“We now have compelling evidence that a serial killer was active in the area at that time.” | Unsplash photo
Chapter 44
The first heap of human remains was discovered lumped in a steep ditch among deadfall logs and rattlesnakes. The backcountry road that led to it dead-ended a kilometre further on, abandoned once the timber ran out.
A few days later, police announced the bone clutch belonged to Gabriel Salisbury, a former pastor of a small church that once operated out of a strip mall in Gold Rush. He disappeared almost 30 years ago.
Police identified a suspect, a possible killer, who posed no further danger to the public. They never spoke the name Frank Kappens, but Jury folks and Gold Rush folks knew.
Civic duty behind her, Lucy itched to return to her home in Port 6, but she stayed because police asked.
Whit and Sylvia insisted she make her home in the suite above the bakery more permanent and although noise came from the rooms down the hall during the day as dry wallers, floor installers and carpenters climbed the stairs and retreated with the tides of the day, the living was comfortable enough.
The only deterrent to staying, as Lucy saw it, was Harley’s single appearance and since the black-hearted shit hadn’t shown its face again, Lucy decided to sit tight for now.
It could be she was building resistance to Jury and the Rift. Her nausea subsided, the headaches struck only every few days and were less severe. She could cope. If the spirits stayed away and they did, for the most part.
But now and then Lucy detected a strange crackling on the edge of her vision, a jittering clutter of white static that never came to fruition. She watched it sometimes, maybe she could catch it before it blinked out, wondered about its origin, its make-up and its reason for being. She thought it might be something knocking to get in. She sure as hell wasn’t going to open the door.
Lucy admitted to herself she had another motivation for sticking around besides the police requests. She wanted another crack at Harley. Their last encounter felt like a win for Harley and she looked to right that wrong. He had caught her by surprise. It wouldn’t go the same way next time.
To be more sure of herself, Lucy jotted down her chants in a small notebook and kept it ready in her pocket. For the first time in her life, she didn’t trust her abilities to ad-lib her way through the moment. Harley was stronger than other ghosts. Or maybe she had become weaker. Either way.
Lucy trilled her terrible songs as she dressed, or as she tumbled down the stairs and out the door to the bakery for a loaf of French white. Her old habits came back easily. They had stayed close to the surface. She would be better prepared for the next meeting.
Her stay in Jury dragged on week after week. Residents started to take note of her.
Walking down the streets, she smiled and waved waist high to the few who remembered her from the old times, drawing huffs of disappointment when she hustled past without exchanging words.
She met Whit for lunch mid-week following the Monday police announcement. He was jumpy, rocked his knees under the table and told impossible stories of fantastical parties from his old life in Vancouver. Everybody there loved him, evidently. Owners of other famous restaurants invited him to their parties just to have him on the guest list.
Crazy stuff. Lucy wondered where it was all coming from because it didn’t sound like Whit, but she knew he was struggling with a personal crisis and gave him a pass.
She lunched with Erin, too, and visited the Alma home several times.
During lunch with Erin, Lucy stopped her mid-sentence, astonished when Erin said her dad’s health was improving.
“How so?” Lucy asked.
“He’s engaging with us, with Sylvia and me more often. He gets involved in our conversations and seems to have fewer memory lapses. He hasn’t taken everything out of the fridge lately.”
“He hasn’t what?”
“Emptied the fridge, like right empty. And he piles it on the counter. If Sylvia or I ask him what he’s doing, he says he’s reorganizing the fridge, but we think he was just looking for something and forgot what he was doing.”
Lucy shook her head. “Jeez. I guess less of that is a good thing, if you’re looking on the bright side.”
Erin paused. They sat at a small corner table in Moe’s Asian Diner. Dishes clattered and voices rose, making conversation difficult. She waited for the next lull.
“It doesn’t sound like much,” she admitted at her next opportunity. “I suppose I was just happy to hear him talking. He actually sat down at the table to have a conversation with both of us.”
She fell silent again, appearing to look over Lucy’s head. Lucy assumed she was remembering certain events.
Finally, Erin put down her chopsticks. “He might be a little obsessed with the glory days, but that seems natural, don’t you think? He’s retired from the restaurant business where he’s worked for most of his life. He’s bound to reminisce. He’s entitled after all this time?” The inflection made it clear Erin wasn’t convinced.
“Maybe,” Lucy said. “Is it actually reminiscing though? Or is he fantasizing? Does it seem like he’s got a firm grip on reality?”
“Jesus, Lucy, give the guy a break,” Erin said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to sound mean. I only want to make sure he’s OK. Will you keep an eye on him?”
“Of course.” Erin reached across the table and grabbed hold of Lucy’s wrist to reassure her she wasn’t angry.
After lunch, Lucy jumped the autobus to Gold Rush, with nothing in mind other than to be anonymous for a few hours.
Later, at the apartment, she heard that police found two more bodies, which they linked to the same unnamed suspect. Jules Verne’s corpse washed up a kilometre from the beach where Frank reported he had watched him die.
What do you know? His last name really was Verne, Lucy thought.
The death had been reported as an overdose 40 years ago, but was reassessed in light of new information, detective Johnson told the news conference Lucy watched on her tablet.
Johnson added police had also unearthed a corpse at a former tree-planters’ camp near White-tailed Lake and had positively identified it as Candrew Paquet of Montreal, who had made his way West after college graduation and vanished.
Then there was half a human pelvis found at what is now a picnic area next to the Paradise Street bridge. It was female, about 20 years old. Police offered no more information, other than they suspected it was the work of the same killer.
Lucy clicked the volume control to better hear Johnson’s statement.
“At this time, I’d like to clarify how we came to discover these bodies. The Gold Rush police called the RCMP several weeks ago after information was brought to our attention by a private individual or individuals. We wanted to bring the RCMP in on the case because they have access to a wider range of investigative and forensic tools.
“Together, we determined the deaths occurred over a 15-to-20 year period. Jules Verne appears to be the first of the suspect’s six victims. He died about 40 years ago, based on the information supplied. Then Gabriel Salisbury 10 years later. Mr. Paquet disappeared a year after that, followed by the as-yet unidentified female remains under the bridge two years after that.
“The suspect has confessed to two other murders, the bodies of which have not yet been found. But based on information in our possession, they would have occurred in the three years following.
“We now have compelling evidence that a serial killer was active in the area at that time. To reassure the public, the person has been identified and is deceased. He has been dead for more than 20 years. There is no further risk to the public. We want to be very clear on that point.
“The evidence that led to the discovery of the bodies was contained in a message left behind by the suspect and, for whatever reason, the message went missing for years and was only recently found. It contained a confession and a map that led police to the bodies. Only the killer, or somebody intimately associated with the killer, could have known where those bodies were located. Two of them, the remains of Mr. Salisbury and Mr. Paquet were found in extremely remote areas and they were hidden beneath logs and underbrush. It is unlikely that anyone other than the killer, or someone close to the killer, would have that information.
“Efforts continue to identify the partial remains of the woman found near the Paradise Street bridge. There are suggestions in the note left by the suspect that the victim’s first name might have been Danny or Danielle. Anyone with further information about missing persons from that time should immediately contact police.
“The Gold Rush Police also want to state at this time that the search for more bodies is ongoing. There are two more victims mentioned in the suspect’s letter, which we have been unable to substantiate. However, the suspect was meticulous in his descriptions and locations of the other bodies, so we believe it is highly likely he’s telling the truth about these murders as well.
“One is a person the suspect identified as Danny, but this one is a male, not to be confused with the previously mentioned female, also named Danny. The note the killer left described him as a drug dealer who operated under the Paradise Road bridge, 20 to 25 years ago.
“The final murder in the note is described as happening in Jury. The suspect wrote that he dumped the victim’s car in the lake with the victim inside. The victim’s name is possibly Ben. Anyone with information about a missing person who fits that description, or if you have any information at all, we urge you to contact police.
“At this time, we are identifying the suspect as Frank Kappens, a former operator of an outreach centre in Gold Rush, established at the same location where Pastor Salisbury operated his church. The mall owners have a letter from Pastor Salisbury that turned over operations to Mr. Kappens, which allowed Kappens to assume the lease. The suspect also worked part-time as a police dispatch operator and we believe that may have helped him gain insight into various police procedures and areas of focus, but he was never part of any police investigative unit and would not have had access to internal files involving specific cases.
“It appears Mr. Kappens met his victims through his work at the centre, as he preyed on the homeless and the drug-addicted poor living in and around his outreach centre.
“We would like to offer our sincere apologies to the victims’ families at this time. For too long they have lain awake at night wondering what had happened to their loved ones. Now, we hope they can find closure. Thank you.”
The video ended. Lucy clicked off the screen.
“Fuck, they called it,” she said aloud. “It’s out now. Frank’s name is out in public.”
She grabbed her phone to call Whit to see if he had heard.
Nah, she laid the device onto the end table. She didn’t feel up to talking about Frank again, and for sure not to Whit. He was weird about it.
She flopped back on the couch. This is going to hit the Kappens family hard, she thought. Especially Petra. Frank was the baby of the family. Once Petra learned her son was a serial killer, it would burst her heart.
Lucy stepped to the big living room window, opened one section of the blinds to overlook Main Street and bent her neck to the right. Even in the dark, she could make out the hedges and the start of the walk leading to the Kappens’ front door. The house was almost dead centre in the middle of the ‘T’ junction where Main Street and Blister Avenue met. She guessed Petra, Jorge and Marco had already seen the police broadcast. It’s going to be hell for them. Frank’s last victims, she thought.
The streets below were empty except for a single autocab passing with its yellow flashing lights at the top and all four sides. She watched the capsule slip past. It turned left and headed up the hill on Blister.
She caught motion in the corner of her eye. The jittery static was back, jumping violently. In the haze, Lucy thought she could make out dark eyes pushing and falling back. She felt the muscles of her neck seize, her headache build.
Uh-oh. Here we go. This one is not going away.
The pain blinded her for a few seconds, eased. Slowly she opened her eyes.
A pale girl, or the shape of something like it, stood near the door next to the kitchen.
A violent hammering on the door jolted Lucy out of her fog. She lost balance, crashed into an end table and knocked a water glass to the floor.
She froze, half crouched. Her instincts screamed to remain still and quiet. Whatever it was, she needed to keep it on the other side of the heavy door.
The pale girl spirit frowned.
Boom, boom, boom, boom. Four more powerful blows echoed through the apartment and shook the floor, rattling lamps and tchotchkes on bookshelves. Lucy breathed deeply, slowly, evenly; calming herself.
Harley was back, she knew it was him and the thought steeled her nerve. She’d prepared for him. She wouldn’t be his victim again.
She marched grim-faced toward the door, ready to punish what waited on the other side. She’d fix this fucking Harley problem right now. She’d breathe him in, the whole horrifying shadow, and disgorge him into a pitiful stack of phlegm and spittle. She’d done it a few times before, to the most vicious and difficult ghosts. But it had been a while ago, when she was younger and stronger.
The thunder at the door shook the room again. Lucy glanced toward the noise. She wouldn’t let Harley win. No matter the cost.
A song trickled into her mind. She had never heard it before, yet knew it by heart.
The boat slips moor,
glides the chop sea
ducking like a hungry bird.
The ancient knot loosed,
Ageless fates play on new threads
Unweaving old rules.
Infinite yet dead,
Rare, yet plentiful as mud
The start and the end.
A thin cry. The pale-girl form shimmered and screeched, echoing the rhythm gliding through Lucy’s head.
The pounding on the door intensified, the door swelled. Lucy’s temples shook and the beams on the ceiling quivered.
The girl-shape in jeans and a tattered brown wind-breaker cried. It stared, pleading. It rushed and thrust itself onto Lucy, grabbed her shoulders and bore down, mingling flesh to fume and smoke until it tangled itself, reaching into Lucy’s sinews and spine. Lucy felt the chill clutch her, as the girl-thing swept through her blood and hammered at her heart’s door. Lucy stood frozen, near dead, next to the door.
She emerged before a gigantic tree snag in the middle of a dank forest. Her feet were soaked, her hair stuck to her face. “Where are my clothes?” she said.
An iridescent, ponderously fat beetle clicked past, followed by a train of grubs and centipedes. The beetle clambered up the dead tree trunk and fired questions to Lucy, one after another, not waiting for answers.
Then a house surrounded Lucy from nothing, a dilapidated, rodent-overrun cabin in the trees. The beetle, still on the snag, both now inside the cabin, pressed Lucy for her thoughts on Crimea, on lemmings and on slow food.
Lucy answered question after question until her voice grew hoarse and it occurred to her the beetle was stalling. The questions were meaningless.
Tears of shame skimmed down her face for being so easily fooled.
She let the pale girl sink further into her. Either that or be stuck in this cabin-prison for eternity.
She watched her own hand, now back inside her apartment, grip the door handle. The pale girl had taken over.
The hammering outside the apartment continued, relentless, heavy thumps striking old, hollow wood.
And before Lucy could stop it, the pale girl flung open the door, where a tall figure in a suit glowered back at her.
“Whit,” Lucy screamed.
The spirit of the girl jumped out from her as quickly as it had entwined itself. Lucy was alone again, but for Whit, who was perspiring heavily, but was, all and all, just a man.
Whit jumped, startled by Lucy’s scream. Then brushed it away.
“Did you see it?” He poked a finger in Lucy’s direction. “The police announcement today? They named Frank. They are so fucked. They are so fucked when this town and all of Gold Rush storm the police station.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucy wanted to buy time to process what had happened, to reorient, but Whit stood in front of her, flapping his arms and yelling.
“The people, they won’t stand for this smear job against Frank’s name.”
“Smear job? Of what? Whit, what’s wrong? You know Frank killed people, right? You’ve seen the note. You’ve seen the map. There’s no question.”
She burst out the words, still stunned by the spectre of the pale girl and what she’d seen in the vision. The cabin couldn’t be real. She searched the kitchen and living room for a sign of the pale girl, while keeping an eye on Whit standing in the entryway.
“Maybe you think he’s not worth it, but a lot of people around Jury and Gold Rush liked Frank. He did a lot of good in these towns and folks won’t like the police dragging his name through the dirt. It’s not just Frank’s name either. They’re ruining the reputations of Jury and Gold Rush and every community around the lake. The police have painted all of us as lawless hillbillies.
“The Kappens family too. They must be devastated by the news. Petra, Dr. Kappens, will be crushed. Frank was her baby.”
Lucy stopped, her mouth agape. Nobody in Jury or Gold Rush was eager to rush out and support Frank’s good name. How could Whit be so fucking stupid?
Whit noticed her hesitation. “It’s true. Just because you don’t believe it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”
“Frank confessed, Whit. He confessed to six murders and to torching the lodge. He detailed all of it in a note. How can you still not see it? I doubt even Frank would expect this level of loyalty.”
“He deserves our respect. Just because he killed some people, doesn’t mean he didn’t do some good too.”
Lucy laughed. “Did you hear yourself just now?”
“I’m just saying there were good times too, Lucy. That’s what I choose to remember. I am wearing this suit tonight in his honour. As a sign of respect, you know. And I thought I could come over and we could remember the good times. I thought you’d understand and we could have an evening of remembering Frank. The real Frank, the guy we knew, not what they’re saying about him on the internet.”
“Hmmm.” Lucy glanced to Whit’s right, into the kitchen. The pale girl had returned and was standing beside the fridge.
Lucy studied her for a second or two, but not too long, not wanting Whit to notice. The girl was nothing to fear, Lucy decided. The spirit had momentarily seized control of her body, but Lucy sensed it was trying to help.
“Hello? You in there? Attention Lucy of Planet Earth,” Whit called to her.
Fine, she thought. She stepped closer, grabbed Whit’s collar and pulled him down to her height. “Frank was a serial killer, and before he was a serial killer, he was the guy we all thought might become a serial killer. Don’t waste your time on him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
Whit’s face contorted. Lucy threw her arms up to defend herself, an instinctive reaction to Whit’s twisted, blustering face.
The pale girl shrieked, pushed through Lucy and threw itself onto Whit. Whit, in a blurred frenzy, thrashed and slapped his face, head and chest as though fending off a swarm of furious wasps.
He escaped the swarm, stepped back.
Lucy saw Whit’s face twist in fury and he raised a hand as if to strike her, but suddenly he relaxed. He seemed to slump and lose the bones in his shoulders and back.
He withdrew down the stairs.
Lucy slammed the door and pressed her back against it, panting.
She staggered down the hall to the bedroom and fell onto the bed. A chant flowed out from her, the remnants of a treatment she’d supplied to an old man who visited her at the hot springs years ago. The man sang this song.
People of the dirt and road,
of the fire and the heart,
The knot is loosed.
Struggle true and the skies fly open
Jasmine grows along our path.
Time throws itself over
that we may seek that which is closed.
And while the rivers choke,
And mountains blot out our sun,
we find the beyond.
Rivers turn to poison behind us,
and mountains hide our passage.
Beautiful starts anew
Lucy let the chant flow out over and over, until it became as monotonous and natural as the sounds from the clock on the mantle.
Hours later, as Lucy lie in bed next to a cold, pale child, the words were fixed in her thoughts.
“Beautiful starts anew,” she murmured, near dreaming.
“The knot is loosed.”
Until sleep took her.
* * *
Bonus material
Check out bonus material, including back stories to the characters in the novel Three Lives of Juryat the link below.
The Underworld Vents also contains short stories of alternative/historical fiction with The Wagon People series.
Check out the new additions with the Tynoffer Common series, humorous flash fiction in bits of letters, bulletins and bureaucratic paranormal madness.
