Paradox Lake

  ALSO BY VINCENT ZANDRI

  The Girl Who Wasn’t There

  The Remains

  The Ashes

  The Scream Catcher

  When Shadows Come

  Everything Burns

  Orchard Grove

  The Detonator

  The Caretaker’s Wife

  Deadly Is the Night

  The Chase Baker Action Adventure Series

  The Sam Savage Air Marshal Action Adventure Series

  The Dick Moonlight PI Series

  The Jack “Keeper” Marconi PI Series

  The Steve Jobz PI Series

  For more books, novellas, nonfiction titles, short stories and more, go to www.vinzandri.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Vincent Zandri

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-60809-418-9

  Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing

  Sarasota, Florida

  www.oceanviewpub.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  “She did not know that the wolf was a wicked sort of animal, and she was not afraid of him.”

  —LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

  “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

  —STEPHEN KING

  PROLOGUE

  THE STOCKY MAN drops to his knees before the prison chaplain.

  “Do you believe in the Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, Theodore?” Father Sean O’Connor asks. “Do you repent all your sins? Do you seek Christ’s forgiveness for what you did to that little girl all those years ago?”

  The short, stocky, bald man brings his hands together like he’s about to pray. He might be focusing his blue eyes up at the concrete ceiling, but it’s more like he’s gazing upon heaven itself.

  What big eyes you have.

  The better to see you with.

  What big hands you have.

  The better to grab you with.

  What big teeth you have.

  The better to eat you with.

  Theodore smiles.

  “You know how sorry I am, Father,” he says, in his high-pitched voice. “I was just a boy then. A confused little boy. I’ve paid for my sins and I believe the good Lord above has forgiven me. Those people on the TV news, they called me the Wolf because of the things I did to Sarah Anne Moore. But I’m not the Wolf anymore. I’m just a man who is sorry for his sins. I’m ready to begin again and live in the likeness of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.”

  “Are you truly ready to become a healthy, productive member of society, Theodore? A respected man?”

  “Just said I was, Father,” Theodore says. “The parole board believes it too. I’m ready to leave this place.”

  “It’s a different world out there now, Theodore,” O’Connor goes on. “It’s not like it was back in 1986. You might not recognize what you see. It might frighten you.”

  “The Lord will protect me, Father.”

  “I believe he will, Theodore, so long as you follow the straight and narrow.”

  The light from the newly risen sun shines into the prison chapel through the stained-glass windows. The red, yellow, and blue beam reflects off the concrete floor. It washes over Theodore “The Wolf” Peasley’s body, making it appear as if he’s glowing in the grace of God.

  Maybe he’s right, O’Connor thinks. Maybe this man has paid for his sins these past thirty-three years. Maybe he is ready to be free.

  Theodore turns to the chaplain, looks up into his eyes.

  “Will you pray with me, Father?”

  “Yes, my son,” the priest says while gently lowering himself to his knees.

  Both men make the sign of the cross and begin to recite the Lord’s Prayer. When they are finished, they both make the sign of the cross once more, and slowly stand. The chaplain glances into the small mirror mounted to the concrete block wall above the tabernacle. He locks onto his own tired eyes.

  But then he finds himself looking into the reflection of Theodore’s face. It’s a round face, covered in salt and pepper scruff. His nose is long and slightly crooked, like it’s been broken more than once. He can’t help but make out the tattoo on the right-hand side of the middle-aged man’s tree-trunk thick neck. It’s a wolf, its jaws opened wide, like it’s about to bury its fangs into something or someone. Just as Theodore did back in 1986, when he raped and murdered the twelve-year-old Sarah Anne Moore on the shoreline of Paradox Lake. A girl he bit more than one hundred times before tossing her body into the cold water.

  The chaplain’s folded hands are trembling. He thinks, Are we doing the right thing? The compassionate thing? Is Theodore truly ready to be released into civilization? Is the Wolf truly ready to be released back into the wild?

  The chaplain finds himself staring into the Wolf’s eyes and he swears he sees the whites turning red, not like the devil has just entered into his body and soul. More like the devil never left. Or perhaps it’s just the effect of the sunlight shining through the stained glass, and the way it reflects against Theodore’s eyes.

  Just then, a knock on the door.

  “Yes,” Father O’Connor says. “What is it?”

  The guard sergeant opens the door, sticks his head in.

  “We’re ready to go, Father,” he says.

  The chaplain nods, places his hand on the Wolf’s thick, tight shoulder.

  “The time has come, my son,” he says, in a voice that sounds like God himself.

  The Wolf turns to the chaplain he has known since he was first incarcerated inside the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane back in late 1986. He gazes into the chaplain’s eyes, and he smiles a mouthful of crooked, gray, sharp teeth. Big teeth.

  All the better to eat you with …

  “Thank you for all your help, Father,” the Wolf says. “You’ve been like a dad to me.”

  Gradually leaning into the chaplain, the Wolf kisses him on the cheek. It’s a tender, loving kiss. The kiss of a son to his father. Until the kiss becomes something else when Theodore runs his long, pale tongue up and down O’Connor’s scruffy cheek … does it quickly, like a snake. It’s enough to cause a frigid chill to shoot up the chaplain’s backbone.

  “Be seeing you, Father,” the Wolf says as he slowly makes his way to the guard sergeant and, for the first time in thirty-three years, his freedom. “Maybe someday we can grab a bite to eat together.”

  As the Wolf disappears back into the bowels of the old concrete prison, Father O’Connor feels a painful pit growing in his gut. His brow breaks out in beads of cold sweat.

  “You will kill again, Theodore,” he whispers to himself. “Like a rabid wolf, you will kill again. That much God and I can be sure of.”

  BOOK I

  THE CALM

  CHAPTER 1

  Two Years Later

  “YOU’RE LEAVING, JUST like that. Don’t I get a say in the matter?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Tony,” I say as I strap the last of the bags to the roof of my red Mini Cooper. “We’re only going for the semester so I can finally get some sculpting done in peace.”

  “Oh, now that hurts,” my boyfriend of more than a half dozen years says, while pulling hi
s hip flask from the top pocket on his worn bush jacket.

  The jacket is one of the things he wears night and day so that, in his overly dramatic mind at least, people recognize him as a world-famous novelist and adventuring freelance journalist—“Hemingway wore a bush jacket,” he often points out. So what if most months he can barely make the rent? It’s the image that counts. But mostly I think the bush jacket just makes him look silly. He steals a quick sip from the flask.

  “I can write from anywhere,” he says. “Why don’t I come with?”

  I turn to him and gently place my hand on his shoulder.

  “Because this is a chance for Anna and me to get to know one another better,” I say, turning to my daughter who is presently seated on the Mini’s rear bumper staring at her iPhone and sulking. “Isn’t that right, Anna?”

  I can’t really see the tall, thin, dark-haired girl since I’m standing next to my boyfriend at the front of the car. But I know damn well she’s rolling her eyes and saying something nasty about me in a text to her friends, now that I’m making her spend the semester with me up at Paradox Lake. Or what she lovingly refers to as “the jungle.”

  “Tone can go in my place, Mother,” she says, pronouncing mother like mu-ther. “I’m good with that. I can spend the semester at Nicole’s house, and I won’t have to be homeschooled like the short bus kids.”

  Tony steals another sip from his hip flask and smiles.

  “She’s got a point, Rose,” he says. “What do you know about homeschooling? It’s been like a half century since you attended the eighth grade.”

  I grab hold of his hip flask and steal a sip of his Irish whiskey. It burns going down, but it tastes so damn good. Handing him back the flask, I look him up and down. I guess it would be wrong to say I’m not going to miss him. He might wear that infernal jacket everywhere but he also looks kind of hot for a middle-aged guy in his tight Levis, brown cowboy boots, and denim work shirt, unbuttoned enough that his bench-press-carved pecs are more than visible.

  I guess you can say that I’m more or less the middle-aged female version of him. Meaning I, too, love my Levis. I also love my cowboy boots. Instead of a bush jacket, however, I prefer t-shirts, like the red one I have on right now that’s advertising my favorite hot chili sauce, Sriracha. Listen, I’m a sculptor and the clay gets everywhere. So jeans and t-shirts work for me. As for the rest of me, well, I’ve got the height just like my daughter, and her dark hair, but at my age, unless I dye it every few months, it would be as gray as Tony’s mood is right now.

  He returns the flask to his chest pocket.

  “What about I come up this weekend, Rose?” he says. He forces a smile when he says it, like that’s going to somehow change my mind.

  “We already talked about visits,” I say, coming around the front of the Mini to the driver’s-side door. “Give us a little time to get acclimated to the place. Then, we’ll talk about visits.”

  Okay, now Tony looks like he’s about to break out in tears. I hate to hurt him like this, but even though I love him, lately that love has been getting, well, for lack of a better term, old.

  “Well that sucks,” he moans.

  Taking him into my arms, I hug him tightly.

  “Come on, honey,” I say. “Turn that frown upside down and look on the bright side.”

  “What bright side?” he asks.

  “Yeah, what bright side?” Anna chimes in.

  “Put a sock in it, you,” I say over my shoulder. Then, turning back to Tony, “Just think of the freedom you’ll have now, Tone. You can belly up to the bar whenever you want. Eat what you want without my bitching about your high blood pressure. You can come and go as you please.” Leaning into him, and whispering in his ear. “Enjoy it now, because if we were ever to get married, it’s ball and chain time, honey.”

  “Ball and chain,” he says. He’s got his smile back.

  “That’s Mom all right,” Anna says. “The ball and chain, forcing me to live in the jungle.”

  I offer Tony a peck on the lips, and for a brief, but what’s becoming a rarer and rarer sweet moment, we hold one another tight. I feel his scruff on my face, and for the first time since I arranged for this sabbatical, I’m beginning to realize I am going to miss him. But just how much remains to be seen. In any case, the things one must do for one’s art.

  We separate and already I’m feeling that much freer. I plant a smile on my face.

  “Let’s go, Anna,” I say, opening the car door and slipping inside. “Our adventure in the great green north awaits.”

  “Great green jungle,” Anna says, her sarcasm as palpable as the hot sun.

  “Wait just a minute,” Tony says.

  As my daughter goes to the passenger-side door, he takes her in his arms and kisses her cheek. Even after all these years, she is a little hesitant when my old boyfriend shows her some affection. It surprises me, because she never knew her father, he having died by suicide months before she was born, and less than a full year after we lost our first child, Allison, to leukemia. Tony came into my life when Anna was still just a toddler and he is the only man she has ever known in terms of a father figure.

  He releases her.

  “Now, Anna,” he says, “you have my cell phone number. You need me for anything, don’t hesitate to call or text or both. You got it?”

  “Yes, T,” she says, opening the door. “You da man.”

  “And don’t forget it, little lady.”

  She throws herself in the passenger seat and immediately crosses her arms angrily over her chest.

  “I hate it when he calls me that,” she says. “Little lady. I’m like a foot taller than him.”

  Out the corner of my eye, I can see her tight, ticked-off face. What’s the word for it? Her bitch-face. Hey, she’s my daughter. It’s my job to call her out on it.

  Starting the car, I throw the tranny in reverse.

  “Say goodbye to Albany for a few months, honey.”

  “Just drive already, Rosie,” Anna says. “The jungle awaits.”

  Tapping the gas, I back out of the drive.

  “Are we having fun yet?” I say.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE WOLF SWEEPS the floor of Paradox Lake’s Ferguson General Store. The store’s owner, a salt-and-pepper-bearded man named Tim, is the only business owner who would hire him when he returned to his hometown after more than thirty years locked up in a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane. That kind of thing does not look good on a resume. Neither does the fact that the law required him to register as a sex offender. His minimum wage paying job might be a crappy one, but he’s lucky to have it.

  The short, stocky man stocks the shelves, cleans the toilets, and sweeps the aisles. He keeps to himself, avoiding eye contact with customers, some of whom are repulsed at his presence. Since life in the present tense no longer exists for him, he lives mostly in the past, inside himself with his memories. All too often, something will trigger his memory into reliving that hot, sunny day back in August of 1986. In this case, it’s a rare edition of Little Red Riding Hood that his boss is selling on the book rack not far from the checkout counter. The book is so rare, it’s stored in a one-gallon plastic freezer bag.

  He stares at the colorful cover and its illustration of the Big Bad Wolf hovering over Little Red Riding Hood who is carrying a wicker basket on her arm. He focuses on the wolf, at his black fur, massive claws, dark round eyes, and big teeth. He sees himself in the Big Bad Wolf. When he looks at Little Red Riding Hood, he sees Sarah Anne Moore.

  But right now, right this very moment, he sees himself back in August of 1986. He’s following Sarah along the trail in the woods. The trail leads to the lake. The twelve-year-old Sarah likes to swim there in the hot afternoons. Her mother doesn’t mind that she goes alone. She’s twelve now. She’s old enough to look after herself. She’s old enough to watch out for strangers. She’s not a little girl anymore. She’s become a young woman in every sense of the word. The Wolf
smells her scent.

  What big eyes you have.

  The better to see you.

  What a big nose you have.

  The better to smell you.

  What big teeth you have.

  The better to eat you.

  Sarah walks, whistling a song by Madonna. “Like a Virgin”. The Wolf laughs on the inside. He can already taste his virgin.

  “Something wrong, Ed?” Tim says from behind the counter, his bearded face stern, his blue eyes wide. “That broom isn’t gonna sweep the floor on its own.”

  The Wolf shakes his head.

  “No, boss,” he says. “Sorry, boss.”

  “Some boxes need to be unpacked in the back,” Tim says. “Get to it.”

  “Yes, boss,” the Wolf says, about-facing and heading towards the back of the store.

  In his head, he sees Sarah alive again—his Little Red Riding Hood. He sees her undressing before plunging her naked body into the lake. What would become of the Wolf, if not for his precious memories?

  CHAPTER 3

  WE DRIVE FOR an hour in tortuous silence. Correction, it’s not entirely a tortuous silence since it’s so gorgeous up here and the smell of the pine-covered mountains fills the car. Anna has been doing her best to ignore me by burying her face in her iPhone, her thumbs going a mile a second while she texts her friends. I can only imagine what she’s texting them. Probably something like, OMG my mom has kidnapped me. Oh the pleasantries of parenthood.

  But something happens once we pass Lake George and head deeper into the Adirondack Park.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Anna barks. “I don’t have a connection.”

  Here it comes …

  “Internet and phone service is a little spotty up here, honey,” I say. “It comes and goes.”

  I steal a glance at her. She’s gazing at me wide-eyed and panicked.

  “What am I going to do with myself ?” she begs.

  Glancing at her once more, I don’t see the impatient, blue-jean-wearing, red t-shirted—The Doors, not that she’s got a clue about Jim Morrison—long-black-haired preteen she’s become. I still see the sweet little kindergartner, dressed in her little pink dress, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and white Mary Janes on her feet. I recall hitting up the Red Robin at least once per week for her cheese and macaroni fix. I recall hours and hours spent on the couch under a thick comforter, watching Nickelodeon reruns and eating bowls of buttered popcorn.