by J-F. Dubeau
“Stay here,” Dr. Hazelwood said while getting up. “I’ll get you something warm to drink while you think of what you want to talk about next.”
As the doctor left, Venus silently agreed that the temperature was getting a little out of hand. At this point, Venus was convinced she was going to walk out of the station with a cold. The teenage girl’s skin was covered in gooseflesh, and her nose was beginning to run. In fact, she was about to follow Dr. Hazelwood out, thank her for her help, and run out into the warm sun, when a voice stopped her, cutting their appointment short.
“Here . . .”
The words were like icicles breaking in the wind just at the edge of her hearing. Alone in the room, Venus was startled by the voice and turned toward the source of it, but there was nothing. Just the desk, covered in file folders, and that notepad with the stupid grocery list.
And Dr. Hazelwood’s purse.
For no reason that she could understand, Venus became convinced that the voice had come from the purse. In fact, the belief was so clear that before she gave it a second thought, her hands were pulling something out of the bag. A familiar plush bear. The same one she’d seen her uncle take from Audrey’s grave.
“What are you doing?”
Dr. Hazelwood stood in the doorway, holding a pair of steaming coffee cups. She was shaking with outrage.
“Where did you find this?” Venus asked.
“That’s none of your business! What were you doing in my purse?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Hazelwood,” Venus said. “I don’t know what came over me, but where did you get this bear? Did my uncle give it to you?”
Still boiling with anger, Dr. Hazelwood closed the door with her foot and set the cups down on her desk. She went to retrieve the toy from Venus’s hands, but the girl pulled it away.
“Did he?” she insisted.
“No. I found it.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you. Why would you think Randy gave this to me?”
Venus considered her next words very carefully. She’d come to see the doctor for help, for an outside perspective. She wasn’t prepared for the decision she was about to make. One that might have a dire impact on her uncle.
“Because I . . . saw him take it from Audrey’s grave. After her funeral. Where did you find it?”
The doctor seemed to lose her footing for a moment. She sat down, holding a finger up, silently asking for a moment to compose herself.
“We have to talk to Inspector Crowley,” she finally said.
“Why?”
“I found it at a murder scene. Gabrielle LaForest’s murder scene.”
CROWLEY
“SIT.”
Crowley wasn’t in the best mood. His ex-wife had once described that as “marginally tolerant.” It was meant as a joke at the time, but the years since the divorce had made it more real.
The last two weeks should have been a victory lap for the inspector. With Sam Finnegan behind bars, he should have been in a position to finally relax. Instead he’d been caught in a wild-goose chase trying to find a supernatural entity that was supposedly hiding here in Saint-Ferdinand. The inspector had spent many nights trying to connect the Craftsmen, the god, and Finnegan, but with no tangible results. He’d tried interviewing Sam again, but this resulted in nothing but further frustration.
When they found a second body, that of Brad Ludwig, Stephen thought they’d have another trail to follow. Instead he wound up with another dead end and wasted days keeping the Ludwigs placated and away from the media.
He was working too hard and was keeping those he used to trust at arm’s length.
One of those people was Randy McKenzie. The inspector and medical examiner had been a good team for a long while. A smalltown Holmes and Watson. Neither tackled a crime scene without the other.
But today Randy had come to Crowley’s office not as a friend or coworker, but as a potential suspect. It was an awkward situation. Years of chasing a monstrous killer together, and now one of them suspected the other was a homicidal maniac.
Randy did as instructed and took a seat. Crowley stared at him with his pale blue eyes, frowning, measuring the potential ways to handle his colleague.
“Randy. Help me out here . . . ,” began the inspector. “Tell me why I shouldn’t put you in the cell right next to Finnegan.”
“What?” Randy’s eyes bulged in disbelief. “How about because you know exactly who—what—killed Gabrielle!”
“Maybe,” said Crowley, rubbing the back of his neck. “But maybe I don’t. Not one hundred percent. I’m pretty sure it’s not you, but I can’t ignore what the rest of the town, the rest of the office, and the flood of reporters waiting at the gates are going to make of this. And there’s always a chance that you’re taking advantage of the situation for your own ends. I can’t ignore that.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Stephen?” Randy’s surprise was slowly turning into anger. “I don’t have any ‘ends’ that would require me to kill someone and decorate the forest with her entrails.”
“You don’t?” Crowley sat on his desk and picked up a file. “I know for a fact that you dug up a little girl’s grave to mutilate the corpse. So explain to me how different that is from killing someone in”—he flipped through a few pages and read—“‘an obviously ritualistic fashion,’ as your friend Erica calls it.”
“You bastard. I saved Audrey from a fate worse than death, and you’re going to feed me to the dogs as a scapegoat?”
“Listen, Randy, we knew it might come to this. You and I weren’t going to end up on the same side. I just happen to have prepared better for it.”
“Careful what you’re about to say, Stephen. You think I don’t have a few tricks up my sleeve too?”
Crowley plucked a fresh photo off his corkboard. Like so many others, it featured a specific symbol. The eye with a spiral iris.
“Your friends are back in town. Cicero, Katrina, and all those other idiots.” He handed the photo to McKenzie. It showed a crudely designed poster for Cicero’s Circus, which had been stapled to a telephone pole. “If you’ve got any leftover tricks, I’d use them to help me find the god. Otherwise, you might as well get used to the idea of spending the next little while in jail.”
Randy shot up from his chair, his finger pointed dangerously close to Crowley’s face. The inspector looked at him with disdain, his brow furrowed as if he smelled something foul.
“Don’t you dare do this, Stephen. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“What are you going to do?” The threat had fallen flat before the might of Stephen Crowley’s self-confidence. “Summon up some ghosts? Raise an army of zombies?”
“It doesn’t work that way. But if you hang me for this, you’ll be in more trouble than you can handle.”
There was a spark of worry in the inspector’s eyes as he stood and slowly paced the office. He knew Randy couldn’t just call on the undead to do his bidding. That kind of magic took sacrifice. What he didn’t know was the actual extent of the medical examiner’s occult knowledge and power. Still, Stephen wasn’t the kind of man to back down when threatened.
“Listen, Randy, it’s not like I want to do this, but you’ve said it yourself: Finnegan was right under our noses the whole time. I’m not willing to take that kind of chance again. Until we’ve found the . . . our ‘friend,’ I want you where I can keep an eye on you.” The inspector gave his colleague a hard, penetrating look. “Unless you already know where it is?”
“I don’t. You can’t hold me, Stephen. You have no grounds. Any accusation you level against me would put you in the spotlight too. I’ll be out of here in one phone call.”
“Wrong. I’ve got a couple of people pointing the finger at you. Tell me where the god is, and we can work together to finish all this.”
“Wait,” Randy asked. “Who’s pointing fingers?” His tone had the edge of a man with nearly two decades of dealing with the dead, fo
r science and for the occult.
“You don’t want to know, Randy. Give me the god, and I’ll let you go and make sure no one knows about this. Just tell me where it is.”
“You might as well tell me, Stephen,” the medical examiner said, his tone sharp with anger. “I don’t know anything about any god.”
Crowley stopped his pacing and gave a final, appraising glance at the medical examiner, who at that particular moment looked every bit the necromancer. Eyes sunken, lips pulled back in a snarl. What would he do with the information given to him? Would he lash out, seek revenge? This wasn’t the best time to pour oil onto the fire. Then again, maybe knowing would break him down just enough to make him harmless.
“All right, but I warned you,” said Crowley. “Erica came to me with some evidence . . . that she got from your niece.”
For the second time since walking into the office, Randy McKenzie couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Erica and Venus were two of his favorite people in the world. He knew Venus had suspicions about him, but he never thought they would go so deep that she would take action against him. And Erica, she had seen what was left of Gabrielle’s body. How could she think him capable of such an atrocity? He could feel tears welling in his eyes. Through the watery haze, he could have sworn he saw a moment of regret on Crowley’s face.
DANIEL
DAN WAS ALREADY running late when he stepped out of the house. Events from the previous week continued to leave him unfocused and thrown off of his normal schedule. As he walked to the car, he could see the front lawn needed cutting, weeds had begun to sprout between the cracks of the driveway, and nothing had been done yet about cleaning the flower beds. If his father weren’t already preoccupied, there surely would have been loud reprimands.
These were petty concerns compared to the things that had been weighing on the teenager’s mind, but right now he had to push all that aside to concentrate on making it to his summer job on time. He only had to sign some papers, but it wouldn’t look good to be late. His manager, Luke, wouldn’t care too much, but word would get back to Daniel’s father. Stephen Crowley might forgive and forget some neglected yard work, but it was best not to add more reasons for a conflict. Especially since Luke was doing him a favor by employing Dan in the first place.
So when the teenager saw the car parked behind his white Civic, a flare of characteristic Crowley rage sparked inside of him.
“Get that thing out of my driveway!” he yelled a split second before realizing whose vehicle it was.
It was an old Dodge Caravan. Wine red. As clean as a new car but with the bumps and scratches of a vehicle that had seen years of heavy use. Daniel had been in that minivan many times since he was a child, riding to and from swim classes and soccer practice. More recently, he’d ridden inside it whenever his own car was too small for him and his friends.
If that minivan could talk, it would get him in trouble.
Dan knew upon seeing it that he was in for a different kind of trouble. The vehicle belonged to Sasha’s mother. Reflexively, he touched the phone in his pocket. There were at least a dozen unanswered voice mail messages from Sasha stored on the device and twice as many text messages.
“We need to talk.”
And there she was. Standing next to the van, peeling off a pair of sunglasses from her face, dark eyebrows twisted into a frown. On the very rare occasions when she was angry, Sasha looked strange. It wasn’t a natural disposition for her. Her mouth would tighten and go slack, as if she wasn’t sure what to do with her lips. Her sunny demeanor was one of the qualities that Daniel enjoyed most about her. Right now, however, there was no trace of that oasis of tranquility.
“Yeah, huh . . . about that,” Dan said. His eyes darted between Sasha and her van, worried about whether he would make his appointment. “Can it . . . wait?”
Sasha came within a foot of him and stopped, unsure what to do next. It looked like one moment she might strike him, and another jump into his arms. She seemed relieved and infuriated by his presence, but mostly puzzled.
“What? No! Daniel, I thought you were fucking dead!”
“Oh, come on, I just missed a few phone calls . . . “
“A few phone calls? You never miss people’s phone calls, least of all mine! Now you disappear for a week, and what? I’m supposed to shrug that off? Do you even realize where you live?”
He did. Saint-Ferdinand. Home of the Saint-Ferdinand Killer. A monster with a reign of terror stretching back almost two decades. A murderer with a body count that might end up rivaling that of Andrei Chikatilo, the infamous Butcher of Rostov. Here, more than anywhere, a teenager, especially one as straightlaced as Daniel, did not ignore phone calls from his parents or friends. Here, the boogeyman was real.
“Okay. You’re right,” he conceded, his hands held up in surrender. “I should have at least—”
“Dead, Daniel! I thought you had been killed! You think I don’t know what’s going on? That everything happening here is so damn well hidden? I read the news. I know what to look for. Your dad doesn’t have that tight a lid on things!”
“Whoa there. What do you mean?”
“That woman who died in the forest? Now that boy who’s gone missing yesterday? I thought your dad had caught the killer?”
Boy? Dan hadn’t heard anything about a missing boy. Granted, his focus had been on other things, but his father always told him about any new cases he was handling. Crowley would be furious to know that the news had leaked out to the media. Then again, Saint-Ferdinand had brought the spotlight on itself when the local serial killer was finally apprehended. It was only a matter of days before it became national news. With all this attention building up, the presence of a copycat killer, or worse, proof that they’d caught the wrong man, would send the story into a media frenzy.
“I . . . I didn’t know anyone else was missing. Do you know who it was?”
“No. Just a note about a missing boy suspected of being a runaway, and that his parents wanted to remain anonymous for some reason. Which is how I know your dad’s involved; who wouldn’t want to broadcast their kid’s face all over the news if he were missing?”
They’ve found his body, then, thought Daniel. That was his father’s style: keep the media one step behind. Wait until something else popped up before releasing anything new. By the time the grisly details were made available, it was old news and journalists had moved on to juicier things. Daniel had never questioned his father’s methods. Until now.
“Look, Sasha, I need you to move the minivan.”
“What?” Her eyes expressed shock, but her voice was full of anger. “No! Screw that. I drove all the way here; the least you’re going to do is give me an explanation for why you’ve been ghosting me for a week!”
“I don’t have time. I have to go meet with my boss. If I want to have a job, that is.”
“First give me an explanation. And it better be a good one, or so help me, I will slash your tires.”
“I’m not cheating on you if—”
“I never said you were, Daniel.”
“God dammit! Fine!” Again, the Crowley temper welled up inside him, but he managed to rein it back in. Rubbing the back of his neck, a nervous habit he’d picked up from his dad, and looking down at the grass, he took a deep breath. “Look. It has nothing to do with you, but it’s complicated and, frankly, it wouldn’t hurt if I had someone to talk to about it. Just . . . let me go meet my boss and as soon as I’m done, I’ll meet you at Daisy’s Diner and tell you everything. Okay? Sasha? Does that work?”
When he looked up, she was staring at him dead in the eyes. Her pupils burned with frustration. There was no question that her patience had been stretched well beyond what should have been its breaking point. Every romantic gesture, every favor he’d done for her, any good faith he might have accumulated in the three years they’d been together, was spent. Not knowing what else to do, he stepped forward to take her into his arms.
“Don’t
touch me,” she said, taking a step back. She pulled out her keys and walked toward the minivan, never breaking eye contact. Even as she pulled out of the driveway and onto the road, she kept staring at Daniel’s defeated face, distinctly seeing him mouth the words I love you.
SASHA
OF COURSE, she had every intention of hearing his side of the story. No sane girl would throw away a guy like Daniel Crowley before getting some sort of explanation. Knowing him like she did, there was every chance that his behavior was somehow justified. As she calmed down, turning up the air conditioning to help her cool off, she thought about what could be so terrible that he believed he needed to hide it from her. Once she heard his story, would she still be angry, or would she be comforting him through some kind of crisis? As she played with the various scenarios in her mind, she came very close to her own crisis.
“Oh shit!” she screamed, yanking hard on the wheel while crushing the brake pedal with her foot. Once the minivan skidded to a stop, she rolled down her passenger window. At first, all she could see was a cloud of dirt and acrid blue smoke from the burned tires.
Then a man walked through the haze until he was almost leaning against her window. His well-pressed black suit seemed to repel the filth floating around it. He appeared unfazed by his near-death experience.
“Hey there,” he said with a cold smile. “You okay?”
“I . . . I’m fine. I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you.”
“That’s okay.” The man tilted his head by a degree. “My name’s Chris Hagen. Say, you wouldn’t be driving to the village, would you?”