Charlaine Harris (59 page)

She looked down. I don't know what expression she wanted to hide. Maybe at the moment she wasn't too fond of herself.

We stole out of the back of the station and finally found a fast-food chain place that looked pretty anonymous. It was too cold to eat in the car. We had to go in. Fortunately, no one in there seemed to read the papers, or else they were simply too polite to accost me. Which meant there weren't any reporters. Either way, I got to eat the food in peace. At least with food this simple, there was nothing Tolliver had to cut up for me. All the aid he had to supply was ripping open the ketchup packets and putting the straw in the drink. I ate slowly because after we finished I'd have to go to the damn barn, and I didn't want to.

“I think this sucks,” I said after I'd eaten half the hamburger. “Not the food, but the situation.”

“I do, too,” he said. “But I don't see how we can get out of it without more fuss than doing it will be.”

I started to snap at him, to remind him that it was me that would be doing the unpleasant task; that he would be standing by, as always. Fortunately, I shut my mouth before those awful words came out. I was horrified at how I could have ripped up our relationship based on a moment's peevishness. How many times a week did I thank God that I had Tolliver with me? How many times did I feel grateful that he was there to act as a buffer between me and the world?

“Harper?”

“What?”

“You're looking at me weird. What's the matter?”

“I was just thinking.”

“You must have been thinking some bad thoughts.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you mad at me for some reason? You think I should have argued more with the sheriff?”

“I don't think that would've done any good.”

“Me, either. So why the mad face?”

“I was mad at myself.”

“That's not good. You haven't done anything wrong.”

I tried not to heave a sigh. “I do wrong things all the time,” I said, and if my voice was morose, well, I just couldn't help it. I knew I wanted more from Tolliver than he could or should give me, and I had to hide that knowledge from everyone, especially from him.

I was definitely on a “my life sucks” kick, and the sooner I got off of it, the better life would be.

We called Sheriff Rockwell on our way back to the station so she could meet us outside. We parked our car and climbed into hers. “He doesn't need to come,” she said, nodding her head at Tolliver.

“He comes,” I said. “That's not a negotiation point. I'd rather talk to the reporters for an hour than go somewhere without him.”

She gave me a very sharp look. Then she shrugged. “All right,” she said. “He comes along.”

As she turned out of the parking lot, she turned yet again so she wouldn't drive past the front of the station. I'd wondered if she might be a glory hound, yet she was avoiding the media. I couldn't figure her out at all.

Even though I'd had some food and some time out, by the time we reached our destination at the very edge of town I was realizing my body was far from healed. There were some pain pills in the pharmacy bag back in our car. I wished I'd brought them with us, but I had to admit to myself that I wouldn't have taken one before I worked. I didn't know what would happen if I fiddled with the procedure. For a moment, I entertained myself with a few possibilities, but the fun of that palled pretty quickly. By the time Sheriff Rockwell pulled to a stop, I was leaning my head against the cold glass of the window.

“Are you feeling well enough to do this?” she asked reluctantly.

“Let's get it over with.”

Tolliver helped me out of the car and we walked toward the cluster of men standing at the entrance to a barn that had formerly been red. It wasn't in as bad shape as the garage of the house in the foothills, but there were gaps between the boards, the paint was only clinging to the boards in streaks, and the tin roof seemed to be all that was holding the structure together. I looked around: there was a house a distance away at the front of the property, a house that seemed in much better condition than the barn. So, someone hadn't wanted to farm or keep livestock; they'd just wanted the house and maybe some space around them.

The little knot of men unraveled to show two people standing huddled at its center. One was a man about forty, wearing a heavy coat that he hadn't buttoned. He was a small man, no larger than Doak Garland. The coat engulfed him. I could see a dress shirt and tie underneath. He had his arm around a boy who was possibly twelve. The boy was short, thickset, with long blond hair, and he had a huskier build than his father. At the moment he looked overwhelmed with shock and a kind of anticipatory excitement.

Whatever was in the barn, the boy knew about it.

The sheriff didn't pause as we passed the two, and I let my eyes linger on the boy.
I know you,
I thought, and I knew he could see my recognition. He looked a little frightened.

My connection is with the dead, but every now and then I come in contact with someone who has his or her own preoccupation with the departed. Sometimes these people are quite harmless. Sometimes such a person will decide to work in the funeral industry, or become a morgue worker. This boy was one of those people. I'm sure a lot of times I don't pick up on it—but since the boy didn't have all the mental guards and trip wires of the average adult, I could see it in him. I just didn't know what form this preoccupation had taken.

The barn had an overhead bulb that left more in darkness than it illuminated. It was a fairly large structure, quite open except for three stalls in the back full of moldy hay. They looked like they hadn't been touched in years. There were old tools hanging on the walls, and there was the detritus of a household: an old wheelbarrow, a lawn mower, a few bags of lawn fertilizer, old paint cans stacked in a corner.

The air was very cold, very thick, very unpleasant. Tolliver seemed to be trying to hold his breath. That wasn't going to work.

This was more a job for Xylda Bernardo than me, I could tell already.

I told the sheriff so.

“What, that crazy old woman with the dyed red hair?”

“She looks crazy,” I agreed. “But she's a true psychic. And what we've got here isn't dead people.”

“Not corpses?” It was hard to say if Rockwell was disappointed or relieved.

“Oh, I think we've got corpses. They're just not human. There's death, but I can't find it. If you don't mind, I'll call her. If she can tell you what's here, you can give her my fee.”

Rockwell stared at me. The cold had bleached the color out of her face. Even her eyes looked paler. “Done,” she said. “And if she makes a fool out of you, it's your own fault.”

Xylda and Manfred got there pretty quickly, all things considered. Xylda came into the barn wearing her ratty plaid coat, her long dyed bright red hair wild and tangled around her head. She was a big woman in all ways, and her round face was lavishly decorated with powder and lipstick. She was wearing heavy support hose and loafers. Manfred was a loving grandson; most young men his age would run screaming before they'd appear in public with someone as crazy-looking as Xylda.

Xylda, who was carrying a cane, didn't greet us, or even acknowledge we were there. I couldn't remember if she'd needed one a couple of months ago or not. It gave her a rakish air. I noticed that Manfred kept his hands lightly on her waist, as if she might topple over all of a sudden.

She pointed with the cane to one of the slightly mounded areas in the dirt floor. Then she stood absolutely still. The men who'd come in with her—everyone who'd been outside, with the addition of the boy and the man I was sure was his father—had been eyeing her with derision, and a few of them had made comments not quite softly enough. But now they were silent, and when Xylda closed her eyes and appeared to be listening to something no one else could hear, the level of tension rose almost palpably.

“Tortured animals,” she said crisply. She spun with as much agility as you can expect from a rather old and hefty woman. She pointed the cane at the boy. “You're torturing animals, you little son of a bitch.”

You couldn't accuse Xylda of mincing words.

“They cry out against you,” she said, her voice falling to an eerie monotone. “Your future is written in blood.”

The boy looked as if he wanted to break and run when those old eyes fixed on him. I didn't blame him.

“Son,” said the little man with the big coat. He looked at the boy with a heartbreaking doubt in his face. “Is what she says true? Could you have done something like that?”

“Dad,” the boy said pleadingly, as if his father could stop what would happen next. “Don't make me go through this.”

Tolliver's arm tightened around my waist.

The man gave the boy a little shake. “You have to tell them,” he said.

“It was already hurt,” the boy said, his voice exhausted and dead. “I just watched it till it died.”

“Liar,” Xylda said, her voice dripping with disgust.

After that, things really went downhill.

 

THE
deputies did their digging and found the aforementioned cat, a dog, some rabbits—baby rabbits—and a bird or two. They kicked around the stalls, making dust from the stale hay rise up in thick clouds. All they discovered was the stalls had bare-board flooring, so there couldn't be any animal corpses underneath. The father, Tom Almand, seemed absolutely stunned. Since he was a counselor at the mental health center, he would know as well as anyone there that one of the early signs of a developing serial killer was the torture of animals. I wondered how many kids who tortured animals
didn't
grow up to be murderers, but I assumed that would be impossible to document. Was it possible to do something so vile and yet become a well-adjusted adult with healthy relationships? Maybe. I hadn't studied the phenomenon, and I sure didn't plan to do any research on it. I saw enough in my day-to-day work life to convince me that people were capable of dreadful things…and wonderful things, too. Somehow as I looked at the tear-wet face of Chuck Almand, age thirteen, budding sadist, I couldn't feel optimistic.

I was sure that Sheriff Rockwell would be pleased. We'd kept the locals from making a foolish mistake, we'd uncovered a genuinely disturbed source of future trouble, and I wasn't going to charge a penny on my own behalf for the distress I'd been put through. They did owe Xylda some cash, though, and I wanted to be sure they'd pay it.

The sheriff was not looking sunny, though. In fact, she looked tired, discouraged, and disheartened.

“Why so glum?” I asked her. Tolliver was making conversation with Manfred; he'd forced himself to do the polite thing. Xylda had hold of the arm of one of the officers, and she was giving him an earful of talk. He looked dazed.

“I hoped we'd wrap it up,” she said. She seemed too down to disguise her thoughts and emotions. “I hoped this would be it. We'd find more bodies here. We'd find evidence—maybe trophies—tying someone, maybe Tom, to all the murders. It would all be over. We would have solved the case ourselves, instead of having to turn it over to the state boys or the FBI.”

Sandra Rockwell was not the clear pool she'd seemed at first.

“There aren't any human corpses here. I'm sorry we can't wave a magic wand and make that come true for you,” I said. And I was sincere. Like most other people, I wanted the bad guys caught, I wanted justice to prevail, and I wanted punishment of the wicked. But so often you didn't get all three at the same time, or in the same degree. “Can we leave now?” I asked.

The sheriff closed her eyes, just for a second. I had a creepy-crawly feeling in my belly. She said, “The SBI has asked that you remain on site for another day. They want to question you some more.”

The creepy-crawly feeling resolved into a knot of anxiety. “I thought we'd get to leave after we did this.” My voice must have gone up, because a lot of people turned to look at us. Even the boy at the heart of this brouhaha turned to look. I stared right into Chuck Almand's face, and for the first time I consciously looked into another human being.

“You might as well shoot him now,” I said. It was an awful feeling. I wondered if this was how Xylda saw things, if this was what had made her so peculiar. I wondered if Manfred would go the same way. It wasn't like free choice had been taken away from the boy, that he was doomed from the beginning by his nature. It was more like I could see what choices he would make. And they were almost all on the side of becoming one of those people who end up as the subject of a documentary on A&E.

Was what I was seeing the truth? Was it inevitable? I hoped not. And I hoped I never experienced it again. Maybe I was able to see inside Chuck Almand only because I was close to two genuine psychics, and their proximity sparked a touch of it in myself. Maybe it was the rumble of thunder far away. That sound always triggered the lightning feelings in me—a jittery combination of fear and agitation. Maybe I had the completely wrong perspective.