Brian Freeman - The Burying Place

'It's me,' she said in her nervous, child-like voice. 'I figured you'd be back by now. Is everything OK? Call me as soon as you can.'

Kasey hung up. She untucked and unbuttoned the shirt of her uniform, letting it hang open. A draft snickered from under the basement door, making her shiver. It was the kind of house where all the windows and doors leaked cold air. She couldn't really complain, because the rent was dirt cheap. A farm widow had died here five years earlier, and the woman's family rented out the property now to cover their expenses. They didn't put much money into the place, but they didn't ask for a lot of money in return. She and Bruce had lived here since they moved to Duluth.

Her eyes kept blinking shut. She wanted to wait for Bruce to get back, but she couldn't think about anything but sleep. She had slept badly all year, and even a couple hours felt like bliss when she could get it. She frowned, seeing the dirty dishes in the sink, but decided they could wait until morning.

Kasey dragged herself upstairs. Her foot landed on a wet spot in the carpet, and she cursed as the water soaked through the fabric of her sock. She reached down and peeled it off, leaving one foot bare. She squeezed the damp sock like a stress ball as she wandered down the hallway into her bedroom. She tossed the sock into their dirty clothes basket and stripped off her shirt and undershirt, leaving herself in a sports bra and her uniform slacks. She began to unbuckle her gun belt, then stopped in surprise when she noticed her sexy nightgown stretched across their bed.

'Bruce?' she called again.

She waited and listened. There was no sound, but even in the silence, something felt wrong. She fingered the lace fringe of the nightgown and frowned. With a quick glance, she noticed that her closet door was wide open, which wasn't how she'd left it. Little hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

She poked her face into the hallway and studied the succession of doors. The office. The bathroom. The nursery. Something shiny attracted her eyes. In the crack of the bathroom doorway, she spotted a silver cylinder on the linoleum by the toilet. It was her Walgreens lipstick.

That was wrong, too. She'd left it on the sink.

Her skin rippled with a wave of fear. She nestled the butt of her gun in her palm and yanked it out of the holster. She crept toward the bathroom and nudged open the door with her t—. The tiny room was empty, but when she reached around and turned on the light, her eyes fixed on the blood-red message scrawled on the mirror.

BAD GIRL.

Kasey stumbled backward, and her bare foot landed in another damp spot on the carpet. She understood now. He had been up here, him and his wet shoes, leaving tracks.

'Where are you?' she screamed, like an animal that puffs its fur to appear larger than it is. 'I know you're here! This time I won't miss. This time I'll blow your goddamned head off!'

She pushed her toe in an arc across the carpet and found another wet footprint. And another. The trail led her toward the nursery.

Kasey pointed her gun at the door. Inside, she heard a noise now, like a deck of cards being shuffled. It was the sound of the wind slapping the vertical blinds together through an open window. She squatted down to peer under the door. Cold air roared through the crack and made her face cold. She put her eye to the carpet but didn't see anyone standing in the room.

Not waiting, she cocked her knee and kicked her heel into the door, connecting near the flimsy metal knob. The door flew round and banged into the wall, and Kasey stepped into the doorway and blocked the door with her shoulder as it bounced back. She surveyed the room. The crib, undisturbed. The pirate wallpaper. The baby monitor on top of the white dresser. The closet door, closed.

She eyed the window, which was open. The blinds danced and flapped crazily against each other as the night air swirled through the room. She made her way to the window frame, but with each step, she watched the closet door, in case the knob began to turn. At the window, she pushed the blinds aside and squinted at the darkness outside. She gauged the distance below her. It was a long way down, and the ground was hard.

The height was too far to jump, she realized, but by then it was too late.

She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. The closet door flew open. He was inside, tall, masked, dressed in black, the same way he had been two nights earlier. She turned to aim her gun, but he leaped across the narrow bedroom before she could bring her arm around. His momentum drove her into the window frame. His hand locked around her wrist and jammed her knuckles into the glass, which shattered and made stinging cuts across her skin. Instinctively, her fist uncurled, and her gun dropped away, tumbling past the window ledge to the ground below.

He backhanded her chin with his forearm. Her head snapped back, colliding hard with the wall. The impact rattled her teeth. Before she could clear her head, she was airborne; he lifted her bodily off the carpet and hurled her toward the opposite wall. Her feet hit the ground first, and she pitched forward into the closet. Her cheekbone struck the wooden floor.

Dazed and bleeding, she twisted on to her back. She expected him to throw himself on her, but instead, he watched her, frozen. His eyes were bright behind the mask. The intimacy of his expression made her sick. She suddenly felt exposed, as if he could see all her secrets, see past her clothes, see what she cared about and fantasized about. He knew exactly who she was, and it terrified her.

Then the moment passed, and he ran.

Kasey got dizzily to her feet. Distantly, she heard the thumping of his footfalls on the stairs, getting further away. She felt the pressure in the house change as the front door was ripped open.

He was gone. Everything fell silent again, except for the twisting of the blinds.

Kasey realized that she couldn't run away from him. He wouldn't let her. That was her last thought before she passed out.

As Serena hunted for Regan Conrad's home on Lismore Road, a black van approached from behind at extreme speed. One headlight was broken, but its single remaining beam grew blinding in her mirror like a searchlight. As the van careened past her Mustang in the adjacent lane, a rush of air pushed her toward the shoulder. The van continued east into the no-man's-land of farm towns like Stewart and Buckthorn, leaving her alone on the two-lane highway.

She slowed to a crawl at McQuade Road and scouted the numbers posted on the mailboxes on the opposite side of the rural road. Half a mile later, she spotted the address for Regan Conrad and turned into the nurse's long driveway. The houses in the countryside were built far back from the road, with several hundred yards of fields and trees separating neighbors. When she reached the house, she was surprised to find the kind of luxury country home that local professionals like doctors or lawyers afforded. Not nurses. A swimming pool, now closed for the season, sat amid a sprawling expanse of brown lawn. A multi-level redwood deck was built off the side of the house, with access from dual sets of French doors.

The living-room window was brightly lit with a broad bay window, but she didn't see anyone inside. She parked beyond the house, where the driveway ended, and got out. As she walked to the front door, she spotted two cars parked in front of the garage. One was a black Hummer. The other was a 1980s-era Ford Escort.

Serena rang the bell and waited nearly a minute before Regan Conrad opened the door a few inches and studied her suspiciously.

From inside, Serena heard the bluesy strains of a soul singer on the stereo.

'May I help you?'

'Ms Conrad? My name is Serena Dial. I'm an investigator working for the Itasca County Sheriff's office on the disappearance of Marcus Glenn's daughter.'