Ahead of the Press Publishing

Haunted

By S.L. Kotar and J.E. Gessler

Chapter 1

 

A car horn beeped. It was the third repetition in as many minutes.

Abandoning the den he had so recently entered, Phillip Gerard crossed back through the living room. Instead of going to the picture window and looking out, he went to the front door and opened it. No car was in sight.

Forcibly unclenching his left hand which had remained in a fist, he stepped outside onto the stoop and peered into the inky blackness. As it had on his previous inspection, Maple Avenue remained undisturbed. No cars, whether belonging to the neighborhood or not, were visible. No loiterers transformed into or from the shadows cast by the street lamp. For all that was apparent to the naked eye, aliens had come and swooped up the quick and the dead, leaving only the homicide detective and his thoughts.

Behind him, the house felt empty, devoid of life. He dismissed the sensation as unreasonable, knowing his wife Marie, and their two children, Phillip, Junior, and Frances, were inside. Sleeping the sleep of the just, for they were innocent victims of his occupation.

“Who’s out there?” he called up the street for no apparent reason. No one was there. No one visible.

“What do you want?”

The question sounded irrational and he was a rational man. He did not believe in ghosts, nor did Gerard have faith in stories of disciples denying their prophet three times before the cock crowed. He put his stock and trade in facts.

The fact was, the man he had been chasing for three arduous years was dead. He had been killed saving the lives of a woman and her son. On an icy road in Bennington, Vermont. Richard Kimble had seen the danger where they had not: witnessed a truck, careening out of control, bearing down upon them. Just coming from work where he had performed a menial task, type unknown to the policeman, the fugitive had dashed into the road, shoving them aside. By so doing, he had left himself exposed to the unfettered vehicle. The tragic end, if such it could be considered, had been preordained.

Pronounced dead at the scene.

Not even the more routine, “Dead on arrival.”

The ambulance crew hadn’t even bothered taking the crumpled, bloodied body to the hospital. The meat wagon had collected the remains and brought it to the county morgue. Or, such was Gerard’s summation of the accident.

He would collect the details with the corpse. And return home with them to Stafford, Indiana, in a railroad car.

Richard Kimble was dead and he could not fully explain to himself why he grieved.

Justice, however convoluted, had been served.

Justice, in fact, had ultimately been merciful. It spared the convicted felon a second trip to the death house. That, in anyone’s book, would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Anyone, but the governors who had not seen fit to commute Kimble’s sentence the first time, and their current successor, who would fail to do so a second.

Circumstantial evidence did not constitute a capital murder charge. Lacking a clear-cut case, district attorneys went after twenty-to-life, with or without the possibility of parole. But D.A. Ballinger had gone for the literal throat and the jury had gone along with him. Much had been written about that decision; more had been speculated. Those on the inside – those who neither wrote nor aired their opinions in the newspapers – suspected more. Ballinger was ambitious and death penalty cases drew attention from those in Indianapolis.

How different it would have been had Kimble been given life, the cast-off, despised, lonely “Indiana cop” standing on the stoop of his house, mused. There would have been no train ride to Michigan City, where executions took place. No escape; no flight to avoid the ultimate penalty. No… insane pursuit of a one-armed man named Fred Johnson.

    Yes, Dr. Kimble, he continued, taking two steps down and walking into the dark yard. You found your fantasy murderer and managed to put a name to him. If I had caught this Fred Johnson of yours a day or a week after the killing and put him in a line-up, would you have pointed him out? Would you have paled under the realization that there was the man you saw running from your home? The one who froze in your headlights with that ‘startled expression’?

    Or, would you have passed him over, too, just as you did all the rest? Was it really only time and desperation which prompted you to select this ‘Fred Johnson’ as the one? And once you had made up your mind, there could be no other, could there? You pursued him the way I hunted you: with a singlemindedness that some refer to as obsession.

    You had to have someone of flesh and blood. Of course you did. You took a big chance, you know. If you had found him again and brought him in – and if I believed you enough to trace his whereabouts on that fateful night and it turned out he had been in a VA in Spokane, or a jail in Tucson, what then? Would you still persist in your belief, or would you crumple to dust because then you’d have to acknowledge you killed your wife?

    Reaching the end of the lawn, Gerard turned and began a semi-circular journey, terminating in the back yard. There, even in the black of the moon, he detected shadows cast by a swing set he had placed there many years before. His children had been young, then, and Marie had complained everyone in the neighborhood had swing sets. She didn’t want Phil, Jr. or Frances going to play in other people’s yards. He hadn’t seen the problem but she did, and he had reluctantly purchased the $75 equipment: the high-end set with the canvas seats and the attached slide.

Erecting the playset had proven difficult. It came with instructions printed in pig-Latin and it consumed three weekends before he managed to fit the pieces together in some semblance of order. Never having used such equipment, himself, for childhood pursuits were unknown to a boy who worked after school in a grocery store since the age of nine, he hadn’t realized the supports required they be cemented in the ground. The first time little Phil tried the swing, the metal legs jumped up as though they had a life of their own, sending the boy flying. It required two more weekends to dig the properly aligned holes and fill them with cement before the unit stabilized.

After that, he had worked six straight weekends in a row and never once saw his children use either the swings or the slide. Marie assured him they did, but in a tone of voice meant to convey reassurance rather than belief.

The swing set had aged since then. The steps of the slide rusted and one of the canvas seats ripped through, so that one end dangled, the way an empty sleeve of a one-armed man might if he didn’t roll it up to the end of the stump.

“Foolish thought,” he grumbled, lowering himself onto the one remaining swing. Although his knees were bent nearly to his chin, he pushed back then lifted them, moving slowly in a sort of pendulum manner. Back and forth; back and forth, the way a hanged man swayed.

As the weariness and depression of six long years settled over him, Phillip Gerard closed his eyes and dozed.

 

Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.

    Railroad wheels speeding over wooden ties.

The sound of brakes squealing in the night like tormented souls; the dissolution of forward movement.

“Michigan City! Michigan City, next stop,” cried the conductor. The grey-haired man sitting by the window turned to his companion. No words were exchanged. Just a fleeting meeting of eyes.

I’m innocent. I’m afraid.

    A pleading for humanity.

A jerk of the head. No more. The man in the outside seat had no comfort to give.

This is it. Let’s go. We’ll be the first ones off. The conductor will hold the other departing passengers until we’re outside.

    No sigh of resignation. No hope.

The conductor came up and stood in front of them as Gerard got to his feet. Kimble slipped over the still-warn seat and joined him. They walked down the narrow aisle, one left hand shacked to that of another. Close, so no one would see. Just two men traveling together. They might have been business partners, but weren’t.

At the platform, the conductor stepped aside. Gerard indicated his prisoner go first. For a moment, the steel of the handcuffs glinted in the light of the lantern, then, as quickly, extinguished. Two plainclothes policemen met them. Identities were exchanged in whispers as though the men were ashamed of who they were and what they were doing. Which may, or may not have been the case. Gerard and Kimble fell in line behind them. A black-and-white police car waited at the curb. No further need of subterfuge.

With the out-of-town policeman and the prisoner in the back, the two locals sat in the front. Having gotten this far and anticipating no trouble, they relaxed.

“This your first run up to Michigan City?” the front seat passenger inquired.

“Yes. No,” Gerard quickly amended. “I’ve been here before but never on… assignment.”

“Don’t worry. It’s a piece of cake.”

Feeling the man beside him stiffen, he scowled.

“Some professionalism, if you don’t mind.”

The two men in the front seemed not to have heard. The driver looked over his shoulder at those in the rear. He grinned.

“You know, I was at the picture show, once. Years ago. When I was a kid. It was a Jimmy Cagney flick, or something. I forget, now. But this cop was takin’ his prisoner to be executed, just like you are. And they were handcuffed together: the cop’s right hand to the murderer’s left. And I wondered to myself, ‘Why is that? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?’ I mean, if the cop has to draw his gun, his right hand is chained. And if the prisoner wants to sock him one, he’s got his good right arm freed.”

Because the rationale had never occurred to him, Gerard snapped, “I’m left-handed.”

“Oh. I never met a left-handed cop, before.”

“You have, now.”

The conversation was trivial and irritating. He would have preferred silence. But to pull rank and order them to shut up was likely to create an animosity he didn’t want.

Let’s just get the transfer over with.

    “Anyway,” the officer pursued, “That was just an observation. Nothing came of it.” Gerard started to answer, hoping to put an end to the story, but the other man was quicker. “What really happened was that Cagney – maybe it wasn’t Cagney. Maybe it was Bogie. Anyway, the prisoner was a dirty little rat – you know the type. But clever. He pickpocketed the cop’s ID papers and then motioned the conductor over.”

Gerard briefly closed his eyes and rolled them before speaking.

“The train personnel were informed before we got on who we were and where we were going.”

“Sure, but here’s what happened: the conductor got off at a previous stop, see? His tour of duty was over and a new guy got on. No one bothered to tell him. So when the prisoner flicks his fingers at him, he comes. And the prisoner says –”

“I’m the policeman and the man beside me is my prisoner,” Gerard tiredly guessed.

“Right! You seen the picture?”

“No.”

“Cagney holds out his ID and says, real conspiratorial like, ‘He got my gun. Now, he’s armed and dangerous.'”

“And the policeman is silent through all this?” Gerard interrupted in annoyance.

“He’s dozing off.”

“How convenient.”

“It was a long train ride. Did you doze off at all, Lieutenant?”

A flat “No,” sufficed.

“The cop finally wakes up but by that time, Cagney’s pinched his revolver, so now he’s got both the cop’s ID and his gun.”

“Sloppy police procedure.”

Richard Kimble’s blunt observation startled the men in the car so much the driver nearly rear-ended the vehicle ahead of them.

“Jesus, you’re a talkie one,” the officer swore. “Shut him up, Gerard. Prisoners aren’t allowed to speak.”

“I want to know what happened,” Kimble explained.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Kimble shrugged.

“All right. If you won’t tell me, I’ll fill in the blanks. The conductor believes the con man-murderer and gets the key from the policeman’s pocket. He gives it to ‘Cagney,’ or ‘Bogie’ – I think it was Ernest Borgnine, by the way – and he jabs the pistol into the ‘cop’s’ side. ‘Don’t say a word, or I’ll plug you. We’re getting off at the next stop.’ And that’s what happens. Ida Lupino is there, waiting for her boyfriend-murderer. She’s got a getaway car waiting. She and Borgnine and the cop – played by Ward Bond – get inside and drive away. So far, so good, but now they have to get rid of Bond. He’s a big, burly fella and could be trouble. And, of course, he’s none too happy.”

The car made a sharp left turn, tumbling Kimble into Gerard. For a moment a look of fear came into both men’s eyes before the black-and-white straightened and they moved away from one another. It took a moment for Kimble to regain his composure and resume the narrative.

“Ida Lupino wants to – plug – Bond and dump the body in a ditch, but Borgnine, the convicted murderer, is a little less bloodthirsty. He wants to keep him as a hostage.”

“Why would the murderer want to keep him alive?” the cop in the passenger seat demanded in pique, as though it was Kimble’s fault the Hollywood scriptwriter had made a mistake.

“Maybe he was innocent, all along,” he suggested. “Maybe he really was a good guy who found himself framed for something he didn’t do. Or, maybe,” he added, staring at Gerard, “he’d already killed the one person he ever would.”

Gerard felt a cold stab radiate through his chest.

“It’s not possible,” he whispered, “that you can read my mind.”

The prisoner’s eyes softened.

“You think you’re the only one? After three years on the run, I’ve learned as much about you as you have about me.”

The answer didn’t seem right and Gerard forced himself to concentrate as swirling mists of time confused the moment.

“No. No… It’s not correct. There was no train wreck…. We’re here. At Michigan City.”

“Yes,” Kimble agreed. “Where I’m to die. Unless I’m already dead.”

“No! You’re not dead!”

Kimble hitched a shoulder.

“If I’m not, I will be soon.”

“Go on with the story,” the driver suddenly demanded. Kimble turned to stare out the window. He might have been looking for a ditch to dump the bodies. Or, in a reverse of logic, a ditch to jump in and hide.

The landscape passed with dizzying rapidity although the police car had slowed to a crawl.

“There’s not much left to tell. Ida Lupino and Ernest Borgnine start to fight – struggle over the gun. It goes off – the car skids off the road and down a cliff. Ward Bond leaps out at the last minute. There’s a huge explosion – camera pans in on a hand hanging out the car window just as the gun slips out of dead fingers and falls to the ground. Ward Bond gets up and dusts himself off, as if to say, ‘Justice is served.’ The end.”

The muscles in Gerard’s jaw twitched. The two men in the front seat disappeared.

“Was that a confession?”

“What do you think? If you can read my mind, you tell me.”

“Please. I need to hear it. From your own lips. Was that a confession?”

Richard Kimble merely stared at him.

The scene faded to black.

 

When Gerard awoke, his fingers were clenched around the chains of the swing. It required all his willpower to release them. His legs had fallen asleep. When he attempted to stand they wouldn’t hold him and he staggered forward, nearly falling. If a neighbor had been looking out their rear window they would have thought him drunk.

In a manner of speaking, he was. Inebriated by the past. A past which had never happened.

His twisted mind had made it up: but on the one salient detail he needed to maintain his sanity, he had failed to elucidate himself.

Even in dream he could not allow himself to hear the answer.

One way or the other.

 

In the end, he decided to wear his good black suit. The rationale was apparent: he did not want to pack two suits – one for travel and a second for appearing at the Bennington police station. One would have to suffice. He did not bother telling Marie his old black suit had a stain on the cuff. She would have offered to clean it.

Out of perversity he drove a police sedan to the airport and left it in short-term parking. Using a department car rather than his own, the precinct would be forced to pay the fee. He was not in the mood to compromise to his own detriment. He was on an official assignment. The last leg of a long journey. Hereafter, there would be no more ‘jaunts’ across the country; no helicopters to hire; no out-of-state police to summon. No more late phone calls.

To the list he conjured in his mind, Phillip Gerard did not include, “No more nightmares.”

Because he did not include it, he dared not sleep and remained awake the entire length of the flight, which included transfers to smaller and smaller aircraft. Every time his eyelids drooped he dug his fingernails into the flesh of his palms, forcing them open. Having forgotten to bring a book or some other diversion, he occupied his time by reading the safety instructions in the seat pocket. By the time the plane landed, he felt well-qualified to inflate the life raft found in the forward compartment, assist others with breathing apparatuses should oxygen become too thin, kick out any one of a number of emergency exits and possibly fly the plane in a crisis.

When stopped by the stewardess on his way out with the traditional and entirely unfelt, “I hope you had a pleasant flight,” he responded, “No, I did not.”

Coming up behind him, the next passenger quipped to her, “Now, you know what it feels like to be jilted.”

Gerard heard her laugh and respond with more energy than she had given him.

“He’s too old for me, anyway.”

Fighting the impulse to go back and shove his police badge in her face, he bit the inside of his lower lip and let it pass.

I’m too wound up; too emotional. I had better get a grip on myself before I go to the police station.

    He was at a loss to explain his feelings.

Not surprisingly, no one was there from the Bennington police department to meet him. That indicated either professional courtesy was dead, or no one from the Stafford department had alerted them of his arrival. That meant either calling the police and asking them to send a car and driver, or taking a cab to his hotel room and going to the precinct in the morning.

True to his reputation, he opted for neither choice. Collecting his overnight bag from the carousel, he grasped it firmly in his right hand and crossed to the local Rent-A-Car agency. A clerk stared at him with indifferent eyes.

“Sedan, station wagon or economy model?”

“Actually, I was looking to rent a red convertible,” he replied for no better reason than the stewardess had said he was too old for her. “But if you don’t have one of those, I’d like a map.”

“What kind of car is that?”

Setting his bag on the floor, he demonstrated by stretching his arms out, first indicating length, then height.

“They usually come three feet by two feet. They’re folded numerous times so it’s impossible to get them back into their original shape and they have little squiggly lines running all over them. Typically in color.”

“We don’t have any like that.”

Scanning the counter he saw several. Choosing one labeled “Bennington” in large red letters, Gerard selected it.

“How much?”

“It comes with the car.”

“I’m not renting a car.”

“I thought you wanted a convertible.”

“You don’t have one of those. Remember?” Reaching into his coat pocket, he felt for and found a dime. Flipping it on the counter, he tipped his hat to the clerk and walked away.

Once outside, a gust of chill late October wind nearly knocked him off his feet. Regaining his balance, then straightening his hat, he crossed the street and settled on a bench. Setting the luggage by his leg, he opened the map and stared at the outline of the town of Bennington, Vermont. Never having been there before, he was curious to know what sights there were.

Bennington Battle Monument. Pottery sheds. Historic Old Bennington.

Determining he was not far from the Bennington Battle Monument, he decided to pay it a visit. Identifying the tall spire in the distance, he picked up his bag and went for a brisk walk. It grew dark as he traveled and by the time he reached the grey stone structure the little shops around it had closed, giving the spot a deserted, almost alien feel as though he were not in the United States but a foreign country. Shaking off the impression by telling himself he felt that way because he was a stranger, he crossed to the edifice and placed the flat of his palm against the outside wall.

Cold. Hard. Enduring.

Using the light cast from a distant street lamp, he read the plaque, discovering the actual battle, for which the monument had been dedicated, had actually been fought in neighboring New York. Bennington came into the picture because it had housed an important ammunition dump important to both side of the Revolutionary War. If the fight had gone against the Colonists, the British would have marched to Vermont and seized the prize.

Finding that an odd reason to erect a monument, he tarried a moment longer, then decided he had seen enough of Bennington.

“I ought to find my hotel,” he announced to no one. “It’s getting late.”

Almost on cue the wind howled, forcing him to draw his coat closer around him. As clouds scurried across the moon, a small rodent or perhaps merely a bit of balled-up trash blew against the back of his leg. He jumped out of proportion to the assault.

A nervousness crept through him, conveying the uncomfortable feeling he was being watched.

By whom and for what purpose?

In retrospect, he realized he had had that feeling since he got off the plane.

Of being spied upon.

But no one knew he was here.

Clamping his mind shut, he picked up his valise and started walking. An owl, or some other bird of prey, cried. He scanned the tress around him but saw nothing. Not even a flutter of wings. The night grew darker.

“I’m letting my imagination get the better of me.”

He meant it as a jest, but deep inside the recesses of his consciousness, he knew what was happening. He had walked into a trap. A trap not of his own making. One Richard Kimble had laid for him.

The ghost of Richard Kimble.

    He wants me to know what it felt like. Being a fugitive. Being on the run. Where every sound was potential danger, every man on every street corner an enemy. Every hotel room a jail; every job a dead-end.

    Gerard stopped walking and turned his face to the wind.

Is that why you came here? Because you knew it had to end somewhere and because you knew I’d have to come… after you? The end of October. Halloween. Is this your idea of a last joke? You had no right being here. You should have been in the southwest; or somewhere down the Southern coast. Where it’s warm. Where a fugitive could sleep outside if he had to. Not in this bitter, wintery weather.

    The few leaves left clinging to branches rustled in the wind. Was it an answer, or was it mockery?

What menial job were you working at, that you were on the street at that hour and that minute? Carrying your lunch pail. Just an invisible working man, minding your own business. But you were never that, were you, Dr. Kimble? You stuck out wherever you went. The quiet man with a soft voice and an education. No one could quite put their finger on what you were, but they knew you didn’t belong to them. You were an outsider. A stranger in a strange land. Sometimes they helped you. Why? Did you ever stop to ask yourself that?

    Because you confessed your crime and they believed in your innocence? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe because you were the ill wind; the Wandering Jew. What did they say? ‘Whatever good you did, didn’t quite pay the price.’ ‘Go away before it finds you, and through you, me.’ ‘Thank you and pass on. Don’t linger or the evil will come.’

    I wasn’t that evil, Dr. Kimble.

    “I was innocent.”

Gerard knew his mind was playing tricks on him.

He picked up his pace. Walking faster. The wind blew harder. Dead leaves swirled around his feet. The air had a feeling of snow. The temperature fell.

He walked two blocks, got turned around and found himself back where he started.

All roads lead nowhere.

All roads lead back to where it started.

Come what may, Phillip Gerard knew he would travel home to Stafford, Indiana. Alone.

Link to HAUNTED Chapter 2