Dead Demon Walking

by Linda Welch

  We went along a short corridor, me slogging behind Royal. I felt worn down, not up to a meeting with the agents. And I still had to tell Royal about Rio Borrego.

  Royal opened the door with the keycard. I leaned on the doorframe and looked at a king-size bed with a maroon quilted cover, dark-oak bedside cabinets, a matching dresser with a wide-screen television on top, a brown faux-leather recliner, a small oak desk and chair. Lamps with cerise ginger jar bases and white shades sat on the cabinets either side the bed. The plum-colored carpet looked new.

  Then images crashed together in my mind. Janine. The Fenshams. Gwen Welch.

  Royal closed the door. “Come here.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you are not.”

  His arms brought me in. I luxuriated in his warmth as it pushed away the chill in my body. His hands stroked down my spine. I rubbed my face on his chest, tried to burrow into him, inhaled his scent, and sighed.

  I marveled at how well Royal knew me, when the face I put on for others hid the stress I felt inside. I’m not as stoical as I pretend. Seeing and talking to dead people can be a disturbing, draining experience.

  “There,” he soothed gruffly. “You can relax now, sweetheart.”

  I lifted my head and caught sight of the clock next the bed. “Yeah, for twenty-two minutes.”

  He snuffed through his nose, a kind a nasal chuckle. “You have the damndest knack for ruining the mood.”

  I pulled my head back to give him a wry smile. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He rested his chin on my hair. “I noticed Agent Gunn’s face had a rosy glow when you left the farmhouse.”

  I sighed. “I warned him not to touch me. He said he wouldn’t. When I saw what was in there, I guess I got lightheaded. He grabbed my shoulder.”

  “Oh, Tiff. . . .”

  “Don’t you ‘oh Tiff’ me! He went back on his word. I should have broke his nose.”

  The agents would be back soon and I had to tell him about Rio. I eased from his arms, took his hand and led him to the bathroom. He peaked his eyebrows and let me tow him along. Going to the sink, I turned on both sink faucets, then the shower. It works in movies.

  “Can you check to see if they had the room bugged?” I whispered, knowing his demon hearing would pick it up above the noise made by the water.

  He didn’t tease me about my phobia or point out the unlikelihood the Bureau arranged to have our room wired. He went through, listening and looking, and gave me an all-clear nod.

  When he heard when I had to say he would agree that now, more than any time during our association with the agents, keeping this from them was vital.

  I turned the water off and went back to the bedroom where I fell backward on the bed. The mattress jiggled a little; it felt good.

  I patted the coverlet. Royal sat on the edge of the mattress, leaning on one hand.

  “I saw Rio Borrego parked down the street from Janine’s house.”

  His spine went rigid and I knew what went through his head. I gave him time to think, because his conclusions, like mine, were daunting.

  At last he drew in air through his teeth, hissed it out in a short burst. “Then the Dark Cousins are involved.”

  “Yeah, what I thought.” I rolled on my side, propped my elbow on the pillow and let my chin settle in my palm. “Why would Dark Cousins be interested in a Gelpha murderer?”

  Swinging his legs up, he lay facing me. With his head down, he said, “Perhaps we’re wrong.”

  “Wrong?” I didn’t get it. Then he lifted his head and steadily looked me in the eye, saying nothing.

  Shit.

  “What did he look like?” he asked, eyes not leaving mine.

  “How I imagine Gelpha would look if I didn’t see you as you really are.” A Gelpha who did not sparkle because I saw him through the eyes of the victims, not mine.

  “I thought your shades recognize us for what we are.”

  “When they are shades, yes.” I swallowed. “After they’re dead. But they’re still alive when they see their killer, the last few seconds before they die, and at that moment. . . .”

  He looked like an exotic human being, which is how Dark Cousins appear to me. I saw the killer as they did, his speed, and assumed. . . . How could I have been so dense?

  I went cold as I digested the possibility the murderer could be a Dark Cousin.

  Is that why Rio Borrego scoped out Janine Hulme’s house?

  Royal slid one arm beneath my shoulders and drew me close so I huddled on his chest. Despite his delicious demon warmth, his arms holding me so tenderly, I couldn’t relax.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Royal slid off the bed and answered the knock on the door. Agent Vanderkamp stood outside.

  We followed him down the hall to a small conference room. Four long tables with white tablecloths and chairs to seat forty, a huge screen on a small stage. Naturally, we couldn’t have a cozy chat in our room, it had to be the nearest thing to an interrogation room they could find.

  Gunn waited inside. He held out a small brown sack. I took it and peeked in. Deodorant for man and woman, two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. I dropped the sack on the table. “Not my brand.”

  Gunn folded his arms. “You’ll cope.”

  Vanderkamp pulled out a chair and gestured to the facing chairs. “Let’s talk.”

  “Yes, let’s,” I said with a singular lack of enthusiasm. Royal and I sat across from him. Gunn remained on his feet.

  I turned the Celtic Knot in my fingers, liking the feel of the smooth, cool, connecting silver loops.

  Vanderkamp put his elbows on the table and threaded his fingers together. “What did the victims, ah, tell you?”

  The idea I talked to dead people made him uncomfortable.

  “Mrs. Welsh saw a tall man in his mid-twenties, long black hair, dark complexion, and dark eyes with a moderate epicanthic fold.” She didn’t mention that about his eyes, but I saw them as he spun to face me. “He had a square face and broad cheekbones. She thought he was South American, possible Guatemalan.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. She saw him, she’s dead.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Looking at papers, maybe from the desk, but she couldn’t corroborate that.”

  “Did she see the murder weapon?”

  Sure she did. But I couldn’t tell the agents, because with all their expertise, no agency in the world would go anywhere near the idea a man could tear people apart with his bare hands.

  “I told you what she saw.”

  “Can you prove any of this?” he shot at me.

  Okay, that was it. I’d had enough of his antagonism. I wasn’t angry, I was weary. “You brought me into this. You really didn’t give me a choice. But you question everything I say, you want me to prove I’m not lying. I don’t have to, not to you, not to your damned Bureau. I’m out of here. Get yourself another psychic.” I shoved my chair back and got up.

  Royal stood next to me. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  “Sit down,” Gunn said. “Your involvement in this investigation goes deeper than an ability to talk to the dead.”

  Royal’s arm pressed against mine. “Is she a suspect?”

  “She is a person of interest,” Vanderkamp said.

  Suspect. Person of interest. Same thing. Both mean law enforcement suspects you, but does not have enough to pin anything on you. I felt slightly nauseous. They must know my history with Janine. It was the only explanation.

  I could tell them why I went to see Janine. I came across Elizabeth Hulme’s diary, it intrigued me and I decided to have a stab at tracing her ancestors. But why I didn’t tell the agents - what reason could I give? They would say I withheld information.

  “Why take Tiff to the crime scenes? When the FBI want to know something, they go the direct route, they haul you in and question you,” Royal said.

  Gunn sat next to Vanderkamp. “We assess a person of interest. Garr
ett decided to hire you, take you to Arkansas and observe your reactions. However, we didn’t expect this.”

  He lifted a TV remote and clicked.

  The screen on the dais came to life. And there I stood, in the Fensham’s den, talking to thin air.

  ”Ahem. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if it’s okay with you.”

  On the screen, I stood in the doorway, unmoving as I stared into the den.

  “I can see and hear you Mr. Fensham.”

  A longer pause.

  “Force of habit?”

  Gunn clicked the remote.

  I watched myself walk into Janine’s house, the camera angles altering as I moved along the hall and into the great room. I stood there a second.

  “Janine?” I whispered.

  A silence of a few seconds, then, “Hello, Janine.”

  “Both, Janine.”

  “I’ve done it for years.”

  I sat. Royal stood behind me.

  I gripped the sides of the seat. “It was an act. Not wanting me to go in the Fensham home on my own, busting in on me in Janine Hulme’s house. So I wouldn’t suspect you bugged their homes.”

  Vanderkamp smiled smugly. “Role playing was one of the things we learned in FBI Agent School.”

  “The Bureau recognizes that those with a psychic talent, specifically mediums, have provided law enforcement with valuable information. However, we had not personally encountered it before, so I hope you’ll forgive John’s cynicism,” from Gunn.

  Vanderkamp’s mouth twisted wryly. “We operate on facts, Miss Banks. Although I saw it with my own eyes, my training insists there should be a logical explanation.”

  “Therefore, before we begin, let’s settle this question of credibility once and for all,” Gunn said as he looked at Vanderkamp. “Miss Banks, how did Mrs. Welsh die?”

  I sat with my back stiff, hands clasped on the table. Gunn gave me a nod I interpreted as “go ahead.”

  I swallowed to clear my throat. “She was slit open down her back, half her vertebrae gone.”

  Gunn’s expression was apologetic, as if countering his partner’s skepticism pained him. “As I told you, John, she didn’t inspect the bodies. She didn’t enter the room. She stayed on the stairs.”

  Vanderkamp had lost a little of his ruddy color. His tone became brisk and businesslike. “Let’s get down to business, shall we? Miss Hulme died a few days short of a month ago. The second murder happened a day later in El Paso. Then nothing for a week, but three more - four now - since then. There is a connection.”

  He gave me a piercing look. “Hulme.”

  Dramatic pause.

  “The third slaying, in Arkansas, Daphne Fensham was Janine Hulme’s stepsister.”

  As that sank in, my ire rose as scalding heat on my neck and face. I can get potty-mouthed when I’m truly angry, and I was livid. “Way to go, fuckwad. You told Janine her sister is dead.”

  Ignoring my outburst, Vanderkamp addressed Royal. “First, Janine Hulme. Third, the Fensham family. Fourth, Jordan and Celia Thompson nee Hulme. Fifth, Constantina Hulme and her son. And now, David and Gwen Welsh, who just moved to their new home, formerly owned by Vernon and Marianne Hulme.”

  I chuffed through my mouth. “So what happened here? The killer got hold of an outdated telephone directory?”

  Vanderkamp straightened his tie. “It could be as simple as that.”

  Royal’s hands closed on my shoulders “What about the second family?”

  “They did not bear the name Hulme, or were related even distantly to a Hulme, nor did they live in a home vacated by Hulmes.”

  I picked at a minuscule thread in the linen tablecloth. “I guess that messes up your theory then.”

  “Yet that incident led us to you, Miss Banks,” Vanderkamp said with a stretch of the lips which could not be called a smile.

  Here it comes. But if the victims of the second slaying had absolutely no connection to Janine, what had any of it to do with me?

  He scrutinized my face as he spoke. He didn’t even blink. “Austin, Texas. The Blackwells. Family of three: mother, father and daughter. The daughter, Maureen Owen, was visiting, taking a break after a messy divorce. The parents were slaughtered, but Maureen untouched. Unfortunately she couldn’t cope with what she saw. She refused to speak, had to be force-fed and her health deteriorated while in the local hospital. Her aunt and uncle had her moved to an intensive care facility.” He leaned in. “When she finally spoke, she said the same thing over and again. ‘Daughter, now you are free.’”

  Gunn took over. “The facility allowed her to make two calls a week to her aunt and uncle, calls she never made, was incapable of making. We approached you because she regained some lucidity last week. She even made two phone calls, but not to her aunt and uncle. She chose to call you instead. Can you explain how you know each other, why she asked for your help?”

  If that was supposed to blow me away, it did. Hell. The phone calls. But I relaxed a modicum - nothing to do with my first meeting with Janine, they didn’t know about that after all. That saved me from a whole mess of explanations I didn’t want to give.

  “I don’t know her. I did get two calls from a woman. She asked for help, then hung up. Must have been her. I tried to trace the call, but no luck.”

  “Calls from the facility are monitored and the ward nurse disconnected the moment she realized what Maureen was up to.”

  I got edgy again. “What did Maureen tell you? Why did she call?”

  “We didn’t talk to her. She hung herself last week.”

  The icing in the cake. No wonder the Bureau came after me. Multiple murders, and a survivor calls me for help, then commits suicide.

  My brain performed acrobatics. Janine, Janine’s sister, other Hulmes, people who lived where Hulmes had, and victims with no apparent connection to the other slayings.

  Why didn’t he kill Maureen?

  I almost missed Vanderkamp’s next bombshell. “What would you say if I told you our forensic pathologist thinks the murder weapon has the same attributes as the human hand?”

  Uh oh.

  Talking to FBI agents can be tricky when you know more than you want to admit. Believe it or not, my natural inclination is not to lie, and lying by omission does not sit well with me either, but I have found it necessary before and no doubt will again. I tried to sound shocked. “Surely that’s impossible!”

  “We think it’s an animal, possibly an ape. An adult orangutan is seven times stronger than the average human male; it can crush a golf ball in its hand. A full-grown Silverback gorilla is twenty times stronger than a man,” Gunn said.

  An ape, huh. Whew. Not a six-eight human male with the strength to tear people to pieces.

  I rubbed my index finger back and forth over my lower lip. “An ape or apelike creature.”

  Three pairs of eyes zeroed in on me.

  “Yeti?”

  Royal dipped his head, no doubt to hide a grin.

  “Amusing, Miss Banks,” Gunn said dryly.

  I have a fondness for the Yeti legend. I don’t believe a person can morph into a vampire or werewolf or some such, but Yeti don’t fall into that class of fantasy. They could well be entities which have survived in isolation over the centuries. I know Gelpha and Dark Cousins exist, why not Yeti? But, yeah, I was yanking their chain.

  Royal cleared his throat. “Then your shades saw whomever is controlling the creature,” he said to me with a perfectly straight face.

  “You’d think we’d find the animal’s spoor, or tracks from a vehicle with the weight to transport something that size, but nothing. This guy is good,” Gunn said.

  “No doubt of that,” Vanderkamp allowed. “So we could be looking for someone who has a grudge with the Hulme family. The question is, are they killing randomly as they find a family member, or trying to locate a specific individual?”

  “The description you gave us is a start.” Gunn laid the remote on the table. “This man will stand out i
n a crowd. He appeared to be searching for something in the homes so we’ll look into that.”

  I could hardly believe my ears. “You’re going to circulate the description given me by a ghost?”

  “Sometimes even the Federal Bureau of Investigation clutches at straws.” Vanderkamp hunched over the table. “In the meantime, we still don’t know why Maureen Owen called you, of all people.”

  I leaned back, slitting my eyes at him, and told him the truth. “No idea.”

  ***

  We went through everything over and again until my head reeled. I didn’t get to sleep for a long time; neither did Royal.

  Why did Maureen call me? Was she in danger and sought a private detective? But why would a woman in Texas seek the help of an investigator in Utah? Did she know of my uncanny skills? Did she need my skills? Why?

  Did she know the killer was nonhuman?

  I think I passed out somewhere around two in the morning. I woke to Royal jiggling my foot. “Cut that out!” I mumbled into the pillow.

  He jiggled it again. I rolled on my back, grinning at the dark room. “Jesus! It’s the middle of the night. You are insatiable.”

  “I am?” he said groggily in my ear.

  I shot up, flicked on the bedside lamp and saw a man standing at the bottom of the bed.

  During a long frozen moment, as I tried to get my mind around what was happening, I wondered why Royal still lay in bed, why he didn’t have his hands around the guy’s throat.

  Then my sleep-fogged brain recognized Rio Borrego, an attractive young Latino, his shining black hair in a thick braid, a black vest open over his smooth bare chest. The last time I saw him, a battered, broken body in a chipped porcelain bathtub, I thought I would see him again as a shade. In the dim light I noticed thin, pale scars on his chest and arms, the only evidence of the broken bones and rib which punctured his dusky skin.

  Something behind Rio stirred.

  She emerged from the deepest shadows at the back of the room. I saw her face first, floating as if disembodied, pale as a freshwater pearl. Her lips were crimson, her dark eyes rimmed by sooty lashes. Her hair blended with the darkness, except where it framed her face and fell on her bare shoulders.