The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) (9 page)

I look at him, not believing the words that I’m hearing. Fine, if that’s how he wants to paint all of this, then so be it. I push myself off the hood of the Shelby and stand toe to toe with him. I look at him without a drop of respect inside of me. This guy is an asshole and a piece of shit. If he wants to make it look like I’m the killer behind all of this, so be it. He can try all he wants, but I’m not going to fit in his little timeline. I stare at him without so much as a speck of fear in my demeanor. Because honestly, the common denominator here isn’t me. It’s Kelly. This bastard is trying its hardest to get to Kelly and if I don’t stop it, she’s going to become another one of its victims.

“You want the case?” I ask him with a furrow on my brow.

“I just want some answers from a cop that thinks he can play cowboy with a murder investigation,” Agent Halbert says out of the corner of his mouth like he’s in some sort of western. “I want to know why taxpayer dollars are being wasted on a CDC investigation into this school when it should be spent investigating you.”

“Well, partner,” I look at him with disdain. “Go ahead and find out. But I promise you, the killer is selecting its next victim and the more time you waste on me, the more bodies will fall and now that’s blood on your hands.”

“We’ll see,” Agent Halbert shrugs apathetically. “I have a sneaking suspicion that the killer isn’t working alone and we’ll see if the killer slips up now that you’re not in the investigation anymore.”

“No problem,” I growl. I turn and walk toward my car. If I’m not part of this investigation anymore, then there’s no reason for me to stick around. Pulling the door open, I can still feel Agent Halbert’s gaze still on me. “It’s all yours, Agent.”

“Wasn’t asking,” he answers. “Nice car.”

“Fuck you,” I answer, slamming the door behind me.

I don’t make it very far before my thoughts drift toward my daughter. Kelly is in great peril right now and with myself off the case, then it’s up to Agent Halbert to stop whatever this thing is. From my experience with both the demon and Halbert, he’s not going to stop it in time. I don’t think he’ll be able to draw the entity’s attention to possibly pull my daughter out of its gaze, and I don’t think it’ll stop working its way toward her. I feel sick, like I’ve failed on so many levels. Three dead, in a matter of minutes and all of it is on my hands because I was too slow to act. All of this, it
is
my doing. If I hadn’t antagonized the creature it might have remained on its calculated course through the city, killing slowly, without a purpose, but now I’ve done it. Now I’ve set it loose.

Pulling my cellphone out of my pocket, I know that I have to call her. I have to warn her.

“Hello?” She answers after three rings.

“Kelly, it’s your father,” I inform her.

“Hello, Steven,” she replies with a timid sort of apprehension in her voice. I don’t like it. It makes me feel like a monster prying into her life. “I was meaning to call you,” she says after a moment of sharp silence. “I’ve heard about the killings at the school. It sounds horrible. I’ve been crying all afternoon. I knew all three of the victims. I can’t believe this is happening, Steven. He really is after me, isn’t he? Are you still at the school?”

“No,” I answer. I look in the rearview mirror, I can’t even see it in the distance. “I just left,” I lie to her, not wanting her to know that I’ve given up the case to the FBI. There’s a moment where I try to picture her face, picture what she looks like right now. I can’t. I can’t even imagine what my own daughter looks like. I decide that I don’t want to lie to her. I don’t want to fill her life with more reasons to suspect that I am not an honorable man or a man she can trust. There are enough of those reasons plaguing her. I stare at the trunk of the car in front of me, my eyes going up to the rear windshield. There’s a white picture of Calvin pissing on the cross. “They’re calling in the FBI now,” I tell her, twisting things only slightly. I don’t want her to think that I was kicked off and a suspect now. “I’m probably just going to be acting as support now.”

“Oh,” she answers. “Well, maybe that’s a good thing.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly, not trying to frighten her. “I don’t think you should stay at home. I think you should go to a motel. Don’t tell me, don’t tell anyone. If you check in under a false identity and pay with cash, I’m sure they won’t ask any questions about it. I just don’t trust that the FBI are going to move as quickly as we were trying. It’ll take some time for them to pick up momentum.”

“Sure,” she answers and I feel a wave of relief washing over me. I was so scared that she might try to resist, to fight the idea. “Anything you think I should do, I mean, you’re the expert in this sort of stuff, right?”

I hope so. “How is everything? Are you keeping it together?” I ask her, wanting to know how she’s holding up.

“So far,” she answers. “I’ve set up the arrangements for the funeral. It’s going to be at Mom’s old Lutheran Church. I’ve set it for Friday morning. If you want to stop by or something.”

I take a moment to think about what I’m supposed to say. Visions of Kate and me on our honeymoon in another life flash through my mind at whirlwind speed. I blink, looking at that same picture of Calvin pissing on the cross. “Absolutely,” I tell her. “I’ll try my hardest to stop by.”

IX

There is a moment where I think that all of this is a lie, that all of this is just a distant memory and that I’m just going to shake my head and all of this is going to turn out to be a dream, a daydream that I fell into and that I’m just waiting, sitting in the middle of Mr. Yukon’s Social Studies class waiting for the clock to bleed away the seconds. But when I do shake my head, I’m here, sitting in front of my computer, looking at the blank page on my processor, wondering what it is that I’m going to say. What should I say? What should someone in my position say about all of this? I’m not in some sort of daydream. I’m in the real world and I’m witnessing all of this. Well, I did witness all of it. Now, I’m here, waiting for someone to tell me why. Why did all of this have to happen today?

I had started out the day with everything going normally. Everything had started out just as all the previous mornings had. My father left before I even woke up and my mother just sat at the kitchen table, next to the cracked window, smoking her cigarette, pretending like no one can smell the filth on her. She thinks that she’s fooling my father, but all of us know better. Everyone knows better. Deep down inside, she has to know that he knows. My father is past caring though. I don’t know how parents are supposed to act, but I know that it isn’t like this. They’re supposed to love each other, not endure the moments that they’re together, waiting for them to pass so they can squeeze in a few moments of precious alone time.

In her old pink bathrobe, stained with makeup, and coffee, and cigarette ashes, my mom stares out the window, waiting for a glimpse of something interesting. I don’t know what she is always waiting for, but I don’t think it ever comes. She reminds me of Rapunzel gazing out of her tower, but the hero she’s waiting for is long gone. I made my breakfast alone, oatmeal and toast. I eat it at the island on my stool, listening to her take drag after drag off of the cigarette before exhaling out the window, the rhythm of my entire morning. Finishing up the last of my homework after I eat, I pack my bag and make my way through the living room. Shouting my farewell to my mother, I often wonder what it is she does when I’m gone. I wonder what it is that occupies her time, when she showers, when she eats, when she leaves that window.

Going to the bus stop, I waited while the trio of usual girls whispered among themselves, hardly even noticing when I showed up. They never even acknowledge my presence. When our fifth member showed up, his eyes were on his portable gaming system, never even looking up. He has to operate like a master navigator with just his peripherals. He never puts that thing down. When Donny shows up, he starts heckling and harassing the girls, like he always does. This is his ritual, down-talking them, calling them names, and insulting everything they find interesting. I don’t know why he does this, but it’s entertaining, since the girls get offended easily. I know he’s an asshole, but so are they. All they do is gossip and insult everyone. The difference is Donny does it to their faces.

Getting onto the bus, I sat down next to Bill. Or maybe it’s Billy? I’ve sat next to him for two years, yet still don’t even know his name. We didn’t say much at first. It was just another day and neither of us were really excited for going back to school. It’s kind of like we’re slaves, being called back to the fields. All that’s changed is the scenery. We chatted a bit about a zombie show that we’re both watching and where we think this season is taking us, what direction the characters are going in, and when the next death will be. Other than that, we’re pretty silent for the most part. That is, until we get to school and we both make our way toward the lockers.

That’s when I saw Alice Wilson. To be honest, the best days are always when I see Alice. Actually, I seek her out whenever I’m having a bad day, just a glimpse of her changes everything. There are obvious social hierarchies in the school and Alice is definitely on top. I would see her with all the other pretty senior girls and I would think that one day I’d be with a girl just like her. I would have her and we’d fall in love and we’d get married and have a beautiful life together. I knew that she was the kind of girl that I wanted to marry, a smart, kind, and moral woman. I know that she wasn’t like the girl that they all talked about. They would call her a slut and a bitch, but I know that just wasn’t her. I know that she had depth and that there was more to her than just petty school drama and politics. She had the most amazing body too. All of her clothes just seemed to be custom made for her body, hanging perfectly on her or looking like they were actually painted on her body. There were some times when I wanted to go up and touch her, just to make sure that they weren’t. All I wanted ever was to be friends with her, to hear her laugh, to have her want to be around me, but that was never going to happen. Alice was part of the upper echelon and I hadn’t paid my dues as a sophomore. As an eleventh grader, I was still too beneath her. I was still too little for her to even notice me. To her, I was just a dot on the distant horizon. Seniors can’t be bothered with sophomores.

But when I saw her today, I couldn’t help but think that she looked like a supermodel. I saw her talking with Kim and Christy, her two closest friends. They were bad influences on her and they always made her go to these terrible parties. I wonder if there’s something I could have done, could have said to make them better. I doubt it. She never would have listened to me. She would have ignored me like it was supposed to be. I’m not supposed to interfere with their lives. So I would watch them from a distance, wondering what their stories and adventures entailed, imagining myself there among them. Honestly, I would give my left arm just to kiss her once.

Watching her talking to them, I saw the bad man enter the building. I don’t know who he was but in my heart now, I know that he was a very bad man. He was responsible for it. He’s the one that should be held accountable for everything that has been done. They should kill him. They should throw him in a gas chamber and crank it all the way up. They should hang, draw, and quarter him. They should do all these things to him. They should make him suffer so much that when he gets to hell, he’ll be happy that his punishment is over. I curl my hands up, wanting to punch him until they’re raw and bloody and his face is caved in through the back of his skull. I want him as dead as a plank. I want him and everyone he loves dead.

He’s the only one I have to blame. It was he who chased her, made her run down the hall, shoving others out of the way. She’d elbowed all of them so viciously, but she had to. She had to escape from him. She had to do everything in her power to stay out of his reach. I know she had to, I can feel it in my gut. When she ran by me, I could smell her perfume. It smelled like the greatest scent ever, sweet and sexy. I watched her running, all the way up to the moment she tripped. People said that she lowered her head and slammed into the door on her own, but I know that she tripped. I know that I saw her trip. She never would have done that. Why would she have killed herself? Alice had everything to live for. Alice had the entire world eating out of her palm and she was the benevolent kind of dictator that everyone loved, except for a few people who tarnished her good name. I watched her trip and I saw as her body crumpled against the door. The bad man was shouting, pushing everyone out of the way. He was going to hurt her. I know it. But I stood there, like a coward, watching him push through the crowd, shouting for her to stop. I stood there like a moron, a stupid moron who didn’t know what to do.

I tried to get through to see her as the gap in the hall closed and everyone descended upon her location, taking pictures, pictures that I’m now looking at on Facebook and Twitter. I’m looking at pictures of the most beautiful girl in the world, dead on the floor. Some of the jerks were taking pictures of her exposed thong, trying to make a mockery out of her death.

They never understood her. They never understood everything that she stood for. They were all a bunch of ignorant savages, too stupid to see what it was that Alice stood for. As I look at the pictures, I feel like screaming. I feel like punching the screen and telling them all that they’re a bunch of retarded barbarians. How could they do this? How could they parade the queen of the school around online like some slain enemy sent to be put on display?

I need to talk to someone. I need to vent, but the world seems like it’s been lit ablaze and as the embers rise and the fires swirl around the growing darkness, the cracks and splits bleed, drowning everything that’s left in a deluge of a crimson tide. I look at the screen, wondering what’s left for me in the world. What’s left fighting for? What’s left to look forward to?

Reliving this over and over again isn’t working. I need to express myself to someone who actually listens to me and doesn’t just stare at me like an alien when I tell them what happened today at school. My dad didn’t even believe me until he got the email and the phone call from one of the counselors telling him that what I’d described to them was actually the truth. They, of course, weren’t saying the nature of or the purpose of the deaths at the school, but we all know better. All I know is that the moment I told them my tale and they got that phone call and email, they immediately started talking about their own days as if mine was of no consequence. Eventually they begin to compete about how bad their individual days had been and it escalates into their usual arguments. They start shouting at each other and I immediately know that I need to get out of here. I need to find someone else to vent my feelings to, but all I got was an online world full of slander, blasphemy, conspiracy theories, and hatred. I can’t stand any of it. It makes me sick. I try to think of someone, anyone I can talk to.

That’s when I picture Miss Larsen. Sweet, kind, considerate, Miss Larsen. She had been a student teacher last year in my English class, before she graduated. She came and stopped by our class before her graduation, thanking all of us for helping her in her final semester of college. Honestly, I thought it was the last time I would see floral summer dresses on her petite, soft figure. She was the kind of woman that always got ignored in the romantic comedies until the very end. I liked Miss Larsen. She always personalized her comments on my papers, telling me what I did great, what I needed to work on and what I do outstandingly. She had always been willing to listen to me when I was having a bad day. She was a good woman and an even better teacher. So I was naturally sad to see her go.

But earlier this year, at the start, I was excited to see that she had come back, but this time, she was a full-fledged teacher. She had her own classroom in the freshman hallway and I was so excited to see her. I must have talked to her for my entire first lunch, listening to her talk about how incredible her summer had been, how she’d gone to Chile and Peru. I liked her. She listened to me talk about how boring my summer was, how I missed school because at least I got out of the house. Closing my eyes, I know that if I could just find Miss Larsen, I could talk to her. I could tell her how I was feeling. I could tell her how terrible I feel about Alice dying and how it’s almost like the world has gotten colder and darker without Alice.

Turning to my computer again, I clear away the libel and blasphemy, pulling up Google and typing in Miss Larsen’s name. It takes a moment for me to narrow my search, sifting through all of the other, random names until I find an image of her, smiling her big, beaming smile. She’s the kind of woman that I associate with summer. She always has that sort of sunny demeanor that makes me feel better. Yes, I should go talk to her. I should find her and I should tell her everything.

I print off her address and stuff it into my pocket. Grabbing my cell and a backpack, I walk out of my bedroom, closing the door softly, trying to keep my parents from noticing me, but honestly, I think I could slam the doors and stomp down the hallway and that wouldn’t pull them away from their cooking TV show. I walk down the hallway and head for the garage.

“Where you going?” my dad shouts at me over his shoulder.

I’m caught off guard. This isn’t normal. They’re not supposed to notice me. They never notice me. I freeze, my fingers just inches from the door handle. I look over at him next to my mom on the couch, hidden in the dark recesses of the living room. His face is illuminated in the pale, blue glow of the TV and I feel like I’m looking into the face of a ghost. “I’m going to Peter’s house,” I tell him. “He needs to borrow my notes.”

“Okay,” my dad answers, completely oblivious to the fact that Peter moved away three years ago and that I’ve been using that same excuse since he packed up and left. I spent the night in the park one night, staring up at the stars, while they were under the impression that I was at Peter’s house. Honestly, I think sometimes that if I disappeared, they’d only notice when I’m supposed to be eighteen and moving out of the house. “Be back before ten.”

“Okay,” I answer before grabbing the door handle and twisting it, stepping out into the humid, baked garage that stinks of oil and musty cardboard boxes.