She knew that car.
It made no sense, but she knew it.
She heard doors open, and figures silhouetted against the headlights. A slim figure coming from the driver’s side, a bulky figure emerging from the passenger side. A smaller figure coming out of the backseat.
They ran toward her.
“Dana!” cried Melissa.
“Oh my God,” cried Mom.
“No, no, no,” moaned Dad as they surrounded her, gathered her in, held her safe.
In the doorway across the street stood Corinda, one hand clamped to her bleeding side. On the ground, sprawled like a scarecrow, was Sunlight. His fingers opened and closed, opened and closed. Still alive.
But he wasn’t getting up.
Then there was a new sound. A wail. And lights. Red and blue. People. More faces. She looked up and saw Uncle Frank and Detective Simpson. She saw other deputies. She saw people. Far above the street, she saw lightning flash in the sky, painting the edges of the storm clouds with white fire.
Mom held her close and Dad bent to kiss her head, and Melissa held her hand.
CHAPTER 83
Scully Residence
April 10, 5:11 P.M.
She lay bundled in blankets on the couch, day after day.
She had stitches in her knee and stitches across her abdomen, and three stitches in her hairline. She had no idea where those came from. It didn’t matter.
Dana did not have to go to school. School came to her. Mr. Sternholtz and the nurse stopped by. They brought flowers. They apologized. She said very little to them, and they went away.
Uncle Frank Hale came by with his partner. The detectives told her that they found Eclipse in the incense. They had testimony from Angelo Luz and Corinda Howell. No one believed Dana had willingly taken drugs. She didn’t say much to them, and they went away.
The school sent a psychologist. The hospital sent one, too. They told her that her visions were not visions at all, but merely the result of the Eclipse drug. At first Dana protested and argued, but with each day it became easier to believe that it had been just that. She had been drugged, and nothing she saw, dreamed, or remembered could be trusted. There were so many lies and betrayals wrapped up with Sunlight and Corinda and Eclipse that Dana wished she could carve it all out of her head.
The psychologists seemed happy with her newfound perspective. They smiled at her. And eventually they stopped coming around.
Corinda was in the hospital, but she was also on the news. On every channel and in the papers. Somehow she had become the one who had taken down a madman who called himself Sunlight.
Angelo was on the news, too. A tiny, passing reference about charges being dropped. No one interviewed him. He was in the hospital and would be for weeks, and the doctors weren’t sure he was going to pull through. Blood loss, shock, and severe trauma had pushed him all the way to the edge. That hurt Dana. She prayed for him every night, clutching her gold cross.
Ethan came over and sat with her every day after school. He brought her flowers and chocolate and books. They held hands and they didn’t say much. There would be time for that, though.
“What’s your verdict?” he asked one afternoon.
“About what?”
“All that psychic stuff. ESP, becoming, all of that. Everyone in the science club’s been hammering on me to ask you what you really think. Now, I mean. After all this. Does any of it make sense to you?”
“It’s a trust thing,” she said after giving it some long, serious thought.
“Trust?” asked Ethan. “What do you mean?”
“Everyone lied to me about it. It was all…” She stopped and shook her head. “I can’t even think about it now without feeling sick. I trusted them. I opened my heart to them, and they just made a fool out of me.”
“Yeah, but where’s that leave you? Aren’t you supposed to have ESP?”
“Who knows? I was being drugged the whole time. If so, I want to shut it off. It’s not like it’s done anything good for me. Everyone I know got hurt by it.” She shook her head again.
“Are you saying none of it was real?” asked Ethan. “Your visions were accurate.”
She took her time with that. “I … don’t know. There are some parts that I guess I can’t explain. The visions I had before we moved here. And how I saw Maisie so clearly, with such detail. If Eclipse made me see visions, then why did I see her? How could a drug make me know so much about her? I mean, what was that? What if it was just the power of suggestion, picking up details from Bible stories and the news?”
“Tisa insists that ESP is real,” said Ethan, “and she’s a pretty hard sell for anything weird or spooky. She thinks it’s a part of science that we just haven’t figured out how to measure or test yet.”
“Maybe. If so, then I’ll wait until we can measure it. Until then, I can’t trust it.”
“Then what do you trust, Dana?” he asked.
“Science,” she said. “This whole thing came down to that. Chemistry, psychology, forensic science. That’s all it really is, and if that’s what it is, then I can deal with it. So … yeah, science. I like science. I can trust science.”
“So does that mean you want to be a forensic scientist, too?”
She thought about Angelo, hovering on the edge of death in the hospital. She touched her crucifix. “Angelo could still die,” she said. “I wish I could help him. When he was there bleeding, I blanked. I should have applied a compress. I could have done something, but I didn’t.”
She sat quietly for a moment. “I held a garter snake once while it died in my hands.” Ethan raised his eyebrows but didn’t press. “I won’t ever let that happen again,” she vowed. “If I can help someone like that, I want to.” She thought about it and shook her head. “No, you can keep forensic science, Ethan. It’s cool and all, but it’s too far away from people.”
“Which leaves you doing what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe medicine.”
* * *
After he left, Melissa came and sat down on the end of the couch farthest from Dana. They looked at each other, and it took a long time before either of them spoke. Melissa wore a new strand of crystals around her neck, one Dana had never seen before. A recent purchase or a gift? In either case, Dana knew where it had come from.
“You’re wrong about her,” said Melissa.
“About Corinda?” Dana snorted and shook her head. “Oh, come on, Missy, you can’t sit there and tell me you still believe in her.”
“Of course I do. She saved your life, Dana.”
“She lied about everything.”
Melissa shook her head. “She told the truth every time.”
“She lied about Angelo.”
“She’s human,” snapped Melissa. “Anyone can make a mistake. Besides, it was Sunlight blocking her from seeing the whole truth.”
“So what is it?” demanded Dana. “Did she make a mistake or was it Sunlight?”
“Both. Corinda is doing everything she can to help you, to help everyone in this town. If it wasn’t for her, you’d be dead, and the killings would never stop. Did you ever think about that?”
Dana stared at her. “I … I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“That’s because you know I’m right.”
Dana turned away and stared at the wall. “No, that’s not what I know.”
Melissa said nothing. When Dana glanced over a few minutes later, her sister was gone. She hadn’t heard her slip away.
She felt it, though.
* * *
The family moved through the crisis like people recovering from a hurricane or a tornado. They found their way back to routines. Dad spent a lot of time at work. Mom and Charlie drifted back into their quiet inner lives. Gran was Gran.
Melissa was there, but there was something different about her. Or maybe it was about how they were together. Melissa still believed in Corinda, in her powers, in her insights. Dana di
d not.
What she believed was that Sunlight was a madman. Corinda was a liar.
And Dana could feel her heart change. It did not actually break, but it went cold. She felt that happen. The world went colder, too. It shrank from the larger world into something that made more sense, even if it was an uglier thing.
She thought a lot about God and the devil. About good and evil. All of her life Dana had accepted “evil” as a part of the world without stopping to consider what it actually was. Or what it meant. Now she had no choice but to look at it as more than a Sunday school concept, as something alive in the world. In her world.
She had seen evil. She’d looked into its eyes.
She did not, however, understand it. Was evil something the devil put into the hearts and minds of human beings? That would be the easy answer.
It wasn’t answer enough, though. Not for her. Not anymore.
Dana wondered if evil was something humans had invented. That was horrible, but it also seemed to make more logical sense to her. It meant that people, good and bad, had to be responsible for who they were and for what they did.
Sunlight was evil. She was sure about that.
Why, though? Was he sick? Was he damaged from some kind of abuse? That was what the newspapers were saying. The reporters went on and on about it, talking about “nature” and “nurture.” About what his own biology was responsible for and about what the influences in his life did to shape him. If that was true, then did that make him evil or sick?
But … what if it wasn’t true? There were plenty of people who suffered abuse. Only a tiny fraction of them ever hurt someone else. It wasn’t an excuse that made sense to Dana. It wasn’t logical.
Nature? Nurture?
That wasn’t a definition of evil. And as she thought about it deep into one lonely night, she realized that for any of this to make sense, for Sunlight to make sense, there must be a third option.
Nature.
Nurture.
And choice.
That, she thought, was what evil was.
It made sense. It fit logic, it squared with science. But it also scared her so badly she stayed awake all night. Dana knew that, like all truths, now that she knew it, she could not un-know it.
For some people, evil was a choice.
EPILOGUE
−1−
County Road 63
Near the Craiger City Line
April 10, 11:11 P.M.
The deputy driving the patrol car killed the siren as soon as he crossed the city limits but left the blue-and-red flashing lights on as he drove into the country. He and his partner sat in tense silence.
The night was immense, with mountains of clouds revealed in flashes of lightning from the coming storm. Wind shear tore and shaped the clouds, so the front wall of the storm looked like towering cliffs that rose thousands of feet above Craiger. Lightning inside the clouds revealed cracks and veins, as if the whole sky could split apart and collapse onto the town.
There was no traffic this far out. The driver clicked on the high beams as he searched for the unpaved side road that led to a quarry that had been abandoned in the sixties.
Up ahead, a pair of headlights clicked on and off, on and off.
The deputy pulled to a stop thirty feet away, tires crunching on old gravel and twists of dead vine. The cars sat there for half a minute with nothing moving except the flashers. Then the doors of the black sedan opened. The gleaming, highly polished paint job of the car was as intensely black as the suits of the two men who got out. The men walked slowly over to the sheriff’s department car. One of the men twirled his finger to indicate that they should lower a window. The driver did.
“Let’s do this,” said the shorter of the two men in black suits. His red hair looked almost black in the wash of red-blue lights.
The deputies exchanged a look but did not move. Agent Gerlach reached into his inner pocket and withdrew an envelope. He pretended to give it to the driver, pulled it back, chuckled, and then handed it over.
“Don’t be a smart-ass about this,” said the deputy behind the wheel. “We’re earning this.”
“Sure,” said Gerlach.
The cops both peered into the envelope, and the second deputy used his thumb to riffle the sheaf of fifty-dollar bills. There were a lot of them. They nodded to each other, and the deputy riding shotgun put the envelope of money in the glove compartment. They both got out. The second deputy drew his service revolver while his partner jerked up the handle to open the back door. He reached in and yanked the prisoner out. Sunlight fell heavily to the ground, groaning in pain. His face was smeared with blood, his eyes puffed shut, one ear nearly torn off. He rolled up onto his knees and spat blood into the dirt. There were small fragments of tooth in that mess. His hands were securely cuffed behind his back.
“He looks like crap,” said Danny, who was the driver of the black sedan.
“Guess he messed with the wrong little girl,” laughed one deputy.
“I guess so,” agreed Gerlach. They were all laughing when Malcolm Gerlach drew his automatic and shot both deputies. Twice in the body and once in the head. Six quick, precise, efficient shots.
His driver looked away briefly, took a breath, nodded to himself, and pulled Sunlight to his feet. The killer stood there, swaying, only half-conscious.
Gerlach walked around to the passenger side of the patrol car, leaned in, thumbed open the glove box, and removed the envelope of money. He peeled off one fifty and squatted down, then tucked it partly under the leg of one of the cops. He let two others blow into the bushes, then walked over and pushed them more securely into the branches of some roadside brush.
“Why’d you do that?” asked his partner.
“It’ll confuse things,” said Gerlach. “The bills are from a bank job in Reno four years ago. No arrests were made. They’ll drive themselves nuts trying to connect that to this.”
Sunlight watched all this, his puffy eyes shrewd, his body tensed for whatever was going to happen next.
“So, what’s your plan for me?” he asked, his voice thick with pain and missing teeth. “Will they find me on the road, killed while trying to escape?”
Gerlach and Danny exchanged a look, and then they cracked up laughing. It was a short laugh. Brutal. Then Gerlach fished a handcuff key out of his pocket and unlocked Sunlight’s cuffs.
“People have invested a lot of money in you, sport,” said Gerlach. “Just ’cause you screwed this up doesn’t mean you’re done working for the Man. The project has to go on.”
“I want—”
“No,” said Gerlach. “This isn’t a conversation. Get in the car. There’s a plane waiting.”
Sunlight studied Gerlach for a long time. Then he gave a single nod, turned, and walked toward the waiting sedan. Danny stood with Gerlach in the gap between the two dead sheriff’s deputies. The road was on a hill, and far below they could see the small lights of Craiger with the towering clouds rising above it. The humid air distorted the image so that the whole town seemed to tremble in awful anticipation.
“So what’s our next move?” asked Danny. “Do we try to find a new angle with the Scully girl?”
“No. Dana Scully’s a dead end,” said Gerlach.
“Her dad’ll be happy.”
The red-haired agent chewed his gum for a moment before answering. “We’re not in the business of making Bill Scully happy, kid. He does what he’s told because he knows what will happen if he doesn’t.”
Danny nodded. “What do we do about Sunlight’s painting at the church? Some creative arson or…?”
“Nah. Those two drivers who keep calling in sick? Put them on it. Scrape the walls, dispose of all the evidence. Wipe it all down.”
“With all that blood and stuff? They’ll hate it.”
“Kind of the point.”
Danny grinned and nodded again. They looked at the lights of the little town.
“Okay,” he asked. “So what do we do now???
?
“Now,” said Gerlach, “we go to Plan B.”
−2−
Scully Residence
April 16, 2:26 A.M.
It had been ten days since the fight at Beyond Beyond. The doctor at the hospital had called to say that Angelo Luz was out of danger.
Dana fell asleep a little past two in the morning. Mom and Dad had said that she could stay home from school for as long as she wanted. That was good, because all she wanted to do was sleep.
And she did sleep.
Soundly, deeply, and for the first time since the Scullys had moved to Craiger, without dreams.
No dreams, no visions, no nightmares.
She smiled as she slept.
−3−
FBI Headquarters
Washington, DC
April 16, 11:48 P.M.
Special Agent Delbert Albritton looked up as his office door opened. People rarely came down to this remote corner of the building, and usually only because they had lost their way or had bad directions. He couldn’t remember the last time someone came to see him. And never this late. It was why Albritton preferred to burn the midnight oil.
The man who entered his office was tall and wore a plain gray suit and quiet tie. He wore no name badge, but Albritton knew who he was. He’d heard stories about this man, and some of those stories scared him more than the cases Albritton investigated in his underfunded, one-man division.
“Can I help you, sir?” asked Albritton.
The tall man glanced down at the folder that had landed on Albritton’s desk less than an hour ago. The folder lay open to show photocopies of official reports from the Craiger sheriff’s department, and surveillance photos of several dozen people, including a pretty girl with red hair. The man considered the contents; then he reached down, slid a fingernail under the edge of the folder, and closed it.
“What are you doing?” asked Albritton.
The man gave him a small, cold smile. “This case is closed. There’s no need for any further action.”