April’s hand clamped down like a vise on Jessie’s wrist. I didn’t answer Tucker at first. I had to genuinely think about it.
“Give them back,” I said.
“That’s it?” He looked over the camera at me, eyebrows raised. “Seriously? That’s all you have to say?”
“It’s what we’re here for.”
“Okay,” he said. “The Bogeyman is back, and he’s taken two victims already. Do you think he’ll go for six, like last time?”
“Five. There were five victims last time, and no, we have no reason to believe this is the same perpetrator, or if there’s any connection at all to the so-called Bogeyman kidnappings in the ’80s. There is absolutely no evidence connecting the two cases.”
“There were six,” he replied.
Jessie took a step forward. April tugged her wrist, hard.
“What do you know?” Jessie said.
He turned the camera off.
“Small town,” he told me. “Lot of history. Lot of dirty secrets, too. I might have something you can use, but I don’t give anything away for free. You’ve gotta throw me some red meat. Off the record, off camera. Just give me something I can go on.”
“Withholding evidence is a crime,” Cody said.
Barry stuck his thumbs in his belt and puffed out his chest. “Damn right. How about I run you in right now, and let you cool your heels in a cell for a few hours while you decide whether or not you wanna cooperate?”
Tucker held up one finger. “Correction, legal beagles. Never said I had evidence, I said I might have something you can use. That something was provided to me by a legally protected, confidential source. So go ahead. Bust me if you feel like a lawsuit and months of bad press. Or you can play ball, and we can all be winners here.”
“You will never be a winner,” Jessie muttered.
“Off the record?” I said.
He showed me the camera from all sides, proving it was turned off, though he didn’t let it out of his grip. That didn’t mean anything: I’d have been amazed if he didn’t have at least one backup tape recorder running in his hip pocket. His promise of confidentiality? That meant even less than nothing.
Still, maybe it didn’t have to.
The Bogeyman wouldn’t be logging on to the World Wide Web to check out his press clippings. Thanks to Earl Gresham, though, we knew something else: the Bogeyman had a human master. Somebody sadistic enough to conjure the Bogeyman wouldn’t be satisfied with just doing the deed. They’d want to read all about it, to vicariously enjoy their victims’ suffering.
There was a very good chance that whatever I told Tucker would go straight to our quarry’s ears. Had to be a way we could make that work to our advantage.
Sometimes you want to use the media to make a criminal angry. Get them good and pissed in the hopes they’ll make a stupid mistake the next time they strike and leave evidence behind. Ever see a “profiler” go on TV and announce that a suspect is probably impotent, wets the bed, and has mommy issues? Textbook play. Dangerous, though, and you have to know whom you’re hunting, how they’re likely to react. Did we? Not nearly well enough.
Another good bit of media spin is to suck it up and play Keystone Kop. Make yourself look clueless to keep your quarry cool and confident. The safer they feel, the more likely they’ll get careless and trip up.
“One second,” I told him. I walked over to April and leaned in. “You’re the expert. How would you play this?”
“Whether or not he’s the original summoner,” she murmured, “he’s working on a timetable. If we frighten him, he’s liable to step it up.”
“So we play it dumb. Still, I want whatever this guy has. If we don’t tell him anything interesting, we can kiss that lead good-bye.”
“Sometimes it’s not a matter of pretending you don’t know anything,” April said, her gaze enigmatic. “Sometimes it’s better to pretend you know the wrong thing.”
She had a point, but then there was the risk that anything I made up might accidentally be true—again, spooking our target and possibly derailing the entire investigation. I thought back to the conversation we’d had with Bill and Shelly Morris.
I snapped my fingers. “Jessie. Helen Gunderson’s house didn’t have an alarm system, right?”
“You kidding me? The front door could barely stay shut.”
I walked back over to Tucker and gave him a careful smile, glancing back over my shoulder. Partners in crime. I led him out of earshot, to the far side of the lawn.
“Okay,” I said, “but this is hot. Red-hot. If you connect me to it, I’ll deny everything.”
He rubbed his greedy palm against his camera. “All right, that’s more like it! Quid pro quo’s the way to go. Whatcha got for me?”
“Both houses had a full alarm system. Top of the line, from Polymath Security. Doors, windows, the works.”
Tucker whistled. “That’s hard-core security. How’d the Bogeyman get in?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? The alarms were totally undisturbed. You know what that means, right?”
His eyes gleamed. “Inside man.”
“Exactly. Either the kidnapper works for Polymath, or he’s paid someone to give him the alarm codes. We’re on our way to the local office right now, to interview all the employees. If we’re lucky, we’ll have a suspect in custody by nightfall. On that note, do me a favor: sit on this until tonight, all right? Don’t want to spook this guy into running.”
Tucker held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor. Okay, you did me right, so I’ll do you right. I was digging around in the archives, over at the town hall. Did you know there used to be a local paper, up until the early ’90s? The Talbot Eagle. Dinky little rag, but it covered all the local gossip.”
“Every major news source we’ve seen said that five children were taken. The Eagle said different?”
“Sure, sure it did,” he said. “Until they ran a retraction, the very next day, saying the child was safe and sound and the abduction never happened. Now, where would they have gotten the story in the first place? Kinda curious, considering the kid was from the richest family in town.”
He slipped me a scrap of paper. Volume and issue number, date and column. I recognized the date right away, with a lurching sickness in my stomach. It happened two days before the monster came to my house.
“Go look it up,” he said. “See for yourself. Way I read it, there’s only two possibilities: either somebody made up a bogus story for no reason at all . . . or the Bogeyman gave a kid back.”
EIGHTEEN
Tucker hit the road. I watched him leave, then walked back to the group in the driveway.
“What’d he say?” Barry asked me, looking nervous.
Or maybe I just imagined he looked nervous. Still, a nasty suspicion crept into my brain and carved out a little place to live.
“Nothing, he was full of crap,” I said. “Look, we’ve got some leads to follow up on. I’ll call you at the station later and catch you up, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” He gave me a brief, tight hug. I didn’t say another word until his cruiser was rumbling down the driveway, turning onto the main road. Cody stuck around, lingering at the edge of the driveway, looking like he had something to say.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked him.
He moved a little closer. I could smell his cologne, a musk that made me think of open fields after a fresh rain.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” he said, nodding back over his shoulder. “Tucker thinks he’s a local celebrity. Local asshole’s more like it.”
I looked into his eyes. Longer than I needed to, but I was having a little trouble pulling away.
“It’s fine. Goes with the territory.”
He smiled and shook his head, his eyes lighting up. “True enough. So where are you off to now?”
I almost told him about Tucker’s clue. Almost. I thought I could trust him. I wanted to trust him. But keeping him at arm�
�s length was safer for both of us.
“Not sure yet,” I said. “We have a few leads. Nothing major yet.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding but not sounding so sure. “Hey, I was gonna ask. I mean, tonight, if you have some free time . . . ”
He trailed off. I tilted my head. “What?”
He looked over at April and Jessie, then shook his head. “Nah, it was nothing. I’d better get back to work before Barry starts squawking at me. Give me a call if you need anything, okay? Anything at all.”
His hand brushed against mine as he turned to go. Just a fleeting, warm touch. I smiled and waved as he jumped into his cruiser and pulled away from the curb. Then I took a deep breath and walked over to April and Jessie.
“We’ve got a problem,” I said through clenched teeth, still waving. Cody waved back and gave us a thumbs-up from his open window. “And Barry’s in the thick of it. Bag up that wicker ball and let’s get out of here.”
“Barry?” Jessie asked. “Why? What’s up?”
I relayed Tucker’s story. “Barry was my father’s chief deputy, and he took over as sheriff after he died. He was on top of the Bogeyman investigation from day one. He would have known about that newspaper article. Maybe even investigated it himself.”
“And yet,” April mused, “he never mentioned it to you. It is entirely possible that the article was a genuine mistake.”
“Lots of things are possible. Until we check it out for ourselves, though, we don’t trust anyone but ourselves.”
Jessie snorted and unlocked the car. “Hell, that’s standard operating procedure. So what about Cody?”
What about Cody? I’d been thinking about that. No, not really. I’d been thinking about him. Just him in general. His confident smile, the curve of his shoulder. That split-second touch of his hand. This was strange territory, and I didn’t have a map.
“He’s trustworthy,” I said, “but no telling what he might slip to Barry by mistake. Let’s keep our distance until we sort this out.”
“That’s all?” Jessie asked.
“Hmm?”
“That’s your entire assessment of the deputy?”
“Yes,” I said, “that’s my entire assessment.”
Jessie wriggled back against her seat and got comfortable. “Mmm-hmm. Whatever you say.”
In the car, April leaned forward in the backseat and tapped my shoulder.
“Out of curiosity, why did you spin that particular story for our intrepid ‘journalist’? About the security system, I mean.”
“I couldn’t risk a claim that might be true. Like, what if I said, ‘Both mothers had the same hairdresser,’ and it turned out the perp was their hairdresser? Serious long shot, but we’d be sunk. Whatever I told Tucker had to be believable—to him and to the Bogeyman’s summoner—but unquestionably false.”
“Which is why you asked me about the security system at Helen’s place,” Jessie said.
“The summoner leaves his tokens outside the houses he’s targeting. As far as we know, he’s never been inside. He wouldn’t know that Helen Gunderson didn’t have a security system—so if he reads Tucker’s ‘big scoop,’ he’s going to assume we’re going off in the wrong direction and feel safe.”
“And criminals who feel safe quickly become overconfident,” April said. “Nicely done. Drop me off at the motel, would you? I need to update Kevin and see how his research is coming. Where are you two headed next? Records archive?”
“Food first?” Jessie asked, looking my way. “Seriously, I’m famished.”
I hadn’t even thought about eating—I get that way when I’m working—but now that she mentioned it, my stomach started growling, too.
“Sure,” I said, “and I know just the place.”
Norma’s All-Day Café squatted on the edge of Stag Head Road, a four-lane highway that buzzed with eighteen-wheelers and tanker trucks on the way to bigger towns than this one. Norma’s didn’t look like much—just a long tin-roofed shack with dirty white walls and a gravel parking lot—but the number of trucks parked out front said good things about the quality of the food.
“You think this Fontaine guy is gonna be here?” Jessie asked as we got out of the car.
I shrugged. “Not likely, but we know he was going to meet the Gresham brothers here, and the Gresham brothers haven’t shown up. He’s bound to want to know why.”
Spotting him, that was the hard part. From what I understood, most demons in our world arrive as hijackers: they aren’t capable of creating their own bodies from soul stuff, so they jump inside any brain they can overpower. I know how to handle creatures like that. I can drive out a possessing entity, bottle it up, or send it screaming back to hell . . . but finding one, especially when it doesn’t want to be found and it’s masquerading as a human, that’s another thing entirely.
Earl Gresham had told us that Fontaine liked the smell of Norma’s pancakes. As we walked through the front door and onto a long rubber welcome mat, bells jingling behind us, I understood what he meant. I could taste the flavor in the air, a medley of fresh-churned butter and warm maple syrup.
“Shoulda brought Cody,” Jessie said. “You know that’s what he wanted, right?”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“You’re kidding me. You really didn’t pick up on that.”
“Pick up on what?”
“He was trying to ask you out.” Jessie punched my shoulder. “He just didn’t want to get shot down in front of me and Aunt April. He’s totally into you. I could smell it.”
Had he been? I thought back, walking through my memory like I was reconstructing a crime scene. I hadn’t had anything resembling a date in three years. I guess if you go long enough without picking up those social cues, you just stop noticing them altogether.
Okay, more important question: Did I want him to ask me out?
Ugh, I thought, complicated. Change of subject.
“I don’t care if it’s lunchtime,” I told Jessie. “I’m having breakfast. And what do you mean, you could smell it?”
“Look at you, living dangerously. And I mean, I could smell it.” She tapped the side of her nose. “Pheromones. Told you, I’m a little sharper than most people in the senses department. Speaking of senses, are yours tingling? Spot anything weird?”
As a waitress in a pink frilled apron walked us to our table, a four-seater in the middle of the crowded room, I focused and took a long look around. Nothing suspicious, just a bunch of locals and long-haul truckers stopping in for a solid bite to eat.
Except for one.
The man in the corner booth had a waxy complexion, that jaundiced yellow look that alcoholics with bad kidneys get, and stringy, short hair combed in a side part. He wasn’t eating at all. He had a full stack of pancakes, a side of hash browns, a steaming mug of coffee . . . and he was just staring at it, with his palms placed flat on the table and motionless.
“Seven o’clock,” I murmured to Jessie as we sat down. “Guy with the bad haircut. He look hinky to you?”
She pretended to stretch and yawn, craning her neck to look. “Oh, yeah. Don’t know if he’s our guy, but he’s giving off some serious creeper vibes. How do you want to play it?”
Demonic hijackers are bad news to start with, but if this guy was as good as Earl Gresham said he was—jumping bodies on a whim—the last thing we wanted was a violent confrontation in a room full of innocent bystanders. We needed to get his attention, subtly. Make him curious.
Flexing a little muscle might do the trick, I thought, and picked up the saltshaker.
“Little thing my mother taught me,” I told Jessie. “African cleansing rite. Makes a room distinctly unpleasant for unclean spirits.”
I held the saltshaker loosely and tapped it against the tabletop. Tap. Tap.
Taptap. Taptap. Tap taptaptap tap. Slowly, a rhythm grew, blossoming from the simple sound.
“Yeah, all right,” Jessie said, nodding slowly. “Can I get in on this?”
“Pl
ease do.”
Jessie’s fingertips drummed the edge of the table, filling in the gaps and adding a strident beat. Focused now, feeling my power welling up, I willed it to spiral in time with the rhythm.
In the beginning was the sound. Music has the power to bind and compel, to stir the soul. Don’t believe me? Turn on the radio. The universe was birthed in the beat of countless burning stars, and stardust is in our bones. Yoruban words spilled from my lips now, a low, keening song, shifting tones weaving in with the drumming.
We caught funny looks from the nearby tables, but I couldn’t care. I was watching the white mist spread across the room in my second sight, glowing and warm, banishing all evils with the sheer joy of—
“Would you kindly stop doing that?” the waitress said, suddenly looming over our table.
The saltshaker slipped from my hand. Jessie missed the beat and froze, confused. The spell shattered.
I looked the waitress in the eye. Something moved in there. A squirming shadow behind her left pupil.
“Are we disturbing the other patrons?” I asked.
“You’re disturbing me,” she said, “which I assume was the point.”
I glanced back toward the corner booth. The guy we’d picked out before was sound asleep, slumped back against the wall.
“Why don’t you get out of that nice lady’s body,” I said, “so we can have a conversation?”
“You’ve got my attention,” she said. The waitress turned and strolled back to the corner booth. She leaned in and brushed her fingertips across the sleeping man’s shoulder. He woke with a jolt, sitting up straight and eyes shooting open, and she took a confused half step back.
The waitress rubbed at her forehead, looking like she had a headache coming on, and went back on her rounds like nothing had happened. The man just beckoned us over with a slow wave of his hand.
“Well,” Jessie said, pushing back her chair, “this should be good.”
Harmony Black (Harmony Black Series Book 1) Page 12