The Midnight Road
Authors: Tom Piccirilli
Contents
For my wife Michelle
And to Dean Koontz
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks need to go out to the following for their friendship, support, encouragement, and inspiration during the writing of this novel: Norman Partridge, Ed Gorman, Jonathan Santlofer, Robert W. Walker, Steve Hamilton, James Langolf, Gerard Houarner, Matt Schwartz, Stephen Romano, T. M. Wright, Brian Keene, Patrick Lussier, and David Morrell.
And for kicking ass and taking names (mine mine): editor extraordinaire and amateur bowling-pin juggler Caitlin Alexander.
ONE
Flynn remembered the night of his death more clearly than any other in his life. The black details of it forced him from the wild slopes of his dreams back to the beginning of his pitch through the ice, down into the dark waters below and the midnight road beyond.
There’d been a moment’s premonition as he drove up the long narrow curve of the Shepards’ driveway to their minimansion. A faint whisper of what was to come. The storm had ended a half hour earlier, but a heavy burst of wind had rattled loose a cluster of icicles high in the canopy trees. They slammed down against his hood so hard and unexpectedly that he overreacted and jammed the brake, his dead brother’s ’66 Charger going into a lissome power slide. He eased off the pedal and turned the wheel directly into the spin. They were the relaxed, familiar motions of someone who’d done a lot of street racing in his youth. The positraction got the car straightened almost immediately. The tires hit a dry patch of brick and let out a squeal like an animal cry of fear.
His stomach tightened. It was the kind of bad vibe he usually made an effort to ignore. Before his death he’d been an even bigger idiot.
There were no streetlights here in this chic area of the North Shore, close to the Long Island Sound. Maybe it was a sign of wealth, having to wind your way through the night all on your own.
He looked out the frosted driver’s side window, seeing the world like watching a film noir. Black and white, intensely sharp around the edges.
From the moment he saw the two pale figures wafting like white lace on the snow-filled front lawn, meeting and parting and joining again in the moonlight, he had fifty minutes left to live.
Flynn’s headlights flashed across the terrain and immediately the grim nerve worked through his chest again, twitching under his heart. Late November, locked in the worst winter in a decade, night having dropped like your grandmother’s velvet drapery, and there in the frozen yard were the girl and a dog prancing about, no parents in sight.
It wasn’t a good sign but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Most anonymous tips to Child Protective Services could be traced back to the neighbor across the street or on either side of the home in question. Except the Shepards had no neighbors within view. Dense lots of brush rose up around the huge house.
It was a three-tiered home built in the late seventies when art deco was losing ground and the holdout architects were really blowing their cool. You had a nice little family residence hidden within a bunch of mortar and rock face, metal and large, well-lit empty windows like wide, blind eyes. It looked schizo as hell and Flynn couldn’t imagine living in such a place, even if it did sell on the open market for a mill and a quarter, maybe a mill and a half.
The tipster had said a child was in danger at this address. No other comment. There didn’t need to be one. It was all CPS needed. If somebody said a kid’s welfare was at risk, you had to move. You catch the call, you take the ride, even in a snowstorm.
The girl stopped traipsing and stood at attention in her white ski suit and snow boots, watching him. The dog was a French bulldog, all white except for a black ring around one eye, wearing a white knitted sweater and little plastic booties. It sat at her heel with its chin up, head cocked, staring intently at Flynn as he stepped from his car. The only color in the world seemed to knife out from the huge windows and the twin bronzed lanterns bordering the two-car garage.
In the glow he saw the girl was about seven. A swathe of snow clung to her chin. Her breath blew white streamers that burst against his belly as he approached. The dog’s breath broke across his legs.
He had to play it carefully. This was always a little tricky. If he approached the kid and she got spooked, screamed and ran into Daddy’s arms, then the potential for big trouble went off the chart. You had to try to keep things easy and friendly. Just introducing himself as an investigator for Suffolk County CPS put everybody on the defensive. All kinds of hell could break loose. Fisticuffs, maybe worse. Nobody wanted to be called a child molester, not even the ones who were guilty of it.
That’s one of the reasons why most investigators were women. A woman could appeal to the wife, seem less threatening to the husband. Flynn still wasn’t quite sure how he wound up on the job, but one of the big perks for him was when some bitter, middle-aged ex–high-school jock who liked working over his old lady and kids decided to throw down and Flynn could cut loose. It was childish, he had to admit. But you took your action wherever you could.
Men weren’t really wanted in the ranks. They had to take evaluations and psych tests semiannually to make sure they were trying to save kids for the right reasons. The shrinks had to weed out the CPS dudes who jumped out of broken marriages just hoping to find some beautiful young teen in trouble. Wanting to nurture her with poetry and bubble baths, maybe woo the mother just to make it look right on the books. The peds hunting fresh meat. Flynn came into work every day and faced cagey, cautious attitudes tossed at him all day long from nearly every corner. It pissed him off, but he tried to understand. You never knew where the next big breakdown or blowup might come from.
It was late. He should’ve been here over an hour ago, but the storm had hit while he was stuck in traffic on the Expressway. Nobody could get anywhere as the freezing rain came down and the slush on the road turned to ice within minutes. Even cars that weren’t moving started to slip sideways into the median. Within a half hour there were a hundred fender-benders as drivers tried to roll off to the shoulder, park and wait it out. The storm didn’t last long, but the freeze was so bad that everybody had to get out of their cars and start hammering away at the layers of ice on their windshields.
He didn’t want to frighten the girl. She didn’t really seem spookable, standing there looking at him, but he wanted to go extra easy. She took two steps through the snow, her blond hair squeezing out from around her white plastic hood, framing her cute face.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Flynn.”
“I’m Kelly.” Then, pointing to the dog, “This is Zero. What are you doing here?”
“I’d like to speak with your parents.”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you cold out here this late, Kelly?”
“Yeah,” she told him. “I wanted to see the storm, but my mother wouldn’t let me until it had stopped. We’re about to go inside. I’d invite you in, but I’m not supposed to do that. How about if you stay right where you are until I get to the door, then you can follow, all right?”
“Sure,” Flynn said.
Smart kid. Practical, even. He always got thrown by smart kids. He’d be getting ready to talk baby talk and they’d suddenly start speaking like college grads.
More icicles clattered in the trees overhead. Flynn walked back and leaned against the Charger, watching the girl make her way to the house, the small dog fighting his way through the drifts.
There were strict codes on how investigations were supposed to proceed, and he adhered to them pretty well, despite the occasional self-defensive brawls. He’d been with CPS for five years and neither his boss nor the District Attorney’s Office ever gave him any static. He was proud to know in his heart he’d saved lives. He’d put child molesters behind bars. He’d gotten good people with anger issues and drug problems the help they needed.
He was the best caseworker CPS had because he didn’t have much of a social life to interfere, which sort of put the whole thing into a spartan perspective, if he stopped to think about it. He rarely did.
Flynn slipped twice just stepping up to the front door.
Mrs. Shepard answered before he got a chance to stomp the snow from his shoes. Kelly stood behind her, and the dog sat behind Kelly. Flynn got the feeling he was entering a very orderly household. One of those intensely domestic homes that ran with military precision and generally creeped other people out.
Mrs. Shepard kept a flaccid smile soldered in place. She stared at him through the storm door and said, “Yes? How can I help you? What’s this about?”