Black Candle

by H. P. Bayne

  “Sullivan? It’s Paul Dunsmore. You wanted me to call if I got any information for you. I’ve got something I think you’ll want, but I can’t get into it over the phone. Come to my place in The Forks as soon as you can.”

  Two more messages from Dez followed, and Sully skipped them both. He realized he’d ignored the timestamp on Paul’s voicemail, so checked the time on his recents list, finding the call had come in about half an hour ago.

  Judging by the weather outside, getting to The Forks wasn’t going to be an easy task right now, so Sully opted to call first. If he could get what he needed without heading all the way over there, all the better.

  Paul picked up on the first ring. “Sullivan? Where are you?”

  Sully scanned the room, assuring himself Marc was nowhere around before answering, keeping his voice quiet enough to not be overheard. “I’m at Marc Echoles’s place.”

  “What? Jesus Christ, kid, get out of there, right now, you hear me? Echoles is dangerous.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He did something really bad, life and death bad. You need to get out now.”

  “You mean murder?”

  “Damn it, not over the phone. Not with him around. He knows stuff. He sees stuff, you hear me? You need to get out of there and over to me. And hurry up. It’s a mess here and people are starting to pack up and bail.”

  “Can’t you come and meet me?”

  “No. I’m busy trying to pack up my own stuff. Just get here and I’ll explain. Then I’ll give you a ride back into Riverview, all right? Just hurry. If you’re not here within the hour, I’m going to have to leave.”

  “Okay. Okay, I’m on my way.”

  “Good. And Sullivan? You be careful getting out of Echoles’s house, all right? Don’t turn your back on him.”

  Sully’s phone battery was reading less than twenty per cent when he ended the call, so he turned it off completely, wanting to save the remaining juice in case he should need it later. Naturally, yet another call was coming in from Eva’s number as he powered off his handset.

  Sully dropped the phone back into its bag, grabbed his borrowed flashlight off the island and headed for the kitchen’s side door, the one he now knew led to the hallway.

  The front door, he recalled, was just down the hall. There was no way he’d manage a full search of the house, no way Marc would allow it. And the last thing he wanted right now was to spend another minute around a potential murderer.

  He’d made it most of the way down the hall when he found himself illuminated by light and felt a solid hand close over his arm.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Sully couldn’t see Marc’s face past the beam, but the voice was as firm as the grip, suggesting the expression wouldn’t be far off.

  “I need to go see someone.”

  “In this weather? I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “No,” Marc said. “You don’t.”

  16

  The city had finally gone into a blackout, the generator-run buildings providing the only semi-reliable light in the storm-cast darkness. A sheet of lightning lit the sky, punctuated by a crack of thunder so intense Dez caught himself jumping in his seat as he eyed the shadow of the house next to them.

  He’d been racking his brain trying to figure out where Sully had gone, and he’d settled on a few possibilities. Bulldog was a strong potential, given his own interest in the investigation and the fact he was also proving unreachable by phone. A strong second was Marc Echoles, a man who bore a tattoo matching those Sully’s ghosts had shown him.

  There were no certainties, but Dez thought there was a strong likelihood Sully had come here—to Marc’s university-area home—looking for answers.

  “You really think a university professor is behind the murders?” Eva asked. “Seems far-fetched to me. What kind of motive would he have?”

  “I’m not worried about motive,” Dez said. “All I’m worried about right now is my idiot brother. Wait here.”

  Even without looking at her, he knew she had to be shaking her head at him in disbelief. “Right. Screw you, Snowman. Let’s go.”

  There was no sense arguing with a woman who, cool and collected as she typically was, cornered the market on stubborn, so they headed up to the house together, flashlights at the ready. Eva made a motion as if to circle around back, which is how they would have handled this were it a call they were responding to as police officers. But right now all Dez wanted was to find his brother and keep Eva in his sights at the same time, so he snagged her free hand and held on as he thumped the edge of his fist against the door.

  They didn’t have long to wait before Marc Echoles answered the door.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Dez asked, eyes moving to the bag of frozen peas the professor was pressing to his jaw.

  “Your brother,” he said. “And if you think this is something, you should see the bruise that’s forming on my shin.”

  “So Sully was here?”

  “ ‘Was’ being the operative term. I tried to hold him back. I mean, it’s Biblical out there. But he wasn’t having it.”

  Dez wasn’t sure whether to be amused, damn proud or to simply continue with his current pattern of worry. The third seemed the most likely to win out, so he settled on that.

  “Mind if we take a look around?”

  Marc’s dry chuckle was free of humour. “Let me guess. You think I’m up to something, too, do you?”

  “I don’t think anything except that my brother’s missing and chasing after something I don’t really want him to find unless he’s got someone at his back. Just let us look around, and we’ll be out of your hair.”

  Marc stood aside and waved an arm grandly at his home’s interior as a sweeping yet plenty sarcastic gesture of welcome. “By all means, good sir. But I can assure you, I don’t have Sullivan chained up in my oubliette.”

  Dez stopped and turned to face Marc. “Your what?”

  “Oubliette,” Eva said. “It’s French, from the word meaning to forget. Refers to a room where people were locked up and left to die.”

  Dez wasn’t placated by the definition. “You have one of those?”

  “No,” Marc said. “Sarcasm, Desmond. Sarcasm.”

  Dez and Eva cleared the house together, finding no sign of Sully, save a bundle of wet clothes left behind in the main floor half bath. Nor, for that matter, did they find any clues to suggest Marc had ever kept a prisoner here at all.

  Marc was waiting by the front door for them. “Satisfied?”

  “His clothes are in the bathroom by the kitchen,” Dez said. “Why?”

  “He was soaked through and freezing. I gave him something warm and dry to put on. It won’t be either anymore.”

  “What’s he wearing now?”

  “Fleece pyjama bottoms and a dark blue hooded sweatshirt. The university logo is emblazoned on the back.”

  “Thanks. And sorry about all this, but we needed to check. Did Sully say anything about where he was headed?”

  “He didn’t seem in the mood to share,” Marc said. “Look, all I know is that he said something about needing to go meet with someone. I got the impression he had spoken to somebody on the phone. I don’t know what was said or who it was.”

  With little else to get from Marc at the moment, Dez and Eva thanked him and headed back out to Dez’s SUV. Dez’s mood had gone from bad to worse, but it wasn’t until he tried to catch Eva’s eye that he realized he might not be the one most in need of comforting right now. There was no emotion on her face, but Dez read the gathering hopelessness there. It didn’t happen often, not to Eva, and when it did, it scared the hell out of him.

  He sought to erase it, landing a hand on her shoulder before dropping it to grasp the fingers of her left hand. “Hey, we’ll find him, all right?”

  “I’m supposed to be trying to make you feel better,” she said.

  “That’s what marriage
is all about, right? You and me, picking each other’s sorry asses out of the emotional gutter.”

  That got him the smile he was after, albeit a small one. “You really know how to lift a girl’s spirits, you know that?”

  “It’s a gift. Okay, so let’s go through this. Someone called Sully and he went to meet them, and given the fact he didn’t bother to wait around here, I’m thinking it was urgent. That means it had to have been about Breanna, Sparrow or Gabriella.”

  “Okay, but that’s if you believe Marc. As of now, he’s the only one who knows anything about Sully’s present movements. And not ten minutes ago, you suspected Marc might have done something to him. He’s admitted Sully left him with those injuries. How do we know it ended there?”

  That gave Dez reason to pause. “We searched the place top to bottom. There was no sign of Sully or anyone else. You think he’s still here somewhere?”

  “Honestly, no. I think I buy what Marc told us. I’m just saying we shouldn’t dismiss things too quickly. Keep in mind some houses in this neighbourhood have bomb shelters or old root cellars out back.”

  “Except Marc was bone dry. If he’d taken Sully out back, he would have been soaked through. And those marks on him were fresh.”

  “So you think he’s telling the truth?” Eva asked.

  “About Sully taking off on him? Yeah, I do. I’m not so sure yet we can trust Echoles on why he was trying to hold Sully back, but I think we’re safe in assuming the guy’s not holding anyone there against their will.”

  “It’s still possible he’s got someone in the backyard.”

  Dez grinned. “I thought you weren’t onboard with the whole university professor-as-deranged-killer thing.”

  “You’re a bad influence. Okay, so if Sully took off from here, we’re going to have to figure out who he was going to see. It’s possible it was something as simple as his bar manager calling to ream him out for not showing up at work tonight. But just in case it wasn’t, who were you waiting on information from?”

  “I haven’t heard from Bulldog in a while and I haven’t been able to get through to him,” Dez said. “That’s weird. He’s been pretty involved in this given it’s centred on his sister and a girl he’s started to identify as a niece.”

  Eva started to suggest Dez try his friend again, but he was well ahead of her. Unfortunately, Bulldog still wasn’t of a mind or in a position to pick up, leaving the phone to ring through to voicemail. Leaving Bulldog with instructions to call back as soon as he checked his messages, Dez ended the call, left another fumbling text, and tried Sully again just in case. Unsurprisingly, he got no answer there either.

  “Could be they’re together,” Eva said.

  Dez shrugged. “Maybe. Could explain why Bulldog won’t pick up.”

  “You think Bulldog would listen to Sully over you?”

  “I tuned the pair of them in earlier today. Could be Bulldog’s not overly excited about the idea of talking to me again just yet.”

  Eva smirked. “And with you probably being so nice and all? Why wouldn’t he be? Look, why don’t we start hitting up some of the shelters, see if Bulldog’s there or if anyone’s seen him? Could be we find Bulldog, we find Sully.”

  “There was someone else we asked for information,” Dez said. “Paul Dunsmore. He was going to work some of his contacts, see if he could find us any info on those tattoos.”

  “But you’ve got everything you need on those already, don’t you? You know they’re connected to the Black Candle coven.”

  “Yeah, but unfortunately, we don’t know who was in the coven. That’s the key to figuring out who might be behind this and why. Maybe Paul’s heard something.”

  Dez pulled his phone back out and dialed Paul Dunsmore’s number, but the call rang through to voicemail and Dez found himself leaving yet another message.

  “No one wants to talk to me tonight,” Dez said. “Either towers are out of commission, or I’ve become a social pariah.”

  “I’m thinking we’re going to have to start driving around looking,” Eva said. “Where to first? The Black Fox, Bulldog or Dunsmore?”

  “We’re not far from Riverview. Let’s check the Fox and a couple of Bulldog’s haunts and then head across the Forks Bridge from there.”

  “Sounds like a plan. But could we stop by headquarters first? My shift’s officially over, and I’m thinking I shouldn’t be running around off duty in my police uniform.”

  “I don’t know,” Dez said. “The way this night’s going, I don’t mind the idea of having a sidearm on hand.”

  It was no surprise, but Dez felt his heart sinking anyway when they arrived at the Black Fox and found no sign of Sully.

  Betty Schuster wasn’t any happier about it, though for different reasons, telling Dez and Eva she’d arrived to a flooded basement, a power outage and a lineup of wet people. It seemed even a torrential downpour wasn’t enough to keep the diehards away from the bar for a night, although Betty—selling what she could by cash and candlelight—was planning on breaking with tradition and closing early. That would keep anyone from getting too drunk and ensure the best chance everyone, including Betty herself, got home safely.

  Dez wasn’t sure if and when he and Eva would reach the same point but, for him at least, it wasn’t happening unless Sully was with him.

  They next headed to the two shelters Bulldog used the most. Both had already filled up for the night and there was no sign of the guy at either. Dez knew Bulldog well enough to appreciate he was smart about ensuring a roof over his head when needed. He was typically among those who arrived just as the night shelters were opening, ensuring himself the best chance at a bed. That Bulldog wasn’t there either meant he’d found somewhere else to hole up or that he hadn’t been able to get here.

  Hoping for the former, Dez and Eva drove over to the house where they’d dropped Bulldog off last night. While they found his friend—a skinny ex-junkie everyone called Mouse—there was again no sign of Bulldog, despite the fact he’d left his stuff there.

  Their last stop was The Hub which, while closed for the day in terms of programming, had remained open as a temporary emergency shelter. There, Dez and Eva found Myra Shingoose, Street Worker Exit Strategy director, lending a hand with cleaning the supper dishes.

  “I haven’t seen Bulldog since he left here earlier today with a young man he was with.”

  “Sullivan Gray,” Dez said. “So neither of them’s been back since?”

  “No, sorry. Why? Is everything okay?”

  Dez didn’t feel like offering up a placating lie and so ignored the question. “If you see either of them, can you give Eva or me a call?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Myra said. “Though I’m afraid I’m going to be stuck back here a while yet. Our soup kitchen manager left shortly after Bulldog and Sullivan, and he didn’t return for the supper shift, so a few of us are working overtime here. I’m worried something might have happened to him.”

  “Maybe he just didn’t bother coming back in,” Eva said. “It’s pretty crappy out there.”

  “No,” Myra said. “It’s not like him. He’s one of our most reliable employees. Granted, he’s been going a little off the rails lately, but that happens to everyone around here from time to time.”

  “Off the rails how?” Dez asked.

  Myra stopped scrubbing a pot, swiping at a trickle of sweat on her forehead and focusing fully on her visitors. “He’s been spending a lot of time with Sparrow lately, and I think it’s likely he’s developed some strong feelings for her. Bree was working hard with her, and had managed to get her into some programming here. Sparrow was taking well to it, was giving it her all. You have to understand, the programs we offer are intensive and, for those who throw themselves in the way Sparrow did, can become a 24/7 job. Thanks to Bree, Sparrow was making some real positive changes in her life. Zane—that’s our soup kitchen manager, Zane Mazur—he found himself kind of left out in the cold with her for a while. She didn’t
have time for a relationship at that stage in the programming, and he didn’t like that. But he adapted, and I think started to realize how important it was for Sparrow. Then Bree died. Sparrow spun back out into her old ways and Zane’s been running after her ever since, trying to protect her.”

  “Do you think that’s what he’s doing now?” Eva asked. “Trying to protect Sparrow?”

  “Maybe,” Myra said. “Probably. I don’t know. Maybe he got word about her location and went to get her. I know he’s been trying to find her. Lots of people have said he’s been asking around the past couple days, with no luck.”

  Dez offered Myra what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Well, since Sully and Bulldog were looking for Sparrow, I’m hoping we’ll find Sparrow and Zane when we locate our own guys. We’ll make sure to keep you posted.”

  Back in the car with nowhere else to go besides The Forks, Eva tried all the phone numbers again, maintaining their run of bad luck on the communication front as Dez navigated around flooded streets and floating debris. Trees were coming apart in the wind and leaving pieces of themselves everywhere. People’s outdoor belongings were blowing around and would likely never be reunited with the correct owner. And the power was still out, making it a challenge to see anything until you were damn near on top of it.

  But it wasn’t until they hit Forks Bridge that the situation went from bad to worse. Massive search lights had been rolled out to aid in what looked to be the evacuation of The Forks, and they illuminated a steady stream of traffic flowing across the bridge into Riverview. Across the river, the glow from additional search lights was just visible, suggesting other Forks residents were fleeing the island for the North Bank district.

  Two patrol cars were stationed this side of Forks Bridge, ensuring as much order as possible.

  “We’re not allowing anyone else into The Forks tonight, sir,” one of the officers said, his tone suggestive of a man who’d repeated the words umpteen times.