Flypaper Opus: Dark Psychological Thriller - Book 2 Read online

  His mother sat there and watched him, one hand under her chin and a big dopey grin on her face.

  He loved her so much. He’d eat and eat even as his stomach pushed back because he wanted her to see he was okay. He didn’t want her to worry, to cry.

  He ate so much of it. What was in it? He still didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. He thought back to the contents of his childhood home. Dish soap. Bug poison. Bleach. Medication of every variety. He sat there and shoveled any or all of it into his face while she watched. While she watched and smiled.

  Nick retched. His mother and Reed both looked at him with concern. He closed his mouth tightly and breathed in and out through his nose. He didn’t move. He didn’t dare move. The slightest twitch would upset the delicate control he was determined to maintain over his bodily functions.

  Meredith walked over and patted him on the back. His shoulders spasmed. “Nickie, you okay?”

  He swallowed and waved her off. Her touch wasn’t helpful.

  Nick kept breathing through his nose, slowly, in and out. He closed his eyes and pictured a nice place. A field. Flowers. Mountains. Some real Sound of Music shit.

  To his surprise, it helped. Holy shit, he’d have to write that website a nice email.

  Reed started to get up. “I’ll get some water.”

  Nick motioned her back down. “I’m fine.” He cleared his throat. It hurt to talk.

  Meredith sat back in her chair. “You sure?”

  Nick nodded and stood up. “Yeah, you do your note thing. Mom, I’ll get the sugar, have a seat.”

  Meredith made herself comfortable and turned her attention to Reed. “Cancer Man was next, sweetie. I think it might be my favorite.”

  Nick grabbed the sugar from a cabinet and pulled a spoon out of a drawer. “It would be.”

  He stood over the table. His mother reached for the spoon. He pretended not to see her and poured two scoops of sugar into her cup.

  Reed scratched at her notepad. “And we already know how much the Maggot—” She looked up at Nick. “—how much our suspect liked that one.”

  Nick put the sugar safely out of his mother’s reach. “Live crabs, I swear. I don’t think I’d have ever thought of that. What the hell.”

  Meredith sipped at her coffee. “I couldn’t be prouder.”

  Reed stopped scribbling. She looked at Nick and then at his mother. She wasn’t sure she’d heard her right.

  Nick put a hand on Meredith’s shoulder. “Mom. Inappropriate.”

  She put a hand on his. “I mean it’s tragic what happened to that man, but think about what it says for Nickie’s talents that people love his stuff so much. It’s special, don’t you agree?”

  Nick pulled his hand away. He looked at Reed. He read her face and vice versa.

  There’s something wrong with her.

  I know.

  Reed looked back at her pad and tiptoed past the giant elephant in the room. “What was after Cancer Man?”

  Nick sat at the table and picked up another book. “Life’s Blood. Low budget horror movie director finds real life scarier than the movies he makes.” He placed it on top of Toilet Humor; in the psychopath-hasn’t-recreated stack.

  Reed picked up Life’s Blood and opened it to the dust jacket biography. A picture of Nick was inside. “That doesn’t sound all that scary.”

  Nick snorted. “You kidding? What’s scarier than real life?”

  Reed’s eyes darted at Meredith for a fraction of a second. “I’m starting to get that. Anything in it that Maggot Man might want to imitate?”

  “You’re talking about me.” Meredith didn’t want to tiptoe past the elephant in the room. She wanted to ride around on top of it. Make it jump through hoops. “I mean, you’re not talking about me, but you’re talking about me. I did it again, didn’t I? I don’t always know the right thing to say.”

  This conversation couldn’t possibly go anyplace fun so Nick tried to kill it instantly. “Mom, she doesn’t know.”

  Meredith patted her son’s hand. “She should know. It’s only right that people should know.”

  Reed stiffened. “Ms. Dawkins, you don’t have to—”

  “Sheriff, a long time ago I did some things I shouldn’t have. Unspeakable things.”

  Nick crossed his arms. “But you’re going to speak about them anyway.”

  Meredith pulled at a thread on her sweater-vest. “I know now that what I did wasn’t right. But being the mother of a sick child; you can’t imagine the way people look at you. The empathy. I’d never felt like anyone cared before.”

  An invisible cloud hung in the air. Quiet, like the eye of a storm.

  “They took Nickie from me. I was in therapy for years. I wasn’t allowed to contact him for a long time, and after that time had passed…”

  “I preferred she didn’t.” Nick tapped his fingers. “Danielle brought her back around.”

  “Oh, how that girl adored you,” Meredith said, her face fairy-tale soft.

  Nick rapped a knuckle on the table.

  Meredith stood up. “I think I should go.” She turned to Reed. “My presence still upsets him sometimes, and you have business to attend to. It was nice meeting you, Sheriff.” She extended a hand, which Reed politely shook. “Come lock the door behind me, Nickie. Some people out there aren’t well.”

  Nick followed his mother to the door. A light drizzle fell from the sky.

  “I’m glad you’re alright, Nickie. I’m sorry again for dropping in like this.”

  He locked the door and dragged his feet back into the kitchen. Reed sat at the table, her mouth slack. “Munchausen’s?”

  Nick collapsed into a chair. “By proxy, but yeah. So that’s the story of me.”

  Reed set her notepad down. “I’m sorry, I had no idea. Obviously, I’d never have invited her in. I thought you were being a dick.”

  Nick arranged some of the books and paper stacks on the table. “That’s understandable, normally I am.”

  “Is that something people know in general? Like is it on Wikipedia?”

  Nick’s eyes bulged. “No. No no. No one knows it. Record is sealed. Juvenile what’s-it. And now she lives in the same town as me.” He waggled his hands in the air. “Yaaaaaay.”

  “May I ask—?”

  Nick waved a hand. “By all means.”

  Reed straightened herself in her chair. “Do you think she’s better?”

  He couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t a real laugh, but a hearty “Ha” of sarcasm. “Boy, that’s the million dollar question.”

  She pointed at the sugar container. “That explains the sugar. I wondered what that was about.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with her. Obviously I can’t trust her, right?”

  Reed sat back. “It’s a bit outside of my wheelhouse, Dawkins. I think everything about you is.”

  They sat in silence for several moments.

  Nick picked up another book. “I figured I’d go ahead and sort these chronologically so we can plow through them.”

  Reed held up her pad. “Sure thing.”

  Nick set one book on top of another and then came to the last stray stack of papers. He blinked at the top page.

  “Sheriff. You have a description of this guy. And a vehicle.”

  “That is correct.” She squinted at him. She still couldn’t read him when he was being intentionally cryptic.

  Nick held the paper-clipped stack in his hand up in front of her.

  The Inn.

  Reed read the title page and made a face. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

  Nick dropped it on the table. “It’s a short story I wrote this year. I based it on the Shady Thicket. If this guy’s as obsessed as he comes off, he’ll know that.”

  “You think he’d stay there?”

  Nick shrugged. “Or at least visit.”

  Reed unhooked her walkie. “I can buy that.” She pressed a button. “Kern. Over.”

  K
ern’s voice came through, composed of static and testosterone. “Go for Kern. Over.”

  The Sheriff flipped through the pages of The Inn. “Hey, I want you to swing by the Shady Thicket. You know the place. Check to see if anyone matching the description’s been around. And then I want regular drive-bys on it. Over.”

  Long pause.

  “Yeah, okay. Roger that. Over and out.”

  Reed hung up her walkie. “This Inn thing. The movie’s about to come out, isn’t it?”

  Nick yawned. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they messed it up though. Took out some good stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  He picked up the story and looked at a couple of pages. “Just some of the grislier stuff. There’s a murder-suicide they probably cut, and if they didn’t, it’ll all be off screen.”

  Reed rested her hands on the table. “You put the Rothschild murder-suicide in your story?”

  Nick scratched his chin. “Not exactly, I took license with it. Y’know, sexed it up a bit. I mean I didn’t add actual sex or anything, it’s an expression.”

  The sheriff crossed her arms. “I know the expression. The woman stabbed her husband in the face with a shard of glass and cut her own throat. How on God’s green Earth did you ‘sex it up’?”

  Chapter 11

  Son-of-a-bitching Nick Dawkins. Blight on the community.

  Deputy Douglas Kern sped down the tree lined road toward the Shady Thicket Inn. The car hugged the edge of the pavement as he took a curve at fifteen miles above the speed limit.

  This used to be such a quiet town. Never any trouble.

  Then Nick Dawkins moved in.

  Weirdo writes all kinds of garbage about people getting chopped up, exploded, and stabbed, and he picked Forest Down out of a hat to set up shop. Just a few miles from where Kern’s daddy was born.

  What happened next shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone.

  Tourists and lookee-loos came to the area in droves, darting up and down the back roads in search of his house. A never ending stream of morbid curiosity in the middle of Main Street, like a parade from the seventh circle of Hell.

  Most of the visitors were relatively harmless; a nuisance.

  Most of them. There had been exceptions. Vandals and trespassers who had come looking for trouble.

  To Kern they were all the same. A giant shitstorm of crazy that had been building for damn near three years. It had been a matter of time before it escalated; a ticking time bomb of mutilated pets and crab-men.

  He pulled into the Shady Thicket’s parking lot. A dark blue news van was parked in one of the closest spots to the building, along with an SUV and a dirty compact. No white van.

  Kern parked in front of the Inn’s porch and tried to remember the mousy little guy who owned the place. He was always at the front desk during business hours. What was his name? It was just out of reach.

  He stepped into the misting rain and trotted up the steps to the front door.

  The Shady Thicket. Kern could never decide how he felt about the place. On one hand, it was a perfect example of what Kern liked about Forest Down. It never changed. Same old-timey rugs and furniture. Same welcoming front desk clerk. In a country filled to brimming with gaping assholes, who would want to come to one of the last bastions of decency and screw with it?

  Which brought him to the proverbial ‘other hand’. He had never been able to disassociate the place with the one night he’d ever seen his father bring his police work home on his shoulders. The old man had come in white as paper and about as sturdy. He still remembered his dad’s arms around him that night. He thought his Pop would squeeze the life out of him.

  It was the night his dad had responded to a call at the Shady Thicket. He and another officer had responded to a disturbance between two guests. The Rothschilds. Couple of out-of-towners coming in after a long night on the road. Screaming, furniture banging, the whole nine. By all accounts, they had really gone at it.

  Kern’s dad and the other officer kicked in the door. They found Mr. Rothschild with a shard of the room’s mirror buried in his face. Mrs. Rothschild stood across the room, another piece of glass to her own throat. She opened it up before they could reach her.

  The other officer quit shortly after, as he recalled.

  Pop had told him all this years and years after the fact, over a football game and a couple of beers. He’d gotten the impression it had weighed on the old man all that time. Probably did until the day he died.

  Out-of-towners. Sickening.

  Kern walked to the front desk and peered over it. So much for the welcoming desk clerk. He dinged the bell on the countertop. No response.

  He tilted over and looked into the kitchen area in the room behind the front desk. Deserted.

  “Hello?” His eyes turned toward the ceiling. What’s-his-name was probably showing someone to their room. Hell if Kern would go hunting through three floors looking for the guy.

  What was the guy’s name? Percy? Anthony? It would drive him nuts.

  The phone behind the counter rang. It was shrill, one of those old models typically relegated to black and white movies. If he shot the damn thing it’d be justified. Assault on a police officer.

  He heard the sound of someone tromping down the stairs. The phone went silent.

  Kern adjusted his hat. “Just the man I was looking for.”

  The front desk clerk gestured at the phone. “You’re apparently not the only one. No worries, if it’s important they’ll call back. What brings you by, officer?”

  “I’m not mistaken am I, you own the place?”

  The clerk stuck out a hand. “That’s right. Mortie Finn.”

  Mortie, there it was. He filed it away for next time. Kern gripped Mortie’s hand tightly. “Deputy Kern. Come by looking for someone suspected of this nasty bit of business we had last night. You heard about it?”

  Mortie pulled off his glasses and picked up a small piece of cloth. “I heard there was some kind of ruckus with the writer. Didn’t hear what. Must have been something big, huh? We have a couple of TV people here already, and I prepared some rooms for more.”

  Kern leaned on the counter. “I’ll spare you the gory details, Mr. Finn, but the description says the guy’s about six-foot, lean, wiry. Long dark hair. Glasses.”

  The warm smile on Mortie’s face fell away like a dead leaf.

  “That sounds like Mr. Sharpe.”

  Kern stood up. “Mr. Sharpe?”

  Mortie put his glasses back on and scanned the registry on the lower deck of the counter. “Let’s see. Here we are. Emmanuel Sharpe.” He picked the book up and pointed at the name.

  Kern studied the handwriting. It was crude. Barely legible. “He stayed here?”

  “He’s still staying here.” Mortie pointed skyward. “I believe he’s upstairs now.”

  The Deputy tensed. Target acquired. “Does Mr. Sharpe happen to drive a white van that you know of?”

  “Sure does.” The clerk stuck a thumb out. “He was looking for a hose to clean it out this morning. I sent him out back.”

  Kern moved to the front door. “I’ll be right back. Don’t say anything if he happens to come down.”

  The drizzle had transformed into a full rain. He missed being dry.

  Mortie had been right. White van parked behind the building. Hose nearby. Kern glanced inside. Handicap-lift, like poor Delbert said.

  Kern unhooked his walkie. “Reed, this is Kern, over.” He walked back around to the front of the Inn, hand on his holster.

  The walkie screeched to life. “Go for Reed, over.”

  Kern stood on the front porch. “Report of suspect at the Shady Thicket, backup requested, over.”

  “He’s there now? Over.”

  “He’s staying in a room under the name Emmanuel Sharpe. Over.” Kern went back inside. “Mortie, what room is this guy in?”

  Mortie hadn’t moved. He was in the process of wrapping his head around the fact that shit was ab
out to go down in his place of business. “He’s in 413.”

  Reed’s voice came over the walkie. “Dawkins says Emmanuel Sharpe’s an alias. Another character name. Over.”

  Kern turned the volume down on his walkie. “Suspect’s up on the fourth floor. We have a handful of other guests here, not sure whether to risk moving them. Don’t want to do anything to give ourselves away. Please advise. Over.”

  “Have Mortie call the other guests and tell them to stay in their rooms. I’ll radio dispatch. Wait for backup. Over and out.”

  Kern looked at Mortie. “You get that?”

  The innkeeper was sweating bullets. He’d be next to useless if the cowpie hit the wall. “Got it. Call the other guests. Tell them to stay in their rooms.”

  The phone behind the counter rang. Mortie jumped three feet and then made an attempt to compose himself. “Should I get that?”

  Kern nodded and kept his focus on the stairs.

  Mortie picked up the receiver. “Front desk. Yes ma’am. I apologize, I was—yes ma’am. I see. Yes ma’am, as a matter of fact, there’s an officer here. I’ll let him know. Oh, and ma’am, we advise staying in your room for the moment. Yes ma’am. Thank you.”

  Kern never took his eyes off the stairway. “Talk to me, Mortie.”

  “A guest up on third says a couple on fourth are screaming bloody murder. They’ve been at for a little while. It’s a little odd…”

  Kern tightened his grip on his sidearm. “What is?”

  “There aren’t any couples staying on the fourth floor.”

  Kern had his gun drawn and was moving up the stairs before Mortie could finish his sentence. He cleared every corner he came to. He wouldn’t do anyone any good if the guy took him by surprise and covered the stairway with his brains.

  His pulse pounded in his ears, his heart in his ribcage. He’d only experienced this once before in all his time with the department. The incident with the bear that had wandered into a local campsite. The primary difference between this situation and that one: bears don’t shoot back. They also don’t dope people up and perform unnecessary surgery.

  No, between man and bear, Kern would rather go one-on-one with the grizzly beast every time. Men were devious creatures. Dangerous.