Gallagher lied straight-faced, saying he’d brought the gold chain to Andie the night after the search of his cabin. Andie hesitated, glanced at Gallagher, then haltingly spoke of her shock at seeing the cross, of the story of her mother and the pouch and the journal and something horrible that had happened in Lawton one hundred years ago; and how she and Gallagher had gone looking for Olga Dawson’s piece of the journal and found it in a cave on Lawton Mountain. Gallagher broke in with another bald fabrication, saying that both sections of the journal were stolen from Andie’s house while they were at Hank Potter’s trying to determine whether he’d had a portion of it or not.
Together they explained the logic of going to see Monsignor McColl and how eventually that had led them to the librarian’s house. The killer had been upstairs when they knocked at the front door. He bailed out the window on a climbing rope, then torched the place just as they were finding the librarian’s corpse.
Even through the sacklike jacket Chief Kerris wore, Gallagher could see his rib cage rising and falling quicker and quicker as he and Andie wove their web of truths and falsehoods.
‘This is bullshit,’ he said when they finished. ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’
Andie held up the killer’s latest drawing and missive. ‘This was pinned to the librarian’s chest when we found him. What don’t you believe?’
Kerris gaped at the drawing as if he were hypnotized. Charun’s head was fully turned now. The sliver of white in his eyes had become a quarter moon. A third of the stitches along the lips had been sliced open to reveal a single sharp tooth; the left corner of the mouth was arched in a sneer. The phallus was bigger and bloodier than on the drawing he’d left at Olga Dawson’s house. There was a noose tied around the tip of the penis.
Andie nipped the paper over so Kerris and Bowman could read the note:
Angel said there were many ways to go and return. My Persephone said we could get closest through the shaman’s mixture and the rope. She swelled deliciously tight around me. She bucked and gasped, ‘Vida!’
The mushroom took my head and I came up, arms spread wide, hard and strong with the rope. Persephone has left me behind. Blind and deaf and mute.
But now my mouth opens to taste the mystery. And the light reaches my eyes.
‘Satisfied, Chief?’ Andie asked.
Kerris cranked his head around. Beads of sweat dripped off his nose, but his jaw set tense and determined.
‘I still don’t believe these killings are linked to something that happened in Lawton a hundred years ago,’ he said. ‘My family goes back a hundred and fifty years in this town. I’ve never heard of anything about an “abomination” or whatever your mother called it, Andie. Until last week, there’ve only been two recorded murders in Lawton and those were close to thirty years ago.’
Andie gripped the edge of the wool blanket. ‘C’mon, Mike, you know better than most that it’s not hard to bury things if you know how.’
For an instant pure hatred crossed Kerris’ face, but he kept control. ‘I still don’t buy it.’
‘What’s going on with you two?’ Bowman demanded.
‘It’s personal, Lieutenant,’ Andie said, never letting her eyes leave Kerris. ‘But Mike knows what I’m talking about. Lawton’s always kept secrets. It’s part of the code among certain families in town.’
‘I don’t know what she’s talking about,’ Kerris said evenly.
‘Old habits die the hardest, don’t they?’ Andie responded.
Bowman pointed at the two of them. ‘Whatever it is between you two, I won’t have it cloud this investigation. I—’
An older trooper in a black rain slicker came across the lawn. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant, but we’ve got a few things you should know. We found the Explorer about two miles from here, pulled off into the ditch. We ran the dog on the scent, but he lost it not far from the truck. Killer must have gone to water and then out into a swamp. We’ve got troopers working all the roads, but it’s wilderness up in there for twenty miles in every direction.’
The mist had lifted. And for the first time they all felt the forbidding presence of the mountains and the vast hardwood forests that soared above Nyren’s property. A man could hide from himself in there for weeks, Gallagher thought. And then he had the creepy-crawly sensation that they were being watched. He scanned the forest, but saw nothing.
‘Anything in the truck, Harry?’ Bowman asked the trooper. ‘Files? Maybe an old leather pouch or something?’
‘No files or pouches that I saw,’ Harry said. ‘Fresh bloodstains, though.’
‘Damn it,’ Andie groaned. ‘He got our list of names and we don’t have a copy.’
‘Have the whole vehicle dusted for prints, though I get the feeling we’re not going to find any,’ Bowman ordered. ‘Get samples of that blood, too, and see if it matches records of the librarian’s blood type. With the fire, I don’t think we’ll be doing any DNA matches, but just the same…And start a door-to-door a mile to either side of where that Explorer was found. Anything else I should know about?’
The trooper nodded. He held up two plastic evidence bags. In one was a swatch of green camouflage about four inches by two inches long. In the other was a scarlet wooden bead, thin, about the length of a fingernail.
‘He left big footprints going out of here, too,’ the trooper said. ‘And a muddy glove print on a birch tree. From the height of it, he’s a huge son of a bitch. We’re taking casts of the footprints.’
‘Good, good,’ Bowman said, allowing herself a smile. ‘He’s finally leaving traces of himself behind, besides what he wants us to see. Now we’ll get him.’
As suddenly as that rare smile had passed her lips, Bowman turned steely again. ‘Sergeant, this is the second time you’ve kept vital information back in this case, and I want to know why.’
‘Would you have believed me, Brigid?’ Andie retorted. ‘Or would you have chalked it up as the ravings of a drunk female cop, especially after the pieces of the journal and the two crosses were stolen and I had no evidence to back me up? Even if you did believe me, would you have let me work on the case?’
The lieutenant held herself stiffly. She looked away toward the woods for a moment, then said, ‘So we don’t have any of this journal?’
‘No,’ Andie said. ‘Right now, we do not.’
Bowman rolled her tongue around the inside of her cheek. ‘I’ve got to ask this, Andie. How long are you from your last drink?’
Andie flinched and swallowed at the question. There was the slightest upturn at the corners of Kerris’ lips and Gallagher wanted to punch him in the face.
‘I was twenty-one months and twelve days sober until I found my mom’s best friend hacked, burned and possibly sexually assaulted,’ Andie said. ‘I am now four days sober.’
Bowman fiddled with the buttons of her raincoat. Droplets stood out on the moussed spikes of her white hairdo.
‘You’ve got to believe me, Brigid,’ Andie pleaded.
‘I don’t believe what I don’t see,’ Bowman snapped. ‘We don’t have the journal, but we do have this third note from the killer. We do have a piece of his clothing. We do have a bead. We do have his semen from Hank Potter. We may have more evidence from Gallagher’s Explorer. Those pieces of concrete evidence are where I’m going to focus this investigation.’
‘You’re not going to pursue the journal?’ Andie cried. ‘There are other people out there who are at risk!’
Bowman held up her hand to end further protest. ‘Look at it from my perspective. My team has a current caseload of twenty-two active investigations and half that many investigators. Where do I put my manpower? On a trail that’s an hour old—maybe someone saw someone leaving the librarian’s house after the fire was set or after abandoning Mr Gallagher’s truck or running through the woods. Or maybe someone saw him drawing this picture at a local McDonald’s. You know as well as I do that I’ve got to proceed where the evidence is the freshest. If that runs
out of steam, we’ll push the journal.’
‘Now you’re talking,’ Kerris said.
The lieutenant shot the chief a quick glance of disapproval, then returned to Andie. ‘Because of your … recent actions, I’m forced to put you on an additional fourteen-day leave on top of the original fourteen, which will mean you’ll be thirty days dry when you return. Which gives me three investigators to work on this case.’
‘Brigid, you can’t!’
‘Sergeant, I can. And you’re lucky not to be suspended indefinitely.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘I WON’T STOP,’ ANDIE vowed. She paced back and forth across her kitchen. ‘She’s wrong and I’m right!’
‘She’s letting her bureaucratic side get in the way of the investigation,’ Gallagher agreed.
‘I admit it: I drank and didn’t tell her about the journal! But that’s no reason to … I’m not stopping!’
‘Then I’m not, either,’ Gallagher said.
Andie shook her head. ‘I can’t let you get more involved in this.’
He pointed at his legs. ‘I’ve been wounded twice by this bastard. It’s gotten personal.’
‘But—’
‘No buts. I’m not backing off, either.’
Her finger wormed into the weave of the Irish wool sweater she wore. She shuffled to the bay window and looked out. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. Despite the prolonged chilly spell, the grass on her lawn was inches taller than it had been when Gallagher arrived in Lawton. Red-winged blackbirds sang in the rushes of the lily pond. The rusty hulls of the maple-tree buds littered the rich dark loam of her overturned garden. On the trees themselves were the faint brush strokes of the year’s first leaves. But winter still embraced the upper two-thirds of Lawton Mountain.
‘It will be time to plant my garden soon,’ she remarked.
Gallagher walked over and looked out the window. ‘Why do you like to work with plants so much?’
‘I suppose it’s my way of getting in touch with my higher power,’ she said. ‘My way of attaching so I can get through the bad times.’
‘So you believe in God?’
Andie turned and gazed at him with a slightly furrowed brow. ‘Believing in a higher power is the only way to recover.’
‘I don’t believe,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she replied with a trace of sadness in her voice, and it occurred to Gallagher that he enjoyed watching the broad range of emotions she displayed. Andie was the most alive being he’d ever known.
Before he could tell her that, she said, ‘I owe you a thanks.’
‘For what?’
‘Well, for starters, you got me out of a burning house,’ she replied. ‘And then you stood up for me with Bowman and Kerris. No one’s done anything like that for me in a long time. No one’s cared to.’
She stood on tiptoes, then pecked Gallagher on the lips. He froze. Disappointment flickered across her face; then her expression tightened and she turned away from him. ‘It’s because of my drinking, isn’t it?’
Gallagher’s throat constricted. ‘No, I …’
‘Do you want to hear about my drinking, the whole thing? I’ve never told anyone the whole thing.’
‘Why would you tell me?’
‘Like you said, we’re alike. I figure you might understand.’
Gallagher wanted to go out into the night and walk and not hear. But the wounded expression on her face would not let him leave. ‘I’ll listen.’
Andie said that during the downward spiral of her father after the death of her brother, the farm, once one of the best-run in Lawton, fell into disrepair. Her parents fought. Andie herself was a lonely little girl whose best friends were her mother and Olga Dawson.
But the summer between her fifteenth and sixteenth years, nature transformed Andie Nightingale from a gawky, shy girl into a tall, well-proportioned, beautiful young woman. For the first time in her life, boys paid attention to her.
Just before the end of her junior year in high school, she met Mike Kerris, a freshman at the University of Vermont. He was handsome and related through his mother to the Powells, the richest and most powerful family in Lawton. Kerris was also the rising star of the UVM football and ski teams.
She met him at a party in early June, around graduation time. Kerris gave her her first drink, vodka and orange juice. The drink made everything shimmery and warm and he kissed her before dropping her off at home. Kerris went away for part of the summer, then came back and they ran into each other a second time at a party. She got very drunk and he told her he loved her. Her life at home was dreary, and here was a glamorous new beginning. She told Kerris she loved him, too.
‘I woke up the next morning to discover I’d lost my virginity,’ Andie said, smiling weakly at Gallagher. ‘Not exactly how I’d planned it. And I didn’t hear from him for a long time after that.’
Andie took a big breath and unraveled the rest of her tale the way a woman struck with agorophobia might approach the edge of the Grand Canyon. Kerris called out of the blue in late August to invite her to a third party after the Shrine game between Vermont’s and New Hampshire’s football all-stars. Andie told her parents she was going to spend the night at a friend’s house.
Kerris gave her a drink the moment she walked into the condominium some older kids had rented at the base of the Lawton ski area. Every time her glass emptied, Kerris gave her a drink.
‘I remember dancing, everything so shimmery and funny,’ Andie said. ‘Then the shimmers blurred until it was dark Mike was with me on a bed in a back room.’
She stopped. Her chin did a slow dance in the air and her eyes watered.
‘You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to,’ Gallagher said.
‘There were other boys in the room with us—they—’ Andie choked. ‘Olga found me wandering in the streets downtown. I didn’t have many clothes on. To this day I have no idea how I got there.’
The hatred that had sparked between her and Kerris at the librarian’s house was there on her face again.
‘Did you press charges?’ Gallagher asked.
‘I went to the police, but—’ Andie stopped. ‘You don’t understand Lawton. The Powells have been around forever. They’re like the Kennedys. When one of them gets in trouble, they close ranks.’
Kerris’ uncle Bruce, once the local state’s attorney and now the esteemed and entrepreneurial mayor of Lawton, went to Andie’s father and convinced him to convince Andie that a public trial would only serve to damage a lot of young people with their whole lives ahead of them. In exchange for dropping the charges, they cut a deal. The Powells would completely pay for Andie’s education. Kerris would leave Vermont and go to Chile to be a ski instructor at a resort owned by a family friend.
‘He was gone six or seven years down there,’ Andie said. ‘But what he’d done haunted me every day. I tried to channel my anger by becoming a cop. But sometimes it would get the better of me and I’d remember how shimmery the world was that night; and, sick as it sounds, I’d sneak drinks by myself so I’d feel what it was like before the rape.’
Andie sat in the easy chair next to the woodstove, drew her heels up to her buttocks and cleared her throat. And cleared it again.
‘How the hell did Kerris get to be police chief?’ Gallagher demanded.
‘The Powell way,’ she said, shrugging. ‘The family decided seven years in exile was long enough and they arranged a slot for him at the state academy over in Pittsford. He spent two years as deputy on the Lawton force; then the mayor eased the old chief out. Now the mastermind of my rape is the law in town.’
Her eyes ran bloodshot. She put her head in her hands and her shoulders shook. Gallagher flashed on an image of his ex-wife in the same defeated posture. ‘Andie?’
‘What?’ she mumbled.
‘I’m sorry I pulled away from you.’
He walked over to her. His hands shook before they came to rest on her shoulders. She s
melled of freshly fallen leaves. A vein pulsed gently at the nape of her neck. He kissed her on that vein, then felt panic at the sense of a gaping hole that opened up in front of him. She must have seen the same yawning chasm, too, because the muscles between her neck and shoulders tightened and her hand shook when she reached out to stroke his cheek
‘I haven’t …’ Andie said, so soft and so vulnerable. ‘I haven’t since then.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MONDAY, MAY 18
THROUGH THE RAIN-STREAKED PANES of Andie’s bedroom window, Gallagher watched a band of blackbirds land in a stand of staghorn sumac and peck at the crimson seedpods. The blood-red shells fell from their beaks like scabs picked off a fresh wound. Pewter clouds broke up behind the birds. The sun rose, flooding the sky with pink light.
Andie’s breasts swelled against his back. She made gentle noises in her sleep that struck him as the most soothing sounds he had listened to in a long time. Her hand came across his chest.
They had taken it ever so slowly. Each time Andie tensed at his kiss or his touch, Gallagher had backed off and waited for her to get through whatever barrier she had to cross. Somewhere in the middle of the night they were at last joined, and they both cried out in a release stunning in its intensity.
Gallagher knew he should have been content lying there. But instead he felt threatened Andie was capable of opening the glass boxes in his head, of making him feel in a way he had not thought was possible. And he realized that, for some reason, the swelling of that strange emotion inside him scared him as much as the thought of facing Charun again. He tried to move out from under her arm, but couldn’t; and he lay there for the longest time staring blankly at the sunrise, trying to think about the murders and Many Horses’ journal as a way to avoid thinking about Andie Nightingale.
That last message from Charun stayed with him.
Angel said there were many ways to go and return. My Persephone said we could get closest through the shaman’s mixture and the rope. She swelled deliciously tight around me. She bucked and gasped, ‘Vida!’
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