Final Inning (PAVAD: FBI Cold Case #2)

Prologue

Hagan Lindhour—the most ignored and despised deputy to have ever existed with the Helery County, Oklahoma Sheriff’s Department—was the one who took the call. She was the one who drove out to the old ball fields four miles south of town, hoping it was a prank call. Kids had found something.

The woman who had called had sworn up and down it was blood.

Human.

And that something about that place was cursed by the darkest of demons, or something. That the entire ball field complex, consisting of four rundown fields that were more the worse for the wear than they should be, was haunted. Cursed.

People had died there before. Many of them. Maybe even thousands of them.

Thousands, in a town that had never had more than five hundred people living in it at one time. Hmmm.

Most definitely cursed, the woman had said.

Hagan wasn’t so certain she disagreed. Helery County…sometimes she’d swear there was real evil in this little county. She just couldn’t prove it.

Hagan wasn’t superstitious. She also seriously doubted it was blood.

And if it was, it probably wasn’t human—which the old woman was insisting it was.

Hagan had to consider the source of the report, after all.

The caller had a reputation. She’d lived at the old trailer park for more than forty years, she had told Hagan more than once.

The woman was a nuisance citizen. She regularly called in crank paranormal calls. Sometimes, once a week. Hagan was the only one who ever responded.

No one wanted to deal with Ruth, but a call about blood required a deputy’s response.

And the trailer park was in Hagan’s part of the county.

Buckbert—well, Hagan patrolled the tiny town exclusively.

She had a relief deputy on weekends, that she could sometimes call in if she needed backup. But that was all the help she had.

She worked the smallest county in Oklahoma. She was the only woman deputy to have ever been hired by the county—and that was under protest. The men she worked with barely tolerated her presence. They all made that clear every chance they could.

She understood exactly what her role was now. She was the token woman on the force. There for pretty photo ops, parade duty, running errands—and dealing with what Sheriff Ted Johnson didn’t want to mess with. That was it.

Hagan fought against their antiquated, ridiculous sexism every single day.

She strongly suspected the call she was on was just another one of that woman’s delusions—and she’d roped in a few kids from the trailer park in on it.

It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.

Hagan suspected Ruth was just lonely, and she called in oddball things so Hagan would visit with her on a regular basis.

There were a few shut-ins in the Buckbert area who had done similar things—until Hagan had made daily patrol stops at each of their houses a part of her routine.

Hagan pulled in by the main office, then took the last turn on the left—the River View Estates Trailer Park was in reasonably good shape.

A large real estate company had tried to buy it out a few years ago, but the residents had protested and fought back.

They kept it reasonably clean; drugs and domestic violence calls were much less frequent than people would have expected, and it wasn’t a half-bad trailer park.

At least not compared to the ones on the southern side of the county.

Those were…terrifying.

Hagan had spent far too many years living in one of those units to ever forget. Her next-door neighbor had been a registered sex offender when Hagan had been eleven. He was the best of the neighborhood. Talk about…bad memories. She’d barely left the trailer, back then.

She never answered a call out there without backup. Ever.

Now, she pulled into 9434 West Garden Way. It was an older single-wide, maybe fifty years old, brown and tan, but Ruth kept it clean.

There were a few things that made Hagan wince—like the old signs that Ruth had posted everywhere, proclaiming Ruth’s particular spiritual beliefs, complete with what Hagan thought was the eye of Osiris or something.

A concrete statue of three women in robes dominated, with a tacky bird fountain on top. The women were new.

Probably in response to Ruth’s neighbor’s latest signs of the cross, and what was left from his Easter display.

Bill Holmes took his faith very, very seriously.

Ruth Holmes took her pagan beliefs just as seriously.

It was war. Spiritual warfare, anyone who knew them knew that.

They were involved in a deep spiritual war that had lasted…decades. It was existential, even.

They had reports about these two going back longer than Hagan had even been alive.

Probably one reason they had divorced six months into their marriage forty-six years ago, as Ruth had told Hagan on more than one occasion. The man was just too damned delusional about what she called Dumbass Bill’s sky god, or something.

Bill called her an evil, soulless witch.

Hagan did not want to get in the middle ever again. She had learned her lesson with those two a long, long time ago.

Hagan was almost at the porch when the screen door swung open.

Ruth stood there, tall, thin, with salt and pepper hair that stood out in wild frizz and fell almost to her waist. There was a wild look in her strange blue eyes.

Something about it had Hagan’s skin crawling.

Ruth prided herself on being almost Zen in nature.

Letting nothing bother her, saying it was all part of some mystical plan.

Stars aligned, everything worked together, it was all fate, that kind of thing.

Trust the stars, or some trio of mythical Sisters named Nellana Ruth followed so religiously.

Hagan had never asked.

But now…she looked afraid. Terrified. And…she was actually shaking.

“Ruth? What’s happened?” Hagan had never seen her afraid before. She just hadn’t. Ruth was the brave type—she’d fight Hades if she had to, if she felt it was important enough.

“Blood and lots of it.” She was shaking, too.

The scent of heavy incense wafted from the trailer.

Hagan looked past her. There were two little boys there, one white, one Latino.

Maybe around the age of ten. Kingsley and Angelo, she thought their names were.

She’d seen them around, but…didn’t think she’d spoken to them before.

Ruth looked at the little boys, then stepped out of the trailer and onto the porch.

She pulled the door shut firmly behind her.

“Evil lurks, Deputy. Evil lurks here. Those boys…their souls…they are tainted now. For the rest of their lives. I am doing what I can, cleanse what I can. But until the soul of the dead is resting, the living…will remain disturbed. It’s happened before.

Nothing…the evil…until it is stopped the souls of the dead cannot rest. They can’t rest.”

Hagan shivered. Ruth…scared her sometimes, no denying that. The things she said—sometimes, Ruth could be a little too right. “Tell me…what happened.”

“I will have to show you. I will not speak the words aloud. For it would bring the curse down upon us all.” Ruth was still shaking, and the hand she’d wrapped around Hagan’s elbow was strong.

“You, Hagan Lindhour, have the purest of souls. I have seen that much before. I will ask the Nellana Sisters to have mercy upon your soul. For the times that come for you now—they will test you in more ways than you can imagine.”

Well, at least there was the Sisters’ help. Her soul could use all the help it could get at times.

Especially since she was living in Helery County.

Hagan just followed.

The trailer park was across the road and two hundred or so feet south of the old ball fields.

The fields were still used occasionally.

There was a rec league that rented the fields each year.

They usually had about one hundred kids involved total.

And sometimes, there were paid tournaments there.

The fields were used as overflow fields, just the way they had been when she’d been young enough to play.

She’d played fastpitch softball from the age of ten on.

Until she’d run away from home, ended up with a foster family, and then got offered scholarships to the local junior college. Softball had gotten her where she was today—but it still brought up complicated feelings when she remembered.

Softball was a thing of the past. She still didn’t even know if she missed it. It was far more complicated than that.

And it looked like the fields hadn’t really been updated in the nine years or so since she’d played her last game. If anything, they had gotten rougher.

Hagan hadn’t been out there at the ball fields but twice in the last three years. “What happened, Ruth?”

“Boys were out being boys. Just playing, now that it has warmed up a bit. Hitting the ball around, chasing each other. Roughhousing. I…keep an eye on them from my window. Their mommas work at the plastics factory in town, can’t afford no babysitter now that the boys are a bit older.

So I do my part. Boys live in side-by-side units.

Been friends since diapers. And they know…

if there is a problem to come here. I won’t lock them out, like someone across the road, who claims to be a good clean Christian and all.

I give them snacks, healthy kinds of things their mommas can’t afford to buy.

I’m just here if they need me, and all. And I’ll never forget the way they came running to me today. ”

Hagan just listened, as they walked toward the back of the ballpark.

Near field three. She studied it, remembering how it had felt to play right there.

Sometimes, her only real free moments had been had on these fields.

The only time she didn’t have to worry about whether she’d made her father angry, whether he was going to hit her again that night, was when she was on the ball field—making him look good.

Making him feel like the star.

But…life went on. And she had goals for her future now.

She tried to remember that. To just keep moving forward. Before Helery County destroyed her.

“Boys brought me here. To the blood. I…looked. Saw for myself. I will never forget. When you see that death, Hagan, you never forget. Then made them head back to my place. They don’t need to be brushed by the evil of this.

They have come close enough already. They’re just babies.

They didn’t need to see this. They just didn’t. ”

Ruth rounded the back of the old shed, that had been used for storage for decades. Hagan just followed.

But then she saw it, too.

The blood.

It was everywhere.

And it was coming from somewhere.

There was too much blood for it to be…minor. No.

There was nothing minor about this.

She swallowed. Forced herself to at least look professional from the outside. To be the one in charge now.

But then she saw…and she would never forget.