Harmony Black (20 page)

THIRTY-THREE

“
What do you think?” Jessie said as we pulled away. “Take him to the motel?”

I thought it over. Willie was our best lead—our
only
lead—and both Fontaine and Nyx had the exact same thought on the subject. Fontaine was out of the hunt for a little while, unless he planned to pelt us with acorns, but Nyx still had our scent. If we wanted to hang on to our new catch, we might have to hold out against a literal siege.

“We’re taking him to the safest place in town,” I said.

Barry kept himself busy by pacing a hole in the police station lobby floor. “Hey,” he said as we walked in with Willie, “what the hell is going on out there? Mabel’s being treated for bumps and bruises after a car accident that
you
caused. And she was driving
his
truck and says she can’t remember anything.”

“That last part’s true,” Jessie said, holding Willie by the arm as she escorted him past. “Mabel’s in the clear. You should probably give her a few days off, though.”

Cody came around the corner, making a beeline for us. Barry didn’t look any less flustered. “And where are you going with him? What does he have to do with all this?”

“Take him on back,” I told Jessie, then turned to face the two men. “I need you both to listen carefully, okay? Willie is a material witness to a crime, and there are some very bad guys in your town looking to do him harm. I need you to put this place on lockdown. Nobody, and I mean nobody but the four of us, finds out he’s being held here, all right?”

Cody tilted his head, shooting a look at the plate-glass doors and the parking lot outside. “Very bad guys meaning what, exactly?”

“Very bad guys,” I said, “who won’t hesitate to burn half this town to the ground to get what they want, and they’ve got some locals on their payroll. So while we’re questioning Willie, I want you two standing post out here making sure nobody—and I mean
nobody
, not your next-door neighbor or your family doctor—walks through those doors. Anybody could be involved.”

Jessie sat Willie down in the interrogation room. We stood on the far side of the two-way mirror, watching him squirm.

“Not taking any chances here,” Jessie told me. “This guy could be the key to this whole mess. Normally I’d say we just go in and have at him, but . . . we need some expert help.”

The expert help, arriving ten minutes later, was April. She rolled her chair up to the window, moving in between us, and folded her arms.

“So what do you—” I started to ask.

“Shh,” she said. Her purse rested on her lap. She fished out a pair of steel-gray bifocals and slipped them on, eyeing Willie through the glass like a raptor watching a plump mouse. I looked at Jessie. Jessie held up her hand, nodding silently.

“Blush and pupil dilation,” April said, “indicate he’s still slightly intoxicated. Good. Lowered inhibition can help us. Harmony. His body language. What’s it telling you?”

I looked through the glass. Willie wrung his hands, glancing from side to side, rocking in his chair.

“He’s nervous.”

She arched an eyebrow but didn’t take her gaze off him.

“I thought you said you studied my work at Quantico. Details
matter
, Agent. Flared nostrils, stiffness—there. Did you see that? He keeps trying to smile. It’s a flicker, an affectation he instinctively knows he can’t sell, but he keeps trying. That’s not stress, that’s guilt and shame. He’s thinking about something he doesn’t like. Something he doesn’t want to confront.”

“Shame,” I echoed, trying to see what she saw.

April squinted. “It’s the Salt Lake Sniper case all over again. I worked lead on that, back in the summer of ’87. Two assailants, one dominant and controlling, the other submissive and placating. When we separated the submissive of the duo and put him alone in an interview room, he exhibited the exact same behaviors. What we’re seeing is a man who knows he’s done something gravely wrong, and his mind is desperately trying to reframe it in a way he can accept. To find an excuse that exonerates him from responsibility.”

“How did you handle the sniper?” I asked.

She quirked a smile. “Gave him more authority and more responsibility than he was willing to accept. Jessie, roll me inside, if you’d be so kind.”

Jessie blinked. “You
hate
when people push your chair for you.”

“People associate that visual with weakness. I want him to utterly discount me as a threat. That’ll help when I drop the hammer on him.”

Willie looked up as we walked into the tiny room, brushing the stringy hair from his eyes.

“Hey,” he said, “uh, thanks for the help back there. I don’t know what happened. I was on my route, just coming back to my truck after dropping off some groceries, and this little old lady walks up and asks my name. Next thing I know—”

“We know about the wicker balls,” April said.

He froze.

“You know,” I said, “the ones you planted outside the Gunderson and Morris houses?”

Willie shook his head. It was more of a twitch. His neck muscles pulled taut.

“I—I don’t—I don’t know what you’re—”

“We know it was you.” Jessie rested her hands, palms flat, on the table. “And we know about the Bogeyman. We’re not the regular police, Willie. And believe me when I say it’s in your absolute best interest to tell us
everything
.”

“N-no,” he said, eyes going wide. His words spilled out in a terrified stammer, turning into a singsong chant. “I don’t know, I don’t
know
what you’re, what you’re talking about, I
don’t
know. No.
No.
”

“Hey, Willie,” I said softly, reaching for his hand. He yanked it away, curling his fingers against his chest. He made little jerking motions, almost punching himself.

“Don’t ask me because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t know anything—”

April held up a finger. “Just one question, Willie.”

He looked up at her with moist, bloodshot eyes.

“What did they do to you?” she asked him. “I mean, I understand. You
hated
those families. You hated them so much—”

“N-no,” Willie stammered, louder now. “No!”

April slammed the flat of her palm on the table. “Yes, you did! We know this was
your
idea,
your
decision,
your
design from start to finish. You hated those families so much you sent a monster to murder their children—”

“He made me do it!” Willie shrieked, throwing his head back and squeezing his eyes shut. “Edwin Kite made me do it!”

He collapsed against the table, clutching his face, feet kicking the floor as he sobbed into his hands.

April glanced sidelong at me. She mouthed the words,
Be the good cop
.

I pulled back a chair and slid it around the table so I could sit next to him. I rested my hand on his shoulder.

“Willie,” I said, gentle now. “Where is Edwin Kite?”

“In his house,” he mumbled into his hands. His shoulders twitched.

“We’ve been to the Kite house,” Jessie said. “Nobody’s there, Willie.”

He raised his tear-drenched face and swallowed hard. “Not that house. The
other
house. The House of Closets.”

“From his contract, I bet,” I said to Jessie. “The demesne Adramelech gave him.”

“Don’t say that name,” Willie said, eyes wide. “Mr. Kite
hates
that name. See, he can’t ever leave his house or the monster will get him. But the monster can’t come inside. He’s safe as long as he stays inside.”

“You were there once,” I said, “weren’t you? When you were a little boy. The Bogeyman took you there and brought you back the next day.”

“I don’t remember.” He squeezed his eyes shut and stomped one foot on the floor. “I
don’t remember
.”

I held up a hand. “All right, all right. That’s fine, Willie. You’re doing just fine. Do you have any idea why they let you go? What made you different from the other children?”

“He said . . . he said I was the
lucky
one.”

Willie ripped open his shirt, buttons popping, tearing the fabric aside to show us the horror beneath. His chest, from just above his left nipple to the curve of his shoulder, was a mass of faded burns, cuts, and scars. Mutilation after mutilation, one upon another.

And above it all, rising up from the surface of his ravaged skin, was an occult sigil about the size of a silver dollar. The intricate curves and whorls bloomed above the tortured flesh, thick and fish-belly pale.

“It always comes back,” Willie whispered. “No matter how many times I slice it off. It
always comes back
.”

Jessie motioned me away from the table. I got up and followed her to the corner of the room.

“Couple years back,” she murmured, “we busted up this little cult in Jersey. Humans, carving up locals as sacrifices for a demon. They all had brands like that. Demon got away. Aunt April had a theory that the marks were some kind of psychic link. So when we busted the demon’s little helpers, he got advance warning to leave town.”

“Edwin Kite was human, though.”

“We figure he busted his deal with Adramelech, right?” Jessie said softly, glancing over at Willie. “Maybe, before he split, he learned some of his old master’s tricks. Hell, he’s what, around two hundred years old and still kicking? That’s not exactly normal, either.”

“Willie,” I said, walking back to the table, “if you don’t remember what happened, when the Bogeyman took you, how do you know all this?”

“Mr. Kite comes to me sometimes. In my dreams. He can do it a-anytime he wants. He always reminds me. I can’t hide. Anywhere I go, he can find me.”

His fingers clawed at the sigil, like a nervous tic.

“And did he teach you how to make those wicker balls?”

“He t-told me what I had to do. He
told
me. It takes a lot of energy to go back and forth, and the Bogeyman can’t stay in our world very long because Edwin is afraid the monster will catch it. So the Bogeyman needs to know—needs to know where to find the
good
houses right away. That’s my job. Picking the good houses.”

“Why the Morris family?” April asked. “Why the Gundersons? What does Edwin Kite have against them?”

He blinked at her, like the question had never occurred to him before.

“N-nothing,” he stammered. “He doesn’t even know who they are. He doesn’t care.”

I leaned closer. “Then why target them?”

His gaze dropped to the table.

“I had to make it fair,” he said.

“Fair how?”

“He told me I should pick families I didn’t like, to”—he paused, grimacing, spitting the words out—“to make it
fun
. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to. So I made it as fair as I could.”

He finally met my eyes.

“I used my delivery list.”

“The groceries,” Jessie said, her voice flat.

He pointed at her with a shaky hand. “Y-yes, see, you understand! Except for the third one, the one he told me I
had
to mark, it’s fair that way. I didn’t know if they were good people or bad people. I just knew which houses had children and which ones didn’t. It was just . . . random. That’s all. That’s . . . that’s fair, right?”

Jessie’s hands clenched on the edge of the table.

“Willie,” I said, “you don’t want to hurt anyone, do you?”

The only answer was a mute, miserable shake of his head.

“Why target any houses at all, then? If the Bogeyman can’t hunt without your help, then why are you doing it?”

He hung his head. Silent.

“Willie,” I said. “Please. Tell us why.”

“I already told you why.”

“Then help us to understand—”

Fresh tears glistened in his eyes, droplets from an ocean of loathing. “Because I’m
afraid
,” he spat.

“Of who? Who are you afraid of?”

“I told you:
he can always find me
. He shows me, in my dreams. He shows me his house. The . . . the things that happen there. The things that happen to the children. And he tells me . . . there’s one person who doesn’t need a beacon. There’s one person the Bogeyman can always catch and bring to him.
Me.
”

Willie slumped back in his chair. He sniffled and shook his head.

“It’s them or me.”

THIRTY-FOUR

J
essie’s voice was a graveyard whisper, her eyes blazing as she squeezed the table’s edge.

“You son of a bitch.”

“He told me,” Willie said, “that he’ll let me go if I give him six children. And he told me . . . it’s proof.”

“What is?” I said.

“That nobody is good in their heart, not really. He’s been doing this for a long, long time. And he told me that not once—not once has the ‘lucky one’ ever refused. Not once. Because when it’s you or them? No matter how good you think you are, no matter how brave you think you are . . . you’ll
always
choose to save yourself.”

“Bullshit,” Jessie snapped. “You’re just fucking
weak
.”

“Agent,” April said.

“No,” she told her. “No! This son of a bitch is sacrificing innocent children to keep
his
neck off the chopping block—”

He mumbled something as his head fell. I couldn’t make it out. His shoulders shook, and a tear fell to spatter his dirty jeans.

“What was that?” I asked, leaning closer.

“I was innocent, too,” he whispered.

April nodded her head toward the interview-room door. We left, giving Willie time to think.

“Don’t even,” Jessie told us, turning on April and me. “I take a
dim fucking view
of people who hurt kids, and don’t tell me you both don’t feel the same way. I
know
you do.”

“Yeah, I do,” I said. “I also know a victim when I see one. Whatever Kite did to him, Willie is . . . he’s crippled. Come on. The drinking, the fighting, that horror show of scars on his chest? The man can barely function. However much you hate him right now, I guarantee he hates himself about a hundred times worse.”

“That doesn’t excuse what he did.”

“No,” April said, “it doesn’t. But it
explains
what he did. And he’s opened up to us. We need that right now. He’s the best lead we have, and I am asking you to
pretend
to be sympathetic.”

Jessie pressed her palms flush against the two-way mirror, leaning in to watch Willie sobbing in the other room. She took a deep breath.

“All right. Fine. I’m cool. Where do you two wanna go with this?”

I held up my hand. “I had an idea. It’ll be risky, but now that there won’t be any more abductions, since we’ve got Willie in custody, do you think Edwin will follow through on his threat?”

April looked from me to Willie.

“You want to use him as bait,” she said.

“He’s ours now,” I said, nodding to the window, “and we can set the terms of battle. If Edwin sends the Bogeyman to grab Willie, we can be standing right there when the closet door opens.”

“And armed for bear,” Jessie said. “Yeah, okay. Sounds like we’ve got a license for Bogeyman hunting season. Think Sheriff Barry’s got any serious firepower lying around the station house?”

“It’s rural Michigan. Guarantee we can get shotguns at least. Serious enough for you?”

“Mayberry,” she told me, “I am an
artist
with a shotgun. Let’s do this.”

“Likewise,” April said. “I approve.”

We strode back into the interrogation room. Willie rubbed at his reddened face, then wiped his palms on his jeans.

“Good news,” I told him. “We’re going to save your life.”

Willie shook his head slowly. “The only thing that can save me is giving him what he wants.”

“That’s not happening,” Jessie said, “but we can do the next best thing. As of now, you’re under our protection.”

He laughed. It was a nervous, jittery, humorless thing, and his eyes widened.

“You don’t get it. You
can’t
protect me. As soon as Mr. Kite realizes I’m not setting out any more beacons, he’ll send the Bogeyman for me. He’ll take me. He’ll take me to his
house
.”

“Not on our watch,” I said. “C’mon, we need to move you someplace safer. Don’t worry. We’ll be with you round the clock.”

We got him on his feet, flanking him as we led him out of the interrogation room, with Willie protesting every step of the way. We weren’t alone. Barry came hustling down the hall toward us, looking ten kinds of worried.

“Something weird’s going on, and you girls have visitors. I don’t know if they’re, ya know, the people you warned me might be coming around or what—”

“Who’s out there?” I asked, shooting a look past Barry’s back, at the swinging door that led to the station lobby.

“Russian girl came by, real pretty but hard-lookin’; she flashed an ID and asked if you two were here. Says she’s a bounty hunter and she’s got a warrant for Willie.”

“You can’t protect me,” Willie mumbled.

“Barry,” I said, “tell me you didn’t let her in.”

He stuck his thumbs in his belt and puffed out his chest.

“Hell, no, I did not. Gimme a little credit, huh? We talked through the glass door. Told her we were having a possible contaminated-mail situation, and I couldn’t open the door till the CDC got here. Also told her I hadn’t seen you all day, but I don’t think she bought it. So she leaves, and five minutes later, this shady-looking guy comes up, says he’s selling magazines door to door. Well, he’s no local, I know that on sight. While I’m giving him the brush-off, he keeps eyeing the lobby behind me, like he’s trying to see who else is here.”

“Are they gone?” Jessie asked.

“Well, that’s the thing. I look out and the two of ’em are out in the parking lot, arguing up a storm. They knew each other, I can tell you that much. So the guy went and sat in his car. He’s still out there. Just sitting. Watching the building.”

“And the woman?” I asked.

Barry shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. I guess she left.”

Cody came up the hall from the other direction, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, one hand on his holster.

“Something’s weird,” he said. “I’m hearing a rattling in the vents, like there’s something crawling around in the—”

That’s when we heard the rattling thump echoing from the station-house roof, right above our heads.

“It’s here,” Willie moaned. “It’s here to take me. The Bogeyman is here.”

“No, Willie,” I said through gritted teeth. “Different monster entirely. Okay, Barry, we need the most secure room in this building, right now. We’re all in serious danger.”

Willie clutched the sides of his head. “I told you. I
told
you, you can’t protect me.”

“This way,” Barry said, pushing past us. “Got a little armory in the back, for the gun cabinets. Ain’t exactly Fort Knox, but it’s built to keep people—”

In the heat of the moment, Barry made the same mistake we did: treating Willie like a witness in protective custody instead of a dangerous suspect. As he brushed past, getting too close, too careless for just a second, Willie lunged for his belt.

Suddenly Barry’s big chrome .45 was in Willie’s trembling hands.

Barry shouted as April grabbed the wheels of her chair and veered backward. Jessie and I pulled our Glocks at the same time, keeping Willie covered in our gun sights. Cody had the fastest draw, whipping out his steel like a cowboy at high noon. He edged toward me, trying to get between me and Willie’s gun. Chivalrous, but bad police work.

“At your shoulder, Deputy,” I said in a low voice, only as hard as I needed to be. “Watch my line of fire.” Cody got the message and sidestepped the other way.

“Son,” Barry warned Willie, “you don’t wanna do that—”

“Put it
down
,” Jessie said.

The revolver swayed drunkenly from side to side in Willie’s grip as he took a couple of unsteady steps back, toward the lobby door.

“You can’t protect me,” he said.

“Willie,” April said, “you’re frightened. We understand that. But what you’re doing is very, very dangerous, and you need to put the weapon down before someone gets hurt.”

Another shuffling step back. As the barrel of the stolen revolver swung toward my face, his grip shaking like a junkie in detox, I struggled to keep my finger off my trigger. From somewhere behind us, metal scraped and groaned. Nyx, in the ventilation. Creeping closer.

“I
will
drop your ass,” Jessie snapped. “Put. The fucking. Gun. Down.”

Barry held out his open hands and took a step closer to Willie.

“Son,” he said, “where are you gonna go? We’re just trying to keep you safe, that’s all. Now, you’re frightened, and that’s fine, but frightened people with guns make some bad, bad mistakes. The kind of mistakes you can’t take back. Just put it down, and we can all pretend this never happened.”

A single tear trickled down Willie’s cheek.

“Don’t you get it?” he whispered. “There’s nowhere in the world I can run to. Nowhere is safe. He can always find me. Ever since I was little, when he started coming to me in my dreams . . . I never had a chance, not really. But it’s okay. Now I understand. Now I know there’s only one way to make it all stop.”

“Willie,” Cody said,
“don’t—”

“It’s okay,” he said, smiling as he blinked back the tears. “I understand now.”

Then he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

The shot boomed like a cannon in the narrow hallway, and spatters of blood and bone painted the drab beige wall as Willie’s corpse tumbled to the floor.

Nobody said a word.

We just stood there inhaling the coppery, acrid tang of gun smoke and blood as we stared down at the dead man.

Even the rattling from the vents stopped cold. I felt a prickling sensation on the back of my neck.

“He’s dead, Nyx!” I called out, holstering my gun. “Get lost.”

A rumbling from the vent, and another noise. Something that sounded like a snort of disgust. The sound retreated into silence.

“Jesus,” Barry breathed. “I didn’t—I mean, I knew Willie had problems, but you didn’t warn me he was nuts. I didn’t
know
.”

“Amateur hour,” Jessie said, “is officially over.”

She stepped around Willie’s corpse and stalked out the door. April rolled after her, grim and silent.

“Barry,” I said, touching his arm, “it’s okay—”

He stared at Willie with a face of pale stone.

“A man just shot himself in my station house, with a gun he took off my belt. This is anything but okay.”

I hated to ask, but I had to. I gestured toward the body. “Can you . . . take care of this?”

“Yeah.” His chin bobbed. “Yeah, sure. Might need you to sign something later, I don’t know. Don’t even know the procedure for something like this. Took my goddamn gun off my belt . . . I didn’t know he was crazy, Harmony. I didn’t know.”

Except he wasn’t crazy,
I thought.
Just hurting.

And he wouldn’t be the last one.

I thought back to what he’d said in the interrogation room. That he’d used his delivery list to pick victims, choosing them at random—except for the third one, the one Edwin Kite picked out personally. We knew about only two abductions, and that could mean only one thing.

The next Returned, Willie’s replacement, had already been marked. If we didn’t find a way to take Kite down, then in another thirty years or so, the cycle would start all over again. Cody followed me to the station-house door. “Harmony,” he said. I stopped with my hand on the push plate.

“I might not
like
Talbot Cove,” he said, “but as long as I’ve got this badge on, I’m responsible for keeping it safe. And the stuff I’ve seen and heard today . . . ”

He trailed off. I waited for him to find the words he was looking for.

“What’s happening to my town?” he asked me. “And please, don’t tell me about Willie being a witness to . . . some criminal conspiracy. Barry might buy that line, but respect me enough not to lie to my face, okay?”

“I won’t lie to you, Cody. But I can’t tell you the truth, either. I need you to just bear with me, okay? When the time comes, I’ll explain everything I can. Just trust me.”

He put his hands on his hips and chewed that over.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Just . . . let me help?”

“When I can,” I promised, and went outside to find my partner.