one voice had tried to quiet the other, a hand over a mouth is what his mind imagined.

  He had then imagined a woman laying a very possessive hand on a luscious breast in the tight confinement of the room, and noticed himself suddenly getting hard. He’d heard whispering. Whispering of mapping a body with the use of nothing else but a mouth and a very investigating tongue, and his mouth had smiled at that. If he could save someone a trip out of town for pleasure he gladly provided the room for the night, even it being his very small laundry room.

  Now the only thing left was the quietness after the evening, and his throat swallowed a sadness trying to escape. Festivities and pleasure, for some, was now emptiness. His hand searched the wall for the switch and moved it several times up and down but his movement didn’t turn on the light bulb. He grabbed a stepladder standing against the wall, went up to tighten the bulb, and tired the switch again with no success.

  “Mary, are you up?” his question echoed the walls of his home, only the cold answer of his own voice returning back to him. “Mary?” he tried again, hoping to hear her voice. He tried the light switch in the hallway next the front door. A faint click and he remained in darkness. He took a few steps into the house, large feet moving across the hallway rug muffling the sound of impact just slightly.

  The kitchen lay just as quiet. Just as dark. If this wasn’t his own home he would turn and walk back the way he’d entered, not knowing what the night may disguise: furniture casting shadows of monsters, trees outside reaching through the windows grabbing what they can. But this was his house and he knew every turn of walls and rooms, where doors opened and closed, what sounds didn’t belong to the house. So, in the darkness he was safe. If anyone was inside the house they knew he was here as well, as he had just erased whatever cover he might have had by yelling for Mary.

  He moved himself smoothly across the kitchen floor until he reached the panel of drawers at the side of the stove, opened one slowly, and used his hand to search for a flashlight hidden among the other items. His hand grabbed something cold and hard just before an excruciating pain broke out at the back of his head, and he sank slowly down the side of the counter until he felt his knees hit the wooden floor boards, bruising them.

  Suddenly his fingers crushed in the drawer above him, and without enough consciousness his hand took a long time to find the handle to open it back up. As if lifting a heavy weight, his hand fell onto his lap before he tumbled forward onto the floor, face down, away from the world. Something pounded at the back of his head, something ran, something trickled. Yet, his body couldn’t respond more than to acknowledge the sensations, telling his body the only thing he could do not to worsen the situation would be to stay still. Don’t move.

  His eyes couldn’t see, but his ears against the floor heard the shuffling of shoes. Slow shuffling, until it stopped and his nose caught a whiff of wet leather. He imagined riding boots, well-worn hiking shoes, or maybe a cowboy had entered the house and these were part of his attire. His mind was waiting in space; between reality and unconsciousness, a place pleasant enough to stay in as he felt no pain, yet he still noticed his surroundings.

  The boot then nudged his body in different ways, rolling over him, pushing down, kicking him like he was a dummy for testing. His mind held him there, in the space in between.

  Then it whispered, “heard your dad said you were a piece of shit.” Then nothing again, the voice swept around his ears, entered his brain, but was gone just as fast. It wasn’t a voice, they were mere words draped in fog. “I wouldn’t disagree,” it swooped by him again, but was gone the same. Something trickled slowly by his ear, ran down the skin of his cheek and disappeared from his senses. “You’re ruining the floor, unless you want to stain it in red,” there they were again, the words of fog.

  Something touched the back of his head moving him further into darkness, the skin moved, pulled, and pinched. Darkness secluded him, drew him in deeper, until nothing else but his own heartbeat echoed inside him. Was he alive? Was he dead? He didn’t know.

  A puff of air pushed into his lungs and his body welcomed him to the reality of a very dark kitchen. He wasn’t sure how long he had been gone from the world, but was thankful to notice himself breathing once more. The floor pushing back against his lungs as his chest stayed flat against the wooden boards. The smell of leather seemed gone from the periphery of his nose, and a while later his ears caught the slow ticking from the old winding clock in the living room.

  With consciousness he noticed the pain return, a pain he knew he wasn’t able to describe on a scale. It was there, it wouldn’t go away, and it didn’t subside. For long he just lay there, acclimating his body and mind to the pain that sat like a knife at the back of his head. And suddenly it hit him - maybe it was a knife? Maybe a blade was in fact chiseled in through the bone of his skull, waiting until he bled to death, or died from the pain itself.

/>   With anxiety building, his arm made an attempt to move so that his hand could brave a touch at the back of his head, but as the muscles trying to lift his shoulder started to cooperate another pain so extreme blurred out his newfound consciousness and he was back in the shadows once more.

  “Wayne, can you hear me?” a whisper from space circled the inside of his head. “Wayne, can you hear me?” Its sound stronger this time. Until his ears popped and a finger pried open his eyelid, letting the light from the kitchen ceiling blind him. “Wayne, thank God you’re awake! Who…” His voice started to rumble inside his chest but didn’t have time to reach the top of his lungs and come out of his mouth before his eyes witnessed what had earlier given his nostrils a taste of wet leather.

  He watched the figure swing something at the woman next to him, feeling her fall onto the imaginary knife he guessed was sitting at the back of his head, and once again darkness engulfed him and in quietness he left the two figures around him. Left the kitchen behind, left the smell of leather and pain for a nothingness he had grown to know through the night.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The quiet darkness that had engulfed him seemed to disintegrate ever so slowly, only to be replaced by rows and rows of bright lights from above. They moved fast, he noticed, almost making him drowsy and lulling him back to sleep. But every time his eyelids felt droopy and he felt the need to close them something would nudge his shoulder or pinch the skin of his arm, and his eyes would once more witness the lights. Bright lights. Nauseating lights.

  “Blood pressure low,” words made their way through the drowsiness and entered his ear, yet he didn’t quite here. Like being underwater. Like drowning. Maybe he was drowning, he thought. Unfortunately, if this was it, it felt surprisingly good.

  Another flash of light shone closer to his eye this time, fingers prying it open. Like a toddler he attempted to shake his head in discomfort without success.

  “Wayne, stay with us,” another dull noise trying to invade his space. His mind tried to push it away, he was tired and wanted to sleep.

  More voices, more disturbance, more lifting and tugging at his body. His body a butterfly in a cocoon trying to spread his arms and fly away to something new, something beyond this.

  “Wayne, don’t close your eyes, stay with us.”

  * * *

  “Mr. Matthews?” a dark rumbled shook him and made the railings on the bed rattle as it woke him to life.

  “Is it God?” he heard himself whisper.

  “In your case, fortunately not. I’m Melanie Orchard, I work with your friend Brody Jensen. I’m with the police.”

  “You made me think I was dead.”

  “You’re not dead. You’re at the intensive care unit at a hospital in Wicheta, and because you finally answered me, I can, with relief, tell the staff you have woken up and are certainly not deceased.”

  “I didn’t recognize your voice.”

  “I understand, because we’ve never met before. I do appreciate the comparison to God, I’ll put that on my next resume, should I ever write one.”

  “God or Goddess, I just wanted to know if I was still alive or not.”

  “That’s a valid question. Is there anyone you’d like me to contact for you? A spouse, parents, friends?”

  “No,” he whispered and kept his eyes closed. Moving anything but the vocal cords and lips proved too much.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Christine, yes, maybe call Christine. Brody knows.”

  “Mr. Matthews, Brody is with Ms. Christine at the moment.”

  “What?”

  “Um, Mr. Matthews…”

  “Yes…” he breathed impatiently.

  “Christine has several limbs broken and was hanged from the ceiling inside your garage, left to die, had it not been for Brody returning to your home the night after the party.”

  “Had it not been for Brody, you say…”

  “Ms. Christine is at the hospital in Primrose Valley getting her left arm in a cast, and is resting from the events. Brody is with her at the moment, sir.”

  “Why am I not there?” his frustration strained his body and he started breathed heavily, releasing a moan.

  “Well, sir, your injury was of another kind and needed other type of treatments.”

  “What?” his left hand attempted a slight move only to fall exhausted onto his chest.

  “You have a skull fracture, Mr. Matthew, and…” she stopped short.

  “Go on,” his whisper motioned.

  “Your skull was divided in half at the back, and then sewn back together.”

  “I don’t remember…”

  “An axe was used, sir, an axe from your shed. Sewing needles from Harold’s were used to reattach the skin to your scalp. Very poorly done, sir, will leave a big scar.”

  “I remember the sudden hit, and the smell of leather.”

  “You’ve been asleep for five days, sir, and I have been watching you since you arrived here. Brody has, as I said, stayed with Ms. Christine.”

  “Who would dream up a vicious act like this?”

  A breath escaped Melanie’s lungs. “You know her as Mary, sir.”

  “Mary? My Mary?”

  “Mary has an admiration for knives,” Melanie answered causally, as if reading random items of a grocery list.

  “What are you talking about, my Mary?!” his lungs coughed draining his energy.

  “Familiar with a woman named Lucy?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Took a vicious tumble down the stairs only to meet her last minutes as a stab victim. Sounds like the fall was something similar to what happened to Ms. Christine as well, in Mary’s presence, “ she confirmed then continued. “Your physician, which you visited several towns away from Primrose Valley…”

  “Fatality by stab wounds, I heard,” Wayne cut her off.

  “Gardening scissors, sir. Awful. Apparently, the doctor had a hard time covering up the correct result to the paternity test, thus had to be silenced.”

  “Oh, my God. Seem as if I’m the cause of all these… casualties.”

  “You’re not, sir. Only someone with a disturbed and sick mind would interpret your slight annoyance with your neighbor’s dog as a reason to end its days on earth.”

  “No,” his voice stunned.

  “Yes, sorry sir. Ms. Mary was not only pretending to be your daughter in an attempt to get closer to you, but also spreading despair with mischievous deeds along her way. She already confessed, sir, with nothing but a smile, pride shining on her delicate face for being capable of such crimes without being detected for so long. She’s said you betrayed her, sir. Is that correct?” Melanie leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

  “Betrayed her?”

  “Rumor has it you didn’t pay enough attention to her. She also mentioned seeing you at Lucy’s housel or the slut’s house, as she named it, several times during the week when you were dating. She said you were a selective man-whore then as you are now and paid as much attention to her as one would a dying fly.”

  “Dating Lucy… that was over a decade ago. If not more. But I’ve met her, Mary, you say?”

  “Not sure, sir, I only know she lived across the street and up the hill from Lucy. I’ve been over there. Her bedroom window in the old house faced the front porch of Lucy’s childhood home.”

  He felt his pulse accelerate, and suddenly his mouth was a dry as a desert. “Foster Street. House number forty-two,” he mumbled and closed his eyes. His chanting began in a whisper, but escalated quickly. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Vicious, mad, and oh so scary,” he repeated in delusion. Over and over again, until Melanie pushed back her metal chair, scraping the cement floor covered in white sterile linoleum and rushed out in the corridor, waving down two nurses for assistance.

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Vicious, mad, and oh so scary,” the noise echoed the walls of the hospital, calling attention not only to employees but patients in close pr
oximity.

  “He will be out for a while, Officer. Please refrain from anymore of your questioning until his mental state has stabilized and his wounds heal better. At the point where he is now, we’re just happy all nerve cells, eyesight, and body movements are functioning. The head wound was deep, poorly stitched back together, and was without doubt made to cause as much trauma as possible,” Dr. Sanford cornered Melanie at the water fountain at the end of the corridor.

  “Absolutely, I have no further questions at the moment. There’s already been a confession.”

  “If I should be perfectly honest,” Dr. Sanford voice lowered to a mumble. “If the other person hadn’t come in and distracted the offender, Mr. Matthews in there would have had two skulls instead of one.” Her feet moved her quickly down the same corridor she had just rushed up and left Melanie alone by the still trickling water fountain. She looked down and released its button with her hand and wiped the side of her mouth.

  Once more the long corridor of the hospital lay silent, and with soft steps she slowly walked back to room thirty-four and pushed the door open enough to slide in easily and without detection from the nurse’s station at the other end.

  The room looked different from just a few minutes earlier. Lights were off, and the only brightness entering the tomb-like space came from the small gaps between the tall blinds covering the sole window of Wayne’s confinement.

  She stared at him for a moment, a few steps away from the bed, and found it difficult to believe someone as dainty as Mary could cause such tremendous pain and destruction to such a large man’s body. Goliath and David came to mind, as she knew he would have been able to defend himself had he known she was right behind him in the kitchen, about to swing the heaviness of the axe to the back of his head. But he hadn’t stood a chance from her quiet approach.

  Chapter Thirty

  Brody was at his wits end making sure Wayne stayed as far away from Christine as possible. The last weeks had brought a more agitated Wayne, frustrated and angry over the bond Christine had cut off, leaving him to fend not only with his own recovery, but with his feelings.