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"The Town That Dared Not Sleep"
"The Town That Dared Not Sleep"
10/22-10/29/2003
I.
At one-thirty in the morning, Buzz and Becky slowly drove their father's old Chevy through the back roads outside Willets, Georgia. Neither had a driver's license, although that was the least of the laws they broke every night. They resembled each other so much it was obvious they were brother and sister, with reddish-blonde hair, blue eyes and too many freckles. At sixteen, Buzz had not filled out across the chest or shoulders, and still had long gawky arms and legs. A year younger, Becky had not gotten much further. She had a figure, but her breasts were too small and her butt too big and her ankles too thick for her to even fool herself into thinking she was sexy.
Slowing down by a driveway with a mailbox that read BECKERT, Buzz leaned out the open window on his side. "Courtney's asleep."
"I can feel her dreaming as well as you can," said his sister. "She the one for tonight?"
"Oh, yeah. She been driving me crazy a long time now." He pulled the car into the driveway a few feet and shut it off. In a low casual tone, he said, "Come here, Courtney. Get out here."
A minute passed. Then they heard a screen door close. Courtney Beckert stepped out into the moonlight, wearing just a white T-shirt and panties, barefoot, with her black hair tied up on top of her head. She was in fact one of the prettiest girls in the school and more than a little stuck-up. Eyes shut, she walked slowly across the lawn to where the Harper siblings waited.
"You might wanna get in the back now," Buzz told his sister. She complied, leaving the passenger door open. Still sleepwalking, Courtney stood outside the Chevy as if waiting. Buzz said, "Get in. Sit down." The brunette did as he said, sitting with arms down at her side. Buzz reached up under the T-shirt and started kneading the young breasts. "Oh man. Nice as I always imagined. Damn."
From the back seat, Becky snorted. "You'll go through ever girl in Willets before you're through."
"I reckon you're right. Lean closer, Courtney." Buzz unzipped his jeans and tugged them down. With his right hand, he started pushing Courtney's head down. "Hey, Beck, you don't have to watch this."
"That's awright. I like to watch. Maybe I'll learn something."
Five minutes later, Buzz sent Courtney back to her house. "Go back to bed," he said, watching her walk dazedly back across the lawn. "Maybe I'll come visit you ever night! That was good."
As Buzz started up the car, Becky got back in the passenger seat. "My turn. I been thinking. Those Schaffer boys always treated me bad. They teased me when I had skin problems. I feel I need to pay them back and they live on this road."
Her brother frowned as he drove slowly past a barn that was falling down, then stopped at another house and turned off the headlights. "What 'zactly are you planning?"
"I dunno. I was thinking maybe have them dance for me in their underwear. Why?"
"Because we been careful so far. We don't leave no evidence what we been doing. You know? Courtney will wake up in the morning and have no idea what I made her do. When Old Man Schonger came out and handed us five hundred dollars, the next day he had no idea what happened to it. We don't want folks to catch on about us, Beck."
"Oh, don't give me no lectures. We can do whatever we want. How is anyone gonna figure out what we do?" Turning toward the darkened house, she called softly, "Tommy. Kenny, come out here."
As they watched, the back door of the house opened and two teenaged boys stepped out. They were in their boxers, one had an oversized Raiders shirt with the number 34 on it. Both were a little over six feet tall and in good shape. One was on the school football team and the other was trying out for track. The boys walked up to the car and stood there.
Leaning out of her window, Becky said in a low voice. "Kenny, punch Tommy in the stomach." With no expression on his face, the bigger of the two boys slammed his fist into his brother's flat belly, doubling him up. Despite the pain, Tommy did not wake up. He got to his feet again. "Now, Tommy, hit him back. Hard as you can!" The boy threw a crude roundhouse punch and Kenny made no effort to avoid it. His head swung around and he dropped to the ground with a thud.
As both boys turned to face the car, Becky giggled. "Oh I love it. You two, take turns punching each other. Really hard now!" The two brothers exchanged blows with a horrible passivity. Each punch knocked one of them down because they did not try to block it or avoid it, and they got up more slowly each time. In a few minutes, their faces were bruised and blood was coming from their noses. The punches were getting wild and starting to miss.
"That's enough, Beck," Buzz said angrily. "I knew you'd go too far. Tommy! Kenny! Go back to bed right now!" Staggering and unsteady, the sleepwalkers turned and made their slow way back toward the house. Nearby a dog started barking. Buzz started up his father's Chevy and pulled away. "You're gonna get us caught."
"Aw, don't give me that. How could anyone prove it was us making them do it? Besides, what can they do us to us?"
Buzz was still furious. "They might burn us alive. That's how they used to treat people like us." He made a U-turn and headed back home. "We can have lots of fun, sis, but we got to be secret about this."
"Burned alive...." Becky whispered. "Like the witches at Salem."
II.
At eight-thirty in the morning, Jeremy Bane strode quickly across Third Avenue and up to the four-story yellow brick building where his office was. He was wearing blue jeans, sneakers and a bright red sweater with V-neck over a white T-shirt. This made him unreasonably ill at ease. For thirty years, he had seldom gone out in public without his trademark black outfit of slacks, turtleneck and sports jacket. Always black, always all his gadgets and weapons hidden in their specific pockets.
In the sweater and jeans, Bane looked so different he felt people were staring at him when of course no one noticed. Hitting fifty now, the Dire Wolf was still tall and gaunt, with short black hair and pale grey eyes that moved restlessly as he walked. Why had he let Unicorn talk him into this? He broke so many rules for that girl. Bane had enough self-awareness to vaguely realize that he enjoyed being pushed into breaking his usual behavior and he liked Unicorn because she tried everything to shake his habits up.
Wednesday was Pizza Night at the KDF headquarters on 38th Street, assuming no cases on were on, and Bane enjoyed catching up with what the new team was doing. So the night before, they were sitting in the reception room with two Meat Lovers Pizza, chatting away about personal trivia. Unicorn had been more frisky than usual. The little blonde was impulsive and insolent at the best of times and for some reason she seemed preoccupied with Bane's clothing. The Dire Wolf had put up with it. He did in fact own other clothes, including a formal suit with three ties and a vest. He also had an all-white outfit he had used once in Canada to move around unseen in a snowstorm. But he liked his turtleneck and sport jacket, he was used to it and people recognized it. It was a trademark.
Somehow, Unicorn had badgered him into wearing different clothes the next day. In exchange, she would leave her phone turned off for twenty-four hours. Everyone had been so interested that Bane had agreed to the deal. Now, as he walked through the automatic glass doors into the building, he felt uncomfortable. Under the sweater and jeans, he still wore the silk-thin flexible Trom armor, and he still had the two silver daggers sheathed under his sleeves. So he hadn't broken every single habit. He had three newspapers under his arm.
Bane walked past the EMERGENCY ONE walk-in clinic, down the short hall formed between the stairs going up and the wall. Here was the plain wooden door with a brass plaque DIRE WOLF AGENCY. He unlocked the door, went through the tiny waiting room and into his inner office. The next ten minutes were spent listening to his messages. A reminder he had to sign some papers at his legal counsel's office. A grudging thanks from Lt Montez for catching Dos Manos again, after the man had escaped from a psychiatric facility. Montez wanted to see him at the 20th Street station house. And of course, a chipper message from Unicorn asking how his day was going. That kid had not been spanked enough, he decided.
The Dire Wolf had no active case at the moment. He settled behind his desk and started searching through the newspapers. From the start of his career, he had found little hints in the papers about Midnight War events, one paragraph stories buried in the back pages. Some of his most important cases had begun with a scant item on page 6 about a black panther spotted in Kansas or two headless corpses washing up in Florida. So far, though, today seemed like a bust. He started on the second paper, spotting something about moving red lights seen by tourists on Overlook Mountain upstate. The police said they had found nothing, but Bane was interested...
The doorbell rang. Bane gave a start, folded the newspapers to one side and jumped to his feet. The waiting room was barely big enough for a coffee table with magazines and two folding chairs, but he seldom used it. Up on the wall was a 12" monitor and he glanced up at it to see who was out in the hall. He didn't recognize the man. Obese, at least two hundred and ninety pounds at six feet, the man was wearing a tan suit with a tie that had been loosened so the collar could be open. He had a round moonface with an unhealthy red color to it, and a greying crewcut. Yet the face was intelligent. The blue eyes that looked up at the camera in the hall had a sharp awareness to them.
Bane opened the door. "Yes, can I help you?"
"Mr Bane, I hope?" Southern accent, the Dire Wolf noted. Georgia but not Atlanta, deeper in the state. All the practice spotting accents sometimes paid off. The shoes were worn but polished, the suit was new and didn't fit well. Plain gold wedding ring. From the tired eyes and beginning of five o'clock shadow, this man had just arrived here after a long trip.
"I'm Bane."
"Oh, I'm glad. Sir, my name is Gene Van Aken, I'm sheriff of Buchanan County. I need to speak to you, it's important." The man touched his lips with his tongue and shifted his weight, he was obviously stressed.
"Sure, come right in." Bane ushered the man through the waiting room and into the inner office, closing the hall door behind them. In front of the desk were two leatherbound chairs and he motioned for Van Aken to have a seat while he circled to drop down in his own chair behind the desk. "Let's get right to it, what's the problem?"
"Some strange things going on in Willets, that's my town. Creepy things. Everyone is in a panic. I heard about from an FBI man, Mr Bane. Some FBI agents were in our neck of Georgia after a fugitive. I got to talking with one while waiting overnight. He told me about you. You've caught serial killers like Samhain and the Slaughterman. But he also said you were an expert on the supernatural. When things happened that couldn't be explained, you were sometimes called in. Frankly, his stories gave me the creeps big time."
"All true," said the Dire Wolf. "That's my trade."
The sheriff fidgeted, looked around the office and took a breath before continuing. "Some mighty weird things are going on in Willets, sir. Money and valuables disappear from people's houses while they're home. People wake up with serious injuries they didn't have before. Three girls from the high school have gone to the emergency room and the doctors found that they were raped, but they all said they had been home alone those nights. The owner of the local diner is missing, his wife woke up and he was gone from their bed without a sound."
Bane's grey eyes were bright. He leaned forward, and said nothing.
"I'm telling you, everyone is hysterical. Most of these events take place late at night. People are afraid to get to sleep. You drive through town and ever house has all its lights lit." The fat man let out a shuddering breath. "They're yelling at me to do something and honestly I'm at a loss."
"It sounds like this is a menace you were never trained to fight," Bane said. "It's good you came to me. I'm heading down there immediately."
Van Aken straightened up. "Thank God. You know, regular burglars and dope dealers and crooks are one thing, I'm been locking them up for fourteen years now. But this is not normal. I don't know where to begin."
Bane stood up and came around to where the man was filling the chair. "I have to make a few phone calls. I'll be on the first flight to Atlanta in the morning and I'll drive over to Willets right away. Have you noticed that the crimes are getting more serious?"
"Oh yeah. They started off as pranks. A boy woke up on the lawn in his sister's dress, for example. But then the rapes and beatings started and each event is worse than the one before."
The Dire Wolf started heading the sheriff for the door. "One more reason to stop whoever's behind this, right now. I'll contact you as soon as I get there."
After he sent Van Aken on his way, Bane went back in his office and paced furiously. He had to get going. Experience told him that there was someone commiting these crimes, someone getting to enjoy it as they got more brutal and there was likely a massacre on the way. He called the airport and managed to get a seat on a 9:45 AM flight to Atlanta. In his car, he always kept a knapsack with clothes and supplies ready, so he did not need to pack. Bane glanced down at himself in the jeans and red sweater. This would never do.
From the closet, he took a spare set of his usual outfit and changed. As soon as he pulled the black turtleneck on and got his arms into the sleeves of the sport jacket, he felt better. Maybe Unicorn was right and he needed to break his rigid habits but this was not the time. Bane left the office and walked down to 40th Street, where he kept his car at the IMPERIAL GARAGE. He was not looking forward the next few hours of filling out forms with Lt Montez and signing statements about how he had apprehended that maniac Dos Manos. Every time he went to police headquarters, it seemed there was more paperwork than the time before. Bane sighed as he drove downtown.
III.
Midnight was only a few minutes away when Bane drove up to a sign that read WELCOME TO FRIENDLY WILLETS - HOME OF THE BLUEJAYS BASEBALL TEAM. The trip seemed to have taken forever. The flight had departed hours late and been held up at landing. Luckily, his daggers had gotten through security once again; the high density silicone molding over them was designed to resemble human muscle if he was searched by hand, but it also fooled X-Rays. So far. He had been so anxious during the boarding that he decided he was not going to fly again. Those knives had been a present from Kenneth Dred and he valued them more than everything else he had ever owned. Also, the silver had its own protective properties and he would hate to go into action without them. From now, he would not use airlines.
In a rented Toyota Matrix, his knapsack in the seat behind him, he had driven for an hour and a half into Georgia. Now, finally, he had reached Willets. On the outskirts of town, he spotted a small motel called the DEW DROP INN. Hah hah, he thought, seen that pun a hundred times in bars around the country. There was a room available and he took it sight unseen, paying for the next two days.
Bane turned on the light as he entered, and immediately drew the curtains on the window. The room was okay, nothing fancy but clean. There was a bathroom in the corner, a double bed, a couch and a chair, a TV on a stand. He dropped his knapsack inside the door and used the bathroom, then sat on the couch and phoned the number Sheriff Van Aken had given him. It rang a dozen times without going to voicemail. Bane felt a sudden tinge of worry about this. He waited ten minutes, then called again and still got no response.
The Dire Wolf went back out again. He drove into town, stopped to fill the tank and check the tires and fluids, which was another of his obsessive details. He noticed the houses were in fact more lit than one might expect. It seemed as if every window had a light in it, but no one was in sight. The clerk behind the register had given him a hostile stare as he paid for the gas, but Bane was not surprised. A stranger in town at midnight, after all the weird events of the past week was bound to be regarded with suspicion. Bane got back in the Toyota and started driving slowly through town.
He had the windows down, listening and looking. Willets was a good-looking little town, with a church up on a hill at one end and a general store at the other. There was a small village green in the middle of town, with an illuminated flagpole. Mostly there white board houses with back yards, garages, lots of pick-up trucks and a NASCAR flag or two. Some Halloween decorations were up. For the next hour, the Dire Wolf drove around at random without seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. He went back to the village green, pulled off the road under an elm tree and shut the engine off.
Bane got out and started prowling the streets. In his black outfit, he blended with the shadows and his training helped him stay out of sight. He heard TVs and music from each house, louder than might be expected. But then, this was a town which was trying to stay on guard and not fall asleep. Two blocks ahead, he spotted movement on a porch. He flattened against a wall and crept up on the house. It was a middle-aged man smoking a cigarette, which he puffed quickly and stamped out before going back inside.
Another hour went by. Bane had circled the town to the extent that he could have drawn a map of it. Then a car went by, the first he had seen on the road since arriving. It slowed almost to a stop just ahead of him. A black Chevy Malibu, some rust by the right rear tire, a ding in that same fender. He memorized the license plate automatically. In the passenger window, the face of a redheaded teenage girl peered out at him with a wicked smirk and then the car pulled away.
It was starting to get light in the east. Bane heard a screen door slam and a truck turn over reluctantly, as if the battery was low. He decided to call it a lost night, walked back to where he had left the rental car and drove to the DEW DROP INN. Back in his room, Bane took rubber wedges from his knapsack and forced them under the door and above the window. He was starving as usual, and the 12" roast beef sub he had bought on the way here disappeared, as did the bag of cashews and the apple. He drained a bottle of club soda almost without stopping and felt better. Dawn was coming up. Bane kicked off his boots, hung his jacket over a chair and stretched out on the bed. He set his mind to wake up in four hours. Bane fell asleep, not knowing about the corpse of Sheriff Van Aken in the next room.
IV.
Just before nine, there was a pounding on the door. Bane was up and off the bed as if he had been stung by a scorpion. His hand jumped to his left hip before he realized he had left his gun home. The Dire Wolf smiled wryly and went to the door, tugging the wedge free and tossing it on the bed. He opened the door and saw a man in uniform, with the deputy badge and the sidearm and the shirt buttoned up to the neck. The name tag over the left shirt pocket said CRISPELL. The man was big enough, just over six feet tall and beefy, with a thick neck and a square face. The deepset eyes glared at Bane with open hostility.
"I expect you got some explaining to do," the deputy sheriff began.
Bane was not intimidated in the slightest. He had killed men this big and muscular, three at a time. "Where's Sheriff Van Aken?"
"He's next door. As you oughtta know. Why'd you do it?"
The Dire Wolf said, "You're going to have to do better than that." He turned away and walked over to get his bottle of water from the table. "Let's start with what you think I did."
"Next door is Sheriff Van Aken. Dead. Back of his head bashed in, and here you are. A stranger from up North."
"Let's have a look," Bane said, shrugging into his jacket. He brushed past the deputy, who surprisingly moved aside just a bit to let him pass. The Dire Wolf stepped out on the walkway in front of the rooms and walked over where an open door showed the wide back of Sheriff Gene Van Aken, lying face down. The back of his head was indeed crushed. Bane peered inside the room. Nothing seemed out of place but the sheriff's holster was empty.
Bane studied the scene, then turned back to the furious face of the deputy right behind him. "You have a medical examiner on the way?"
"From the next county. Doc Muenster is supposed to be here soon. But you need to start talking."
"Sure." He pointed at the body. "Was Van Aken registered here? If not, how did he get in? Have you asked the clerk on duty last night?"
Crispell was taken offguard. He had not expected to face a string of questions like that. "I'll doing the asking here, mister-"
"That's not good enough. How did Van Aken get out here? I don't see a car other than mine and yours. He sure didn't walk ten miles here from town, look at him."
"Stop it! Hold it right there," Crispell yelled. He moved in until his face was inches away from Bane. "Gene told me he was going to go see you. The famous Dire Wolf. He took the train to New York City and came back the same way. He called me when he got home that night. That's the last anyone heard of him."
"I see." Bane stepped one foot into the room, crouched and took hold of the corpse's hand before Crispell could stop him. He flexed the fingers and stood up. "Dead at least twenty-four hours. This air temperature and humidity... yeah, twenty-four hours. The doctor will confirm that."
"So what?"
"Twelve hours ago, I was on TWA flight 2317 out of JFK. I arrived in Atlanta and rented a car to drive here. This is all documented, with dates and times. The man at the rental agency will remember me because I paid cash and he asked to copy my driver's license number. At the time this man was killed I was waiting at the airport for my flight to leave. Security cameras will show that, How much more do you need? Has it dawned on you that Van Aken asked me to come here to investigate the unsolved crimes? He was in effect my client."
The deputy seemed to deflate. He was used to people being intimidated, not having someone take over an investigation. This strange Northern boy with those pale eyes had a quiet self-assurance that was hard to defy.
"Oh, there's more," Bane went on. "Look at the side of his face. See the purple area? That's where blood collected after he died. The heart stops, blood pools wherever gravity pulls it. It's called postmortem lividity."
Crispell bent over to look. "Well, sure, I know about that..."
"So he wasn't killed here. Someone smacked him in the head and let him lie on his side for a while, then brought him here. Do you see blood on any object in the room? I don't." Bane folded his arms. "There's something else. Why would the killer bring the body here, where it would be found right away? Why not conceal it in the woods? Because the killer wanted it to be found.. next to my room." He straightened up. "Who else knew I was coming here? Van Aken told you. Who else knew?"
"Listen, for the last time, I am going to ask the questions here! Don't try to confuse things..."
Bane turned as an ambulance pulled up, followed by a black Lincoln. The EMTs got out and waited for a white-haired man with a mustache to emerge from his car. The next hour was hectic but Dr Muenster confirmed Bane's estimate that Van Aken had been dead at least twenty-four hours. Photos were taken, everything was measured and finally the body was loaded into the ambulance and taken away. The doctor had said the nearest hospital was twenty-five miles away in the neighboring county.
"You've got my alibi," Bane told the deputy. "I can prove I was a thousand miles away when Van Aken was killed. Not that I had any reason to kill him in the first place! I came here to help solve your mysterious crimes. Come on," he added as he started walking toward the motel office. The deputy followed with a puzzled expression. The same man was on duty that had been there the night before, a middled-aged local named Earl Grover He lived in the room behind the office and was almost always manning the desk. He didn't know how Van Aken had entered that room, but a little questioning revealed that he had found the ring of keys on the office floor that day.
"I must have dropped them," Earl said. "But you'd think I'd hear the clink."
"You take naps during the day?" Bane asked.
"Well, sure. I never know when someone is going to check in or out. My cousin Roy relieves me on weekends or if I have to go into town."
Bane nodded. All the crimes seemed to take place when the victims were asleep. No wonder everyone in town seemed to try to stay up all night. Then he remembered the black Chevy that had gone past him the night before, with the girl grinning out the window at him.
V.
Crispell did not seem to know how to deal with Bane, who was neither frightened nor angry. To his own surprise, the deputy started to answer the Dire Wolf's questions. He was finding that Bane was asking about things that Van Aken had mentioned. They stood at the end of the walkway for over an hour. Bane got names and addresses of the victims of the weird crimes, put the dates and times in order, then started on how everything connected. In a small town like Willets, almost everyone knew each other to a degree.
Finally, the Dire Wolf asked about Van Aken's family. The wife, Kathleen, had been living back with her parents for the past year as the couple had not been getting along. The two children were, in Crispell's opinion, unruly brats who skipped school and had been in trouble for shoplifting. Becky was fifteen and Bradley (who was called Buzz by everyone) was sixteen and they were always seen together. Bane got a description of the two and kept his face inexpressive. Reddish hair.
"What kind of car did Van Aken drive?"
"His own car? Old Chevy Malibu with some miles on it. Why?"
Bane said, "Every detail can come in useful. Look, deputy, I was hired to investigate the unsolved crimes in this time. Now that Van Aken has been killed and his body dumped to point a finger at me, I'm more determined than before. I can see you want to bring his killer in as well. We might as well cooperate. We can get more done working together than against each other."
The man gave him a sullen stare. "I wasn't sure about you. After the sheriff said he was going all the way to New York to bring you in, I looked you up. You've got some record, all right. I found reports that you have caught a dozen serial killers. And then there's all the supernatural rumours about you. I never put any stock in that stuff before, but the weird stuff going on the past few weeks has me wondering..."
The Dire Wolf gave the faintest of smiles, not noticeable unless you were looking for it. "It's a wild world, deputy. I'm going out to Van Aken's house and talk to the family. What about you?"
"Me? Aw hell, I got to be in the office. There is so much paperwork and reports to do. I'll be acting sheriff until an election can be held and I wasn't expecting it."
Bane went and got the knapsack from his room, then started heading for his car. "I'll stop back as soon as I learn anything," he said. He got in the rented Toyota and eased out onto the road as Crispell watched. That had gone easier than he had hoped, Bane thought. He hadn't expressed his thoughts but he had organized the crimes into three categories. There was simple profit, the theft of cash and smartphones and digital cameras, that sort of thing. There was the string of sexual assaults, all local high school girls except for one thirty-year-old who worked in the general store. And there were the pranks which had started as whimsical and become brutal.
All done while the victims were asleep, almost all at night.
Bane had expected to be facing a warlock of some sort, maybe a member of Red Sect. Now he concluded he was dealing with "dream-slavers," rare but not unknown. If the criminals were a teenage brother and sister, it made sense. The boy was having sex with the girls from school that he found attractive. The girl was paying back boys who had offended her somehow. And both were benefitting from robberies. Of course, this meant they had killed their own father but that was nothing new. Investigating murders had left Bane with the opinion that anyone could kill anyone, nothing was taboo. As he drove through town, the Dire Wolf found he was angry on a person level. Van Aken had come to him for help and had been killed. That offended Bane's pride. Then the killers had left Van Aken's body in the next room to try and point suspicion at him. That really made him feel a cold calm rage.
Driving through town, he didn't spot any place to eat. This village was really just an array of houses along a road, except for a church and a general store. Bane pulled over by the store and went in. The man behind the counter regarded him with bleary eyes and fought a yawn. This was a town that dared not sleep. Bane looked along the shelves and picked up two hard rolls, some sliced ham and a packet of cheese from a refrigerated cabinet. A bottle of apple juice and two granola bars were next. He carried his choices to the register and faced the man as his purchases were rung up. Nothing was said beyond minimal grunts of "That'll be all?" and "Thanks."
Back out in his rental car, Bane sliced the hard rolls with a dagger and made two thick sandwiches. Some mustard would have helped but he didn't want to go back in for it. As he munched slowly, he watched the people driving by and the occasional customer trudging into the store. None of them looked as if they had gotten any sleep. The Dire Wolf sipped the apple juice and felt a twing of sympathy for them but, if he had his way, the reign of terror would be ending soon. Pulling out onto the road, he drove until he reached a side road that read CROSBY LANE, and he turned into it. Here was a nice two-story house with aluminum siding and a big yard. A railroad track ran by just outside the yard, with no fence to mark the property line. Parked next to the house was the black Chevy he had glimpsed the night before, and next to it was a police car. Bane got out and walked up to the front door.
Before he could knock, the screen door swung open and a short skinny man in a deputy uniform stuck his face forward. "Yeah? Whadda YOU want?" The name tag read STOUTENBURGH.
Bane held up the leather billfold that held his PI license and let the deputy get a good look. "Sheriff Van Aken asked me to come down here. He wanted me to investigate the recent crimes."
Stoutenburgh scowled. "Yeah, right. I saw him get on the bus. I guess it's all right then, he said you were some sort of expert." A train rolled by with a whistle that sounded unbearably shrill at close hand. "Goddam trains," the deputy said.
"I just came from where Crispell was supervising the scene. Sorry about Van Aken. I only met him for about half an hour." Bane stepped up and past the deputy without asking or being invited. Inside the cluttered living room, a heavyset woman got up from an overstuffed couch. On the wall over her was a stuffed deer head with a cigarette stuck in its mouth in country humour.
Mrs Van Aken must have been a handsome woman in her earlier days, with thick black hair and green eyes. She had packed on weight, though, and her face had the signs of a chainsmoker. The yellow stains on her right forefinger and thumb told it as well. "Who are you? I didn't ask you in my home."
Again, Bane held out his PI license and let her study it. "Your husband went to my office and asked me to look into the unexplained crimes going on down here. I agree to investigate. Now, after what happened, I'm determined to get the the bottom of these events."
The woman handed the billfold back. "Go ahead. I don't care. Nothing you do will bring my Gene back."
The Dire Wolf glanced up. On the stairs, peering down at him, were two skinny teenagers. A boy and a girl, both with reddish-blonde hair and blues, both wearing faded jeans and T-shirts. As their eyes met, he saw that the girl knew he recognized her from the night before. "You must be Gene's children?" he asked.
"Well, ain't you sharp?" said the boy. "Everyone in New Yawk City as bright as you?"
Bane's voice was quiet but carried in the silent house. "I believe the unsolved crimes are being committed by two people. People with unusual abilities. I've handled a lot of cases like this and I'll handle this one, too." The slightest edge came into his voice. "People who use these strange abilities wrong always come to a painful death."
In the girl's eyes a flicker of fear shone and even the boy drew back an inch, saying, "I love tough talk, mister. Good luck with your ghosthunting."
"You don't seem too upset about your father's murder. Most families would be in shock."
"Well, you don't know much about us," Buzz Van Aken said. "I guess you'll be going now."
Bane turned to where the wife was watching. "I'll be around until this is solved. Whatever it takes, I promise your husband's killer will face justice. One way or another." And he turned and left the house.
VI.
The rest of the day was spent questioning townsfolk. He went from one to the next, asking about what had happened. One man woke up to find his laptop and smartphone gone, even though his door was locked from the inside. A woman sat up in bed at dawn to find herself naked and sweaty, with bruises on her thighs. Two high school boys had evidently beaten each other up in their sleep and gone back to bed to awaken with black eyes and dried blood from their noses. Altogether, eighteen people had been victimized in one way or another. There was one missing man, still unfound after a week. And there was the dead body of Sheriff Van Aken. All the work of dream-slavers, if he was right.
Bane's style of questioning worked because he was so blunt and matter-of-fact about the weird events. He said that, yes, he had witnessed stranger things and he was sure he could stop these crimes. When asked by the people what could be done to protect themselves, he sensibly said they should guard each other. Have one person sleep while another sat up and watched. People who lived alone could try tying a foot to the furniture with clothesline before going to sleep, in the hope that tripping when getting up would wake them.
It was getting near dusk when he had covered everyone he wanted to speak with. Bane drove back to the convenient mart on the outskirts of town and snatched two cheeseburgers sitting on a heated metal cabinet. Better than nothing, he grumbled. As darkness fell, he pulled up to the DEW DROP INN, grabbed his knapsack and entered his room. He saw no signs that Crispell had searched this room at all. Dumping his clothes on the bed, the Dire Wolf tugged off the false bottom of the knapsackto reveal a stiff cardboard lining holding a variety of exotic and illegal devices. He had plans for a few of them.
Now it was a waiting game. Bane figured the killers wouldn't come here too early. Their powers depended on the victim being asleep. He studied two of the local newspapers he had picked up at the convenient mart. He made a few phone calls back to New York and caught up on business. Around eleven, he decided it was time to prepare. From the cache of weapons and devices, he took three disposable syringes and examined them closely...
At just after midnight, the black Chevy pulled up into the gravel lot of the DEW DROP INN. Buzz was driving. Becky had a windbreaker on against the night chill. They sat for a few minutes, heads tilted as if listening for the faintest noise possible. Finally, Buzz said, "He's asleep in there. But I ain't never touched a mind so deep in sleep."
"I know, I know," his sister said. "He's really out of it. Not even dreaming."
"Maybe he took a sleeping pill. I don't know. Whatever, we got to settle with him tonight. Maybe it's time we moved on to a bigger playground. Imagine how much fun we could have in Atlanta." Buzz opened the door and got out, with Becky reluctantly following his example.
They stood in the gloom before the door of Room 6.
"What you gonna make him do?" asked the girl.
"I brought Pa's gun. Mr Jeremy Bane is going to put a bullet through his head. That should be good for a laugh." Buzz faced the door and said, "Get up. Get up, open the door."
A long minute later, the doorknob turned and the door swung inward. But standing there with his eyes closed was the desk clerk, Earl. Both Buzz and Becky Van Aken gasped and gave a start, turning to each other. A dark form loomed up behind them and two fists hard as stone crashed down against the nape of their necks in a vicious rabbit punch. The teenagers dropped to their knees and started groaning. Bane seized them by their clothing and flung them bodily into the room, closing the door behind them.
Earl was still standing there blankly. Bane gently brought the man over to the bed and lowered him down on it. "You make a fine decoy, buddy."
On the floor, Buzz was moaning and trying to get up but he was in too much pain, rubbing the back of his neck. "You tricked us...?"
"Damn right." The Dire Wolf grabbed the boy by the shirt and threw him on the couch. The sister followed a second later, landing half on top of him. "I gave Earl an injection of the anesthetic I use in my darts. He'll be out for most of an hour yet. You two are getting the same medicine."
Buzz tried to get up, reaching behind him. In a move that could hardly be followed, Bane leaned over and drove a fist into the teenager's chest with a noise like a hammer breaking rock. The boy doubled up, trying to catch his breath. The Dire Wolf tugged him forward and got the .357 Magnum from the back of the kid's belt. He hefted the weapon critically.
"This was for me, right?" he said. "Let's add it up. You came here to make me kill myself. You two murdered your father- your own father. You made one other man disappear. He's certainly dead out in the woods. You, the boy- you raped and molested nine girls. I won't even get into all the robbery and general abuse." Becky tried to get up and Bane shoved her roughly back down again.
"Now, here's the problem," he continued. "How can I bring you in? How can I charge you with making people doing things in their sleep with your psychic powers? No. Never work. You can't be punished by the courts but I certainly am not going to let you keep on killing and terrorizing like this."
Becky's voice cracked. "You're not gonna murder us?! We're just kids."
"Let's see what happens," Bane said. He grabbed Buzz by the wrist, yanked the boy's arm out straight and plunged the needle in. The teenager yelped at the burning sensation, then his eyes rolled up and he sagged limply.
"Wait, wait," begged Becky. "He made me do it, he forced me, I'm innocent..."
"Save your breath," said the Dire Wolf, injecting her in the arm as well. As she slumped back on the couch, Bane returned the syringes to the concealed lining of his knapsack and placed it in a corner. He took a second to examine the sheriff's .357 Magnum and saw that the weapon had not been fired. He set it on the dresser, just out of reach. Then he brought a chair over, reversed it and sat down on it backwards, gazing over the back of the chair at the two drugged dream-slavers.
He was taking a terrible chance with this. All day he had been wracking his brain to remember what he had read about this sort of psychic predator. Dream-slavers took control of sleeping minds and could make the victim do anything they commanded, but they themselves were sometimes vulnerable when they were asleep. It was a two-way process. After a few minutes, both Buzz and Becky began stirring. Their breath grew labored, their faces twitched. Bane felt a powerful compulsion reaching his thoughts, a pressure compelling him to obey. He fought it. Asleep themselves, the dream-slavers were ordering him to take the revolver and put its barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger. The compulsion swept over him like a hot wave.
But he had decades of disipline and self-control to resist the commands with. Even without his Tel Shai training, Jeremy Bane was a strong-willed stubborn man who never bowed down to any orders. He rejected the compulsion. He shoved it back as if walking against a gale wind to close a door. Suddenly the struggle was over and he felt the pressure ease.
Without a word, their eyes still shut, Buzz and Becky Van Aken got up off the couch and walked clumsily toward the door. The boy reached over without looking and grabbed the heavy revolver to take with him. Strangely, Bane did not interfere. He watched the two leave the motel room with an expression of great relief. As the headlights of the Chevy shone through the curtained window, to swing around as the car backed up and drove away.
The Dire Wolf sagged, his head dropping down. His hair was damp with cold sweat. That had been a tougher fight than he had expected. Reversing those murderous young minds had taken everything he had. Taking a deep breath, he got up and stretched, suddenly feeling exhausted. There was still much to do. Opening the door, he glanced about but saw no one. Picking up the drugged desk clerk over one shoulder, Bane hurried along the walkway to the open door of the office, into the room behind the lobby. There was a couch with a blanket and two pillows. He lowered Earl onto it and left. Hopefully, the man would wake and conclude he had just fallen asleep during a dull watch.
Back in his room, Bane sat by the door, listening and waiting. Nothing. He still wasn't sure he had handled this the right way. Finally, he locked the door and put the rubber wedge under it. He fell asleep sitting up in the chair and rousted himself enough to stretch out on the bed fully dressed, with the light still on.
Early the next morning, the familiar pounding came on the door. The Dire Wolf jumped, got to his feet and crossed the room. He tugged the wedge loose and opened the door to reveal Deputy Crispell again. The man looked awful, unshaven and red-eyed. "I want you to come with me," he said.
"Am I under arrest? Or being detained as a person of interest?"
"No. Nothing like that. It's the Van Aken kids. Come on."
Bane took a second to wash his hands and face with cold water before joining the big man. "Those two? What about them?"
"Dead. Both of them. Sitting in the father's car in front of their house. The boy shot his sister in the temple and then put a bullet between his own eyes. Inside of the car is the worst mess I ever seen. Happened around one this morning, according to a neighbor down the road who says she thought someone was shooting at possums in the garbage."
Bane started through the door, brushing his hair with his fingers. "Where was the mother?"
"She was at a friend's house, if you know what I mean. I want you to take a look at the scene and tell me your impressions. You've got experience in these matters."
"I'll do my best," Bane said. "I sure don't seem to be getting anywhere with these weird sleepwalker crimes." Even as he said that, though, he knew that there would not be any more. In a short time, the people of Willets would start to feel the terror was over and life would ease gradually back to normal. The nightmarish past few weeks would be just stories to retell. Only Bane would know what had happened.
1/31/2014
10/22-10/29/2003
I.
At one-thirty in the morning, Buzz and Becky slowly drove their father's old Chevy through the back roads outside Willets, Georgia. Neither had a driver's license, although that was the least of the laws they broke every night. They resembled each other so much it was obvious they were brother and sister, with reddish-blonde hair, blue eyes and too many freckles. At sixteen, Buzz had not filled out across the chest or shoulders, and still had long gawky arms and legs. A year younger, Becky had not gotten much further. She had a figure, but her breasts were too small and her butt too big and her ankles too thick for her to even fool herself into thinking she was sexy.
Slowing down by a driveway with a mailbox that read BECKERT, Buzz leaned out the open window on his side. "Courtney's asleep."
"I can feel her dreaming as well as you can," said his sister. "She the one for tonight?"
"Oh, yeah. She been driving me crazy a long time now." He pulled the car into the driveway a few feet and shut it off. In a low casual tone, he said, "Come here, Courtney. Get out here."
A minute passed. Then they heard a screen door close. Courtney Beckert stepped out into the moonlight, wearing just a white T-shirt and panties, barefoot, with her black hair tied up on top of her head. She was in fact one of the prettiest girls in the school and more than a little stuck-up. Eyes shut, she walked slowly across the lawn to where the Harper siblings waited.
"You might wanna get in the back now," Buzz told his sister. She complied, leaving the passenger door open. Still sleepwalking, Courtney stood outside the Chevy as if waiting. Buzz said, "Get in. Sit down." The brunette did as he said, sitting with arms down at her side. Buzz reached up under the T-shirt and started kneading the young breasts. "Oh man. Nice as I always imagined. Damn."
From the back seat, Becky snorted. "You'll go through ever girl in Willets before you're through."
"I reckon you're right. Lean closer, Courtney." Buzz unzipped his jeans and tugged them down. With his right hand, he started pushing Courtney's head down. "Hey, Beck, you don't have to watch this."
"That's awright. I like to watch. Maybe I'll learn something."
Five minutes later, Buzz sent Courtney back to her house. "Go back to bed," he said, watching her walk dazedly back across the lawn. "Maybe I'll come visit you ever night! That was good."
As Buzz started up the car, Becky got back in the passenger seat. "My turn. I been thinking. Those Schaffer boys always treated me bad. They teased me when I had skin problems. I feel I need to pay them back and they live on this road."
Her brother frowned as he drove slowly past a barn that was falling down, then stopped at another house and turned off the headlights. "What 'zactly are you planning?"
"I dunno. I was thinking maybe have them dance for me in their underwear. Why?"
"Because we been careful so far. We don't leave no evidence what we been doing. You know? Courtney will wake up in the morning and have no idea what I made her do. When Old Man Schonger came out and handed us five hundred dollars, the next day he had no idea what happened to it. We don't want folks to catch on about us, Beck."
"Oh, don't give me no lectures. We can do whatever we want. How is anyone gonna figure out what we do?" Turning toward the darkened house, she called softly, "Tommy. Kenny, come out here."
As they watched, the back door of the house opened and two teenaged boys stepped out. They were in their boxers, one had an oversized Raiders shirt with the number 34 on it. Both were a little over six feet tall and in good shape. One was on the school football team and the other was trying out for track. The boys walked up to the car and stood there.
Leaning out of her window, Becky said in a low voice. "Kenny, punch Tommy in the stomach." With no expression on his face, the bigger of the two boys slammed his fist into his brother's flat belly, doubling him up. Despite the pain, Tommy did not wake up. He got to his feet again. "Now, Tommy, hit him back. Hard as you can!" The boy threw a crude roundhouse punch and Kenny made no effort to avoid it. His head swung around and he dropped to the ground with a thud.
As both boys turned to face the car, Becky giggled. "Oh I love it. You two, take turns punching each other. Really hard now!" The two brothers exchanged blows with a horrible passivity. Each punch knocked one of them down because they did not try to block it or avoid it, and they got up more slowly each time. In a few minutes, their faces were bruised and blood was coming from their noses. The punches were getting wild and starting to miss.
"That's enough, Beck," Buzz said angrily. "I knew you'd go too far. Tommy! Kenny! Go back to bed right now!" Staggering and unsteady, the sleepwalkers turned and made their slow way back toward the house. Nearby a dog started barking. Buzz started up his father's Chevy and pulled away. "You're gonna get us caught."
"Aw, don't give me that. How could anyone prove it was us making them do it? Besides, what can they do us to us?"
Buzz was still furious. "They might burn us alive. That's how they used to treat people like us." He made a U-turn and headed back home. "We can have lots of fun, sis, but we got to be secret about this."
"Burned alive...." Becky whispered. "Like the witches at Salem."
II.
At eight-thirty in the morning, Jeremy Bane strode quickly across Third Avenue and up to the four-story yellow brick building where his office was. He was wearing blue jeans, sneakers and a bright red sweater with V-neck over a white T-shirt. This made him unreasonably ill at ease. For thirty years, he had seldom gone out in public without his trademark black outfit of slacks, turtleneck and sports jacket. Always black, always all his gadgets and weapons hidden in their specific pockets.
In the sweater and jeans, Bane looked so different he felt people were staring at him when of course no one noticed. Hitting fifty now, the Dire Wolf was still tall and gaunt, with short black hair and pale grey eyes that moved restlessly as he walked. Why had he let Unicorn talk him into this? He broke so many rules for that girl. Bane had enough self-awareness to vaguely realize that he enjoyed being pushed into breaking his usual behavior and he liked Unicorn because she tried everything to shake his habits up.
Wednesday was Pizza Night at the KDF headquarters on 38th Street, assuming no cases on were on, and Bane enjoyed catching up with what the new team was doing. So the night before, they were sitting in the reception room with two Meat Lovers Pizza, chatting away about personal trivia. Unicorn had been more frisky than usual. The little blonde was impulsive and insolent at the best of times and for some reason she seemed preoccupied with Bane's clothing. The Dire Wolf had put up with it. He did in fact own other clothes, including a formal suit with three ties and a vest. He also had an all-white outfit he had used once in Canada to move around unseen in a snowstorm. But he liked his turtleneck and sport jacket, he was used to it and people recognized it. It was a trademark.
Somehow, Unicorn had badgered him into wearing different clothes the next day. In exchange, she would leave her phone turned off for twenty-four hours. Everyone had been so interested that Bane had agreed to the deal. Now, as he walked through the automatic glass doors into the building, he felt uncomfortable. Under the sweater and jeans, he still wore the silk-thin flexible Trom armor, and he still had the two silver daggers sheathed under his sleeves. So he hadn't broken every single habit. He had three newspapers under his arm.
Bane walked past the EMERGENCY ONE walk-in clinic, down the short hall formed between the stairs going up and the wall. Here was the plain wooden door with a brass plaque DIRE WOLF AGENCY. He unlocked the door, went through the tiny waiting room and into his inner office. The next ten minutes were spent listening to his messages. A reminder he had to sign some papers at his legal counsel's office. A grudging thanks from Lt Montez for catching Dos Manos again, after the man had escaped from a psychiatric facility. Montez wanted to see him at the 20th Street station house. And of course, a chipper message from Unicorn asking how his day was going. That kid had not been spanked enough, he decided.
The Dire Wolf had no active case at the moment. He settled behind his desk and started searching through the newspapers. From the start of his career, he had found little hints in the papers about Midnight War events, one paragraph stories buried in the back pages. Some of his most important cases had begun with a scant item on page 6 about a black panther spotted in Kansas or two headless corpses washing up in Florida. So far, though, today seemed like a bust. He started on the second paper, spotting something about moving red lights seen by tourists on Overlook Mountain upstate. The police said they had found nothing, but Bane was interested...
The doorbell rang. Bane gave a start, folded the newspapers to one side and jumped to his feet. The waiting room was barely big enough for a coffee table with magazines and two folding chairs, but he seldom used it. Up on the wall was a 12" monitor and he glanced up at it to see who was out in the hall. He didn't recognize the man. Obese, at least two hundred and ninety pounds at six feet, the man was wearing a tan suit with a tie that had been loosened so the collar could be open. He had a round moonface with an unhealthy red color to it, and a greying crewcut. Yet the face was intelligent. The blue eyes that looked up at the camera in the hall had a sharp awareness to them.
Bane opened the door. "Yes, can I help you?"
"Mr Bane, I hope?" Southern accent, the Dire Wolf noted. Georgia but not Atlanta, deeper in the state. All the practice spotting accents sometimes paid off. The shoes were worn but polished, the suit was new and didn't fit well. Plain gold wedding ring. From the tired eyes and beginning of five o'clock shadow, this man had just arrived here after a long trip.
"I'm Bane."
"Oh, I'm glad. Sir, my name is Gene Van Aken, I'm sheriff of Buchanan County. I need to speak to you, it's important." The man touched his lips with his tongue and shifted his weight, he was obviously stressed.
"Sure, come right in." Bane ushered the man through the waiting room and into the inner office, closing the hall door behind them. In front of the desk were two leatherbound chairs and he motioned for Van Aken to have a seat while he circled to drop down in his own chair behind the desk. "Let's get right to it, what's the problem?"
"Some strange things going on in Willets, that's my town. Creepy things. Everyone is in a panic. I heard about from an FBI man, Mr Bane. Some FBI agents were in our neck of Georgia after a fugitive. I got to talking with one while waiting overnight. He told me about you. You've caught serial killers like Samhain and the Slaughterman. But he also said you were an expert on the supernatural. When things happened that couldn't be explained, you were sometimes called in. Frankly, his stories gave me the creeps big time."
"All true," said the Dire Wolf. "That's my trade."
The sheriff fidgeted, looked around the office and took a breath before continuing. "Some mighty weird things are going on in Willets, sir. Money and valuables disappear from people's houses while they're home. People wake up with serious injuries they didn't have before. Three girls from the high school have gone to the emergency room and the doctors found that they were raped, but they all said they had been home alone those nights. The owner of the local diner is missing, his wife woke up and he was gone from their bed without a sound."
Bane's grey eyes were bright. He leaned forward, and said nothing.
"I'm telling you, everyone is hysterical. Most of these events take place late at night. People are afraid to get to sleep. You drive through town and ever house has all its lights lit." The fat man let out a shuddering breath. "They're yelling at me to do something and honestly I'm at a loss."
"It sounds like this is a menace you were never trained to fight," Bane said. "It's good you came to me. I'm heading down there immediately."
Van Aken straightened up. "Thank God. You know, regular burglars and dope dealers and crooks are one thing, I'm been locking them up for fourteen years now. But this is not normal. I don't know where to begin."
Bane stood up and came around to where the man was filling the chair. "I have to make a few phone calls. I'll be on the first flight to Atlanta in the morning and I'll drive over to Willets right away. Have you noticed that the crimes are getting more serious?"
"Oh yeah. They started off as pranks. A boy woke up on the lawn in his sister's dress, for example. But then the rapes and beatings started and each event is worse than the one before."
The Dire Wolf started heading the sheriff for the door. "One more reason to stop whoever's behind this, right now. I'll contact you as soon as I get there."
After he sent Van Aken on his way, Bane went back in his office and paced furiously. He had to get going. Experience told him that there was someone commiting these crimes, someone getting to enjoy it as they got more brutal and there was likely a massacre on the way. He called the airport and managed to get a seat on a 9:45 AM flight to Atlanta. In his car, he always kept a knapsack with clothes and supplies ready, so he did not need to pack. Bane glanced down at himself in the jeans and red sweater. This would never do.
From the closet, he took a spare set of his usual outfit and changed. As soon as he pulled the black turtleneck on and got his arms into the sleeves of the sport jacket, he felt better. Maybe Unicorn was right and he needed to break his rigid habits but this was not the time. Bane left the office and walked down to 40th Street, where he kept his car at the IMPERIAL GARAGE. He was not looking forward the next few hours of filling out forms with Lt Montez and signing statements about how he had apprehended that maniac Dos Manos. Every time he went to police headquarters, it seemed there was more paperwork than the time before. Bane sighed as he drove downtown.
III.
Midnight was only a few minutes away when Bane drove up to a sign that read WELCOME TO FRIENDLY WILLETS - HOME OF THE BLUEJAYS BASEBALL TEAM. The trip seemed to have taken forever. The flight had departed hours late and been held up at landing. Luckily, his daggers had gotten through security once again; the high density silicone molding over them was designed to resemble human muscle if he was searched by hand, but it also fooled X-Rays. So far. He had been so anxious during the boarding that he decided he was not going to fly again. Those knives had been a present from Kenneth Dred and he valued them more than everything else he had ever owned. Also, the silver had its own protective properties and he would hate to go into action without them. From now, he would not use airlines.
In a rented Toyota Matrix, his knapsack in the seat behind him, he had driven for an hour and a half into Georgia. Now, finally, he had reached Willets. On the outskirts of town, he spotted a small motel called the DEW DROP INN. Hah hah, he thought, seen that pun a hundred times in bars around the country. There was a room available and he took it sight unseen, paying for the next two days.
Bane turned on the light as he entered, and immediately drew the curtains on the window. The room was okay, nothing fancy but clean. There was a bathroom in the corner, a double bed, a couch and a chair, a TV on a stand. He dropped his knapsack inside the door and used the bathroom, then sat on the couch and phoned the number Sheriff Van Aken had given him. It rang a dozen times without going to voicemail. Bane felt a sudden tinge of worry about this. He waited ten minutes, then called again and still got no response.
The Dire Wolf went back out again. He drove into town, stopped to fill the tank and check the tires and fluids, which was another of his obsessive details. He noticed the houses were in fact more lit than one might expect. It seemed as if every window had a light in it, but no one was in sight. The clerk behind the register had given him a hostile stare as he paid for the gas, but Bane was not surprised. A stranger in town at midnight, after all the weird events of the past week was bound to be regarded with suspicion. Bane got back in the Toyota and started driving slowly through town.
He had the windows down, listening and looking. Willets was a good-looking little town, with a church up on a hill at one end and a general store at the other. There was a small village green in the middle of town, with an illuminated flagpole. Mostly there white board houses with back yards, garages, lots of pick-up trucks and a NASCAR flag or two. Some Halloween decorations were up. For the next hour, the Dire Wolf drove around at random without seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. He went back to the village green, pulled off the road under an elm tree and shut the engine off.
Bane got out and started prowling the streets. In his black outfit, he blended with the shadows and his training helped him stay out of sight. He heard TVs and music from each house, louder than might be expected. But then, this was a town which was trying to stay on guard and not fall asleep. Two blocks ahead, he spotted movement on a porch. He flattened against a wall and crept up on the house. It was a middle-aged man smoking a cigarette, which he puffed quickly and stamped out before going back inside.
Another hour went by. Bane had circled the town to the extent that he could have drawn a map of it. Then a car went by, the first he had seen on the road since arriving. It slowed almost to a stop just ahead of him. A black Chevy Malibu, some rust by the right rear tire, a ding in that same fender. He memorized the license plate automatically. In the passenger window, the face of a redheaded teenage girl peered out at him with a wicked smirk and then the car pulled away.
It was starting to get light in the east. Bane heard a screen door slam and a truck turn over reluctantly, as if the battery was low. He decided to call it a lost night, walked back to where he had left the rental car and drove to the DEW DROP INN. Back in his room, Bane took rubber wedges from his knapsack and forced them under the door and above the window. He was starving as usual, and the 12" roast beef sub he had bought on the way here disappeared, as did the bag of cashews and the apple. He drained a bottle of club soda almost without stopping and felt better. Dawn was coming up. Bane kicked off his boots, hung his jacket over a chair and stretched out on the bed. He set his mind to wake up in four hours. Bane fell asleep, not knowing about the corpse of Sheriff Van Aken in the next room.
IV.
Just before nine, there was a pounding on the door. Bane was up and off the bed as if he had been stung by a scorpion. His hand jumped to his left hip before he realized he had left his gun home. The Dire Wolf smiled wryly and went to the door, tugging the wedge free and tossing it on the bed. He opened the door and saw a man in uniform, with the deputy badge and the sidearm and the shirt buttoned up to the neck. The name tag over the left shirt pocket said CRISPELL. The man was big enough, just over six feet tall and beefy, with a thick neck and a square face. The deepset eyes glared at Bane with open hostility.
"I expect you got some explaining to do," the deputy sheriff began.
Bane was not intimidated in the slightest. He had killed men this big and muscular, three at a time. "Where's Sheriff Van Aken?"
"He's next door. As you oughtta know. Why'd you do it?"
The Dire Wolf said, "You're going to have to do better than that." He turned away and walked over to get his bottle of water from the table. "Let's start with what you think I did."
"Next door is Sheriff Van Aken. Dead. Back of his head bashed in, and here you are. A stranger from up North."
"Let's have a look," Bane said, shrugging into his jacket. He brushed past the deputy, who surprisingly moved aside just a bit to let him pass. The Dire Wolf stepped out on the walkway in front of the rooms and walked over where an open door showed the wide back of Sheriff Gene Van Aken, lying face down. The back of his head was indeed crushed. Bane peered inside the room. Nothing seemed out of place but the sheriff's holster was empty.
Bane studied the scene, then turned back to the furious face of the deputy right behind him. "You have a medical examiner on the way?"
"From the next county. Doc Muenster is supposed to be here soon. But you need to start talking."
"Sure." He pointed at the body. "Was Van Aken registered here? If not, how did he get in? Have you asked the clerk on duty last night?"
Crispell was taken offguard. He had not expected to face a string of questions like that. "I'll doing the asking here, mister-"
"That's not good enough. How did Van Aken get out here? I don't see a car other than mine and yours. He sure didn't walk ten miles here from town, look at him."
"Stop it! Hold it right there," Crispell yelled. He moved in until his face was inches away from Bane. "Gene told me he was going to go see you. The famous Dire Wolf. He took the train to New York City and came back the same way. He called me when he got home that night. That's the last anyone heard of him."
"I see." Bane stepped one foot into the room, crouched and took hold of the corpse's hand before Crispell could stop him. He flexed the fingers and stood up. "Dead at least twenty-four hours. This air temperature and humidity... yeah, twenty-four hours. The doctor will confirm that."
"So what?"
"Twelve hours ago, I was on TWA flight 2317 out of JFK. I arrived in Atlanta and rented a car to drive here. This is all documented, with dates and times. The man at the rental agency will remember me because I paid cash and he asked to copy my driver's license number. At the time this man was killed I was waiting at the airport for my flight to leave. Security cameras will show that, How much more do you need? Has it dawned on you that Van Aken asked me to come here to investigate the unsolved crimes? He was in effect my client."
The deputy seemed to deflate. He was used to people being intimidated, not having someone take over an investigation. This strange Northern boy with those pale eyes had a quiet self-assurance that was hard to defy.
"Oh, there's more," Bane went on. "Look at the side of his face. See the purple area? That's where blood collected after he died. The heart stops, blood pools wherever gravity pulls it. It's called postmortem lividity."
Crispell bent over to look. "Well, sure, I know about that..."
"So he wasn't killed here. Someone smacked him in the head and let him lie on his side for a while, then brought him here. Do you see blood on any object in the room? I don't." Bane folded his arms. "There's something else. Why would the killer bring the body here, where it would be found right away? Why not conceal it in the woods? Because the killer wanted it to be found.. next to my room." He straightened up. "Who else knew I was coming here? Van Aken told you. Who else knew?"
"Listen, for the last time, I am going to ask the questions here! Don't try to confuse things..."
Bane turned as an ambulance pulled up, followed by a black Lincoln. The EMTs got out and waited for a white-haired man with a mustache to emerge from his car. The next hour was hectic but Dr Muenster confirmed Bane's estimate that Van Aken had been dead at least twenty-four hours. Photos were taken, everything was measured and finally the body was loaded into the ambulance and taken away. The doctor had said the nearest hospital was twenty-five miles away in the neighboring county.
"You've got my alibi," Bane told the deputy. "I can prove I was a thousand miles away when Van Aken was killed. Not that I had any reason to kill him in the first place! I came here to help solve your mysterious crimes. Come on," he added as he started walking toward the motel office. The deputy followed with a puzzled expression. The same man was on duty that had been there the night before, a middled-aged local named Earl Grover He lived in the room behind the office and was almost always manning the desk. He didn't know how Van Aken had entered that room, but a little questioning revealed that he had found the ring of keys on the office floor that day.
"I must have dropped them," Earl said. "But you'd think I'd hear the clink."
"You take naps during the day?" Bane asked.
"Well, sure. I never know when someone is going to check in or out. My cousin Roy relieves me on weekends or if I have to go into town."
Bane nodded. All the crimes seemed to take place when the victims were asleep. No wonder everyone in town seemed to try to stay up all night. Then he remembered the black Chevy that had gone past him the night before, with the girl grinning out the window at him.
V.
Crispell did not seem to know how to deal with Bane, who was neither frightened nor angry. To his own surprise, the deputy started to answer the Dire Wolf's questions. He was finding that Bane was asking about things that Van Aken had mentioned. They stood at the end of the walkway for over an hour. Bane got names and addresses of the victims of the weird crimes, put the dates and times in order, then started on how everything connected. In a small town like Willets, almost everyone knew each other to a degree.
Finally, the Dire Wolf asked about Van Aken's family. The wife, Kathleen, had been living back with her parents for the past year as the couple had not been getting along. The two children were, in Crispell's opinion, unruly brats who skipped school and had been in trouble for shoplifting. Becky was fifteen and Bradley (who was called Buzz by everyone) was sixteen and they were always seen together. Bane got a description of the two and kept his face inexpressive. Reddish hair.
"What kind of car did Van Aken drive?"
"His own car? Old Chevy Malibu with some miles on it. Why?"
Bane said, "Every detail can come in useful. Look, deputy, I was hired to investigate the unsolved crimes in this time. Now that Van Aken has been killed and his body dumped to point a finger at me, I'm more determined than before. I can see you want to bring his killer in as well. We might as well cooperate. We can get more done working together than against each other."
The man gave him a sullen stare. "I wasn't sure about you. After the sheriff said he was going all the way to New York to bring you in, I looked you up. You've got some record, all right. I found reports that you have caught a dozen serial killers. And then there's all the supernatural rumours about you. I never put any stock in that stuff before, but the weird stuff going on the past few weeks has me wondering..."
The Dire Wolf gave the faintest of smiles, not noticeable unless you were looking for it. "It's a wild world, deputy. I'm going out to Van Aken's house and talk to the family. What about you?"
"Me? Aw hell, I got to be in the office. There is so much paperwork and reports to do. I'll be acting sheriff until an election can be held and I wasn't expecting it."
Bane went and got the knapsack from his room, then started heading for his car. "I'll stop back as soon as I learn anything," he said. He got in the rented Toyota and eased out onto the road as Crispell watched. That had gone easier than he had hoped, Bane thought. He hadn't expressed his thoughts but he had organized the crimes into three categories. There was simple profit, the theft of cash and smartphones and digital cameras, that sort of thing. There was the string of sexual assaults, all local high school girls except for one thirty-year-old who worked in the general store. And there were the pranks which had started as whimsical and become brutal.
All done while the victims were asleep, almost all at night.
Bane had expected to be facing a warlock of some sort, maybe a member of Red Sect. Now he concluded he was dealing with "dream-slavers," rare but not unknown. If the criminals were a teenage brother and sister, it made sense. The boy was having sex with the girls from school that he found attractive. The girl was paying back boys who had offended her somehow. And both were benefitting from robberies. Of course, this meant they had killed their own father but that was nothing new. Investigating murders had left Bane with the opinion that anyone could kill anyone, nothing was taboo. As he drove through town, the Dire Wolf found he was angry on a person level. Van Aken had come to him for help and had been killed. That offended Bane's pride. Then the killers had left Van Aken's body in the next room to try and point suspicion at him. That really made him feel a cold calm rage.
Driving through town, he didn't spot any place to eat. This village was really just an array of houses along a road, except for a church and a general store. Bane pulled over by the store and went in. The man behind the counter regarded him with bleary eyes and fought a yawn. This was a town that dared not sleep. Bane looked along the shelves and picked up two hard rolls, some sliced ham and a packet of cheese from a refrigerated cabinet. A bottle of apple juice and two granola bars were next. He carried his choices to the register and faced the man as his purchases were rung up. Nothing was said beyond minimal grunts of "That'll be all?" and "Thanks."
Back out in his rental car, Bane sliced the hard rolls with a dagger and made two thick sandwiches. Some mustard would have helped but he didn't want to go back in for it. As he munched slowly, he watched the people driving by and the occasional customer trudging into the store. None of them looked as if they had gotten any sleep. The Dire Wolf sipped the apple juice and felt a twing of sympathy for them but, if he had his way, the reign of terror would be ending soon. Pulling out onto the road, he drove until he reached a side road that read CROSBY LANE, and he turned into it. Here was a nice two-story house with aluminum siding and a big yard. A railroad track ran by just outside the yard, with no fence to mark the property line. Parked next to the house was the black Chevy he had glimpsed the night before, and next to it was a police car. Bane got out and walked up to the front door.
Before he could knock, the screen door swung open and a short skinny man in a deputy uniform stuck his face forward. "Yeah? Whadda YOU want?" The name tag read STOUTENBURGH.
Bane held up the leather billfold that held his PI license and let the deputy get a good look. "Sheriff Van Aken asked me to come down here. He wanted me to investigate the recent crimes."
Stoutenburgh scowled. "Yeah, right. I saw him get on the bus. I guess it's all right then, he said you were some sort of expert." A train rolled by with a whistle that sounded unbearably shrill at close hand. "Goddam trains," the deputy said.
"I just came from where Crispell was supervising the scene. Sorry about Van Aken. I only met him for about half an hour." Bane stepped up and past the deputy without asking or being invited. Inside the cluttered living room, a heavyset woman got up from an overstuffed couch. On the wall over her was a stuffed deer head with a cigarette stuck in its mouth in country humour.
Mrs Van Aken must have been a handsome woman in her earlier days, with thick black hair and green eyes. She had packed on weight, though, and her face had the signs of a chainsmoker. The yellow stains on her right forefinger and thumb told it as well. "Who are you? I didn't ask you in my home."
Again, Bane held out his PI license and let her study it. "Your husband went to my office and asked me to look into the unexplained crimes going on down here. I agree to investigate. Now, after what happened, I'm determined to get the the bottom of these events."
The woman handed the billfold back. "Go ahead. I don't care. Nothing you do will bring my Gene back."
The Dire Wolf glanced up. On the stairs, peering down at him, were two skinny teenagers. A boy and a girl, both with reddish-blonde hair and blues, both wearing faded jeans and T-shirts. As their eyes met, he saw that the girl knew he recognized her from the night before. "You must be Gene's children?" he asked.
"Well, ain't you sharp?" said the boy. "Everyone in New Yawk City as bright as you?"
Bane's voice was quiet but carried in the silent house. "I believe the unsolved crimes are being committed by two people. People with unusual abilities. I've handled a lot of cases like this and I'll handle this one, too." The slightest edge came into his voice. "People who use these strange abilities wrong always come to a painful death."
In the girl's eyes a flicker of fear shone and even the boy drew back an inch, saying, "I love tough talk, mister. Good luck with your ghosthunting."
"You don't seem too upset about your father's murder. Most families would be in shock."
"Well, you don't know much about us," Buzz Van Aken said. "I guess you'll be going now."
Bane turned to where the wife was watching. "I'll be around until this is solved. Whatever it takes, I promise your husband's killer will face justice. One way or another." And he turned and left the house.
VI.
The rest of the day was spent questioning townsfolk. He went from one to the next, asking about what had happened. One man woke up to find his laptop and smartphone gone, even though his door was locked from the inside. A woman sat up in bed at dawn to find herself naked and sweaty, with bruises on her thighs. Two high school boys had evidently beaten each other up in their sleep and gone back to bed to awaken with black eyes and dried blood from their noses. Altogether, eighteen people had been victimized in one way or another. There was one missing man, still unfound after a week. And there was the dead body of Sheriff Van Aken. All the work of dream-slavers, if he was right.
Bane's style of questioning worked because he was so blunt and matter-of-fact about the weird events. He said that, yes, he had witnessed stranger things and he was sure he could stop these crimes. When asked by the people what could be done to protect themselves, he sensibly said they should guard each other. Have one person sleep while another sat up and watched. People who lived alone could try tying a foot to the furniture with clothesline before going to sleep, in the hope that tripping when getting up would wake them.
It was getting near dusk when he had covered everyone he wanted to speak with. Bane drove back to the convenient mart on the outskirts of town and snatched two cheeseburgers sitting on a heated metal cabinet. Better than nothing, he grumbled. As darkness fell, he pulled up to the DEW DROP INN, grabbed his knapsack and entered his room. He saw no signs that Crispell had searched this room at all. Dumping his clothes on the bed, the Dire Wolf tugged off the false bottom of the knapsackto reveal a stiff cardboard lining holding a variety of exotic and illegal devices. He had plans for a few of them.
Now it was a waiting game. Bane figured the killers wouldn't come here too early. Their powers depended on the victim being asleep. He studied two of the local newspapers he had picked up at the convenient mart. He made a few phone calls back to New York and caught up on business. Around eleven, he decided it was time to prepare. From the cache of weapons and devices, he took three disposable syringes and examined them closely...
At just after midnight, the black Chevy pulled up into the gravel lot of the DEW DROP INN. Buzz was driving. Becky had a windbreaker on against the night chill. They sat for a few minutes, heads tilted as if listening for the faintest noise possible. Finally, Buzz said, "He's asleep in there. But I ain't never touched a mind so deep in sleep."
"I know, I know," his sister said. "He's really out of it. Not even dreaming."
"Maybe he took a sleeping pill. I don't know. Whatever, we got to settle with him tonight. Maybe it's time we moved on to a bigger playground. Imagine how much fun we could have in Atlanta." Buzz opened the door and got out, with Becky reluctantly following his example.
They stood in the gloom before the door of Room 6.
"What you gonna make him do?" asked the girl.
"I brought Pa's gun. Mr Jeremy Bane is going to put a bullet through his head. That should be good for a laugh." Buzz faced the door and said, "Get up. Get up, open the door."
A long minute later, the doorknob turned and the door swung inward. But standing there with his eyes closed was the desk clerk, Earl. Both Buzz and Becky Van Aken gasped and gave a start, turning to each other. A dark form loomed up behind them and two fists hard as stone crashed down against the nape of their necks in a vicious rabbit punch. The teenagers dropped to their knees and started groaning. Bane seized them by their clothing and flung them bodily into the room, closing the door behind them.
Earl was still standing there blankly. Bane gently brought the man over to the bed and lowered him down on it. "You make a fine decoy, buddy."
On the floor, Buzz was moaning and trying to get up but he was in too much pain, rubbing the back of his neck. "You tricked us...?"
"Damn right." The Dire Wolf grabbed the boy by the shirt and threw him on the couch. The sister followed a second later, landing half on top of him. "I gave Earl an injection of the anesthetic I use in my darts. He'll be out for most of an hour yet. You two are getting the same medicine."
Buzz tried to get up, reaching behind him. In a move that could hardly be followed, Bane leaned over and drove a fist into the teenager's chest with a noise like a hammer breaking rock. The boy doubled up, trying to catch his breath. The Dire Wolf tugged him forward and got the .357 Magnum from the back of the kid's belt. He hefted the weapon critically.
"This was for me, right?" he said. "Let's add it up. You came here to make me kill myself. You two murdered your father- your own father. You made one other man disappear. He's certainly dead out in the woods. You, the boy- you raped and molested nine girls. I won't even get into all the robbery and general abuse." Becky tried to get up and Bane shoved her roughly back down again.
"Now, here's the problem," he continued. "How can I bring you in? How can I charge you with making people doing things in their sleep with your psychic powers? No. Never work. You can't be punished by the courts but I certainly am not going to let you keep on killing and terrorizing like this."
Becky's voice cracked. "You're not gonna murder us?! We're just kids."
"Let's see what happens," Bane said. He grabbed Buzz by the wrist, yanked the boy's arm out straight and plunged the needle in. The teenager yelped at the burning sensation, then his eyes rolled up and he sagged limply.
"Wait, wait," begged Becky. "He made me do it, he forced me, I'm innocent..."
"Save your breath," said the Dire Wolf, injecting her in the arm as well. As she slumped back on the couch, Bane returned the syringes to the concealed lining of his knapsack and placed it in a corner. He took a second to examine the sheriff's .357 Magnum and saw that the weapon had not been fired. He set it on the dresser, just out of reach. Then he brought a chair over, reversed it and sat down on it backwards, gazing over the back of the chair at the two drugged dream-slavers.
He was taking a terrible chance with this. All day he had been wracking his brain to remember what he had read about this sort of psychic predator. Dream-slavers took control of sleeping minds and could make the victim do anything they commanded, but they themselves were sometimes vulnerable when they were asleep. It was a two-way process. After a few minutes, both Buzz and Becky began stirring. Their breath grew labored, their faces twitched. Bane felt a powerful compulsion reaching his thoughts, a pressure compelling him to obey. He fought it. Asleep themselves, the dream-slavers were ordering him to take the revolver and put its barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger. The compulsion swept over him like a hot wave.
But he had decades of disipline and self-control to resist the commands with. Even without his Tel Shai training, Jeremy Bane was a strong-willed stubborn man who never bowed down to any orders. He rejected the compulsion. He shoved it back as if walking against a gale wind to close a door. Suddenly the struggle was over and he felt the pressure ease.
Without a word, their eyes still shut, Buzz and Becky Van Aken got up off the couch and walked clumsily toward the door. The boy reached over without looking and grabbed the heavy revolver to take with him. Strangely, Bane did not interfere. He watched the two leave the motel room with an expression of great relief. As the headlights of the Chevy shone through the curtained window, to swing around as the car backed up and drove away.
The Dire Wolf sagged, his head dropping down. His hair was damp with cold sweat. That had been a tougher fight than he had expected. Reversing those murderous young minds had taken everything he had. Taking a deep breath, he got up and stretched, suddenly feeling exhausted. There was still much to do. Opening the door, he glanced about but saw no one. Picking up the drugged desk clerk over one shoulder, Bane hurried along the walkway to the open door of the office, into the room behind the lobby. There was a couch with a blanket and two pillows. He lowered Earl onto it and left. Hopefully, the man would wake and conclude he had just fallen asleep during a dull watch.
Back in his room, Bane sat by the door, listening and waiting. Nothing. He still wasn't sure he had handled this the right way. Finally, he locked the door and put the rubber wedge under it. He fell asleep sitting up in the chair and rousted himself enough to stretch out on the bed fully dressed, with the light still on.
Early the next morning, the familiar pounding came on the door. The Dire Wolf jumped, got to his feet and crossed the room. He tugged the wedge loose and opened the door to reveal Deputy Crispell again. The man looked awful, unshaven and red-eyed. "I want you to come with me," he said.
"Am I under arrest? Or being detained as a person of interest?"
"No. Nothing like that. It's the Van Aken kids. Come on."
Bane took a second to wash his hands and face with cold water before joining the big man. "Those two? What about them?"
"Dead. Both of them. Sitting in the father's car in front of their house. The boy shot his sister in the temple and then put a bullet between his own eyes. Inside of the car is the worst mess I ever seen. Happened around one this morning, according to a neighbor down the road who says she thought someone was shooting at possums in the garbage."
Bane started through the door, brushing his hair with his fingers. "Where was the mother?"
"She was at a friend's house, if you know what I mean. I want you to take a look at the scene and tell me your impressions. You've got experience in these matters."
"I'll do my best," Bane said. "I sure don't seem to be getting anywhere with these weird sleepwalker crimes." Even as he said that, though, he knew that there would not be any more. In a short time, the people of Willets would start to feel the terror was over and life would ease gradually back to normal. The nightmarish past few weeks would be just stories to retell. Only Bane would know what had happened.
1/31/2014