Instead Gran turned to Melissa and Dana. “You should come and watch the TV. Someone you know is saying things you should hear.”
Before anyone could ask what that meant, Dana heard the sound of someone speaking, using the tone and meter people did when they were being interviewed. The voice was very familiar.
“… these were murders and not accidents,” said Corinda Howell. “Those dead children spoke to me in visions.”
Dana bolted from the table. Melissa hesitated for half a second, then followed, edging around Dad and Gran. On the big console TV in the living room, Corinda stood in front of Beyond Beyond wreathed by a dozen news microphones and the words BREAKING NEWS pasted across the bottom of the screen. She had makeup on and a beautiful batik dress and lots of turquoise jewelry.
“It was Maisie Bell who spoke to me first,” said Corinda. “She came to me in a dream and said that she had been murdered.”
The questions kept coming in, and Corinda answered them, detailing how she began having visions of the murders and saw the face of the killer in her mind.
“At first he disguised himself,” explained Corinda, “projecting an image of one of the Watcher angels, a grigori, and then as a nephilim, the offspring of an angel who married a human woman in ancient Canaan. Then I understood right away that these projections were part of his delusions, that this was how he saw himself. Psychotics are like that, you know. Over time, though, I was able to break through his defenses and pull off the mask and see his true face. That’s when I knew that I had to come straight to the sheriff’s department in order to prevent this madman from doing more harm to the beautiful children of our community.”
“She’s doing it,” whispered Melissa, grabbing Dana’s hand, “she’s taking the fall for you … for all of it.”
“And that led me to consider other ways in which the killer’s religious mania could have manifested in his crimes,” continued Corinda. “Maisie Bell had appeared in a vision to a girl at her school, and it was immediately clear to me that she had received the wounds of Jesus, that the killer had tried to simulate stigmata. I made the intuitive leap to the other deaths, and I told the sheriff’s department to look for wounds that correspond with the deaths of the apostles, specifically James the Greater, James the Less, Saint Peter, Doubting Thomas, and even Judas.”
The image cut away to the news anchor in the studio.
“We’ll have more from Corinda Howell, owner of Beyond Beyond on Route 302A, which is Main Street in Craiger. Miss Howell is a professional psychic who reached out to authorities today to help them investigate the case of the string of tragic deaths of teenagers. And this just in,” said the anchor, turning to accept a sheet of crisp paper. “Sources within the Craiger sheriff’s department have issued an arrest warrant for Angelo Luz, a nineteen-year-old Latino male. Luz is wanted in connection with the deaths of those six teenagers.”
“Oh my God…,” whispered Dana.
CHAPTER 71
Scully Residence
April 6, 12:18 A.M.
Melissa crept into Dana’s room after midnight. She closed the door and came into Dana’s bed and under the blankets with her, pulling them all the way over their heads the way they had when both of them were little girls. The rest of the house was dead quiet now that Dad had stopped yelling, and he had yelled a lot and for a long, long time. Eventually, he had exiled the sisters to their rooms and there were growled promises of consequences to come. Mom tried to intervene, but that turned into a more private war behind their bedroom door, and the muffled thunder of it filled the house for nearly forty minutes.
Now Dana and Melissa lay with their heads on the same pillow, faces inches apart, talking quietly in the dark.
“Why did she do it?” asked Dana. “Why would Corinda do this?”
“Do what?” said Melissa.
“Lie like that.”
Melissa shook her head. “Is that really how you see it? ’Cause I don’t. I think what she did was smart and brave.”
Dana propped herself up on one elbow. “Brave? Smart? How?”
“She took as much of this off you as possible.”
“Right, she made it all about her. Sunlight was going to go to the sheriff. She must have stolen the idea from him.”
“That’s ridiculous. And what does it matter who told the cops? That’s exactly what we wanted to happen,” insisted Melissa. “How does it matter to you who actually talked to the sheriff? You don’t own all this, Dana. This is the real world. Sunlight would have done it the same way, which means he’d have left you out of it, too.”
“Sunlight would have done it without TV reporters and being the center of attention. The way Corinda did it was cheap. It was all ‘look at me.’ It was all about her taking credit for everything.”
“Credit? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Corinda made it look like she was the one solving this case,” said Dana, thumping her mattress with a fist.
“Well, excuse me. Since when are you a cop? Hate to break it to you, sis, but you’re fifteen. You’re not police, you’re not FBI, you’re not Sherlock Holmes.”
“But I figured a lot of this out.”
“Right, and who would believe you if you went to the cops? No one. What would happen, though, is everyone would be looking at you as the weird girl who sees dead people. And you know who else would be looking? The killer.”
“Angelo already knows I know. He chased me, remember?”
“Sure, but he doesn’t know what else you know. Corinda’s letting herself be the target instead of you. Just like Sunlight would have done. Or maybe she’s smarter because she didn’t wait to have a quiet word with the sheriff. She came right out and said it to everyone. That takes the whole spotlight off you. Why can’t you get that? Corinda did it to protect you.”
“I think she did it to make herself look better.”
Now Melissa propped herself up, too. “You’re really damaged, Dana. Corinda would never do something like that. She’s bigger than that. She’s all about helping people.”
“Is she?”
“Of course she is. And she has incredible gifts. You’ve seen them firsthand. She can look into your head and read the truth. I mean, look at everything she knew about this whole thing. She knew about your visions, about what happened at school, about the case files, about all of it.”
“She didn’t know about what happened at Karen’s house. I mean … when I had that vision that I was in there with everyone who was murdered. Corinda never mentioned any of that on the news,” said Dana, “and it bugs me.”
Melissa looked at her as if she were crazy. “Bugs you how?”
“I … don’t know, but if she’s everything she claims to be, then why didn’t she know about that?”
“No one knows everything, Dana. But Corinda knew a lot of it. She knew about Angelo.”
Dana sagged back down. “I guess.”
They lay together in silence, listening to the two crickets singing in the grass.
“The whole Angelo thing is so freaky scary,” said Melissa after a while, “to think that we know a killer. That we’ve talked with him.”
“I know,” said Dana. “Even now, though, it’s hard to believe this is all him.”
“Why? From what I heard, he gets into fights a lot, and he has that knife. He chased you, Dana. And he has those scars on his hand that Corinda saw in her vision. And the eclipse tattoo.”
“I know, I know, but in my dreams the angel doesn’t talk like Angelo. He’s like a college teacher or something. Really precise, and he knows so much.”
“Not everything in visions is exactly the way it is in the real world,” said Melissa.
“More of Corinda’s wisdom?”
“Yes, and don’t be rude about her. I still think she did the right thing, and maybe that’s why you’re not in juvie right now. Or in a mental hospital.”
“Thanks,” Dana said bitterly. “This is all so wrong. Corinda should never
have taken credit—”
Melissa made a sound of disgust and stood up. “What’s with you? What’s with this ‘taking credit’ crap? You have your head so far up your own butt that you can’t tell when someone is going way out on a limb to help you. Corinda’s the best, and you’re being a real snot about her.”
Dana stood up, too. “Why are you defending her, Missy?”
“Because my crazy sister keeps attacking her,” snarled Melissa. Before Dana could reply, Melissa jabbed her finger toward her. “You think you’re so special, Dana, because you have visions and you have gifts, and now that someone else has those same gifts—and better ones—all you want to do is cut her down. If I had those same gifts, I wouldn’t be acting all jealous and nasty. I’d use them to help people like Corinda’s doing. God! Sometimes I can’t believe we’re even related.”
And with that she stormed out.
CHAPTER 72
Scully Residence
6:17 A.M.
Dad was up and out before Dana came into the empty kitchen. She had no appetite for anything and poured a cup of tea.
Then she saw two things left for her on the table.
The first was a note in her father’s strong, precise hand.
Come straight home after school.
She sighed and looked at the newspaper atop which the note had been placed. There was a picture and a headline, and it froze her into a block of ice.
The headline read:
PSYCHIC WARNING LEADS TO ARREST IN TEEN MURDERS
The photo showed two sheriff’s detectives, a white man and a black woman, flanking a cuffed and bleeding Angelo Luz. The woman was identified as Nora Simpson, and her partner was Frank Hale. Uncle Frank!
Melissa came in, saw that Dana was there, and turned around without saying a word.
Dana sat down hard on a chair and read the article. It quoted Corinda extensively and then gave the lurid details of the manhunt and capture of Angelo. It was clear from the photos that Angelo had not given up easily. His eyebrow was torn and blood ran down his face. Even though the picture was black and white, Dana could imagine the color with perfect clarity.
She tried to make sense of why she was so angry that Corinda had been the one to take all this to the police when Sunlight was going to do the same thing. Was it only because Corinda did it in such a showy way? What if Melissa was right and Corinda’s grandstanding had simply been a play to draw all possible attention away from Dana in order to protect her? She didn’t know. However, Dana felt that there was more to it, and not being able to figure that out might be driving her crazy.
“What am I missing?” she asked the empty kitchen. Whatever it was felt important, but she simply did not know where to look for an answer. The clock ticked loudly and the world seemed to lean away from the security of its hinges.
CHAPTER 73
Francis Scott Key Regional High School
7:39 A.M.
Going to school was a bad idea.
Dana knew that as soon as she got within a block of the big building. Everyone stared at her. No one said a word to her, but several times she saw girls leaning close to each other to say something she couldn’t hear. She heard the laughter, though. They all know she was the “girl at school” Corinda mentioned on the news.
Deputy Driscoll, the school narcotics officer, gave her a long, cold look that was filled with suspicion. No, it was more than that. He looked at her with the kind of contempt someone like him would have for the kind of person he arrested.
In homeroom the teacher did not look at her at all, not even during roll call. No one sat next to her.
There was a word she had read once. Pariah. It was used to describe an outcast, and that was how she felt, and yet she didn’t really understand why. None of this was her fault. She hadn’t done anything wrong.
Because they have to hate someone, she told herself. And it’s easy to hate a freak.
Why did she feel guilty, though?
Near the end of homeroom, the door opened, and the narc beckoned to the teacher. They both cut looks at Dana. She saw the teacher stiffen and then nod.
“Miss Scully,” said the teacher. “Please step into the hall.”
Every pair of eyes in the room snapped toward her. A few nodded as if whatever was happening made sense with how they had this all figured out. A few smiled at her as she gathered up her backpack and walked down the rows of desks. None of the smiles were encouraging, none were nice.
In the hallway, the narc took her backpack from her, pulling it roughly from her shoulders. “Principal’s office,” he said. “Now.”
The teacher went inside the room and closed the door.
“What’s going on?” asked Dana.
“Best thing you can do, little miss,” said the officer, “is keep your mouth shut.”
He walked beside her to the office, and Dana immediately realized that a bad morning had gotten worse. Dad was there, his face as red as it was last night. Mr. Sternholtz stood behind his desk, his face cold and hard. The school nurse was there, too, and the two detectives whose faces she’d seen in the paper, Nora Simpson and Frank Hale. She flinched, terrified of what she’d see in Uncle Frank’s eyes. Did he know about Ethan and the case folder? Was that what this was about? Her blood turned to icy slush.
“Dad,” began Dana, taking a step toward him, but her father actually stepped back from her.
“Sit down, Dana,” he ordered.
She collapsed onto a chair, crushed and terrified.
Detective Hale was on her left. He was a tall, thin man dressed in a navy-blue sports coat over tan pants and with a boring blue-and-tan-striped tie. Anyone could tell he was related to Ethan because he had the same wiry build, the same intelligent eyes. However, Frank’s eyes had a hardness to them, and a sadness, as if his job had made him look at too many bad things and he had reached some kind of personal limit on horror and pain.
On her other side was Nora Simpson, who wore a green tailored suit over a cream blouse. Low-heeled, practical shoes. She was a few years younger than Uncle Frank, and there was some of the same sadness, but it had not yet filled her to the top. There were still traces of optimism in her expression.
“Miss Scully,” said Detective Hale, “the blood test conducted by the school nurse has been processed and my partner and I obtained the results.”
“Um … okay?”
“Your blood contains trace elements of a controlled substance called Helios 5, which is the trademarked name for a synthetic version of a 5-HT2A receptor agonist. It’s an experimental hallucinogen developed for the treatment of schizophrenia. It has been showing up on the street under the name Eclipse.”
Dana stared into the absolute silence of the moment. This was the same compound she and Ethan had seen in the files. How did she have the same drug in her system as the dead students?
“Because the amount of the drug found in your blood is minimal,” continued Uncle Frank, “it is not clear whether you have recently begun using it or not. We would need to do more medical tests to determine the extent of your addiction.”
“No,” she said. “That’s impossible.”
“The test is very precise, Dana,” said Detective Simpson. “The court will likely have an independent lab run it as well.”
“No,” she insisted. “That is not possible.”
“Dana,” said her father softly. “The best thing you can do for yourself now is to come clean. Tell these detectives everything. How you got it. How much you took. Who gave it to you. Everything.”
“But, Dad, I never took anything.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he said, and she could hear in his voice how heartbroken he was. “You have to tell the truth.”
“I don’t do drugs,” insisted Dana. “You know that. I would never do anything like that.”
“Who gave you the Eclipse?” asked Simpson.
“No, you don’t understand, the whole eclipse thing is part of my—my dreams. The pendant Maisie had,
the tattoo…” She blurted it all out, everything she knew about the sign of the eclipse. “It’s his symbol. The angel’s. If the other victims had it in their blood work, then he gave it to them.”
Principal Sternholtz said, “This is what I was telling you about, Detectives. She thinks she’s having ‘visions.’ It’s the talk of the school.”
Uncle Frank nodded but did not pursue that. Instead he latched onto something Dana had said. “What makes you think that the victims had Eclipse in their blood?”
“I…,” she began, and realized that she was dangerously close to outing Ethan. Even though she was mad at him, she knew this would destroy him. She took a breath and said, “Everyone’s saying that they had taken drugs. I just assumed it was the same thing.”
“Stop it,” pleaded her father. “Stop lying and tell them the truth.”
“We’ll help you if you agree to help us,” said Frank Hale. “We can take an anonymous statement. You’re a minor and if you have information that can help us, then you need to tell us. Even though you don’t have enough of the drug in your system to justify arrest, if you know the parties responsible for providing Eclipse to students here at FSK, then you need to speak up. If you’re involved but decide to help us, the district attorney can make a deal. Immunity from prosecution. We have a lot of latitude at this point, Dana, but only if you help us.”
Dana pounded her fists on the tops of her thighs. It hurt, but it also fueled her rising anger. “Look, are you all deaf? How many ways can I say this? I. Don’t. Do. Drugs. Ever. If there’s something in my blood, then I don’t know how it got there. Check the school cafeteria. Check the water in the town reservoir. Check our coffeepot at home. How would I know where it came from? All I know is that I have never gotten high and I never will and this is all bull—”
“Enough!” roared her father. He stood up. “Dana, this nonsense has gone on long enough. I expected better of you.” There was such a weight of disappointment and anger in his voice that it pummeled Dana until she slumped and turned her head away.