"I know," she soothed.
She held him tightly, and they were quiet for a minute. Quiet long enough for him to get himself together again. Then he leaned back, looking into her eyes. "Let's go home to Mallory."
She smiled, her own eyes filled with tears. "OK, let's go home."
They kissed and he brushed her cheek tenderly with his fingertips before releasing her. "We'll go home and we'll have fajitas with Mallory, and we'll put her to bed and then we'll sit down and try and look at this logically," he told Rachel as she started the car engine. "If the police can't figure out who's killing these people, maybe we can."
* * *
Snowden walked slowly up his mother's driveway, dreading going in. It was dark except for the glow of her porch light, and the air hung heavy with the promise of rain. In the distance, to the west, thunder rumbled.
His mother would want to talk about the case, about Judge Hearn. About what the police knew and what they didn't know. She'd want to know why he wasn't eating enough and why he didn't ask out that pretty blonde on the force. It was always the same with her, and his answers were never good enough.
She met him at the back door. "You said you'd be here by seven."
"I'm sorry. I was waiting for transport for a prisoner."
"Mattie McConnell." She held the door open. "Hard to believe. You know, he used to come to the library with his father. He liked animal books. I always—"
"Mom, how did you know we arrested Mattie?" He kicked off his shoes and left them in the mudroom.
"Scanner."
Snowden walked into the kitchen. There was a pot of chili on the stove. He hated her chili. No spices. Cheap ground turkey. It tasted like beans and burger and ketchup to him. "You don't have a police scanner."
"Calvin and Trudy next door have one. They came over to tell me that Officer Lopez brought him in."
"Of course they did." He sighed, reaching up in the cabinet for a Corelle bowl.
"There's corn bread on the table."
He scooped out a little chili and carried his bowl to the place she'd left set for him at the dinette table.
"That's not enough to feed a fly."
He sat down, folded his hands, thanked God for the food, prayed for patience, and picked up the soup spoon set neatly on a folded paper towel.
Tillie opened the refrigerator and brought him a stick of margarine in an old-fashioned butter dish. Snowden always made it a point to buy real butter, whipped in a tub for easy spreading. He loved real butter on corn bread.
"I hope you're not sending that poor boy to jail."
"He's not a boy. He's my age, Ma. And you know I can't tell you where they're taking him."
She slid the butter dish across the table and folded her arms over her flowered apron. Her mouth puckered sternly. "You know very well Mattie McConnell didn't murder those people."
"I know no such thing." He took a large square of corn bread from under the cloth napkin and began to butter it. "And neither do you."
"Mattie would never hurt anyone. Of course there were rumors, how his daddy fell off that ladder and broke his neck."
Snowden took a big bite of the corn bread. His mother did make good corn bread, the dry kind that was cakey, not the wet, southern kind. "What rumors? The police report said it was an accident. No one ever thought Mattie had anything to do with his father's death," he defended.
"Police don't know everything."
"Ma—"
"Some say he didn't fall off that ladder. Jack was like a monkey on ladders. And he wasn't that old either. They say he was pushed."
Snowden groaned. He should have just stayed at the station and waited to be sure Mattie was in that state police transport van to take him up to the hospital in Wilmington. He should have just called his mother and told her he couldn't make it. But the van had gotten a flat tire on Route 1 and had been delayed. His shift supervisor assured him he had everything under control. He didn't think he'd have any problem transferring him. Mattie hadn't been the least bit resistant since his arrest. In fact, all he'd done since he'd been put in the cell was pretend to play a keyboard.
The truth was that Snowden had left because he'd felt so guilty about sending Mattie off to the nuthouse. But there he could be evaluated. Maybe even questioned about the murders. Snowden certainly didn't have the capability to communicate with him. He doubted Mattie had the capability to communicate at all.
That was what was worrying him about the arrest. As much as he hated to admit it, Noah had made some good arguments. It was too easy. Mattie had possession of the Bible from which the notes the killer left behind had been cut. Mattie couldn't defend himself. Did the killer want to see the mentally handicapped man go to a mental hospital for the rest of his life for something he didn't do? Would that then be the end of the murders? Would they ever really know if Mattie did it?
Snowden took a mouthful of chili and another bite of corn bread.
"You shouldn't eat so fast. It's bad for your digestion." Tillie crossed the small kitchen. "You want something to drink?"
"Yes, thank you." Snowden took another bite of chili.
Delilah had left the station without saying good night. He wondered if she would be expecting him tonight. He wondered if he should go. He couldn't continue his visits to her house. He knew it. She had to. Maybe tonight was the night to put an end to it. But he felt like he needed to see her. Tonight, of all nights, he needed her.
"Bathroom door's squeaking again." Tillie set a glass of water in front of him.
"I'll have a look at it just as soon as I'm done, Ma."
It was ten by the time Snowden left his mother's house. After supper, he'd used WD-40 on the squeaky hinge. Then she'd found another. Then she'd needed him to change the filter on her dehumidifier.
He'd called the station once while he was there to check to see if Mattie McConnell had been picked up. He hadn't yet, but Johnson said he'd been assured someone would be there anytime. Snowden debated whether or not to call again, but he didn't want his shift commander to think he didn't think he was capable of handling a prisoner with the IQ of a preschooler. It was just that guilt was beginning to get the better of him. Maybe he shouldn't have had Mattie arrested yet, not until he had someone look at the Bible to be sure it was a match to the evidence they already had in custody.
On the way home, Snowden had to turn on the windshield wipers. Lightning zigzagged the dark sky. Thunder rumbled. Inside his house, he moved around mostly in the dark, only turning on a few lights. The more time that passed, the worse he felt. Noah had insisted Mattie wasn't capable of cutting those verses from the Bible. If he had been trying to cover for himself, he wouldn't have argued in Mattie's behalf, would he? Or was he so clever that he knew how to make himself seem innocent, even to a chief of police?
He kept reminding himself of what all the literature said about serial killers. They were always bright. Clever. Convincing.
Snowden changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt. Barefoot, he made himself a cup of mint tea and went into his living room where he had his computer set up. He signed onto the Internet, deleted e-mails offering him quick weight-loss pills and increased penis size, and then Googled idiot savant.
The storm continued to hang over Stephen Kill, rain hitting the windowpanes of the house, thunder rumbling. There were occasional flashes of light in the living room, which was illuminated only by the computer screen. Once, the screen clicked off, but then it clicked right back on, the battery backup beeping twice before electricity was restored.
It occurred to Snowden that he ought to shut down his computer. The storm seemed to be getting worse. But time got away from him as he read about what doctors knew about idiot savants and what they didn't know. He was watching a film clip of the movie Rain Man when his phone ran, startling him.
When he picked up, he half expected to hear Delilah's sweet southern drawl, asking him where the hell he was. It was Johnson.
"Sorry to call you, Chief, but we'v
e got us a situation here."
"Situation?"
"I think you need to come down to the station."
* * *
Noah heard the thunder rumble, felt it deep in his bones. He rolled over in the old bed he and Rachel had shared as newlyweds. They had just set it up the other night after moving Mattie into the spare room downstairs.
He moved away from Rachel, curling up in a ball, half awake, half asleep, fighting the acrid scent that always came to him just before a blackout. "No," he mumbled.
Darkness seemed suddenly to close in on him. Someone was calling his name. Lightning flashed and someone, something, was in the room. A large, dark shape in the corner of the room.
Noah tried to roll over. To warn Rachel. But his limbs wouldn't obey. He could feel himself being sucked into the darkness. He tried to resist, to cry out, but there was no fighting it.
* * *
"What the hell do you mean he got away?" Snowden climbed out of his police car, which he had pulled around to the back door where prisoners entered and exited. He'd taken the extra five minutes to put on a fresh uniform; he had a feeling it might be a long night.
Lieutenant Johnson held a large golf umbrella over them both as they walked to the building's overhang to get out of the rain. Johnson, fifty, built like a fireplug with a crewcut, was an Air Force retiree and a good cop. Solid. Went by the book. He wasn't a creative man, and he didn't seem to have a head for investigating, but he understood the role of the police in keeping the peace in a small town and he did it well.
"It was my fault, Chief." Johnson drew himself up to his full five-foot-eight height. "I... I underestimated the prisoner. When we went to transfer him, there was a problem. Apparently, the spare tire the bozos put on the van was soft, so they ran down to the gas station to put some air in it. Instead of putting McConnell back in a cell, I had him put in the interrogation room. He just seemed so scared, like a kid."
"And someone didn't lock the door."
"No, sir." Johnson shook his bulldog head. "I did not. Same time, an alarm was going off at the post office. I was shorthanded and I was scrambling to get someone over there. Apparently, Mattie just walked right out. By the time I found out the post office was secure and got back to the room, he was gone."
Snowden stood beneath the overhang, watching the rain pour over in rivulets. The night air had cooled off with the storm, but it was still humid out, the air so close that when you inhaled, you didn't feel like you could quite get a full breath.
"What time was this?"
Johnson checked his watch. He had a ruddy face that reddened when he became irritated or anxious. It was bright red. "'Bout an hour ago now. We've looked everywhere. I mean, how far could he have gotten? He didn't act like he knew enough to find his way out of a wet paper bag."
"Biggest mistake you can make, underestimating a prisoner."
"I know that, Chief. Like I said, I screwed up."
Snowden stared out into the darkness, watching the rain illuminated by one of the security lights in the back parking lot. He saw Delilah pull into the parking lot in her little red pickup. He'd called her as he left the house, woken her. This was her case; she had a right to be here.
"You're sure he's not still inside somewhere, cowering in a corner?" Snowden studied the shadows of the parking lot, hoping against hope that he might see Mattie's hulking form huddled in the rain.
"He's a big guy, Chief. Outweighs you by fifty pounds. He's not inside."
"Did you call the Gibsons? See if he turned up there? They should be warned that he might."
"No answer, but I can't tell if it's ringing through or not. We've got some phones out in the area. Lot of cable TV out. Had two calls from people wanting to know what we were going to do about the cable being out. Apparently there's some kind of John Wayne movie marathon on tonight." Johnson shook his head, chuckling, but he really wasn't that amused.
"Well, let's send a patrol car out to the Gibsons. Have a look around. Maybe he just went back to their place and he's sitting on the porch soaking wet, scared to death."
Delilah ran across the parking lot. She was dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a yellow rain slicker, wearing her badge on her hip the way detectives did. Snowden was quite sure she was wearing her gun belt. She looked good, even in the dark, in the rain, her hair messy from sleep and only a quick comb-through.
"Chief, Lieutenant." She nodded to them both as she darted under the overhang.
"Johnson will fill you in. I'll be in my office." Snowden nodded toward her, turning away. Then he turned back, suddenly thinking of something. "All our vehicles accounted for, Johnson?"
"Sir?"
Snowden pointed into the parking lot at the black-and-white cruisers parked in two rows, side by side. As officers came in and out, cars were checked out off the end of a row, returned at the end of a row. The third space on the second row was open. It shouldn't have been open.
Johnson stared at the cars for a moment and then swore under his breath. "He's retarded Chief. To steal a car, a person would have to get a key. He'd have to—"
"Check the log." Snowden glared.
Johnson grabbed the back door, left propped open with half a cement block, and stepped inside.
"I think I'll take a car, ride out to the Gibsons' myself," Delilah said, taking care not to meet Snowden's gaze directly.
"I was thinking the same thing." He glanced down at her. "Let's take mine."
Chapter 31
Unlike so many nights, nothing startled Rachel awake. She woke slowly to the sound of the rumbling thunder, now farther in the distance than it had been before. She could hear the rain pattering on the old farmhouse window. The storm was letting up.
Then she realized the air conditioner was silent; it had been on when they went to bed. Now it was hot and sticky in the room.
Still half asleep, relieved not to have woken in the terror of one of her nightmares, she pushed the hot sheet off her naked body and reached out to Noah in the bed beside her.
He wasn't there.
She sat up, looking around in the dark room, drawing the sheet up to cover her bare breasts. It was almost pitch black. Not even the light from the security lamp in the yard shone through the windows. "Noah?"
Despite the warmth of the room, she shivered. Something wasn't right. Something didn't feel right in the room. The sense of dread she had been experiencing began to slowly seep through her. "Is someone there?"
She reached out and turned the switch on the bedside lamp. It clicked but the light didn't come on.
Electricity must have gone out in the storm. That explained why the window air conditioner was off. The digital clock beside her bed wasn't illuminated either.
Had Noah gone downstairs to check the breaker box? Years ago, his parents had hired an electrician to rewire the house, and the old glass fuse box had been replaced with a proper regulation switch box. They rarely lost power these days. Unless, of course, power lines went down in a storm like this, she reminded herself, fighting the feeling that something was wrong, very wrong.
Rachel slid her feet onto the rag rug on the floor beside the bed and felt for her clothes. She didn't feel as if she'd been asleep long. After they had tucked Mallory into bed they had sat side by side at the kitchen table and talked about who might possibly be killing parishioners Noah had counseled. Who might be trying to frame Mattie. They hadn't come up with any clear-cut answers, but they had a lot of questions, which were all jotted down on a legal pad downstairs on the table. They'd gone to bed too tired, too scared to make love, but Noah had held her in his arms until she drifted off to sleep. That was the last thing she remembered.
Rachel finally located the clothes she'd tossed on the floor when she'd gone to bed. She stepped into a pair of denim shorts and pulled her discarded T-shirt over her head. Then she fumbled for the drawer pull on the bedside table, slid it open, and felt for the flashlight she always kept inside. She found a pack of tissues, ChapStick, something
small and square she couldn't make out, a book light, and a magazine. Finally, in the back of the drawer, she felt the hard plastic tube of the flashlight.
"Aha," she said aloud trying to shake that spooked feeling a person had when they were alone in the dark. She flipped the switch and the flashlight clicked on, but the light was feeble. The batteries were running low. Figured. She didn't know the last time she'd used it. At least a year ago. It was just here for emergencies like this one.
Not that this was an emergency.
"Shoot," she muttered, thinking that if she spoke aloud, the heaviness in her chest that was the fear of something she couldn't quite pinpoint wouldn't seem quite so real. She shook the flashlight, and the dumb thing went out. She must have dislodged the batteries. "Well, that's much better," she chastised herself. She shook it again, and the dim light shone once more from the barrel.
Holding it gingerly in her hand, she took a quick swipe of the room, though why, she had no idea. There was nothing there out of the ordinary, of course. Clothes thrown over the doors of the open antique armoire. Shoes on the floor. Some of Noah's clothes in a laundry basket, for lack of a better place to put them presently. Nothing had been disturbed.
Noah must have closed the bedroom door behind him when he went downstairs to check the box, Rachel told herself.
She entered the hall, moving the flashlight beam as she walked slowly toward Mallory's bedroom. She and Noah had moved into the house with his parents six years before their deaths. When the old church rectory they'd been living in had been determined to be infested with termites, the council had voted to demolish it and use the space for the additional parking needed. Noah was offered a stipend for housing, and he and Rachel had moved into the farmhouse. Some women might not have liked the idea of moving in with their in-laws, but not Rachel. She'd loved this house, this family, since she was child. She knew it as well as she knew her own body.
Yet for some reason, now in the dim yellow beam of light, nothing looked quite familiar. Everything seemed slightly strange—the striped wallpaper, the carpet runner, even the family photographs on the wall. That heavy feeling in her chest seemed to be growing weightier by the minute.
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