XGeneration (Book 5): Cry Little Sister

by Brad Magnarella

  Guilt prickled Janis’s face as she wavered to her feet. She circled the fire pit and stood outside the tent, listening to Cassie trying to calm her poor father. He had reacted to the memory Janis had called up in him. Because in the instant before being shocked from Jasper’s thoughts, she had heard someone move in that tent. She had caught a flash of someone—or something—emerging.

  When Scott reappeared through the flap, Janis nearly cried out.

  “You all right?” he asked, taking her arms.

  “Yeah.” She swallowed. “How’s he doing?”

  “Settling down.” He lowered his voice. “Did that have anything to do with…?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “You’ll have to forgive him,” Cassie said, stepping from the tent. “He does that at night sometimes, too. I managed to get a little bourbon in him. I keep it for emergencies. Usually does the trick.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Janis said. “I mean, about showing up in your woods out of the blue and…”

  “Nonsense,” Cassie cut in. “You’re welcome here anytime. We’ve got no claim on these woods, besides.”

  Without knowing she was going to do it, Janis gave Cassie a hug.

  “Aren’t you a sweet one.” Cassie chuckled as she returned the embrace.

  Janis knew the gesture didn’t make up for what she had just put Cassie’s father through, but she was glad to feel the joy it sparked in their new acquaintance. Scott hugged her next.

  “We should probably get going,” Janis said, once Scott and Cassie had separated. “But I wonder if you could point us in the direction of that man’s camp. Scott’s parents had some things taken from their beach house. We thought we’d look around to see if he left anything behind.”

  “’Bout a quarter mile straight that a way.” Cassie aimed her gloved hand. “You’ll cross a creek that ain’t running no more. It’ll be beyond the trees on the other side, where there’s a small clearing.”

  Janis and Scott thanked her for the directions and coffee and set out.

  From the tent, Jasper whimpered in his sleep.

  18

  Scott listened to Janis recount her experience inside Jasper’s memory with a mixture of horror and fascination. Whatever had been inside that tent had reduced Jasper from a fully functioning—albeit, down on his luck—adult to the mental case he and Janis had observed back at the camp.

  “Did you see anything at all?” Scott asked her as they crunched into a leaf-filled gully. “I mean, when he opened the tent?”

  “Just … paleness.”

  “Paleness?” He thought about what Jasper had cried. “Like a ghost?”

  “More like someone who had never seen the light of day.” Janis waited for him on the far side of the gully. When Scott arrived beside her, he realized they had just crossed a dry creek bed.

  “We must be close.”

  “It’s here,” Janis said, leading the way around a stand of trees and into an open area lined by saw palmettos. A few thin pine trees poked up. Otherwise, the clearing was empty.

  Janis shivered and clenched her jaw.

  “What is it?” Scott asked.

  “That energy…” Janis stared around them, perceiving a layer of reality Scott could only imagine. “It’s faint, but it’s everywhere.” She walked ahead of him and moved her arm in a circle. “The tent was right here. I remember from the experience, but it’s also where the energy is most concentrated. It’s actually making me a little nauseous.”

  She backed away.

  “Should we leave?” Scott asked in concern.

  “No, no, I’m all right.” She patted his arm and smiled weakly. “I’ll see if I can pick up an energy trail. Why don’t you look around, see if he left anything behind that could clue us in to who he might be.”

  As Janis moved around the periphery, Scott paced the clearing as though he were mowing a lawn—back and forth, eyes to the ground. About halfway through his search, when he had reached the end of a line, he glimpsed something out ahead of him in the palmettos.

  He picked his way forward. A familiar cylinder took shape. Scott lifted the empty propane tank that had once fueled his father’s outdoor grill. Judging by the wet depression of decomposing leaves, Scott judged that the tank had been lying in that spot for at least a couple of weeks. Too long to lift any prints from, he guessed. He set the tank upright against a tree and searched for anything else that the man might have cast off.

  When he came up empty, he shared his finding with Janis. “How about you?” he asked. “Feeling anything?”

  Janis pulled her lower lip beneath her teeth. “Outside of the clearing, the energy fades pretty quickly. I’ve also tried a global scan, but all I’m picking up are the people back at the encampment.”

  “So, whoever was here really did clear out,” Scott said.

  “Once the man saw that someone was onto his stealing, he took care of Jasper and probably left that very night. Went somewhere more remote. I’m guessing deeper into the woods.” She nodded toward the empty tank hanging from Scott’s hand. “Ditched that because of the weight.”

  Scott turned toward where the trees thickened. “Think we’ll find him back there?”

  “By the map, these woods connect to a state forest. We’re talking hundreds of square miles, Scott. I wish I could call up that kind of power, like I used to, but right now it’s just not there.”

  Scott pulled Janis to him, cupping the strap of muscle between her ribs and waist. He peered above her autumn-red crown and studied the silent trees, as though a trail to the killer might suddenly reveal itself. But all he felt was the hopelessness he had just heard in Janis’s voice.

  They were at a dead end.

  Scott’s mother was dressed and waiting at the kitchen table when Janis and Scott returned to the beach house. Mr. Spruel, who was sitting in the reclining chair, nursing a mug of coffee, was also dressed, which Janis interpreted as bad. Scott’s father usually liked to slog around in a shaggy green robe and slippers until mid-morning, and here it was only eight o’clock.

  “Well?” Mrs. Spruel asked, raising a stenciled eyebrow.

  “Well what?” Scott unshouldered his pack and set it beside the door.

  Exasperation crossed Mrs. Spruel’s face. “The murderer. Do we know who killed Dr. Fields?”

  “We’re close,” Janis lied. “Really close.”

  “Yeah,” Scott put in.

  “Well, you two were close last night, and I’m afraid that’s not going to cut it anymore.” She sighed and tilted her head sympathetically. “Look, I know you’re doing your best, but Stanley and I have been talking this morning. We’re already underwater on the property, and if we don’t get out before something else happens, we’ll be … well, under financial strain. We’ve decided to go forward with the open hou—”

  “We’ll cover the cost of any further depreciation,” Janis blurted out, “from our Champions pay.”

  We will?

  Janis shot an elbow into Scott’s side.

  “Oh no, hon,” Mrs. Spruel said. “We can’t accept your money.”

  Scott stepped forward. “Well, what about the fact that someone else is going to be murdered, mom? Doesn’t that mean anything to you besides the value of your—your investment?”

  “Of course it does. But sometimes there’s only so much that can be done.” She said it as though they were talking about feeding the poor in a far-off country. She stood with her empty cup and squinted at her son. “Tell me, how close are you, really?”

  Scott stammered.

  “We just need more time,” Janis answered for him.

  Mrs. Spruel clopped to the kitchen, where Janis noticed the food had been bagged up again. “Well, like I said.” She rinsed out her cup in the sink. “Time is a luxury we can’t afford.”

  “Unless you happen to have a doctor friend with a souped-up DeLorean,” Mr. Spruel called from behind them. “Har-har-har-har!”

  Mrs. Spruel shot him a witherin
g look. “Why don’t you finish packing, Stanley? And when you come back down, I want your metal-detecting stuff cleared off the table. I’m going to see if I can make the garage half-way presentable so the realtor doesn’t have to wade through it herself.” She turned back to Janis and Scott. “We’ll need to be on the road by ten, kids.”

  Scott sank into the chair where his mother had been sitting, fists mushing his propped-up cheeks.

  Janis sat across from him.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” he mumbled.

  Janis listened to the ceiling creak beneath Mr. Spruel’s arriving weight. Inside the garage, it sounded like a small demolition crew was at work. The situation did seem pretty hopeless. The one person who had an idea as to the killer’s identity wouldn’t tell them for fear of jeopardizing his best chance of release, and even with that information, there was no guarantee Janis and Scott would be able to find the man before he struck again—let alone in the next two hours.

  Janis poked through the assortment of metal objects on the table: hair pins, roofing nails, caps to bottles of Coke, Mello Yellow and various beers, peel-off tabs, an assortment of sandy change.

  “Why did your dad keep these?” she asked.

  “Huh?” Scott looked up to see what she was doing. “Oh, so they won’t trigger the metal detector again. He cleans off the change and anything else that looks interesting and junks the rest.”

  Janis separated a dull silver band from the pile—someone’s ring.

  “Looks like cheap sterling,” Scott said, pushing up his glasses. “He’ll probably toss that, too. Or give it to my mom.”

  Janis slipped the band absently over her ring finger. The ring was a little small for her and gritty with sand. When it lodged over her second knuckle, an ochre-colored bolt jagged through her vision.

  She gasped and yanked the ring off.

  Scott straightened. “What’s wrong? Did it cut you?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. It’s…” Janis held the ring to eye level. “The energetic lines are way off, like over your sliding glass door.”

  J.R., who had been napping in the living room, yawned and sneezed. When he scampered toward the table, an idea occurred to Janis. She scooted out and lowered the ring to the dog’s level. He leaned forward as though to sniff it but then fell quivering onto his haunches.

  When Janis withdrew the ring, he seemed fine again.

  Scott observed the behavior as well. “Do you think the killer came into contact with it?” he whispered.

  “It’s more intense than that. I think it belonged to him. I think he owned it.”

  Janis handed the ring to Scott. She watched him rotate it slowly. “Looks a little small to be a man’s,” he commented. When he placed it on his own ring finger, the band barely fit over the pad. “Then again, Cassie heard a man’s voice at that tent. He must have dainty hands.”

  “Hey, take that off a sec?” Janis said.

  She inspected the ring as she carried it to the sink. Beneath the running tap, she rubbed away the sand that had become encrusted on its inside. An engraving took form, at first palpably and then visibly.

  “There’s writing,” Janis said, flicking on the light above the sink.

  Scott came up behind her.

  “‘Mr. & Mrs. GS,’” she read. “‘3-12-42.’”

  “So, it’s a wedding band,” Scott said.

  “Which means Mr. GS must be our killer.”

  “And assuming he married around age twenty, which would have been normal back then, that would make him…” Scott paused to do the math. “Sixty four? Hm. I wasn’t expecting a retirement-aged killer.”

  Neither was Janis. With a fingernail, she scratched more sand from the initials.

  “Is there an office around here that would keep wedding records?” she asked.

  Scott snapped his fingers. “The county recorder.”

  “Yeah?” She perked up before reality chopped her down. “That would probably be in the county seat, though, right?”

  Which meant there wouldn’t be time.

  Scott held a finger to his lips as he retrieved his backpack.

  What’s up? she asked.

  He beckoned her to follow him through the back door. Pocketing the ring, she crept behind him. A minute later, when they were back on their bikes and pedaling toward downtown, he spoke.

  “Murder Creek is the county seat.”

  19

  Scott’s heart raced as his fingers flipped through Barrow County’s register for 1942. He bypassed births and slowed when he arrived at the marriage section. He scanned the handful of registered marriage licenses for January and February, looking for the start of the March entries.

  There.

  He ran his middle finger down the hand-written dates. Getting a hold of the register had been easy. Scott had explained to the bookkeeper that he and Janis needed the information for a class project. Two minutes later, the young woman had returned with the 1942 records and pointed him and Janis toward the small table where they were now sitting.

  For the first time that day, Scott felt useful.

  “Bingo!” he said when his finger landed on March twelfth.

  There had been two marriage licenses issued on that date, apparently. He ran his finger across the page and hesitated, his eyes flicking between the sets of names. His heart fell into his stomach.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” he said.

  The bookkeeper looked over from her newspaper crossword puzzle.

  Janis craned her neck. “‘Giles Snyder and Eleanor Tinsley…” Scott watched her eyes descend to the next row of paired names and widen with incredulity. “‘Gemini Stopes’? What are the chances? Two men with the same initials.”

  “And they both sound like killers,” Scott muttered. “Why couldn’t one have been a Gary Smith?”

  As Scott wrote the couples’ names into a notepad, he sensed Janis feeling for any information—any residue, she called it—that might be lingering around the names. Her intuition must have remained silent because she did, too. When Scott finished writing, Janis closed the register and stood.

  “There’s a phone booth outside,” she said. “Let’s see if either of those names are listed.”

  In the light of mid-morning, the White Pages turned out a “Stanley J Stopes” but no Gemini or Snyders.

  Scott lifted the phone receiver and focused into the system. He navigated the line to the central office, data bombarding him from all sides, and manipulated the switches until the number for Stanley J Stopes began to ring.

  “Wouldn’t a quarter have been easier?” Janis asked, when he’d snapped back to his body.

  Scott shrugged. “Good practice.”

  A woman answered.

  “Ah, yes, hello,” Scott said. “I’m trying to find a Mr. Gemini Stopes.” He enunciated the name carefully. “He’s not listed and I thought maybe you or someone in your household might be related to him.”

  “He’s my father-in-law,” the woman said.

  Scott gave Janis a thumbs up. “Oh, how’s he doing?”

  “He ain’t.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Passed in eighty-two. Beat the wife by a year.”

  “He’s dead?” Scott asked.

  “Or taking the longest nap you ever seen.”

  “Oh, okay. I’m sorry to have bothered you. And, hey, I’m sorry about—”

  The woman hung up.

  “It sounds like we can scratch Mr. Stopes off the list,” Janis said as Scott replaced the receiver in its cradle.

  “Can we?” he asked. “Jasper thought he’d seen a ghost at that camp.”

  “Scott, there’s no time to chase ghost theories. We lost enough time with vampires. We need to stick with living, corporeal, flesh-and-blood suspects. If Mr. Stopes is deceased, that leaves Mr. Snyder. Period.”

  “Or Mrs. Snyder,” Scott said, raising a finger.

  When Janis’s brow wrinkled, Scott braced for another objection. But her brow
flattened out again. “Wow, you’re right. All this time we’ve been assuming the killer is a man. But with the small size of the wedding band…” Janis took it from her pocket to inspect again. “Cassie assumed the low, raspy voice she heard belonged to a man. But no one actually saw him.”

  Scott straightened with redemption.

  “In either case, we have a name,” Janis said, “which is good. But it still doesn’t tell us where Mr. or Mrs. Snyder is.”

  Scott looked around. “And there’s no time to canvass the neighborhood for info.” His gaze landed on the post office and police station building across the street from city hall. Two cruisers sat parked in front. “You know,” he said. “I thought that name Snyder sounded familiar. I’m pretty sure I came across it when I was inside the department’s database.”

  “Mr. or Mrs.?”

  He shook his head regretfully. “I can’t really remember.”

  “Well, we can’t sneak back into their system in broad daylight.”

  Scott patted the top of the phone booth in thought. More civic buildings lined the street to his left. In the window above the front door of the library, a sign flipped from Closed to Open. Scott wondered whether the Murder Creek branch still relied on a card catalogue. The last time he’d been inside, the closest thing he’d seen to a computer was an old microfilm reader.

  “The newspaper,” he said suddenly.

  Janis stirred from whatever she’d been thinking. “Huh?”

  “The library has every issue of the Barrow County Beacon. It’s all on microfilm. Anything newsworthy that Giles or his wife were involved in will be there, including past crimes. Who knows? Something on there might clue us into their motive. If we can understand why they murdered Dr. Fields, then we might be able to figure out who’s next on the hit list.”

  “Which means we wouldn’t necessarily have to find the killer,” Janis said. “We would just need to beat him to his next target. Or beat her.” She glanced at her watch. “But we’re going to need to hurry.”

  They entered the library through a set of wooden doors, weaved their way around the small tables of an empty reading area, and plunged into the library’s vertical stacks. The microfilm reader was stationed in the very back, beside a row of metal file cabinets.