by H. P. Bayne
“But you told me what Paul said. They’re all in each other’s back pockets. If one goes down, especially one as important as Lowell, the rest go with him. You really think Gerhardt’s going to bite on that, especially since he and Lowell are so closely connected in this whole drug experiment?”
Dez’s lips flattened into a hard line. “When you put it like that…. Hell, I don’t know, Sully. All we can do is try, okay? Just take this one step at a time and see where it gets us.”
“Okay, but we’ve got one massive step to take tomorrow, and that’s the reunion. We haven’t got room to blow it.” He’d been thinking something since they’d left Marc’s office, something he knew Dez wouldn’t want to hear. “Dez, I think I need to find Eloise again.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s possible, given what Marc said, she was involved in her own son’s disappearance. I mean, if it were my son and someone told me something like that, I’d do anything possible to protect him.”
“Yeah, but that’s if she believed in prophesies and psychics. Lots of people would have laughed Harry out of the room.”
“That’s another reason I need to find her again,” Sully said. “I want to know for sure, and I want to know before we go to Lockwood tomorrow. The more answers we have going in, the stronger we’ll be.”
“That’s if we get there,” Dez said. “Face it, man, we almost didn’t walk out of there the last time. Hell, I carried you out the last time.”
“So we’ll be better prepared this time. Terrence is nearby. He’d be great backup. And maybe we can go armed this time. We can ask about borrowing Emily’s gun.”
“You’re really serious about this.” Dez turned from Sully, staring out the windshield at the university parking lot. “I don’t like it.”
Sully knew Dez wasn’t talking about his surroundings.
“Neither do I,” Sully said. “But it doesn’t make it any less necessary.”
Dez put his foot down about visiting The Forks that night, insisting they go in the morning. He put his other foot down against Sully’s suggestion he stay at the apartment that night.
“You’re staying where I can see you,” Dez said. “No way I’m leaving the door open for you to make some middle-of-the-night visit to The Forks without me.”
With that, Dez drove the two of them back to his house.
After the obligatory call to fill Lachlan in, Sully spent the night on the downstairs couch. He woke in the morning to find Kayleigh next to him on the floor, stuffing balled-up newspaper into a tied-off jeans leg. Judging by the sheer size of the leg, it had come out of Dez’s closet.
“Hey, Kay-bee,” he said.
She turned to meet his eye and beamed. “You’re awake! Good. You can help me. I’m making a scarecrow for the front step. It’s almost Halloween, and Mom said I could make some decorations.” She looked back at the jeans. “Dad’s pants are too big. I’m running out of newspaper.”
Sully laughed, then gave Kayleigh a hand until Dez emerged and told them breakfast was ready.
“Can we make some more decorations today?” Kayleigh asked while Sully cleared the table afterward.
“Uh, Uncle Sully and I have somewhere we need to go this morning,” Dez said. “We’ll try to be back by lunch. Maybe we could make something before we head out again this afternoon.”
“You’re leaving again?” Kayleigh’s lips formed a pout. “You’re always leaving.”
Dez turned his frown into a smile, grabbing Kayleigh and tickling her until she broke down in laughter. “But then we’re always coming back.”
Dez waited until he and Sully were in the SUV before commenting further.
“We damn well better be coming back,” he grumbled.
Sully reminded Dez they needed to change. First they made a quick stop at Emily’s, who took one look at Dez’s bruised face and happily handed over her revolver and a supply of extra bullets. After promising to be careful, they then changed into their grungier clothes at Dez’s apartment and set out for the warehouse area where Sully had left the boat from Ravenwood.
The mansion was silent as they emerged from the tunnel and made their way through the house. Ned, it seemed, had grown used to Dez, which came as a relief.
Sully was about to lead the way outside when he was halted by a hand on his arm. He waited while Dez loaded the revolver and relocated it from his back waistband to the front pocket of his jacket. The extra rounds he placed immediately next to the gun, ensuring they were within easy reach.
Dez kept his hand inside the pocket after, and Sully could imagine his brother’s fingers wrapped around the gun, prepared to draw and fire or even shoot through his clothing should the need arise. He wasn’t about to be bested in a fight a second time—a fact that suited Sully just fine.
They set the same course for the Gerhardt house, concealing themselves in as many bushes and overgrown backyards as they were able until, at last, they reached the right block. Once there, they ducked into the same thick grove of trees they’d regrouped in immediately after their previous disastrous visit to the Gerhardt home.
Dez’s eyes were on the street, gaze sweeping each of the houses in turn. “Any idea which house Terrence and Snowy are using?”
Sully was also scanning the area, looking for an answer to that question. The block largely consisted of larger Victorians, but a couple of smaller, more nondescript houses nestled between the larger properties. “It’ll be one of the smaller ones,” he said. “The bigger houses would attract the looters and the gangsters first, plus there’s more opportunity for an enemy to sneak in and take the occupants by surprise. Terrence will probably be somewhere he feels like he’ll attract the least attention and where he has the most control.”
“Ordinarily, the bigger places would give him and Snowy more places to hide.”
“You’ve seen the state of the houses here,” Sully said. “Ravenwood’s mostly stone and brick, so it held up pretty well under the weight of the flood. But most homes in The Forks are wood. A lot of them are rotted out, and upper floors are mainly unusable or unstable. Terrence would know that. Multi-storey places aren’t much use around here.”
Dez didn’t debate the point any further. “So which one?”
Sully nodded with his chin. “I’d say the one with the rifle aimed out the window.”
“Jesus, what?”
Sully waited the couple of seconds until Dez had seen what he had: the barrel of a long gun, barely visible where it protruded from the corner of a largely boarded-up window. An overgrown caragana bush covered part of the window, making the gun even harder to see, were you not looking for it.
“If that’s a sniper rifle, I’m going to have a few questions for him regarding the death of a certain judge,” Dez said. “Speaking of, am I safe bringing him up? Do you think he’ll come at you again if I open up that can of worms?”
“I don’t know,” Sully said. “It’s possible. But, honestly, I don’t see a way to avoid it. You’re right. We need to ask, even if I seriously doubt it was Terrence behind it. He wouldn’t have shot at me too.”
“Your face was concealed,” Dez said. “He wouldn’t have known it was you, right?”
Good point. And Dez had another one. “The gun’s aimed in our direction. How much you want to bet he saw us moving around in here, and he’s got a scope on that thing?”
“Only one way to find out.” Without giving Dez a chance to stop him, Sully pushed through the bush, exposing his form to the gun wielder.
“Damn it, Sully!” came Dez’s protest from the bushes just before he, too, burst through and took up a spot next to his brother.
Sully waited. The gun, for a moment, remained where it was, so long he began to wonder whether it was simply propped there as a warning to passersby. But then, as he stared, it slowly withdrew. A moment later, the front door cracked open. Terrence’s face, and then a beckoning hand, appeared.
Sully and Dez ran over, their pace in keeping with the
frantic waving of the man’s hand. Once they’d been granted admittance to the house, Terrence tore into them.
“What the hell’s the matter with the two of you? Last time wasn’t enough? Don’t you know the kind of assholes hang out around here?”
Sully didn’t have a chance to answer or to offer a friendly greeting before Dez jumped in with his own question. “That looked like a sniper rifle you had levelled at us. Was it?”
“Damn straight. I’ve got myself a small arsenal here. It’s called survival in The Forks. Anyway, I didn’t know it was you until Sullivan showed himself. All I saw was movement in the trees. Damn lucky I didn’t just cap you. Round here, you shoot first, ask questions later.” Terrence turned next to Sully. “The other day, the way you tore into those assholes. How’d you do that?”
“Long story,” Sully said. “I’d rather hear yours. Your mom told us Lowell tried to kill you. What happened?”
“I got no proof it was him.”
“But you suspect.”
Terrence looked from Sully to Dez and back again. He said nothing, and Sully didn’t need Snowy’s mind-reading skill to know where Terrence’s thoughts had gone.
Neither, apparently, did Dez. “We’ve got no loyalty to Lowell,” he said. “We want to take that bastard down more than you do.”
Terrence held Dez’s eye for a long moment. He didn’t share his mother’s psychic ability—at least not as far as Sully had ever been made aware—but he was ex-army, a man who’d been forced to live hard, to see the kind of things no human being should ever have to see. He’d learned how to read people as a matter of survival, and he was putting that skill to the test now. For Dez’s part, he didn’t flinch, and Sully watched as the muscles in Terrence’s face gradually relaxed, forming a visible dropping of his guard.
“Mom told me what Lowell did to your kid brother,” he told Dez. “The little guy, I mean. I just wanted to be sure you were for real, that it was true and you weren’t trying to expose me to your uncle.”
“The only thing I’m interested in doing for Lowell is fitting him with a nice, cozy prison cell,” Dez said. “Or a casket. I’m fine either way.”
Terrence’s lips parted in a dangerous smile. “Then you and I have something in common, brother.”
Dez crossed his arms. “Before we go any further down that road, there’s something I need to ask you.”
Snowy’s voice sounded as she emerged from the hallway. “Terrence didn’t kill the judge. He wasn’t even on the mainland when it happened.”
Terrence met Sully’s eye. “Who the hell you talking about?”
Sully took a chance at speaking the name. “Former Justice Prescott Montague. He lost his job after he was implicated in the death of a teenage boy.”
Dez finished the explanation. “Then he lost his life after he threatened to blab something about Lowell and the Circle.”
Sully scanned the room. No judge. This was a first, one he believed he could safely put down to the reverse possession. Sully had never considered himself an intimidating person, but he’d begun to realize there were parts of himself that were truly terrifying. Apparently, Montague had grasped that too.
Sully hadn’t received an answer to his previous question, so asked it again. “What did Lowell do to make you run?”
“Like I said, I’ve got nothing to say for sure it was him. All I know is I was leaving the store one night, locking up in the back alley, and someone took a shot at me. Then a second. I ducked for cover behind my truck and called it in, but police found no sign of anyone by the time they got there.”
“What makes you think it was him?”
“No one else I know has cause to go after me. Lowell paid me to break into the Black Fox the night before Betty Schuster was killed and then her house afterward. I figured later it was a way to try to set me up for a fall if someone started to put two and two together. But I guess that wasn’t enough. I might decide to rat him out, after all. I was a loose end he couldn’t afford to have hanging around.”
Sully’s heart sank. “So you didn’t actually see him take those shots. You don’t have any actual evidence against him?”
“Only what my gut’s telling me. That’s enough for me.”
Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be nearly enough for an investigating officer, nor for a court of law. And the additional reality wasn’t lost on Sully either, that Terrence’s word wouldn’t stand on its own against Lowell. Terrence was a medically discharged soldier with a significant psychological chip on his shoulder, and a man who’d agreed to commit break-ins in exchange for a payout. He wasn’t what a court would readily deem a reliable witness. It might be his word would be helpful down the road, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough on its own.
It was looking more and more like they’d need Gerhardt.
Sully’s gaze shifted to the window overlooking the street. The sniper rifle rested there, its business end propped up against the windowsill. “Any chance you can use that to cover us, Terrence?”
“For what?”
“Dez and I need to go back into the old Gerhardt place. His wife’s ghost is there and I need to ask her about something. I’d rather we not get taken by surprise.”
Terrence shook his head. “I can’t leave my mother here for that long, unguarded. There are too many bad people around here.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of you covering us from here, maybe firing a warning shot if you see anyone approaching.”
Terrence nodded slowly. “I can do that. Least I can do for you after everything you helped me with back then.”
Dez harrumphed, and Sully could read the turn of his mind. It really was the least Terrence could do. Sully ignored him. Snowy scowled.
Regardless, Terrence did as asked, exiting the house with them and taking up a spot in the caragana bush beneath the living room window.
“Think we can trust him?” Dez asked as he and Sully made their way a few houses down the street to where the Gerhardt house waited.
“Even if he won’t go all-in for us, I think we can count on him for at least this much,” Sully said.
“He’d risk exposing himself and his mother, and the fact they’ve got guns there? I don’t know, man. He’s got a lot to lose. I wouldn’t count on him doing what he promised he’d do.”
“So I guess we just need to be more careful this time,” Sully said. “Keep your gun ready, just in case.”
They reached the house without a problem, and Sully, with Dez at his immediate side, searched the main floor for Eloise. She didn’t appear, and Sully led his brother quickly through the living room—the site of the recent attack—and into the kitchen overlooking the backyard. The door was off its hinges, its former frame bent with the heaving foundation, and Sully stepped carefully onto the rear veranda lest it not support his weight. He managed it safely, but Dez had to leap off as the boards cracked beneath him.
Photographs in the police file had shown the backyard to be the sort of place found in a house-and-garden magazine, the pristine wild of an English country garden. It had been all tall flowers, sheltering trees, benches and bird baths. A retreat to get lost in.
Getting lost would be a lot easier now. The couple of large elm trees had died, drowned in the flood, but new ones had sprung up in their shadows. Rose bushes—all thorns and no flowers now that summer was long gone—had overtaken large sections of the yard while caragana had sprouted and spread in places once occupied by flower beds.
If David’s spirit was back here, he’d be damn near impossible to find.
But Eloise wasn’t.
Sully sensed her before he saw anything, his skin prickling and hair standing to attention on the back of his neck as the feeling of her anxiety reached him. Standing at the base of the veranda steps, Sully turned his head to look back at the house.
She stood framed in the doorway, a spectre of blood and dread as her eyes fixed on the garden where, years earlier, her panic had been born.
�
�We talked to Marc Echoles,” Sully said. “He said Mariel told him what she’d been a part of. Did you know?”
Eloise didn’t meet his eye, still fixated on the jungle of her yard. Yet Sully sensed her attention was on him, on his words to her.
Sully pressed on. “Did you find out Mariel helped someone take David that day? Eloise?”
Nothing.
“Someone else was involved. Was it your father?”
She didn’t move, didn’t adjust her gaze.
“Eloise. I know this is hard, but I need some answers if we’re going to move forward. Did you know about the second son prophesy, that your son was in danger?” A logical next question came to him—one that suddenly made all the sense in the world given the intensity of feeling Eloise still carried for David.
“Eloise,” he said. “Were you involved? Did you turn your back on purpose that day?”
Her eyes snapped to his, wide and full of pain—and maybe, somewhere in their depths, regret.
“That’s it, isn’t it? Why you’ve stayed. You knew your son was in danger and that your husband wouldn’t protect him, so you had to do it. You helped make David disappear, and you’ve regretted it since.”
He took a step forward, one foot on a rickety step. It creaked beneath him but held.
“Please,” he said. “I want to help, but I need you to communicate with me. Do you know where he ended up? Do you know what happened to him? How did you die? Eloise?”
She stared, saucer-shaped eyes boring into his for a long, tense moment. Answers were in her expression, signs of a knowledge she carried but had chosen to keep secret.
Then, just as suddenly as she’d appeared, she vanished.
“Eloise!” he called out, but she didn’t reappear.
“What’s going on?” Dez asked, voice near a whisper as if reluctant for her to overhear him.
“I know she heard me but she’s shutting me out. She just disappeared on me.”
“Why? She seemed pretty eager to talk the last time.”
“I think it’s because I suggested she was involved. That’s got to be it, Dez. She’s ashamed. She did it out of love, the same way my birth mother was prepared to give me up to protect me. But I think she doesn’t know what happened to him after, and she’s scared. What if we find out something bad happened to him after? She’d blame herself.”