“So what do you—” I started to ask.
“Shh,” she said. Her purse rested on her lap. She fished out a pair of steel-gray bifocals and slipped them on, eyeing Willie through the glass like a raptor watching a plump mouse. I looked at Jessie. Jessie held up her hand, nodding silently.
“Blush and pupil dilation,” April said, “indicate he’s still slightly intoxicated. Good. Lowered inhibition can help us. Harmony. His body language. What’s it telling you?”
I looked through the glass. Willie wrung his hands, glancing from side to side, rocking in his chair.
“He’s nervous.”
She arched an eyebrow but didn’t take her gaze off him.
“I thought you said you studied my work at Quantico. Details matter, Agent. Flared nostrils, stiffness—there. Did you see that? He keeps trying to smile. It’s a flicker, an affectation he instinctively knows he can’t sell, but he keeps trying. That’s not stress, that’s guilt and shame. He’s thinking about something he doesn’t like. Something he doesn’t want to confront.”
“Shame,” I echoed, trying to see what she saw.
April squinted. “It’s the Salt Lake Sniper case all over again. I worked lead on that, back in the summer of ’87. Two assailants, one dominant and controlling, the other submissive and placating. When we separated the submissive of the duo and put him alone in an interview room, he exhibited the exact same behaviors. What we’re seeing is a man who knows he’s done something gravely wrong, and his mind is desperately trying to reframe it in a way he can accept. To find an excuse that exonerates him from responsibility.”
“How did you handle the sniper?” I asked.
She quirked a smile. “Gave him more authority and more responsibility than he was willing to accept. Jessie, roll me inside, if you’d be so kind.”
Jessie blinked. “You hate when people push your chair for you.”
“People associate that visual with weakness. I want him to utterly discount me as a threat. That’ll help when I drop the hammer on him.”
Willie looked up as we walked into the tiny room, brushing the stringy hair from his eyes.
“Hey,” he said, “uh, thanks for the help back there. I don’t know what happened. I was on my route, just coming back to my truck after dropping off some groceries, and this little old lady walks up and asks my name. Next thing I know—”
“We know about the wicker balls,” April said.
He froze.
“You know,” I said, “the ones you planted outside the Gunderson and Morris houses?”
Willie shook his head. It was more of a twitch. His neck muscles pulled taut.
“I—I don’t—I don’t know what you’re—”
“We know it was you.” Jessie rested her hands, palms flat, on the table. “And we know about the Bogeyman. We’re not the regular police, Willie. And believe me when I say it’s in your absolute best interest to tell us everything.”
“N-no,” he said, eyes going wide. His words spilled out in a terrified stammer, turning into a singsong chant. “I don’t know, I don’t know what you’re, what you’re talking about, I don’t know. No. No.”
“Hey, Willie,” I said softly, reaching for his hand. He yanked it away, curling his fingers against his chest. He made little jerking motions, almost punching himself.
“Don’t ask me because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t know anything—”
April held up a finger. “Just one question, Willie.”
He looked up at her with moist, bloodshot eyes.
“What did they do to you?” she asked him. “I mean, I understand. You hated those families. You hated them so much—”
“N-no,” Willie stammered, louder now. “No!”
April slammed the flat of her palm on the table. “Yes, you did! We know this was your idea, your decision, your design from start to finish. You hated those families so much you sent a monster to murder their children—”
“He made me do it!” Willie shrieked, throwing his head back and squeezing his eyes shut. “Edwin Kite made me do it!”
He collapsed against the table, clutching his face, feet kicking the floor as he sobbed into his hands.
April glanced sidelong at me. She mouthed the words, Be the good cop.
I pulled back a chair and slid it around the table so I could sit next to him. I rested my hand on his shoulder.
“Willie,” I said, gentle now. “Where is Edwin Kite?”
“In his house,” he mumbled into his hands. His shoulders twitched.
“We’ve been to the Kite house,” Jessie said. “Nobody’s there, Willie.”
He raised his tear-drenched face and swallowed hard. “Not that house. The other house. The House of Closets.”
“From his contract, I bet,” I said to Jessie. “The demesne Adramelech gave him.”
“Don’t say that name,” Willie said, eyes wide. “Mr. Kite hates that name. See, he can’t ever leave his house or the monster will get him. But the monster can’t come inside. He’s safe as long as he stays inside.”
“You were there once,” I said, “weren’t you? When you were a little boy. The Bogeyman took you there and brought you back the next day.”
“I don’t remember.” He squeezed his eyes shut and stomped one foot on the floor. “I don’t remember.”
I held up a hand. “All right, all right. That’s fine, Willie. You’re doing just fine. Do you have any idea why they let you go? What made you different from the other children?”
“He said . . . he said I was the lucky one.”
Willie ripped open his shirt, buttons popping, tearing the fabric aside to show us the horror beneath. His chest, from just above his left nipple to the curve of his shoulder, was a mass of faded burns, cuts, and scars. Mutilation after mutilation, one upon another.
And above it all, rising up from the surface of his ravaged skin, was an occult sigil about the size of a silver dollar. The intricate curves and whorls bloomed above the tortured flesh, thick and fish-belly pale.
“It always comes back,” Willie whispered. “No matter how many times I slice it off. It always comes back.”
Jessie motioned me away from the table. I got up and followed her to the corner of the room.
“Couple years back,” she murmured, “we busted up this little cult in Jersey. Humans, carving up locals as sacrifices for a demon. They all had brands like that. Demon got away. Aunt April had a theory that the marks were some kind of psychic link. So when we busted the demon’s little helpers, he got advance warning to leave town.”
“Edwin Kite was human, though.”
“We figure he busted his deal with Adramelech, right?” Jessie said softly, glancing over at Willie. “Maybe, before he split, he learned some of his old master’s tricks. Hell, he’s what, around two hundred years old and still kicking? That’s not exactly normal, either.”
“Willie,” I said, walking back to the table, “if you don’t remember what happened, when the Bogeyman took you, how do you know all this?”
“Mr. Kite comes to me sometimes. In my dreams. He can do it a-anytime he wants. He always reminds me. I can’t hide. Anywhere I go, he can find me.”
His fingers clawed at the sigil, like a nervous tic.
“And did he teach you how to make those wicker balls?”
“He t-told me what I had to do. He told me. It takes a lot of energy to go back and forth, and the Bogeyman can’t stay in our world very long because Edwin is afraid the monster will catch it. So the Bogeyman needs to know—needs to know where to find the good houses right away. That’s my job. Picking the good houses.”
“Why the Morris family?” April asked. “Why the Gundersons? What does Edwin Kite have against them?”
He blinked at her, like the question had never occurred to him before.
“N-nothing,” he stammered. “He doesn’t even know who they are. He doesn’t care.”
I leaned closer. “Then why target them?”
His gaze dropped to the table.
“I had to make it fair,” he said.
“Fair how?”
“He told me I should pick families I didn’t like, to”—he paused, grimacing, spitting the words out—“to make it fun. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to. So I made it as fair as I could.”
He finally met my eyes.
“I used my delivery list.”
“The groceries,” Jessie said, her voice flat.
He pointed at her with a shaky hand. “Y-yes, see, you understand! Except for the third one, the one he told me I had to mark, it’s fair that way. I didn’t know if they were good people or bad people. I just knew which houses had children and which ones didn’t. It was just . . . random. That’s all. That’s . . . that’s fair, right?”
Jessie’s hands clenched on the edge of the table.
“Willie,” I said, “you don’t want to hurt anyone, do you?”
The only answer was a mute, miserable shake of his head.
“Why target any houses at all, then? If the Bogeyman can’t hunt without your help, then why are you doing it?”
He hung his head. Silent.
“Willie,” I said. “Please. Tell us why.”
“I already told you why.”
“Then help us to understand—”
Fresh tears glistened in his eyes, droplets from an ocean of loathing. “Because I’m afraid,” he spat.
“Of who? Who are you afraid of?”
“I told you: he can always find me. He shows me, in my dreams. He shows me his house. The . . . the things that happen there. The things that happen to the children. And he tells me . . . there’s one person who doesn’t need a beacon. There’s one person the Bogeyman can always catch and bring to him. Me.”
Willie slumped back in his chair. He sniffled and shook his head.
“It’s them or me.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Jessie’s voice was a graveyard whisper, her eyes blazing as she squeezed the table’s edge.
“You son of a bitch.”
“He told me,” Willie said, “that he’ll let me go if I give him six children. And he told me . . . it’s proof.”
“What is?” I said.
“That nobody is good in their heart, not really. He’s been doing this for a long, long time. And he told me that not once—not once has the ‘lucky one’ ever refused. Not once. Because when it’s you or them? No matter how good you think you are, no matter how brave you think you are . . . you’ll always choose to save yourself.”
“Bullshit,” Jessie snapped. “You’re just fucking weak.”
“Agent,” April said.
“No,” she told her. “No! This son of a bitch is sacrificing innocent children to keep his neck off the chopping block—”
He mumbled something as his head fell. I couldn’t make it out. His shoulders shook, and a tear fell to spatter his dirty jeans.
“What was that?” I asked, leaning closer.
“I was innocent, too,” he whispered.
April nodded her head toward the interview-room door. We left, giving Willie time to think.
“Don’t even,” Jessie told us, turning on April and me. “I take a dim fucking view of people who hurt kids, and don’t tell me you both don’t feel the same way. I know you do.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I also know a victim when I see one. Whatever Kite did to him, Willie is . . . he’s crippled. Come on. The drinking, the fighting, that horror show of scars on his chest? The man can barely function. However much you hate him right now, I guarantee he hates himself about a hundred times worse.”
“That doesn’t excuse what he did.”
“No,” April said, “it doesn’t. But it explains what he did. And he’s opened up to us. We need that right now. He’s the best lead we have, and I am asking you to pretend to be sympathetic.”
Jessie pressed her palms flush against the two-way mirror, leaning in to watch Willie sobbing in the other room. She took a deep breath.
“All right. Fine. I’m cool. Where do you two wanna go with this?”
I held up my hand. “I had an idea. It’ll be risky, but now that there won’t be any more abductions, since we’ve got Willie in custody, do you think Edwin will follow through on his threat?”
April looked from me to Willie.
“You want to use him as bait,” she said.
“He’s ours now,” I said, nodding to the window, “and we can set the terms of battle. If Edwin sends the Bogeyman to grab Willie, we can be standing right there when the closet door opens.”
“And armed for bear,” Jessie said. “Yeah, okay. Sounds like we’ve got a license for Bogeyman hunting season. Think Sheriff Barry’s got any serious firepower lying around the station house?”
“It’s rural Michigan. Guarantee we can get shotguns at least. Serious enough for you?”
“Mayberry,” she told me, “I am an artist with a shotgun. Let’s do this.”
“Likewise,” April said. “I approve.”
We strode back into the interrogation room. Willie rubbed at his reddened face, then wiped his palms on his jeans.
“Good news,” I told him. “We’re going to save your life.”
Willie shook his head slowly. “The only thing that can save me is giving him what he wants.”
“That’s not happening,” Jessie said, “but we can do the next best thing. As of now, you’re under our protection.”
He laughed. It was a nervous, jittery, humorless thing, and his eyes widened.
“You don’t get it. You can’t protect me. As soon as Mr. Kite realizes I’m not setting out any more beacons, he’ll send the Bogeyman for me. He’ll take me. He’ll take me to his house.”
“Not on our watch,” I said. “C’mon, we need to move you someplace safer. Don’t worry. We’ll be with you round the clock.”
We got him on his feet, flanking him as we led him out of the interrogation room, with Willie protesting every step of the way. We weren’t alone. Barry came hustling down the hall toward us, looking ten kinds of worried.
“Something weird’s going on, and you girls have visitors. I don’t know if they’re, ya know, the people you warned me might be coming around or what—”
“Who’s out there?” I asked, shooting a look past Barry’s back, at the swinging door that led to the station lobby.
“Russian girl came by, real pretty but hard-lookin’; she flashed an ID and asked if you two were here. Says she’s a bounty hunter and she’s got a warrant for Willie.”
“You can’t protect me,” Willie mumbled.
“Barry,” I said, “tell me you didn’t let her in.”
He stuck his thumbs in his belt and puffed out his chest.
“Hell, no, I did not. Gimme a little credit, huh? We talked through the glass door. Told her we were having a possible contaminated-mail situation, and I couldn’t open the door till the CDC got here. Also told her I hadn’t seen you all day, but I don’t think she bought it. So she leaves, and five minutes later, this shady-looking guy comes up, says he’s selling magazines door to door. Well, he’s no local, I know that on sight. While I’m giving him the brush-off, he keeps eyeing the lobby behind me, like he’s trying to see who else is here.”
“Are they gone?” Jessie asked.
“Well, that’s the thing. I look out and the two of ’em are out in the parking lot, arguing up a storm. They knew each other, I can tell you that much. So the guy went and sat in his car. He’s still out there. Just sitting. Watching the building.”
“And the woman?” I asked.
Barry shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. I guess she left.”
Cody came up the hall from the other direction, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, one hand on his holster.
“Something’s weird,” he said. “I’m hearing a rattling in the vents, like there’s something crawling around in the—”
That’s when we heard the rattling thump echoing from the station-hou
se roof, right above our heads.
“It’s here,” Willie moaned. “It’s here to take me. The Bogeyman is here.”
“No, Willie,” I said through gritted teeth. “Different monster entirely. Okay, Barry, we need the most secure room in this building, right now. We’re all in serious danger.”
Willie clutched the sides of his head. “I told you. I told you, you can’t protect me.”
“This way,” Barry said, pushing past us. “Got a little armory in the back, for the gun cabinets. Ain’t exactly Fort Knox, but it’s built to keep people—”
In the heat of the moment, Barry made the same mistake we did: treating Willie like a witness in protective custody instead of a dangerous suspect. As he brushed past, getting too close, too careless for just a second, Willie lunged for his belt.
Suddenly Barry’s big chrome .45 was in Willie’s trembling hands.
Barry shouted as April grabbed the wheels of her chair and veered backward. Jessie and I pulled our Glocks at the same time, keeping Willie covered in our gun sights. Cody had the fastest draw, whipping out his steel like a cowboy at high noon. He edged toward me, trying to get between me and Willie’s gun. Chivalrous, but bad police work.
“At your shoulder, Deputy,” I said in a low voice, only as hard as I needed to be. “Watch my line of fire.” Cody got the message and sidestepped the other way.
“Son,” Barry warned Willie, “you don’t wanna do that—”
“Put it down,” Jessie said.
The revolver swayed drunkenly from side to side in Willie’s grip as he took a couple of unsteady steps back, toward the lobby door.
“You can’t protect me,” he said.
“Willie,” April said, “you’re frightened. We understand that. But what you’re doing is very, very dangerous, and you need to put the weapon down before someone gets hurt.”
Another shuffling step back. As the barrel of the stolen revolver swung toward my face, his grip shaking like a junkie in detox, I struggled to keep my finger off my trigger. From somewhere behind us, metal scraped and groaned. Nyx, in the ventilation. Creeping closer.
“I will drop your ass,” Jessie snapped. “Put. The fucking. Gun. Down.”
Barry held out his open hands and took a step closer to Willie.
Harmony Black (Harmony Black Series Book 1) Page 22