Hex Appeal (17 page)

I suddenly knew …
knew
, with a sick wave of despair. He was guilty. Guilty of making the shell of the dead girl, at least. It sickened me, but I could believe that. He hadn’t resurrected her, though. I knew him better than that he’d coldly looked on as she was tortured, mutilated, killed.

Still, there was something bitterly disappointing about this … not just that he’d taken money from a serial killer, but that …

That he hadn’t trusted me enough to confess it.

Oh God.

I dropped the phone on the table, leaped out of the bathroom, and pulled on clothes as fast as I could. I was shaking and panting with panic, because I knew,
knew
that he’d lied to me. It wasn’t just asking questions, not anymore.

Andy was out there tracking down a killer, and he was probably closer than anybody knew. Close enough to be in real danger.

I dialed his cell phone. It rang, and rang, then finally he picked up and said, “Bad time, Holly.” He was panting, and I could tell he was running

“Where are you?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Andy, please—I
know.
I know you made the shell. I know you’re taking this personally. But you
need help.
This man—he’s not like anything you’ve come up against before.”

“Dammit!” He spat it into the phone, then heaved a big sigh, and said, “Not you, Holly, I’m sorry, but he made it to his car. Son of a
bitch
. I had him. I
had him.
”

“Did you see a license plate?”

“No. Couldn’t even make out the car real clear; all them things look alike to me anyway. Was blue, that’s all I can tell you.” His breathing eased a little, and he said, in a much different tone, “Holly Anne, I never meant to lie to you. Not for a second. I just couldn’t tell you. Not that. I let you down. I let that gal down, and if I could take it back, I would.”

“The killer didn’t hire you.”

“No. Money and job came by courier. Courier’s the man I found dead. He couldn’t tell me nothing.”

“So who were you following?”

“Got a tip about the witch,” Andy said. “He drove off afore the killer went for his car. I got the name of the witch; he ain’t getting away. Killer’s still a mystery, and I damn sure want to solve it.”

I heard him starting up an engine. “Andy, did you take my car?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that. Needed to move fast. Look, I may still be able to pick up his trail. We’ll talk about all this later, and I’ll explain proper.”

“Andy, it’s serious, what you did. You know that, don’t you?”

“Dead girl brought back to torture and murder? I know it is.” He sounded grim and quietly heartsick. “Ain’t the first time I made a mistake, but this one hurts. Hurts bad.”

“You didn’t make any others…?”

There was a short silence, then he said, “Gotta go, Holly Anne. Please forgive me.”

And then he hung up, without telling me where he was, or what he was planning to do.

*   *   *

It was a long couple of hours before the phone rang again. I grabbed it up in relief, but it wasn’t Andy, after all.

“Got another crime scene and another dead-again,” said Detective Prieto. He sounded tired and harassed. “Get a piece of paper. I’ll wait here for you.”

My heart was pounding painfully. “Is Andy—?”

“Is Andy what?” he snapped back. “Ain’t seen him, and do me a favor, don’t bring him. The son of a bitch creeps me out.”

Oh, thank God. It wasn’t Andy he’d found, then, which had been my instant and horrifying fear. “I—I don’t have a car.”

“Well, take a taxi, then, but don’t expect the city to be picking up the tab. Hurry it up if you’re coming. I can’t keep this place secure for long.” He read me the address, which I wrote down, then called a taxi for pickup.

I tried calling Andy’s phone, but it went straight to voice mail. The sound of his recorded voice, so awkward and uncomfortable with this newfangled messaging, made my heart break all over again.

He’d already broken it in two by lying to me, even if it was a lie of omission, and now, there was the horrifying possibility that he’d created
more
bodies to be filled with sleeping souls. More girls to wake to torture and death.

No wonder he didn’t want to talk to me. He had to stop it. I knew that he wouldn’t let go until he’d accomplished that, at any cost.

The taxi honked about five minutes later, and I felt sick as I opened the cabinet to retrieve my go-bag … and found it missing. I’d left it in the car, which Andy was driving. Not that I had the heart, or the stomach, to try to resurrect one of these poor, tortured souls, but it was habit to have it with me. A bit of constancy and comfort that I’d have to do without.

I gave him the address, and the taxi driver struggled with GPS coordinates until he finally said, “Lady, that’s some kind of park. You sure—?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

He shrugged and put the car in gear. Just another twenty-dollar fare to him.

*   *   *

Unlike the first crime scene, this time there was no uniformed police presence, no warning tape. Just Prieto’s big brown car, a shining dark blue one beside it, and an empty parking lot with a thin line of trees at the back of it.

There was one lonely crime scene technician photographing the scene: Greg. I waved at him, and he looked over and nodded. He waved back before continuing to snap pictures.

Prieto looked me over as the cab that had brought me drove away. “Here I thought you and Toland were joined at the hip. That’s two times you’ve shown up without him.”

I avoided the whole topic of Andy Toland because it hurt too deeply. “Where are the other crime scene guys?”

“I didn’t call them in. Legally, the worst we got here is illegal disposal of a body, and nobody wants to waste crime scene dollars on this thing, not in a budget-cutting economy. Hey, Greg, hang back for a minute. I want her to get the full impact of what her damn witch friends did.”

Greg stepped back and waited, watching me curiously as I walked forward. I immediately identified her: the second victim. Her dark eyes were open, staring up at the clouds as they passed overhead; they had filmed over but hadn’t dried out completely. Her full lips were parted. She had a look on her face I couldn’t quite define—surprise, and something horribly close to relief.

She’d been happy to die, at the end. Happy the suffering was over.

I thought about the cash sitting in the bureau drawer at home, waiting for a trip to the bank, and shivered; that was blood money—no, worse than that. I could never bring myself to touch it again.

“This dump site wasn’t on the original case files. It’s new. He’s changed it up to reduce his risk, which means we’re screwed halfway to hell on stopping him unless you and the undead boyfriend run down that resurrection witch.”

“Andy has a name for you. He may have information about the killer, too.” I said. Standing there, staring at the torn evidence of another girl’s horrible, violating death made me angry at Andy, really and painfully furious. He could have confessed.
Should
have confessed. If he’d made the shells, he could have told me and Prieto about it, and immediately handed over the courier who’d paid him; that would have made it at least partly right again. I knew why he’d tried to go it alone … it was in Andy’s Old West nature. But it was wrong this time.

No. This … this was beyond wrong. There was no mending it.

“Holly?”

Prieto’s voice was quiet, and unlike his usual dismissive tone. It honestly seemed … compassionate. I looked up to see him standing on the other side of the body, watching me. Behind him, the tech was staring, too. After a few seconds, he went back to work, but Prieto’s focus remained.

“Something you want to talk about?” he asked. “I can tell by the look on your face that you’re hurting.”

I shook my head. I
did
want to tell him, I wanted to blurt it out and be free of the dreadful pressure of this secret, but I couldn’t. Instead, I dialed Andy’s phone again. Got voice mail.

In the background, as distant as another world, the click of Greg’s strobe sounded like the dry scrape of claws on cement.

“All right, but there’s something you’re torn up with guilt about. Something to do with Toland. What is it?”

Prieto was maneuvering me into talking, and he was frighteningly good at it. I could see now why he was such an excellent detective; he had a calm, gentle manner toward suspects, one that made me want to confide in him. Unburden myself and relieve the boiling internal pressure.

I sucked in a deep breath, turned, and walked away toward the street. I’d dismissed the cab, and now I was sorry I had; I’d expected that Prieto would offer a ride back home, or have one of the uniformed officers do it, but the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a car with him now. I was frighteningly fragile, and he’d know just where to push to collapse my thin, wavering wall of resistance.

“Holly Anne,” he said from behind—closer than I thought he should be. “Is he off looking for the killer? Because that’s not his job. That’s mine. You have to tell me what you know. He could be in a lot of danger if he goes off and tangles with this cold bastard.”

Good.
That came bubbling up from the black, angry depths of my soul, and I tried to push that down, tried to excuse it as temper. “He’ll be fine,” I said. “He’s strong.” God, I was so disappointed in him now. And angry. And frustrated.

And then I felt it.

My stride faltered a little, as if I’d hit an unexpectedly soft patch of ground, but it wasn’t a physical blow, it was a feeling that swept over me, like a stinging black rain.

Weakness. Disconnection.
Loss.

I knew that feeling, I’d been dreading it all this time, every day, every hour. It was the other shoe dropping.

It was Andy Toland losing his iron-hard grip on life and sliding back into the darkness from which he’d come.

I stopped and wrapped my arms around my stomach, shocked by the depth of the desperation ripping through me.
No, no, no …
I wasn’t sure if it was me feeling that, or Andy, or both of us, a tangled knot of despair and pain and anguish.
Oh, mercy, please …

“You all right?” Prieto touched my shoulder, but I couldn’t respond. I panted for breath, and there were tears shimmering in my eyes. Bright, harsh tears that bent the light and broke it into twisting black shadows. Death was coming.

Death was
here
. I was losing him, and I didn’t know why, or how, or how to stop it.

I heard an engine roaring, and looked up to see a car round the corner and pull into the parking area, skidding and sliding in a greasy veil of smoke. My car. A shadow behind the wheel. Before the momentum was burned away, the driver’s side door snapped open, and a body tumbled out in a loose-limbed heap.

Andy.

He rolled over on his back, gasping, arching in the struggle to resist the touch of the darkness that was welling up inside. I could feel it drenching his cells, drowning the life out of him.

I wasn’t even aware of falling on my knees beside him on the cracked surface, but the touch of his skin was the most real thing in the world to me. “Andy—Andy, no…”

He grabbed for my hand and squeezed it tight. His eyes were wide and blank with concentration. I could see that the whites of his eyes were coloring over with blackness. Death was coming, and coming fast.

“Found the resurrection witch. He’s dead,” he gasped out. “Holly, Holly, I damn sure didn’t mean for this to happen. I never meant to cause suffering. You believe that?”

“I do,” I said. It was hard for me to see his expression now, through the bright veil of my tears. “You made the shells. You didn’t know what they’d be used for.”

“Should have,” he whispered. “Should have fucking well known. I killed that witch, but he gave up his black-hearted son of a bitch boss first. Gave him up and he’s here, Holly, he’s right here with you, and I had to make it back to you, I had to…”

I didn’t know what that meant. I looked over my shoulder; Prieto stood nearby, watching us with a confused expression. His cell phone was in his hand, but I could see that he didn’t know who he could call for help. Not for this. “He dying?” Prieto asked.

I was afraid to tell him, but there was no doubt of it, not now. I could sense the relentless tide of it growing inside him. “
No,
Andy, stay with me,” I begged. “God,
please
, stay with me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I doubted you…”

“Holly, listen,” he said. His voice was faint, but there was a note of urgency in it, a raw edge of insistence. “
He’s right here.
”

Prieto.
No.
I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t, but I turned to look at him. He frowned back. He hadn’t heard what Andy had said. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would he call us in, why would he if he knew—”

“Not him!” Andy forced the words out, and squeezed my hands so hard I felt bones shift. “
Other one.
”

The blue car.

Greg.

I didn’t register the sound of the gunshot immediately; it took a long, confused second to penetrate as anything but a sharp, alien noise. By then Prieto was falling, the cell phone dropping to shatter on the pavement before he did. Half of his face was gone in a red ruin of bone and blood and brain, and, for a numbed instant, I thought his head had actually exploded in some kind of freak accident …

And then I realized that someone had shot him, as a bullet ricocheted off the door of the car and dug a raw gouge in the pavement not a foot away from me.

I screamed and ducked. Andy tried get up, to put himself in front of me because that was who he was, what he had always been.

I’d given up on him. I’d let myself doubt, and doubt had set him adrift just when he needed me most. And still he’d fought his way back out of the dark to come here. To warn me.

I wrenched open the back door of my car, and there, in the back floorboards, were two bags. Andy’s, and mine. I threw myself inside and grabbed both. I thumped Andy’s down on the pavement next to him.