The Secret Witness (Shepard & Gray)

Book Preface

Otto Murray woke up from a deep sleep to Allyx whispering, “Otto, our motion detector in the backyard turned on.”

“Probably a raccoon or something,” he mumbled, still hazy. He’d spent several hours working in the yard, raking up leaves, and just remembered he hadn’t put the lid back on the trash can.

He was already drifting off when Allyx shook him and whispered, “It turned on again!”

“So what?”

“Otto, please. I heard there were break-ins in the neighborhood.”

“Stealing skis out of the Sandovals’ open garage isn’t a break-in.”

“I won’t be able to sleep until you check on it.”

He sighed. No use arguing with fear. “Fine.”

After swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he rubbed his eyes and stretched his neck.

The first thing he saw was Allyx’s mannequin, which she used as a model while working on pieces of clothing she would sell around the neighborhood and at swap meets. A female mannequin with dark eyes and an uncomfortable looking tilt to her neck, giving her just enough of a deformed appearance to be disturbing. After they’d both retired, they’d needed something to fill the time. Otto had found fishing and hiking, and Allyx selling trinkets and clothing. The house was stuffed with unsold creations his wife refused to let him throw out.

“Things we do for love,” he said as he tapped the mannequin on his way out of the bedroom.

“What?” Allyx asked.

“Nothin’.”

He yawned while walking to the kitchen and debated whether to get a gun. It probably was a raccoon, but cougars and bears lived close to the West Mountains in Utah. A bear had even recently ripped off the door of a minivan to get to the McDonald’s Happy Meal inside.

Now that’s a break-in.

Just in case, he went to the den—which was one of only four rooms finished in the house, the rest being a work in progress since they’d only moved in a year ago—opened the brown gun safe, and took out his double-barrel shotgun. It wasn’t as powerful or sleek as his pump-action Remington, but he preferred the classics. Things that held up over time were worth more than new things. Plus, when his father used to take him rabbit hunting, this was the gun he preferred to use, and it always reminded him of his dad when he got a chance to shoot it.

After loading the shotgun, he shuffled casually to the kitchen, yawning again, and squinted through the window above the sink. They had a large unfenced backyard that led to the mountains. Grass and trees surrounded the home, and beyond that was nothing but dirt and rocks. They’d bought the house on the cheap with the expectation they would finish it themselves, Otto having been a contractor, but he found it boring and slow work now that he wasn’t getting paid for it. So he had an unfinished house with an unfinished yard in an undeveloped neighborhood. Still, for two empty nesters who didn’t have many guests over, it was perfect.

He didn’t see anything near the house and figured he had been right: raccoon. He wished one had still been there; having Allyx jump out of bed in fright after hearing a shotgun blast would be fair payback for waking him up.

As he turned away, the motion detector light came back on. He looked out the window again but didn’t see anything in the yard. He went over to the back door and opened it. A slight trickle of fear touched his belly for the first time.

He scanned the yard from one end to the other and tried to focus on the sounds around him.

No crickets.

He could think of only two reasons for that: it was too cold, or a predator was in the area. Since the temperature had been almost ninety earlier that day, it wasn’t too cold. But people attacked by bears had reported the forest going silent right before.

The motion detector clicked off. Otto stepped outside and looked up at the sky. Not much light pollution, and being higher up in elevation gave him the best view of the sky he could have asked for.

The motion detector light came on.

He turned, squinting, toward the light fixture at the corner of the roof.

“Hello? Someone there?”

The light clicked off. Darkness again.

Otto gripped his shotgun tighter and brought it up to waist height. His throat felt like sandpaper. He swallowed. Cougars liked to attack from behind, but bears attacked from the front. Sickening anxiety confused him as to what to do.

Then, relief washed over him. No one was here. The motion detector was malfunctioning. He recalled seeing some online reviews about false alarms being triggered with this system.

Despite considering himself a relatively tough guy, he had to admit these last few seconds had been a little scary.

He chuckled to himself and went back inside the house. As he shut the door, the motion detector light came on. It stopped him, and then he reminded himself that it was just malfunctioning.

“What is it?” Allyx called from the bedroom.

“The motion detector’s busted. I told you to go with those other guys.”

“They had worse customer service.”

“What customer service? Just make sure our alarm works and leave us the hell alone the rest of the time.”

He set the shotgun on the kitchen counter. He searched under the sink and then up in a cupboard until he found the smaller of his tool sets.

The light turned back on as he went outside, marched over, and set the tools down. When he went to open his tool kit, he realized he didn’t have the key. It was one of those old sets from back when people fixed everything themselves and called experts in only when there wasn’t any other choice. His dad’s tool set he’d given Otto as a gift when he was a teenager.

When he was halfway back to the door, the motion detector light clicked off, then clicked on a second later. That sickening feeling came back and flooded his mouth with a sour taste.

“Is somebody there? Hello?”

Fear made his hands tremble, and he noticed for the first time that he’d left his shotgun on the counter.

The light clicked off. He stood still a moment in the dark and then continued toward the door. He had his hand on the knob when the light clicked on.

He decided he would go back to bed and worry about it tomorrow.

Something bothered him, though. Before the light had gone out the last time, he’d seen . . . something. A shape. An outline. Something that stood out from the darkness but blended in enough that he couldn’t tell if it was in his head. It was nearer the property line, toward a grouping of trees.

“Hello?” Otto put his hand over his eyes to shield them from the light. “This isn’t funny, whoever you are. I’m calling the cops.”

The shape moved.

It was a subtle movement, but noticeable. The shadow shifted to the right a couple of feet. As though it was a person taking a large step. But he couldn’t see any legs.

The light clicked off.

Otto’s heart thumped against his ribs, and all he could hear was his own heavy breathing. The darkness seemed deeper than it was a moment ago somehow, with just enough starlight to make out odd shapes floating past his vision.

As he scrambled to turn the doorknob, the blade pierced the back of his neck, and he felt pressure on his forehead where the shape pulled his head back to expose his throat. The steel felt like ice in his body, and then there was no longer ice, only warmth. Sucking breath did nothing but make him gurgle. He fell to his knees, his hands going instinctively to the wound, trying to hold back the blood.

The shape pulled out the knife in one powerful jerk, and then, grunting, swung it over and over again, plunging the blade into Otto’s flesh.

Allyx called her husband’s name a few times, to no response. Otto was a practical joker, had been since the time they had dated, and she had little doubt he was hiding behind some corner to shout “Boo!” at the right moment.

“Otto, this isn’t funny.”

After a few more minutes, she rose from bed. Her mouth felt dry and her throat itched and she thought about how mad she was going to be if this was a joke.

“I will be furious if you scare me. Do you hear me, Otto? Furious.”

No answer, no noise. She went to the bedroom door and looked out at her hallway and the kitchen, a dozen feet away. She could see that the light from the motion detector in the backyard was on. Before she could take a step out of the room, the light turned off, and the sudden change made her gasp.

Then a noise caught her attention.

Whatever it was, it was somewhere in the house.

A guttural, primitive scream burst out of her as Allyx ran out the open back door, nearly tripping over the hem of her nightgown. She sprinted through the grass barefoot and into the dirt behind the house. When the light turned on, she saw her husband’s body, torn apart and caked in blood, lying on its back. Milky eyes staring up at the night sky.

Headlights appeared on the overpass near their property, like eyeshine from an animal passing by.

“Help!”

The ground was uneven, and she slipped and fell, hitting the dirt hard. She rose to her feet and screamed for the car to stop.

The car turned onto a side road and was gone. Her words echoed in the empty valley, and she knew no one would hear them.

Her entire world became her feet pounding dirt and the sound of her hot breath as she grew more and more winded and tried not to think about the footfalls behind her and whether they were getting closer.

Then something shattered the rhythm of the predictable sounds. Like a bolt of lightning on a stormless night.

The first round tore through her shoulder, spinning her like a top. She slammed into the ground, dirt filling her mouth.

Sobbing, she tried to force herself up, but the blood flowing down her arm left her muscles weak. She managed to get to her knees, chanting, “No, no, no,” as if the words would stop the bullets.

Another shot tore into her body, and she collapsed for good.

The taste of blood and dirt in her mouth made her gag, like sucking on a handful of pennies. She tried to push herself up to run again, but one of her arms wouldn’t respond. All she could manage to do was flip herself onto her back.

The crunch of hard dirt grew louder as the shape approached.

“No, please,” she cried, “please. I’ll do anything you want! Please. I’ll do anything!”

She looked up at the shape as the handgun rose. It wore a black hood that looked like a pillowcase with a drawing she couldn’t make out on the front.

She opened her mouth to scream, but the round tore through the roof of her mouth and into her brain, and then there was nothing.

Bobby Larson had been driving Uber for four years now, and as far back as he could remember, the passenger in the back seat was the quietest he’d ever had. Even the quiet ones would answer a question if asked directly, but this guy . . . there was nothing.

Tooele, pronounced “Two Illa,” which Bobby guessed was a Native American word, wasn’t a city he was used to driving in, as he lived in Salt Lake City, a half hour away. Still, he had to admit, at night, it was beautiful with the bright stars and large mountains.

He’d brought a fare down here from the airport and considered himself lucky to have picked up another fare at two in the morning; he worked full time during the day as a short-order cook and could only get out driving at night.

Bobby had told the passenger it would be a lot cheaper to take a bus in the morning from Tooele to Salt Lake, but the passenger said it was fine.

“So we’re right near State Street,” Bobby said, looking over his glasses into the rearview mirror. “You got a preference on which side of the street I drop you off?”

No answer. Bobby shrugged and mumbled, “All right, dealer’s choice, looks like.”

“Not here,” a low voice said from the back. “Up the street.”

Bobby drove up almost half a mile before the passenger said, “Stop.”

He pulled over and put the car in park. He was turning to ask the passenger to leave him a five-star review when he felt the muzzle against his cheek.

“Wha—”

The round ripped through his cheek, splattering bits of bone and ragged flesh over the windshield. Bobby’s face hit the steering wheel, his glasses cracked and spattered with blood. He heard the back door open and then a few steps before he saw the shadow of the gun in front of him. The figure holding it wore a black hood, and Bobby could see the drawing in white on its front. A skull with an upside-down cross on the forehead.

The last thing Bobby heard was a loud bang.

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