by King, R. L.
“Let’s back up,” Stone said in a monotone. He noticed Edna had an arm wrapped around Suzanne’s shuddering shoulders, and was attempting to get her to her feet.
Jason mouthed, “She dead?”
Stone nodded. “Come on, Suzanne,” he said. “Let’s go—the police will be here soon.” It was hard to keep his voice soothing in the face of yet another senseless death, but sometimes this job didn’t give you the easy stuff. He put his hand on her other shoulder and helped Edna get her up. She allowed the two of them to lead her back out to the street.
The houses out here were far enough apart that no one had come running in response to the scream; the four of them stood there next to Jason’s car until Lopez returned from his truck.
A couple minutes later, sirens could be heard in the distance. Shortly after that, two squad cars and an unmarked white sedan pulled up and parked behind Jason’s and Lopez’s vehicles.
Peter Casner got out of the white sedan. When he saw Lopez standing with Stone and Jason, he strode over. He looked pissed. “What the hell’s going on, Stan?”
Stone spoke: “Check the house, Lieutenant,” he said softly, nodding toward it. “We didn’t go inside—just looked through the window.”
Casner glared at him, but turned to his officers and ordered them to check out the house. Then he addressed the group. “You people just stay right here. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll get to you in a minute.” He hurried off after the uniformed officers.
Suzanne, still sobbing, watched them go. “She—she’s got a husband—kids—”
“I’m so sorry,” Stone murmured.
“This is my fault. If I hadn’t—”
“Shh...It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause this.”
“What am I going to tell the police?” she whispered.
Stone thought about that. On the one hand, Suzanne clearly wasn’t the type who’d be adept at lying, so asking her to do that, morality aside, would probably end up getting them all in trouble if she broke down and spilled everything—even more so if she let slip that Stone had told her to lie. Given his current reputation with Casner, that would probably be enough to get him tossed back in a cell again, if for no other charge than “obstructing justice.”
On the other hand, though, if she did tell Casner about everything they’d discussed, including the Sisterhood, the security tape, and the magical tome, he might feel duty-bound to investigate. And having an avowed skeptic like Casner acting as the Sisterhood’s first contact point to what was going on could be disastrous. Choosing his words with care, he said, “I can’t tell you what to say, Mrs. Washburn. But I can tell you this: Lieutenant Casner and his officers are doing the best job they can trying to find what’s behind these murders—but they won’t be able to do it. Literally the only thing he can do if he knows all the details of what’s going on is make things worse, and probably get others killed if he gets in the way of what we’re trying to do.” He indicated Lopez, Jason, and Edna.
“So—you want me to lie to the police?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. But if you believe me—if you want us to have a chance at ending this before more people are killed—I would try to avoid telling him about the Sisterhood, or the book you gave me. Or that security tape. I doubt he’ll ask you about it. If he asks about why I was talking to you, tell him that my investigation led me to you because of your occult interests. That’s actually the truth, though obviously not the entire truth. Do you think you can do that, Mrs. Washburn?”
She struggled not to start crying again. Her elegant makeup had run to the point where she looked like a well-coiffed raccoon. She met Stone’s gaze. “Yes,” she whispered. “I think so.”
He patted her shoulder. “Thank you. As soon as they let us go here, please try to contact the others. I’ll be wanting to talk to them now more than ever.”
“Do you think they’re in danger, too?”
“I’ve no way to know that,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s possible that the spirit is confined to this area. It seems to be heavily associated with Ojai, so if we’re lucky, it will stay here. If we’re not—” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Casner was coming back over. He pointed at Lopez and then at Stone, then made a sharp ‘get over here’ gesture. His expression was carved from rock.
When the two of them drew close, he said without preamble, “How did you know?”
Lopez spoke first. “Dr. Stone wanted to talk to Mrs. Washburn. He’d met her before at the Third Eye downtown—you know, the witchy shop. He’s still checking into local legends and stories, and he thought she might know some.”
“What’s that got to do with our vic?” he asked, pointing toward the house.
“They were friends. Mrs. Washburn was worried about her, with the murders and all. When she couldn’t reach her on the phone, she asked us to come over here with her to check, in case anybody dangerous was around.”
Casner’s eyes narrowed and he focused on Stone. “Just won’t leave it alone, will you, Stone?”
Stone shook his head, not flinching in the slightest before Casner’s obvious attempt at intimidation. When you’d nearly been ripped to shreds by a five-hundred-pound bear driven by an ancient psychopathic vengeance spirit less than two days ago, a grumpy detective lieutenant no longer even rated on the scale. “I can’t, Lieutenant. I won’t impede your investigation, and I won’t interfere with your crime scenes. I’ll even help when I can—just as I’m doing now. But don’t ask me to stop. This is too big and too potentially deadly for me to do that.”
Casner glared at him. “I said it before and I’m saying it again: if you know something you’re not telling me, you’d better start talking. Because even if I can’t get you for murder, withholding information from the police is a crime, too. Don’t think I won’t haul your ass in again in a heartbeat if I think that’s what you’re doing. I’ve got too damn much going on here and too many people getting killed to put up with you and your mystical bullshit.”
By now a small crowd had gathered, drawn by the police cruisers outside Karen Blanco’s house. Stone dropped his voice so only Casner and Lopez could hear him. His eyes were every bit as cold as Casner’s. “Lieutenant, I tried to tell you before. Remember, at the Ayala house? I tried to help you. I told you what I knew. You didn’t believe me. Tell me—did your men find any evidence of any other people inside that house? Did you talk to the little girl, Olivia? What did she tell you?”
Casner looked like he was gearing up to blow his top at Stone, but he took a moment to get control of himself, let out a long, frustrated breath, and said instead, “Screw it. I just want the world to make fucking sense again.”
“What did she tell you, Lieutenant?” Stone asked again, softly.
“She said that she walked in on her family hacking each other up with knives.” he said in a monotone. “That’s what that little eight-year-old girl told us. And we can’t find one fucking bit of evidence that shows she was wrong.”
Suddenly he looked very tired, almost visibly deflating. He glanced over at where more cruisers and a crime-scene van were arriving, and three police officers were herding the crowd back across the street and away from the area. When he spoke again, he addressed Lopez. “Stan, I’m in way over my damn head here. We all are. None of this is making a fucking bit of sense. We’re doing everything right—and God knows that’s getting hard to do, since we’re strapped to the wall with all these murders to process, and nothing’s coming up like it’s supposed to.”
Lopez nodded, sympathetic but steady. “Pete, I’m telling you. You know me. You know I’m not about woo and fairy dust. I know it sounds insane, and I know your cop’s brain doesn’t want to accept anything you can’t prove. I get that. I didn’t either. But I’m telling you—as a colleague and an old friend—let Dr. Stone keep on doing what he’s doing. I’ve seen
him work, man. You can’t do what he does, just like he can’t do what we do. If we work together, we might just get through this without too many more people ending up dead.”
A shadow of the old fire flashed in Casner’s eyes. “What do you want me to do, Stan, make him an official consultant? You want me to put a professor of the occult on the payroll?”
“If that’s what it takes, then yeah,” Lopez said, crossing his arms.
“Do you realize what the press would do with that?” he snapped. “They’d rip us to shreds. The whole department would be laughingstocks. We wouldn’t be able to do our jobs!”
Stone nodded. “Lieutenant, I understand. I’m not asking for any sort of official relationship; in fact, that would be as detrimental to me as it would be to you. All I need is for you to stop getting in my way. Stop making me have to concern myself with looking over my shoulder to make sure you’re not hovering there, waiting to pack me back off to jail because you think I’m somehow involved in these murders.” His icy gaze bored into Casner’s. “Because I’ll tell you this, Lieutenant: if it were me who was committing them, then doesn’t that tell you something? You have no evidence. I have alibis for most of them, assuming you don’t think Sergeant Lopez is in league with me. So if I’m committing them, then you’ll never be able to stop me. But I’m not. I don’t want to kill anyone. All I’m interested in is the same thing you are: stopping this, preferably before anyone else is killed.”
He took a couple centering breaths, realizing that his voice had risen in volume. When he spoke again, his tone was quiet, even, and implacable. “Just as Sergeant Lopez said: you can’t do what I do. You won’t pursue the same leads that I will, because you won’t know they exist. I won’t be in your way. Please, if you want this to end—stay out of mine.”
Casner was silent for a long time. His gaze flicked from Stone to Lopez, to Jason and Edna, to the house where Karen Blanco had impaled herself upon her own sculpture. When he spoke at last, he sounded like the words were being pulled from him with great reluctance, like a surrender. “I don’t know what else I can do. Fine, Dr. Stone. You do your thing. If anybody gives you trouble, tell them to call me. I’m not going to condone what you’re doing—whatever the hell it even is—but I won’t stop you. But do not get in the way of official investigations. Go pursue whatever cockamamie supernatural leads you think might help, as long as Stan thinks you’re accomplishing something. I’ve got no fucking idea what’s going on, but Stan and I go way back, and I trust him not to have lost his mind. Don’t make me regret it.”
“You won’t regret it, Lieutenant,” Stone said softly.
Casner glanced over at the house. “Right now, though, I’ve got another crime scene to examine. So unless you’ve got anything useful to contribute, I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of here and take your goddamn Scooby gang with you.”
Chapter Forty-One
They drove back to Suzanne’s house in silence. She hadn’t wanted to go with them, guilt-ridden and reluctant to leave her old friend, but Stone had gently convinced her that she would honor Karen’s memory more by doing what she could to help them stop her killer.
“What are you going to do next?” she asked as they all trooped into her large living room. Her voice sounded bleak, heartbroken.
“We need to contact the others,” Stone said. He’d introduced Jason to her, and she already knew Edna in passing from seeing her around town.
“Debbie and Carly,” Suzanne said. “You said you’d already called Michiko?”
“Yes, but I’ll want to call her again as well,” Stone said. “After—what’s happened, I want to make sure she’s all right. If she is, then that will add to my theory that the spirit is operating in Ojai.” He paused. “Which one did you say was the latecomer to the group? The one who wanted to do the curse?”
“Carly,” Suzanne said. “Carly Rosales.”
“And she’s where, now?”
“Santa Maria, I think,” she said. “That’s up a little south of San Luis Obispo.”
Stone nodded. “All right, then. What I’d like to do is call Debbie and Michiko, but not tell Debbie anything about this yet. Let’s just do a welfare check on them—make sure they haven’t experienced anything odd in the last day or two. But I want to focus on Carly first.”
“Why? Because of the curse?”
“Partly. But mostly because it seems that things started to happen after she joined you. If you were doing these rituals since junior high school, but the spirit didn’t appear until after she joined, that suggests that she might have been the catalyst.”
“That, and the fact that the kid she wanted to put the curse on almost ended up as one of the victims,” Lopez added. “Don’t forget that.”
“Good point,” Stone said. “I should be taking notes.” He turned back to Suzanne. “Tell me about Carly if you could, please.” He kept his voice gentle; as focused as he was on moving his investigation along as quickly as possible to avoid further bloodshed, he reminded himself that this woman had just lost one of her lifelong friends in a particularly horrifying way. He could afford to do what he could to make his questions as easy as possible on her.
She dabbed at her mascara-streaked eyes with a tissue and made a little shrug. “She was always—different from the rest of us. Debbie and Michiko and Karen and I—we all came from nice homes. My parents were wealthy, and so were Michiko’s, at least before her father died, but even after that they did all right. Debbie and Karen were typical middle-class suburban girls. Carly, though—I think I told you she was more of a ‘wrong side of the tracks’ type.”
“How so?” Stone asked.
She shrugged again. “She came from a poorer part of town—lived in an apartment with her single mom. It seemed like she got in trouble a lot: you know, talking back to teachers, running with a crowd that was always in detention, that kind of thing. But she wasn’t mean or anything. Everybody liked her fine. I think we kind of envied her a little, since she got away with things we’d never be brave enough to try.”
Stone leaned forward. “And she asked if she could join your group?”
Suzanne nodded. “She—overheard us one day when we were planning our next ritual at lunchtime in the cafeteria. After school, she came up to me and asked about it. I remember thinking she was being sarcastic, making fun of us. I was kind of mortified that she’d heard. But she seemed sincere—she said she was interested in the supernatural and ghosts and witches, and told me some things to prove it. So I talked to the others, and we all agreed to invite her to the meeting.”
“And how did that go?”
“Fine. She fit in with us like she’d always been there. I think we all sort of realized that the reason she was so wild is that she didn’t really know what she wanted to do with herself. We figured if we were nice to her, got to be friends with her, she’d calm down.”
“Did that happen?”
“Mostly. She still went out with the wrong kinds of boys, and stayed out too late. But her grades got better and she got fewer detentions. She even went to college for a while, though I don’t think that worked out for her.”
“You didn’t talk about it when she was here recently?”
“No, we thought it was none of our business. We wanted to keep everything positive and upbeat. She did seem—distracted, though. Kind of out of sorts. We tried to be especially kind to her. But I think we were all a little glad to say goodbye. You know what they say: ‘you can’t go home again.’ I think we’d decided that we wouldn’t try getting the Sisterhood together again at the next reunion. Some things just need to come to an end, you know?”
Stone nodded. “I understand. Could you call them for us now, Mrs. Washburn? Remember—don’t say anything to Debbie, and as little as possible to Michiko. And ask Carly if she’d be willing to talk to me.”
“All right,” she said, wiping her eyes aga
in. She got up and went off toward the kitchen. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
After she was gone, Jason gestured toward where she’d headed. “She gonna be okay?”
Stone nodded. “I put a shield on her mind earlier.” He settled back on the comfortable, overstuffed couch, closed his eyes, and let his breath out, allowing himself to rest for at least a short while. The constant adrenaline rollercoaster, coupled with his recent injuries, loss of blood, and near-nonstop mental stress, were all doing a number on his body. Usually, in constant motion, he wouldn’t allow himself to notice it; however, any time he settled down to rest it all came crashing back, threatening to submerge him into a sleep that would last for days. He couldn’t afford that. Not yet.
“So, you think this Carly is ‘she of my masters’ blood’?” Lopez asked.
Stone nodded without opening his eyes. “It makes sense. And I’d bet a lot of money she’s got magical talent, even if she doesn’t realize it.”
“So if we can talk to her, maybe you can figure out how to set up a ritual to send Faces back?” Jason asked.
Edna snorted. “You’ve got them all trained, don’t you, Stone?”
Stone cracked his eyes open. “Hmm?”
“You’ve got them all talking about ‘power’ and using it to force things. How many times do I have to tell you: that isn’t going to get you anywhere this time.”
“I’m not sure you’re right about that, Edna,” he murmured, trying to kick his brain back into gear again. It was getting harder to do. “Let’s talk to this Carly, and see if my theory is correct. If it is, then we’ll go from there.”
“Dr. Stone?”
Suzanne’s voice held an odd note. Stone sat up quickly to see her standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “What is it, Mrs. Washburn?”
“I think we have a problem.”
He froze. “It’s got Carly?”
“No, no,” she said hastily, holding up her hands. “Not that—thing. But it is about Carly.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “She won’t talk to me. She won’t talk to you. She says she wants nothing to do with any of us anymore.” Another pause. “I think she was very drunk. Or worse.”
