by H. P. Bayne
Sully beat Dez to it, his raised eyebrows showing all the surprise Dez felt. “Marc’s wife.”
Lachlan grinned. “Bingo.”
Dez shrugged, then winced as the movement pulled at a sore spot. “Weird connections aside, what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing,” Lachlan said. “Maybe everything. I don’t know. All I do know is we haven’t found our answers yet, and any good investigation leaves no stone unturned. Investigators at the time looked at the possibility of family involvement, but they ruled it out very quickly—maybe too quickly. I think we should visit your friend Marc, see if he knows anything.”
Dez found himself pinned in an imploring gaze from Sully, who then addressed Lachlan directly. “Um, maybe it would be better if Dez and I went to talk to him ourselves first. He really loves Mariel, and he’s bound to be protective. If he gets the impression you’re accusing her of anything—particularly something this serious—he’ll probably shut down on you.”
Lachlan pressed his lips together. He wasn’t fond of the suggestion, that much was clear. But he was thinking about it, which said something about Sully’s power of persuasion. Not easily would Lachlan agree to sit out a witness interview he’d personally deemed necessary.
Maybe it also said something for his faith in Dez and Sully to do the job that his lips turned up into a slight smile. “Okay. You have a point. But don’t beat around the bush on this. I know he’s your friend, but he might have answers we need. You have to get him to share what he knows—even if it means getting a little forceful.”
Lachlan handed over a copy of Mariel’s police statement and the subsequent report before letting the brothers go on their way.
“I’d imagine that’s why you didn’t want Lachlan coming along,” Dez said once the brothers were back in the SUV and on their way to the university. “I don’t get the impression ‘getting a little forceful’ with Marc is the way you want to play this. Good call, by the way.”
“That was part of the reason, but not the only one,” Sully said. “Lachlan doesn’t know about Marc’s empath abilities, and I’m not sure Marc would want to share. Plus, let’s face it, Lachlan’s personality being what it is, his aura has to be all sorts of colours that would put Marc off from the start.”
It was a good point. Marc’s ability to read auras allowed him to see right into a person’s soul at first glance. Lachlan was a good person, but he could also be a complete dick and a huge bully when he chose to be—which some days was quite often. Marc wasn’t likely to spill any secrets to a man like that, much less about a deceased loved one.
Marc wasn’t in his office when Dez and Sully arrived on the floor housing the Sociology department, allowing them a little more time to go through the documents Marc had provided. Sully had read them aloud on the way over, but Dez had never been the best at processing information that way. Seated in a pair of chairs outside Marc’s closed door, Dez took the statement and the report from Sully and read them over himself.
“They’re short,” Dez said. “But it looks like investigators ticked the right boxes back then. They even noted she appeared distraught—about what you’d expect from a young woman whose nephew’s gone missing.”
“I didn’t see anything to suggest she knew something.” Sully paused, fingering the wooden cross hanging around his neck. It had been a gift from Marc, one not lightly given since it had belonged to Mariel. Sully had his hood up, but Dez could see enough of his face to recognize tension along the jawline. That and the way he was toying with the cross suggested he didn’t want to say what he was thinking. He did anyway. “But I’m not sure there’s anything here to prove she didn’t know anything either. I mean, people with a guilty conscience could be distraught, too, right?”
“Do you really think Marc would have married a woman who had a hand in hurting her own nephew?”
“No, I don’t. But maybe the answer’s something else.”
“Or maybe the answer’s what the police thought at the time,” Dez said. “That she had no knowledge of the disappearance.”
Sully nodded, the hood moving with the motion. “You’re right. That makes the most sense. Don’t tell Marc I said anything.”
“If I were you, I’d take a breath and try to put it out of your head,” Dez said. “The second he sees you, he’ll know something’s up, whether or not you say anything.”
Another nod, then the two fell into silence as Dez folded and tucked the documents into his jacket pocket.
Another fifteen minutes passed before the elevator doors opened down the hall to reveal Marc approaching with leather briefcase in one hand, coffee mug in the other and a stack of books and papers balanced precariously along his forearms. He looked stressed, but his eyes lit up the moment he saw Dez and Sully waiting for him.
“Boys, good to see you.” Marc reached them, jingling a set of keys on one finger while meeting Dez’s eye. “Help me out and get the door for me, will you? I didn’t think ahead when I left my office. Essay turn-in day. You can guess how I’ll be spending my weekend.”
Dez carefully extracted the keys from Marc’s overtasked hand and unlocked the office door. Inside, Dez and Sully helped the professor unload his burden onto his cluttered desktop.
Dez scanned the top of one of the papers. “Witchcraft, huh?”
“More specifically, the persecution of women and societal outsiders condoned during the witch trials. Interesting topic. I’m just not sure I’m in the mood to read over this class’s offerings. Not the brightest bulbs, if you catch my drift.”
“Love to help, but witches aren’t really my thing,” Dez said. He recognized his foot-in-mouth comment as soon as it had escaped, Marc being a practicing Wiccan. “Present company excluded, of course.”
Marc chuckled, then slid into his chair. “Naturally. What can I help you two with? I can see something’s on your minds.”
Sully shut the office door, then took one of two other chairs. That left Dez the other, which first required relocating a few books from the seat to the desk.
“We’re looking into something as part of an investigation,” Sully said. “It’s about a missing kid.”
“Oh no,” Marc said. “I didn’t hear about a missing child. What happened?”
“It’s not a new case,” Dez said. “This one dates back forty years. Actually, it’s Roman Gerhardt’s son we’re trying to find answers about. We’ve just learned Gerhardt’s wife was Mariel’s sister.”
Marc had been leaning forward, his expression one of interest. Now he sat back in his chair, the springs squeaking beneath him. An expression crossed his features for a fleeting moment—worry or fear, Dez believed—but it was gone quickly, replaced by what would be best described as an inscrutable poker face.
Apparently, Sully had caught it too. “Marc?”
Marc’s eyes snapped onto Sully’s. “Why are you doing this? After everything you went through at that man’s hands, you’re putting yourself back into the fray? Why? What do you think you’re going to get out of this?”
“Answers, if we’re lucky,” Sully said. “We’re getting really close to being able to move on some major players and expose their dirty secrets. Gerhardt might be the key, if we can give him what he wants.”
“His missing son,” Marc summed up. “You want to expose another human being to a monster like that? What for?”
“We don’t even know David’s still alive,” Dez said. “Let’s be honest, most people who take children aren’t planning Disney trips. It could be all we find is a body he can bury, but at least it would give him some sort of closure.”
“He doesn’t deserve closure. We all know what kind of man he is, what he does to innocent, helpless people. Monsters like him are exactly why it’s so crucial to teach the subject I do. People like that made the witch trials possible, and if you think it couldn’t happen again, you’d be very wrong. What he’s been doing in Lockwood, that’s a form of torture.”
“If i
t turns out David is alive, we wouldn’t hand Gerhardt a bunch of info on him just like that,” Sully said. “We know better. But here’s the thing: We’re trying to take down something far bigger than Gerhardt or David or either of us. Gerhardt could be the key, and we’re going to have to weigh everything we do against the big picture.”
“What are you trying to do, exactly?”
Marc was doing exactly what Sully had expressed a fear about. He was shutting down, closing in on himself. Yet he was their friend, and he was no doubt asking questions because of that existing relationship. If they could give him satisfactory answers, maybe they could elicit a few from him as well. Because one thing was very clear: Marc did indeed know something. And he wasn’t keen on sharing.
Dez and Sully gave Marc a full rundown on what they were working on, providing details of the Circle, of Lowell’s crimes, of Sully’s blood ties to Gerhardt and of their forming plan to deal with all of it. When they’d finished, Marc’s poker face had crumbled. Still, he remained silent.
They gave him a minute or two, and Dez watched as thoughts played out in the narrowing of eyes and the deepening of forehead lines.
“You truly believe you can shut down Lockwood?” he asked at last.
“Our goal isn’t to shut it down,” Sully said. “It does good work for a lot of the patients, ones who aren’t psychic anyway. It’s just Gerhardt who needs to go.”
“To hell, preferably,” Dez added.
“And you think Mariel knew something,” Marc said.
“We don’t think anything,” Sully said. “We’re just asking the question. She called Eloise at the exact moment David was taken. It’s possible a kidnapper was waiting behind the fence for an opportunity, and one simply presented itself when Eloise went to answer the phone. But we need to check into every possibility, including that Mariel was providing an opportunity on purpose.”
Marc released a long sigh, one suggesting a difficult truth was about to be revealed.
“What I’m about to tell you is something I swore never to reveal,” he said. “I promised Mariel as she lay dying. I’m only saying this so you can make an informed decision as to how best to proceed, given all that’s involved.” He leaned forward, into arms folded atop his desk. His face lowered, concealing much of his expression. Maintaining the position, he took a long, deep breath and let it out in a shaky exhale. His eyes remained fixed on his cupped hands as he spoke. “When I first met Mariel, I was certain she was the most beautiful human being I’d ever set eyes on. Her aura was incredible, an array of bright colours that told me she was as lovely inside as out. But there was something else there too: a muddy spot that told me she was carrying something unpleasant, something that came from deep guilt or regret or pain. I asked her about it a few times over the course of our marriage as it never disappeared, but she wouldn’t speak of it. She kept saying she’d tell me one day, when she was ready. That day came as she was lying on her deathbed.”
He stopped, lifting a hand to press at the corners of his eyes where tears had begun to form.
Sully’s voice pressed into the silence. “I’m sorry, Marc.”
Marc glanced up, catching Sully’s eye. “I know. It’s all right.” He took another deep breath and continued, this time maintaining his gaze on his visitors. “Mariel aided in the kidnapping of her nephew. But it isn’t what you might think. There was no malice in it, only love. She adored that little boy with all her heart. All of the family did. Everyone but his father, that is. I can’t imagine Roman Gerhardt having it in him to care about anyone. Even this obsession with finding the child, it’s not about love. It’s about control. As far as he’s concerned, that child was his, his property, his possession, and someone took that from him—and in doing so, prevented his plans for the boy. Don’t ever mistake his feelings for anything honourable.”
“Was he abusive?” Dez asked. “Was that why Mariel wanted to get David away from the situation?”
“He was a jerk, all right, and he was verbally and emotionally abusive to both Eloise and David. As far as Mariel knew, he never raised a hand to them, but abuse of any kind is abuse. It’s something far bigger, something that wouldn’t make sense to many people.”
“It has to do with the Circle, doesn’t it?” Sully asked.
Marc nodded. “Mariel was in university at the time, and she befriended a young man named Harry Schuster.”
“Hang on,” Sully said. “Harbinger Harry? You didn’t tell me that when I came to you with the possession stuff two years ago.”
“I didn’t think it pertained, and I’ve explained to you why I’ve kept this secret. Anyway, Mariel told me she was out for a walk one night and encountered Harry on the street. He appeared to be in a trance. The friend she was with thought he must be sleepwalking, but Mariel suspected differently. Her friendship with Harry had come to include a shared interest in Wicca. Perhaps sensing she was someone who would understand, he told her about his gift of prophesy and how the visions came to him. When she saw him on the street that night, she recognized he was in the midst of that type of trance. Her friend was spooked about the whole thing and left, but Mariel stayed and guided Harry home. He talked the whole way, muttering out a prophesy about a second son. He mentioned the name Gerhardt, and said Gerhardt’s second son would have to die to protect the Circle.”
“And she bought it, just like that?” Dez asked. “She helped to arrange a boy’s kidnapping from his parents over something a guy muttered on the street?”
“I know how it sounds, but there’s more to it. When Harry and Mariel first met, he appeared stunned. He apologized and told her to ensure her mother didn’t drive on the night of October thirteenth. Mariel didn’t heed the warning, thinking it sounded crackpot. The night of October thirteenth, her mother was going to visit her parents out of town. A drunk driver crossed into her lane and hit her, head on. She was killed instantly. Mariel didn’t doubt him again.”
“Okay, but we’ve looked at the file, and we didn’t see anything about David having any siblings,” Dez said.
“Actually, there was another boy. Gerhardt and Eloise’s first son was named Leo. She was almost full term when she suffered a miscarriage during a fall. Some have said that’s when Gerhardt started to go wrong in the head, but Mariel told me otherwise. He’s always been wrong. We’re all aware of the existence of sociopaths, and most people argue it’s a mental disorder, at least as far as the ones born that way. But I’ve always wondered whether it’s something else. Most people are born with a soul; I suspect sociopaths are not. I met Gerhardt once. The aura around him, the only way to describe it is like staring into a black hole. There’s nothing there. No colours, not even the muddy ones you’ll often see in people who have done bad things. There’s only one explanation I could come up with.”
“Maybe that’s why Snowy couldn’t read him,” Sully said. “There’s nothing there. If her connection to people is through the soul rather than the mind, that makes sense.”
“For most people, there is a connection between mind and spirit. Not for people like him.” Marc’s eyes bored first into Sully’s, then Dez’s. “Now, perhaps, you can understand why Mariel felt it necessary to do what she did. The second son prophesy put at risk the futures of some very ambitious men, Gerhardt included. Someone like him, there’s no doubt in my mind he would have found a way to protect himself, even at the expense of those closest to him. The thought of killing one’s child makes no sense, not to people like you and me. But to people like him, people who place nothing above the importance and preservation of oneself, everyone else is expendable. If what Harry said was taken seriously—and I have reason to believe it was—David was in very grave danger.”
“You said Mariel helped,” Dez said. “Who actually took David? Was Eloise in on it?”
“She didn’t say. She told me she wanted to share her truth with me, but didn’t want to tell the secrets of others. As far as Eloise, I guess it’s possible she was involved, though I u
nderstand she gave every impression of a panicked mother in the time prior to her own disappearance. I suspect it was the girls’ father who actually took the boy. Elliott Kisbey was a very good man, very loving and protective of his family. What’s more, he believed strongly in the world beyond our five senses. He would have believed Mariel’s story about Harry, about what he’d said.”
Marc leaned forward, putting his papers at risk of toppling under the weight of a shoulder. His eyes carried the intensity of a statement yet to be spoken, one he needed to be heard.
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” he said. “Had Mariel and Elliott not taken David from that home, his father would have killed him.”
18
Sully dropped into the SUV’s passenger seat, removing his hood once it was clear no one was around to see him. He waited until Dez was settled in behind the wheel before broaching the topic they’d just discussed with Marc.
“As much as I hate Gerhardt, I’ve never considered the possibility he might have considered killing his own son.”
“All this time, we’ve been operating under the assumption he wanted answers about David because he’s a worried parent of a missing kid,” Dez said. “Now I’m thinking he only wants confirmation he’s dead so he knows his little Circle is safe.”
“And if David isn’t dead, he wants the opportunity to correct that,” Sully said. He met Dez’s eye, looking for answers there. “How do we deal with this?”
“Same way we were going to deal with it in the first place. We offer Gerhardt the chance to find the answers he’s after.”
“But we can’t hand David to him if he’s still out there somewhere.”
“No, we can’t. And we won’t. All we need to do is gather enough info to do what you talked about doing in the first place: enough to use as a carrot to dangle. If we can convince him we’ve got his answers, I’m hoping we can get him to give us Lowell. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the rest of the Circle. It’s just the one member I want.”