The Breathtaker Page 26

  “I don’t know, Pop. Quit asking me that.” With growing apprehension, he dialed Rick’s cell phone again, but all he got was the digital recording.

  He stared straight ahead at the silvery, slanted lines of rain and started adding it up in his head: Rick had superior storm-chasing capabilities; he was right-handed; he had medium-length brown hair… what about shoe size? Charlie wasn’t sure. He was exceptionally neat and well organized, scientifically precise, kept lists of all tornadic-related activity and elaborate death statistics. He was a devoted chaser, and most damning of all, he’d been the one to finger Gustafson. Fingered him and then planted the evidence against him.

  Charlie had a thought. “Pop? Where’s your lucky jacket?”

  “Oh, that. I must’ve lost it somewhere, dammit,” he said. “Been out of luck ever since.”

  His vision spun; unfocused, swirling. “Do you remember seeing Rick Kripner around that time? Did you talk to him or see him in passing?”

  Isaac frowned. “We’ve crossed paths on occasion. Why?”

  “Around the same time you lost your jacket?”

  “What’s this all about, Charlie?”

  He reined in his rising dread and shook his head. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” had been a deliberate choice. “I’m on Fire.” A message to Charlie. Hey, Chief, I know you. I’m on to you. I’m watching your every move. That stiffened gait and those buttoned-up shirts. That hitch in his step that suggested a greater pain he’d never mention. At his father’s knee, little Rick Kripner had learned to intercept tornadoes and raid people’s houses during the occupants’ moment of greatest vulnerability.

  He remembered the call he’d gotten from Dime Box, Texas. “So there we were, huddled inside the closet, scared out of our wits, when I peeked out the door and saw this little person moving around inside our house. I thought it was an elf… I thought we had an elf in the house… but now I think it must’ve been a little boy.”

  Little Rick and his dad, chasing tornadoes, invading people’s homes and robbing them blind while the town siren wailed and the threat of devastation loomed… but then one day, the elder Kripner had overplayed his hand. A monster F-5 made a direct hit on the house, and Rick and his old man got flung like debris into the surrounding fields. Miracle Boy. The trauma of his father’s death must have pushed him over the edge. He’d already made a deal with the devil. He was out there helping his father rob defenseless citizens… How easy would it have been to escalate to violence? How easy to turn from burglary to animal cruelty? From killing dogs to killing human beings? Gone chasing. Who else said that? Rick Kripner. Gone chasing. Shit, and now his daughter… unthinkable.

  No, ridiculous. Another wild-goose chase. Not Rick. He needed verification. He needed further evidence. Proof that this was possible. He took the next exit.

  “Where the hell are we going now?” Isaac grumbled.

  “Pixley.”

  “Pixley? What’s in Pixley?”

  “Maybe an answer,” Charlie said.

  2

  CHARLIE SWERVED onto a poorly paved country lane that bumped over a pair of railroad tracks and passed through a winding draw full of purple wildflowers. It was raining hard now, a blustery downpour by the time they pulled up in front of Rick Kripner’s house. He stared past rivulets of rain at the sad little farmstead with its broken-down smokehouse and saddleback barn. The rambling gray Victorian stood in splendid isolation on several hundred acres of fallow fields. The copper oriel windows were relieved against a high mansard roof of green slate, topped off by a weather vane. The stained-glass bay windows repeated an azalea pattern, and the porch bulb glowed like a blurry beacon in the inclement weather.

  “Stay here,” he told his father.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Be right back.” He stepped out of the truck, the rain making pitter-pat sounds against his hat. The big old house formed a monstrous face in the gloom—the porch was its unhappy mouth, the front door its nose, the windows its beady eyes. He shot up the wooden steps, then paused to listen to the rainwater collecting in the aluminum gutters. A strange tinkling sound rose above the sibilance, and he looked up. Dozens of wind chimes dangled from the porch beams, jingle-jangling in the wind, their dissonant notes sending anticipatory shivers up his spine.

  The front door was massive, flanked on either side by leaded fogged-glass windows. He hammered on the door with his fist, and when nobody answered, went to a nearby window and cupped his hands over the cold glass. What he saw next made his heart flutter: bite-sized chunks were missing out of the windowsill, as if somebody’d taken a hatchet to it. One of the load-bearing walls in the small rectangular room beyond the windowpane was completely exposed; in places you could see through the yellow insulation to the veins and guts of the house—exposed wires, leaking pipes.

  He hammered on the oak panel with his fist. “Police! Open up!” When no response was forthcoming, he tried the door and found it wasn’t locked, then hesitated on the threshold. Fuck probable cause. He stepped inside.

  “Sophie?” he hollered into the immense front hallway. “You in here?”

  He paused to listen to an echoing silence. The front hallway’s twelve-foot ceilings were topped off with crown moldings, and the hardwood floors still had their original quarter-sawn boards. A sudden flash of feathers gave Charlie a start as a pigeon flew up the central staircase. Some of the balusters were missing from the oak railing, as if they’d been yanked out, leaving just the splintered ends.

  A kernel of fear took root as, unfastening the safety strap on his holster, Charlie approached the small dark room he’d seen through the porch window and stood in the doorway. Somebody had gone mad in here. The molding was gouged; in places there were holes in the plaster so deep the lath was exposed. The skeletal frame of an entire wall could be seen—diagonal braces, jack studs, joists, lintels. There wasn’t a stick of furniture, just a stepladder leaning against a wall and a trail of carpenter ants cascading out of the cellulose insulation.

  He moved back into the dark-wood entryway with his weapon drawn. The drafty old house came alive with sound. The wind whistled through the rafters and the ping of dripping water echoed. Plenty of plaster had been knocked out of the hallway walls as well, leaving bald patches of exposed plank in stark contrast with the prim Victorian wallpaper. To his right was a parlor full of plain, simple furniture and tall spires of books, precisely stacked newspapers and videotapes. The old single-thickness windows still had their original frames and sashes, ripples of rain trailing down the panes. Beyond these ripples, he could see other wind chimes, and beyond the dangling wind chimes was a curtain of gray.

  Charlie passed through a narrow vestibule into an austere-looking living room. The old fieldstone fireplace had recently been used—he found bits of burned paper among the ashes. There was a rich wool carpet and floor-to-ceiling windows with fringed valances over mauve curtains. The furniture was a hodgepodge of heirlooms—an art deco pole lamp, a cumbersome sideboard, a grandfather clock, matching straight-back chairs. The computer was missing from the antique desk in the corner, cables snaking across the polished walnut. Unpaid bills were scattered over the floor, and the desk drawers were askew. Charlie examined the long, low table crowded with all sorts of equipment—a GPS receiver, an anemometer, some barometric pressure instruments. He ran his finger over the polished wood—not a speck of dust anywhere.

  As he entered the kitchen, he squinted, then opened his eyes wide. Lists everywhere. If you didn’t write it down, it didn’t exist. There was a built-in Hoosier-style hutch, several glass-front display cupboards and a farm-style sink. The canned goods were stacked with the labels facing out so you could read them lightning-quick. Charlie opened the refrigerator, empty except for a few six-packs and some cold cuts. The freezer compartment was chock-full of hail balls, each one carefully labeled inside its own plastic bag. Marble-sized, golfball-sized, softball-sized, spiky, smooth. Dates and locations. Out back was a porch that was literal
ly falling down.

  Upstairs was an eye-opener. On the second floor at the top of the stairs was a sloped ceiling you had to duck under to get by. All the small, colorless rooms were crammed to the rafters, each pile neatly stacked and labeled. This was orderly chaos. In one room, Charlie found a bundle of twisted tree branches, a stack of tattered pictures from old Sunday School quarterlies, at least twenty Tupperware bowls either torn in half or twisted by the wind, and a mound of snapped black cables. Rick had studiously labeled every item—date, town, F-scale. And then… chair legs and balusters stacked like kindling. Plastic bags full of refrigerator magnets—the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Felix the Cat, My Little Pony. His flesh crept. If you ate dinner with this guy, you’d notice midbite that your fork was labeled “fork.”

  In the next room, Charlie found a building-block tower of concrete chunks, each one more progressively deteriorated than the last; a collection of glass “genie” bottles; a heap of watches and clocks, their hands stopped at the exact moment the tornado had struck. There were bundles of shredded clothes and pages torn from books. Dog and cat collars. Twisted highway signs. Turntables and radios from the seventies and eighties. Unbroken china and pewter. A Mickey Mantle baseball card that was probably worth something. A receipt for somebody’s 1984 class ring.

  In the bathroom, painted avocado green with a mosaic tile floor, he found little plastic bags of obsessively trimmed fingernails. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. What a sick, twisted fuck. Everything had to have its place. At least fifty rolls of toilet paper were stacked beneath the vanity. There were two of everything: two toothbrushes, two razors, two soap dishes. All the items in the medicine cabinet had been arranged in alphabetical order, aspirin first. Charlie glanced at the original cast-iron Kohler fixtures, everything spotless and gleaming. Would the world come to an end because there was a speck of toothpaste in the bathroom sink? Somehow, yes.

  Only the modest room at the far end of the hallway looked lived-in. It held an unexpected innocence, its pine shelves lined with the kind of plastic action figures you might purchase with your Happy Meal. A large window let in a square of dirty light. There was an original stone fireplace and hearthstone. Above the driving rain, you could hear the wind pushing in through cracks in the rafters. The bed was neatly made. The bureau drawers stored whites and colors. The walls were painted an odd chemical blue. On the old RCA turntable, Gloria Swanson’s 1932 recording of “I Love You So Much I Hate You.” On the bedside table, a half-empty glass of clear liquid. Charlie picked it up and sniffed. Water. He set it back down.

  He opened the steamer trunk at the foot of the bed and found stacks of desiccated newspaper clippings that spanned decades. He leafed through yellowing articles about old killer tornadoes and the recent spate of murders. He dropped everything back inside the trunk, a ringing in his ears. He took a deep breath, let it out cautiously. Stood up. The closet door was closed. He crossed the room and opened it.

  Clothes on plastic hangers, spaced evenly to keep them from getting wrinkled; shoes in perfect rows at the bottom of the closet. Four pairs of identical-looking Nike sneakers—white and champagne shelltops. With the tip of a ballpoint pen, he inspected one of the sneakers. Size eleven, wads of cotton stuffed in the toes. All the other shoes in the closet were size nine.

  Feeling a palpable heartbeat in his throat, he stepped out into the hallway. No probable cause. Illegal search. He feared his own impulses, his transgressions. The last thing in the world he wanted was to blow the case due to some legal loophole, but his daughter was missing. His daughter. Nothing else mattered. He stood staring at the ceiling. “Sophie?” he hollered. “You up there?”

  He lowered the hinged jaw of the attic staircase and mounted the steps two at a time. The attic smelled of mothballs. Old, old. Ancient grievances. Pain. Tears. Heart-pine wood floors and a transom window. Old exposed posts and beams. A single bare bulb that cast sickly shadows down the roof-sloped ceiling.

  Charlie ducked his head. To the right of the stairwell was a pile of dusty whiskey bottles, each one containing the residue of some ancient amber liquid. Each one with its own bizarre label, “1981, upper right canine.” He took a sharp breath, then let it out slowly. He could feel the seething atmosphere inside the house. To his left was a player piano that looked like it hadn’t been played in decades, a thick bed of dust coating the mahogany fall board. The discordant sound of many wind chimes could be heard, like a tickle at the back of your throat. The wind chimes were feelers, he imagined, delicately testing the air for weather patterns. The entire house shivered like a bell; or more accurately, like a living creature alert to the shifting winds.

  At the western end of the attic, a narrow window overlooked the back fields, the horizon stretching infinitely into the distance. Angled in front of this window was a large straight-back chair made of some dark sturdy wood. Two old leather belts were strapped to the chair’s back splat—leather straps grotesquely misshapen and rigored with age. Time slowed to a crawl as Charlie circled around it. A trickle of ice water hit him on the back of the neck and he looked up, goose bumps rising everywhere on his body. It was only rainwater, leaking in through a crack in the weatherboarding and providing a constant drip-drip.

  On the floor around the base of the chair were blood spatters, like the concentric echoes of a fading scream. The chair’s spindles were covered with a green mold and clotted with dried blood. A nearby wooden table held a collection of old-fashioned dental tools—forceps, a mirror, an elevator and chisel, needles and suturing material, and two glass mason jars. One of the jars held a wad of gauze pads, now ivory with age. And the other…

  Charlie’s hair stood on end as he picked it up and gently shook it. He couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Inside the old-fashioned mason jar were dozens of extracted human teeth, mixed with animal teeth. Canine, bovine. As hard as he tried, as much as he pretended to maintain a professional distance, he couldn’t keep his hands from shaking or his mind from reeling at this ultimate proof of evil.

  He took a pained step backward, the souls of the dead swirling around him. He knew their outrage. He felt an almost intolerable pain begin to grow inside his head. He stood transfixed while he tried to regain his composure and realized, at that moment, just how deep the wounds were, how far back this most inhuman crime went.

  3

  CHARLIE TOOK a detour in order to bypass a bad traffic jam and ended up on this sorry stretch of road way out in the middle of Mayberry, slowing to a crawl due to heavy rains. Hydroplaning through long drizzling threads of rain, his windshield wipers dragging across the glass.

  “East Texas looks promising.” Isaac had his laptop computer propped open on his lap.

  “Promising? Can’t you do any better than that, Pop?” Charlie rubbed his face with hard, angry gestures. Out of breath. Out of breath. The horror of that house. The chilling revelation. Rick was the Debris Killer. There was no doubt in his mind. “We don’t even have a target storm yet,” he said angrily. “We don’t know where the hell we’re going!”

  “I’m trying to figure out where a tornado is likely to form, which direction it’s likely to move in. We’ve gotta know where to be and where not to be. The Texas mesonet is showing the highest dew points. I believe a storm’s gonna form around Matador and become tornadic around Aberdeen or thereabouts, but I need to get a confirmation.” He swiped the CB mike from its metal retainer and, cupping it close to his lips, said, “This is Poppa Vein, can I get a break?” He fiddled with the volume and wattage controls while multiple voices channeled out of the speaker. “Break one-oh?”

  Charlie pressed the pedal to the metal, willing the Loadmaster to go faster than it was probably capable of. The scalloped cumuli were blowing in a brisk northeasterly wind that enveloped the truck in warm buoyant air. It was closing in on 5:30 P.M. He stepped hard on his panic and had a sudden tender memory of Sophie as a baby, kicking at the world from her crib, her eyes deep blue wells of love and curiosity. He could barely gras
p the significance of what he’d just seen. He was still in shock. His hands were shaking.

  “Does the driver of the eastbound red Wilson have his ears on?” his father said, adjusting the squelch and volume levels. “Break one-oh. Can I get a break one-oh?”

  “Who’s that breaker out there?” came the laconic response.

  “Poppa Vein,” Isaac said, using his handle.

  “Hey, Poppa, this is Cloudy. Watch your back, we got a real bunch of cowboys on the road today.”

  “How’s it looking in Texas? You got a target storm for me, Cloudy?”

  “What’s your twenty?”

  “I’m passing through Hardeman County, heading west.”

  “I got thunderboomers in Childress…”

  “I’m looking for that special one percent… a terawatt supercell that’ll spawn a tornado in its updraft. What’s your feeling about Aberdeen?”

  “Aberdeen’s lookin’ real sweet,” he responded. “We got a large circular-shaped storm with tops to fifty thousand feet moving northeast at about thirty-five miles an hour.”

  “Sounds juicy.”

  “That’s your best bet.”

  “Catch you on the flip-flop.” Isaac dunked the mike back in its metal retainer. “That’s our target storm,” he said, sweat beading on the sides of his nose and rivering down the deep grooves of his mouth. “We’ve got maybe an hour to get there before we miss the whole show.”

  “One hour? That’s it?”

  His eyes narrowed to slits, as if this were a trick question. “Aberdeen’s the place we wanna be, son.”

  Charlie stared gloomily ahead, the road winnowing before him like the wrong end of a telescope. Unless the state police or highway patrol could locate Rick’s black GMC Sierra soon, Charlie had no better plan than to chase down the nearest tornado and hopefully intercept Rick’s truck before Sophie got hurt. Everything rested on the forlorn hope that the killer wouldn’t kill until he’d found a tornado to his liking, and that they could somehow intervene before he’d succeeded. Charlie didn’t feel like dwelling on the absurdity of those odds.