Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) (12 page)

Weston nodded. “You mentioned how talented I am, but the truth is, I can barely draw stick figures.”

Kate thought he was joking but realized he wasn’t. “So this is all Christopher?”

“It certainly isn’t me. But when he sends me the pictures, I go into my own little trance and the drawings are waiting for me on the other side. I barely remember putting the pencil to the paper.”

“So you have no control over what winds up on the page?”

“Did you have any control over what happened to you?”

She shook her head. And that loss of control was almost as frightening as being transported back to that alleyway.

“Control isn’t the issue,” Weston said. “What matters is the information. And I have a feeling I’ve only seen a portion of what’s stored inside that head of his. I have to puzzle it all together and try to figure out what it’s telling me and what we’re supposed to do with it.”

“Like gathering and evaluating evidence.”

He nodded. “Only the evidence Chris gathers can’t be seen or experienced by just anyone. And since I’m getting it secondhand, it’s not always accurate. Sometimes it comes in scrambled or he makes a mistake. Which is what I thought this was.”

“Meaning what? Coming to Santa Flora?”

He nodded again. “I already suspected the murders at the Branford house had nothing to do with the man with the tattoo, but I also knew the minute we stepped inside, that something else was off. I can’t see what Chris sees, but I have my moments, and the feeling I got was that the people who died in that house were not the victims of a roving psychopath. Those killings were much more personal.”

“I’ve been saying that all along.”

“Because you have the gift, too,” Weston said. “We wouldn’t be talking if you didn’t.”

“Christopher told me the same thing. But that’s absurd.”

“Of course it’s absurd. All of this is. But it’s the reality we’re dealing with. Chris is the transmitter and you and I are the receivers. Only based on what you told me, the signal you’re getting is a hell of a lot stronger than mine.”

“Apparently so.”

“So it makes sense that he chose you. Just like he chose me.”

“But for what?” she asked.

“What do you think?” Weston told her. “To help him find and kill the man with the tattoo.”

∙ ∙ ∙

So there it was, in a mere handful of words.

The idea that these two were on some kind of crusade had been percolating in the back of Kate’s brain for awhile now, but it had never occurred to her that
she
might be part of that crusade.

If what she’d seen in that alleyway was true, then the three of them were forever linked by the savagery of a single man—a revelation that both rocked and rattled her. But going after that man and expecting to find and kill him, seemed hopelessly naive—and dangerous.

The fantasy of an eleven-year-old.

But then Christopher could do things no other eleven-year-old could. Like convince a grown man that chasing a psychopath was a good idea.

“You do realize that talk like that could land you right back in a jail cell.”

“How?” Weston said. “We haven’t done anything.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but vigilantism is against the law.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Sit back and let this maniac destroy more lives? If his crimes go back as far as twenty years, there’s no telling how many people he’s killed. He has to be stopped, lieutenant, and it’s obvious the police aren’t interested in doing it.”

“And you think I am?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “Coming here wasn’t my idea, remember? And I’d just as soon be gone.”

She gestured to the boy. “So how do you even know him? How did you two meet?”

Weston took a moment to respond and she saw that he, too, was struggling to find his center. She expected him to start stonewalling again, but he didn’t. Instead he looked around the diner as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping, then spoke in as even a tone as he could muster. “After Anna and the girls were murdered, I was in a pretty bad way.”

“I can imagine you would be.”

“It wasn’t just the police who were convinced I’d killed them. I got stares everywhere I went. People I’d considered friends who looked at me as if I were some kind of monster.”

“Even after they let you go?”

He nodded. “I owned a saw mill, and most of my employees quit. Didn’t matter that Danbury was still trying to recover from the recession, they’d rather be jobless than be associated with a devil like me. So I thought, screw ‘em. I stopped going to church, stopped praying altogether, shut down the mill, and shifted into self-destruct mode. I spent most nights getting drunk in my living room—the room where Anna’s body was found—watching TV, shouting at the religious shows, cursing them all for being such superficial hypocrites.”

“So what changed?” Kate asked. “What snapped you out of it?”

“I saw Christopher. On TV.”

“TV?”

“He was on a regional cable show out of Tallahassee called Second Chances, which is about a half-step above a revival tent show. The host was an Elmer Gantry wannabe who trotted out three people he labeled as miracles of God’s grace, the third of which was Christopher.” He paused. “They had saved him for last, I guess, because his story was the most compelling.”

“And what was it? His story.”

“Abandoned at birth. Spent the first seven years of his life living in a group home for children with special needs. Then one night someone wiped them all out. Kids, caretakers, nine people in all. Christopher was found curled up in a corner, barely alive, but by the grace of God—or so the host said—he had managed to survive.”

“Jesus,” Kate murmured.

“The people telling the story were Chris’s foster parents. Couple of unemployable reprobates who take in kids like stray pets because the government pays them by the head. I could see that they were only in it for the money—especially with Christopher, who seemed to spook them both whenever they looked at him, like he was more a curse than a miracle. But, hey, they were on TV.”

“So you felt sorry for him.”

Weston forced a hollow laugh. “I was too busy feeling sorry for myself. No, what happened was I got about half a bottle into my nightly quota and started hearing a voice inside my head. I thought I was hallucinating, and knew it had to be the booze, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the TV. And every time they cut to a shot of Chris sitting there next to those worthless wretches, I felt like he was looking straight at me. Calling to me. Only I couldn’t quite understand the words.”

Kate thought about the scrambled transmission. The backwards speech. Was that what Weston had heard, too?

“So what did you do?” she asked.

“What I always did. Passed out. But when I woke up the next morning, I found an empty can of black spray paint at the foot of the sofa. No idea how it got there. But that didn’t much matter when I saw what I’d done with it.”

“Let me guess. A picture?”

He nodded. “The entire wall above the sofa was covered with a painting. Black and white. Detailed beyond belief. And if I’d still been a religious man, I would’ve said it was a sign from God, because even stone-cold sober I never would’ve been able to paint something like that.”

“What was it?” she asked.

“A beat-up plantation style house with a mailbox out front. The name below it read
HANEY
, the name of the foster parents. Angela and Rupert Haney.”

“So what did you do?”

“Got drunk again. And the next day, I got some paint thinner out of the garage and went to work with a rag and a sponge until all that was left of the picture was a vague black smudge.”

“But it obviously didn’t end there.”

“No,” he said. “Two days later, I woke up and there was another empty spray paint can on the floor and the painting was back. Only this time it was dark green and even more detailed than before.” He paused. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. In this new painting, the front door of the house was hanging open and sitting in the foyer, looking out at the street with those blank eyes, was Christopher. Staring straight at me. And I knew that if God wasn’t sending me a message, that goddamn kid
had
to be.”

Kate felt a chill, but said nothing.

“So I packed my backpack, locked up my house, then climbed in the Rambler and headed for Tallahassee.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. I didn’t feel I had a choice.”

He reached for the glass of water next to his untouched sandwich and took a sip. He seemed far away, as if he were replaying the moment in his mind.

“And what happened when you got there?” Kate asked.

“I didn’t have any trouble finding the place. It was like I had a GPS in my head and just followed my instincts. Next thing I knew I was parked out front, looking at that same house, in living color this time, mailbox and all. The only difference was that the front door was closed.”

“And Christopher?”

“I got out and opened the gate and went up the steps and was about to knock when a neighbor spotted me and told me I was wasting my time. That the Haneys had piled all their little circus freaks into their car—his words, not mine—and moved across town the previous day.”

“So did you go look for them?”

Weston shook his head. “I was heading back to the Rambler when something made me turn and look at the house again. And for some reason I felt as if I couldn’t leave. So I went up the steps and checked the front door and found it unlocked. When I pushed it open, I saw Christopher in the foyer, sitting in the middle of the floor on that little suitcase of his. Waiting for me. Just like in the painting.”

“They’d left him behind.”

Weston nodded. “And they’re probably still collecting a check in his name. I just stood there, staring at him, then gathered him up, helped him into the Rambler and we’ve been traveling together ever since. That was a little less than a year ago.”

“Did he communicate with you? Say anything?”

“In his usual way, yes. And this time it was crystal clear.”

“What did he say?”

Weston glanced at Christopher then looked again at Kate. “Six words. Six words that will probably stay with me for the rest of my life.”

“Which were?”

“’I know who killed your family.’”

K
ATE’S CELL PHONE RANG, BUT
she ignored it.

On the third ring, Weston said, “Aren’t you gonna answer that?”

She pulled the phone from her back pocket, checked the screen, then jabbed the decline button and set the phone on the table. “It can wait. Keep going.”

Weston spread his hands. “There isn’t much else to say. It took me awhile to get my mind around what Christopher wanted me to help him do, but once I did, I was—”

“Back up a minute. You just said he knew who killed your family.”

“Right. But he couldn’t give me a name. And as you saw in the drawings, there are only glimpses of what the guy looks like—based on what he’s gathered from the crimes scenes we’ve visited. Chris calls him the Beast.”

“Like in Lord of the Flies?”

“Or maybe the Book of Revelation—although despite that train wreck of a TV show, I’ve never gotten the impression he’s religious.”

“But it’s curious the name he’s chosen starts with a B. Has he ever mentioned someone called Michael Bonner?”

“No,” Weston said. “Who’s that?”

She stared at him, wondering how, in less than an hour, she’d gone from complete distrust to wanting to share everything with him. But who else could she talk to about this? Certainly not her father. Or her colleagues.

So she explained what she’d seen in her vision, describing the nameplate on Bonner’s chest and his attempt to cut out her mother’s tongue. She even told him of her near meltdown and her conversation with Rusty Patterson.

“Right before I came to get you,” she said, “I went down to the Open Unsolved file room and dug up my mother’s murder book. I hadn’t looked at it in years.”

“That’s understandable.”

“I checked the witness sheets and found that Michael “Mickey” Bonner had been working security for less than three weeks when he supposedly found her in the alley. His statements during both interviews were consistent and hadn’t raised any red flags. He claimed he was on his usual rounds when he spotted the body between the Dumpsters, and after checking to see if the victim was still alive, he told his partner to call the police.”

“And what did the partner say?”

“He backed up Bonner’s story, and probably believed it.”

“Maybe I need to talk to this guy,” Weston said. “If he’s had direct contact with the Beast…”

“Good luck with that. A newspaper clipping in the binder said he died in a car accident two months later.”

Weston looked disappointed. “And what about Bonner? What happened to him?”

“After his second interview, the investigators didn’t have any contact with him, and there’s nothing in the file to indicate where he might be. So I ran a database search and hit a dead end. None of the Mickey Bonners I found have ever lived or worked in Santa Flora, let alone the Sandy Point Mall.”

“And no photographs?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s like he never existed.”

“Then I guess that means it’s time for us to go.”

Kate frowned. “Really? After what I just told you?”

“The trail you’re on is twenty years cold, lieutenant, and the only person who may have been any use to us is long dead. So what’s the point of sticking around? There’s nothing for us here.”

“Yet here you are.”

“Not for long.” Weston took another sip of his water and got to his feet. “You said we could leave if I let you buy us lunch. Well, lunch is over and we need to hit the road.”

“Sit down, Mr. Weston.”

“I told you that coming here wasn’t my idea. This is a detour.
You’re
a detour. A distraction we didn’t need.”

“A distraction
you
don’t need. But what about Christopher? He didn’t show me that alley for no reason. He wants something from me. And I want to know what it is.”

“You
know
what he wants. The same thing he wanted from me.”