by R. L. King
She didn’t move for several seconds. She stood there, rooted to the spot, her numb gaze taking in the room, the pile of ashes and clothes, the unconscious (dead?) man. The weird insane expression had left him; he looked like nothing more than a nondescript, middle-aged man in a suit.
When the compulsion to remain standing in one place left her, she did the only logical thing she could think of: she ran. Her only thought as she pelted up the stairs was to get away from the man, to find someone on the staff, to bring them down here and show them the man and explain to them about the ashes and the boy and—
—She flung herself out the door into the kitchen. She didn’t see the shadowy figure standing there until she collided with it.
Chapter Seven
Stone put the matter mostly out of mind for the next couple of days, focusing on catching up with some work he’d let slide while pursuing his investigation. As he suspected, neither Nancy McClain nor Dr. Barnett had contacted him again regarding Madison’s case, so he assumed that their concession to considering an occult connection for what had happened had been covered. He had kept a close watch on the local papers and the late-night news, but no more unusual murders had turned up. Maybe the whole thing was just a coincidence, and he was chasing shadows. He decided he wouldn’t mind that: he had too many other things to do, and if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t have the time to spare on this investigation.
Never stopped me before, though.
He waited until Thursday afternoon to go back to Kolinsky’s shop, figuring that should give the black mage enough time to tap his sources and research whatever connections he had. As usual, when he entered the shop there were no customers.
Kolinsky looked up from his desk. “Ah. Alastair. I was hoping you might come by today. You can get started on the wards whenever you like.”
“You’ve got something, then?”
“Something,” he said. “Though perhaps not as much as you might have hoped.” He waved Stone toward a chair, and when he had sat down, he pulled out a folder and opened it, extracting a sheet of paper. “The bad news first: I’m afraid I didn’t find out much about your murders that you didn’t already know. I was able to obtain a couple of transcripts from an interview with Martin Glass—the man who pushed the woman in front of the train. He maintains that he has no idea what he was doing, and that he—I am quoting here—’felt like somebody else had taken over my body and made me do it.’” He glanced up at Stone over the paper.
“Just like the little girl said.” Stone frowned. “So we might be looking at some sort of possession after all. Odd that I didn’t spot it. Anything else?”
“Nothing on the homeless men, and not much on the man in the alley. His name was Enrique Juarez, and he was a transient of no fixed address. The police have no leads on who might have killed him, which seems odd, given the ferocity of the crime.”
Stone nodded, sighing. It wasn’t much to go on. Kolinsky’s sources had never failed him before, which made him wonder once again if perhaps there wasn’t much here to find. Even if the girl and Glass had been somehow possessed, it was possible that the others were just the victims of particularly violent killers. “Anything about the traces of satisfaction?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve never heard of any such thing, beyond the feeling of pleasure that mages of my persuasion experience when taking power from someone. It’s possible that if it were done voluntarily it might have faded over time, but it doesn’t sound like this was voluntary. If it were black magic, you should have been able to detect the traces.”
“I expect so, yes. And I hardly think someone would stand by and allow themselves to be murdered. In any case, that level of draining by a black mage would reduce the victim to ash anyway.”
“Yes.” Kolinsky put the paper back in the folder.
“Okay, so that was the bad news. What’s the good news?”
He paged through the sheets until he found two that were stapled together. “Your source was apparently correct about the disappearances. There have been quite a number of them.”
“Oh?” Stone leaned forward. “How many are we talking about?”
“Thirty-eight, just within the last year. More if you go back further, but I confined my search to the last few months.” He passed the paper to Stone. “These, of course, are only those that were reported. I suspect there might be more, since there are likely cases where missing homeless people might not have any local friends or family to report them missing.”
Stone took the pages and glanced over them. They contained neat tables listing dates and locations of disappearances, along with the name, gender, and approximate age of the missing person. “And these are all people who disappeared from shelters? Not simply homeless people who disappeared?”
Kolinsky nodded. “Yes. And they aren’t all homeless people. A few are children or teenagers who disappeared from group foster homes and halfway houses. The only thing they have in common is that they disappeared while in the care of these facilities.”
“How can that be?” Stone lowered the paper and frowned at Kolinsky. “Don’t people notice these things? Families, or—”
“I doubt anyone else has made the connection. You mentioned that a homeless man told you this. The homeless are notoriously reluctant to speak to the police, and probably with good reason. As for the children—the cases have been obfuscated. Snarled in red tape. Most of the children are wards of the state, so again, no one would necessarily miss them if they were to be, say, transferred to someplace to which they never arrived.”
Stone sat for a moment, thinking. Finally he sighed. “This is all very unfortunate, but—” he spread his hands. “I don’t see what I can do about it. I supposed I can report it, but I wonder if anything would come of it even then. I’m assuming you found nothing to indicate supernatural involvement?”
“Not a bit,” Kolinsky said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Alastair. I’d like to have found more for you, if for no other reason than that I have a few other projects that could benefit from your help. But I think perhaps you might be searching for something that isn’t there.”
Stone nodded, only half-listening as he idly scanned down the Name column in the tables. The names meant nothing to him: more males than females, most of them adults. He turned the page and skimmed the second one, preparing to hand it back to Kolinsky.
And then he stopped.
One name jumped out at him. Verity Thayer. Age 17. Disappeared from a halfway house called New Horizons in Mountain View only a couple of days ago. He knew he’d heard that name before, but where?
“Is something wrong?” Kolinsky asked.
“I—” Stone waved the pages. “I saw a name I think I recognize. But—” And then it came to him, where he’d heard it. “This girl. Verity Thayer. I know this sounds farfetched, but I think I knew her mother.”
“Indeed?” Kolinsky looked surprised. “Are you sure?”
“It’s an unusual name,” he said. “I doubt there are two of them. The age is right, too. Her mother’s name was Lenore. She’s been dead for years. I met her when I was a teenager. She had…” he struggled to remember “…another child, an older boy. Verity had just been born less than a year before I met Lenore. I think the family was from southern California. What was her daughter doing in a halfway house in Mountain View?” He held up the pages. “May I keep these?”
“Of course. What do you plan to do?”
“I think I might check out this halfway house. If she truly is my old friend’s daughter, I should probably at least make an effort to try to find out what’s become of her.”
Kolinsky nodded. “Then I’m glad to have been of assistance. Now, about my wards—”
Stone wanted to go to the halfway house right away, but it was already getting late. “I suppose I’d best do them tonight. That way I can sleep off the fatigue and go inve
stigate the place tomorrow.”
Chapter Eight
For Jason Thayer, the whole thing started with a flashing red light.
He sighed, tossing his battered duffel bag on the couch. Couldn’t today just leave him alone for a little while? It was bad enough that he was dead tired after dragging in from two days visiting a friend out in Sacramento, not to mention nearly getting tossed in jail for a bar fight—did his answering machine have to mock him as he came in the door?
In his experience, that red light never meant good things. It was never “Congratulations! You won the lottery!” or “Hey, buddy, I’m out with this really hot chick and she’s got a hot sister who’s dying to meet you.” No, not for him. It was usually more like “Where’s the rent?” or “I’m gonna fuck you up when I find you, asshole!” or “I never want to see you again!”
Maybe he’d be lucky and it would just be a bill collector. He was getting good at ignoring those. He hit the button.
“Jason?”
The single word jolted him like an electric current. He stared at the machine’s tiny speaker.
“Jason? Are you there? If you are, please pick up. It’s me.” There was a several-second pause, then the voice continued, faster and more frightened. “Jason? Oh, God, you’re not home. Or maybe you’re just not answering. But—I need help. There’s something going on at this place and it’s wrong and I’m scared. I have to get out.” Her breathing quickened. “I can’t talk long—I’m not supposed to be using the phone, and I don’t know how long it’ll be before they find me. Charles says I have to go. It’s not safe here anymore.” A pause, then: “Somebody’s coming. I have to go. Oh, God, please, Jason—help me! You’re the only one I can trust!”
There was kind of a scuffling sound, the sort you might hear when somebody is fumbling with the phone receiver, and then a soft click and the line went dead. Then the little red light went out, and another one appeared next to “No new messages.” The timestamp was from two days ago.
“Oh, shit…”
That, or some variation of it, was his usual response to hearing that particular voice. He felt bad about it, but it was true. That voice hadn’t brought him anything but trouble for years, and it looked like this was no exception. He really wished he didn’t feel this way. A long time ago, back when he was a kid and his dad was alive and the world hadn’t yet gone to shit, he and Verity had gotten along great. But that was a long time ago, and a lot had changed since then. Maybe too much.
He sighed. Dad, I wish you were still around to handle this. Because I have no fucking idea how I’m gonna do it.
He had to hunt around for an embarrassingly long time before locating the number of the halfway house—he finally found it on a torn-off piece of paper buried under a stack of bike-parts catalogs and skin mags on his nightstand. Before he could change his mind, he perched on the edge of the couch and dialed it.
It was a long time before anyone answered. Then, “Hello?” The voice sounded young.
“Uh, yeah, hi. Is this—” he consulted his slip of paper for the name “—New Horizons?”
“Yeah.”
This wasn’t going to be easy. “Can I, uh, talk to somebody in charge?”
“In charge? Oh. Uh, yeah. Just a sec.” There was the sound of the phone being tossed down on a table, then the far-off call of, “Dr. Delancie, some guy wants to talk to you!”
Another long pause—Jason was beginning to think the kid had wandered off and forgotten about him—and then somebody picked up the phone. “Good afternoon. Who is this, please?” This time the voice was male and sounded older.
“Who’s this?” Jason responded. “I need to talk to somebody in charge there.”
“That would be me,” the man said. “Dr. Edward Delancie. And you are?”
“I’m looking for my sister. She’s a resident there. She left a message on my machine two days ago. I was out of town—didn’t get it till today. It sounded like she might be in trouble.”
Pause. “Who is your sister?”
“Verity Thayer. She’s seventeen.”
“Ah, yes, Miss Thayer. Lovely girl. What did you say your name was again?”
“Jason Thayer.”
“Well, Mr. Thayer,” Edward Delancie said, “I’m sure if you’re familiar with your sister’s case, you’re aware that she suffers from certain…delusions.”
For a moment Jason wasn’t sure how to reply. “Yeah, I know that,” he finally said. “I thought she was doing a lot better, though.”
“Oh, she is, she is,” Delancie assured him. “She’s making wonderful progress. But sometimes she has—moments of backsliding. I hope you understand. They’re coming with less and less frequency as time goes on, but they still happen. And I regret to say that the incident two days ago was one of them.”
Jason took a slow deep breath. “So—you’re telling me that whatever she said, she was making it up? That she’s not in any trouble?”
“Well…technically she is in a spot of trouble, since we have strict rules here about unauthorized use of the telephone. According to my records, she’s currently in what we call ‘time out.’”
“What the hell does that mean?” Jason demanded. He was growing more and more convinced that he didn’t like this guy.
Delancie didn’t miss a beat. “It means, Mr. Thayer, that she’s had certain privileges suspended for two days. No telephone, no television, and no visitors. You understand, I hope, that our treatment methods are carefully designed, and unfettered contact with, shall we say, ‘the outside world’ can cause severe setbacks.”
Jason glared at the phone. “So you’re saying she’s in some kind of—what—solitary confinement?”
Delancie laughed. “No, no, no! Of course not! She still has access to our library, and she’s able to move around the facility just as she always was. She’s simply not allowed television privileges nor any contact with anyone outside for two days.”
“So I can’t talk to her?”
“You’re welcome to give her a call tomorrow morning, or to write her a letter. But until then, I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
Again, Jason took a deep breath. It was all he could do not to growl at this oily son of a bitch. “So how do I know she’s even still there? She said something about needing to get out—about how it wasn’t safe there anymore. She could be dead for all you’re telling me!” His voice rose a bit at the end, and he could feel his temper rising along with it.
“Mr. Thayer—Jason—please.” Delancie still sounded utterly unruffled. “I understand that you’re upset, but there’s really nothing I can do. Rules are rules, and they’re put in place for the benefit of the residents.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “I’m sure you know this, as you signed the papers to have your sister come to live with us here at New Horizons. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten over time, since I don’t show any record of your ever having visited your sister here.”
You smarmy fucking bastard. “Listen up, Ed. Maybe I haven’t visited before, but I’m coming up there now. And if you know what’s good for you, you’d better let me see my sister. You got that? In fact, have her ready to go, ’cause I’m taking her out of there. I don’t really think a pretentious ass like you is the kind of guy I want looking out for her.” His mouth was running away with his good judgment again, but for once he just let his brain go along for the ride.
“You do what you think you must, Jason.” Apparently this Delancie character was incapable of being pissed off, which pissed Jason off even more. “You are, of course, responsible for making these sorts of decisions for your sister until she reaches the age of eighteen. But may I submit that, since I have been overseeing her care for the past several months, perhaps I might have a better idea of what’s required to, as you say, ‘look out for her’ than you do. Let’s make an appointment and we can chat, then you can make an i
nformed decision. Is that acceptable?”
Jason gritted his teeth and forced himself not to start yelling into the phone. Smarmy or not, the part of his mind that actually made rational decisions had to admit the guy made sense. Verity could be a handful sometimes—he knew that from firsthand experience. And she had certainly been known to overreact to things that didn’t even exist. “Okay,” he grumbled. “We’ll talk. But I want to see her when I get there. That’s not negotiable. I want to make sure she’s okay.”
“Fair enough,” Delancie agreed. “When shall I expect you?”
“When I get there,” Jason told him. And he hung up, which was strangely satisfying.
Chapter Nine
Two hours after he’d hung up on Edward Delancie, Jason was on the road. He checked in with Stan Lopez, a cop and an old friend of his father’s, on the way out.
“You leavin’ town?” Lopez asked, eyeing Jason’s duffel bag.
“Yeah, for a while. Change of scenery might do me good.” And then, because his friend was looking at him like he didn’t believe a word of it, added, “Goin’ up to the Bay Area to check on V.”
Lopez’s expression softened. “Haven’t heard much about her in a while. She doing okay?”
Jason shrugged. “Who knows? That’s what I’m headed up there to find out.”
“Take care, kid. And take care of her. Lemme know if there’s anything I can do, okay?”
“Might take you up on that.”
Jason thought a lot about Verity as the old Harley rumbled up the coast. He figured he had the guilt coming, and now was as good a time as any to let it catch up and smack him a few good ones between the eyes.
Shit, had it already been five years? Between the Academy and the series of odd jobs after he’d gotten kicked out, time had moved fast. At the beginning, of course, he hadn’t had to worry about things like insurance and care facilities and treatment programs. Dad had done that. Just like it was supposed to happen when your sister freaked out and had to go live where they could take care of her.