Dead Echo

  *

  It was past ten and Arnold remained at his desk. The precinct was never a quiet place but Arnold had long training on filtering disturbances. And right now he was in his own little world. A world that seemed to be getting messier by the minute. Though he seldom wrote anything down, on a pad before him was a list of names. This is how it looked:

  Bill Camp—dog catcher ?

  Samuel “Jester” Johnson—mailman ?

  Dan Sidworth—electrician D

  Miles Placard—former resident 9535. ?

  Below this list he’d also scratched the name Carolyn Skate. He didn’t like it, not one damn bit. So far, out of these five people, only one had been pronounced dead. The others? The Placard fellow missing from an untouched home, keys still in the ignition of his car, likewise untouched. The mailman gone too. No one had seen him since the day his mail jeep was found, weeks ago now. Arnold didn’t make it a habit of assuming things but more often than not his hunches proved accurate. Johnson and Placard were dead men; he could feel it down to his toes. That left the dog catcher. He remembered seeing the piece on the news with the guy being carted off on a stretcher, but, unless things had changed dramatically, that old boy was still at the State House. Okay, so there was one guy he’d have to look into. It’d been a week or two since his lunch with Skate and knowing the present state of mental health facilities, Arnold figured he wouldn’t hedge any bets that the guy was still in lockup. No, this shit was starting to get too freaky.

  The whole damn neighborhood was becoming nothing but a tragedy magnet. Of course he didn’t have the proof that rested in the box in Patsy Standish’s attic, but he could connect the dots with the best of them.

  The place had gone bad. Again, he was reminded of the story he’d told Skate at lunch. The one that had come to mind after he’d driven through the neighborhood. He could still see that woman’s eyes just before she shut the door in his face. He could still hear the gunshots. Well, there were gunshots going off right now in his head and he’d be a fool not to recognize them for such after all he’d been through.

  He looked back at the note. Scrawled another name, larger, below his group of four. Underlined it. Circled it. Drew stars at each corner. Breathed deeply and took his chin in his hand. Patsy Standish. She was the hub around which all these objects revolved. He smiled savagely and tapped the pencil against his desk blotter. Yeah, there were some people getting a visit from Detective James Arnold tomorrow, come hell or high water.

  Then he bent back to the computer to get the one address he needed.