A Soul To Steal (12 page)

“Yes, I want a story,” Quinn said. “But I’ve given you no reason not to trust me. In fact, quite the opposite.”

“You can’t always bring that shit up,” he said. “You can’t keep using it on me.”

“Come on,
Gary
, I’m not using anything,” he said. “I’m just trying to get the story.”

There was a pause. Silence reigned and Quinn watched the clock on the wall move agonizingly forward a full minute before he talked again.

“What are they hiding?” he asked, when he could take it no longer.

“I don’t know,”
Gary
replied.

“But you know something,” Quinn said.

“The Kaulbach kid...”

Quinn let the pause come. He steeled himself to wait. If he hurried,
Gary
would realize he could just hang up the phone. Sometimes there was a magical effect on sources. If you ask a question, they feel compelled to answer it. But push it too far and you lose them. Quinn waited.

“He kept saying something,”
Gary
began again.

“What?”

“He kept saying, ‘I found her head. I found her head.’”

“Found who’s head?”

“Well, I finally asked him,”
Gary
said. “Look, I can’t be telling you this. This is my ass on the line.”

“Think about it Gary, why did they put you in charge today?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do,” Quinn said. “You hate reporters. You tell them nothing. You’ve made no secret about it. Stu doesn’t trust Tipper—he never did. He’ll leak. But you won’t.”

“Because they trust me,” Gary said. “And I'm betraying that...”

“No, because you got burned by Kyle and Summer,” Quinn said. “You said something off the record and they put it in their stories. But they don’t know about us. Why? Because I didn’t burn you. I went out of my way to protect your son and I didn’t have to. A cop’s kid dealing marijuana is a big story…”

“Shut up, okay?” Gary said. “You don’t have to remind me.”

“Kyle doesn’t know I talk to you—my own editor doesn’t know,” Quinn said.

This last part was a bold lie—Rebecca knew damn well who his source was. But she would never give it up.

“No one will know if you leak to me,” Quinn said. “You know you can trust me. They won’t know.”

“All right,” Gary said finally. “All right.”

“Tell me what you know,” Quinn said.

“They found a body, in the woods, on the gravel road between here and Waterford,” he said.

“Hearse Road?”

“Yeah,” Gary said.

“They found a body. Murdered?”

“She was decapitated, Quinn,” Gary said. “That kind of thing doesn’t tend to happen accidentally. The Kaulbach kid spilled the story along with his guts. The woman was missing a head—clean cut from her shoulders.”

Quinn felt a momentary stab of panic. In his head, an image played from his nightmare. The Horseman was bearing down on him, a sword in his hand, preparing to remove his head. He could feel the blade about to cut into his flesh.

Quinn pushed it away.

“And Kaulbach found the head,” he said.

“They were called out there to search,” Gary said. “Originally they wanted to have a whole pack do it, but they stopped.”

“Why?” Quinn asked.

“Because they’re scared,” Gary said. “Scared this isn't a murderous lover or something...”

“Scared it’s the Horseman,” Quinn said.

“Yeah,” Gary said, and then added, “Wait. What? The Horseman? Who the hell is the Horseman?”

“No one,” Quinn said quickly. “I sometimes get my serial killers mixed up.”

“I'm not going to say who I was thinking of,” Gary said.

“Lord Halloween,” Quinn said. “That’s who they are worried about.”

“Look, I was truthful at the beginning here,” Gary said. “I don't know much. We don't know that it is that guy at all. Hell, some people still even think it really was Holober. But even if it wasn’t… He has been gone 12 years, for Christ's sake. It’s just…”

“Just what?” Quinn asked.

“The brutality of it is unusual for this town, you know that. And with this time of year..."

“It isn’t hard to jump to conclusions,” Quinn said. “So are they going to talk about it?”

“Are you nuts?” Gary asked. “If I so much as mention that you are inquiring about a headless woman in the woods, what the hell do you think they will say? They’ll clam up.”

“So how do I get the story, Gary?”

“That’s not my problem,” Gary said. “I shouldn’t have told you this much. They’ll find out who leaked it.”

“No they won’t,” Quinn said.

“They will...”

“They will if you run around acting guilty,” Quinn said. “Don’t do that. Just act like everything is normal. Just be cool.”

“Easy for you to say,” Gary said grumpily.

“Look, I appreciate what you’ve told me...”

“Just don’t screw me over,” Gary said. “All right? Just don’t screw me over.”

And with that, he hung up, and Quinn was left in silence.

He looked at the clock. It was still early in the morning and no one else was here. And he had the story of a lifetime.

Almost.

There were two concerns. The first was the vision of his nightmare intruding on reality. The idea that this was the work of a Washington Irving character was absurd and yet Quinn couldn’t help but wonder about it. A headless corpse, days after he had been dreaming about a headless rider who enjoys taking trophies. It unnerved him. But he pushed it to the back of his mind. Dream phantoms don’t kill people.

The second problem was more banal. He needed confirmation. Regardless of how it works in the movies, a one-source story wasn’t going to fly at the
Chronicle
. In theory, Gary could be making stuff up or have his facts confused. Quinn trusted him, but he wasn’t enough. Considering the return of Lord Halloween would panic just about everyone, he had to make sure the story was 100% solid.

But Quinn also knew he could not call the known world. Doing so could alert Summer or someone even more important to what’s going on. This was a major scoop—likely the biggest one of his career—and he would be damned if he was going to let it get away. How he acted would be critical. The police were trying to keep this quiet. That was fine by him. The
Chronicle
wouldn’t publish for two days—a lifetime for a story like this.

If whatever was going to happen broke today, it would be old news by the time the
Chronicle
came out. But if the police wanted to keep a lid on this… that changed things.

He had to be careful, building the case so it wouldn’t break until precisely the right time. This had to work but he was going to need help. He dialed Janus’ number.

He was so busy the next few hours, he didn’t even see when Kate walked in. Only when his stomach started rumbling at 12:30 did he look up and notice her there. She seemed absorbed in whatever she was doing.

He got up and crossed over to her desk.

“Hey,” he said, in what he hoped was a casual way.

She looked up at him.

“Hey stranger,” she replied. “I saw you over there working the phones. What has you so busy?”

Quinn thought for a moment. It was a risk to bring her in on a story like this. He really knew very little about her. On the other hand, she had been a reporter at a good city paper and Laurence had mentioned something about police beat experience. She might be an asset. Quinn glanced around nervously.

“How about we discuss it during lunch?” he asked.

She chuckled.

“Now I really am curious,” she said. She picked up her purse and grabbed her jacket.

“Where to?” she asked.

Chapter 8

Janus was standing in the entrance to La Villa Roma when they walked in.

“I figured I would find you here,” Janus said.

Quinn nodded and they walked over to a booth. The table still had the remnants of its previous occupant’s lunch on it, but Quinn barely noticed. Janus picked it up and set it on a nearby table before settling into the booth across from Quinn and Kate.

“What did you find?” he asked Janus.

“There’s a lot of activity,” Janus said. “They chased me away in a goddamned hurry.”

“Figures,” Quinn said.

“Wait a second,” Kate began. “What’s going on?”

“Can we trust her?” Janus asked, and Quinn could tell he wasn’t kidding. For all of Janus’ swearing and sometimes obnoxious behavior, there was no one else you wanted on your team. On stories like this, he was the most professional photographer you could ever want.

Quinn caught his breath and opened his mouth to speak.

“What do you think?” Kate asked, and looked at both of them slowly. Her gaze seemed to pierce right through Quinn. “On Saturday, you guys were all joking and now Janus is looking as serious as I’ve ever seen him. You can trust me. Now please tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I think we can,” Quinn said and looked back at Janus. He nodded.

“All right,” he said.

Quinn kept his voice low as he related to Kate his conversation with Gary that morning, although he did not tell them his source.

 “So who were you on the phone with the rest of the morning?” Kate asked Quinn.

“Right now just making the rounds on the stalker,” he said. “I’m trying to find out why they canceled the press conference.”

“But you know that…”

“Yeah, but they don’t know that I know,” he said. “I wanted to find out what the cops have told some of the heads of the citizen patrols.”

“I doubt very much they told them there was a dead body in the woods,” she said.

“Nope,” Quinn replied. “But they were stupid enough to tell them different stories. Bill Browson, who heads up the Leesburg Family Council, was told that Sheriff Brown had to testify in court unexpectedly.  But Rev. Athearn was told that there was simply no new information. They both might be true, but I doubt it.”

“Sloppy,” Kate said.

“Yeah, because they had to do it fast,” Janus said.

“Why are you wasting time on this?” she asked. “Why not just confront the police?”

“I could,” he said. “But what would that do? The story needs time to simmer. The cops think they can keep a lid on this, but there is no way this doesn’t start to leak out. Sooner or later, something always does. The more people that know, the easier getting confirmation will be. If I ask too many questions too soon, the right people are going to get scared and clam up. I want to see how many times I get the same story.”

“But if you just asked…”

“This isn’t Ohio, Kate,” Janus said. “These cops don’t like or trust us very much. They’re secretive down to their core. A lot happens in this town they don’t like to talk about. The first time Lord Halloween struck, a lot of people lost faith in the police and they never got it back. It’s created a siege mentality at the police force.”

“But you could force them to talk, just by asking a lot of questions,” she said.

“If I do that today, they could find my source,” he said. “And that won’t help me. Let them see me asking everyone in town—they will hear about it. They’ll get nervous and when I call them tomorrow they won’t ask who gave me the story. They’ll figure I pieced it together.”

“But what more do you know?” Kate asked.

Quinn gestured at Janus.

“He’s been my eyes in the sky,” he replied. “I’m waiting for his report.”

“Quinn called me this morning and had me head out to the site,” he explained to Kate.

“Where the body supposedly is?” she asked.

“We didn’t know exactly where, but…” Quinn said.

“We know where now,” Janus said.

 “What did you find?” she asked.

“The cops are swarming around the woods along a side road between Leesburg and Waterford. They’ve roped off a whole chunk of it. It isn’t very well traveled, but…”

 “Not exactly subtle,” she said.

“They never are,” Quinn replied. “Secretive, but not subtle.”

“I got there and parked far enough away,” Janus said. “I started taking photos pretty far back. I have a good telescope lens, so I could see quite a few uniforms combing the woods.”

“Did they see you?”

“Not at first,” he said. “I got pretty close before anyone came over to me. When they did, though, you would have thought I killed the lady.”

“What happened?”

“A whole bunch of cops—like five or six—started coming toward me and shouting and shit,” he said. “I switched the film because I figured they might try and hurt the camera, but they weren’t that dumb. Instead they just started trying to intimidate me.”