Footprints of a Dancer (Detective Elliot Mystery) Page 3

  Carmen unlocked her car and climbed in. Before leaving the parking lot, though, she rolled down the window and this time allowed her direct and lingering gaze to find Elliot’s. “Maybe you could call me tomorrow and we can talk more about this.”

  Elliot smiled.

  Chapter Six

  Later that night after his meeting at the school with Carmen, Elliot sat in a recliner in the living room of his home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, sipping coffee and trying to decide if he should continue looking for Gerald, or simply wait for his old friend to contact him again. However, each time he leaned in the direction of the latter, a gut feeling pushed him away from it—Gerald was in trouble.

  Laura Bradford, at least the one Elliot had known, had never officially enrolled at the university. Elliot had spent the afternoon and part of the night finding that out, though it hadn’t surprised him. He’d never seen Laura in any of the classrooms or hallways or even on campus, unless she was with Gerald. Elliot thought about Terri Benson and he wondered how close Terri had been to Laura back when they all hung out together.

  Elliot had always wondered if Laura’s being in Stillwater involved more than scholastic endeavors, or even being Gerald’s girlfriend. He’d suspected she had her own agenda. When she stopped coming around, he’d fallen back on that, figuring she’d found whatever it was she’d been after and with nothing else to keep her there, she’d gone back to wherever it was she’d come from. But what, exactly, she’d been after, he wasn’t sure. He’d learned at an early age that he was more intuitive than most people, but his uncanny guessing-game talents had their limits.

  Elliot kept going back to Angela Gardner, the anthropology student. It had been shortly after Gerald’s encounter with Angela and her teacher, Professor David Stephens, that Laura had disappeared. After that, Elliot would see Gerald and Terri now and then, but the meetings at Joe’s began to taper off, never going further than casual conversation, until they just quit meeting altogether.

  Elliot retrieved the scrap of paper that had been found in Gerald’s hotel room, focusing this time not on the name of Professor David Stephens, but rather on the previously unintelligible series of numbers and letters on the reverse. Gerald had a habit of scribbling things down in a hurry and he’d often run everything together, his own brand of short hand.

  In light of this, Elliot saw the message as it should be, and W14SCheyenne became West 14th Street and South Cheyenne Avenue. It was an address, or at least an intersection.

  Elliot glanced at his watch. 11:30 p.m. He laced up his shoes and grabbed a jacket from the closet. In the hallway, he considered the weapon that hung there.

  He put on the shoulder holster and slid his jacket over it as he left the house. Inside the garage, he thought about the pickup, a better choice on such a night, but he’d recently acquired a Harley, one of those spur of the moment things he had to admit feeling a little silly about.

  He straddled the bike and hit the garage door opener. When the garage door closed behind him, he fired up the Harley and motored out of the neighborhood.

  The road unfolded in front of the handlebars, and while Elliot twisted the grip of the Harley, he wondered about the sanity of his actions, driving around this part of town at this time of night, but as soon as he crested the hill that overlooked the address Gerald had scrawled onto the paper, he knew this whole thing was a bad idea.

  Elliot slowed the bike and brought it to a stop, hoping that the darkness and the vibration of the bike had caused a visual distortion, and he had not seen who he thought he’d seen in the mirror.

  But there she was, Laura Bradford, standing not more than three feet behind him, those haunting black eyes that he’d never been able to completely eradicate from his mind staring right at him.

  He tore his concentration from the mirror and twisted around.

  She wasn’t there.

  Elliot wanted to blame his failing visual acuity on lack of sleep and poor eating habits, but he knew better. There was another avenue to explore. His believing that Laura was a vision didn’t necessarily make it true. Each time he’d seen her, it had been dark, and had occurred in areas where deception was possible. She could have simply stepped off the trail and disappeared into the darkness. Even now, she could have darted behind a tree or a building. He thought back to a time when his mother had passed in her sleep and he was with her, in the house, by himself but not alone, and it was a feeling like that which now crawled across his senses.

  A scream, like a wounded animal might make, cut through the air.

  Elliot scanned an area about two hundred yards ahead where he thought the sound had come from.

  The shadowy forms of homeless people who had gathered around a campfire near the lawn of an old apartment building were now scattering in several directions, disappearing into the streets and alleyways nearby.

  Elliot tightened his grip on the handlebars of the Harley. The homeless did not relish being observed in daylight, but during the night they were not a timid bunch, especially on what they considered their own turf, but the scream had frightened them.

  Elliot put the bike in gear and started toward the scene, but by the time he arrived the only thing remaining was the campfire.

  Elliot leaned the bike against the stand and started toward the house, an old mansion that had been converted into an apartment building. One of the logs had fallen to the side of the campfire, though it was still partially in the fire and burning on one end.

  Constantly surveying the area, he crouched slightly and when he had the torch in hand he straightened and resumed his journey, slowly climbing the stairs leading to the front entrance. The doors and windows had been boarded up. The place was empty.

  Still using the torch for light, Elliot descended the stairs and walked across a grassy area leading behind the building.

  The backdoor was secured as well, but when Elliot stepped away from the door, he saw another possibility.

  A set of concrete stairs led into the earth, barely visible by the faint light of a distant streetlamp.

  It was the entrance to the basement. Elliot pushed aside his wild ideas of what might be hiding in the dark space beneath the house and started down the steps, the light from the torch tossing the darkness around in haphazard shapes.

  A door blocked the entrance, but it was old and decayed, and even if it had been locked it would not have offered much resistance.

  Elliot shoved it open and stepped into the room.

  The smell of damp earth and organic substances that had gone bad filled the air. Footprints spotted the muddy floor of the basement, meandering toward the back wall, stopping at the base of a set of wooden stairs.

  Elliot raised the torch.

  The wooden stairs went from the floor of the basement to an open doorway leading into the house. The light dimmed further as the torch died down to nothing more than glowing embers.

  Elliot let the torch fall to the damp floor where he knew it could do no harm and retrieved the flashlight he kept in the breast pocket of his jacket. Stopping at the base of the stairs, he directed the light upward, toward the opening.

  It was as if someone had gone into the basement to retrieve a jar of canned fruit, intending to quickly return to the kitchen.

  Elliot lowered the beam and quickly directed it about the room, checking each corner and shadowy place where he thought someone might hide.

  He slowly climbed onto the bottom stair and bounced his weight against it, testing the integrity of the structure. The stairs were solid, but Elliot remained cautious, taking his time, letting each step prove itself before proceeding to the next. When he reached the top, he eased through the doorway and entered the first floor.

  Tall wooden cabinets with glass-fronted doors covered two walls, and remnants of linoleum patched the countertops. Wooden planks stretched across the floor. What had once been a grand estate was now little more than the material it had been constructed from.

  Standing in the darkness s
ent a chill up his spine. Elliot thought of leaving. Again, he had to focus on why he was there. He had to find Gerald’s connection to the empty house, if indeed there was one.

  Elliot left the kitchen, moving slowly through what had been the dining area, and when he reached the empty expanse of the great room, the beam of the flashlight revealed something much more than shadowy distortions. He walked slowly around the object, a scaled-down version of a step pyramid, studying it from all angles.

  The structure, a type of altar, like some mad stone mason’s private creation, rose at least seven feet from the center of the floor. The coppery scent of fresh blood filled the air. It had run down the sides of the altar to form pools on the floor.

  Elliot steadied himself and stepped onto the pyramid, and when he had climbed a few steps he raised the flashlight so that the beam fell across the top of the structure.

  The victim lay sprawled across the altar, his back arched, his arms lying at his sides. He had aged, of course, and put on weight, even grown facial hair, but Elliot immediately recognized him as he stared into the dimly lit face, the death mask of Stanley Gerald Reynolds III.

  Elliot braced himself against the stonework and ran the light across Gerald’s corpse.

  An eight or nine inch gash ran horizontally across his abdomen, just below the rib cage. Blood still oozed from the wound. An image of Gerald laughing at one of his own jokes ran through Elliot’s thoughts, and his eyes moistened.

  As Elliot fought to regain composure, to understand what was happening, he again thought of Angela Gardner, and along with her image something she’d said formed in his mind: Sacrifice is made to give sustenance to the gods.

  A familiar sound from outside tugged at Elliot’s conscience, but in his current sate of confusion it took him a moment to identify its source.

  Someone was trying to start the Harley.

  Elliot stumbled across the room to the foyer. When he reached the front door, he placed his face against it and stared through the cracks in the boards that covered it.

  His pulse quickened. Someone was out there.

  Elliot scrambled through the house, maneuvered the muddy floor of the basement, climbed the cement steps and stumbled into the backyard. Gaining his footing, he ran to the front of the property.

  Elliot bolted across the yard toward the ragged man struggling to push the Harley into the street.

  It moved easier once he got it into neutral. It might have been a few years, and maybe some type of pain-soothing substance was hindering his performance, but the thief had clearly been around bikes before. He wouldn’t have gotten this far otherwise.

  Like a linebacker who had the angle on his opponent, Elliot caught the man and dragged him to the ground. The weight of the Harley pinned the guy’s legs to the asphalt, and even in his medicated state he screamed from the pain.

  Elliot hoisted the bike upright and dragged the old guy to a softer, grassy area between the sidewalk and the street.

  He smelled of sweat and fermented fruit. Wrinkles lined his face. The age of those with hard lives can be deceiving, but he had to be in his seventies. “Who the hell are you?” Elliot asked.

  “Did you just do what I think you did?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You lifted the bike up off of me like it was nothing. The Harley’s got to be close to seven hundred pounds.”

  Elliot shook his head. He hadn’t exactly picked it up, just put it back on its wheels, using the width of the frame as leverage. “Why were you trying to steal it?”

  “You got it wrong, man. I wasn’t going to steal it.”

  “Oh, I get it. You were just going to push it down to the car wash and shine it up for me.”

  He pulled a twenty from his pocket and showed it to Elliot. “Dude gave it to me. Said he’d give me another, when I done the job.”

  “What dude?”

  “The one who hangs around the old apartment house.”

  A vision of Gerald, lying inside the house with his stomach cut open ran through Elliot’s head. He grabbed the ragged man by the lapels of his jacket “Tell me where he is. I need to talk to him.”

  “I don’t know anything, man. To tell you the truth, I thought you was the dude until I got a better look at you.”

  Elliot released his grip. “Since you’re bright enough to know I’m not the same guy, why don’t you tell me what he does look like?”

  He opened his jacket, exposing the booze he’d tucked away. “Do you mind?”

  “All right, if it’ll help you talk. But not too much.”

  He unscrewed the lid and turned the bottle up. Afterward he replaced the cap. “He looks a little like you, the way you dress I mean. He’s older, though, grey hair and all.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “No. But I see him around the old place every once in a while. I just figured he owned it or something, maybe going to fix it up, rent it out or something.”

  Elliot had interrogated a thousand drunks. Looked like this one was telling the truth. He helped him to his feet. “Are you hurt? I can take you to the hospital, if you want.”

  “I just want to be left alone. I’ll be all right.”

  Elliot reached for his wallet. “I’m going back inside, take care of some business. You said the man promised you another twenty. I’m making it up to you, but if you want to live to spend it, leave the bike alone.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I don’t want no trouble with you.”

  Elliot drove the Harley back onto the yard in front of the building. After shutting it off, he said. “You used to ride, didn’t you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Just the way you handled it, like you knew what you were doing.”

  The old guy’s eyes seemed to cloud over as he shook his head. “It was a long time ago, another lifetime, I guess.”

  “You could get it back, if you wanted to bad enough.”

  “I think about it sometimes. But I don’t know how.”

  “Cut back on the booze,” Elliot said, “in small increments. Instead of two bottles a day, drink one and three quarters, pour the rest out. Next, go to one and a half, like that until you get it under control. It won’t be easy, but you can do it, if you put your mind to it.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said, “but let me ask you something? The sound that brought you down here, you ever hear anything like it before?”

  Elliot thought about the animal-like screaming he’d heard earlier. He shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t go back inside the place if I was you. It’s where the sound always comes from, and why I did what the man asked, taking your bike and all. You understand what I’m saying?”

  Elliot continued toward the house. “Use your fear as an incentive to get off the street.”

  “All right. But you got to listen to me. Things been going on down here.”

  “Like what?”

  He took a drink, wiped his mouth, and said, “Something straight out of hell, I reckon. And I know what you’re thinking. He gets all juiced up, he wouldn’t know a scream from a country song, but you’d be wrong. I been around this old world for a long time, know a little about people dying. I know a death scream when I hear one. He cuts their hearts out. That’s what they say. You’d do well to get back on your motor and get on out of here.”

  “I found somebody inside all right,” Elliot said, “murdered, cut with a knife. You know anything about that?”

  Fright shot across the old guy’s face. “No, sir. Dude told me to hide the bike in the bushes. I don’t anything about no murder. Honest to God.”

  Elliot turned away and retraced his steps across the lawn and through the basement. He had his phone out when he reached the parlor, intending to call the department and report what he’d found, but what he sensed caused him to rethink his options.

  The expanse of dilapidated oak flooring stretched across the room, but something had changed. The altar was stil
l in the middle of the living room, but no sacrifice was atop it, and no blood pooled on the floor.

  Elliot shined the light around the room, wondering if someone had come while he was gone and removed the evidence, but as quickly as the idea formed, he dismissed it. He might have been gone long enough for someone to have hidden the body, but not to have cleaned up the mess. Although he could see from this angle and distance that the altar was empty, he again climbed the side of it to be sure.

  Gerald was gone and so was the blood.

  Elliot returned to the kitchen where his attention was drawn to the door leading to the basement. No trail of blood showed on the floor where someone might have dragged the body. The basement door was still open.

  Elliot moved the door to the closed position.

  A padlock hanging from the back of the door banged against the wood. Attached to the door frame was the corresponding hasp.

  Elliot slid the hasp in place and replaced the lock, though he did not secure it. He had no desire to be trapped in such a place. However, with the door partially secured, no one could enter through the basement unless they knocked the door down, and anyone trying to get out would be slowed down considerably. It just might give him the opportunity to catch them, whoever that might be.

  Elliot went back through the house to the foyer where a set of stairs led to the second floor. The only place he hadn’t been. He shined the light up the stairway, pressed his back against the wall, and began climbing, looking ahead, but glancing back occasionally to make sure no one came up behind him. The nerves on the back of his neck kept tingling.

  At the top of the stairs, Elliot directed the beam around the dark chasm, but the light began to dim. The batteries were going dead.

  His hands began to shake. He wanted to search the rest of the building, but the feeling of being vulnerable, exposed to whatever presence was behind this overwhelmed him. The absurdity of the situation, his being inside an abandoned house in the middle of the night, struck him. He thought about seeing Laura on the running trails at the River Park and later in the mirror of the Harley. An image of Gerald lying in sacrifice atop the altar exploded through his head. Had any of it been real? Sure, he was a little more intuitive than most people were comfortable with, but nothing like this had ever happened. Again the thought of insanity played around the corners of his mind.