by King, R. L.
He hadn’t loved Lindsey Cole: of course he hadn’t. They’d only known each other for two days, whatever nascent relationship that might have been had barely grown into the initial stages of playful flirting and raw physical attraction. Could it have evolved into more? He had no idea. If history were any indication, odds were good that it would either have ended when he returned to Palo Alto, or else she’d have gotten a taste of the freak show that was his life and politely exited, stage left. That was the way it always happened. He was used to it. He didn’t like it, but he was used to it.
But damn it, she hadn’t even gotten the chance.
Someone—something—had killed her in cold blood. Or worse, so much worse: forced her to kill herself. What had she felt? If that was how it ended, had some part of her been conscious? Had the thing left her body once she’d moved past the point of no return? Had she bled out the last of her life in cold, unknowing terror?
All of it had been his fault.
Whatever this thing was, it wanted him. It had taken hold of Lindsey the first time to tell him so, after its attempt to murder him had failed. And if it wanted him, that meant anyone he was close to represented a potential avenue to get to him. If he hadn’t succumbed to his baser instincts and asked her out, she’d be safe now, sitting in her office or driving her car around Ojai showing high-end houses to wealthy clients.
Instead, her body lay on a slab in a morgue somewhere. His mind’s eye helpfully served up a full-color snapshot of what that might have looked like: her face bone-white, her lips cold, a Y-shaped line of rough stitching running from her chest down her abdomen—
Stop it. That isn’t helping.
He knew it wasn’t helping, but when did that ever matter? He couldn’t stop it. For all his vaunted willpower and formidable mental strength, he was powerless to halt the images. He drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, his whole body shaking. He didn’t cry—he wished he could, but his body stubbornly refused to cooperate. Eventually, his exhaustion finally catching up to him, he dropped off to uneasy sleep.
“Dr. Stone?”
Stone stirred.
A light knock on the bars. “Dr. Stone, you awake?”
He rolled over, wincing as every muscle and bone in his body protested against the thin mattress and the uncomfortable position. What time was it? How long had he been asleep? Slowly, he sat up.
Stan Lopez stood outside the cell. He wasn’t wearing his police uniform; instead he wore faded jeans, battered brown cowboy boots, and a plaid shirt over a T-shirt advertising a recent interdepartmental chili cook-off.
Stone blinked. “Sergeant?” Jason’s old friend was the last person he expected to see.
Lopez nodded. “Yeah, they said I could come talk to you for a few minutes. Privileges of knowing people around here, you know? Only if you want to, though.”
For a moment, Stone didn’t answer as he waited for his brain to emerge from its stupor. He sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over with his elbows braced on his knees.
“You okay?” Lopez asked.
Stone rolled his head back and forth. “No. I don’t think I am.” His gaze came up. “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”
“I just wanted to come by and see you,” he said. “When I heard they were holding you for murder, I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t.”
“I didn’t do it,” he said, staring back down at his hands. He rubbed his eyes, trailing his hand along his stubbled jawline. “I didn’t kill her. But it seems they think I did, and it seems that the initial evidence supports their belief.”
“I won’t ask you about what happened,” Lopez said. “I’m still a cop, and they can use whatever you’d tell me. Why didn’t you get a lawyer?”
Stone shrugged without looking up.
“You really should, you know. This is a big deal, even if you didn’t do it.”
Stone didn’t answer.
Lopez let out a sigh. “Okay. You do what you want. But like I said, I wanted to see you. Jason talks about you a lot—says you’re a good guy and a good friend. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help you out—anything you need, that kind of thing.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate your kindness.” Still, Stone didn’t look up, and his voice was flat.
Lopez regarded him for a few moments. “Listen. I know this is hard on you. But lemme give you some advice, if I can.”
Stone raised one hand in a ‘go on’ gesture.
“Fight,” he said firmly. “If you didn’t do it, fight it. Get yourself a lawyer. Work on remembering everything that you can about what happened. Try to remember if anybody saw you that night. Casner says they haven’t charged you yet—they’re still trying to decide if they have enough evidence to do it. Help them. He’s a straight-up guy—I’ve known him a long time. He’ll be fair, but he’s gonna need something to go on.”
Stone looked up and met his eyes. “You believe me, then?”
“Yeah, I do. Maybe I’m a damn fool, but I know Jason. He wouldn’t think that highly of a guy who could stab a woman in the chest with a letter opener.” He sighed again. “I’ve been in this business long enough to learn a few things, Dr. Stone. I’m pretty good at reading people, and I’m pretty good at looking at the way somebody acts and being able to tell if they’re capable of that kind of thing.”
“You barely know me, Sergeant.”
“Yeah, but Jason does. And besides that, just talking to you, you don’t strike me as a fit-of-passion kind of guy. Jason, yeah, maybe. You, no.”
Stone nodded. “Has there been any news on Jason?”
“No.” Lopez’s tone was as flat as Stone’s. “No sign of him.”
That didn’t surprise him, of course. And being stuck in here, he wasn’t getting a damned thing done toward finding out where Jason was.
“So, anyway,” Lopez said, “I’d better get going. But if I can help you, let me know. I know some good lawyers around here. I can hook you up if you want.”
“Thank, you, Sergeant. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Time, Stone discovered, passed very slowly when you were confined to a small cell with nothing to occupy your mind but your own traitorous thoughts. When he was awake, he couldn’t concentrate enough to think through the events of the past couple of days; mostly he dozed, his disjointed dreams haunted by a procession of bloody corpses: Lindsey’s, Jason’s, Verity’s.
When Casner came in and called his name, he didn’t even get up. He just lay there and watched the cop with dulled eyes, wondering what new bit of damning evidence the mysterious entity had managed to plant against him.
“Dr. Stone, you’ll want to hear this,” Casner said as he opened the cell door.
Stone sat up. “What is it now?”
“Please come with me.”
He did as he was told, once again without protest or question. Casner took him into the interrogation room and motioned for him to sit down. When he did so, the detective opened his folder.
“We found the puncture in the mattress,” he said. “It was right where you said it would be. But—this is, if you don’t mind my saying so, Dr. Stone, the weirdest thing I’ve seen in all the years I’ve been on the force. I can’t even begin to explain it.”
Stone gave him a questioning look but otherwise remained silent.
“It seems a witness has turned up. Ms. Cole’s next-door neighbor has a houseguest.”
“A—witness? To what?” Could someone have seen the murder? Or—seen Lindsey Cole forced to kill herself?
“To you, Dr. Stone. Leaving.” He glanced down at his papers. “The witness says he was on the front porch of the house across the street, having a cigarette because his host won’t let him smoke inside the residence. He didn’t come forward until now because he’d gotten up very early that morning and spent the day in Ve
ntura surfing. He hadn’t heard the news.”
Stone stared at him. “What—does this mean?”
“He says he saw a tall, thin man in a long coat come out of the house, get into a dark-colored BMW sedan parked in Ms. Cole’s driveway, and drive off at about 2:15 a.m.”
Stone nodded. “That was about when I left,” he said, raising up a bit from his slump. He wouldn’t allow himself to hope—not yet. “But that doesn’t prove that I didn’t kill her, does it?”
“Not on its own, no. But when combined with one other thing the witness stated and the ME’s declaration of time of death—” He pulled out another paper. “The witness states that after the car left, he remained on the porch finishing his cigarette for about five more minutes. In this time, he saw the door to Ms. Cole’s house open, and a female figure in a robe appeared there. He says she stood there for a few seconds, then went back inside. Her porch light was on, so the witness got a good look at her. He IDed Lindsey Cole as the woman he saw.”
Stone bowed his head. If this story was true, then Lindsey had come out right after he’d gone—perhaps to call him back inside? Now, he’d never know. But— “So...that proves she was alive when I left,” he said softly.
Casner nodded. “That’s correct. And after examining Ms. Cole’s body, the ME has placed the time of death at some time between three and four a.m.”
“Well after I left.”
“Yes.” Casner took a deep breath. “It appears, Dr. Stone, that your story holds up.”
“So—you’re satisfied that I didn’t kill Ms. Cole? You aren’t going to charge me with her murder?”
“We’re not going to charge you,” Casner said.
Stone took a deep breath, rubbing at his forehead. “And you don’t think that I might have returned to her house later?”
“I might think that, except for two other bits of evidence we found. And one of them is where that weirdness that I mentioned comes in.”
“Go on...” Stone said softly.
“First, we examined the scene, and found nothing to suggest that you killed her. Wounds like that bleed a lot, but there was no sign of anyone tracking blood across the carpeting, no sign of blood on your clothes—in fact, aside from the immediate area around Ms. Cole’s body, we found no blood at all.” Casner paused. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, Dr. Stone. But when we examined the murder weapon, we did find your prints—but they were mostly obscured. By Ms. Cole’s own.”
And this is where it begins, Stone thought. “And this implies—”
“It implies that she touched the weapon after you did. And—” He looked down at his papers. Stone noticed that his breathing picked up a bit. He blew air through his teeth and met Stone’s gaze. “As I said, I shouldn’t be telling you this. I told you that my gut told me you didn’t kill her before, and now I’m sure of it. I could get in a lot of trouble for sharing this information, so I hope you’ll use your discretion.”
“Of course,” Stone said, leaning forward. He could see the effect this was having on Casner—something was seriously spooking the man. “You have my word, for whatever you might think that’s worth.”
For almost a full minute Casner was silent, his eyes on the papers in his folder. Then he looked up and spoke in a rush. “My guys examined the crime-scene photos and the weapon, Dr. Stone, and checked them against the ME’s initial autopsy report. Lindsey Cole’s cause of death was that letter opener, driven directly into her heart.”
Stone frowned. “I’m not sure I see—”
“Let me put it to you this way,” Casner said. “Unless she was unconscious when it was done, and there’s no indication that she was, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to cleanly hit her heart in one shot. We’d expect to find multiple stab wounds, or the blade being diverted by the ribs, or a chip out of the nearest rib. No one conscious would simply sit still and allow such a thing without defending themselves, or at least flinching.”
He stared at Stone, and there was something odd and disturbed in his eyes. “Dr. Stone—I was being a smartass when I asked you about it, but—unthinkable as it might be, all the evidence points to Ms. Cole stabbing herself.”
Chapter Sixteen
Two hours later, Stone sat in the chair in the living room of his rented house, gazing out the window into the street without seeing it. It was past five now; he hadn’t eaten anything since dinner with Lindsey last night, and he didn’t give a damn. The last thing on his mind right now was food. Alcohol maybe, and it was a good thing he didn’t have any in the house, but not food. The best he’d managed was to shower, shave, and change into different clothes; that was mostly because he wanted to distance himself from last night and his day in custody as much as possible.
It wasn’t working very well.
Casner had released him an hour ago, after having him sign a series of forms and extracting his promise that he would remain reachable if necessary. He walked out of the station as if in a dream, still unshaven and rumple-haired in his old jeans and faded black T-shirt. He didn’t care about that either. He felt the cops’ gazes on him as he left, sure that most of them still believed he’d been responsible for Lindsey’s murder and thought Casner was insane for cutting him loose.
And why shouldn’t they? The alternatives—that someone had broken into her home and murdered her after he left, or that she’d killed herself in some nigh-inconceivable way—were hardly as attractive as “jilted foreign lover snaps after being rejected.” That was the kind of soap opera storyline small towns thrived on.
On an end table next to Stone’s chair was a copy of the local paper. The headline across the front read Local Realtor murdered in her home. He’d forced himself to read the whole story carefully: his name was not mentioned, which was one tiny bit of this whole nightmarish affair that had gone in his favor. All it said was that the police were “questioning a person of interest” in the case, and that they hoped to make an arrest soon.
He sighed. Of course, it was the nature of small towns that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t mentioned in the article: everybody in town probably already knew the “person of interest” was the odd British visitor who’d been spotted around town over the past couple of days. And that, in turn, meant any anonymity he hoped to maintain while continuing his search for Jason had just gone right out the window. He could use his disregarding spell, of course, but he couldn’t keep it going constantly, and it was less useful in any kind of crowd. He was sure that by now anyone who cared to do so had made the connection between the victim of the attempted strangling at Bart’s yesterday (there was an article about that, too—Lindsey’s murder had pushed it to a small area below the fold—and in that one he was mentioned by name) and the person of interest in Lindsey’s murder case.
Hell, small-town busybodies were resourceful enough that Stone didn’t doubt that some subset of them had already made the connection between those and the person who’d found the second victim of the town’s other murderer.
This wasn’t going to make anything easy.
And even worse than all of this was the chilling realization his oh-so-helpful brain had chosen to share with him while he was in the middle of shaving, nearly causing him to take a slice out of his jaw: he’d gotten very, very lucky. When he realized just how lucky, he’d actually felt faint and had to sit down on the edge of the bathtub for a moment to get his bearings.
There had been a witness to support his story. Someone who’d stated they’d seen him leaving Lindsey’s house, and seen her alive after he’d left.
Whatever had taken over Lindsey had proven it could switch bodies with careless disregard. What if the thing had decided to take temporary residence inside the neighbor, and instead of telling the truth about what had happened, had told the police that he’d heard yelling and screams coming from inside Lindsey’s house? Or that Stone hadn’t left until much later?
Now, sitting in the chair looking at nothing, Stone continued pondering the implications of an opponent that could be anyone, and, unlike the Evil, wasn’t confined to a single body. Sure, he could look for the aura. He’d have to get into the habit of doing that nearly constantly, even though maintaining his magical senses for such prolonged periods would take its toll on his endurance. That couldn’t be helped. But he couldn’t keep an eye on everyone who might call the police with lies about him, or speak to reporters, or even be reporters writing stories that did name names.
As Jason was fond of saying: Holy crap.
For a moment, a few seconds, Stone thought about simply calling it a day. Packing up and heading home, retaining a high-priced lawyer to deal with any leftover fallout, and just lying low until it all blew over. He could do that: he doubted that the powers that be at Stanford would sack him for anything that had happened thus far, and his students weren’t likely to read any tiny articles about the situation that might find their way onto the back pages of the Bay Area newspapers.
Yeah, that would have been the easy thing to do.
But that left Jason still missing.
And it left a murderer running loose in this little town. One the mundane police had no hope of catching or stopping. If he left now, he was condemning an unknown number of people to death until the thing decided it had enough.
In Stone’s experience, things like this rarely decided that they’d had enough. Usually, if something nasty from another dimension wanted revenge on a single person (perhaps someone who’d been audacious enough to summon it or attempt to enslave it) and it got the chance to achieve it, it would kill that person—often in some spectacularly messy way—and then depart back to its home plane.
If this one was killing multiple people, that probably meant it was more of an indiscriminate type that craved death for whatever reason: either because it somehow fed on the released energy, or because it simply liked killing. Either way, Stone had a pretty good idea there wasn’t anyone else here who’d even gotten as far along the string of clues as he had, let alone who was powerful enough to have a chance of banishing or destroying it.
