The Menace: A Thriller

Chapter 11

In Interview Room A at the rear of the Peachtree Heights PD, at 10:45 PM, Chief Blake Cutter took the chair across from the suspect, Robert Davis of Suwanee, Georgia, and his attorney David Dixon, who’d come up from Atlanta.

The attorney was a dignified salt-and-pepper sixty or so in a tailored gray suit and navy-blue silk tie that together likely cost more than Cutter’s monthly salary. Dixon’s eyes were the same navy blue as his tie, and his heavy black-framed glasses rode above a graying version of Rhett Butler’s mustache. For a man summoned from home so late in the day, he could hardly have made a more intimidating specimen of the legal profession.

“You took my client into custody,” Dixon said, in a smooth courtroom baritone, “at gunpoint, with no explanation other than to say you were holding him for questioning, the excuse being that he didn’t have his driver’s license on his person or in his vehicle.”

Bushy-haired, belligerent Davis, whose deeply grooved face could work up a hell of a scowl, gave Cutter a beauty. “Who do you slobs think I am?”

“Apparently,” the chief said, “you’re Robert Davis and you live in the area, though not in Peachtree Heights or its adjacent communities. You were stopped at a roadblock, were uncooperative, and threatened the officers physically. And, yes, you weren’t able to provide your driver’s license.” To Dixon, he added, “Which all adds up to our legitimately bringing your client in for questioning.”

“Does it?” the attorney said. “My client informs me that your questions ran to matters of murder. Specifically, these physician killings that are generating so much speculation in the media.”

“Who do you slobs,” Davis said again, the bitterness hanging from his voice like icicles from a roof gutter, “think I am?”

“Suppose you tell us,” Cutter said emotionlessly. “Then we can discuss your whereabouts on certain key dates.”

“This,” the attorney told Cutter, “will tell you who my client is.”

From a briefcase, Dixon slid a manila folder across to Cutter, who looked inside at some newspaper clippings. Less than a minute passed before the chief rose and, taking the folder with him, said, “If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”

Cutter joined Detective Hodges and Sgt. Jackson in the observation booth. On the other side of the glass the client and lawyer were exchanging smug smiles.

“We have here a Vietnam veteran,” the chief quietly informed his colleagues, “who, when his rifle team was ambushed, threw his helmet over a fragmentation grenade and his body over his helmet. Saved the lives of eight men and lost his legs in the process.”

Jackson said, “My God.”

Janet stood her ground. “That doesn’t mean he isn’t our man.”

With a joyless smile, the chief said, “Doesn’t it? He lives in Suwanee, where he was born and raised, he’s married with two children, and is definitely not Dennis Lee under an alias.”

“We don’t know for sure,” she said, “that Dennis Lee is our killer either. We need to question Mr. Davis as to where he was on the dates and times in question, and establish if anyone can back him up, and do our damn jobs here, however unpleasant that might be.”

“Understood.” Cutter sighed and started to head back out. “But perhaps you’ll understand why I am less than thrilled about the prospect of going back in there and grilling a Medal of Honor winner.”

Roy was back in his pajamas and Helen in her nightie, his arm around her as she cuddled against his shoulder as they lay there with the covers at their waists. The nightstand lamp continued to provide a modest golden glow.

“How does it feel,” he asked her gently, “to have it all over with?”

“We could go again,” she teased.

He laughed a little. “That’s not what I’m talking about, you nut. I mean, having this damn threat lifted.”

She smiled up at him sleepily. “I know what you mean. But I don’t exactly feel, right now, how you’d think I might feel.”

“Oh?”

“Relieved, of course. So very relieved, but also... I suddenly feel like I’m home.”

“You are home.”

She studied him earnestly. “Am I?”

“You are if you want to be.”

She took a few moments before saying, “The other night I asked you not to go. Remember? But you didn’t stay. You left me here in this bed, alone. You were punishing me for leaving you. You and our son.”

A small nod. “I suppose I was.”

She locked eyes with him. “No suppose about it. And you had a right to get even. But I want very much to live here in this wonderful old house. With you and Richie. I can paint here, and drive down to Atlanta to the gallery when necessary. But mostly be here where I belong — with my two men.”

“Your two men would like that.”

“And, darling, I have to be honest with you.”

“You don’t have to... but I’d rather you would.”

She looked past him. “I think my father was wrong about Richard. About Richie. Granted, our son was premature and slow to develop, and I know he’s behind in many ways, but in others... Is he really even a ‘Special Needs’ child at all? If he is, that’s fine, we’ll love him and I’ll nurture him, I will nurture the hell out of him...”

“Language,” he said with a smile.

That made her laugh a little.

His arm around her brought her even closer. “But, honey,” he said, “Richie does have special needs. A very special set of needs.”

Her expression grew curious. “Oh? What?”

“He needs loving parents,” he said, “who love each other.”

As he moved across the front yard, across the gravel apron by the front porch, Officer Jerry Haines — like his chief, a displaced New Yorker and early retiree — thought he heard something rustling in the outbuilding where the gardening and other household maintenance equipment was stored.

A raccoon maybe, he thought. Or stray dog...

On his way to the glorified shed, the sturdy six-foot officer — blond and boyish at fifty-one — passed by the prowl car that Dickson and Rawley shared, parked near the front gate. He found no sign of either one in or around the vehicle, a fact he confirmed with his flashlight.

That rustling noise got his attention again and he headed for the cement-block outbuilding, to the left of the house as you faced it, set back a little. Though he, too, had heard the radio dispatcher report that a suspect was in custody in the medical murders, he shifted his flashlight to his left hand and filled his right with his service revolver.

The moonlight made him notice something he couldn’t quite figure out — two separate, not-quite parallel grooves in the not-recently-cut lawn, as if perhaps a pair of heavy bags — of seed perhaps? — had been one-at-a-time dragged through there, flattening the grass. These depressions led to, and converged at, that cement-block outbuilding.

Converged, actually, right up to the door of the big shed, a barn-red, paint-blistering wooden slab that stood ajar.

Genuinely suspicious now, he sent the flashlight beam on ahead, followed by the revolver in his fist. He approached slowly and, a few yards from that red door, called out, “Police! Step outside, now!”

Which, if he were talking to a racoon or a stray dog, he knew was a wasted effort and risked him making a fool of himself.

With no response, he pushed the door open and, from the doorway, he dispatched the beam of his flash to take a look around inside. Initially all he saw were such yardwork and general home maintenance items as a rider mower, a spreader, rakes, shovels, hoes, coils of garden hose, and an aluminum extension ladder, but finally — stacked carelessly on the floor like those two bags of seed he’d imagined — officers Dickson and Rawley, belly down and dead as hell.

The shovel that swung into him broke his right knee and dropped him to his left and his mouth came open to scream but didn’t get the job done as the next swing of the shovel flattened his features in a bone-crunching, tooth-shattering smunch, knocking him back outside, onto his back, the face looking up at the moon barely a face at all.

Then two powerful hands took one ankle each and dragged the dead cop inside with the others.

Their Medal of Honor-winning suspect had been out of state during two of the murders — those of Doctors Carter and Petersen — and Davis and his wife had been entertaining some old service buddies at the time that Molotov cocktail had come crashing through the window at the Ryan place. That he had no alibi for the Petersen killing seemed moot.

They released him before midnight, but as he was going out, Davis — ever belligerent — said, “I don’t suppose there’s a chance in hell you people have found my car.”

They were in the small lobby area on the other side of the civilian counter. Davis and his pretty, petite wife — who’d married him before he went into the service and who had stuck by him after — were just about to go out, their attorney acting as a high-priced doorman, possibly on Uncle Sam’s dime. The loving wife, vaguely embarrassed by her husband’s behavior, had fetched his artificial legs, which he now wore, putting him nose-to-nose with the chief — uncomfortably so.

“What do you mean, Mr. Davis?” Cutter said, working to be polite. This guy was a verified hero but also a certified pain in the ass. “You were driving your car.”

Davis held up two fingers and it wasn’t a peace sign. “I have two cars. Imagine that? One of them was stolen over a month ago and I reported it. Don’t you cops keep track of such things?”

“We’ve been rather focused elsewhere,” Cutter said, “and I would assume you reported it to the Suwanee PD.”

“That’s right. That’s where I live! Where else would I report it?”

“Sir, there are dozens of suburbs around Atlanta, and as many departments. And, really, locating a stolen car is more the province of the Georgia State Patrol.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be so damn hard to find! How many ‘67 Chevy sedans like that are out there, anyway?”

“Like what?”

“Rigged up like mine! With hand controls.” Davis threw his hands in the air, to make his point. “You people are unbelievable.”

Then the little group was gone, though their former suspect’s grumbling could be heard trailing off.

Cutter turned to Janet Hodges at his side. “Huh. His car was stolen. Do you think Dennis Lee might be driving it?”

“Who would have taught him to drive?”

“Good question. Maybe nobody. Maybe in the middle of the night he managed to get that buggy as far as a parking lot till he familiarized himself with those hand controls. Makes him mobile.”

Jackson came up from the mostly empty bullpen with a slip of paper. “Chief, a call came in for you while you were in the interview room. From Chief Sturgis in Timber Lake. Wants to talk to you yet tonight, if possible.”

“Wonder what rates that,” Cutter said.

He brought Janet along to his office and made the call, which he put on speaker, then settled behind his desk. “Am I getting back to you too late, Wynn?”

“Not at all, son,” the familiar folksy voice said. “I just called half an hour ago, and it’s a good chance we’ll be here at the scene a while yet. Maybe all night.”

Cutter exchanged glances with Janet, then asked, “You’re at a crime scene?”

“Not sure what you’d call it. We got a call from the owner of a cottage ‘long the Chattahoochee. Lights were on in a neighboring place that’s been boarded up since last year. Seemed like suspicious activity to this neighbor. Guy was surprised the electricity was still on, which actually it wasn’t — but a generator was. But here’s the prize in the CrackerJax — cottage belonged to the late Efram Lee.”

“And you just learned Lee had a cottage now?”

“Afraid so. It wasn’t listed in his estate. A kind of off-the-books deal. I’m guessing it was a love nest — maybe for him and that little gal who took a fall down the stairs ten years ago or so.”

“You’re at the cottage now?”

“Outside of it, at the moment. You’re patched through to my radio in my cruiser. What makes this worth bothering you with, this time of night, is... well, I can’t be sure if this bears upon your situation, but... somebody’s been living in this boarded-up cottage. Somebody who knew about it from before, I’d say. Somebody smart enough to get the generator going and get himself some electricity.”

Cutter frowned. “These are signs of recent activity?”

“Food in the refrigerator is fresh enough. Bed slept in. Soap and toilet paper stocked. We had two convenience stores get robbed in middle of the night. Looks like somebody goes shopping when the larder gets thin.”

Janet spoke up. “Detective Hodges here, Chief Sturgis. My husband’s convenience store was robbed last week, which is an embarrassment to his policewoman wife.”

“You may get the chance to do somethin’ about that,” Sturgis’s voice said. “Because I think your hubby’s thief and ours may both be named Dennis Lee... What do you think, Chief Cutter?”

“I think,” Cutter said, on his feet, “I told some people they’re safe and they really, really aren’t.”

Officer Ben Raymond, another of Cutter’s NYPD early retirement pals, was the last officer standing at the Ryan compound, though he wasn’t aware of that. Sixty-two, bald as a grape, paunchy but still tough and alert, he knew finding that ladder leaned up under the attic window meant trouble. This was the opposite side of the house from where the previous assaults had been, but that just meant their attacker was smart enough to mix things up.

It also meant the suspect at the Peachtree Heights station was almost certainly not their man, as that ladder hadn’t been positioned there on his last circuit of the house.

Service revolver in his right hand, he got on his walkie and tried to raise any one of the other three cops patrolling the grounds, but got no response. He clipped the walkie back on his belt and got out his flash and worked it around the area, starting of course with the ladder. Their mean little man might already be up there, though the window was closed. So what? Dennis the Menace — as all the cops working the Ryan place had taken to calling their man — might well have closed it behind him.

Was that little bastard perched somewhere along top of that fieldstone wall, waiting to pounce? Raymond swept the beam slowly along its upper edge particularly, and — while no sign of the menace presented him/itself — the cut phone line dangling did. Had the thing shimmied up the pole like a damn lineman and clipped it? Holy Hell, what were they up against?

He trotted around to the front of the house where the prowl car he and Officer Haines shared was parked on the gravel apron. He needed to call this in.

He opened the car door and the ball-peen hammer swung and its flat head sank into his furrowed brow. He pitched backward onto the gravel, taking the hammer with him, and when the hammer was yanked away, the sound was a sucking slurp like a boot pulling out of thick mud.

But of course Officer Raymond didn’t hear it, nor the grunting of the low-slung yet broad-shouldered figure that yanked him by the ankles and dragged him around the side of the house toward the maintenance outbuilding, making a third flattened path in grass that really could use cutting.

At the Peachtree Heights PD, Cutter didn’t even get a ring tone when he tried the Ryan house. He called the operator, who — after about a minute — came back and said the line was apparently down.

Janet Hodges was at the dispatcher’s station trying to get through to any of the police on patrol at the Ryan place. She came over to Cutter and reported that she’d had no luck either.

Cutter said, “We need to get out there now. Tell the dispatcher to send two additional units, immediately. Then come with me.”

She did.

After he’d loaded the fourth corpse into the maintenance outbuilding, Dennis returned to the ladder and started to climb. At the top, the window was locked.

He broke the glass with the heel of his fist — with the four cops dead, all the noise might do was attract Dr. Ryan, which was fine with Dennis. Then he reached in and around and unlocked the window, slid it up.

And crawled inside.

The breaking glass woke Richie. He wasn’t sure what he’d heard. He even thought he might have dreamed it. But then came more sounds — not loud, just something moving in the attic. And that only made him sit up and smile.

Was his friend walking around up there?

The beating of the mummy’s heart had been getting stronger, faster. So that made sense.

He got out from under the covers. He thought about changing into some clothes, but then figured the Six Million Dollar Man jammies would do. But he took the time to get into his slippers. And to grab the stethoscope and put it around his neck. Loose, not with the earpieces in.

The light switch was at the bottom of the stair well. He flipped it on. Then he went up and was kind of expecting to find his friend walking around up there. Maybe moving slow, with his arms stuck out, like in a movie about a mummy who wasn’t Aztec that Richie had seen. That mummy walked really slow, although everybody ran away from it really fast.

Yet somehow in the movie the mummy caught up with them anyway. It didn’t really make sense, but oh well. That was just a movie.

And his friend didn’t seem to have moved at all. He was sitting quietly on the floor in his faded color collar and thin tunic like always.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” Richie said.

The mummy said nothing.

“Can’t sleep?” Richie asked, walking over. He sat cross-legged before his friend. “Me too neither. I think Mom and Dad are asleep, though. They were noisy for a while, but the last I checked?” He lifted the tip of the stethoscope. “They were snoring. Dad was, anyway.”

The mummy made no comment.

Richie said, “You can’t sleep either, can you? You’re okay, aren’t you?”

The mummy’s eyes weren’t glowing red anymore.

“Hey, you haven’t died again, have you? You don’t look so good. You look different. Maybe I better listen to you.”

Richie leaned in, under an outstretched bony hand, and pressed the chest piece gently against the wispy cloth. And the heartbeat came fast and loud.

The boy grinned and the mummy grinned back.

“I knew you were still alive!... Are there mice up here or something? Do you hear boards creaking?”

The mummy said nothing.

“Must be my imagination,” Richie said, but he was a little scared. “My dad says I have a good imagination. So there’s no need to worry, right? Anyway, you’re here to protect me...”