In the midst of all this I guess I forgot why I came here.' Sam turned and walked back past Wilson and down the hall in the other direction. He knew the Sheriff wasn’t fooled.
Damon watched him go, then walked down the hall and re-entered the room where the old man had died. He stared at the splattered bloodstains while the crime scene technicians went about their business around him.
Jesus H. Christ! he thought. Who the hell could do something like this?
The mutilation of the Cummings had been bad. The memory of the man’s head stuffed into the toilet bowl rose in his mind, but he quickly shoved it away again. It was bad enough that he saw it in his dreams, he didn’t need to see it while he was awake.
Yet that horror had been something he could understand. It was sick, sure, but normally sick, if that made any kind of twisted sense. Mutilation of a victim’s body wasn’t all that uncommon in psychotic killings.
But this….
This was beyond anything he’d ever seen.
The poor guy had been torn to shreds, for Christ’s sake.
He shook his head. What kind of animal am I after? How the hell did it get in here without being seen or heard? How intelligent is this thing?
Sheriff Wilson’s right hand unconsciously slipped down to caress the butt of his service revolver.
There was one question he did know the answer to, however.
What did you do with an animal that was running wild in the streets?
Damon smiled grimly.
You hunted it down and killed it.
Sam felt like he’d been caught up in a giant whirlwind that was hurtling his body relentlessly forward without his control. He sat slumped on the floor in the basement locker room, his back resting against the cool metal of the lockers. He was doing his best to stop the palsied trembling of his body that had started as soon as he’d sought refuge here.
He wasn’t having much success.
The events of the last hour had been too much for him. His mind and his body were numb with shock. It was hard to believe that Gabriel was dead. He knew it was true, yet a part of him resisted the notion.
Sam was overwhelmed with guilt. There was no way he could deny the fact that he had killed his friend. He hadn’t harmed him physically, but he was as responsible in his own mind as whoever had actually performed the violence. He had dismissed his friend’s fears as the harmless ramblings of an old man rapidly approaching senility, even when there had been no evidence that Gabriel had begun in any way to loose touch with reality, and that had killed him as surely as if Sam himself had wielded the knife.
If he’d listened, he might have been able to save him. He and Gabriel could’ve faced the old man’s enemy together. Gabriel might have survived.
If only he’d listened!
But he hadn’t, and Gabriel had paid the final price for Sam’s own ignorance.
With his heart aching and filled with guilt, grief finally broke through. His face in his hands, Sam wept long and hard, his shoulders hitching with the force of his sobs.
After a time, grief slowly gave way to anger.
Gabriel’s death would not go unavenged, he vowed to the empty air around him.
With the backs of his hands, Sam wiped the tears from his face and rose slowly to his feet. Knowing the police might still be outside, he knew he had to maintain his appearance, particularly in the light of Sheriff Wilson’s obvious suspicions. He went to his locker and spun the combination, intending on removing the extra coat he kept there to support the story he’d told the Sheriff and Officer Collins. When the lock clicked he yanked open the thin metal door and froze, staring at what lay inside.
A thick package wrapped in brown paper rested on the top shelf inside the locker. Sam’s name was scrawled across the front in Gabriel’s script.
The package hadn’t been there the day before yesterday.
It was just a simple package, no bigger than a couple of paperback books.
Yet something about it sent chills racing up and down Sam’s spine.
He had the distinct impression that it had been waiting there for him; waiting there in the darkness of his locker, quietly, patiently, like a spider hanging suspended in its web.
He stared at it for several long moments, his heart beating painfully in his chest.
Very slowly he reached in and picked it up. He held it gingerly, half expecting it to scuttle swiftly out of his hands.
It did not.
It merely sat there, its very presence seeming to mock him, daring him to open it.
A voice in the back of his mind told him to toss it back into his locker. Better yet, straight into the nearest trash can. It’s probably nothing important anyway, the voice said. Get rid of it. Forget you ever set eyes on the damn thing. Let it sit there and rot until there’s nothing left but a thin film of fuzzy mold growing in its place.
Ignoring the voice, Sam took a deep breath, ripped the package open, and peered inside.
The black face of a videotape stared back at him.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Revelations
Jake awoke.
He lay flat on his back in bed, his eyes straining to see in the darkness. His muscles tensed, and he was surprised when, a second or two after awakening, he realized he was holding his breathe.
For several long moments, there was silence.
Just when he’d convinced himself that he was imagining things, the loud pounding that had awoken him resumed.
The front door, Jake realized distantly.
He glanced at the glowing hands of his watch.
Who the hell was banging on his door at two a.m.?
Finding his jeans where he’d dropped them beside the bed, Jake swung his legs out from under the sheets and pulled the jeans up over them.
The knocking continued.
'Hold your damn horses. I said I was coming!' he called in the direction of the front door.
The pounding had awoken Loki and now the dog added his barking to the din.
'Quiet boy!' Jake said as he rounded the corner and snapped on the foyer light. Loki stood in front of the door, barking furiously, but when he saw Jake he backed off and settled down.
The sudden quiet left in the wake of Loki’s silence was interrupted a second later as the pounding resumed for a third time.
Jake lost his patience. He turned the lock, disengaged the bolt, and threw the door open violently.
'Look you stupid son-of-a…'
He got no further.
The flood of words leaving his mouth trickled to a stop the moment Jake realized who it was standing on his front steps.
It was Sam and his friend was a mess.
The knees of his jeans were stained with mud and grass. His shirt was buttoned improperly and on its front was a long streak of drying vomit.
Sam looked up and Jake knew something terrible had happened.
At last he found his voice. 'Sam! What the hell happened?'
Travers smiled sadly. He opened his mouth to answer, but got no further.
His chin dropped, his shoulders slumped, and without uttering a sound he collapsed directly into Jake’s arms, unconscious. The beer can he’d been holding behind his back clattered to the floor.
