Sticks and Stones Read online

  Outstanding praise for Michael Hiebert and Dream with Little Angels

  “Hiebert has an authentic Southern voice and his protagonist is as

  engaging as Harper Lee’s Scout. A masterful coming-of-age gem.”

  —Deborah Crombie

  “Gorgeous prose and some thoughtful characterizations, with

  attention given to theme and setting ... Michael Hiebert’s debut

  delivers ... a breathless, will-they-get-there-in-time affair, with a

  heartbreaking resolution. Hiebert’s skill at character and

  storytelling should take him a long way.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “A trip to the dark side of a town much like Mayberry, filled with

  that elusive quality of childhood and the aura of safety that often

  settles, unjustifiably, over rural small towns in the South.”

  —Carolyn Haines

  “Dream with Little Angels has engaging characters, a riveting plot

  and pacing that flips between languid and runaway train. It’s a

  marvelous portrait of small-town America, and families struggling

  to come to grips with a trying, terrifying series of ordeals.”

  —The Missourian

  “An atmospheric mystery.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Dream with Little Angels is quality storytelling sure

  to keep readers enthralled.”

  —Kane County Chronicles

  Books by Michael Hiebert

  DREAM WITH LITTLE ANGELS

  CLOSE TO THE BROKEN HEARTED

  A THORN AMONG THE LILIES

  STICKS AND STONES

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  STICKS and STONES

  MICHAEL HIEBERT

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Outstanding praise for Michael Hiebert and Dream with Little Angels

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Discussion Questions

  Copyright Page

  For Natalie . . .

  PROLOGUE

  Alvin, Alabama, 1974

  The Stickman.

  Harry Stork.

  A year and a half of Detective Joe Fowler’s life.

  Joe Fowler: one of the two main officers working the Alvin Police Department, and the only detective. The other cop is a tall, lanky man with a bad comb-over whose name is Strident. Officer Peter Strident. Strident has the eyes of an arctic wolf—that crisp morning sky blue—and when he looks at you, it feels like he sees right through you. Nobody interrogates a suspect like Strident.

  What Fowler lacks in his eyes, he makes up for in gumption.

  A year ago February, the first evidence that Harry Stork would eventually come onto Detective Fowler’s radar appeared when Stork’s first victim turned up beneath the tracks at Finley’s Crossing. A black male, mid-thirties, turned out to be one Waylon Ferris. Ferris’s body was found shirtless. His hands and feet hog-tied behind him, putting him in an almost reverse-fetal position. A thirty-eight-caliber bullet hole entering the back of the skull, a big exit hole in the front.

  Even more horrific, a wooden stave was hammered through Ferris’s chest, staking him into the ground. On a piece of paper affixed to the stave, a drawing of a stickman made in black permanent marker.

  Lack of blood and brain matter at the crime scene and evidence from the ligature marks on his wrists and ankles suggested Ferris was shot somewhere else, somewhere he had spent a day, maybe two, before his killer put the bullet through his brain.

  For the press release, Fowler held back the stake and the paper attached to it.

  Waylon Ferris was victim number one.

  A succession of killings followed, all inside of or circling the small town of Alvin, each with the same MO: shirtless victims inversely hog-tied with a .38 Special-caliber slug entering the back of the skull. Victims ranged in age from mid-twenties to early forties, mixed men and women, black and white. Each one staked to the ground with the picture of a stickman. Women stickmen had circles for breasts, hair rising to tips on either side of the head.

  Every killing brought more cops into the mix. Fowler created a task force and managed to continue holding back the staked paper with the stickmen from the press. Until the information leaked out after victim six. Someone on the task force talked. Someone obviously needed cash.

  Almost immediately, the killer was tagged the Stickman by the media. Fowler hated the name. Thought it trivialized everything, almost turning it into a game.

  The case was long and arduous. Too many victims. Too many pieces of paper with bloody stickmen.

  Nine in total, that is, if Fowler knows about all of them.

  Nine bodies, almost a year and a half away from his daughter—Leah—and his wife, Josephine. Because Fowler is like that. Even when he’s home, if he’s on a case, he’s still on the case. He lets them get to him. They pick away at his bones, eating him up until he solves them. They take their toll on his family, especially on his daughter, Leah. He worries about her and how she’s affected by his stress. It’s the part of the police game he hates most.

  Harry Stork.

  The Stickman.

  It took Fowler too long to figure out they were the same man. When he did, Stork disappeared.

  That was almost a month ago.

  But tonight, Fowler and four other officers surround an abandoned shotgun shack with Stork inside. He’ll be taken either alive or dead. It’s all up to him now, how he plays it.


  The dilapidated shack is set back in the woods, flanked by tall oaks, their boughs heavy with Spanish moss. Fowler’s positioned at the shack’s rear door. Fog and a light mist cover the ground, making the dense forest ghost-like. If not for the band of stars and the silvery gold of the moon overhead, Joe Fowler wouldn’t even be able to see his own hands.

  The rest of the officers are broken into two teams of two, waiting at the shack’s front for Fowler’s instructions. Team A will batter down the door, Team B will rush in and clear the front room. Team A will move on to clear the rest of the place.

  Joe Fowler is Team C, protecting the only other exit, other than a window. Stork won’t have time for windows.

  Pushing his fingers through his short, graying hair, Fowler feels sweat pop onto his forehead. He brings the blow horn to his lips. “Come out, Harry!” he yells into it. “You’re surrounded. Come out or we’re coming in! And if we come in, it could go bad.” He rubs his chin, feeling three days’ worth of stubble. He wonders if maybe Stork wants it to go bad, wants to go out in a blaze of glory.

  A fitting end to the Stickman? Maybe.

  From the windows, the occasional flashlight beam dances erratically into the night, the only indication Stork’s still alive. He silently moves from room to room.

  Fowler counts to five. Stork stays quiet. Stays inside.

  “All right,” Fowler says. He tosses the blow horn onto the loamy ground, lifts his walkie-talkie. “Team A, go! Team B, ready! Team C is ready!”

  Dropping into a crouch, Fowler pulls his weapon, readying himself in case Stork’s stupid enough to come out shooting.

  There’s a boom! as Fowler hears the front door go down. “Front clear!” Someone shouts.

  “He’s running!” Someone else.

  It all happens in a blur. The back door bursts open, and Harry Stork appears, silhouetted by the flashlights from the cops in the hall behind him. Fowler sees the gun in Stork’s hand, tightens his grip on his own weapon—a snub-nosed Colt Cobra revolver—and readjusts his crouch, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet.

  “Drop your weapon!” Fowler screams. “Drop your weapon or I will shoot!”

  Stork hesitates while his eyes adjust to the darkness. He must’ve dropped his flashlight in the scramble. He sweeps his gun blindly in front of him. Fowler sees the barrel tremble. “Don’t kill me!” Stork yells, panicked. “I was set up! I’m a fuckin’ patsy!”

  “Then drop it, Harry!” Fowler calls out. He notices a slight shake in his own hand. Arthritis. Doc gave him the news six months ago. He readjusts his grip and the shake goes away, replaced by a tingling pain shooting up his right arm. Fowler knows too well what it means: He’s getting too old for this game.

  He pushes the thought away, focuses on Stork. Everything becomes a tunnel around the man. Stork hasn’t dropped his weapon. “Drop your gun!” Fowler shouts again.

  But Stork doesn’t. Instead, no longer blinded by the night, Stork levels the barrel straight at Fowler. There’s little choice left. In that split second, Fowler reacts on instinct, pulling off a .38 Special round destined straight for Harry Stork’s heart.

  Fowler wanted to hit the man’s gun arm, but overcompensated, too afraid he might miss. Too afraid Stork wouldn’t. Fowler’s shot clips the edge of Stork’s lower left ventricle, the kind of shot there’s no coming back from.

  The gun barrel goes limp in Stork’s hand before falling and rattling on the broken wooden porch at Stork’s feet. Stork falls right behind it.

  And that’s how it happened the night the Stickman went down and Joe Fowler gave his life back to his wife, Josephine, and his daughter, Leah. The daughter who would one day follow in her pa’s footsteps.

  CHAPTER 1

  Fifteen Years Later

  Summer came to Alabama the way it always did, like a twister out of the east. The heat from the early morning sun pounded down on the red maple and black gum trees out along Cottonwood Lane. Officer Leah Teal drove by these trees every day on her way to work, but this was the first day she could remember in a long time it being so hot at only half past seven.

  Everything was alive in vivid colors. Alvin looked like a picture book filled with images of white clusters of berries bursting on the mayhaw, and yellow, green, and orange flowers popping out of the tulip trees, late bloomers. Even with her window rolled down, the air lay in the car like a dead animal, making the heat even more intolerable. As she came to her turn, the smell of sweet bay magnolias trying their best to bloom wafted inside. Drifts of cottonwood fluff fell like snow onto the brown hood of her Bonneville as she turned down the hill.

  As she drove, Leah hummed a tune, unsure of what it was. She was in good spirits lately—ever since Christmastime, really, because of a man she was rapidly falling for: a detective out of Birmingham whom she’d met on her last big case, a case that started with a psychic—of all things—and ended with a serial killer.

  Things were never dull for long around Alvin.

  The detective’s name was Dan Truitt and he was different from any man Leah had ever met. She hadn’t dated a lot of men in her life. In fact, Dan was the first in over a dozen years since her husband, Billy, died in an automobile accident.

  For too long she had let that accident spin her life out of her control. Now she felt like she was finally taking her life back. And Dan Truitt was helping her do it. No, more than that, he was making her want to do it. She was starting to admit to herself she was falling in love.

  Pulling her sedan to a stop at the curb outside the Alvin Police Station, Leah exited the vehicle and was immediately overwhelmed again by the melting, stagnant heat. Honeybees buzzed around the red buds on the sweetshrubs planted in front of the station’s windows.

  She picked up the Alvin Examiner from in front of the station door on her way inside. The station was locked, which meant she’d beaten Officer Chris Jackson to work. Officer Jackson was the only other cop at the Alvin Police Station apart from the chief, Ethan Montgomery. Jackson was also black, which caused quite a stir in this little community when he first came on the force, but that quickly faded. Now he was respected as much as Leah or Ethan.

  After putting on a pot of coffee, Leah took the newspaper she had tucked beneath her arm, pulled the elastic off it, and unrolled it.

  She read the front page and her happy demeanor immediately changed.

  The headline read: 15 Years Later, Stickman Strikes Again.

  The photograph beneath the headline could’ve been a lot more gruesome than it was. It was taken some distance from the crime scene, which left out a lot of the details described in the article. It didn’t matter; Leah knew immediately what the actual scene would’ve looked like. The victim, unnamed in the paper, would’ve been shirtless with her ankles and wrists bound together behind her back. Her body would be staked to the ground, through the chest, and attached to that stake would be a piece of paper with a stickwoman drawn on it. But that’s not what would’ve killed her. A gunshot wound to the back of the skull would’ve done that job. Leah didn’t have to see it all in a picture; she could imagine it pretty well. She’d lived it.

  Scanning the photo, Leah made out strangler fig and cypress trees. The dirt looked soft. She guessed the body was found near water. Indeed, the article confirmed it had turned up on the bank of Leeland Swamp, an area surrounded by forest just outside of the ranch lands in the northwestern corner of Alvin.

  And then the rest of the train caught up with her thoughts and she realized what this really meant. It made her breath catch and her heart tumble into her stomach.

  She had lived the case vicariously through her pa, Joe Fowler, fifteen years ago when he spent a year and a half hunting down a serial killer. But—

  Her pulse quickened.

  Heat rose to her face.

  This, all because there was one thing Leah knew with absolute dead fact: But . . . what I’m looking at, it’s . . . it’s impossible.

  Her pa killed Harry Stork, the
man who earned the nickname “Stickman” in papers from one side of Alabama to another. Shot him through the heart. The Birmingham News had called it “The Shot Heard ’Round the World.” It made the front page. Suddenly everyone knew about Alvin, a town with a population of just over six thousand people almost nobody in Alabama had ever heard of.

  She glanced up to the newspaper’s date, hoping for some bizarre reason to find the paperboy had accidentally delivered a paper from 1974, but today’s date stared back at her under the black script headlining the Alvin Examiner. She hadn’t really expected to see anything else.

  But how . . . ? The more she thought of it, the more impossible it was.

  The door opened and she jumped. It was Chris. He took one look at her sitting on the edge of her desk, paper in one hand, forgotten coffee mug steaming in the other, and closed the door quietly behind him. “How you doing?” he asked in his low-timbered voice. Chris spoke slowly, and with near on perfect enunciation. It made him sound as though he was a man who chose his words carefully and said them with reverence. “I see you got the coffee started.” He smiled, wiping his brow with his uniform sleeve. “Man, is it hot.”

  Leah said nothing back, and he realized she was reading the paper.

  “Oh,” he said, with a big sigh. His smile faded quickly as he plunked into his chair. “So you know.” He ran his dark fingers through his cropped black hair. Sweat, even at this early hour, popped over his hand. He looked like he wished he would’ve called in sick.

  Leah snapped the front page of the paper toward him. “This can’t be the Stickman,” she said. “The Stickman was Harry Stork and my pa killed Harry Stork fifteen years ago.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Chris said, “but he shows every sign of having come back to life.”

  Leah bit her lower lip. It couldn’t be Harry Stork. She remembered her pa on that case like it was yesterday. He would come home physically exhausted most nights, but mentally he stayed on the job twenty-four/seven. His brain never stopped trying to solve it. It took him near on a year and a half to finally do it, and, near the back side of it all, Leah and her ma both thought he would be needing intense therapy. It all tied up because of a lucky break, an anonymous tip called in to the station—although he would never use the word lucky. Leah could hear him in her mind. “No,” he’d say, “lucky would’ve been catching him ’fore anybody had to die. This ain’t luck, Leah, after all this time, this is God throwing down justice.” Back then, he had told her she was too young to understand, but one day it would all make sense.