XGeneration (Book 5): Cry Little Sister

by Brad Magnarella

  Scott nodded. “So now what?”

  Janis could see what he was thinking. How could they warn Chief McDermott about the imminent attempt on his life without admitting what they knew? Would the chief feel compelled to shut them up? As it was, Detective Buckner was already watching them. It then occurred to Janis that he might have been ordered to do so. She imagined the detective thumbing through Scott’s notebook at that very moment, reading the information she and Scott had jotted down on Mr. Snyder earlier in the day.

  “Mr. Snyder will attack at night,” she said with a certainty similar to what she’d felt when she was describing Rourke. Her powers were coming back online and not a moment too soon. “Likely at the police chief’s house.”

  “And we’ll need to be there,” Scott said.

  “But we’ll need to intercept Mr. Snyder before he gets there.”

  “Before?”

  “Chief McDermott let his detectives go forward with David’s and the others’ arrests—the evidence was there—but he has to at least be wondering whether someone else killed Dr. Fields. And if he suspects Mr. Snyder, the chief is going to be extra vigilant.”

  “And if he catches our shadows skulking around his property, he’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “Right, too chancy.”

  “What do we do when we intercept Mr. Snyder?” Scott asked. “He’s starting to sound like the victim in all of this, but he did kill those two dogs and mess up Jasper. And then there’s the strange energy and however he’s been slipping in and out of houses. I mean, do we really know who we’re dealing with?”

  Janis considered this. Mr. Snyder had seemed like a decent man in the short time she had occupied his memory. But that was thirty years ago and before the unthinkable had happened.

  “There’s a way we might find out,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  She glanced at her watch. “If we hurry, we can catch the morning bus to Statham.”

  “You want to go back to the prison? David’s not going to talk to us. Not after the last—”

  “Not David,” she said. “Markus. He knew the family.”

  “Chastity, too?”

  “Chastity, especially. Why?”

  “Because she would be in her early forties now and…”

  “And would have as much of a revenge motive as her father,” Janis finished for him, nodding.

  Scott rewound the microfilm roll and tossed it to Janis, who boxed and returned it to the filing cabinet. Scott snapped the microfilm machine off, and they rushed away. In their hurry, the computer remained on.

  Minutes later, someone arrived and stared down at the orange text on the screen.

  >results for “Harold Fields” AND “McDermott”

  22

  The ham-faced guard grinned when Scott and Janis approached his inspection station. “No battery today?”

  “No, I guess not,” Scott said.

  “A shame. Old Sparky had to work late last night. Could probably use a little pick-me-up.”

  When the guard guffawed, Scott forced a weak chuckle.

  Ever since leaving the police station, he had been feeling vulnerable. He had kept reaching for the backpack that would have been sitting by his feet on the bus. But his pack was in Detective Buckner’s office, along with his battery, laser, and picking tools. Which meant he had almost nothing in the way of offense—and just when he and Janis were converging on the killer.

  My powers are coming back online, Janis reminded him.

  I just don’t want to be dead weight, he replied. Or worse, a liability.

  Beyond the metal detector, another guard escorted them to the no-contact room.

  Scott was surprised to find Markus already seated on the other side of the Plexiglas. The inmate’s bulbous eyes started slightly—he was just as surprised to see them, apparently. Regardless, David had no doubt coached his friends on what to say and what not to in the event of visitors. As Scott scooted into the partition beside Janis, he was skeptical that they’d be able to get much out of him.

  “I think you know us,” Janis said, but she made their introductions anyway.

  “Yeah,” Markus replied hoarsely.

  Scott had to force himself not to stare at the goiter that bulged above the V-neck of his jumpsuit. A goiter that, by Markus’s wheezing breaths, sounded as though it had a grip on his trachea. Had the radiation in those supplements done that? Scott wondered.

  “You need to talk to David if you want anything,” Markus said. “And if you’re going to bring up the gardening business again, forget it. We had it moved.”

  “How well did you know the Snyders?” Janis asked, undeterred.

  Markus looked at Janis and then down, as though weighing the risk of answering. Scott saw that his fingernails had been clipped; clean crescents now showed above the pale-yellow beds.

  Markus moved his cuffed hands onto his lap. “I knew them.”

  “What were they like?”

  “What is this?” Markus wheezed. “A Barbara Walters special?”

  Scott understood what Janis was doing. She was training his mind on certain areas in order to more easily access his thoughts. Her method was similar to those research libraries where the aisles of books were stacked against one another and you pushed a button to open the aisle you wanted.

  “Was Mr. Snyder a violent man?” Janis asked.

  Markus gave a sardonic smile. “Killed his wife, didn’t he?”

  “Did he?”

  Markus pulled his lips in.

  “Look, I know about your relationship with Chastity.”

  Markus stared at her for a moment. Scott could see him trying to determine how she knew. A futile endeavor no matter which way he tried to cut it. He might have been smart, but he was nowhere close to David’s order of genius.

  “So?” he finally said.

  “Did you ever hear from her? After her and her father fled?”

  His eyes flicked toward the mesh window that looked down on the room. Another tell. “No.”

  “A phone call? A letter?”

  He gave no response, but Scott could see the blue veins that webbed his goiter pulsing with greater urgency. He lacked his leader’s porcelain façade, as well.

  “Did she ever mention them returning to Murder Creek?”

  “I’ve gotta go.” He waved toward the window.

  “Remain seated,” a voice called over the intercom. “A guard will be there shortly to escort you out.”

  Before that could happen, Janis slipped in a final question. “Did she ever say anything about revenge?”

  Markus remained staring at a spot in the lower corner of the Plexiglas. The door behind him opened. When the guard grasped his upper arm, something compelled Markus to speak.

  “How could she say anything?” he wheezed. “She was a mute.”

  Because the afternoon bus wasn’t due for another three hours, Scott and Janis decided to walk to the next town on the returning route, five miles away. That would kill two of the hours and give them space to talk. As their pant legs whisked through the grass along the road’s shoulder, Janis took a deep breath. Scott could tell she had finished organizing whatever she had received and was ready to share.

  “Markus knew the Snyders, of course,” she said. “On the question of violence, though, nothing came back. His father didn’t care for him. Thought Markus was a greaser. In Mr. Snyder’s defense, Markus was a greaser back then, but Mr. Snyder tolerated him. He never threatened or acted violently toward him—or anyone in his own family, as far as Markus knew.”

  Scott was anxious for her to get to the good stuff, to those final questions, but he knew better than to push. A semi truck roared past, blasting air through their clothes and hair.

  “He knows the truth about Mrs. Snyder’s killing,” Janis continued as the truck’s noise faded. “About who was responsible. And with that came a barrage of images.” She stopped straightening her hair to gesture around her head. �
�The images went back to the beginning, when they first started receiving the supplement. I got that Markus had ended up in the youth camp for skipping a few days of school that year. The others were put in for similarly bogus reasons. There was a boys’ and a girls’ side, separated by a chain-link fence.”

  “All of them from poor or broken families?”

  “From what I could tell, yeah.”

  “That’s so wrong.”

  “Dr. Fields would show up each morning, and Markus and the other inmates would line up to receive their supplement-laced milk. The milk was dull brown with a metallic taste.” Janis’s face pinched around her lips, as though she had just taken a sip. “Once a week, Dr. Fields would see them in a clinic. Markus didn’t tell anyone, but he looked forward to the visits because it was the only building in the camp that didn’t push a hundred on the thermometer. At the end of the check-up, Dr. Fields would give him a cold bottle of Coke. He was the only nice one in the camp, it seemed. For a long time, Markus didn’t make the connection between his nausea and the nutritional milk the doctor was giving them.”

  “Wow, you did pick up a lot.”

  “This is only the appetizer,” she said. “David was the one who figured it out. He told the others to wait until they were out of sight of Dr. Fields and then dump their milk. Sure enough, Markus’s nausea improved, the rawness in his throat went away. But Chief McDermott caught on to what they were doing. From then on, the inmates were forced to drink the milk under the supervision of the so-called camp counselors. Every last drop.”

  Scott’s stomach roiled at the thought.

  “But a part of Markus still trusted Dr. Fields—or wanted to. When he showed Dr. Fields the round nodule on his neck, the doctor chuckled and told him it was normal. His body was ridding itself of toxins: alcohol, cigarette tar, whatever other impurities he’d been ingesting. His lymph nodes were bound to swell. Dr. Fields told Markus that once he had been purged, he would feel better than ever.”

  Janis’s lips compressed as she shook her head.

  “But not all of the campers trusted Dr. Fields,” she went on. “One day they protested. They dumped out their milk right in front of him and then upended the table holding the pitchers. The counselors swarmed in with batons and beat the protestors to the ground. Markus received a few blows to the head just for being there. For the remainder of the camp, everyone drank their radiation milk.”

  “No wonder Fields and McDermott had to shut the Snyders up,” Scott said. “And that doctor who examined Chastity? I wouldn’t be surprised if the clinic lost her medical record around the same time.”

  “No doubt,” Janis agreed.

  Scott watched her squint ahead to where the road bisected a fallow stretch of farmland before bending into the trees. “What about Chastity?” he asked, unable to contain himself.

  “Their relationship started at the camp.”

  “But I thought you said the two sides were separated.”

  “By a chain-link fence,” Janis said. “The campers on both sides could still see one another, and they were outdoors a lot of the time. The inmates received an hour or so of counseling as advertised, but the Sunshine Camp for At-Risk Youths was mostly a labor camp.”

  Scott worked out the acronym in his head: S.C.A.R.Y. “What sort of labor?”

  “The boys’ side dealt with pine trees that were brought in on a trailer. Cutting, stripping, mulching—that sort of thing. I could feel the tarry pitch all over Markus’s hands. The girls labored in a watermelon patch. The two sides weren’t allowed to talk, but they would still try to work as close to the barrier as they could get away with. Chastity stayed far back, though.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Tall and thin. And her hair was this pale blond color, nearly white. At the camp it would be parted in the middle and braided into ponytails that fell down the front of both shoulders.”

  “Like Laura on Little House on the Prairie?”

  “A little. Anyway, Markus knew about her and how she couldn’t talk. He was telling the truth about that. One of his grandmothers was deaf, so he had learned a little sign language. One day he decided to sign a quick hello.”

  “And she signed back?” Scott asked hopefully.

  “She did. After that, they talked every day—for hours. Markus would spell out the words he didn’t know, and Chastity would sign the word so he would know for the next time. They talked about normal teenage stuff. How school stunk, the camp sucked, etcetera. They talked about their sickness and whether or not they could trust Dr. Fields. By the time the camp ended and they were handed certificates declaring them reformed, they were dating, I guess.”

  “Wow, that’s intense.”

  “Two weeks later, she was on the run with her father.”

  “Oh, right. Bummer.”

  “Now, this is where things get really interesting.” They moved from the grassy shoulder to the road where it bridged a creek, Janis floating her hand over the metal guard rail. “When I asked whether he had heard from Chastity, the answer was a definite yes. About a year after they disappeared, Markus received a postcard from Texas. Blank, nothing on it.”

  “And he believed it was from her?”

  “He wanted to, but he couldn’t be sure. The next year he got one from Wyoming, and the year after that, from Montana. It was with the third one that he realized they were all postmarked around the same date—that July day he’d first signed a hello to her at the camp.”

  “That’s actually really sweet,” Scott said, amazed that he had used the word to describe anything having to do with Markus. “So it sounds like Mr. Snyder and his daughter went west and then north.”

  “Yeah, and they were all states where Mr. Snyder would have been able to find cattle work, I’m sure. Anyway, from what I could tell, the deal with the postcards went on for a few more years—each one from a different place—until Markus received a card that didn’t fit the pattern.”

  “How so?”

  “It arrived in February, for one. And this one had writing on it.”

  Scott raised an eyebrow, but Janis had to wait for another semi to pass.

  “I could see it as if it were in my hands,” she continued. “The words were thin and they wavered like they’d been written by someone who could hardly hold a pen. The message said, ‘Wish I could have seen you one final time. I’m afraid to die.’ That was it.”

  “Geez. How long ago was it sent?” Scott asked.

  “Twenty years or so, but Markus still has it. Still looks at it—at all of the postcards, in fact. That’s how I was able to see them so clearly.”

  “And he never received another one?”

  Janis shook her head.

  “So, between Chastity being mute and, well, dead, I guess that really only does leave Mr. Snyder,” Scott said. “But we still have no idea how he manipulates energy, or whatever it is he does.”

  “No, but we have important information about his past, information we might use to appeal to him. We know he didn’t kill his wife. We know he ran to protect his sick daughter.”

  “But then what? Convince him to go back into hiding?” Because that seemed to Scott the only alternative to Mr. Snyder presenting himself to the police chief responsible for his wife’s death and the eventual death of his daughter. “And what would become of David and his friends?” he asked, the thought just occurring to him. “They’d be tried for Dr. Fields’s murder, right?”

  “Well, the third alternative would be to convince Mr. Snyder to turn himself in to another authority. The state attorney’s office, maybe. He would confess to the murder of Dr. Fields and reveal his motive—the youth camp, the radioactive supplement. If David and the others gave supporting statements, Mr. Snyder could well be acquitted of his wife’s murder.”

  “The spotlight would then swing toward Chief McDermott,” Scott said.

  “Right where it belongs.”

  “But Mr. Snyder would still do time for Fields, right?”
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  “Probably.” Janis pushed a strand of hair behind an ear. “But he’ll serve knowing he’d been cleared of what made him start running in the first place, and that he’d righted the wrongs done to his family. Something tells me he’ll be okay with that. Maybe even content.”

  “And you still think he’s going to strike soon?”

  When Janis looked over at him, her irises were deep green.

  “Very soon,” she said. “Tonight.”

  Scott gazed out the window as the bus pulled up to the stop at the edge of Murder Creek’s downtown. He caught himself wondering how the town had ever seemed dull to him. From the stop, he and Janis zigzagged back toward city hall. By the time their red cruisers came into view, Scott’s digital watch showed a few minutes after four. Their plan was to hurry home, rest (it had been a hell of an eventful day, starting with him nearly getting brained by a flying hatchet), and then go into campaign mode, plotting their moves for the night.

  But as Scott rolled his bike from the rack, it thudded to the sidewalk like dead weight.

  “Great. I’m flat.”

  “Not flat,” Janis said, inspecting her own deflated tires. “Slashed.”

  When Scott looked more closely, he saw that she was right. Something sharp had been driven into the side of his front and back tires, leaving one-inch gashes near the rims.

  “Guess someone’s unhappy with our snooping,” he said.

  “Markus did mention moving their growth operation from Murder World, which means they have someone on the outside. But this feels more…” Janis’s brow tensed in concentration, her hand still cupping her back tire. “I don’t know, more official somehow.”

  “You mean like—”

  “Hey, there!” someone called from across the street.

  Scott raised his face to find Chief McDermott in front of the police station. He looked both ways before crossing the street at a waddling run. A brown corduroy jacket stretched the breadth of his stomach. At his waist, Scott could make out the bulge of a holstered firearm.