3.
“Echoes of the Darkness”
There stood the boy. Arms chained to the wall, body leaning forward in a standing position. His feet were all the way back against the wall, so that the position came from falling forward and being caught in the chain. The knees were chained to the wall also, so that they could not buckle and allow the body to fall down.
The head was held to the body with the slightest stand of flesh and bone.
“Hey, Pappy,” Came a quiet voice that wasn’t giving a cheerful greeting, just acknowledging his presence.
It was Ori Feldon, the County Coroner. The two had been friends for the last 10 years, having met at the previous outrage and surviving it through mutual understanding.
“Hey, Ori,” Hannibal said, “I cannot believe this is going on again.”
“You think it’s the same guy?” Bill Hereford, the owner of the property, asked.
“Looks like,” The old man said, “There’s too much of a match with the last time in things we never told anybody about.”
He hoped that was true. They hadn’t told anyone the details, and the order was for no one to do so. But it was a small town. There were so many places for leaks that it would be impossible to check them all out. And it had been ten years ago. If someone was crazy enough to want to be a copycat, they could have tracked down enough specifics to do a gruesome recreation and miss very little.
“We sent for the F.B.I.?” Pappy asked.
“We sent for them four weeks ago, they keep saying they got troubles with race riots and we’d better handle this ourselves.” The Deputy said.
“They didn’t say that last time,” Ori said.
“They couldn’t solve it then, either,” Pappy reminded them, “Wouldn’t be good press for them to come on board another serial killing that they couldn’t break before. When it looks like we got it taken care of, they’ll send someone to handle the press.”
Pappy crouched down to get a better look at the poor kid, and immediately realized his age. He almost fell over forward.
“Tooley, we’ll have to see if we can get anything on these tethers, the chains, you’know, where they came from and such,” The old man saw that the Deputy had his notebook out and was writing down what he said, word for word. Tooley was a good kid, but not to quick. His writing was kind of slow also.
“We’ll try to dust for finger prints and such and then we’ll turn him over to you, Ori.”
“Pappy, I got nothing but time,” The Coroner informed him.
“One more thing, Pappy,” Tooley said, with a bit of shame.
“Yeah, boy, what is it?” Hannibal looked at him suspiciously.
“No body has told the family.” He said.
“Dammit,” Pappy cursed under his breath.
“You know me, Pappy,” Tooley said, nearly in tears himself, “I’m just not good at that kind of . . .”
Without saying a word Hannibal walked out of the garage.
He wished he didn’t, but he knew where the Chambers place was. He also believed that this was the kind of news that, as much as he hated the idea, could not be held back.
He wished he had made it out to the fishing hole and Tooley wouldn’t have found him for a while.
But then he knew, that was longer that those folks would have to wonder, “Where’s little Bobby?”
© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens
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