The Torment Read online

  The

  TORMENT

  Anthony Hains

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Tuesday

  Jared

  Before

  Lacey and Martin

  Laz

  After

  Request for Review

  About the Author

  Other Books

  Copyright

  1

  TUESDAY

  LACEY WAS BLISSFULLY UNAWARE OF the previous evening’s unsettling events as she drove to work, marveling at the difference a cold front could bring to the new day. The tropical air mass finally showed signs of abating. The line of angry thunderstorms that rolled in during the early-morning hours had moved off to the east, leaving small streams along the shoulders of the road and standing water in low-lying ditches. Limbs, branches, and leaves were scattered everywhere.

  No tornadoes, though, thank God, Lacey thought. That was something.

  The Blue Ridge Mountains climbed gracefully on three sides of the community, shielding it from the worst of the weather fronts coming anywhere from the southwest to the northwest. The eastern side of town overlooked gentle foothills that rose and fell toward the horizon. Lacey loved her mountains, and she did consider them her mountains, regardless of the time of year. The fall panorama was probably her favorite, but she appreciated the relative coolness they offered in summer and the adventures provided by winter snows. In her younger days, she and her husband had loved to ski. Now she felt a vicarious pleasure watching younger people head off to the ski area nearby, anticipating the sheer joy of careening down the slopes.

  Lacey pulled into her parking spot next to the old municipal building. The calls would start soon, asking or demanding to know about the storm cleanup. She’d have to rouse Horace to make sure he had his public grounds crew out picking up the debris. These were mostly high school kids, who could create their own problems, but they were a sight better than Horace, who was generally hungover this early in the morning.

  Darrin Collete’s pickup was parked at an odd angle on the street, as if he couldn’t remember how to do it and had given up midway through the effort. Lacey sighed, wondering what was up with him today. Under the best of circumstances Collete was a jackass, but over recent months he’d turned downright psychotic and frightening. She pitied his family.

  Lacey entered the county municipal building, walked past the town hall offices, and pulled open the doors to the sheriff’s office. Jan sat at her desk in front of four LED monitors, keeping her eye on the location and activities of on-duty deputies. She was cordoned off in a glass bullpen of sorts, giving the illusion of privacy and security.

  “Good morning, Jan.”

  “Morning, Sheriff,” Jan called back as she slid her headset down to her neck. Lacey and Jan went back decades, although Jan still insisted on calling her sheriff while on the job.

  Lacey entered her office, which was off to the side of Jan’s enclosure. She turned on her computer and waited for the login commands. Outside her windows, she had a splendid view of the mountains to the north. They allowed her to pull all of the shades and blinds open and keep them that way. Only indirect light permeated the room, which meant she wasn’t subject to eye-piercing glare or afternoon baking in the western sun. She paid the price in the winter on bitter or overcast days, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

  Once she logged in and checked her email, Lacey returned to the outer office.

  “Let’s rattle Horace’s cage. He has some work ahead of him, I think.”

  “Already done,” Jan replied over her shoulder, fingers wildly clicking the keyboard.

  Lacey nodded even though Jan couldn’t see it. She should’ve expected Jan to be on top of the day’s tasks.

  “Strange day already,” Jan commented in a much lower voice as Lacey came closer, “and it’s just barely eight o’clock.” She dipped her head in the direction of the cubicles the deputies used to complete paperwork. Jared Strickler, one of her two young deputies, was attending to a soaking wet little boy sitting in a visitor’s chair adjacent to the desk.

  Lacey smiled. Jared had a knack for this kind of thing. For a young man, his demeanor was unguardedly sensitive and often introspective. Unlike other young male deputies who tended to display a certain testosterone-fueled swagger and haughtiness, Jared was soft-spoken and calming. He had a way of inserting himself into stressful situations and talking down the meanest and angriest wild-ass drunks in the county. But his gentle nature wasn’t indicative of any timidity. Jared had squarely faced nightmarish circumstances in his life and emerged intact.

  Jared gave the boy a towel and tried to help him dry off. It wasn’t working very well; the child looked like a drowned rat. His dark hair was soaked and plastered on his head, and his shirt and shorts looked as though you could wring a gallon of liquid from them without trying too hard. A leaf was stuck to his right leg, along with some dirt and grass. His right foot was bare, missing a sneaker.

  As she walked closer, Lacey could hear Jared say, “I’ll try calling your momma one more time, and if I can’t get her, we’ll see about getting you some dry clothes. How does that sound?”

  “She ain’t home.” The boy’s murmur had a hollow ring.

  “Well, who do we have here?” Lacey asked cheerfully.

  “Well, hi, Sheriff. This is Robbie Collete. He came in this morning with his father.”

  Lacey now placed the boy. His presence, along with the haphazard parking job by his father, didn’t bode well. Lacey flinched when Robbie glanced up at her. Maybe she hadn’t recognized him at first because she hadn’t seen him in a few months. Robbie was what, eight or nine now, and kids could change fast from one week to another. But that wasn’t it. The boy just didn’t look well. His face was unnervingly pale, like cottage cheese well past its sell-by date, nearly erasing a swath of freckles that should have been running across the bridge of his nose. His eyes were sunken.

  Lacey kneeled in front of Robbie. “Hello, sweetheart, what’s going on?” She held her hand out to Jared for the towel, which he gave up willingly, and vigorously rubbed the boy’s head to dry his hair. Robbie felt clammy and cold through the terry-cloth towel.

  “I want my daddy,” Robbie said, barely above a whisper. His lower lip extended into a pout.

  “I bet you do, hon. Let me find out what’s going on.”

  Lacey turned to Jared. “Keep trying his mother. If you don’t get her soon, I’ll send you out there. In the meantime, we’ve got to get this kid some dry clothes. What’s happened here?”

  “We’ve got the clothes covered, I think. Jan’s grandson is about his age, and she was going to call her daughter to bring something over. I’ll check with her to see if she did it.” Jared’s attention was drawn to something over Lacey’s shoulder. “There’s Daff. I think it’s best if you talk to her about Mr. Collete and Robbie.”

  Deputy Daphne Mercer had just appeared in the squad room from the holding cell area behind and out of sight from public view. Only her closest friends safely called her “Daff” and even fewer were permitted to call her “Daffy.” She locked eyes with Lacey, then shut them while shaking her head slowly, suggesting she was fed up with the day’s events. She’d probably been on duty for less than an hour.

  “Daphne?” Lacey pulled a visitor’s chair from the next cubicle and sat down to receive her update. Lacey stuck with her Christian name, even though she probably could get away with Daffy. Old habits died hard.

  “I was here for maybe fifteen minutes when Collete comes blasting in like he’s out of his mind. He’s all jittery and I’m like, oh crap, he is really strung out. It was like he could crawl out of his own skin. Anyway, he’s really incoherent, and he’s saying stuff ab
out killing his family and that he shouldn’t be here.”

  “Who shouldn’t? Collete?”

  “I’m getting to that. So, I ask him to sit down and relax, real soothing like you’ve always said we should talk when they’re going off the deep end. Except, I know this guy’s on meth. His eyes are jumping all over the place; he’s got that smell about him, and he’s picking at those little meth bugs. All the while, he’s mumbling about protection and he can’t be in the truck.”

  “Who can’t be in the truck? That doesn’t make sense.”

  Daphne just looked at her, lips tightly pressed.

  “Never mind. I guess it makes sense that it doesn’t make sense.”

  Lacey recalled her gut reaction when she saw Collete’s pickup. Under most conditions she would have patted herself on the back for her predicting-the-future skills, but predictions of calamity when Collete showed up weren’t exactly awe-inspiring. The two went together about 90 percent of the time.

  “So, where is he now?”

  “I locked him up back in the cells.”

  “You’re kidding? What—”

  “Wait till you get a load of this. While all of this is going on, Jared comes in.” Daphne stole a glance in Jared’s direction. Out of the corner of her eye, Lacey watched Jared trying to suppress a grin.

  “And?” Lacey prompted.

  “But I didn’t see the little guy walking with him.” Daphne nodded toward Robbie across the room. “All of a sudden, Collete’s screaming, ‘No, no, no.’ He tries to get up but falls backward, knocking over the chair. Then he’s on the floor, trying to scramble away from his kid. Jared comes over to help me grab him. Meanwhile Collete keeps carrying on, and he’s begging us to lock him in a cell.” Daphne smiled in disbelief and shook her head again.

  “Jared’s helping me haul him to the back, and I say that I can do it, go talk with the kid.”

  Lacey knew Daphne could handle something like that. Many a dumb male made the colossal mistake of underestimating this cute young woman with her blond hair in a ponytail. Some quickly found themselves hunched over, gasping for breath and clutching their genitals. In addition to being a fine athlete in school and quick on her toes, Daphne had three older brothers.

  “As I’m dragging his sorry butt towards the cell blocks, I notice the strangest thing. The little Collete kid’s just standing there, completely relaxed. He’s watching his old man whimper as he stumbles with me across the floor. Only his eyes move. I can see them clear as day. Finally he says, ‘Daddy, you’ll hafta come with me,’ like he’s the adult. Weird.”

  Lacey sat back into the plastic chair with a long exhale. This didn’t fit Collete. He’d always been an angry jerk, starting fights and winning most of them since childhood. His pallor was troubling to behold, and the body odor was enough to knock out a horse. Lately she’d suspected that his drug of choice had shifted from alcohol and occasional cocaine to meth, fueling his aggression with a paranoid rage. To be requesting protection in a cell—from his nine-year-old—well, that was a new one.

  And what was this thing about his family?

  “What happened when you got him in the cell?”

  “Well, he went in willingly, no abusive language like you’d expect. Then he’s going on about having to beat the shit out of Tamara because she wouldn’t keep her fat trap shut and says he went a bit too far. She deserved it for her nagging, blah, blah, blah.”

  Lacey signed. It was unchristian to say under these circumstances, but Tamara was just plain unpleasant. The temptation to knock her upside her head when she got mouthy was something many people had experienced over the woman’s twenty-some odd years on this planet. She was as bright as a low-watt bulb, and her decibel level inversely correlated with her IQ score. Collete got her pregnant with Robbie, and Lacey couldn’t honestly say whether she recalled them getting married. They had a little daughter now too. God, what a mess.

  Of course, Tamara was a Chilton, and they’d been inbreeding on the top of Somers Mountain for nearly two hundred years. If the Colletes were the epitome of stupid white trash, the Chiltons were the high watermark for bizarre and disturbing. Lacey had interacted with generations of them over the years and could never quite get over the sense of unease she felt around them.

  “I was just getting back up front when you got in. Mind you, this whole thing took about forty-five minutes, if that.” She looked over Lacey’s shoulder. “What’s Jared got from the kid?”

  “Not much, I don’t think. Listen, Jared has been trying to call Tamara with no luck. I’m getting a bad feeling about this. I want you to go out there, and let Jared stay with the boy. See if you can find out what’s going on. Let Tamara know we have Robbie—if she’s even aware that he’s missing. When I get the chance, I’ll go back and try and get some sense from that idiot.”

  Lacey was not in the mood to talk with Collete just then, so she went back to Jan’s area for a cup of coffee. Jan kept an automatic coffeemaker in her bullpen just for a select few. She always took care of the coffee for the department in general, but three or four years ago she’d started experimenting with various gourmet varieties she bought online. Hazelnut toffee, white chocolate strawberry, caramel mocha. Most of the males hated the stuff and complained. They wanted plain coffee, period. Lacey loved the flavors, as did a handful of other deputies. So Jan bought the basic institutional crap and kept the percolator in the main office. She made one pot of that in the morning, and once it ran out, the lowlife deputies were responsible for making their own. As for the gourmet stuff, Lacey provided a top-of-the line coffeemaker. Only a select few who contributed financially could imbibe. Jan guarded this supply with her life.

  “Hmm. Tastes like vanilla,” Lacey said after she took a sip.

  “French vanilla supreme,” Jan replied. “It’s not too bad. I prefer something chocolate.”

  “Really?” Lacey kidded. Eighty percent of the coffee bags Jan brought contained some concoction of chocolate mixed with something or other. “Jared said you had some clothes for the Collete boy?”

  “Yep, Molly is bringing something over.” Jan looked at the deputy talking with him. “That kid doesn’t look good. I wonder if he’s coming down with something.”

  “I thought the same thing.” Lacey took another sip and realized she didn’t have a critical part of the story. “How did he get all wet?”

  Jan shrugged. “I don’t know. Didn’t Jared say?”

  The phone rang before Lacey could reply. She swallowed another sip of heavenly vanilla, or whatever the coffee was called, and sat her cup down. She walked to the deputy cubicles.

  “Jared. Can I talk to you?”

  The young man ruffled the Collete boy’s hair. “I’ll be back in a second,” he told him. The kid didn’t respond.

  “Ma’am?”

  Jared stood a little over six feet with a complexion that tanned easily in the summer. If there was any disadvantage to his youth, it was that he looked even younger than twenty-two. At times, he could still pass for seventeen.

  “How did he get wet?”

  “It’s funny.” Jared looked around as if he didn’t want to be overheard. “He won’t tell me. He just keeps saying, ‘Daddy did it.’ That’s it.”

  “Daddy did it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I figured I didn’t want to start prying and unnerve him. He seems a little, I don’t know, spacey.” Jared eyes caught hers. “Maybe he’s traumatized or something.”

  Lacey hadn’t thought so. But Jared had a sixth sense for hidden trauma, so she didn’t press. She’d learned to trust the judgments of her staff, if they earned it.

  “Okay, you’re probably right. Let’s not trouble the kid any more than we have to. We’ll figure it out soon enough.” Lacey shook her head and sighed. “I suppose I better go down and talk to Collete and see if I can get anything out of the damn fool.”

  As she made her way back to the cell area in the rear of the department, Lacey considered her overall luck as sheriff.
The county certainly had its share of morons like Collete, but for the most part she had a connection with the heartbeat of the residents. God knows, many people had certainly helped her out during her darkest time.

  She’d been a teacher for nearly thirty years when her husband developed aggressive brain cancer that killed him within months of diagnosis. Martin had been sheriff, and had to retire early to fight the disease. She quit her position to nurse him as best she could. She wasn’t prepared for how debilitating it would be for him. She knew hypothetically how the process would go, but what actually transpired was beyond brutal. He went from the picture of health (he was fifty-one but could pass for forty before he got sick) to an old, disabled man right before her eyes. Death, while a blessing for him, left her feeling vacant. They had raised two daughters, but the girls were now gone. She didn’t want to return to the classroom. The thought of going back to herding twelve-year-olds left her cold. But she soon realized she needed to do something; the restlessness alone was going to drive her insane.

  She toyed with the idea of running for sheriff. When she mentioned it to a few friends, they thought she was nuts. But why not? She knew the job, she’d learned from the best in the business for nearly three decades. She frequently stopped by the department after school to lend a hand, file reports, and otherwise mother the guys who made up the team of deputies. As she took stock of the situation, she also realized that she knew just about everyone in the county, because most had worked their way through her classroom. This had its advantages; she knew their strengths and weaknesses, along with many childhood foibles. The county supervisor still couldn’t look her in the eye, let alone resist her arguments for this or that or whatever, ever since she caught him playing with himself in the cloakroom as a sixth grader. She would swear on a stack of Bibles that he still blushed every time he ran into her.

  Yes, being everyone’s middle school teacher meant she could talk with any of them. Not many sheriffs could pull that off. So, one thing led to another, people rallied behind her, and she’d been in the role for five years. To top it off, by God, she turned out to be quite good at it.