Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(47)
“And those needle marks on my arms, like I was some kind of junkie.”
At the bottom of the hill, she almost thought she heard the barking of those dogs again. But there was some other sound, more muted and distant than her memory of the corn harvester, but—
She turned toward him, twisting in her seat belt.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What’s what? That sound? It’s just a train. Coal trains come through here real regular, you know that. Why? You look upset.”
“Scared. I feel scared, and it’s just a distant train. Sounds really stick with me, even when I can’t get any visual memories. One of the books Miss Etta gave me about childhood traumas said smells or sounds could trigger a buried memory. Gabe, I think I remember the sounds of a train, and there’s no tracks in earshot of my house here or where I live in Michigan. But I don’t think the sounds from a train carry to Dane’s place either.”
“I’m starting to think we need a field trip to Chillicothe,” he said as they turned out onto a paved road. “I need to talk to the vet who gave Dane the initial alibi, because I remember my dad saying she lived near a train track. I could ask her about vet drugs without quizzing Dane. And I’ve got something else to check on there too, looking into someone’s past who has a record of molesting little girls.”
“Someone who lives here now?”
“Yeah. Let’s just save that until later. I don’t want you to go to Dane’s with me, Tess, but let’s go see what Hillman has to say about that stuffed dog in the backseat. Just don’t wander off if you see any buried rooms with padlocks and new wood, okay? Hearing the train narrows down where you might have been held around here to about fifty square miles instead of a hundred. Something’s going to break these cases loose. I only hope it’s not too late for the other girls.”
15
Tess was relieved to see that John Hillman’s driveway and house were a far cry from the creepiness of Sam’s. Everything looked well kept and newly painted. The driveway was a short, straight one off State Route 104 to Chillicothe. A neatly lettered sign read Hillman’s Taxidermy and had a stag’s head on it. She wondered if Mr. Hillman would sell the new stag’s head or keep it. Thoughts of mounted stag heads with those liquid eyes and that rack of pointed antlers made her uncomfortable.
But where had she seen mounted stag heads? She couldn’t recall anything specific.
“When you said I wouldn’t like this place—that it was a house of horrors—I pictured it back in the woods like Sam Jeffers’s house,” she told Gabe.
“I didn’t mean horrors linked to you. I just meant you might not like what you see inside, depending on what he’s working on. Even though he hangs around with some of the backwoods boys, Hillman’s a modern businessman. He advertises in the Chillicothe Gazette, and this location on a busy road helps promote his services too. People are in and out of here all the time.”
Gabe took the mounted pit bull out of the backseat, got rid of the plastic bag, then held the dog under his arm as they went up to the side door with another Taxidermy sign hanging over it. He rang the bell. Tess jumped when the sound of it was not a chime but an animal’s roar.
“Black bear recording,” Gabe said as John Hillman, wearing a leather apron and goggles shoved up on his forehead, opened the door.
“Hey, Sheriff. And, Ann—oh, sorry, guess not,” he said, squinting at Tess. “Hey—I was wondering what happened to that pit bull!” He reached out and stroked the dog’s head. “Some jerk stole that right off my back porch when I had it out so the glue could dry. Glad you got it back for me. Come on in, both of you.”
“John, this is Tess Lockwood,” Gabe said, and made formal introductions, though the man seemed more interested in the mounted dog than her. “Someone left this in her backyard.”
“That right?” he said, leading them into a large workroom. “It belongs to Jonas Simons, Ann’s brother. It’s one of his favorite dogs, named Sikkem, died real sudden.”
“Sic ’em, huh?” Gabe said. “I don’t see a mark on his fur. I’ll bet you did a good job patching him up. One of his fighting dogs?”
“Fighting dogs?” Hillman echoed, looking overly dramatic, Tess thought. “Don’t know a thing about that. But why would someone leave it in your yard, Tess?” he said, turning to her and narrowing his eyes.
“That’s what we’d like to find out,” she said, keeping her attention on him rather than looking around as she had done at first.
This place smelled strange, sharp, like turpentine, and the heads of dead animals peered down from all four walls. A large vat behind Hillman was making strange sounds, and he had a big, bloody pelt stretched out on the worktable behind him. Worse, a collection of what must be glass eyes stared at her from a clear vase on the table. Around the room, plastic carvings of different animals were displayed in great detail—including veins and muscle ridges—with various stages of their own hides pinned to them.
She had not expected to see carvings that looked almost like works of art. Nor was John Hillman what she’d expected. He was slim with a closely clipped beard unlike his friend Sam Jeffers’s long one. He was younger than she’d expected too, maybe in his late thirties. Unlike Sam, he didn’t “talk country” but sounded educated with a touch of a Southern drawl. What a weird trio of friends Dane, Sam and John made. Was the foundation of their friendship animals, dead or alive?