“The last place you saw him was on the property? He couldn’t be in town, whooping it up with the other kids?” Jackson asked the couple.
“Our kids aren’t welcome there, and you know it. No, he would be drawn to something like this. He has to be here.” Eunice looked at him with pleading eyes.
“We’ll look for him. Take it easy. Why don’t you head home, and I’ll send a man over to you as soon as we get in there and check things out.”
“I’ll wait right here,” Eunice said. She shrugged off her husband’s hand once again and started for the steps. “I’ll be puttin’ on some coffee.”
“Ma’am, stay out here until we have a chance—” Jackson started, but stopped with an exasperated sigh. Eunice took the steps at a pace that said she would brook no interference.
Jackson looked at one of his men and then his dark eyes fell on Mr. Johansson. “Well, get after her and make sure she stays in the kitchen.” He watched one of the uniforms and the large Johansson take the steps two at a time to catch up with Eunice. “Damn hicks,” Jackson muttered under his breath. “Now you,” he said, pointing at Kelly, “I assume you were taping…recording, whatever it is you do?
“Both, yes. We have the camera and video footage queued up for you when you’re ready, but the cameras won’t be much good. The batteries were drained. The audio may help…It’s in bad shape, but there’s something on it.”
“That can wait. Right now, we’d better start at the top floor and work our way down, in case one of your people broke a leg or something.” He looked first at Kelly and then Dalton. “My bet would be on someone pulling your leg. If this is a joke, that someone is going to spend the night in jail. Is that understood?”
“If it’s a joke, I’ll turn the key in the lock,” Harris said. He stepped aside to allow Jackson and three of the state officers by.
“That’ll be hard to do from the side of the cell door you’ll be on,” Jackson retorted. He pushed by the director and started up the steps with the officers. Harris sneered at Detective Lieutenant Jackson’s back.
“What a dick,” he said.
“That dick, along with our intrepid reporter Julie Reilly, ruined a man’s life because they got it into their heads that he was lying about this house. He’s not a nice man, from all accounts.”
“Yeah, well he better watch it. I think there’s something in that house that’s equal to the challenge of Lieutenant Jackson.”
Kelly turned and looked at Dalton, watching the man’s eyes roam over the brightly lit house.
“So you’re a believer now?”
“I guess we’ll find that out, if they don’t turn up our two people.” He finally looked at her. “Won’t we?”
“Harris, Mr. Peterson is on the line from Los Angeles. He’s not a very happy camper,” one of the technicians called from the van.
“What are you going to tell him?” Kelly asked.
Harris took a deep breath and started walking away, but then stopped. Without turning, he said, “That we no longer have a show, and that corporate may have one hell of a legal mess to clean up.”
“Shit,” Kelly said under her breath. She hurried to catch up with the director.
Kelly entered the van in time to hear Dalton answer the call from Peterson. She was about to sit down when Nancy, the assistant director, tugged at her sleeve.
“You have to see the—”
“Not now,” Kelly snapped. Hearing this call was more important than anything else right now. The fate of the show hinged on it.
“This is Harris,” the director said angrily into the phone. “Yes, I recognize your voice; you don’t have to be so melodramatic about it, for Christ’s sake. The plug is pulled, so get your blood pressure under control. Yes, yes, she’s right here. Damn…all right.”
Kelly watched as Dalton placed his large hand over the phone.
“Get me an intercom working so Kelly can talk and I can hear. NOW goddamn it!”
The technicians piped the call from Los Angeles into the van.
“Okay, you’re on,” Dalton said into the phone.
“Kelly, are you there?”
“Yes, Mr. Peterson, I am most certainly here.”
“You screwed the pooch out there, huh? I mean, if you’re going to pull stunts like this, we expect you to keep police involvement to a minimum.”
“This is not a prank! It’s as real as—”
“All right, knock it the fuck off, Kelly. Wait until the State Police leave, and then get your two missing people the hell out of there and back to LA. Whose bright idea was it to call the state police anyway, damn it?”
“Mine,” Dalton said, rolling his eyes. “Look, we have two missing—”
“Don’t do it, Harris. Don’t start thinking again. I’ll do that from now on. Kelly, get your ass back here. Don’t pass go and don’t collect two hundred dollars. Here, right now. What I have to do with you, I want to do in person. I also want—”
“Mr. Peterson, I have CEO Feuerstein on the line. He wants to sit in on the conference call,” Peterson’s secretary said in the background in LA.
“Very well. Patch him through.”
“Peterson, that you?” came the voice of the CEO from the east coast.
“Yes, sir, I was just trying to straighten out this god-awful mess.”
“I guess you have a big one on your hands. Look, I don’t want this to leak out until you can get another show to back up Hunters, and try and keep the sponsors intact in case we have to go with an alternate show. I would hate to lose them.”
Kelly listened as the two-sided conversation droned on. The assistant director shook her shoulder again. Frustrated she turned and mouthed the word, “What?”
“You better see this before everyone hangs up,” she whispered, pointing toward a monitor with a green-tinted piece of film framed up. She pushed a button on her remote. “Seriously, you’ve got to see this. It’s from Paul’s cameraman and the FLIR.”
“The cameras were dead and there was no power, how could they have recorded anything?”
“I don’t know. It’s only a few frames. I think I’ve wet my pants!” the assistant director hissed, low enough that no one else could hear.
Kelly watched the frames slip by on the monitor. She could see Kyle standing on the ladder with his head half-turned toward the camera. It was dark, and she couldn’t see all of Kyle because the camera wasn’t centered right on him. The special effects man was talking and looking into the grill in front of him. Then suddenly, the grill fell from the wall and a dark cloud-like shape emerged from the vent. It looked like a large hand to Kelly, with tendrils, finger-like, that wrapped around Kyle’s head. And then he was pulled inside the vent, just that simple and just that quick. Kelly looked over at the FLIR footage that was looped at the same time speed as the night vision camera. This time the hand-shaped blur was blue, meaning the image framed up was cold — possibly freezing. It wrapped around Kyle and squeezed, pulling him into the vent.
“Jesus Christ!” Kelly said. Dalton’s tap to her shoulder made her yelp and jump. She spun in the air with her hand to her mouth.
“Well? Are you going to answer the CEO?”
“Excuse me, I’m sorry — what?” It was a moment before she could get her eyes to focus on Dalton.
“Ms. Delaphoy, my question was: is there anything you should be telling us about any hidden agendas for the test, before Mr. Peterson proceeds with what he has to do?” Feuerstein asked from New York.
Kelly made the ‘rewind’ gesture to the assistant director, twirling her fingers. The woman caught the meaning at once and went to work.