“That’s Preacher Webb,” he told them in total confusion. “He’s my pastor!”
“Funny how that happens sometimes,” Hollis murmured.
“Wait—he’s the unsub? But I thought Joe—”
“Joe was just a tool,” DeMarco explained. “Webb liked to use tools. Especially weak or young minds.”
“Young?”
Hollis said, “Yeah, you need to meet Sean Brenner. He’s eight. And he’s what caused Clara Adams to swerve her car—and then lose control. Well, sort of. Sean was playing with a toy in the middle of the street, and Clara swerved to avoid him. After that, the carefully sabotaged electrical system caused the accident.”
Mal stared at her. “Eight?”
“He was one of Webb’s tools,” Hollis explained. “He really doesn’t remember much but . . . there’s some missing time. And he has the same automatic response Joe had to being asked if he was okay.”
“Which is?”
“‘I’m fine. I’m absolutely fine.’”
“Well, wouldn’t he say—”
“Not an eight-year-old. Or, at least, not Sean. Anyway, I think he was practice as much as anything else. Face-to-face, Webb was a fair hand at a form of hypnosis.” She didn’t mention the more inexplicable “tricks” to attempt to control her or Kirby. That really wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with the sheriff.
And it wasn’t necessary, after all.
Since it was obvious the sheriff needed time to process, Hollis said, “You know, I think maybe it’d be best if we—most of us, anyway—went back to the station to talk.”
“I,” Jill said definitely, “am not doing the post on this guy. And tonight I really, really want to take a couple of hot showers and drink some wine. Mal, I’ll give you my statement later.”
“But what about—” He gestured somewhat helplessly toward the body on the floor.
“My suggestion? Open the freezer door and seal off this room until you can get another ME here. I couldn’t do the post officially anyway, since I was a potential victim.” She glanced to either side, then slipped off the autopsy table. “I want to get away from these candlesticks too. I don’t like them.”
“Cursed,” Mal offered rather absently.
“Yeah? Well, I’d say sell ’em to a museum. And don’t handle them very much in the meantime. They sure don’t need to belong to a preacher. Any preacher.”
“Stolen. From a museum in France.”
Jill eyed the sheriff, trying not to smile. “Well, in that case, I bet there’s a finder’s fee. And I’ll bet it’ll keep the Widow Webb and her kids in comfort, probably for the rest of their lives.”
Hollis nodded. “Especially if she wants to sell the other artifacts he collected. I’m betting some were stolen, some bought legitimately, and most all will be worth a lot more to a museum or a collector than they will be to her.”
“I’ll have to make notification,” Mal said. “Jesus, what am I supposed to tell her? This—all this—”
“Probably needs to stay inside this room,” Hollis said. “Jill can talk to Sam, but I doubt he’ll want to advertise that he got knocked out by a preacher. Even an evil one.”
“Got that right,” Jill said.
To the sheriff, Hollis said seriously, “Mal, I really don’t think Clarity needs to deal with the fact that one of their pastors murdered people, including another pastor, and worshiped Satan on the side.”
“I wouldn’t even know how to start explaining that,” he admitted.
“Look, I know it goes against the grain, but right now everybody believes Joe Cross was the killer. He doesn’t have blood family here, nobody who might object or demand further investigation to learn more or to remove a stain from the family name. And from all we can tell he didn’t even have many casual friends. His world was Perla. Everybody knew that. Everybody. And when she threatened to leave him again, this time for good, he . . . snapped.”
Mal shifted uncomfortably, conscious of the two silent deputies behind him. “And the others? The . . . accidents?”
“They were . . . accidents. Horrible, and inexplicable, like so many bad things that happen in life. You called in FBI agents because you wanted to be sure, and they did what we call an equivocal death investigation and concluded that the first four deaths were just accidents. Nobody to blame, including the victims. And that they have no connection to what happened later to Perla Cross and Reverend Pilate, both murdered by Joe Cross, who couldn’t bear to lose Perla when she wanted to leave him for good. And who maybe hated the Reverend Marcus Pilate for trivializing the death of his wife by wanting her personal things to sell to raise money for his church.”
“But . . . how Pilate was left in his church . . .”
DeMarco shrugged. “Gossip has already added elaborate details to what was believed to be a strange and gruesome murder. Only law enforcement, Jill, and her assistant actually saw the body. You can close that case by announcing that Joe Cross killed him, and why—and how Cross was later killed by a federal agent. And why. We were on his land, at his home. And he had already snapped. He didn’t think twice about shooting at federal agents.” He shrugged again. “Nobody’s going to question you, Mal. Especially when all of us give statements to verify that’s what happened.”
Mal gestured, this time silently, toward the late Reverend Webb.
Hollis shrugged. “As I see it, you have two viable options to explain this death. One: Reverend Webb, after confronting your temporary ME’s assistant in his own hotel room, knocking him out, and leaving him bound and gagged, lured Jill here to kill her because he blamed her for the death of his sister three years ago in Asheville. There’s plenty of documented evidence about Sharon Webb’s death, and how upset her brother was at the time.”
“I never even saw him,” Jill murmured. “A whole team worked on her, and still we lost her. The chief of surgery is the one who notified her family. Him, Webb.”
“But he blamed you, for whatever reason,” Hollis said matter-of-factly. “People do irrational things in grief. And when you came here to help us investigate all the accidents, and then the murders, Webb lost it. He blamed you, and he wanted to kill you here, in exactly the sort of place where he had to identify his sister’s body. She was carrying ID, but the police needed a family member to verify it was her. So that’s where he saw her broken body. On a stainless steel table in a morgue. And that’s what broke him. It just took three years for him to realize he was broken.”
DeMarco pointed out quietly, “There won’t be a trial. Whatever evidence was collected here won’t be used, because this man was killed by four federal agents, the justified shootings witnessed by the medical examiner he was about to murder. The Bureau will want statements from all of us, and from Jill, but our unit chief will make sure it doesn’t go any further than that.”
After a long moment, Mal said, “Or?”
Hollis said, “Or . . . maybe the devil told one of your most respected pastors to kill some of his fellow citizens. Including another pastor. Brutally. Maybe he practiced Satanism, and sacrificed people because he was trying to summon unnatural power. Hell, maybe he was a member of a coven, and neighbor looks at neighbor, wondering, asking questions or, worse, not asking them.”
Mal held up a hand to stop her. “No, you’re right. A whiff of devil worship in Clarity, and this whole town could be destroyed.”
Behind him, Deputy Brent Cannon, with a degree in criminal justice under his belt, said, “I don’t see how justice could be served any other way, Mal. For the good of the town. And because, in the end, we’ll be the only ones who know the truth. Pieces of the truth, at least.”
Beside him, Deputy Ray Marx nodded, his own face as grave. And for the first time, Hollis realized these were the two detectives who had been with the sheriff and agents when Pilate’s mutilated body had been found.
&
nbsp; Deputy Cannon said, “I can live with that.”
“I can live with it too,” Deputy Marx agreed. “We say what we saw, what we know, and Clarity will never be the same. I want my kids to grow up in the Clarity I grew up in.”
Mal had turned to listen to them, and their stolid support and understanding made the decision for him. “Okay.” He turned back to the others. “Jill, as long as I have a statement from you and from Sam before you leave, we’re good. I’ll probably just ask one of our doctors here to do the autopsy on Webb. There isn’t, after all, anything mysterious about his death.
“The rest of you, if you don’t mind, go back to the station and write up your statements, give me whatever reports I need to have on hand of your findings. I’ll follow a bit later—after Brent, Ray, and I get rid of that cloak thing, and everything else that makes this death look like . . . something it wasn’t.”
Hollis said, “Burn all the material, including the black candles. As for the candlesticks, they are valuable, and selling them can help provide for his family. But if I were you, I’d cover them with something and stuff them in that freezer until your expert, or whoever he recommends, can come fetch them.”
Remembering the pentagram on the base of each candlestick, Mal didn’t argue. He merely said, “I had nightmares about those things last night. Happy to leave them here.”
“Good idea,” DeMarco murmured. “And you might want to very quietly look around Webb’s home, when his wife and kids aren’t there, just in case he kept other . . . tools . . . of a Satanist’s beliefs.”
“Oh, shit,” Mal said.
—
CULLEN PUSHED THE legal pad in front of him farther away and yawned hugely. “’Scuse me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am beat. I think I still have questions, but I’m too tired to remember them. Except one.”
Hollis, expecting it, said, “Kirby.”
“Well, yeah. Kirby—and you. Am I right in thinking that you and Kirby both managed to share information and hide it from a clairvoyant and a telepath?”
Kirby gave her partner an innocent look. “Look at this face. How could this face hide anything?” Then she grinned, and innocent suddenly looked more elfin and more than a little sly.
“Damn,” he said, but not as if the revelation of a core of steel underneath Kirby’s childlike exterior disturbed him.
In fact, Hollis thought it pleased him. And she had a hunch that theirs was a partnership that would last.
“I’m tired too,” Kirby told the room at large, then looked at her partner. “I finished my statement. Anything else Mal needs, we can give him in the morning. Walk me to the hotel?”
Cullen sent the other two agents a glance but was already rising to his feet. “Sure. Will we be leaving early tomorrow?”
Hollis shook her head. “No real reason to. Unless you get a message to the contrary, just plan on checking out of the hotel at their standard time and coming back here to make sure Mal has everything he needs.”
“Gotcha. Come on, partner.”
When the door closed behind the two of them, Hollis looked down at the legal pad and frowned when she realized she’d been doodling. Her statement was written and had been torn from the pad minutes earlier.
She had “doodled” a rather comical sketch of Mal and his new canine buddy, Felix. The Yorkie was tucked inside his half-open jacket, peering out at the world from his perch with bright eyes.
“It’s good,” Reese said.
“Is it?”
“Yeah.” Reese leaned forward and held out a stack of pages that had been piling up, without Hollis paying any attention, at his end of the table. “And so are these.”
More than a little surprised, Hollis flipped through page after page of sketches she didn’t even remember drawing. There were faces, buildings, mountain views. There were cattle and horses in distant pastures. There was a little girl with an ice cream cone bending down to the very attentive Sheltie at her feet. A man in a sports car leaned out the window to gesture to someone not shown, his exaggerated patience very evident.
“I don’t even remember seeing half these things,” Hollis said slowly, looking through the sketches again one by one. “And I certainly don’t remember drawing them.”
“You’ve been drawing pretty much every time we’ve been in this room. Not paying attention. Autopilot.”
“What?”
“You were on autopilot,” Reese said. “Beau Rafferty, Maggie Garrett’s artist brother, says sometimes an artist’s best work is done on autopilot. Because the artist gets out of his—or her—own way. Have you met him?”
“Yes.” Hollis was still frowning. “Reese, I’m not an artist anymore.”
“Aren’t you?”
“This isn’t— I haven’t drawn anything in years.”
“Not since the attack.”
“No. Not since the attack.”
“Until now.”
Hollis dropped her gaze to the sketches, going through them again, more slowly this time. And it dawned on her only gradually as she looked at work she knew was very, very good that this was what had been stolen from her soul by the animal that had brutalized her and left her to die.
He had stolen her drive to create beauty.
If she had not been able to see again, then perhaps she would have grieved most that loss of sight. That inability to see the world as she had seen it, with an artist’s clear, fascinated gaze. It had been, ironically, that drive to become a better artist that had prompted her move to Seattle. Where the monster had found her.
And destroyed that other Hollis.
Very quiet, still looking at the sketches, Hollis said, “In the back of my mind, or maybe buried deep with all the memories, there was a . . . fear . . . of even trying to sketch again.”
“You were afraid you’d draw monsters. Violence.”
She looked at Reese, into eyes she had known the first time they had met were sharp enough to probe far more deeply than some people would ever be able to bear. Maybe most people. But she knew she could.
“Yeah. I was afraid I’d draw . . . dark, horrible things. Things I had felt. Things I’d seen. The attack that took so much and left me psychic—and everything else I’ve seen in the years since. I didn’t want to draw most of those things. That wasn’t why I became an artist. I didn’t want to create . . . ugly things.”
Reese reached out and tapped the sketch closest to him, which happened to be the little girl with her ice cream and her dog. “There’s nothing ugly here. There’s nothing ugly in any of these. Do you know why?”
Hollis was afraid to ask—literally afraid.
“Because,” Reese answered anyway, “there’s nothing ugly in you.”
“Monsters,” she murmured.
“There are no monsters in you, Hollis. You’ve faced and fought so many of them since the first monster, the one who really did change your life. But no matter what you believed then, no matter what you’ve believed since, he didn’t destroy what was most important to you. Your creativity. You’ve held it and protected it all these years. Kept it safe.”
“I buried it,” she realized slowly. “The way I buried the ugly things. The ugly memories. The ugly nightmares.” She was reaching out a hand before she realized it, and watched, felt, as his fingers twined with hers. “But now . . .”
He was smiling, that faintly crooked smile that was rare, and all the more valuable because it was. “Now, like the memories and the nightmares, it’s something you can accept. Because you’re ready to let that happen. You’re ready to find out how this Hollis, how the woman you’ve become, will tap into that creativity. Ready to find out what she can create . . . now.”
“I’m still . . . a little bit afraid,” she confessed.
“I know. But it’ll pass. Look at what you could create when you weren’t even tryin
g, Hollis. Just imagine what you’ll be able to create when you do.”
Hollis felt herself smiling, even felt the fear almost melting away. “What I can create when I try.”
Reese nodded. “You’ve fought monsters, Hollis. Not the storybook kind, but real evil. Fought and won. Fought and never let the evil stain your soul. Of course you can create beauty. You’ve always been able to, even when you didn’t think so. You’ll create beauty the way you create humor. The way you create spirit. The way you heal, and can see the colors of someone’s feelings, and know things most artists will never know.”
“I like the sound of that,” she said.
“Good.” His fingers tightened slightly, but before he could say anything else, a voice spoke dryly from the doorway.
“Don’t let me interrupt.”
Hollis turned her head slowly, not very surprised because she had known he was coming tonight, that he had been on his way almost from the moment the bullets had struck Reese.
“Bishop, your timing sucks,” she told him.
“Really? It looks pretty good to me.” He came into the room a few steps and reached over to place something in front of Hollis. “In fact, I’d say it was perfect.”
It was a large sketch pad. And charcoal pencils.
Hollis looked at the gift, still smiling, then glanced at her partner before looking back at their unit chief.
“Thank you. Do me a favor?”
“Sure. What?”
“Stay out of my head. For good. There’s someone else in there now.” She was getting to her feet because Reese was getting to his, but she kept her gaze on Bishop. “You and Miranda can stop worrying about me now.”
“Can we?”
“Yeah. I’m okay now. In fact, I’ve never been better in my life.” With her free hand, she picked up the sketch pad and pencils, because she knew exactly what Reese was going to say.
“Bishop, Hollis and I are now officially taking our annual leave. Which neither of us has taken in years. We’re going to find an island somewhere, or maybe a cave, where there’s no cell service, and where even if you retask a satellite you won’t be able to find us.”