KnockOut

by Catherine Coulter

  “Yeah, right, lady, and if you try anything, I’ll blow your head off. I don’t need you.”

  Joanna said, “You’re going to shoot me anyway, aren’t you?”

  “Well, now, let me just say I’m doing things like I’m supposed to. You’re not enough to stop me anyway. Sheriff, you stay out of here, you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I hear you.” Ethan heard the low murmur of their voices, but he couldn’t make out the words. Then he heard Autumn’s voice, clear and loud. “I don’t want to go back with you—I won’t go back! And don’t touch my mama—”

  He heard Glenda scream, “You shut up, you hear me? Shut up!”

  Joanna yelled, “Big Louie!”

  Big Louie bounded past Ethan, barking wildly, lost traction, and careened into the kitchen doorway, and bounded straight toward her, his nails a mad tattoo on the kitchen tiles. He heard Glenda yell, heard a gunshot, obscenely loud in the small kitchen. Ethan raced into the kitchen after him.

  He saw Joanna hit Glenda in the jaw with a hard right jab. Glenda’s head snapped back with the force of the blow. Big Louie was barking his head off, his jaws locked around Glenda’s leg. She rolled her head, trying to get clear again. Autumn grabbed a pot and swung it hard at Glenda’s back, and got her good.

  It was all Joanna needed. She hit her again, hard, in the temple. He watched Glenda’s eyes roll back in her head, watched her hit the center island and slide to the kitchen floor. He eased his Beretta back onto his belt. “Big Louie, that’s enough, lad. You did good.”

  He picked up Glenda’s gun and stared at Joanna standing over his only female deputy, rubbing her knuckles.

  She looked up, and he couldn’t believe it. She was grinning like a loon. “I hope that was hard enough to snap her out of it. Thanks, Big Louie, you’re a prince.” She went down on her knees and hugged the big Lab against her. He licked her face, then turned his head to take a couple of licks at Autumn’s face.

  He hadn’t been needed, but his dog had been a nice addition.

  He said, “Usually Big Louie hides under my bed at the first hint of trouble. But he didn’t this time.” Ethan scratched Big Louie’s head.

  Glenda moaned. Ethan went down on his knees beside her, checked her pupils. Her eyes opened. “Ethan? What happened? Oh, goodness, my head hurts.”

  “It’ll be okay now, Glenda, just hang in there. Larch, get Glenda to Dr. Spitz’s house as soon as the others arrive. Don’t leave her, okay?”

  “Jeff’s gonna freak,” Larch said.

  “Yeah, he will, but she’ll be okay.”

  “She’s going to have a big shiner. Jeff’s not going to like that. They’ve only been married six months.”

  “I’ll talk to him. Go, Larch. Glenda, you take nice light breaths and stay awake, okay?”

  Glenda nodded and moaned.

  Joanna said, “Glenda, I’m sorry I hit you so hard, but I had to. I had to break you free of Blessed.”

  “I don’t know,” Glenda whispered, her hands pressed against her head. “I can’t remember.” Larch nodded as he pulled Glenda up against his shoulder and walked her out of the kitchen.

  Ethan hugged Autumn against him. “Did you see Blessed? Do you know where he is?”

  Joanna said, “No, Sheriff. But when Glenda came into the kitchen through the back door, I knew Blessed had gotten to her—her walk was different, and she had this look, scared me to death. That sounds stupid but—”

  “No, it doesn’t. Autumn, if your mom leaves anything out, you just pipe up, okay?”

  Autumn pressed even closer, nodded against his waist.

  Joanna said, “She had her gun already against her side, but the thing is, like Ox, she didn’t want to hurt Autumn, and that meant I could act.”

  Ethan said with a calm he wasn’t close to feeling, “She could have shot you between the eyes in an instant.”

  “But she didn’t,” Joanna said, giving a sideways look at Autumn.

  Autumn pulled away a bit. She smiled up at him. “Mama slammed her twice, Ethan, right in the head. Did you see her? She was awesome.” She sent her mother a beaming smile.

  Ethan heard his deputies outside, and relaxed. He picked her up and hugged her until she squeaked. “I’m proud of both of you.”

  Joanna scooped her daughter out of Ethan’s arms and kissed her face a good half-dozen times, until the little girl was giggling. “We’re a good team, sweetie. You got her in the back with that pot—what a swing. I think I see a Yankee in the making.”

  Autumn patted her mother’s cheek. She looked over at Ethan. “I’m glad you came back, though, Ethan. I was a little worried.”

  Joanna said, “Why did you leave, Ethan? It was really early when I heard you drive off.”

  He looked at Autumn, shoved the horrific words back in his mouth, and shrugged. “I had something pretty urgent to take care of.”

  He saw her stiffen. She guessed, he thought, that Blessed had done something to get him away from the house, something awful. She swallowed. She didn’t want to know, at least not yet.

  Thirty minutes later, Faydeen called to tell him they’d identified the victim. “His name is Harold Spalding, sixty-six, a retired bush pilot from Sitka, Alaska. A neighbor of his at the campsite said his daughter and her family were coming in today and they planned to spend a week exploring Titus Hitch. He was going to teach his grandkids about survival skills in the wilderness.”

  Only now he wouldn’t. Blessed had seen to that.

  Ethan knew he’d have to meet with Harold Spalding’s daughter and family. He’d tell her that her father had been murdered, but no more. But what could he tell her about the motive? He felt battered, and his rage at Blessed was beyond anything he’d ever known, though he’d been powerfully angry when he’d been at the DEA at what he’d seen the drug lords do. He walked back into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot Joanna had brewed. It was strong and rich. It cleared his head but didn’t lessen the anger in his gut.

  31

  Tuesday afternoon

  A black FBI helicopter set down on the country road in front of Sheriff Ethan Merriweather’s house, whipping up the hot afternoon air and bringing everyone outside. Autumn yelled, “Oh, my. Look, Ethan, Mama, it’s the President! He just landed on the road!”

  “Shows you how important we are,” Ethan said, and grinned. “I didn’t even have to call him. Service right to our front door.” He watched a big man wearing a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black slacks, and boots climb down. He turned to help down a woman, tall and slender, dressed as he was, all the way to the black low-heeled boots. She had incredible hair, a beautiful red, vivid as an Irish sunset. The man waved to the helicopter pilot and the bird lifted off.

  The two of them were carrying leather jackets over their arms, and the man held a black computer case.

  So this was Dillon Savich. Ethan had forgotten how sharp a fed could look. He had dressed like that himself three years ago, before he’d realized they’d cast him in a role he didn’t want to play in the long run and had come back home to the mountains and to flannel shirts, boots, and jeans. He wondered if his deputies would have thought he’d looked as cool as these two back in the day. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

  He felt Autumn’s small hand slip into his. He grinned down at her. “Sorry, babe, I don’t think it’s the President. But maybe it’s somebody you know.”

  She became very still, shaded her eyes. She shouted, “Dillon!” and broke away from Ethan and her mother and dashed across the front yard, Big Louie barking at her heels, toward that fed who looked hard as nails, his black hair whipped up by the helicopter blades.

  Savich recognized the little girl instantly and pulled up. “I believe it’s my midnight visitor,” he said to Sherlock, then caught the little girl when she opened her arms and leaped at him. “Hi, Autumn,” he said. He kissed her cheek and held her close, breathing in her kid smell, different from Sean, not better or sweeter, ju
st different. A little-girl smell, he thought, and wouldn’t that be nice? “I like finally seeing you in the real world, in real time.”

  “Real time,” she repeated. “I like that too.” She reared back in his arms and lightly touched her fingertips to his cheek. “You’re awful handsome, Dillon.”

  “Well, my wife thinks so,” Savich said.

  “You’re almost as handsome as Ethan.”

  “Hmmm. Say hello to my wife Sherlock. Sherlock, this is Autumn, who just kicked my ego in the chops.”

  Sherlock lightly touched the little girl’s hand, smiled at her. “Do you know we have a little boy? His name is Sean.”

  Autumn slowly shook her head. “Dillon didn’t tell me. Is he as big as me?”

  “Not quite,” Sherlock said. “And he’s got a terrier named Astro. Astro’s all white, a live wire, and he fits right in Sean’s arms.”

  Savich said, “Is that your mama standing over there, Autumn?”

  The little girl nodded happily and called out, “Mama! This is Dillon. And Sherlock. They’ve got a little boy named Sean. And Astro. It sounds like Big Louie is lots more dog than Astro.”

  “Nice job of ice-breaking,” Savich whispered to Sherlock. “Let’s meet everyone, Autumn. Would you introduce us?”

  An hour later, Ethan was cooking ribs and chicken and vegetables and foil-wrapped potatoes on his backyard grill, his eyes searching the woods for any sign of movement, any sign of Blessed. Savich turned twelve pieces of corn on the cob on the grill with a long-handled fork, whistling, asking more questions as they occurred to him, getting a feel for the place, and this bizarre situation, and drinking the best iced tea he’d had in a very long time.

  He said, “Did you tell Joanna any details about what happened to the hiker?”

  “Not all of it. I couldn’t. She took it pretty hard.”

  “This Bricker’s Bowl, where the Backmans live—since you know Blessed’s identity, did you call the local sheriff?”

  Ethan turned a chicken breast, slathered on more barbecue sauce as he said, “Yeah, I called Sheriff Cole, for all the good it did me. He asked me straight off if I could identify Blessed Backman as the man responsible for all the trouble, and of course I couldn’t. I never saw him without his mask. I asked him to e-mail me a photo of Blessed and Cole said yeah, yeah, sure, he’d do that. When I told him about what Autumn saw, he sort of chuckled and said it was a private cemetery, no law against shuffling bodies around, now, was there? Of course, in this case, it sounded like the little girl dreamed it all. Sure, he’d go talk to Miz Shepherd, blah, blah. I wished I could have reached his throat through the phone.”

  Savich said thoughtfully, “I’m thinking Sherlock and I should pay a visit to Bricker’s Bowl. I followed up on some Web research Sherlock told me about. I found a mention of what may be the Backmans in a blog by a group that calls themselves Children of Twilight. They traced the IP address of the server to northern Georgia, near Bricker’s Bowl. The blog claimed to be written by a Caldicot Whistler, who wrote with the snake-oil charm of a charismatic cult leader. It mentioned only their first names—Blessed, Grace, and Shepherd, as disciples who had developed the powers of mind under Whistler’s guidance. A cult requires money. I want to find out where the money’s coming from.”

  Ethan knew where all the money came from, supposedly, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to tell Savich that Theodore Backman was a slot-machine whisperer.

  Finally, Ethan couldn’t stand it. As he brushed barbecue sauce on the ribs and flipped the onions, he said, “Did Autumn really suddenly appear in your head one night and talk to you?”

  Savich nodded as he carefully turned over the tinfoiled potatoes buried in the coals. He looked at Ethan. “It surprised me but good. At the time I was racing Lance in the Alps, both exciting and scary, since my bike was maybe three inches from a cliff, when there she was, right in front of me. I tell you, at first I thought I’d crashed my bike right over that cliff. I remember it was midnight on the dot.”

  “She…just appeared? Like that?” He snapped his fingers. “In your head?”

  Savich smiled at him. “Yes. Her voice was clear as a bell, but I couldn’t see her clearly. I asked her to bring her head up so I could see her face. She’s a precious little girl, all that dark brown hair, her blue eyes and the line of freckles across her nose; she’s the image of her mother. She’ll be as beautiful as her mother someday. It’s quite a gift she’s got.”

  “But that means you’ve got it too,” Ethan said, and he felt weirded out all the way to his boots saying such a thing. “Has this happened to you before?”

  “Yes, several times. Once we were chasing a killer as dangerous as Blessed, called Tammy Tuttle. She was a horror, and if Blessed is anything like her, we’ll have to focus on him like a target on a shooting range. Look, I know getting your mind around what Autumn can do is tough. But it isn’t as important now—getting Blessed is.”

  “Fair enough,” Ethan said.

  Savich nodded as he turned the zucchini and squash slices and the mound of onion rings on the tinfoil, all coated lightly with olive oil. The smells were incredible, and he breathed in deeply. “I love summer,” he said. “Even when it’s so hot in Washington you feel like you’re frying, there’s something in the air, something sweet and alive.

  “You’ve got a nice setup here. You use the grill a lot?”

  “At least twice a week in the summer. Friends I haven’t seen all winter show up.”

  “Well, I suppose smells this good travel fast.”

  Ethan fidgeted with the bottle of barbecue sauce. “But you were surprised when she suddenly popped up, right?”

  “Sure. Look, Sheriff—”

  “Call me Ethan.”

  Savich grinned, which didn’t make him look like any less of an ass-kicker. “Ethan. The last sheriff who asked me to call him by his first name was Dougie.”

  “Did you ask him why his parents hated him?”

  Savich laughed. “He was sporting bib overalls at the time, his gun belted on top.”

  Throughout the afternoon Ethan’s deputies were in and out, drinking a couple of gallons of iced tea Sherlock and Joanna made, with Autumn’s help, all of them eager to meet the two feds and trying not to act impressed or intimidated. When Glenda came into the kitchen with Larch just before dinner, Joanna walked right up to her, studied her face, and said, “I’m sorry I hit you, but I had to.”

  Glenda nodded. “I know. You had to get him out of me, so you’re forgiven. Thank you.”

  Ethan introduced Savich and Sherlock. Savich said as he shook Glenda’s hand, “You knew someone was there, in your head?”

  Glenda frowned. Her head still ached, although the pain pills Dr. Spitz had given her had reduced it to a dull throb. She knew what she’d said had sounded like she’d been taken over by an alien. The pain in her head spiked, and she closed her eyes.

  “Here,” Joanna said, “drink some iced tea and relax. Stop thinking about it.”

  Glenda drank, took a few slow, light breaths.

  Ethan said, “That’s right, try to throttle down, Glen. Take it easy, don’t think so hard about it. Look, when Blessed put the whammy on Ox, he still hasn’t remembered.”

  Thankfully the pain eased off again.

  “I can’t believe Jeff let you come over.”

  “He didn’t want to, but I told him it was my job and I didn’t want to get fired.” She gave Ethan a big grin and looked over at a big rope bone in the corner of the living room, chewed to grimy bits by Big Louie. “You’re right, I don’t remember, but the thing is, Ethan, I do know I wasn’t there inside my head until Joanna hit me in the jaw. Her first punch didn’t knock me out, but I remember the lightning slap of pain, and shaking my head, and for a moment I felt something inside my head slip, like a slippery hand losing its grip on a doorknob, off balance and trying hard to regain control.”

  She clammed up and looked terrified. “I can’t believe I said that. I’m cr
azy, aren’t I?”

  “If you’re crazy,” Ethan said matter-of-factly, “then we all are.”

  His words did the trick. Glenda’s eyes cleared. “It’s true. He was there, inside me, but I didn’t know it, not until she hit me. Thank God you hit me again, Joanna. That second whack must have knocked him right out of me. I don’t remember anything until I woke staring up at Ethan’s face.”

  Larch said, “You scared the crap out of me, Glen. Would you look at that mouse. What did Jeff say?”

  “He thought it was cute once I convinced him I wasn’t going to croak.”

  32

  ETHAN SAID TO SHERLOCK and Savich, “Jeff Bauer, Glenda’s husband, is a ranger with the Glenwood District, a real hardnose—I’ve seen him stare down a bear that was stealing food. He and Glen have only been married—what? Six months? He’s one of the many out looking for Blessed. I’m surprised he isn’t here hovering.”

  Glenda smiled. “I told him I was okay, but you know Jeff. Don’t be surprised, Ethan, if he comes charging in here any time now. He did freak when I called him, since he knew about what happened to Ox. He came running over to Dr. Spitz’s.”

  Savich said, “Glenda, at any point, did you hear Blessed speaking in your head, telling you what to do?”

  She shook her head. “It was like I was gone, or buried so deep I might as well have been gone. I was only there after Joanna hit me that first time. And there was Big Louie biting my leg, and then Autumn was hitting me in the back with a pan.” Glenda patted Autumn’s cheek. “You and your mom mounted a full-blown attack on him. Really, thank you. You too, Big Louie.” She leaned down and scratched behind Big Louie’s ears.

  Sherlock felt her own shoulders tighten at the overflowing tension she heard in Glenda’s voice, even as she’d tried to joke about what had happened to her. She asked Ethan, “Where did Big Louie get his name?”

  Ethan laughed. “My grandfather’s old hound dog was called Big Louie. I remember my folks called him Saint Louie, since my grandfather was such a piece of work and they figured the hound had to be a real saint to put up with him. But the truth is, the two were closer than ham and rye.