“I know, honey. Finish your soup.” She smiled for him and he tried to smile back. He was so easy to play with. “It’ll make you all better.”
Arlo looked down at the bowl. It was empty. “All gone.”
Jolene ran her fingers through his hair and across his sweaty scalp. The poisons would do their business in the next few minutes. “You get some sleep, sweetie. Jolene will watch over you.” Her smile was sincere enough.
It took time, a good fifteen minutes or so before the rat poison finished what it had started. Beau died first, not surprising when you considered his infections. Arlo took longer and vomited a thick pool of blood and other things before he died. When he was finished with his death throes, she turned on all of the gas stove’s burners, taking the time to put out the pilot lights first. The weather was getting colder and no one would be too surprised by a crappy heater catching the place on fire. Just to be extra sure, Jolene nudged Arlo with her foot until his hair was actually touching the heater’s coils and she could see the hair starting to burn. After that she got the hell out of Dodge.
She was a quarter of a mile through the woods when the place exploded. She watched with her binoculars, just to make sure that no one got in or got out.
“It’s true. You want something done, you just have to do it yourself.” She sighed. Life was really a lot easier when she could just make other people handle the dirty work. Still, now and then you had to finish what you started and this time around, there was so very much to finish.
“First, I guess it’s time to give Carl a hint or two. Cute, but slow. That one’s gonna take some time to settle up proper.” She moved through the woods at a surprising speed, and around her the animal life froze, careful not to catch her attention. They knew a predator was close, even if that predator looked mostly harmless.
She had, of course, already given him a clue, and in the process inadvertently awakened Frank. That was a special sort of chaos that she hadn’t expected.
Frank was a legend. He was one of the first to survive, and his death had caused so many members of the family trouble that for a while no one was allowed to leave the Hollow, except for her mother. Those had been good times, when she hadn’t needed to deal with the more unpleasant members of the family.
Even now the word that Frank was back from the dead was causing all sorts of issues. Merle was fit to be tied, and her mother? Well, there weren’t words to express her mood, were there?
The thought made Jolene smile. A lot of the family forgot about her. She was a distraction for the regular folks, like her mother had been in her time, and considered little more. Merle called on her when someone needed to be played with, and other than that left her alone. It didn’t matter that she was barely out of high school; she’d been toying with men since she was twelve or so, mostly travelers who didn’t know any better, but not always. A few of the men in town had thought to catch her attention over the years, which was why she always enjoyed spurring on a few arguments.
Barry Dunlop came to mind. Barry was close to forty years old, old enough to be her daddy, really, and he did everything he could to get into her pants short of actually trying to rape her. And when she wouldn’t take the hint, he started spreading ugly rumors about her. She didn’t much care about the rumors, really. They were mostly comical and the people she cared about—the few at school she considered friends—all knew better, but that didn’t mean she approved of Barry being the one to spread the unpleasant stories.
The bikers she sicced on Barry made sure he never talked about her again. He was still alive, sort of, but not really in the sort of condition that allowed him to spread ugly rumors. The bikers? They were long gone. All she had to do was tell them about a party in the Hollow, and the family took care of the rest.
Jolene had plans of her own, and they had little to do with what certain other members of the family thought were important. Of course you couldn’t exactly discuss things with the family. They didn’t like to have conversations so much as they liked to kill anyone who pissed them off.
So it was time to shake things up on the home front. All she had to do was make sure that the men she needed to do her work were in the right places. That meant the sheriff, his big friend, and Cousin Frank.
The good news? They were already on a collision course.
* * *
Fun fact about police systems. They can tell you damned near anything about a person. For example, despite appearances, Siobhan Blackbourne was not young enough to be her daughter’s sister. According to the paperwork she was in her thirties. She also had a substantial bank account—several actually—as a result of marrying well and divorcing even better. More power to her, Carl supposed.
On paper at least, she was clean. Of course the same could be said of Merle, who had so far managed to avoid ever having a charge against him that stuck.
That was about to change, of course.
Carl looked at the large collection of cars that had already been pulled from the graveyard they’d found in Crawford’s Hollow. There were a lot of vehicles, and more still to come. More importantly, they were starting to paint a very unpleasant picture, one that was looking very bad for certain members of the Blackbourne clan. So far the boys had tracked down eight separate cases where the drivers or owners of the vehicles were nowhere to be found. They’d been reported missing and never bothered to show up after the reports were filed. Mostly they were out of towners. There were fingerprints to be found. So far no less than four members of the clan had foolishly left evidence behind. There were still at least seven unidentified sets of prints that could have come from vehicle owners or from other sources.
So, yes, as the patriarch of the group, Merle was about to get a headache the size of the county.
And Carl couldn’t make himself feel at all bad about that fact.
Carl sat in his office and tapped away on the keyboard, searching for members of the family that could possibly be tied into the raid he was already planning. The Blackbournes were knee deep in something, if he could find a way to keep some of them locked away until after Halloween, maybe that could slow down or prevent the weirdness that seemed to be heading for all of Brennert County at high speed.
Or maybe they’d pull their crap off anyway, but at least their numbers would be thinned and that would make it easier to handle the situation if he had to.
The buzzer rang on his office phone and he answered.
“It’s Carl.”
“I’d sure as hell hope so, Carl. It’s your office I buzzed.” Carl rolled his eyes. Tyler Booth was trying to have a sense of humor again. The only thing lamer than the man’s sense of humor was his ability to score with the ladies. Tyler dated even less than Carl and Carl almost never managed to find the time for going out on anything remotely like a romantic occasion.
“What can I do for you, Tyler? I’m a mite busy just now.” He let the annoyance stay in his voice.
Tyler completely ignored it, which was one of the man’s gifts. He could ignore anything short of a howitzer aimed at his face.
“Got Merle Blackbourne out here. Says he’d like to talk with you.”
Well, now that was a surprise.
“Tell him I’ll be right with him.”
Carl came out of his office two minutes later, and looked at Merle. He’d have liked to have thought that somehow the man might seem less threatening away from his home, but that just wasn’t the case. He was still a fairly large man and very confident in his power.
Merle looked at him for a long moment as if contemplating exactly what he wanted to say. Finally he said “Walk with me a spell, please, Sheriff.”
Carl nodded and they headed for the door. It was a simple enough situation. Merle wasn’t about to make any statements that might be overheard.
Twenty feet from the front of the building Merle looked toward Carl and nodded his head. “I were in your position, I suspect I’d be getting ready to come into the Hollow and make a few arrests.”
“Can’t say as the idea hasn’t crossed my mind, Merle. Got a lot of stolen cars and a lot of missing people. I figure I need to find out what happened to them.”
“Way I see it, you got a lot of cars. Ain’t seen any people.”
“Cars that belong to people who are missing, Merle. It ain’t rocket science to figure the two might be related.”
“Let’s cut the shit, Carl. You come on in, you do what you need to do, and I can guarantee you don’t find anyone. No one. Not a soul.” Merle’s eyes were calm, his face almost serene, but his tone was a touch on the tense side.
“Merle, I have two dead deputies and a murdered friend on my plate. What the hell makes you think a few empty houses are going to stop me from digging until I get what I want?”
The man nodded his head amiably enough. “You have my sympathies, as we’ve already discussed. I can get you Frank. I can probably arrange a few others, too. You tell me who you need, I can have them turn themselves in.”
Carl stopped walking and stared hard at the man. “Suddenly you want to play nice, Merle?”
“It ain’t playing nice, and you damned well know it.” He spat the words. “It’s called playing smart. You start tearing up my territory, things are going to get ugly and you know it. You got your people to look after and I have my family. Be smart, Carl. Let’s just get this done with as little mess as possible.”
Carl looked the man over from head to toe. There was a certain logic to what he said. The logic wasn’t really what Carl wanted just then. He wanted disruption and ways to throw whatever Merle and his family of lunatics was thinking about doing.
“If I say yes, I’d need the people on that list by the end of the day. Sunset, is what I’m saying here, Merle. Not midnight.”
“Might could take a bit longer to get Frank to come in.” Carl gritted his teeth. Might could. He hated that phrase and always had. You might. You could. It wasn’t supposed to be both.
“I could give you until sunrise for Frank. I’d still need the rest of them today.”
“Give me the names.” Merle was too accommodating. Carl didn’t like it in the least.
“Come on back to the office. I’ll get that list for you.” Merle nodded. “You don’t come through for me, Merle, and I can promise I’ll be shaking down every single place I can think of to look, starting with your house. You understand me?”
Merle’s half smile crept back in. “I don’t much like threats, Carl.”
“I don’t like to give them. I’m just letting you know that I’m serious here. I’ve got enough on my plate with the recent deaths, I don’t need to waste a lot of my time looking for your kin.”
Carl walked back into his office and closed the door. He looked over the list of people who had been identified and jotted the names down. Then just for fun, he added seven more names from people he knew were dirty enough to be involved. There was no proof, but he was good with that. This was just a maneuver to buy him a little time. He had no doubt that they’d still be raiding the Hollow in the morning. This way, however, he maybe got a few of the more serious players out of the way before hand.
When he handed the list to Merle the man started reading, his lips pursed up like he was half expecting a kiss. He’d wait a damned long time. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“I’ll be here.”
Merle headed for the door and Carl let him go. He held his breath until the bastard was through the threshold.
He wasn’t watching as well as he should have. If he had been, he’d have seen the Blackbourne patriarch cut himself in the palm of his hand and let several fat drops hit the dirt of the parking lot.
And if he’d been paying attention, things might have gone very differently.
* * *
“That,” Charon said once she and Griffin were in the house, “Was a very creepy man.”
“He was, and you seriously pissed him off,” Griffin said. He placed Jerry’s notebooks and laptop on the coffee table.
Charon said, “He didn’t sound too thrilled, even before I threw that stuff at him.”
“No, I was needling him. Trying to get him mad. Sometimes you learn things that way.”
“And sometimes you probably get shot at.”
“That too. I’m going to call Carl. Why don’t you see if you can get the laptop up and running.”
“Will do.”
Griffin dialed Carl’s cell. Carl answered on the third ring. “Wade. What’s up?”
“I just met another of the Blackbournes I’d never heard of. This one named Isaiah. An albino.”
“I don’t know that one either. They’re coming out of the woodwork lately. Hopefully this one hasn’t been dead for twenty years.”
“He’s lively enough, but I don’t think he’s fully human.”
“Great,” said Carl. “Merle was just here by the way.”
“Sounds like we have them rattled with all our digging around.”
“It does. So did you learn anything from Whit?”
“Yeah, I’ll get to that, but listen. Charon thought of something that could be pretty bad. Figured you have the manpower to do some checking.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
Griffin told Carl what they’d learned from Whit Gramling about the events on Blacktop Mountain in 1986 and what that probably meant in terms of hostages. He also gave him the Reader’s Digest version on the story of Abigail Blackbourne.
When Griffin was done, Carl said, “Yeah, I think you could call that bad. There could be a crowd of people in some serious shit. Charon’s right though. You’d think someone would have noticed a bunch of people going missing in that short a time frame. I wonder if the Blackbournes were being careful and snatching people outside the county? Might be worth making some calls to other Sheriff’s departments. I’ll put someone on it. Thing is, we just discovered something that would explain why some folks have disappeared, but not enough of them recently to fit in with any sort of mass sacrifice.”
“Anything you can talk about?”
“Better not, even on the phone. I’ve got some things in the works though and I should be able to tell you something by morning.”
“Gotcha. Well keep me posted.”
“ I will. What are you going to do?”
“Think I’m going to have another talk with Mr. Decamp.”
Griffin rang off and stepped back into the living room to find Charon frowning at the laptop. She said, “I don’t suppose you have a password for this thing?”
“Damn,” Griffin said. “Should have thought of that. The Tribune’s IT guy can probably get us in, but it will have to wait. We need to talk to Decamp.”
“I called him while you were talking to Carl. He said to come on over.”
Griffin smiled. “You’re pretty handy to have around.”
“Keep that in mind, big boy.”
“Did you tell Decamp we’d heard about his earlier encounter with the othersiders?”
“No, but I said that Whit Gramling had mentioned him. I’m sure he put the rest together.”
“No doubt. All right then. Let’s go see the man.”
* * *
Charon marveled again at Decamp’s Victorian home as Griffin pulled into the driveway. She said, “I bet the upkeep on a place like this is huge.”
“Decamp said it had been in his family for generations,” Griffin said. “Guess he comes from money.”
Charon was picking up a slight edginess from Griffin. He was always...she supposed focused would be the word, but now he seemed to almost hum with a sort of intensity that was a little scary. They got out of the truck and Griffin led the way up the walkway.
Decamp met them at the front door as he had on their previous visit. He said, “Come straight through to the study. I have some coffee made.”
Griffin nodded a terse greeting and followed Decamp into the house. Charon hoped that Griffin wasn’t angry at Decamp for holding out on them. He had said he didn’t blame Decamp but she c
ouldn’t get a clear read on Griffin’s mood.
When they were seated around Decamp’s desk Decamp said, “Charon told me you’d spoken with Whit Gramling, Griffin. I suppose he told you about Blacktop Mountain.”
Griffin said. “Not much. Just enough to know that what’s happening now has happened before and that you were involved. I have to say that I think you might have mentioned that to us. We are dealing with some pretty dangerous stuff here.”
Griffin was staring hard at Decamp but the older man’s gaze didn’t waver. “I don’t know you, Griffin. I’m not in the habit of giving out unnecessary information about myself to anyone.”
“Even if that information might save lives?”
“You seem to be all right.”
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear the last time, Decamp. Those othersider bastards murdered a good friend of mine.”
“And you’re doing what?” Decamp said. “Trying to avenge him? Ask yourself, Griffin. Are you interested in stopping the othersiders or just taking vengeance on them? That’s what I need to know before I trust you any farther. The last thing this situation needs is a loose cannon.”
Charon felt Griffin tense beside her, and for a moment she thought he might leap across the desk at Decamp. Then he said, “Can I get some of that coffee?”
“Certainly. Cream and or sugar?”
“Black. Cream is for sissies.”
Decamp smiled. “I thought I’d read you correctly the first time, Griffin. You’re a man with a lot of anger, but you try not to let it rule you.”
“Sometimes I fail,” said Griffin.
“So do I,” said Decamp. “Yes I held back information, but I felt it necessary. As I said, I didn’t know you and I wasn’t sure how much information to share. This isn’t the sort of thing you can talk to just anyone about. For all I knew, you were working with the Blackbournes.”
Charon took in an involuntary gulp of air. So Decamp knew about the Blackbournes. Had they been involved in the earlier attempt to open the path to the other side? It seemed likely, but the Moon-Eyed ones were far older than the Blackbourne family.
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