Autumn's Eyes (Storm Season Book 1) Read online

  Autumn’s Eyes

  By J. L. Sutton

  To my friend Pieter. For all the long hours and advice, both asked for and unsolicited—and for keeping me more or less sane.

  All characters and events in this publication (other than those clearly in the public domain) are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by J. L. Sutton

  www.jlsuttonbooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-620-70749-7

  Table of Contents

  1. Half measures

  2. Idle

  3. Blood

  4. Odds

  5. Pins and needles

  6. Paper walls

  7. Push

  8. Choices

  9. Unforeseen

  10. Tightrope

  11. Glass confessions

  12. Windows

  13. Facet

  14. Dreams

  15. Sleepwalker

  16. Cadre

  17. Wild eyes

  18. Truths

  19. Pursuit

  20. Consequences

  21. Shadows

  22. Dark light

  23. Breathe

  Winter’s Call: 1. Stifled

  The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and where the other begins?—Edgar Allen Poe

  1. Half measures

  I no longer heard the words. No matter how many times I replayed the message it was the girl’s tone I found myself fixated on.

  I listened to the message a dozen times in the last hour alone. Not exactly the healthiest activity, but that’s the problem with spending so much time behind the wheel of a parked car—it gave you a lot of time to think. Or overthink, in my case. Going into this line of work one of the first things they drill into you is you need infinite amounts of patience. What they didn’t tell you is that nothing can prepare you for the brutally dull hours spent waiting for your mark to show. Yes, life as a professional investigator had its thrilling moments, but this part was definitely not one of them.

  I leaned back into the seat of my dated black Chevy Chevelle and retrieved my phone to play the message again, as if somehow this time it would be different from the last hundred.

  Hey dad. Look, I know you’re still trying to find me. Just please stop already, or I won’t leave these messages for you anymore. I’ll come home when I can, if I can. I . . . I have to go okay? I love you.

  Fear. It was laced into every rushed word, wrapped around every syllable. I had my share of clients bursting into tears in my office, blankly staring at me as I delivered my evidence, or on occasion even fly into a blind rage. But this was something altogether different—especially given the voice belonged to the woman I was hired to find.

  Two weeks ago Arthur White hired me to find his daughter Natalie, a twenty year old student who vanished after drawing a substantial amount of cash from her trust fund. She left a note vaguely explaining her disappearance that her boyfriend Trent found. But, being a legal adult, the police wouldn’t get involved so four days later Arthur called me in. At the time it seemed like an almost effortless job I’d close in two days, three at the most. Well, guess you can’t be right all the time Hadley.

  After speaking with some of her close friends I quickly learned each of them heard a different story from her. Between the disinformation, never leaving a paper trail and always moving I had to admit Natalie was a smart young woman. It also told me she probably had a damn good reason to disappear. That thought right there should’ve stopped me dead in my tracks, but it was also the only job on my desk right now, and me being me I just couldn’t let go when I got inquisitive. What could possibly have happened to make Natalie walk away from her home, her family? I had to know.

  So I stuck with the case, my heart only half in it as I chased down a few dead ends. Nothing popped. Then one morning her father forwarded me that message, and before it finished playing my resolve to find her was reignited—but not for my client. I liked to joke with my friends that this job was nothing more than being a glorified stalker. Sadly the reality was I potentially had the power to cause a lot of damage. The client wasn’t always the one who truly needed help, and I couldn’t shake the feeling Natalie needed mine.

  It took a little coercion on my part to obtain this latest lead from a close cousin of hers, but it looked promising. Okay, promising was a little strong. From what I learned about Natalie, this seedy, bare bones motel on the outskirts of the city seemed too remote, too edgy for someone like her. After playing him the message the cousin readily confessed to dropping off a burner for her here this morning. People I spoke to lied on her behalf before, which made me a little skeptical as to his credibility. Unfortunately, Natalie never stayed in the same place for more than two nights, so if it was true this was my only chance to catch up to her before she moved on again.

  A brief dimming of the neon vacancy sign caught my attention, the sign so largely out of proportion it dwarfed the ageing building it pointed to. After more than two hours gazing at the same deserted parking lot, the slightest change seemed monumentally noticeable. I knew if she showed tonight it wouldn’t be long until she arrived. So I kept myself alert, but as the hands of my watch ticked down at a near glacial pace my mind inevitably started to drift—it always did.

  Three years ago if someone told me I’d spend my nights watching other people’s lives unfold framed by my car’s windshield I’d have laughed. It seemed so long ago now I was that man. A second generation cop, dead set on working up the ladder and foolish enough to think he could take on the world. Set hours and a solid paycheck seemed almost alien now. Claire, my then girlfriend, had just begun working towards her dream of becoming a nurse. We knew each other since high school, and it seemed almost natural that we became a lasting part of each other’s lives. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still see the grin on her face when she walked through my door every night, deep brown eyes brimming over with her trademark enthusiasm. I was too much of a realist to say things were perfect, far from it, but life was pretty good. Then it all changed.

  Looking back at the choices I made since that life shattering night three years ago I no longer regretted the path I had taken. But at times like these, trapped in my box of glass, polished leather and steel, I still wondered. No, this is not the life I would have chosen as that man, but now even with the waiting ad nauseam that came with the gig I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything but this.

  Thankfully I was shaken from the bittersweet memories of Claire tugging at me by a cab pulling off the street, stopping outside the door of number nine just long enough for a woman to step out. She was too quick for me to catch a glimpse of her face through the lens of my camera, but the long blond hair trailing behind her was a dead giveaway. Natalie had arrived.

  After securing my camera under my seat I locked the car behind me, pulling my jacket close to fend off the worst of the early autumn chill. There were a lot of cars on the road for this late on a weeknight, mostly heading over the nearby bridge that formed the border into my hometown of Greystone, Massachusetts. Nestled in a natural rocky bay roughly between Boston and Plymouth, the small city’s roots could be traced back as far as the late nineteenth century. As you moved further away from the coast the buildings became more modern, though whole blocks of the original double story houses still stood—their time worn red clay bricks a defining feature of the city.

  Funny, I never thought of myse
lf as that guy who lived his whole life without ever straying more than fifty miles from home. After Claire’s death I promised myself every year that one day I would leave this place in my wake, yet somehow every time I found myself seriously contemplating leaving, life found a way to suck me back to Greystone.

  Standing under the pale blue veranda looming over Natalie’s room I hesitated to knock. I had no idea how to approach this girl who I knew so much about, yet never actually met. I wanted to help her, but for all I knew she was running from the man who hired me. What reason would she possibly have to trust me? If I were her, would I trust me? Figuring it was best to stick with the truth I took a steadying breath, and knocked twice.

  “Who is it?” a timid female voice spoke through the door.

  “Good evening Miss White, my name is Benjamin Hadley,” I answered, hoping I sounded somewhat reassuring, “I’m an investigator your father hired to find you.”

  Upon learning my identity, her voice took on a hard edge, “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong person. Now go away.”

  Well, that went about as well as expected. I ran my tongue along the back of my teeth, a habit I had for years, and after taking a second to assess my position I abandoned all subtlety and skipped straight to a confrontational approach. “The way I see it, right now you only have two options. I could call your father and wait outside here until he shows, or you could let me in and we can talk first. Your choice.”

  I paced restlessly past the door, my feet dragging across the uneven concrete every time I swiveled around. Giving her time to think probably wasn’t the best idea, but just as I turned towards the door to knock again I heard a drawn out sigh, followed by the metallic clink of the door chain.

  I managed to pull a picture of Natalie from a website a week before she disappeared so I knew what she looked like, but when the door swung open and she peeked her head out I barely recognized her. The woman from the picture was sitting with her friends at a café, smiling and perfectly at ease, kind green eyes and long blond hair framing full, rosy cheeks. This frail, twitchy woman standing in the doorway was a grim shadow of the Natalie in the picture. She looked ten pounds lighter, skin pale and blemished, and from the dark circles set under her eyes it seemed like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

  Her eyebrow rose ever so slightly as she did her own assessment, and after checking either side of the doorway she gestured for me to come inside. “Come on then, quickly.”

  Natalie stepped aside just long enough for me to enter the small, neat single bed motel room before she hastily shut the door behind her and snapped the chain back in place. Every surface was covered with black and white squares, from the sheets to the oversized shower curtain I could see through the crack in the bathroom door. Less than ten seconds inside and I could feel a headache coming on.

  Natalie travelled light. Besides her purse on the nightstand and a small brown leather suit case half tucked under the bed there was nothing else around the room to indicate she was living here—which also meant I was right about tonight being my only chance to find her before she was on the run again.

  “Okay I’ll admit—you’re not what I expected,” Natalie said tentatively as I glanced around the room.

  “Oh? And what exactly did you expect?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged, throwing her hands on her hips. “Someone older I guess. Aren’t PI’s usually sketchy middle aged men?”

  “Sure,” I said, breaking into a half smile. I was good with sarcastic, maybe getting her to talk to me wouldn’t be difficult after all. “And they all have gruff names like Steele, struggle with drinking problems and speak like they just walked off the set of a seventies gangster movie.”

  “Point taken.” Natalie flopped down onto her bed and slid a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  I shrugged. “Your room.”

  “Thanks, I only started a few days ago and sometimes I forget to ask. So, what exactly do you want?”

  Good question. The second I saw her face I knew this wasn’t some form of rebellious acting out. Lying barely beneath the surface of her wary sarcasm was a frightened girl, just a year younger than Claire was before she was taken from me. It was at that moment it clicked why this job was so personal, and I felt a little selfish wanting to help her when a part of me knew I was only doing this because of old memories and cold promises still haunting me. Still, no matter what my motivations were I liked to think I was someone who cared enough to help. I wracked my brain trying to think of something, anything to get her to trust me. Remembering how much Natalie’s own words impacted me I took my phone out my pocket. Scrolling quickly through my media files I found her message to her father. Natalie stiffened at hearing her own brittle voice echoing through the small room, shutting her eyes tightly as the words faded away.

  “What I want,” I said, pausing to lean against the door frame. “Is to help.”

  Natalie straightened, crushing her half smoked cigarette into the empty astray on the nightstand as she shook her head in resignation. “You can’t help me.”

  “You don’t know that, and even if it’s true I’m pretty sure you could use someone to talk to. Even if I’m a stranger, hell maybe because I’m a stranger.”

  I don’t know whether it was my words or something else she saw in me, but Natalie nodded after a moment, more to herself than me. “Why not, can’t really get any lower than this. I’m sure by now you’ve spoken to Trent?”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “That psychopath is not my boyfriend,” she hissed. “Not anymore at least. Sure, he seems nice at first, sweet even, but you have no idea just how screwed up he is.”

  “Alright, it was an honest mistake.”

  “Sorry. You’re right.” She nodded. “Long story short I broke it off with him three months ago, after the second time he cheated on me. Well, Trent didn’t like that one bit. See, after giving him the boot I didn’t hear from him for a few days, so I thought he got the message. Then the phone calls started—sixty or seventy a night, always from payphones and always after midnight. It doesn’t sound bad, I know, but no one has any idea what it’s like to have your phone ring for four hours straight. I ignored them at first, turned off my phone and tried blocking the numbers but that only pissed him off more. So he enrolled to audit my classes. He never spoke to me in public, just watched me from the back of the class and tried calling me later.”

  Natalie looked out the window for a moment, taking a shallow breath before she continued. “When that didn’t work it was quiet again for a few days, and I hoped, prayed he had given up. That’s when things started to go missing from my car and apartment. It was little things at first. Books, jewelry—nothing I couldn’t deal with, but then one morning on my way to class I found my car’s tires slashed. He drew broken hearts on the windows with my lipstick. After that . . . well, I kinda snapped.”

  “To be fair it sounds like a pretty good reason to. Did you try and talk to the police?”

  “I tried. Didn’t do any good.” Natalie looked down at the floor, her jaw setting in a tight line. “They said if I couldn’t prove he did something wrong, then there was nothing they could do until things got worse—as if things weren’t bad enough already. I couldn’t sleep, barely ate, always watching over my shoulder for the creep. Nobody believed me.”

  “I believe you, and for what it’s worth I can empathize when it comes to cops and red tape. Trust me.”

  “Thanks, it’s kinda nice to hear someone say that.” She smiled weakly. “Even from a stranger.”

  I returned her smile, wishing I had more comfort to offer her. “There’s one thing I still don’t understand. I get trying to break away from him, but why keep your father out of the loop?”

  Natalie let out a short, bitter laugh. “Are you kidding? My dad loves Trent like the son he never had. I tried talking to him about it, telling him how scared I was and you know what he said to me? ‘Don’t worry about it ho
ney. I’m sure you kids will work this out’.”

  “That’s . . . troubling.” And I thought I had family issues.

  “I love my dad, but he’s a clueless idiot sometimes,” Natalie shook her head, and there was something fragile about the movement. “So I ran. Probably not the smartest idea in hindsight, but more than anything I just needed to get away. I’m not going to be one of those girls who waits around for her own funeral.”

  “No, considering your options it was probably a good idea to take some time away, get some perspective.”

  “Yeah, fat lot of good that’s done me. I don’t suppose I could just pay you to beat him to within an inch of his life for me? You look like you could.”

  “That’s not going to solve anything. Not with guys like him. Truth is there really isn’t much I can do to help you at this point, but I might know someone who can.” I sighed, smoothing the collar of my jacket before unlocking the door chain. “Give me ten minutes.”

  The last thing I wanted to do right now was call the police. I knew better than anyone how easily things got lost in the system, how stuffy all the politics were and how much simpler, and more effective, it would be to remedy the situation with an aluminum baseball bat. Sadly the simple fact was short of me breaking half a dozen laws to get the message through to Trent, the police were the only ones who could help Natalie right now—if they could even help. Okay, that sounded cynical even to me. I still believed in the system, even with all its flaws—I just didn’t want to be a part of it any more.

  As I dialed the number I couldn’t help noting the irony in all of this. I left the force because they wouldn’t let me pursue the course I thought was right, keeping me from helping the people I cared about. So I went my own way, and now here I was calling them because at the end of the day I rarely ever got the chance to make a real difference anymore.