Page 88 of Midnight Creed

Norwich had her cell phone to her ear, barking orders.

“The downwash,” Brodie was yelling to be heard over the heavy whomp of rotor blades. Now, as she stood in front of them, she still had to shout. “It’s lifting the scent. It’ll scattered it away from its original positions.”

Taylor realized it was Brodie’s voice that had come over the radio. Norwich was nodding at Brodie even as she and Hank continued jogging up the street. Norwich still had the phone to her ear. The noise was so loud, Taylor could barely make out the sheriff’s words as she yelled instructions.

This time, when she glanced over her shoulder, Dora stood in her open doorway, arms crossed over her chest. Despite being at the end of the circle drive, Taylor could see the woman smiling as her head pivoted, watching the sky. She seemed to pay no attention to the chaos and only cocked her head to get a better look up above.

The helicopter disappeared on the other side of the trees. But within minutes, the tops of the pine trees began waving wildly again. The rumble grew. It had looped around and was returning. Now, it came lower. A gust of downwash dismantled anything not anchored down.

Taylor could feel the pull, the swish of her hair and the flap of her scrubs. She put a hand over her eyes to avoid the blinding searchlight. She couldn’t help thinking that this would get Will’s attention, and her eyes scanned the edges of the woods back to where the bulldozer was.

Then suddenly, the helicopter banked to its side and took off across the highway to do the same thing to that neighborhood.

Taylor saw Norwich turn. The phone was still pressed to her ear, but now she noticed Dora standing at her front door. The sheriff glared at Dora like she wished her death-ray stare could make a difference. Taylor wanted to tell her it would take more than that to pierce an ice-cold heart.

But now she could clearly hear what Norwich was telling the person on the other end of the phone, “I don’t care what you have to do. Get me the governor on the line. And do it now!”

57

Peter Gregory worried the hallucinations had taken over his mind. He fought to determine what was real and what was only a figment of his imagination. All these law enforcement officers and vehicles amassed in the streets. Were they real or imaginary?

It took him a while to realize they weren’t looking for him. After he’d safely ditched the blue pickup, he became an ordinary man walking the neighborhood. His work clothes and boots helped him fit in. A tattered old ball cap he found in the glove compartment completed his camouflage.

He heard bits and pieces from their radios and their shouts to one another. Door-to-door, street-to-street, they marched. An invasion that stirred up electricity and tension in the air as thick as the humidity.

It wasn’t until he saw them checking the garage that he realized it was the boy they were looking for. He was close enough to hear the discussion about a bicycle.

He wondered why they were so far behind. Why hadn’t they started looking sooner? Now, in their urgency and turmoil, they’d even left the garage door unlocked.

They’d never find that boy.

When Gregory heard the helicopter approaching, he knew his mind had not conjured up this chaos. He could feel the vibration of the machine when it skimmed the treetops.

But this chaos and urgency that made all these people reckless also kept them from noticing the obvious. And it all played right into his hands, aiding him instead of driving him away or driving him to madness.

It was a good thing. Because for several weeks, he’d questioned his sanity. What was real? What was created by the demons in his mind? Demons, or what his mother called his “overactive imagination.”

She had drilled it in over and over again after that night. She insisted what he thought he saw had been influenced by different factors.

That’s what she told him. It’s what she told everyone.

She insisted that a young child’s mind could be easily manipulated into believing things that simply were not true.

That was her answer when his description of the events that took away his father didn’t coincide with what she had witnessed or reported. The situation was “too traumatic” for him to remember correctly. That’s what she told the authorities.

“He’s still in shock. He just lost his father,” she said. “Trauma can tangle memories and details until none of them make sense.”

Plus, her older son had a vivid imagination to begin with. He always had his nose in a graphic novel or a comic book. She sometimes thought he got reality mixed up with the made-up stories he read.

And she could be so convincing.

She’d even convinced him.

So much so that for years, he believed his nightmares about that night were convoluted by his wickedly vivid imagination.

But not anymore. Those same nightmares had finally revealed the truth about that night.

Now, after he’d walked by countless law enforcement officers, he casually entered the unlocked garage. Only one vehicle filled the huge space. Someone wasn’t home. Though Gregory had gotten a glimpse of the woman standing in the front entrance. She had flung open the door, and watched the helicopter passing overhead with a flicker of a smile. For some reason, its presence pleased her.