Riverwatch

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Baton Passes

The cold water from the basin felt good on his face and hands. After unceremoniously losing his dinner, Sam had stumbled down to the men’s room and suffered another attack of retching that lasted almost fifteen minutes. His throat was raw. His stomach ached. He was all but certain that the next attack would leave him exhausted.

Sam reached over and yanked several paper towels from the dispenser hanging on the wall and used them to mop his face dry. One glance in the mirror at the bleak, unhinged look in his eyes was enough. As he bent his head beneath the faucet and tried to rinse the foul taste from his mouth for the fourth time, he made sure he refrained from looking in that direction again.

When he felt he had himself together, he left the men’s room and stepped back into the hall.

Two uniformed officers were waiting for him just outside the door.

Damon was talking with one of the responding officers when Collins came up beside him and signaled for his attention.

"What have we got?" Wilson asked while studying Sam over his fellow officer’s shoulder.

"Nothing much, I’m afraid." Collins pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. "Name’s Samuel Travers. Claims he works here, stopped by to get a few things from his locker and ran into the commotion downstairs so he thought he’d check things out. The victim was a friend of his it seems."

Collins handed Damon a small laminated card that had Sam’s picture and employee information. Damon glanced at the photo and then suddenly remembered where he had seen him last.

Travers had been at the site where they’d discovered the Halloran corpse. Damon wondered if it was just a coincidence that Sam had shown up at this murder scene as well. Come to think of it, Jake Caruso had been at two of the murder scenes as well, the two at the Blake estates. Damon filed the thought away for later investigation.

The Sheriff handed the ID back to Collins. "Check this out for me. Find out who his supervisor is and get him on the phone. I want to know everything he can tell us about this guy. You know the drill."

"Gotcha, Sheriff."

As Collins headed down the hall, Damon walked over to where Sam was standing. "Feeling any better, Mr. Travers?" he asked kindly.

"Uh, yeah, thanks. Sorry about the mess." He waved his hand feebly in the direction of the doorway where he’d lost control of his stomach earlier.

"Don’t worry about it," Damon replied. "A sight like that isn’t an easy one to take." He shook his head sadly. "Unfortunately, when you’re in a position like mine you get used to it after awhile."

Sam didn’t reply. He was barely listening. He knew that he should be paying attention. He was probably in a whole lot of trouble, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His thoughts were a confused jumble, like a swarm of bees around a hive.

He realized suddenly that the sheriff had asked him another question.

"Uhh, pardon me?"

Wilson eyed him calmly. "I asked if you knew the victim."

Gabriel! a voice cried in the back of Sam’s mind. "Yeah. He’s…" he began, and then corrected himself. "He was a friend of mine. I work here, this is my floor." Forgive me Gabriel! How could I have known it was all true?

"Are you friends with most of the patients entrusted to your care?"

"Some of them," Sam replied.

The heavy stench of death filled his nostrils as the ambulance attendants walked past carrying a stretcher on which sat a number of body bags. Sam’s gaze followed them the length of the hall until they disappeared around the corner.

Damon waited until he had Sam’s attention again. Then he asked, "Do you know who killed Mr. Armadorian?"

Yes! Sam’s mind cried, and for a moment he was afraid he’d be unable to prevent himself from telling the Sheriff all he knew, that his mouth would disobey the commands his mind was sending to it and the whole sorry story would be revealed, but some rational part of him was still functioning. He knew that if he told the Sheriff what he suspected he’d only wind up at the County Hospital awaiting a psychiatric exam. He managed to squelch his desperate need to unburden himself and answered the question in the negative.

Sam’s inner turmoil did not go unnoticed, but Damon gave no indication that he’d seen it.

If Sam might know something that could help the investigation of the murders, then Damon was duty-bound to bring him in for questioning. The mayor and the public were screaming for him to make an arrest and end the killing spree that was rapidly turning their town into a frightened community of hermits, too scared to leave their homes. He couldn’t arrest Sam just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time but bringing him down to the stationhouse for questioning wouldn’t violate any of his civil rights.Something stayed his hand, however.

Maybe it didn’t make much sense, but in his gut Damon was certain that Sam had no connection to the murders. While there was no evidence yet linking this one to the others aside from its sheer savagery, Damon was certain that they were all connected. They had to be. There was no doubt in his mind that all four murders were committed by the same person. Or animal, if he were to use Strickland’s theory. While Sam’s appearance tonight might indicate he knew something about the murders, not for a moment did Damon believe that Sam was capable of committing them. It took a certain maliciousness to kill in such a brutal manner, and his gut reaction told him Sam wasn’t capable of that.

Which left him back at square one.

Except for whatever it was that Sam knew.

Damon watched as Sam dug a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and stuck one between his lips. His hands trembled as he tried to light it and after three unsuccessful tries the Sheriff took pity on him and lit it himself.

Sam weakly smiled his thanks.

Damon came to a decision. "Look, Mr. Travers. I get the feeling you know a bit more about all this than you’re letting on. I’m giving you a chance to come clean right now. Is there anything you wanna tell me?"

Sam merely shook his head. "Is it okay if I go now? I’m not feeling all that great and…"

Damon cut him off. "Yeah, all right. I’m sure the whole situation has been a shock. There are a few other questions I want to ask you about Mr. Armadorian but they can wait until the morning. I’ll expect you in my office around eleven o’clock, all right?"

"Yeah. Okay." Sam turned and began walking down the corridor. He’d only gone a few steps when Sheriff Wilson called out to him.

"Mr. Travers?"

Sam turned back around to face him.

"The locker room is this way," the Sheriff said, indicating the other end of the hall with an outstretched hand.

For a moment Sam was completely confused. The locker room? What the hell did that have to?? Then he remembered the cover story he’d told Officer Collins. He smiled weakly, doing his best to cover his lapse. "Thanks. In the midst of all this I guess I forgot why I came here." Sam turned and walked back past Wilson and down the hall in the other direction. He knew the Sheriff wasn’t fooled.

Damon watched him go, then walked down the hall and re-entered the room where the old man had died. He stared at the splattered bloodstains while the crime scene technicians went about their business around him.

Jesus H. Christ! he thought. Who the hell could do something like this?

The mutilation of the Cummings had been bad. The memory of the man’s head stuffed into the toilet bowl rose in his mind, but he quickly shoved it away again. It was bad enough that he saw it in his dreams, he didn’t need to see it while he was awake.

Yet that horror had been something he could understand. It was sick, sure, but normally sick, if that made any kind of twisted sense. Mutilation of a victim’s body wasn’t all that uncommon in psychotic killings.

But this….

This was beyond anything he’d ever seen.

The poor guy had been torn to shreds, for Christ’s sake.

He shook his head. What kind of animal am I after? How the hell did it get in here without being seen or heard? How intelligent is this thing?

Sheriff Wilson’s right hand unconsciously slipped down to caress the butt of his service revolver.

There was one question he did know the answer to, however.

What did you do with an animal that was running wild in the streets?

Damon smiled grimly.

You hunted it down and killed it.

Sam felt like he’d been caught up in a giant whirlwind that was hurtling his body relentlessly forward without his control. He sat slumped on the floor in the basement locker room, his back resting against the cool metal of the lockers. He was doing his best to stop the palsied trembling of his body that had started as soon as he’d sought refuge here.

He wasn’t having much success.

The events of the last hour had been too much for him. His mind and his body were numb with shock. It was hard to believe that Gabriel was dead. He knew it was true, yet a part of him resisted the notion.

Sam was overwhelmed with guilt. There was no way he could deny the fact that he had killed his friend. He hadn’t harmed him physically, but he was as responsible in his own mind as whoever had actually performed the violence. He had dismissed his friend’s fears as the harmless ramblings of an old man rapidly approaching senility, even when there had been no evidence that Gabriel had begun in any way to loose touch with reality, and that had killed him as surely as if Sam himself had wielded the knife.

If he’d listened, he might have been able to save him. He and Gabriel could’ve faced the old man’s enemy together. Gabriel might have survived.

If only he’d listened!

But he hadn’t, and Gabriel had paid the final price for Sam’s own ignorance.

With his heart aching and filled with guilt, grief finally broke through. His face in his hands, Sam wept long and hard, his shoulders hitching with the force of his sobs.

After a time, grief slowly gave way to anger.

Gabriel’s death would not go unavenged, he vowed to the empty air around him.

With the backs of his hands, Sam wiped the tears from his face and rose slowly to his feet. Knowing the police might still be outside, he knew he had to maintain his appearance, particularly in the light of Sheriff Wilson’s obvious suspicions. He went to his locker and spun the combination, intending on removing the extra coat he kept there to support the story he’d told the Sheriff and Officer Collins. When the lock clicked he yanked open the thin metal door and froze, staring at what lay inside.

A thick package wrapped in brown paper rested on the top shelf inside the locker. Sam’s name was scrawled across the front in Gabriel’s script.

The package hadn’t been there the day before yesterday.

It was just a simple package, no bigger than a couple of paperback books.

Yet something about it sent chills racing up and down Sam’s spine.

He had the distinct impression that it had been waiting there for him; waiting there in the darkness of his locker, quietly, patiently, like a spider hanging suspended in its web.

He stared at it for several long moments, his heart beating painfully in his chest.

Very slowly he reached in and picked it up. He held it gingerly, half expecting it to scuttle swiftly out of his hands.

It did not.

It merely sat there, its very presence seeming to mock him, daring him to open it.

A voice in the back of his mind told him to toss it back into his locker. Better yet, straight into the nearest trash can. It’s probably nothing important anyway, the voice said. Get rid of it. Forget you ever set eyes on the damn thing. Let it sit there and rot until there’s nothing left but a thin film of fuzzy mold growing in its place.

Ignoring the voice, Sam took a deep breath, ripped the package open, and peered inside.

The black face of a videotape stared back at him.