Killing Red (15 page)

Ten-year-old Annie Sykes had been buried in the damp October ground for nearly an hour when she awoke from a frightening and confusing dream. Whatever breathable air was left beneath the heavy soil would get used up in a hurry if the child panicked.

She couldn’t understand why the darkness wasn’t going away, the way it always did when she woke up in her bedroom. Her head hurt so much she thought for a moment about going back to sleep, but somehow knew that would be a very bad idea.

Annie tried several times to turn her head, but she managed to move only slightly. With each abbreviated twist, the coldness pressed harder against her face. Breathing was becoming more difficult. Annie knew that she had to do something—and fast.

Shifting a few inches on knees that ached, and which she imagined were badly scraped, Annie groped around awkwardly with delicate fingers that she could not see. Everything felt hard and cold. Her trembling hands moved slowly in toward her shoulders and upper back, to where her head and neck had been swallowed up by the ground. With a difficult, contorted stretch she touched a mound of soft dirt where the rest of her body should have been.

Now Annie knew what was happening, and fear began to take hold. She had been buried, but not all of her. Wiggling just enough to free her shoulders a bit, she pressed her palms to the ground and pushed. Pain, like that of a thousand jagged razor cuts, tore across her chest, and up through her neck. She tried to scream, but that effort only let a couple more tablespoons of dirt slide into her mouth. Something large and heavy clawed into her chin and behind her ears. Annie started crying, but the tears pooled in her eyes, and made them feel sticky and heavy.

Don’t move too much and it won’t hurt at all. Sit in one place Annie, motionless, still, like an object. Until someone comes and sets you free.

Where had she learned that? Those words were familiar, and comforting in a way. But now she realized that no one was coming to rescue her.

Annie pushed again, but whatever was digging into her chin slid a little and started choking her. She tried to catch her breath, but there was too little air to be had and the dirt burrowed up, filling her nose until it was gnawing into the tight spaces behind her eyes.

What limited strength Annie might’ve normally had in her slender arms was just about gone and she started to cry again, thinking of her parents, her brother, and how badly she wanted to be back in her house. Again she brought a hand to where her body ended and the dirt began.

Willing frigid fingers into the ground, Annie started digging. It was easy, at first, as her nails sank into the recently upturned earth. But then she reached the area where the ground had been packed more tightly by the weight of the dirt above it. By that point, however, her hands weren’t quite as cold. The feeling was returning to her fingers, and Annie started to believe she was going to be able to free herself.

The child strained to pivot her head from side to side. She dug farther down along her neck until she touched something hard and completely foreign. Moving more of the dirt aside, Annie felt her way around what she at first thought was a belt, then recognized it as a thick dog collar.

Again, Annie tried to pull her head out, desperate to get free, but the collar wouldn’t budge. She slipped her fingers between the coarse leather and the smooth skin of her neck, until her hands struck metal objects that were somehow attached. Using her index fingers and thumbs, Annie followed the smooth, curved metal on either side of her neck until it straightened and vanished into the dirt.

She knew what these things were. Just a few months earlier, when the Sykes family went on its annual Memorial Day camping trip, Annie and Tyler had helped their father put up the tent. Now she recalled how Dad had scolded Tyler when he pulled a long spike out of the duffel bag, explaining to the seven-year-old boy how dangerous those things were.

Annie remembered watching her dad pound the spikes deep into the ground, then challenging each of them to try and pull one out. They couldn’t, and Annie knew that she wouldn’t be able to now.

She felt lightheaded and nauseous. It would be so easy to just let go and slide off to sleep. Her head hurt so much, and the pain seemed less intense whenever she stopped moving, or quit thinking about getting out.

Don’t move too much and your head won’t hurt. Sit in one place Annie, motionless, still, like an object. Until someone comes and sets you free.

Maybe this is how she would be set free, by letting go. Annie let herself relax and in an instant she began to drift off. She had just about lost consciousness when her knees slipped and she fell to her side. The fall wrenched her neck, jolting Annie back into the moment. More determined than before to get free, she began to feed off the pain, imagining it was a tangible thing that could be directed right into her muscles and bones.

Annie groped around until she found the buckle, just behind her ear. Moisture from the damp ground had caused the leather to swell and tighten its grip on the metal. She ran her fingers along the buckle until she touched its sharp narrow prong, then forced her right thumbnail under it while holding the buckle still with her other hand.

When her thumbnail had gone as far under as it could, she pulled up on the prong and managed to create a slight separation. It was just enough for Annie to be able to grab hold, and maybe pry it open. She pinched the prong between her index finger and thumb, then tried to coax it away from the strap. The slender metal tooth was about halfway there when it slipped from her tender fingers.

Annie managed to jam her index finger under the prong before it fell back into its original place. She pushed up on it—more slowly this time—until it was sticking straight up from the collar. Grabbing the metal sliver with one hand, and the end of the strap with the other, Annie pulled in opposite directions, freeing the prong from the damp leather.

Once she had unfastened the buckle, Annie willed her head out of the collar, and then the hole. But she didn’t have full control of her body right away, and fell back hard against the ground. One nightmare had ended, another was beginning.

Alex Chapa stood on the same ground just a few days later and tried to imagine what that image must have looked like. For him, it represented a moment of extraordinary courage and strength. He had an instant admiration for the little girl who would not give up when she was supposed to.

The image of Annie Sykes standing alone in that field, cold and wounded, but also defiant and determined, was slipping through his mind now, as were dozens of other seemingly unrelated images. A giant black bird screeched at him before disappearing in the distance. A bleeding heart with a knife through it undulated as it drifted through a dark landscape, only to double back and come around for a second pass. A tangle of thick branches turned into a swatch of red hair that floated across the edges of his mind.

At first the images seemed disconnected and random—Annie’s face and the faces of some of the other children whose photos he had seen in the trailer. Chapa thought he was chasing Nikki through dense trees, but couldn’t catch her. The parade of disturbing images came then went, only to sweep by again.

A marginally conscious part of him feared he would not be able to escape this nightmare.

But then he opened his eyes.

The first time Chapa heard the voice he wasn’t sure if it came from within the room or somewhere out in the dark, cold field that Annie Sykes had managed to escape years ago.

Chapa was certain something heavy had been fastened to his eyelids. Forcing them open even a little made his head scream at him just for trying. After a few painful attempts, he managed to let what sparse light there was in the room slip in through the narrow slits, and that hurt even more.

He brought his hand up to rub his face, but it felt as though the arm belonged to someone else. Digging his thumb and index finger into the corners of his eyes, Chapa managed to work some of the haze out. His forehead felt like it was misshapen somehow, but the last thing he wanted to do right then was look in a mirror, since that would mean having to get up.

Though Chapa’s eyes were more or less open, he was far from fully conscious. He focused on a figurine sitting on a shelf just a few feet away. Just enough specks of light from the hallway were creeping into the room and he was able to make it out. A small porcelain girl in a blue checkered dress with a teddy bear tucked under one arm was handing a book to her father.

“Tell me a story, Daddy,” Chapa softly said to himself, having read the inscription a thousand times since Nikki had given the fragile gift to him on Father’s Day when she was just four. It had sat on the same shelf, within reach of his bed, ever since then.
I could tell you a story, but I don’t think you would understand it
, Chapa thought as he began to understand that he was back in his own bedroom.

“From what I’ve seen, Mr. Chapa, your stories are nothing more than a disappointing collection of lies.”

The voice came from Chapa’s left, and he gradually willed his head to move in its direction. It was as easy as rolling a large boulder up a steep mountain using nothing but the muscles in his neck.

“How did I get here?”

“I don’t know how much longer you will be conscious, so you need to listen.”

The voice was coming from a shape in the far corner of the room. Chapa squinted and tried to see beyond the darkness, but it was no use.

“This is where you let go, Alex. You write your story, and this time tell the whole truth about what happens over the next few days, and leave the rest alone.”

He had some sort of accent, Eastern European, maybe.

“What did you do to me?”

“Nothing that wasn’t done to Red.”

Flooded by images of violence, Chapa now realized that the stabbing pain he had felt back at the trailer was caused by a needle being jammed into his neck.

“I can get to you any time I want. I can come into your home. The cops get involved with Red, and you will find me here waiting for you.”

The voice was drifting across the room, and the shape was no longer tucked safely into the corner.

“I know where your loved ones live, that woman you screw, her cute little boy, your daughter too. What’s her name? Oh yeah,
Nicole
,” he said it as though he was ordering his favorite meal. “You call her
Nikki
, with two ks. Cute.”

A large hand gripped Chapa by the throat, tightening around his neck like a collar. He couldn’t breathe.

“It’s only out of the kindness of my heart that I don’t drive over to your woman’s house and peel the skin off the little boy’s tender body while she watches. But my kindness is conditional.”

He came in close, and Chapa could smell his stale breath. The shape of his face became visible, but the features remained a blur.

“Maybe I’ll just stop by now and hang around to watch her get the boy ready for preschool before she goes off to work.”

Then the thick hand released its vise grip. Chapa coughed, and it hurt like hell to do so.

“I like the way your woman moves.”

Chapa closed his eyes and drifted back into something less than consciousness. A short while later, or maybe an hour, he lacked the lucidity to be certain, he heard footsteps calmly retreating down the stairs, then the sound of the front door closing.

He needed to get to a telephone and call for help. But that meant figuring out how to make his body do what he wanted it to. His shoulders were numb, but he had some sensation in his legs. Chapa started trying to rock his hips, which proved much harder than he expected, and he was not certain that any part of his body was actually moving.

Suddenly, enough weight shifted and he rolled over. The jerking motion made him feel nauseous. He blacked out, falling into a deep chasm, desperately trying to reach back as his bedroom vanished in the distance.

When he opened his eyes Chapa again only saw whatever was pressing down against his face. Something was putting pressure on the whole front of his body, as though he was lying under a lead-lined comforter.

After a couple of minutes of staring into the beige fabric while trying to get a sense of how much it would hurt to move, Chapa realized that it was he who was lying on top of something. The weight he was feeling was his own.

The ringing in his head was abruptly replaced by a muted series of seemingly random sounds. Then the ringing returned and this time Chapa made out the sound of his answering machine message, followed by Joseph Andrews’ voice.

Alex, damn it, where are you? You need to answer a phone and you sure as hell better call me before you set foot outside of whatever rock you’re hiding under.

Chapa brought his hands up along the sides of his body, then pushed and separated himself from his bedroom carpet. He sat there by the side of the bed and rubbed the back of his sore neck, wondering what other injuries he would have to deal with.

Tiny but determined demons were kicking at the skin on his forehead. Chapa slowly reached up, and with an unsteady hand felt a massive welt above his right eye, just below the hairline. Eventually, he walked over to the answering machine on the dresser and pushed the messages button while he took stock of his appearance.

Chapa found six messages on his answering machine and two bruises on his face.

Al, it’s Joseph. Hey, give me a call at the office or even better on my cell.

Andrews had called again two hours later, almost to the minute.

Al, it’s Joseph again. I checked the blotter so I know you haven’t been picked up yet. Call me!

Blotter? Picked up? Chapa now remembered Andrews had warned him about going out in his most recent message.

Um, hi Alex
,
this is Matt Sullivan. Wow, what a morning, huh? Well, obviously we have a situation here and Mr. Macklin would like to move up his meeting with you. Can you give me a call as soon as you get this so we can schedule that? Thanks.

How long had he been out? Chapa looked at the clock.
11:28
. How much can happen to a guy in roughly eighteen hours?

The next call was from Erin, describing all of the things that she and Mikey were doing at the indoor water park. After what Chapa had been through and the messages from Andrews and the newspaper, hers seemed to come from another dimension.

The one that followed brought Chapa back to his new reality.

Okay, Al, I just now got around to playing back your message from yesterday. You didn’t give me much information, just enough to have me worried. The local police have identified you as a person of interest in the death of Louise Jones. I’ve managed to put them on ice for the time being, but that won’t hold. If I haven’t heard from you by tonight I’ll try to get out there and stop by your house.

Chapa looked outside through the slats of his bedroom blinds. The bright sunlight stung his eyes, but everything below looked as it should. That is, except for the police car doing a slow cruise past his house.

Good thing I didn’t leave my car parked out there,
he thought, and then,
Where the hell is my car?

As he walked to the bathroom to throw some water on his battered face, Chapa remembered what the guy had said about going over to Erin’s house. That meant he didn’t know she and Mikey had gotten out of town. He felt a small bit of relief.

The cold water didn’t do him much good, but at least it wasn’t painful, either. He returned to his bedroom and dialed Andrews’ cell.

“Jesus, Al, where were you? Are you okay?”

“I was asleep on the floor of my bedroom.”

Chapa explained as best he could everything that had happened to him since Erin found the note on her door.

“The Traveling Killer Museum? That’s an urban myth.”

“Really, then that would make the purple ping pong ball on my forehead the stuff that dreams are made of.”

“Were you able to gather any evidence?”

“I had planned on it, but that wasn’t on the curator’s agenda.”

Andrews told Chapa quite a bit about the museum, and how there was a running debate within the Bureau as to whether or not it was real. Believers claimed that it popped up in deserted areas. A few months earlier it had been seen at a remote spot in the wilds of Southern California called Slab City, but folks claimed to have seen it in many parts of the country.

“According to the creeps who follow this stuff on the Internet, the process is a lot like what you’ve described. A person gets an invitation with a map. When they arrive at some remote place they find the trailer unlocked. There’s never anyone around, but a few people claim they felt like they were being watched.”

Chapa gave him the directions as he remembered them, and Andrews told him he would send a forensics team to check out the area where the trailer had been.

“It won’t be there anymore,” Andrews said.

“No, but my car should be. Tell your guys to be gentle, it’s a family heirloom.”

“That trailer is the least of your problems right now.”

Chapa watched as another squad car rolled down his street. Two in less than half an hour, that couldn’t be a coincidence.

“How the hell am I a person of interest to anyone?”

“Well, let’s see, there’s your business card which had Louise’s blood all over it. Your name is in her appointment book. Also, you left a message on her machine stating that you would be there at a time that closely matches the coroner’s preliminary report for the time of death.”

“And on the other side of the ledger is my complete lack of motive.”

“They’re not accusing you of anything. They just have some questions.”

“Like what?”

“Did you get any sense that there was someone else in that house?”

Chapa thought for a moment and tried to put himself back there again. Was that really just two days ago?

“No, but I guess there could’ve been.”

“To make matters worse, every paper picked up the story today.”

“Every paper?”

“Actually no, your employer chose to ignore it, but two of your competitors ran it on the front page.”

Chapa looked at himself in the mirror and wondered what his mug shot might look like.

“You’ve got about a twenty-four hour window. But I’d like you to come here to the office and I’ll take your statement.”

They agreed on an 11:00
A.M
. meeting the next day. Andrews said that would give him enough time to have Grubb’s brother picked up for questioning on the murder and everything else that had gone down in the past few days.

Then Chapa remembered something else.

“Did you find the red journal I told you about at Louise’s?”

“It wasn’t there. Lots of other journals and notebooks, but no red.”

Chapa wasn’t surprised.