Deception Creek Read online

  Deception Creek

  A masked killer is stalking the small town of Oakridge. Known only as The Phantom, he strikes at night, attacking sleeping couples in their beds, raping and murdering with impunity. Despite the best efforts of the local deputy, he manages to elude capture, and finally former marshal Ed Burton is brought in to assist the investigation.

  Burton is an experienced lawman, having solved many murder cases before his retirement, but never before has he hunted a predator as dangerous as this one. Working closely with Deputy Maynard Blayloch, he becomes obsessed with his quarry, and soon they close in on a suspect. But nothing is what it seems, and suddenly Burton finds himself the target of The Phantom.

  Based upon a true story, Deception Creek is a tale of terror and justice in the Old West.

  By the same author

  The Drygulch Trail

  Quarter to Midnight

  Rimrock Renegade

  The Boot Hill Breed

  Deception Creek

  Ned Oaks

  ROBERT HALE

  © Ned Oaks 2016

  First published in Great Britain 2016

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2204-9

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.bhwesterns.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Ned Oaks to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  CHAPTER ONE

  The man in the burlap mask stood silently in the darkness for a couple of minutes, watching the sleeping couple in their bed. He had slipped into the house without waking either of them.

  There was a lantern turned down low on a table near the bedroom door. In the dim light he could see the shape of a man lying on his side on the far side of the bed. A woman lay beside him, her long coppery hair spread out on her pillow.

  They were sleeping deeply. The man in the mask’s heart was beating so rapidly that he worried they would hear it and wake up. He smirked slightly. It was a stupid thought. All of his senses were sharply attuned in preparation for what he was about to do.

  He picked up the lantern in his left hand and stepped toward the end of the bed. In his right hand he clutched a Colt .44 pistol. Suddenly he turned up the lantern to its full brightness, spilling light across the bedroom. Neither the man nor the woman awakened. Irritated, the masked stranger smashed the butt of his pistol into the sleeping man’s ankle, waking him immediately.

  The man yelled in pain, startling his wife awake. She screamed when she saw the intruder with the pistol.

  ‘Shut up!’ hissed the man in the mask. He thrust the gun forward, speaking through clenched teeth. Two holes had been cut out of the mask, revealing his pale blue eyes. Those eyes moved rapidly back and forth between the man and the woman in the bed, scanning for any signs of resistance.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ yelled the man in the bed.

  ‘I said shut up!’ snapped the stranger.

  He put the lantern back on the table and pulled a handful of pre-cut lengths of rope from his pocket. He tossed these on to the bed, then pointed the barrel of the gun at the woman, who by this time had tears streaking down her cheeks. She was struggling to sob quietly – she didn’t want to provoke him by making any more noise.

  ‘Tie him up!’ he commanded. His voice had a shrill quality to it, almost as if he were trying to disguise it. He seemed nearly as scared as the woman.

  She hesitated momentarily, her mind struggling to process the unfolding situation.

  ‘Do you want to die?’ the man in the mask screamed. He brought the gun down hard on her shin.

  ‘N-n-no,’ she said, taking the ropes in her hand. She turned to her husband, whose gaze was locked on the figure at the end of the bed. He turned and looked at the ropes. He seemed dumb with fear and confusion.

  ‘Do it!’ the stranger yelled.

  He fired a bullet into the wall a few inches above her head. She yelped. Her husband put his hands behind his back and she tied his wrists.

  ‘Tighter!’ the man barked.

  She tightened the knot as he watched.

  ‘Now his ankles!’

  She tied her husband’s ankles, making sure to pull the knot extra tight.

  ‘Turn around.’

  She did as she was ordered, putting her hands behind her back. He tied her quickly and expertly. He pulled the knots extremely tight, to the point where she winced. The knot he used was elaborate and unusual, but guaranteed not to come undone. He ignored her pain. When he finished tying her up to his satisfaction, he retied the knots on her husband, then dragged him off the edge of the bed on to the floor. He checked the knots again to make sure the man was completely immobilized before rising and abruptly leaving the room without another word.

  ‘Oh, God, Pete,’ the woman said quietly. Her name was Margaret Dexter. ‘What’s he going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pete Dexter said, despair in his voice.

  They heard footsteps coming toward them from down the hallway. The woman whimpered softly, fear a powerful force within her. She felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Only two or three minutes had elapsed since the man had awakened them, but it felt like a lifetime.

  The man in the mask came back into the room. In his hands he carried a small stack of plates and two porcelain cups. He walked to Pete Dexter and placed the dishes in two stacks on the prone man’s back.

  ‘You make any move and I’ll hear these dishes rattle,’ he said. ‘I hear these dishes rattle and you die.’ He jerked a thumb toward Margaret Dexter. ‘And she dies, too.’ He leaned forward and pressed the end of his gun barrel against the man’s temple. ‘I will kill you.’

  His voice was harsh and grating, and Pete Dexter had no doubt that he meant what he said.

  ‘I won’t move.’

  The man rose and pulled Margaret Dexter to her feet. He pushed her toward the hallway, and she had to hop ahead of him with her ankles bound. Pete heard them make their way to the living room, heard his wife’s muffled sobs, heard the man’s voice dispensing commands. He knew what was taking place in that room.

  Sweat poured down his forehead; his wrists and ankles had moved past the stage of throbbing pain toward numbness. He wondered whether the man in the mask would kill them, and concluded that he would. There was a palpable rage within the attacker, as if the Dexters themselves had violated him. Pete searched his mind but was unable to place the stranger. The mask and the strangely altered voice had succeeded in obscuring his identity, if indeed he was someone familiar to the Dexters.

  Pete heard fast approaching steps and suddenly the man in the mask was standing over him, his breathing heavy. His paranoid hands felt the knots, and then he was gone, once more striding rapidly to the living room.

  Margaret Dexter’s quiet pleas began again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ed Burton sat atop his horse, looking toward the mountains that ringed his new home. They were densely covered by tall, majestic fir trees, over which lay a thick, almost impenetrable layer of mist. The cold air had a bite to it, and he pulled up the collar of his sheepskin around his dark beard. There was moisture on the lenses of his glasses.

  He was on a trail not far from Oakridge, in the southern end of the Willamette Valley. After breakfast that morning, he had decided to ride into town and pick up some items at the mercantile. He had stopped to fasten the top two buttons on his coat, then became distracted by the forbidding beauty of the nearby mountains. He had been raised in this area but had spent several years as a town marshal on the other side of Orego
n. His return to the place where he had spent his childhood sometimes triggered uncharacteristic moods of nostalgia, as it did now. He thought about how many times he had gazed upon those hills when he was still just a kid. So many years later, they still had the power to move him.

  Burton was contemplating the misty peaks when he heard the rider coming toward him on the trail. He pulled the reins on his horse and turned around. He recognized the approaching horseman as Maynard Blayloch, the deputy sheriff in Oakridge. He smiled and nodded at Blayloch as the lawman pulled up near him.

  ‘Morning, Maynard,’ he said genially.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Burton,’ said the deputy, with more than a touch of deference.

  Blayloch was a clean-shaven man of average build, in his early thirties. He was well aware of Burton’s background in police work. Some of Burton’s cases had been covered in the newspapers, before he resigned his position in eastern Oregon and returned to Oakridge. The two men had even discussed a few of them. They were on friendly terms.

  There was an awkward silence.

  ‘What brings you out this way?’ asked Burton.

  ‘Well, we got a problem,’ said Blayloch. ‘I was wondering if you could spare a little time and advise me on something. I didn’t want to bother you, but the sheriff insisted I ask.’ He shifted in the saddle. ‘You ever remember hearing about the Phantom?’

  Burton frowned. ‘I do, yes. That was quite a few years ago, though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yep, it was. Five years since the last time he struck – until last night.’

  ‘I see,’ said Burton thoughtfully. The horrors of his last case as town marshal had led to his resignation and subsequent return to the land of his youth. He was wary of any further involvement in police work, as Maynard Blayloch knew. But his interest was piqued.

  ‘He attacked Pete and Margaret Dexter at their cabin sometime after midnight,’ Blayloch explained. ‘I’m heading over there to talk with them. I’d be much obliged if you would join me.’

  ‘I’d be glad to,’ said Burton.

  Burton and Blayloch rode into the Dexters’ yard about an hour later. The door to the cabin was open. They hitched their horses to the post by the front porch, climbed the steps, and entered the house, removing their hats as they did so.

  Margaret Dexter sat on the couch in the living room. She was wrapped in a blanket. Pete Dexter stood by the entrance to the hallway. Both seemed slightly stunned, as if they had experienced something they couldn’t quite accept or understand.

  ‘Morning, Margaret,’ said Blayloch. He nodded at her husband. ‘Pete.’ He gestured toward Ed Burton. ‘This is Mr Ed Burton. He used to be a town marshal over in—’

  Burton cleared his throat. ‘We’ve met before, Maynard.’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Blayloch, his face flushing. ‘Well, as I was saying, Pete, Mr Burton has lots more experience with this sort of thing than I do. I thought he might be able to help.’

  Pete Dexter merely nodded.

  ‘Can you tell us what happened?’ asked Burton.

  ‘It must’ve been after two in the morning,’ Dexter began. ‘We was asleep. Man in a mask woke us up. He had a gun on us both.’ He paused, and Burton and Blayloch waited patiently while he gathered his thoughts. ‘He had Margaret tie me up, and then he tied her. He tied us real tight.’ Dexter raised his wrists and displayed them for the two men. They bore angry-looking purple welts, and his hands were still discolored from the lack of circulation. ‘Margaret’s hands and feet are the same.’

  Burton glanced quickly toward her, but she had covered her entire body with the blanket, which was pulled all the way up to her neck.

  Maynard Blayloch reluctantly prodded Pete Dexter for more details.

  ‘What happened then, Pete?’

  ‘He put me on the floor. Got some dishes and put them on my back. Told me he’d kill us both if he heard them dishes rattle.’

  Burton and Blayloch exchanged glances. Burton remembered that the rapist known as the Phantom had often used this technique in his attacks from years ago.

  Dexter continued: ‘Then he took Margaret and . . . had his way with her.’ The profound trauma of the previous night was etched across his face. He looked up quickly when he heard Ed Burton’s voice.

  ‘Do you think you knew this feller?’ Burton asked.

  Dexter shook his head. ‘No. At least, not as I could tell. He had that mask on and his voice sounded odd. Only thing we could make out was his eyes. Real blue, they were.’

  ‘How’d he get in?’

  ‘Pried open a window in the kitchen. He must have been real quiet.’

  ‘Well, he’s done this before,’ observed Burton. ‘You ever heard of the Phantom?’

  Margaret Dexter raised her head, a startled expression crossing her face.

  ‘You think this was him?’ she asked anxiously.

  Maynard Blayloch, as the official law enforcement officer at the scene, spoke up. ‘Ma’am, it sounds an awful lot like him. We can’t say for sure, but it’s more than likely.’

  ‘He said he’d been watching us,’ the woman said. ‘That he’d been planning on doing this for a long time.’

  Pete Dexter suddenly hit the log wall hard with his fist. He turned and walked down the hallway.

  ‘Pete . . .’ his wife murmured, then covered her face with her hands. She cried quietly.

  ‘Ma’am, I hate to ask you more questions at a time like this, but I’ve only got a couple more. I’d like to get out of here and let you and Pete be alone.’

  She nodded, her face still covered by her hands. She breathed deeply, and after a moment she removed her hands. She had stopped crying.

  ‘Please ask your questions, Mr Blayloch,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Dexter. Now, when did he leave?’

  ‘A couple hours after he got here. He took his time. He even ate some food at the table while we were tied up. Then I heard the back door open and after a while I knew he was gone. It took me a long time, but I finally got the bindings loose on my wrists. After I got free, I untied Pete. He couldn’t even feel his hands or feet anymore.’

  ‘I guess it was right after that that Pete rode over to my place,’ suggested Blayloch. He lived not far from the Dexters, on a forty-acre spread.

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘My last question, ma’am,’ said Blayloch delicately. ‘Did he say anything else that you think might be useful for us in apprehending him?’

  Margaret took a moment to consider his question. Finally, she shrugged.

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Blayloch. He promised to kill us over and over again. He kept ranting. Eventually I realized he just wanted us to obey him, so I tried to do everything he asked.’ She blushed. ‘He was so angry I was sure we were going to die. I don’t know how we survived.’ Her eyes met Burton’s. ‘I’m sure he’ll kill someone, Mr Burton. Sooner or later, that’s what he’ll do. Maybe he didn’t have the guts to do it last night, but it will happen. I can just feel it.’ She fell silent, gazing absently at the floor.

  Burton realized that they were standing in the room where she had been violated. He felt a powerful urge to leave.

  ‘Well, Maynard,’ he said. ‘Probably best we be headin’ out.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes. Absolutely.’ Blayloch pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes and began backing toward the door. ‘Mrs Dexter, we thank you so much for your assistance. I’ll be getting to work on finding this sidewinder right away.’

  She smiled faintly in acknowledgement of Blayloch’s words. She was through talking for the moment. Burton said nothing. He followed Blayloch out of the door and closed it behind them. They untied their horses and began to walk across the yard, holding the animals by the reins.

  ‘What do you make of it, Mr Burton?’ asked Blayloch.

  Burton was pensive. ‘It’s got to be him,’ he said. ‘The Phantom.’

  ‘I think so, too.’

  ‘Wonder why he was out of action for so many years.’
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  ‘Could’ve been in jail.’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘Or maybe he moved somewhere, but now he’s moved back.’

  They stopped at the edge of the yard and mounted their horses, then started up the trail through the forest. Burton observed the overcast sky and knew there would soon be rain.

  ‘How many times did the Phantom attack?’ he asked.

  ‘Four times that we know of,’ said Blayloch. ‘I have always wondered if there were other attacks that no one ever told us about. Some people might have a real hard time telling the law about something like this.’

  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ Burton agreed. He liked the way Blayloch thought. Here was a man who took his job seriously, just as Burton always had.

  ‘He did the same thing back then that he did with Pete and Margaret Dexter,’ Blayloch said. ‘Breaking into people’s homes in the dead of night. He was always able to get in without being heard. He’d wake them up, hold a gun on them to make them do as they were told, and then tie them up.’

  ‘He did his little trick with the dishes, too.’

  ‘Yes. He did that in every case that I know of.’

  They emerged from the trees into a large forest pasture, hundreds of acres wide. They rode across the moist grass, watching the mist drift down from the hills into the valleys.

  ‘You could see how bad it was for Margaret,’ said Blayloch. ‘Pete’s going to torture himself. All the men who’ve encountered the Phantom have been changed permanently. They all think there was something more they could have done, or that their wives only think of them as half a man now.’

  Burton adjusted his spectacles. ‘Looking down the barrel of a gun changes the way a man looks at life,’ he noted. He spoke from experience. ‘It makes a man understand himself in a way he didn’t before. Sometimes that’s a painful understanding.’

  ‘I would imagine so,’ said Blayloch. He had never so much as been shot at in his six years of work as a deputy sheriff.