Riverwatch

Chapter Seven: Sheriff Wilson

Damon Wilson was on duty in Harrington Falls when the call came in. As Sheriff of Algonquin County, he was responsible for the safety of the inhabitants of not only Glendale, but also Harrington Falls and the other similar mountain communities within the county limits. He had two men out sick, so he was covering their shifts himself, patrolling in his Bronco.

"I’ll take it, base. I’m in the vicinity."

"That’s a roger, Sheriff. See Jake Caruso at the site."

"10-4."

Damon replaced the microphone and headed for the Stonemoor estate.

Back when he was on the force in Chicago, calls like this had been a fairly commonplace occurrence. They were called into abandoned buildings and derelict lots all the time, especially during the summer months when the stench of decomposing corpses would disturb the denizens of even the roughest neighborhoods. The winters weren’t so bad; a body could lie in the dark for weeks without being discovered. He’d seen his fair share; that was certain.

But here in Harrington Falls? He couldn’t remember the last time there was a violent crime up here. Glendale was a bit different; a little more modern, more bad apples. Harrington Falls seemed to have missed all of that, nestled as it was in the mountains. The people were quiet folk. They kept to themselves and generally obeyed the laws. Aside from the occasional loud drunk or teenage shoplifter, the patrol in Harrington Falls was considered incident-free.

Which made the call even more interesting.

As Damon pulled up in front of the house, he saw two men sitting on the top step of the porch, obviously waiting for him.

Jake watched as a large, heavy-set man got out of the Bronco. Roughly six-foot two, he had to weigh a good two-fifty. His hair was salt and pepper, right down to his beard and mustache. Both were carefully groomed and short in length. The man was dressed in the brown uniform of the Sheriff’s department, with a pistol clearly visible on his belt.

Jake and Sam rose to greet him.

"One of you Jake Caruso?" Damon asked.

Jake said, "I am," and extended his hand in greeting.

"Damon Wilson, Sheriff’s Department." The Sheriff shook Sam’s hand also. Turning back to Jake, he asked, "I understand you’ve found a body?"

Jake nodded. "Down in the cellar."

"Mind telling me what you were doing out here in the first place?"

Jake explained to the Sheriff how he came to be there that morning, going back to the events of the day before. The Sheriff listened closely, made notes every few minutes, but otherwise left Jake to tell the story without interruption. When Jake was finished, the Sheriff turned to Sam and asked him if he could remember any other details.

The Sheriff then suggested that Sam wait outside to direct the coroner to the scene, before asking Jake to lead him to the body.

The two climbed the steps to the house, passing through the foyer and the kitchen, until they reached the stairway to the basement. The smell of mildew and decay from below reached Damon. For just a moment, he had a vivid picture of bodies lying for days in forgotten Chicago tenements, the memory of another time, another place. He quickly slammed the lid closed on that particular memory before it could escape the Pandora’s box of his mind. Chicago was a long time ago and Damon definitely wanted to keep it that way.

Jake headed down the steps and Damon followed.

"Sorry about the stench. When we began renovations this entire level was flooded. My men pumped out the fetid water the other night but the smell will probably linger for a while."

"That’s how you found this tunnel?" Damon asked.

"Yeah. There was a big stone slab in the middle of a small trench dug into the floor. The tunnel was underneath it."

Jake had left the lanterns behind when he and Sam had gone to the trailer to call the police. By their illumination Damon could see the trench where the men had been working. When they moved closer he could see the opening to the passage itself.

Jake stopped and picked up his lantern from where he had left it besides the opening. He nodded at the heavy flashlight the Sheriff was carrying. "You’d better turn that on."

The Sheriff was surprised at the tunnel. It appeared to be man-made, carved from solid rock sometime long ago. The effort that went into such an undertaking had to have been incredible.

Why would someone go to all this trouble? he wondered.

He didn’t have much time to think about it, however, since they were rapidly approaching their destination. Ahead of them, Damon could see the remains of a brick wall that had once blocked the tunnel. Jake stopped a few feet away, allowing Damon to pass him.

Damon stood just outside the chamber and gazed in at the body. He could see it was that of a white male, in his mid-to-late twenties, lying face-up and partially on his right side. The man’s face was twisted into an expression of horror. One arm was trapped beneath the body, the other hanging limply across the base of the statue. In the dim light, Damon could not make out any signs of injury.

"This the way you found him?"

Jake nodded. "I went inside the room and checked his pulse, but I didn’t touch or move anything."

Damon shined the light around the rest of the room. The only objects were a lantern similar to the one in Jake’s hand, lying against the opposite wall, and a pickaxe, the handle of which was tangled up in the feet of the corpse. The room was otherwise empty.

Damon next turned his light on the statue. A good seven feet in height, it was carved entirely from some kind of shining black stone that gleamed like black oil in the beam of his light. It appeared to represent a demon, or maybe a gargoyle. Two long, curling horns jutted from its forehead. Its strikingly reptilian mouth was open wide, revealing a double row of razor-sharp teeth. The creature’s torso was humanoid in appearance, but covered with thousands of tiny scales like the flesh of a miniature dragon. Wicked looking talons jutted from its four-fingered hands and feet. Bat-like wings swept outward from the center of its back. The craftsmanship was superb, giving the creature a sense of life. To Damon it seemed as if at any moment it might leap off the small pedestal on which it stood.

"It’s certainly ugly," Damon said. Jake didn’t answer. The statue might have been easy enough to handle if that’s all it was, ugly. But there was something more, something near indefinable about it that instantly put Damon on guard. It was more a gut feeling than anything else, a sense of wrongness about the thing that disturbed him on some deep, primitive level.

Damon felt the short hairs on the back of his neck start to rise and quickly turned his attention to the body on the floor. It took him a moment, but he finally recognized it as that of Kyle Halloran. Kyle had been one of the bad ones, constantly getting into fights at the bars down in Glendale. More than once Damon had to toss him in a cell for the night on charges of drunk and disorderly. He’d been the type to stay out of trouble for a month, maybe two, and then end up back in a cell on similar charges.

Aside from the expression on his face, there were no obvious signs of violence. Damon could not detect any evidence of a disturbance in the dirt around him, either. Drugs were the first thing that came to mind. That would explain the lack of injury. The theory might also explain the man’s expression. Who knew what one might encounter in their own drug-induced hallucinations?

"Recognize him?" the Sheriff asked.

Jake nodded. "Kyle Halloran. Hired him last week as a temp. Bit of a loud mouth. My foreman said he was slacking on the job so I let him go yesterday."

"Any idea what he might have been doing down here?"

"I couldn’t even tell you how he found out about it. He wasn’t on the detail that was working down here."

The Sheriff nodded his head. It seemed pretty obvious to him. Halloran heard about it from another worker, figured there might be something valuable hidden in the tunnel, and decided to check it out for himself. He’d probably been pumped to the gills with whatever he’d been on that week and had taken more than he could handle.

Damon took out his notebook and jotted down his impressions and general facts about the scene. He’d learned long ago to make a record of everything at a crime scene; you never knew what was going to be important later. When he was finished, he stepped inside the room for the first time.

Jake watched the Sheriff make a careful inspection of the body. Damon squatted next to the corpse and felt for a pulse on the man’s neck. He sat back on his haunches and visually inspected the corpse, taking care not to touch anything else. After a few moments he jotted down some notes and even sketched a quick diagram of the situation. Jake recognized the hallmarks of a methodical and patient man. Once the Sheriff had finished with the corpse, he turned his attention to the statue above it, going over it with the same care and diligence he’d shown with the body.

Jake didn’t want to be in the room with either the statue or the corpse. His earlier excitement had quickly died when he and Sam had discovered Kyle’s body. Now all he wanted to do was retreat back up the stairs into the bright sunshine and forget about what he’d found.

He stepped back into the passage, a glimpse of movement catching his eyes as he did so.

He turned in the doorway, staring at the statue, watching its eyes, watching its hands.

Must have been the Sheriff.

Statues don’t move.

The Sheriff called out to him as he turned away.

"Where does this go?" Damon asked, pointing behind to something him that Jake could not see due to the intervening statue.

"Where does what go?" Jake asked. He stepped to his left and gaped in surprise at the doorway now visible on the other side of the chamber.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Jake asked.

Damon watched Jake examine the door and knew he wasn’t faking it. He really hadn’t known it was there. The iron door had been coated with a thick layer of dust and dirt, causing it to blend with the wall in the dim light. In the horror of finding the statue looming over Kyle’s body, it had been overlooked.

The Sheriff intended to let the forensics team open the door once they had thoroughly checked the chamber. He hadn’t counted on Jake’s curiosity. Before the Sheriff could stop him, Jake had grasped the solid iron ring that served as a door handle and pulled with all his strength.

The door swung inward with a groan.

Sunlight flooded the chamber.

Without a word Damon stepped over to stand next to Jake.

The two men stared out the doorway onto the carefully trimmed green of the Forest Lawn Cemetery

"Holy shit," Jake said under his breath.

The Sheriff agreed. Holy shit was right. They must have traveled a couple of hundred yards underground, clear off the Blake property and onto the adjoining one. He hadn’t realized they’d gone that far.

He stepped out into the sunshine with Jake at his heels. As one, they turned to face the doorway.

The door proved to be the entrance to a white marble mausoleum that was built into the side of a small hill. Across the lintel of the doorframe was carved a name.

Sebastian Blake.