Trouble's Child

  Angela smiled. Sometimes things happened to them and they simply vanished before the police could ever find them.

  One thing was for sure: the killer wasn’t going to stop until someone stopped him.

  “So the reverend came in late that night?” Angela asked.

  “That’s right.”

  Angela guessed that it must have been after the two gave her a ride home. “God’s messenger drinks?”

  Angela had told Clay Baker and his sister that she tended bar, but she hadn’t told them where. It seemed an odd coincidence that they would come into the bar where she worked not long after giving her a ride. Angela didn’t like coincidences.

  On the other hand, they said they were staying at the Riley Motel. That was just a ways up the hill. If they were looking for a bar, Barry’s Place was the closest one.

  “They each sucked on a beer for a couple hours,” Brittany said. “I think they only bought a couple beers so they could have an excuse to sit there and talk to people.”

  “Talk to people?”

  “You know,” Brittany said, popping her gum, “talk to anyone who would listen about life’s miseries without Jesus Christ as their savior and how returning to the path of the Lord could bring you eternal happiness, or some shit like that. He bent my ear about God, telling me how I needed to walk the Lord’s path.”

  From what Angela knew about Brittany, she was already a good long way off the path.

  “He wanted to talk to all the girls about God,” Brittany said. “Barry went over and told him that the girls were working and he’d have to talk to them on their own time, after work or something. So then the reverend did the strangest thing.”

  “What’s that?” Angela asked as she washed a glass in the bar sink.

  “He and that woman with him left. A little while later they came back with a couple of working girls from up at the Riley.” Brittany leaned in with the juicy gossip. “The reverend bought the two hookers drinks just like they were his dates or something. He talked to them for quite a while—trying to ‘save’ them, I imagine.”

  “Were they ‘saved’?” Angela asked as she dried glasses.

  Brittany snorted a laugh. “I don’t know, but as long as he was buying drinks they seemed happy to sit there and knock them back while he evangelized. I’d bet you anything they were willing to sit there because they were on his dime.”

  Angela frowned as she leaned over the bar toward Brittany. “He paid for hookers just so he could preach to them?”

  Brittany leaned her head in confidentially and to be heard over the pounding rock music. “From the way they were hanging on his every word, it had to be. Those two weren’t going to waste their time just for a drink. They were on the clock. If they can fake an orgasm, they can fake interest in the Lord.”

  Angela shook her head as she put another glass in the sink. “Wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve seen in here.”

  “That’s for sure,” Brittany agreed. She turned serious again. “At closing time, they all left. Together.”

  Angela frowned. “Together?”

  “Yeah. I stuck my head out the door to sneak a peek and I saw the girls climb in this big old car with them. They all went back up to the Riley, I guess. For all I know he and the mute paid for a party and all the two girls had to do was sit on his bed and sing hallelujah to him.”

  Angela watched the pair across the room as she dried another glass. They were too far away and the bar was too dark for her to be able to see them very well, but she could see that Lucy was signing in Reverend Baker’s palm.

  The rotating ceiling light sent sparkling flecks of light slowly meandering across everything and everyone. It made it harder to see faces. Barry thought the rotating lights gave the place a dreamy, party feel. It was his idea of atmosphere so people would want to stay and buy drinks. That and serving girls in cutoff shorts or miniskirts. The rock music Barry played was so loud it was hard to talk with people without leaning close, which gave men a chance to get in close to women.

  “Okay, I have to admit that is pretty weird, but he’s just preaching,” Angela said. “You said before that there was something creepy about him. What did you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Brittany finally admitted. She picked up the tray of beers when her customer waved. “For some reason those two just make my skin crawl. Maybe it’s those cross tattoos on his cheeks. Maybe it’s that mousy, flat-chested woman he has with him. They’re a real fucked-up pair, know what I mean?”

  Angela arched an eyebrow. “Maybe they’re what people are talking about when they say that God works in mysterious ways.”

  Brittany, holding up the tray with the beers on her upturned palm, was moving her hips to a song she liked. “Could be. He actually tipped me pretty good the last time, so as long as they’re buying I guess they can be as mysterious as they damn well please.”

  As Brittany turned to the room, one of the men sitting close by smiled at her. “You look good moving that fine tail of yours.”

  “Fuck off,” Brittany snapped.

  The guy and his buddy laughed. He gave her ass a backhanded smack as she went past. Brittany grinned as she departed with the tray. She liked the attention, and only pretended to object. The guys knew it.

  “You know,” the guy sitting at the bar said as he munched on a pretzel while turning to Angela, “if you cut those shorts of yours any shorter they won’t be able to contain the girls.”

  She looked up into his eyes. They weren’t evil, just bloodshot.

  “Thanks for the tip, but I prefer my tips in cash.”

  The guy and his buddy laughed. They were regulars. They were annoying but harmless. The cutoff shorts Angela wore kept them sitting at the bar, drinking beers. Along with her courier business it helped earn her a good living. Guys like them, though, made her need an occasional hike in the woods.

  Guys who were less than harmless made her need other things entirely.

  Angela watched Brittany delivering the beers to two couples at a small table. When she was done, Reverend Baker summoned her to his table. She bent close, holding her hair back as she listened to him. Angela assumed they were placing an order. After a brief conversation she returned to the bar.

  “What does he want?” Angela asked.

  “He wants a couple of beers.” She looked over her shoulder briefly and then back at Angela. “And he wanted to know about you.”

  The hair on the back of Angela’s neck stood up.

  She set the first beer on the tray. “Me? What did he want to know about me?”

  “He wanted to know when you got off. He said he’s already talked to all the other girls here about the Lord’s path and he would like the chance to talk to you as well. I told him that I thought you knew your path better than anyone I’d ever met. He asked what your path was. I told him, ‘Honey, if you ever find out would you please let the rest of us know because we ain’t got a clue.’ ”

  Angela smiled. If he gave her any trouble she could knock his cane out of his hands. He’d never be able to catch her.

  Still, her inner sixth sense was stirring—the one she had acquired as trouble’s child growing up around dangerous men.

  Reverend Baker struck up a conversation with an older man and his wife at a nearby table. Angela could see the couple listening politely. Being so far away and with the music so loud she couldn’t hear anything that was being said. It all looked friendly enough, though, with the couple nodding their agreement occasionally. Once they even chuckled at something he said. The reverend didn’t look like he was pressing the couple, he looked to be having nothing more than a casual conversation with them. For all Angela knew he might not even be evangelizing.

  He and his sister each had two beers and left several hours before last call. They never came over to the bar to say hello to Angela, but he did turn in her direction and wave before going out the door. She was relieved that they didn’t want to stay until closing to talk to her. She was tired a
nd just wanted to go home and get some sleep.

  It being a weeknight, business slowed down considerably around midnight. By closing time all the other girls had gone home. After last call Barry shooed out the last few customers and locked the door. Angela had put the Reverend Clay Baker and his sister Lucy out of her mind as she cleaned up behind the bar. It was her turn to straighten up after closing. While she swept the floor, Barry went to his little back-room office to close out the night’s tally.

  After she finished cleaning up, she called out that she was leaving. Barry hurried out with a smile and handed her some folded bills for the previous week’s work. As he followed her to the door, he told her to have a good night, and then he locked the door behind her. It was a surprisingly warm night, so Angela simply draped her coat over her arm.

  Across the road she could see the jagged tops of the trees in the light of the nearly full moon high overhead. Most of the snow was off them. Barry’s Place was at the edge of town, a last stop of sorts, an oasis, for those needing a drink before venturing into the largely uninhabited forested mountains.

  Angela’s pickup, its gray primer dull in the streetlight, was the only vehicle still in the parking lot. Barry always parked around back. With the above-freezing temps, most of the snow had melted, leaving the parking lot wet and clear of snow except at the edges where it had been piled up by the snowplow that had cleaned the lot.

  Just as Angela put the key in to unlock her truck, a car rolled up behind her. She quickly turned the key, unlocking the door. She always carried a Walther P22 in the center console.

  She was about to dive in to retrieve the gun when she saw that it was the old, tan Lincoln that Lucy and Reverend Baker drove. She let out a weary sigh, her alarm lowering but her annoyance rising. She wanted to get home and go to bed. She didn’t want to have a theological discussion in a chilly parking lot in the wee hours of the morning with a traveling evangelist who had crosses tattooed on his face.

  The car sat idling next to her, the cloud of its exhaust rising into the still air. Angela waited patiently for him to open his door so that she could tell him, politely, that she was tired and didn’t want to talk to him. She folded her arms and leaned back against her truck. After a moment, both doors of the Lincoln opened.

  Reverend Baker stepped out, without his cane, while Lucy emerged from the driver’s side.

  Frowning, arms still folded, still leaning back against her truck, Angela decided not to wait for his pitch.

  “Reverend Baker, before you start telling me about God, I have to stop you. It’s late and I’m tired. I don’t want to have a discussion tonight.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Angela saw Lucy coming around the front of the big, square Lincoln. Whatever expression might have been on her face Angela couldn’t see because it was in shadow under the streetlight. Angela realized she had never really gotten a good look at the woman’s face.

  An odd kind of smile came over Reverend Baker. “I’m not here to discuss God with you, Angela.”

  “Good.”

  “You see, God has already chosen you.”

  Angela frowned. “Sorry, but I didn’t raise my hand.”

  “Oh, but I’m afraid you did.”

  He lifted his dark glasses and for the first time, in the light from the streetlamp, Angela saw his eyes.

  It was like being hit by a bolt of lightning.

  They were the eyes of a killer.

  In that brief instant, Angela saw the men and women he had murdered. She saw Kristi Green struggling as he wrapped a lamp cord around her neck. The cord was from the Riley Motel room where she thought she was being paid for sex. In her mind’s eye, Angela saw him throwing her clothes in the trunk of their car, then dragging her by her ankles into the woods.

  Angela saw the young man he had abducted only the day before and intended to torture to death. Clay Baker had an almost uncontrollable hatred of the young man, because he was a male prostitute. But as he was being castrated, the young man had an asthma attack and died. Clay Baker was furious. The man was in the trunk of their car that very moment, waiting to be disposed of.

  Looking into his eyes, Angela had instantaneous visions of all the things he had done to all eight women and two men he had murdered over the course of several years. She saw his knife flashing overhead in blind rage as he slammed it down over and over into one woman. Angela saw him carefully, slowly, peeling the skin off a young man gagged and tied to a pole in a dark and grimy railroad yard. She saw him raping a woman after he had beaten her nearly to death.

  During it all, his sister was there.

  Angela saw that the bite wounds on Kristi Green’s breasts were not his. They were Lucy’s. He had not broken her ribs. Lucy had.

  Angela looked over at the mousy woman standing in the headlights. Her eyes, too, held a world of evil. They were the eyes of a person who enjoyed the slaughter. She was his partner. She lived to see their terror, to be a part of it, even if she let her brother be the one to finally end their lives.

  It all came into Angela’s mind at once, an instantaneous otherworldly infusion of knowledge. That cascading vision of depravity came to her so fast and hard it hurt.

  In that flash of comprehension from what she saw in his eyes, his memories became her memories.

  It was the same as it always was when she looked into the eyes of a killer. They were the same kind of visions that always made her bones ache when they flooded into her.

  They were the same kind of visions that made her lust to kill these evil men. But this time the visions had her at a distinct disadvantage.

  “Ah, I can see the surprise in your eyes,” he said with a wicked grin.

  “You’re not …”

  “No, I’m not blind. Not at all. You see, I’ve happened across a few people before who could recognize in my eyes that I’ve killed people. As I’m sure you can imagine, that became quite awkward and in several instances nearly got me caught.

  “As a result I learned that it’s in my own best interest to cull that kind of threat from the world before it can harm me. I use the dark glasses of a blind man to hide in plain sight and hunt those like you who can see my secrets in my eyes.

  “I have to tell you, I also find it a delightful treat to make that kind suffer. Of course, those others could never have stopped me, but you’re different, Angela. I suspect, given the chance, you could.

  “That day I took that whore out into the woods, before I could enjoy myself with her, I happened to look up and there, way up through a small open patch in the forest, I saw you coming over the ridge. So I had to kill the whore and leave.

  “But I stayed in the area. When I saw you on the road after you found the body and called the police, I knew I had to see who had prevented me from the ecstasy of introducing another whore to Hell. I had to look into your eyes, see if you are one of those who plague me.

  “When I offered you a ride I saw that you were. More than that and unlike the others of your kind, I got the feeling that you can see exactly what I’ve done to those I’ve killed. Am I right? You see it all, don’t you?”

  Angela couldn’t stop herself from answering. “Yes. I see you for who you really are.”

  He smiled as he arched an eyebrow. “The devil?”

  It suddenly all made sense. They had been out on that desolate road not because they were on their way back from the village of Bradley. Angela had interrupted their kill. That was why they just happened to be there in the area to give her a ride. That was why they had come to the bar.

  Angela was angry with herself at how stupid she had been. She knew better than to accept coincidences at face value. But Clay Baker’s blind-reverend trick had worked. She had seen what he wanted her to see.

  Whatever mistakes she had made were irrelevant now. What Angela needed to do now was kill this bastard.

  She turned and yanked open the door of her truck. She dove inside to reach the center console and the gun she kept there. Her fingers grabb
ed the lid.

  As she did, his big fist snatched her by her hair and yanked her back out. Her coat fell from her arms and the keys from her hand.

  Angela kicked behind at his shins. He danced away from her strikes. With a firm grip on her hair at the back of her head, he wrenched her around so that her back was to him. She frantically tried to pry his fingers off her hair.

  As she did he snaked his left arm in under her arms and around her neck. He released her hair and instead gripped his left arm to put her in a headlock.

  Angela struggled, trying every way she could to hit him, scratch him, or gouge out his eyes. She swung with fists and elbows, but with the way he was holding her she couldn’t connect effectively. He kept his legs spread so she couldn’t kick him or stomp on his feet. She knew he was toying with her.

  Then he leaned back, holding her tight up against his chest, lifting her feet from the ground to put more pressure on her neck. As he tightened his arms to compress the carotid arteries in her neck she could feel the world getting fuzzy as the blood supply to her brain was being cut off.

  In mere seconds she could feel herself beginning to lose consciousness. Her fingers tingled as the world dimmed.

  Her arms flailed, but they flailed with all the limp power of a dream.

  In her darkening vision, Angela saw a hand grab her right arm. It was Lucy. She had a syringe in her other hand. She pulled the cap off with her teeth and bent close to put the needle into Angela’s arm. She felt the cold sting of something inching up the veins.

  With the way Clay Baker had his arm around her neck cutting off not only her circulation, but her air, she couldn’t even scream.

  She had seen into this monster’s mind.

  She knew what she was in for.

  Sounds faded away as blackness closed in over her.

  Angela became dimly aware of an oppressive darkness. She felt herself being jostled. She was lying on irregular, hard shapes. She had such a horrific headache it made her nauseous.