Halloween and Other Seasons

5

It was getting dark.

Len Schneider looked like a man who was thinking. He stood with his head down, hands in the pockets of his jacket.

He glanced at his watch.

Almost time to go.

His hands clenched into fists.

It had turned even colder. The last few days had each announced, with increasing earnestness, that autumn was here and winter wasn’t far behind. A curt wind was dervishing dead leaves into some of the shallow pits they had dug. The deeper holes were filled with muddy water and blankets of leaves.

There was nothing else in any of them.

Where the hell are you, you son of a bitch?

His fists clenched tighter.

“Detective? We’re gonna roll now.”

Schneider looked up to see Fran Morrison, one of the fresh-faced uniformed cops, standing in front of him. Behind the tight cluster of trees, in a small clearing, a work crew was loading shovels and other tools into a truck: an emblem on its door, in orange letters on a black background, read TOWN OF ORANGEFIELD, PUBLIC WORKS.

As Schneider watched, one of the crew opened the door, climbed into the truck and yanked it closed behind him.

Morrison was waiting for him to say something, so Schneider let out a long breath and said, “Yeah, Fran, we’re done here. You might as well go, too.”

“You need a ride back?”

Schneider looked down at his shoes, which were covered with mud. “No, I’m good.”

Morrison, almost sighing with relief, turned and was gone. A few moments later Schneider heard his patrol car spitting leaves from its tires as it followed the truck out of the road they had made and hooked up with a dirt road a quarter of a mile away.

He was alone, now.

But he knew he wasn’t. He felt it.

“Dammit!”

His voice echoed through the forest.

He couldn’t blame Morrison and the rest of them if they thought he was obsessed. He knew he was. But there was no way he wasn’t going to do everything he could to find Jody Wendt.

And Jody Wendt was here, somewhere.

Whoever had taken him had a lair here, somewhere.

Schneider knew it.

For a moment, Jerry Carlton’s smirking face rose into his memory, wearing those goddamned mirror shades.

“Not this time,” Schneider said out loud.

~ * ~

“My party, this time,” Grant said.

The bar itself was crowded, but the booth area, at three o’clock in the afternoon, was nearly empty. Bill Grant placed a fifth of Dewars gently on the table, as if setting down a piece of porcelain, and sat as he produced two eight ounce glasses, one with ice, one empty. He hesitated as he pushed the empty one toward Len Schneider.

“This is the way you like it, right? Neat?”

Grant had already lit the first of what would probably be a hundred cigarettes.

Schneider nodded. “I didn’t think you were paying attention last time.”

Grant gave a slight smile and pushed the empty glass to the other side of the table.

Schneider was working at the cap on the bottle, and twisted it open with practiced ease.

He poured for himself, then reached across and studied the amber liquid as it trickled over the ice in Grant’s glass.

“I thought we should talk outside the office,” Grant said.

Schneider’s ears immediately pricked up; already he detected a focus in the man he hadn’t seen before.

Len replied, still looking at the scotch in Grant’s glass, “You here to give me the fatherly pep talk? I’m sure Franny Morrison and the rest of them think I’m nuts.”

He looked up from Grant’s glass to meet the other detective’s eyes. To his surprise, Grant had pulled his cigarette from his mouth and was smiling.

“You think I’m nuts too?” Schneider asked.

Grant’s smile widened. “As a matter of fact, I do. But I understand. Thing is, I know now that this isn’t…weird shit.”

Schneider had downed one scotch, and refilled his own glass. Grant’s new attitude had begun to irk him just as much as his old one.

“This isn’t weird enough for you?” he said. “Did you hear what Jody Wendt’s mother claims happened to her two days ago? That a pumpkin-headed robot appeared on her back stoop and spoke to her in Jody’s voice?” Schneider let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t find that strange?”

“Frankly, I find it charming. She told me the same story.”

“You interviewed her?” Schneider said with sudden anger.

“On my own time,” Grant added quickly. His smile faded a bit, and he actually looked apologetic. He lit another cigarette, blew smoke, and said, “It has nothing to do with you, Len. I just had to know.”

“Had to know what?” Schneider’s voice had risen—a few of the patrons at the bar, one of whom was a cop they both knew, looked around before turning away. Schneider finished his drink and poured a third.

Grant put his hand on Schneider’s arm. Schneider looked at the hand, still angry—but his anger drained when he saw that the familiar haunted look had returned to the other detective’s face. Grant’s skin had the yellow pallor of the tepid cloud of smoke from his cigarette.

Schneider let a long breath out.

Grant had finished his own scotch and was pouring a new one. He drained half of this past its ice, which had mostly melted from the natural heat of the liquor, then put the glass down. He coughed.

“Remember when I said there were worse things than a kid getting killed?”

Schneider’s anger was back in an instant, but Grant pushed immediately on:

“I know how callous that sounded. Believe me, I do.” He stopped for Scotch and then a fresh cigarette, which he chain-lit from the remains of his current butt, only half devoured. “But I’ve seen things much worse than anything you can imagine.”

“Like what?” Schneider replied, not hiding his mood.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Grant said. His voice became a near whisper, and Schneider was once again reminded of the vague, haunted man in the office the day he had taken this assignment. “I don’t ever want to talk about that.”

He looked straight at Schneider, who was working on his own Scotch. “But there are other things I will talk about. There was a local beekeeper named Fred Willims. He was involved in the Peter Kerlan case with me. That was the children’s book author you’ve heard about.

“We had a closed door session with the district attorney at the time, who sealed the case shut. His name was Charles Morton. He warned Willims never to say anything about what we’d seen happen on Halloween to Peter Kerlan or his wife. Me, he didn’t have to tell, though I’m telling you now that Kerlan and his wife were both killed by hornets. As far as I know, Willims never said a word. But some time later Willims was found dead, hung from a tree with his eyes gouged out. The eyeholes were filled with hornets. Morton died, too, the same day, of anaphylactic shock from a hornet sting. And then there was a girl named Annabeth Turner—”

“I read that case after I got here,” Schneider said. “Tried to hang herself in a park—”

Now it was Grant’s turn to interrupt. “That’s what the report said. There were two other suicides, both of them successful, at almost exactly the same time. There was more to it than just a bunch of suicides, Len.”

Again, Schneider asked, “Like what?”

Grant shrugged, looking suddenly deflated. “Never mind. But here we are again at that special time of year in Orangefield, when the pumpkins get sold, Pumpkin Days come, the farmers get rich and weird shit crawls out of the woodwork. Only this year, my friend, for once it’s just plain old crime.”

Schneider said nothing.

Grant leaned forward and said earnestly, “What do you believe in, Len? What do you really believe in?”

Grant’s question was so unlike him, so unlike his meticulous procedural ways and evidence building, and his manner so suddenly needy, as if some sort of dam had burst within him, letting out all the fears he’d tucked away, that Schneider said nothing. He looked at his scotch, then drank it. He started to get up.

“I believe in not fucking up a second time, Bill. That’s what I believe in.”

Grant grabbed his arm and urged him back into the booth. His eyes pinned Schneider in place, like a butterfly to a board. When he spoke again his voice was level and harsh. “Take me seriously, Len. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about weird shit. At least not this time. The bad news is I think you just might fuck up again, if you’re not careful. I think you should let me have this case, after all. It was a mistake for me to let you take it to begin with. You’ve got that mess in Milwaukee so tied up with this that you’re liable to screw up. I’ve seen it happen. It happened to me, and just like you I was concentrating on payback instead of doing my job—”

It was Schneider’s turn to be level and harsh. He leaned forward in the booth. “That bastard Jerry Carlton sat there during his trial taking his watch apart and putting it back together. He never glanced at the jury, not once. At the end of the trial, he looked up from his watch and mouthed the word ‘Ted’ at me. That was the kid in Milwaukee’s name.” His voice was shaking. “I could have saved that kid, Bill.”

“Maybe,” Grant answered.

There was another two fingers of scotch in Schneider’s glass, and he drained it, poured again. Tears abruptly filled his eyes. “I could have saved him.”

“Like I said, maybe. Then again, maybe not. Maybe you still would have gotten there too late. Maybe Jerry Carlton would have killed him earlier, if he saw you coming. Maybe—”

Schneider drained his glass and gripped it so hard he could feel it getting ready to break. He looked at Grant, who was studying him; Grant’s pallor had assumed it’s yellow, haunted tinge.

“Be careful, Len,” Grant almost whispered. “Do your job and don’t let things get out of hand.” He paused to light yet another cigarette. “Advice from an old fart. Someone named Riley Gates, my mentor, once gave the same advice to me. He also saved my life by not shooting me when I was about to fuck up big time.” He gave a short, bitter laugh that ended in a cough. “He also saved my career, such as it is.”

The anger was back and this time when Schneider stood up Grant didn’t try to stop him.

“This case is mine, Bill. Stay the hell away from it. And I don’t need a goddamn mentor—especially not a burned out lush who’s seen the boogeyman one too many times.”

As Schnedier stalked off, Grant stared straight ahead, unconciously pulling another cigarette from his pocket. He didn’t look at it as he lit it from the one already in his mouth, which had barely burned.

“Careful…” he said.