“Stop us from what? From seeing Zach?”
“I don’t know. That might be what he meant.”
“We’ve got to see him,” Peyton said, her voice full of determination.
Justine opened the drawer on her bedside table and grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. “Start from the beginning. Tell me everything Timmy told you again, everything you saw. I want to get it all down on paper. If some shadow monster is going to try and stop us from getting to Zach Regan, then we need to know exactly where we stand.” She paused. “Good Lord, I can’t believe I just said that. This is really happening, right?”
“Do you want me to pinch you?”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll wake up.” She sat back against her pillow and crossed her legs Indian style. “God, Rick is not going to believe this.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Peyton told her aunt everything, from the moment she’d seen Timmy to the moment the thing inside Rakel had brutalized her dead body. It was difficult to describe the horrors that had unfolded inside the hotel room, and Peyton had to stop and compose herself more than once.
“That’s when it ended,” Peyton said. “I was back in the kitchen. Then I heard you drop the cup.”
Justine set the pad and pen back on her bedside table, leaned back against the headboard, and rubbed her face with the palms of her hands. “I feel sick.”
“We need to let them know, don’t we?” Peyton asked.
Justine stopped rubbing and peeked through her fingers. “Who?”
“Hold on.” Peyton ran to her room and frantically dug through her purse until she found what she was looking for. She ran back to Justine’s room, and handed her a business card.
“Who is this?” Justine asked.
“Someone who promised he’d be there for me if I ever needed him.”
37
It took a few rings until Taggart realized it was his phone making the infernal racket.
He reached for it, knocking it to the floor in the dark. “Crap!” He flicked on his lamp, squinting at his digital clock. A little after 10 p.m. Calls at this hour were never for Mr. Taggart, they were always for Detective Taggart. He grabbed his phone off the floor. “Taggart here.”
“Detective? I’m sorry to wake you, but I really need to talk to you.”
It was a girl’s voice, but he couldn’t quite place it. “Who is this?” he asked.
“This is Peyton Sayre.”
He immediately put a face to the voice. Peyton Sayre, the girl whose parents were killed. “Peyton, what’s wrong?”
“I need your help, Detective.”
Taggart sat up in bed. He was fully awake now, wondering what could possibly be wrong for the girl to have called him at this hour. “Where are you, Peyton?”
“I’m in Twin Creek, and I’m okay. I’m not hurt or anything, but I need to talk to you.”
“Do you know what time it is?” Taggart said, trying hard to hide the pang of annoyance he felt.
“Yes, I know it’s late, but do you remember what you told me when you gave me your card? You said I could call you whenever I needed your help. And I really need your help.”
Taggart’s wife stirred beside him. “What is it, Jim?”
“Nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.”
“Is everything okay?”
He covered his phone with his hand. “I think so. It’s the girl whose parents were killed a few months ago. The Sayre girl. She says she needs to talk to me.”
Sighing, his wife dropped her head back to her pillow and pulled the covers over her head. Being awakened by calls in the middle of the night was normal for a cop’s wife, but that didn’t mean she’d ever gotten used to it.
“Hold on a second, Peyton,” Taggart whispered. “I’m going out to the living room.” He grabbed his robe from the foot of his bed, switched off the bedside lamp, and stumbled out to the living room.
“Okay, Peyton. Now tell me what’s going on.”
“This is going to sound hard to believe, Detective, but I don’t know who else I can turn to right now. My aunt is here with me, and she agreed I should call you. She feels the same way.”
He thought hard for a second. “Her name is Justine, right?”
“Yes. Justine Harmon. Do you want to talk to her?”
“No, not yet.” Taggart could hear the desperation in Peyton’s voice. He knew there was something terribly important she needed to get off her chest, and in a way he was glad she trusted him enough to call him. He sat down on the couch and said, “I’m listening, Peyton.”
“I know how Rakel Anders was killed.”
For a second, Taggart wondered if he’d heard her correctly. That name was not something he’d expected to hear. “Did you say Rakel Anders?”
“Yes, the girl who was murdered in a hotel room? I know what happened, Detective. He’s completely innocent. Zach Regan didn’t do it.”
Taggart knew the story had hit the national news. He didn’t want to be skeptical of what she was saying, but he couldn’t help it. “Is this some sort of joke?”
Peyton knew she’d have to speak quickly. “No sir, I wish it was. Please just listen, and don’t hang up. I saw what happened in the hotel room. I was shown what happened.” There was nothing but silence on the other end of the line. It didn’t surprise her. “Detective Taggart? Are you still there?”
Taggart decided to hear her out. He still had a case to solve. “Hold on a minute,” he said, quickly grabbing a pen and pad of paper from beside the living room phone. “Go ahead, Peyton. I’m listening.”
As Taggart took notes, Peyton told him the entire story, starting from the moment she saw Zach in the kitchen at the party, to when she’d walked into her aunt’s room just a short while ago.
Taggart asked to talk to Justine Harmon next, and he listened to her story as well. He was struck by how sincere they both sounded. If it was some kind of prank, it was a damned good one.
As with all murder investigations, there’s always some evidence that never makes its way to the public eye—some small piece of evidence that only the killer would know. Peyton knew that Rakel Anders had been killed with a box knife, a fact that’d been kept from the public. Taggart knew there was no way Peyton could possibly know what the murder weapon had been. Unless, of course, she’d seen it. Or had been there. Or had talked to Zach Regan.
Even more telling was that Peyton had mentioned Mitch Bannock. No one outside of the department—except for a few select, trusted people—knew that name. No one.
Peyton came back on the line.
“I think I need to talk to Zach,” she said.
“I want you to stay put for now. I’ll be in contact with you very soon,” Taggart said.
“You don’t believe me, do you.”
The dejection in her voice was obvious. “You said it yourself, Peyton, this story was going to be hard to believe. Well, you were right. It is.”
“Detective, I’m telling the truth. Zach didn’t do it. I just know I need to see him. And soon. I need your help.”
Taggart sighed. “I’m going to help you, Peyton, the only way I know how. You need to stay right where you are, and I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
Peyton knew she’d received as much help from Taggart as he was able to give at this point, and she was grateful for that. “Thank you, sir. Thank you for listening to me. It means a lot.”
“I’ll call you in the next couple of days, Peyton. Until then, stay put.”
After the call, Taggart sat on his couch for a few minutes, trying to wrap his mind around all he’d just heard. When he’d first learned that Mitch Bannock had been buried in Twin Creek, and remembered that Peyton had gone there to live, the connection between Twin Creek, Zach Regan, and Peyton Sayre had seemed like a strange coincidence, and it’d been nagging at him ever since. In a way, Peyton’s explanation had provided some missing pieces to the jumbled puzzle the Anders case had become. But he needed to somehow verify it all before he could possibly star
t to put those pieces into place.
*
“Sit down, Jack. The Anders case just got even more bizarre.” Taggart sat at his desk holding a sheet of hastily scribbled notes from his conversation with Peyton.
Jack Mauger leaned against the door frame. “I knew it. Aliens did it, right?” he said, smiling.
“Peyton Sayre called me late last night,” Taggart said. “Remember her?”
“Yeah, lost her parents a few months ago. Murder-suicide. I remember her. What the hell does she have to do with the Anders case?”
Taggart rubbed his eyes. Five cups of coffee later, he was still trying to understand everything he’d been told over the phone. The caffeine hadn’t helped a bit. “If what she told me is true, then she has a shitload to do with it.”
“What’d she tell you, Jim?”
“Remember that quote you told me? If all the reasonable things are discounted, then what is left, no matter how crazy, is the—”
“—truth? Close enough. Yeah, I remember.”
“Keep that in mind. Peyton said she had a vision of the Anders murder. She said she was shown everything, from the time Zach Regan and Rakel Anders arrived at the hotel, until Anders was killed. She told me Regan left the room about thirty minutes after they checked in, and that two hours later, Rakel Anders was killed. She described the murder scene in detail, Jack. She knew Anders was strangled with her own bra, and was cut by Regan’s box knife.”
Just a tad of the normal color faded from Mauger’s face. “No friggin’ way,” he said, vigorously shaking his head. “That’s impossible. Nobody knows any of that.”
Taggart had kept those details—the bra and the box knife—out of the press. And Mauger was correct; there was no way anyone outside of the investigation could possibly know about those two things, or the timeline, for that matter. “She does.”
“So if she was shown what happened—which I hope you’re going to explain to me in a minute—did Peyton just happen to mention who our killer is?”
“Rakel Anders strangled herself.”
“That’s— What? That’s physically impossible.”
“Not if you’re possessed by some sort of evil shadow monster.”
“Evil shadow monster.”
“That’s what I said. And after it forced Anders to kill herself, it took the box knife and carved the word into her dead body.”
“So Rakel Anders strangled herself, then her dead body cut itself up?”
“There’s no way she would know about the post-mortem wounds, either, Jack.”
“Jesus. And you believe this crap?”
“I didn’t say I believed it. I’m just telling you what she told me. And it gets better.”
Mauger ran his fingers through his buzz cut. “Something tells me I’d better sit down for the rest of this.” He grabbed a chair and plopped down.
“Do you remember where Peyton Sayre was placed after her parents died?” Taggart asked.
Mauger thought for a second. “Twin Creek.”
“Correct. And you also remember what happened in Twin Creek about twenty years ago?”
“The bank robbery, a mass shooting. We talked about it after we found Bannock’s fingerprints at the scene.”
“Do you want to hazard a guess what the Bannocks’ address was in Twin Creek?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Mitch, Jenna, and Timmy Bannock lived at 1307 Oak Hill Drive, which just happens to be where Peyton is living with her aunt and uncle.”
“The same house?”
“The same house.”
Mauger rubbed his eyes. “You should’ve let me grab a cup of coffee before I came in here.”
“Or a shot of something a little stronger?” Taggart suggested, trying to smile.
“No shit. Like rubbing alcohol. So, tell me how Peyton was shown all these things that she has no way of knowing.”
“Both Peyton and her aunt said they’d seen the ghost of Timmy Bannock in the house. They’ve talked to him. Peyton said it was Timmy’s ghost that allowed her to see the murder scene.”
“Okay, let’s stop for a second,” Mauger said. “Apart from two people admitting they’re talking to a ghost, which is way too weird for this early in the morning, by the way, what is Peyton’s connection to Regan? Why her? Is it the house or something? Like Amityville?”
“They both think Zach Regan is sharing an existence with another man.”
Mauger said nothing.
“Want to guess who?” Taggart asked.
“Since we’re talking about the Anders murder, I’m going to guess it starts with a ‘M’ and ends with ‘itch Bannock.’”
“Bingo.”
“Jim, they couldn’t know about Mitch Bannock, either. That name hasn’t been released anywhere.”
“I know.” Taggart paused before continuing. “Peyton’s aunt texted me after I’d gotten off the phone with them. She’s convinced the spirit of Jenna Bannock is connected to Peyton somehow, that they’re sharing an existence, too. She’s not sure Peyton realizes it yet, and they’re both sure Regan has no idea what’s going on.”
“Because a ghost told them.”
“Pretty much.”
After a long pause, Mauger spoke. “Okay. To sum it all up, we have a girl, Peyton Sayre, living in the same house where three murdered people once lived, convinced that she’s ‘sharing an existence’ with the dead wife of a dead man. She’s been visited by, and her aunt has been visited by, the dead son, who tells them both that his dead dad is ‘sharing an existence’ with Zach Regan. Peyton knows about the bra, the box knife, the post-mortem wounds, and Mitch Bannock, all of which are absolutely impossible. Oh, and there’s a shadow monster, too. Is that about it?”
“Not quite,” Taggart said. “You forgot about the Rohypnol and Bannock’s fingerprints.”
“Oh, sure,” Mauger said, throwing his arms up into the air. “How could I forget about those.”
“Peyton said she watched Anders drink half a bottle of booze in the hotel room—the bottle we found at the scene, which we also didn’t release to the press—and even mentioned that there was a drug in it. Anders tried to get Regan to kill her. He was under some sort of spell, but Bannock’s spirit—or whatever—came through and made Zach run away. Peyton said she watched Zach’s features change, and thought she saw Mitch Bannock’s face on Zach Regan’s body.”
“And that’s where the fingerprints and handprint came from? Bannock’s spirit—or whatever, like you said—came through so strongly that it actually changed Zach’s body?”
“That’s the story, Jack.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
“Peyton wants to see Regan. She’s frantic about it, and her aunt feels the same. They said all of this must be happening for a reason. Peyton and Regan, or Mitch and Jenna Bannock, need to be together again. And don’t ask me why, because they’re not sure either.”
“What did you tell Peyton to do?”
“I told her to sit tight until I called her again in a couple of days.”
“Once we figure out what we’re going to do, right? I think we need to get Zach Regan back in here.”
“For what?” Taggart asked. “He’s already said he doesn’t remember what happened.”
“Copy that. But maybe he can be helped to remember.”
The faintest trace of a smile crossed Taggart’s face. “Waterboarding is frowned upon now, Jack.”
“Not if you don’t get caught. But I’m talking about hypnosis.”
Taggart definitely didn’t expect that suggestion from his partner. “Oh, come on, Jack. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It’s been used to help solve cases before,” Mauger replied. “Ted Bundy. The Boston Strangler. We’re kind of at a dead end anyway, right? No pun intended.”
Taggart leaned back in his chair. He didn’t particularly believe in hypnosis, but Mauger was right. Taggart was familiar with both cases. Two people who had seen Ted Bundy underwe
nt hypnosis, and connected Bundy to two of his killings. And Albert DeSalvo, the self-confessed Boston Strangler, had described his murder scenes in depth while under hypnosis, relating details only the killer could have known.
“If you think it’s worth exploring, then we’ll consider it,” Taggart said. “But we’ll need to do it quickly. I don’t know why, but I have a bad feeling about this case. Something else is going to happen if we don’t move fast.”
“You and your damned gut, always burping up doom and gloom. You still worried about the Sayre girl?”
“I am.”
Mauger nodded. “I’ll give Trish Holloway a call and see what her schedule looks like. You gonna call Regan’s lawyer?”
“Yeah.” Taggart sighed. “This ought to be fun.”
38
The call with Regan’s lawyer had gone about as well as expected. So Taggart decided to call Zach directly, before his lawyer had a chance to talk to him.
“Hello, Detective.”
“We need to meet with you again, Zach,” Taggart said. “I’ve already talked to your lawyer. He’s probably trying to call you right now, but I wanted to talk to you first.” Taggart was pulling an end-around on Jake Tellez by contacting Zach himself, but based on the nature of the case, he didn’t give a damn. “We need you to do something for us, Zach. Mr. Tellez is going to tell you not to. I personally think he’s wrong. That’s why I called.”
“Maybe I should listen to him, Detective.”
“We’re on the same side, Zach. You may not think so, but we are. You don’t remember what happened that night, and we need to know what happened. We’re both trying to get at the truth, and I think we have a way to do just that.”
“I’ve already answered all your questions,” Zach replied, sounding frustrated. “What else is there to—”
“No. No more interrogations,” Taggart said. “That’s not it.”
“Then what is it? There’s somebody out there who killed Rakel. You’re wasting your time with me. I think we’re d—”
“Hypnosis, Zach. We want you to go under hypnosis,” Taggart said. There it was, out in the open. Something he never thought he’d suggest. There was a long pause before Zach finally answered.
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