Without The Gray Man’s help he was a goner, no two ways about it. The dogs were in relentless pursuit, their legs moving in long strides as they tried to close the gap on Napoleon and bring him down. At one point the leader of the pack almost reached him, his snarling jaws snapping at Napoleon’s knees.
Then? That power again, from someplace else, pushed him to pump his arms and legs to nearly superhuman capacity. It was exhilarating, but offset by the very real fear of what would happen if he tripped and fell at this speed. He’d seen his fair share of traffic collisions—mangled faces and body parts everywhere. He imagined that this might be what he would look like if he stumbled. The dogs would have nothing left to attack. They could just feed on the pieces of him that were left.
He was ascending and descending the small dunes that came up here or there on the mud flats. Black tumbleweeds with long barbs rolled infrequently in and out of his line of sight. He wanted to stop. To catch his breath and gain his bearings, but that wasn’t an option. The Gray Man was pushing him. Hard.
“Wait. Ease up. What’re you doing?” Napoleon yelled, the wind in his face blowing sand into his mouth.
We have to, Villa. This is not good.
“I know. They aren’t falling off. They’re stubborn bastards.”
No. Not the dogs. This. My helping you like this. It’s a red flag. We’ll be noticed now.
“Shit.”
Exactly.
“What do we do?”
We have no choice. We’ve got to turn and fight.
The idea was so far beyond Napoleon’s comprehension that he was struck speechless for a moment before he finally managed a frustrated “What?”
I’d hoped they would’ve given up the pursuit by now, or that we’d be close enough to the city to beat them there. But, no.
“How the hell can I take out five of them?”
More power. If necessary.
“But that will only put us on the radar here even more, right?”
Yes. But there’s another option.
“Which is?”
The physical still works here, Napoleon. As do most of the laws of physics. You haven’t yet been “quantified.”
“Quantified?”
Your soul hasn’t yet been stripped from its last physical manifestation on earth. This desert is for those who wander first, for whatever reason, most likely as part of their torture before they are quantified and then submitted to eternal agony.
Three more dogs had closed in. Glancing at them, Napoleon cursed.
The dogs are being given a boost as well, by something that has noticed us.
“Great. Let’s get on with it then. What’s the plan?”
How good a shot are you?
Napoleon was confused, then it hit him: his gun. He still had his gun. He could feel it there, bouncing against the left side of his rib cage.
“Five dogs. Sixteen bullets. Fifteen in the clip. One in the chamber.”
Okay.
“One more boost. Get me enough distance to be able to stop, turn and draw.”
Are you sure?
“Yes.”
Suddenly Napoleon was thrust forwards at such a speed that his feet left the ground and he was literally levitating over the desert sands. As quickly as the boost came, it dissipated, but in such a way that Napoleon glided a good twenty yards before his feet came back to the ground; he was still moving fast, but was able to slow down and stop.
He spun and planted his feet shoulder width apart. As he pulled the 9 mm from its holster, he saw them coming: five black streaks, two to the left, one dead center and two to the right. A perfect attack pattern. As if they were human.
Because they once were, The Gray Man murmured.
Napoleon took control of his breathing and focused on the dogs to his weak side, his left side, first. He squeezed off two shots; one caught the first dog clean, exploding its head like a cantaloupe. He meant to hit him of course, but at that speed, mid-stride? The head shot was pure luck, offset somewhat now by the fact that the second dog on that side was still coming. It took two more bullets to bring him down.
As Napoleon turned to aim at the center dog, it cut hard left and then back again, confusing his aim. Again, it was all about training. Bad target? Move on to the next. But the dogs to his right were now aware he had a weapon as well, and they too took evasive maneuvers.
He squeezed off three bullets that missed both dogs entirely before another shot caught the dog closest to him in the rear leg, blowing it off nearly completely. The dog yelped and went down, but not for long, it was up again, trying to run on three legs, dragging the fourth, which was still attached by tendons and sinew, behind it. Napoleon fired another shot, catching the three-legged dog in the chest and finally dropping it.
He was more than halfway through his clip with two dogs left when he felt the sudden realization that there was no way he was going to be able to take them both down. There just wasn’t enough time or space. They were closing, fast. The center dog, the leader of the pack that had swung to the left, had eased up a bit, willing to let the other dog to Napoleon’s right get to their prey first.
Smart fucking dog. It knows what I know.
Napoleon rotated at the waist and fixed his aim on the dog to the right, which was zigzagging his way in, but at a certain pace and in a fixed pattern. Napoleon held his breath, focused on the pattern and waited.
When the moment came he squeezed three shots off, knowing that at some point one of the rounds would find its mark. He was wrong: two did. The dog was struck in the chest by the first shot and spun sideways, creating a larger target for the second, which tore into its side. It went down in a heap.
“Four bullets left,” Napoleon whispered to himself. But it didn’t matter.
The lead dog was upon him. Napoleon squeezed off one shot in its direction but missed completely.
The dog struck him, knocking him backwards with a brute strength that seemed more suited to a lion than a canine. They fell together, tumbling backwards down a sand dune. Napoleon barely managed to get his hands up around the dog’s throat to keep from being bitten, but he wasn’t going to be able to maintain his hold for long. The gun, still in his right hand, was hindering his grip.
Out of the corner of his eye Napoleon saw one of the black tumbleweeds, barbed like razor wire, just to his left. If he rotated his body weight properly and timed it right…
The dog shrieked as the tumbleweed dug into its back. Napoleon fell on top of it, pushing it even harder into the barbs. The dog growled and gnashed its teeth at him, trying to struggle loose, all four legs kicking spastically, its clawed paws digging into Napoleon’s left thigh, abdomen and right forearm.
The flesh of his thigh registered the most pain, but he had no time to worry about it. This close to the animal, Napoleon could feel the evil, like tar, seeping from it. It’s red eyes, even now, in the midst of being wounded and possibly defeated, burned with hate. The teeth in its mouth were far too large and sharp to be those of a normal Doberman, and it was trying desperately to rotate its jaw to Napoleon’s right wrist, sitting as he was at an odd angle on the creature’s throat, his grip still tight on the handle of the gun and his index finger trapped in the trigger guard.
Napoleon gripped with his left hand with all his might, trying to keep the creature from gaining enough leverage to bite him, but it was no use. It was going to get to his hand, and Napoleon wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if, with those teeth, his hand came clean off.
He felt another surge; this time it went down his left shoulder and into his left forearm. It came with such force that his left hand was violently driven against the dog’s throat, snapping its neck with a loud crack.
The Doberman’s eyes shifted back and forth for a second in confusion. Blood spilled from its throat as it gasped out hot air before its tongue finally lolled out of its mouth and against Napoleon’s gun.
“Shit. That was close.”
No reply came. Then, finally, Walk.
Exhausted, Napoleon was incredulous. “What? Can’t you at least give me a—”
Turn around. Look behind you.
Napoleon spun in panic, filled with terror, expecting another danger.
You need to get over that dune there, up ahead.
Napoleon sighed, shook his head, and stood. “No rest for the weary, huh?”
Because there’s no rest for the damned, either. And they’re coming now. I’m sure of it.
Napoleon was exhausted, but he moved on, leaving the carcass of the dog behind, his feet now dragging in the sand. After a long while The Gray Man finally spoke again.
There it is.
“What—”
Napoleon had just crested a massive dune and made a hard left when it came into view: a towering white city, standing stark and naked against the red sand and orange sky, a thing of light in a darker than dark place, like a mirage of pure hope.
Exactly, The Gray Man said grimly. That’s just what it is. A mirage. A lie.
Matthews, the Inyo county sheriff, sounded concerned. “So, Conch, you’re saying you’ve matched eighteen files total—”
“So far,” Conch interjected.
“Right. So far. Shit, eighteen, with your two live cases right now?”
“That’s what the man said,” Sheriff Estrada added.
“I’m still digging though,” Conch added with a sigh. He was exhausted and had spent the better part of the morning trying to organize this conference call. Getting the sheriffs in four adjacent counties together at the same time wasn’t easy, but it seemed important, in light of the circumstances.
Estrada, in Kern County, had been the last to call back but the first one to be alarmed. He should’ve been; the majority of the missing girls were last seen in his area.
“This has gotta go to the Feds, lickety-split,” Sheriff Couch, from Tulare County, said in his quiet matter-of-fact voice, sounding more than a little uneasy.
Sheriff Klump, from Kern County, which included Bakersfield, was next. He had a trademark chuckle laced with sarcasm that broke through the phone. “As if anything good ever came from the fucking Feds.”
“At least we’ll get some help,” Matthews countered.
“You mean we’ll get to give them the files, step back and wait for them to fly in and start ordering us around, right?” Klump argued. “Not a big deal for you, Matthews, you’re up there in Inyo. Maybe it throws off your fishing schedule. Me? I gotta juggle the fall out this will cause with eight hundred and sixty thousand damn residents.”
“Let’s not get punchy, fellas,” Couch said calmly.
Conch was one letter removed from Couch’s last name, but their counties were vastly different, both in population size and complexity. They were the most alike in demeanor though, and on the few cross-county sheriff functions they’d been to together, the odd fund raiser or golf tournament, they always hung out together and often shared a little whiskey. Conch noticed that his friend sounded troubled.
“You got something on your mind, Couch?”
“You mean despite the fact that three of these girls are from my county?”
“Yeah.”
“Ya know. I guess its hindsight, but when isn’t it? About a year ago, this last girl you pulled up? Teresa Lee? I had a feeling. It was just a nagging hunch. The other two? They coulda up and left town either way, or they had reason to: one had a jealous ex-boyfriend, the other had an abortion without telling her husband and all that that entails. But the Lee girl? No. She just moved here. Was all settled in. All her stuff was left behind. Had a nephew here that she was close to. I dunno… it just…”
“Didn’t wash,” Estrada finished.
“Exactly. I shoulda known,” Couch said.
“Shit. How about if none of us goes down that path?” Matthews added. He had only one missing girl, but with only a tenth of the population of Couch’s county.
Conch rubbed his temples. There was plenty of blame to go around. Too much here, not enough there. As if reading his mind, Klump spoke next. “All these girls are originating from Beaury though, correct?”
There it was.
Conch surrendered a hollow “Yep.”
“People move all the time, Floyd,” Couch said, clearing his throat. “They move from here to there and there to here.”
“Can’t possibly keep track of them all,” Estrada added.
“Yeah. But—” Conch began to say, before Matthews said it first.
“—it means the odds are that our guy probably lives in Beaury. How else could he know all these girls?”
The call went silent for a while.
“I imagine you scoured things on your end about twice over by now, Floyd?” Couch asked.
Again, Conch nodded. “Yes, Trent. I did. No wants, no warrants, no one here that I know of that’s shown even a flicker of this type of behavior.”
“So?” Matthews joined in. “What are we looking for?”
“Guy who flies under the radar,” Estrada added.
“Guy who follows people…” Matthews mused.
“Or flat out stalks them.”
“That’s more likely,” Conch said. “And he’s violent.”
“Yeah?” Estrada asked.
“The crime scene on the last girl. She put up a fight, but he put it to her good. And he’s smart.”
“How’s that?”
“He took the time to cover his tracks. Used bleach.”
“But if he’s so damn smart,” Klump shot back, “he don’t leave no tracks to begin with.”
“Like the liquor store girl,” Matthews said matter-of-factly.
“Exactly. And let’s be honest. We gotta review all these files, especially before the Feds get here, but I got a feeling he’s been operating more like he had with the liquor store girl than this last one. He’s getting sloppy now for some reason. But before? I bet we all come up with dick, just like we did during the original investigations.”
“Sounds like someone’s already preparing his arguments,” Estrada said.
“We all should be,” Klump shot back.
“Who’s calling it in?” Couch asked no one in particular.
“Oh. Boy. This one is Floyd’s all the way,” Klump said.
Conch figured as much. Originating investigation, originating crime scene. Originating perp, most likely.
His county.
“I’ll call it in,” Conch said grimly. “But first, can we put on our thinking caps for just a second?”
“Shoot,” Couch said with encouragement.
“How could he know them all?”
“High school?” Estrada asked.
“Not unless it took him ten years to get his diploma,” Matthews said.
“Or if he was a teacher there,” Estrada countered.
Conch pressed. “It’s gotta be someone they saw regularly, right?”
“You thinking they all have the same ex-boyfriend?” Klump asked.
“No. Not necessarily.”
A cascade of guesses came over the line.
“Coworker then?”
“The FedEx guy?”
“Handyman?”
“Hmm. There’s a lot of possibilities.”
“Yeah. Whadda ya say we hang up, all sharpen our pencils and reconvene on this tomorrow morning. Floyd, you make your call and get the ball rolling with Uncle Sam. We’ll have some time before they get here to work on this,” Couch said.
“Okay. Fair enough. We all agree?”
Everyone concurred and the call ended.
It wasn’t five minutes later that the phone rang again. Conch figured it was Couch calling back with some words of encouragement.
Instead, it was Hazel Jay.
“Sheriff Conch?” she asked, her voice small and meek over the phone.
“Yes, Hazel, how can I help?”
“I dunno. I didn’t sleep much last night. I got to thinking about some stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“Well. It’s probably nothing, but I remembered there was this one guy that Ashley mentioned a few times, kinda jokingly, a while back.”
Conch sat up in his chair. “And?”
“She said he was kinda creepy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well. He would look at her like he was imagining stuff, like her naked or something.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I mean. Most guys do that anyways, but this one was a perv about it a few times, like, ya know, he wouldn’t look away when she caught him looking. It weirded her out some.”
“You think?”
“Yeah. Like I said, she only mentioned it a few times, like, months ago. It was like a joke. Then she never mentioned him again.”
“Do you know who he was?”
“Yeah. One of the delivery guys to the store.”
It was as if she’d hit Conch in the face with a sledgehammer. He sat back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. After a second or two he managed the words: “Did she say which deliveryman?”
“Yeah. The guy who brought the pastries and breads and stuff.”
After five more minutes of trying to extract more information out of her and getting little else, Conch thanked Hazel and hung up.
He sighed, called Kendall and asked him to leave the roadblocks and start calling all the families of the missing girls from Beaury, track them down wherever they were and find out one thing: where the girls had worked here in town.
Conch was willing to bet what he was gonna hear: markets, the 7-Eleven or the Conoco station. They couldn’t be getting this lucky, but if they were, this was the lead he was hoping for—and it made sense.
Who had guessed it was the FedEx guy? Matthews. Yeah.
Close. But not quite.
It might not be the FedEx guy, but it might be a deliveryman nonetheless.
The damned bread man.