“No.” She sounded sure of herself, and he figured she’d already guessed what he was working on. “You’re on to the Justice Turnbull story, aren’t you? I mean, it’s practically in your backyard. Hope you don’t mind if I check in with you some more as we go along.”
Harrison couldn’t decide if he was outraged or amused. He settled on the latter. “It’s flattering that you need to follow after me to find your own news, Pauline.”
She laughed. “Are you still mad about that whole episode with your brother-in-law? C’mon, Frost. We’re all adults here.”
He could practically see her sharklike smile. “Are we?” he asked, then clicked off before he lost his sense of humor.
Lang wanted to clap his hands over his ears at the rhythmic moaning filling the offices. He felt like he couldn’t just leave, although O’Halloran had no such qualms, and was at his desk, finishing up some work he’d planned to put off till tomorrow. He might have stuck around the department, but he was definitely glad that both Johnson and Geena Cho had been the ones to separate James Cosmo Danielson’s significant other from her clinging children so that Savvy Dunbar could escort the hysterical woman to the morgue to identify the body. The woman’s ID had been positive—a loud keening wail before flinging herself atop the body, according to Savvy—and now she, who had said her name was Virgin, short for Virginia, according to her ID, was crying softly and rocking her children to and fro. The aforementioned sister had been called to come collect her, and the sister and her husband were on their way to the TCSD together as Virgin had the sister’s vehicle. The sister’s husband was going to drive the flowered van back home, but there was the impound to pay, and it was that injustice added to Cosmo’s death that had sent Virgin into her current chanting, rocking fugue.
Into this distracting noise, Lang’s cell phone rang. It was lying on his desk and he snatched it up. He recognized the number displayed on his LCD as Sam McNally’s, so he headed out of the squad room to the relative quiet of the sheriff’s office, closing the door behind him.
“Detective Stone.”
“Sam McNally,” he responded in a serious tone. “I understand you’ve been trying to get hold of me.”
“That’s right. About Justice Turnbull.”
“He escaped from that hospital, huh?”
“Friday night. We think he’s driven back here and is somewhere on the coast.”
A pause. A soft remark that sounded like “Shit.” Then McNally said, “You know he’s after those women at the lodge, Siren Song.”
“Yeah. And you were the lead investigator the last time he was after them,” Lang replied.
“I worked with your department. There’s a woman who lives in my county. Rebecca Sutcliff Walker. She was adopted out as a child, but she’s one of them. She was tops on his hit list last time but escaped. I’m going to put some protection around her. Otherwise, he’ll probably try to get to the ones at the lodge. He’s got a total obsession about them.”
“He wants to kill them all. . . .” Lang heard the questions in his words, even though he had meant to make a statement.
“He seems to try to pick off the ones outside the gates, but that doesn’t guarantee he won’t go after the ones inside. He’s really a whack job. I mean it, a bona fide psycho.”
“I got that,” Lang said with feeling.
“Any others on the outside that you know of?”
“I don’t think so,” Lang said slowly. “I could ask Catherine. She’s like the matriarch,” he said, for lack of a better term.
“You talk to her?” McNally was bowled over.
“Some. Our sheriff, O’Halloran, has known her for years, and my fiancée is a doctor at Halo Valley. She’s talked to Catherine a few times. Has even been inside the lodge,” Lang admitted.
“Really.” McNally sounded amazed. “That’s more than Rebecca ever managed.”
“What can you tell me about Justice? Something that might help find him now.”
“Nothing you probably don’t already know,” McNally said. “He squatted in the lighthouse. His mother owned that motel, which I understand has been boarded up ever since. She went to a nursing home, I believe, after he attacked her.”
“Seagull Pointe,” Lang clarified. “It hasn’t been publicized yet, but it looks like Justice got in and smothered her last night or early this morning.”
“What? For the love of God!” Then with more urgency, “You gotta keep those women safe, Stone. If you can reach this Catherine, do it. Hell, we don’t even know if they’re aware he’s out.”
“Yeah, well, they have interesting ways of getting information,” Lang said. “But I’ll try to breach the gates, make sure they’re all okay. We’ve been patrolling outside their lodge, and they have to know it, so they must know something’s up. Sam, can you update me a little bit on what happened last time? I’ve got the gist of it, but since you led the case . . . ?”
“Call me Mac. Everyone does.” He then went on to explain how Justice had targeted Rebecca Sutcliff and nearly managed to kill her. Sutcliff and her then-boyfriend, now husband, Hudson Walker, had learned that Rebecca was once a member of the Colony but had been adopted out when she was a baby. But Justice, who had a thing against all of them, had found her by a means they didn’t fully understand and had gone after her, intent upon killing her, and it wasn’t the first time he’d attempted to; it was just the first time Rebecca was aware that she was his target.
Mac went on to explain about a murder over twenty years earlier that had links to the Colony and how this murder had played into the investigation that had finally led to Justice’s capture.
He finished with, “You know, I just got back from a camping trip with my son, Levi, who’s thirteen. He met a kid at a soccer tournament last fall. Mike Ferguson. Mike and some buddies and his older brother were at that school that was razed a few years ago, St. Elizabeth’s. There was a maze attached to the school and the kids were trying to scare each other and they uncovered a skeleton which had been buried in the middle of the maze, in front of a statue of the Madonna. That’s when I got involved with the case. The discovery of those remains kicked off the Turnbull investigation.
“Anyway, this Ferguson kid knew I was Levi’s dad and that I headed up that case not long before I retired. He’s apparently been following it. Really into it. Wonder what he thinks about Justice’s escape.”
“Yeah,” Lang said, his mind already moving on to a possible meeting with Catherine, Keeper of the Gates. “Kids, huh,” he added, echoing Clausen.
“You just never know what they’re gonna get up to. . . .” McNally warned.
But Lang was already hanging up. He had a lot of other things to think about.
CHAPTER 25
Thirteen-year-old Mike Ferguson stretched his neck as far as he could without lifting the heels of his boots off the floor, pushing the top of his head to the ruler placed on his crown. His gaze was glued to the TV set across the bedroom, which was nearly obscured by the baseball jacket he’d tossed across the room that had gotten hung up on the shelf above. One sleeve dangled across a portion of the screen, which was airing the evening news. “How tall?” he demanded, never moving his eyes.
“Five foot six,” his brother James said in a bored voice.
“Bullshit.” He put his finger to the top of his head and twisted away, holding his place. “Five-eight!” he yelled.
“Whatever, Mikey. You’re still a dwarf.” James was six foot one and growing.
“It’s Michael,” he said, as he always did when his brother tried to stick him with that same nickname. He’d grown five inches since he’d become a local celebrity a few years ago. No more was he Little Mikey Ferguson. Now, he was thirteen and a half, which was almost fourteen, and his face had lost its baby fat, and girls were starting to act stupid around him, which made his head swell even while he pretended he didn’t notice.
Now Mike glanced to the left and the mirror mounted on his chest of drawers and s
moothed his hair across his forehead, Justin Bieber style.
“God, you’re stupid,” James declared, groaning. It felt like he could ralph right here and now—ralph being his new favorite word (lots better than puke or upchuck or vomit or the really lame “tossed his cookies”). And because he was nearly three years older than Mikey, James definitely wanted to ralph when his mind even brushed on the idea that his little brother might be considered hot.
He had a gag reaction just thinking about it, and he made a bunch of disgusting sounds in front of both Mikey and Woofy Larson, James’s best bro since his last best bro, Kyle Baskin, and his family had moved to California. But Mikey had moved from absorption in the TV and his own face to his cell phone, where he was texting like mad.
Woofy ran a hand through his mop of red hair and asked, “Who ya texting?”
“It’s not a text. It’s a tweet. Channel Seven.” Mike’s thumbs moved rapidly across the tiny keyboard.
James said, “Mikey’s a butt-face.”
“That would be Michael’s a butt-face,” Mike said, looking up.
“Fuckin’ A,” Woofy said, impressed.
“Why are you on Twitter?” James demanded. “Get off that.” He made a grab for the phone, which Mike deflected with a sharp turn.
“You sound like Mom.” Mike, unfazed, turned back to his phone.
“It’s all you do!”
“Yeah, like you don’t use your phone twenty-four-seven.”
James kicked at a soccer ball that was lying on the bedroom floor and sent it crashing into the wall. It rebounded, hit the shade of Mike’s bedside lamp, sent it spinning to the floor, where the bulb promptly made a fitz sound and popped, sending shards of glass out like tiny shrapnel.
“Nice,” Mike said, too cool to flip out, like James wanted him to, though he certainly felt like it.
And James did want him to explode, that was for sure. Mike witnessed the fury rush to his head and turn his skin a dull red. James wasn’t normally so quick to anger but everything just seemed to piss him off. “What the fuck,” James muttered, then, after a few tense moments, bent down to pick up the slivers of glass.
Woofy, who was good-natured and easygoing as a rule, made a halfhearted attempt to help him, though he wasn’t known for his cleaning skills. He always wore the same rugby-style shirt and jeans, enough to convince half the school he was dirt poor, when in reality he just didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Mike said after a moment, “I’m just trying to figure out where he went.”
“Who?” Woofy asked, but Mike could tell James knew.
“That killer, dude,” James said in a long-suffering tone. “Justice Bullshit, or whatever. Mikey’s obsessed.”
“Justice Turnbull.” Mike finally lifted his eyes from his phone, switched it off, stuck it in his pocket.
“Oh, yeah.” Woofy screwed up his face in deep thought. “The dude they caught who killed that girl, the one with the hand you found.”
“It was sticking out of the ground,” Mike reminded. “Skeleton fingers. Turned upward, reaching for help.”
“Like a hundred years old!” James said, bugged in a way he couldn’t define.
“Twenty years old,” Mike corrected.
James snorted. He thought his brother was becoming a real pain in the ass.
“He escaped,” Mike said. “You know that, right?”
“Of course, dude.” Woofy sounded miffed, but Mike suspected he didn’t really know what he was talking about.
“From that high-security hospital,” Mike insisted. “Nobody thought he could get out. Nobody. But he did. He’s like a ghost. Whispers through the night . . .” He spread his hands out as if he were parting a curtain. “He’s kinda . . . ethereal.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Woofy asked.
“Like insubstantial, man,” James clued him in.
“I’m gonna find him,” Mike said with certainty.
“Bullshit,” James shot back.
“I am. He lived in that lighthouse before. He’ll go back. For sure! But it’s a little ways out. We’ll have to go by boat, I think.”
James stared at his younger brother as if he were the psycho.
But Mike knew differently. He was one of those guys who just knew what he wanted to do . . . and then went and did it. James, who second-guessed anything and everything, found him a little scary and just short of completely weird.
“Oh, yeah,” James mocked. “That’s just what we’re gonna do, butt-head. Drive to the coast. Rent a boat. Motor to the island and check out the old lighthouse where the psycho used to live!”
“I think we’ll have to use a rowboat and oars,” Mike explained earnestly. “I don’t think anybody would rent a motorboat to us.”
James threw up a hand in disgust. “We’re not going, shit for brains. You can’t even drive.”
“But you can,” Mike retorted, staring at James through blue eyes. “I’ll navigate.”
“Jesus, you’re serious,” Woofy said, blinking in disbelief.
Mike added, “I think a rowboat is the answer.”
“I thought we were playing Guitar Hero.” James glared at him.
Mike’s eyes flicked back to the TV, and he noticed, from the corner of his eye, that James let his gaze wander there, too. That hot, bitchy, dark-haired reporter was coming on.
“Turn it up,” Mike demanded.
“I’m not your slave, asshole,” James muttered, but Woofy, who was near the remote, hit the volume.
“Call themselves Deadly Sins. Seven privileged teenagers who found a way into other people’s homes . . . homes that belonged to the parents of their classmates . . . and who helped themselves to their possessions . . .”
“Shit,” Mike muttered. “She’s not talking about badass Justice Turnbull! Everybody’s forgetting him!”
“They’re not forgetting him,” James said, long-suffering. “They just can’t find him. He’s probably in Canada by now.”
“Or Mexico,” Woofy put in.
Mike turned to James. “Mom and Dad are leaving on Tuesday. They’ll call us on our cells. They won’t know we’re not here. We can head to the lighthouse on Tuesday or Wednesday.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Woofy said again, full of admiration.
“We’re not driving to the beach!” James glowered at his brother.
“I bet we could find him. I bet we could be heroes,” Mike insisted.
“Hey, moron. The guy’s a psycho. Did you forget?” James demanded.
“You get me there. I’ll do the rest.”
“You’re gonna really go out to that lighthouse?” Woofy asked, his eyes wide with anticipation.
“No. He’s not.” James was repressive.
“Yeah, I am. Just gotta get a rowboat,” Michael said.
“Find yourself a kayak, ’cause you’re going alone!” James yelled. “God, you are such a ’tard.”
“I think you mean nerd.”
“Nope.”
Mike’s attention swung back to the set, where a picture of a woman’s face filled the screen. No one could identify her, apparently. Since the news wasn’t about Justice, Mike turned back to James. “School’s out Tuesday. Mom and Dad’ll take off and be gone until the next week. We got nothing but time.”
“You’re as much of a psycho as he is!” James was sick of the whole mess, especially of Mike. He strode out of his little brother’s bedroom and yelled from the hallway, “If you don’t want to play Wii, then I’m not gonna hang out. And you’re a fuckin’ idiot. We’re not going to the beach.”
Heroes. Ha. This was just another way to get into trouble. Another bad idea. James had no interest in taking his determined little ass of a brother anywhere.
Woofy wandered out to meet him in the garage, where James had picked up a paddle and was shooting a line of table tennis balls over the low net to the other side of the table. Beneath the flickering fluorescent lights, the balls bounced once and then flew off the Ping-Pong table and o
nto the floor. Some ricocheted into the exposed rafters; another hit the old fridge, where Mom kept extra sodas and beer; another smashed into the workbench. Woofy picked up another paddle, the dropped balls, and served to James. They went at it for all they were worth for twenty minutes; then James slammed a Ping-Pong ball straight into the garage door and flung down his paddle. “He really pisses me off!” he declared.
Woofy grunted. “Yeah?”
“I’m not doing it.”
Woofy shrugged. “Didn’t say you were.”
“He thinks I’m gonna do it.”
“Why do you care? You’re not gonna.” There was a silence, and Woofy, who wasn’t known for his perception, nevertheless picked up the vibes radiating from his friend. “Are you?”
“No,” James stated.
But a little kernel of interest had been planted. Even while James railed long and loud that he wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t going to drive his little brother to the coast so that he could get involved in the search for some sicko, psychotic psycho, a part of him liked the idea of being a hero. James could see himself on the news with that hot bitch reporter, telling the world how he’d captured the guy. . . . It would be so intense . . .
If the fucker didn’t kill them.
The dream evaporated in a puff. James valued his life, even if his obsessed little brother didn’t.
Woofy left a few minutes later, and as James returned to the house, his cell phone rang. To his disbelief, it was Belinda Mathis. Only the hottest girl in the school! They’d exchanged cell phone numbers one day, though he’d suspected she was just humoring him to be nice. But now she was calling . . . !
“Yeah?” he answered cautiously.
“Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.” It was a breathless little girl’s voice. Not Belinda Mathis, for sure. “This is Kara Mathis, Belinda’s sister,” she explained. “Is this James Ferguson?”
“Uh-huh.” He tried not to sound too disappointed.
“I’m using my sister’s phone. Your cell phone number was on it. Um . . . I know your brother, Michael? Do you . . . could you . . . give me his cell number?”