Helens-of-Troy (25 page)

Roy could hear Purdy’s cruiser arriving
on the scene. He wondered what had happened with the Stan
situation.

It was an unfortunate circumstance to
be certain, but Purdy had no choice but to keep Stan with him as he
headed out to assist Chief Cohen. He hadn’t run into Jacey Sumner
or anyone else he would have trusted with the boy. Luckily, about a
mile out of town the country station had faded. “Say goodnight to
Carrie,” he told Stan, who immediately went out like a light. Purdy
wished he had thought of turning the radio off earlier.

He parked the car far enough away from
the farm that the boy couldn’t see what was happening if he
happened to wake up. The row of cedars Ralph had planted decades
ago as a wind barrier screened the driveway from the side road. He
tested the rear doors. Stan was safely in lock-down. He took an
investigation kit from the trunk and went to meet Roy.

“How bad is it?” Purdy
asked.

“Bag Tara’s jacket and gloves,” the
Chief said without answering his question.

“All right.”

Tara gladly threw the soiled clothes
into the bag that Purdy held open. He marked it as
evidence.

“Can I go now?” she asked.

“Not until we check the house,” Roy
said.

“But I’ll freeze my ass off,” she
whined. “I’ll be okay, Ralph’s other dogs are in there.”

Purdy pulled a tiny emergency blanket
from his bag. “Throw this on. It’ll keep you warm
enough.”

“I left the back door of my cruiser
unlocked,” the Chief offered. “Go sit in it until we come to get
you.”

“All right,” Tara sighed, secretly
welcoming any chance to escape the scene.

He motioned for Purdy to move towards
the fridge. “Don’t worry about Wildman. The ambulance is on the
way. He’s passed out again, but his injuries are the least of our
problems here. I need you to take pictures of the fridge and its
contents.”

“Gotcha,” the officer said, as he
walked over to the toppled appliance. He let out a low whistle.
“Christ, it’s Kevin Clark. I play poker with his dad once a month.
What the hell happened?”

“Tara says she found them like this.
Kevin dead in the fridge and Ralph pinned underneath it,” Roy
answered.

“Do the Clark’s even know he’s missing?
We never got a call.”

“We never initially got a call about
Brooke either, strangely enough.”

Purdy began to carefully take pictures
of the fridge, Ralph Wildman and the surrounding area.
Meticulously, he photographed every inch of the crime scene,
reciting a few prayers under his breath as he did so.

“What did you say, Purd?” the Chief
asked. Before his officer had a chance to answer, Roy’s cell phone
interrupted their conversation. “Cohen,” he said. He listened for a
moment. “Are you serious?” He rubbed his forehead with his fist as
he tried to digest the information he was hearing. He put the phone
back in his pocket. “This gets stranger by the minute. Purd, do me
a favor. Make sure you’ve got few shots of Kevin’s
neck.”

“I already did. Why is his neck of
particular interest?”

Roy looked at him solemnly, “that was
the Coroner on the line. He says he did a preliminary on Brooke and
her body has been completely drained of blood.”

“What?”

“There was a slight mishap with it when
the paramedics unloaded it from the ambulance. He didn’t elaborate,
but apparently she didn’t bleed. Whatever happened, it made him
take a closer look at her before he went home for the night. He
said he saw two puncture marks on the left side of her neck. That’s
it. No severed artery, no major contusion. Nothing that would cause
blood loss of the magnitude that has occurred. They’ll do a
complete autopsy tomorrow but so far he thinks she hadn’t been
beaten, and she hadn’t been sexually molested. She had however, for
all intents and purposes been partially embalmed.”

The look on Purdy’s face said it all.
“You can’t be serious.”

“That’s what I said to him,” Roy
shrugged. “But that’s what the chop man found.”

Purdy looked at his commanding officer.
“This still doesn’t mean the older Lachey kid’s story has an ounce
of truth to it.”

“Tara confirmed that Ryan went to the
creek because of a dream Ellie LaRose had,” the Chief said as he
walked back over to Kevin’s body for another look. “So he might
have just happened upon her like he said.”

He looked at the boy, hoping for some
clue as to what had happened, as if Kevin was going to get out of
the fridge and tell him. “Work with me for a moment, Purd ...did
you notice anything strange?”

“Stranger than Kevin Clark dead in a
fridge?”

“See, that’s the first problem for me.
I might have bought it as an accident if it had been someone
Brooke’s age and they crawled inside the old fridge, the door shut
and the death was due to asphyxiation. Kevin is...was...seemed to
be... a smart kid. I remember that about him. He was full of
questions about Mr. Wagner’s sudden passing on Helena’s porch the
other night. He wouldn’t have climbed into the fridge. Someone put
him there.”

“Agreed.”

“I also think someone brought him here.
It’s nine miles into town. Bit of a stretch for a nine-year-old to
bike ride, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m following you so far.”

“Another thing I don’t get is this...
Kevin was a fat little kid. But I ask you...the boy in the
fridge...does he look fat?”

Purdy studied the torso. “I don’t know
about fat...a little pudgy maybe.”

“So how does a fat kid become just kind
of pudgy?”

“There is no politically correct way to
answer that.”

The Chief knelt down beside the fridge
to take a closer look. The initial shock of seeing the dead boy had
worn off, and now he was able to view the body more objectively.
“Look at his face. It looks drained.”

“Well, it’s safe to say he’s been
through a lot,” Purdy offered.

“Not drained emotionally, I mean
drained as in missing fluid. Kevin had pinchable cheeks the last
time I saw him. There’s nothing to pinch now.”

Purdy took a closer look at Kevin’s
face. “You’ve lost me. What are you getting at?”

“How much blood does a human body
hold?” Roy asked.

“Seven or eight percent of its total
body weight.”

The Chief looked at Purdy. “I didn’t
expect you to actually know that. I was throwing it out as a
rhetorical question.”

“I watch a lot of cable,” Purdy
shrugged. “If you’re wondering if the coroner is going to find
Kevin’s body missing all his blood, I doubt it. His face may be
appearing gaunt because of his position at the time of death.
Fluids tend to run south.”

The chief put on gloves and reached for
Kevin’s hand. He pressed the child’s fingernail, hoping to see his
nail bed flush with blood.

“That won’t work,” Purdy said. “He
doesn’t have any blood pressure anymore.”

“Exactly how much cable do you watch,
Doctor Purdy?”

“Apparently more than you
do.”

“I know he has no pulse. I was just
trying to confirm my suspicions about how long he’s been dead. His
muscles are still relaxed. There’s no sign of rigor mortis. That
leads me to think his heart stopped beating within the hour.” He
pushed Kevin’s hair back from his neck. No marks were
evident.

“That could mean the killer is still
hanging around. Even watching us,” Purdy noted. He looked uneasily
at the farmland between himself and the creek.

“Maybe. Ralph’s pegged under the
fridge. It’s possible that he killed Kevin, stuffed the boy inside
it and then got himself caught underneath trying to make his
getaway. But it’s not very likely.”

The ambulances could now be heard in
the distance. The Chief put their e.t.a. at a less than five
minutes.

“Are you going to leave Tara here or do
you want me to bring her to the station after the paramedics are
done?” Purdy asked.

“No, I’d rather keep her away from Ryan
right now. I don’t want the two of them talking and coming up with
a different version of this situation.”

“Go home, get some sleep. I can finish
this up.”

Cohen laughed uneasily. “There’s not
much chance of sleeping tonight. I'll tell you what. I’ll take Stan
over to Helena’s. He’ll be as safe there as anywhere. Can you head
over to the Clarks? It might be easier coming from you.”

“It’s never easy," Purdy sighed. “And
it might be a bit late for you to go over to Helena’s.”

“Some things can’t wait,” Roy said.
“I’ve got a few questions for her granddaughter,” he said as he
started down the driveway towards his car.

“Do you think she has something to do
with this?” Purdy asked, walking with him.

“Ellie LaRose, Tara Wildman, Ryan
Lachey, Jacey Sumner, Tom Williams...they all have something to do
with this. I just don’t know what.”

Roy opened the rear door of his
cruiser. “Tara, the ambulance is here. I want you to ride with your
dad to the hospital. I know it’s late, but I don’t want you here at
the house alone.”

“Surprisingly, I don’t have a problem
with that,” Tara answered. “I’ll go over to my aunts
afterwards.”

“I just remembered I’ve got a
sweatshirt in the back of the trunk,” Roy said, opening it. He
handed her his police sponsored softball hoodie. “It’s clean. The
game was cancelled. It’ll do you for now. Throw it on. Keep
warm.”

“Thanks,” Tara said sincerely,
accepting the sweater.

It was another ten minutes before the
police felt confident enough to leave the paramedics on their own.
They made sure Tara was safely inside the transport vehicle and
Ralph and Kevin had gone their separate ways before they were
finally able to check inside the house. There was no sign of a
struggle within the Wildman home, and they were confident the dogs
would have scared off any stranger hiding within it.

“Okay,” Roy said, locking up the house.
“Let’s get out of here.”

“Stan’s got to be wondering what the
hell the commotion was,” Purdy commented. “He couldn’t have slept
through all this.”

“I’ll come with you in case he asks too
many questions,” the Chief said. “My kids were young once. I’ve had
practice lying to them about what goes on in our job.”

The two officers turned out onto the
side road and immediately reached for their firearms. In the
darkness they could see a figure attempting to open the locked rear
passenger door of Purdy’s police cruiser. The car that held Stan
Lachey.

Purdy pulled his gun from his
holster.

“Freeze,” he commanded.
“Police.”

The figure turned towards them and
laughed.

“It’s a freaking’ teenager,” Purdy
noted, as he released the safety on his pistol. Given the murder
scene he had just left, he was taking no chances.

“Step away from the vehicle,” the Chief
said, also aiming his gun towards the teen. “I won’t ask you
twice.”

“What makes you think I’m going to
listen to you now?” the voice said.

“Do we know this kid?” Purdy
asked.

The Chief thought about it. The voice
could have been one of thousand voices he heard any given week. But
the way he laughedmocking themwith a depraved chuckle, well, the
Chief knew he had heard that chuckle before. He was trying to
remember where. The brief second he contemplated that thought was
enough for the teenager to vanish.

“Did you see that?” Purdy asked. “He’s
gone. He was standing in front of us one second and gone the
next.”

“I did see that,” the Chief
said.

The kept their firearms in front of
them as they slowly approached the vehicle, Cohen taking the left
side, Purdy the right.

Stan Lachey was in the back seat,
wide-awake and crying.

“Get out of the car, Stan,” the Chief
said. “You’re coming with me.” He reached in and took the boy first
into his arms, then taking his hand as he set him down on his feet.
“Are you okay?”

“He said he was going to get me,” Stan
said. “He said he was going to take me away and eat me.”

“Nobody is going to eat you,
Stan.”

“He said he killed Kevin and he was
going to kill me next.”

Cohen looked at Purdy. While there was
a chance Stan Lachey could have figured out that something bad
happened at Wildman’s farm, there was no chance he could have known
it was Kevin’s body they had just found. “Did he say his name,
Stan? Can you describe him close-up? Could you draw us a
picture?”

“He said he was my nightmare. He was
dark and scary,” Stan said. “And he smelled bad. He always smells
bad.”

“Always? You’ve seen him before?” the
Chief asked.

“Yes,” the boy replied. “He’s a vampire
and he lives next door to me. In Mrs. LaRose’s
backyard.”

Purdy looked at Cohen. “Sooo...I’m
thinking Helena’s house is out of the question for Stan. I guess
I’ll be taking him home tonight?”