The Soul Hunter

by Melanie Wells

  It did dawn on me briefly that I could be jumping to a conclusion. Perhaps John had been connected to the murder, but had not actually committed it. It was possible he had witnessed it, I decided. But if so, why hadn’t he come forward? What motivation would he have to keep silent?

  I got up, put on my bathrobe and fluffy slippers, and let Melissa out of her hutch. It was three thirty—time to get up anyway. I’d surely hear from Peter Terry soon, with all the activity going on. He loves this kind of stuff.

  I paced the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea, pausing to stare at Drew’s photo on the refrigerator as I reached for a carton of milk.

  “What’s the answer?” I said out loud.

  She looked back at me silently, her eight-year-old self freckled and wan, with her shaggy hairdo and her crooked smile.

  I dug through my notebooks until I found Brigid’s photo and stuck it on the refrigerator next to Drew’s. The daughter was an unblemished, more confident version of the mother, a version of woman that I suspected Brigid had never been and could never hope to be. Perhaps Drew’s anger, rooted in that free-spirited third-grader, had saved her, ultimately, from the strange, half-truth fate Brigid seemed to have found, lying to herself and anyone who would pay her to tell them what they wanted to hear. Drew had a hard life, but she had lived it on her terms. Defiant until the end. Small consolation.

  I shut the refrigerator and squinted at the photos. The water began to boil on the other side of the kitchen. I tuned out the whistle of the kettle and focused on the pictures.

  Drew’s eyes were green, her hair a messy black fringe of neglect over eyes that seemed somehow aware of her destiny. She was the lost girl, collar askew, hating every moment of being photographed. Submitting to it out of…what? Not fear, certainly Condescension, perhaps. Had she known that there was no winning? Had the odds, stacked so ominously against her, somehow impressed her, even in that tender, ignorant moment before it all came slamming down around her feet?

  Melissa scratched at my ankle urgently, as if to nudge me toward the stove to quiet the kettle, which was screaming now for attention.

  My feet stayed rooted by the refrigerator door, my eyes locked on to Drew Sturdivant’s.

  “What’s the answer?” I asked again.

  As my eyes moved back to Brigid’s photo, the steam popped the top off the kettle and the whistle fell silent. I walked across the kitchen, turned off the stove, and poured the boiling water into the sink. I picked Melissa up and tucked her into her hutch with some raw, organic carrots, got dressed, and grabbed my keys.

  If I hurried, I could make it to Shreveport by sunrise.

  35

  Brigid was clearly not a morning person. Normally, I find this to be a reassuring quality in the people I meet. I do not trust morning people. They are far too enthusiastic for me. But after several minutes of standing in the cold on Brigid’s doorstep, pounding on her door with a blue fist, I was ready to make an exception. At least in the dead middle of winter on a frigid Saturday as the sun was rising.

  Someone chained the door from the inside. It budged, an inch, and a woman with blowsy white hair with black roots fixed a groggy eye on me.

  I tried to look respectable. “Hi. I’m Dylan Foster.”

  She slammed the door.

  I knocked again.

  “Go away!” she shouted.

  “Not until you talk to me.”

  “I’ll call the police!”

  “Aw, come on, Brigid! I came all this way.”

  “I’m dialing!”

  “I’ll tell them about the car accidents on Stringer Road.”

  She cracked the door again. I found myself staring at that same eye, nowhere near groggy now.

  “I had nothing to do with those car accidents on Stringer Road. You cannot pin that on me, young lady.”

  “Yes, but you know who did.”

  She squinted at me. “You get off my porch or I will call the police.” She said police like two words. Pole-lease.

  “I’m not going until you talk to me. I just need five minutes.”

  “You get off my porch. I’m not going to say it again.”

  “Brigid, your daughter is dead. Are you going to talk to me or what?”

  “I’ve got nothing to do with that.”

  She slammed the door again.

  I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and dialed Brigid’s number. I could hear the phone ringing inside the house.

  “I am not answering that!” she shouted through the door.

  “I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “Five minutes, Brigid. That’s all I want. I drove all this way. Please.”

  I heard some stomping around, a loud and somewhat alarming metallic click, and then she flung the door open. Brigid was standing there in her bathrobe, pointing a shotgun at me.

  I jumped back and stuck my hands in the air. “Brigid, calm down. I just want to have a conversation.”

  “You get off my porch and get in that ugly truck of yours and go right back where you came from.”

  I smiled stiffly. “No need to insult the truck,” I said, hoping the levity would settle her down, which it did not.

  I squared my shoulders and tried to act like I wasn’t intimidated by the double-barrel 12-gauge that had been shoved in my face. Though truthfully I couldn’t be positive that I hadn’t just peed in my pants.

  “Five minutes. And then I’ll leave.”

  “No.”

  “I need to know about Peter Terry.”

  I thought I saw a flinch, but she kept her voice steady. “I never heard of Peter Terry.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She lowered the gun and glared at me. “You tell me why I should talk to you.”

  “I’m trying to find out who killed your daughter.”

  “They caught the guy that did it.”

  “They caught the wrong guy.”

  She looked at me for another long minute, then turned to walk into the house. I put my hands down and followed her inside. I could barely walk, my knees felt so weak.

  I guess I should have called first.

  She led me into the kitchen, pointed me toward a dirty, beige, vinyl dinette set, twisted the dial on an egg timer, and then leveled the gun at me again.

  “Five minutes,” she said.

  “Can you put the gun down?”

  “I will not.” She motioned me to sit, which of course I did, even though I could tell the woman owned no effective cleaning products of any kind.

  “Tell me about Peter Terry,” I said.

  “I don’t know anything about Peter Terry.”

  “Come on, Brigid. I’ve only got five minutes here. Work with me. Is Peter Terry one of the Watchers?”

  “All I know is he’s a spirit from the other world. Like the others. Watching all the time.”

  “That must be annoying,” I said, trying again to be funny.

  “You have no idea what you’re messing with, young lady. If you did, you’d turn right around and go back home where you belong.”

  “What about Anael? Who is he?”

  “He told me he was Drew’s guardian angel.”

  “He spoke to you directly?”

  “When she was a baby.” She shrugged. “They’re all the same to me. Liars. I don’t trust any of them. Not anymore.”

  “How did you meet Peter Terry?”

  She paused, looking at me suspiciously over the gun barrel.

  “I channeled him,” she said at last.

  “Channeled him? What does that mean?”

  “It means I lit some candles and did a reading one day for a customer and there he was.”

  “When was this?”

  “January 10, 1986. A Friday.”

  “Why do you remember the date so well?”

  “Day I met my late husband. He walked up to me on the dance floor like he’d known me all my life. Bought me a beer and just star
ted talking and smiling and charming me into believing he wasn’t the two-timing, no-good, gambling, whoring drunk he turned out to be.”

  She started talking and waving her hands around, pointing the gun every which way. I tried not to flinch every time she swung it in my direction. She was lost in her story, though, so eventually I settled down and watched her tell it.

  I could see traces of Drew’s angry beauty in her face, but it was almost unrecognizable, Brigid’s faded features showing the hard wear of a person twice her age. She was a pale, pocked, used-up broomstick of a woman in a thinned out bathrobe, badly bleached hair sticking out everywhere, and yellowy nicotine stains on her fingertips.

  Her kitchen was a wreck. Days’ worth of dishes were piled in the sink. Tacky knickknacks covered every possible square inch of shelf and wall space. An opened carton of Marlboros was spilled onto the countertop, among cans of tuna and various bags of junk food. As though someone had dumped the groceries out of the sack and gone outside for a smoke without bothering to put anything away. About two weeks ago.

  “I always blamed Peter Terry for bringing that loser into my life,” she was saying.

  “How long were you married?”

  “Nine years, two months, and three days. Right up to the minute he slammed his Chevy into that tree on Stringer Road.”

  She set the gun down and reached for a pack of Marlboros, tapping the pack before she ripped it open. She dug in a few drawers until she came up with a book of matches, then lit the cigarette and took a long drag.

  I tried to look relaxed and keep my eyes off the gun.

  She smoked for a minute. I waited impatiently as the egg timer ticked. “That wasn’t my fault,” she said at last. “You can’t pin it on me. I wasn’t anywhere near that road. And I’ve never talked about it once, to anybody.”

  “Except Drew.”

  “That’s right. She knew.”

  “What happened, Brigid?”

  She looked at me and kept smoking.

  The egg timer dinged.

  “Time’s up,” she said.

  “Brigid.”

  She kept smoking, though thankfully she left the shotgun where it was.

  “I asked Peter Terry for a little help. That’s all. A favor.”

  “And what happened?”

  “King was dead by mornin’.”

  “Why’d you take Drew to the Jesus commune?”

  “I thought she’d be safe there. From Peter Terry and his kind. My sister and her husband, they’re real religious. I thought she’d be better off.” She pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked at me, her eyes watery now.

  “Yeah, that didn’t work out too well, did it? And Drew’s husband?”

  She shook her head and smoked, dabbing her finger at the corner of her eye. “What do they call that? A coincidence? Yeah, that’s it. A coincidence.”

  “Did you talk to Peter Terry about him too?”

  Her hands were shaking. “He shouldn’t have hurt my baby girl. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.”

  “How well do you know Peter Terry?”

  “Well enough to wish I’d never met him.” She looked at me.

  “What’s your story?”

  “I met him last year. At a spring-pool in Austin, Texas. And he knew my mother, I think.”

  “Lucky you.”

  She nodded and motioned me to follow her, which I did, into a tiny, cluttered room with a window-unit air conditioner, a sink with a neck-hole in it, and one of those old beauty shop chairs with the hair dryer attached.

  “I do hair,” she said, as she leaned over in a corner and pawed through stacks of papers and books. She came up with a photo album, flipped the pages, and handed the book to me, pointing with a yellow-stained finger.

  “I threw all the rest away. I only kept this one because Drew was in it.”

  It was a photo of Brigid and a slim, good-looking man in pressed Wranglers, pointy-toed cowboy boots, and a white Stetson. I could see how he’d be a charmer. He had that rakish ain’t-I-a-stinker look about him. Drew had clearly gotten her good looks and her fighting spirit from him. He and Brigid were each holding the hand of a poodle-girl version of Drew. She wore a stiff pink dress, white gloves, and a bonnet. Her anklets were little explosions of white lace. No wonder she’d taken to making her own clothes. The three of them stood in front of a commercial garage with a sign on it that said, “The Tire King—New and Used Tires, Retreads and Repairs. King Sturdivant, proprietor. Since 1979.”

  “Easter Sunday,” Brigid said. “Two days before he died. His parents took that picture.” She tapped the photo. “Named their only child King. What does that tell you? They thought that man set the world to spinning. He could spit on ’em both between the eyes and they’d a thanked him for it.”

  “May I?” I asked.

  “Have at it.”

  I flipped back to the beginning and began paging through photos from Brigid’s childhood. I got to the junior high years and stopped cold. I recognized the crooked smile, the thick glasses, the bad skin.

  I looked up at Brigid and studied her face again. “Where did you grow up?”

  “Just south of here. Till tenth grade. My dad moved us to Beaumont when the oil business took off. He did refinery work.”

  I flipped another page and pointed at the school dance photo.

  “Tenth grade,” she said. “Nicest boy I ever knew in my whole life. Shy. And nothing to look at. Sweet as a cupcake, though, and sweeter than that to me.” She shook her head. “I coulda married him if my daddy hadn’t moved us. I’da been a lot better off, I tell you that much.” She tapped the photo. “He went off to college. Someplace north. He was older than me. I married King right after that. I was sixteen. Thought I knew everything there was to know.” She shook her head.

  “Did Drew ever meet him?”

  “I never saw him again after he left for college.” She looked up at me. “He’s a genius, you know He’s a doctor now. Dr. Mulvaney. Don’t that sound nice? I coulda been a doctor’s wife.” She took another drag on her cigarette and stumped it out in the sink. “I’da turned out different if I’d married him. Instead of that rattrap loser King Sturdivant.”

  “Brigid, could I borrow this photo?”

  She looked at me sideways, her crooked mouth frowning down. “I’ll want it back.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She pulled it out of the album and handed it to me.

  I took the photo, thanked her for her time, and left before she had a chance to pick up the shotgun again.

  I called McKnight from the road and woke him up.

  “Drew Sturdivant knew John Mulvaney,” I said.

  McKnight swore. “Haven’t we already had this conversation?”

  “He was her mother’s junior high boyfriend. I have a picture of the two of them together. I’m holding it in my hand. John has the exact same one on his computer at work.”

  McKnight swore again. “I’m listening.”

  “Can’t you just check it out? Check the fingerprint on the note? Check his trunk? Something?”

  “I’ll have to get a warrant for the trunk,” he said. “That’ll take a little time. I can ask him to voluntarily submit a fingerprint.”

  “Great. Do that.”

  “I’ll go over there today. You got an address for him?”

  “Just an office address. But it’s Saturday.”

  “I realize that, Dr. Foster. No home address?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know about the picture on his computer?”

  “I saw it in his office yesterday.” I left out the part about breaking in. “He uses it as a screen saver.”

  “You’re not there now?”

  “I’m in the car. On my way back from Shreveport. I went to see Brigid. I just came from her house.”

  “It’s not even eight in the morning.”

  “Yeah, she wasn’t too happy about that part.”

  “She say anything about tho
se car accidents?”

  I thought about telling him, but couldn’t imagine what the point would be. Peter Terry had gotten away with two more killings. There was nothing I could do about that now.

  “She just said she wasn’t there. She said it was probably a coincidence.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “Will you call me after you talk to John Mulvaney?”

  “Why not? You already ruined my day.”

  36

  I drove the rest of the way back to Dallas squinting in the bright, cold sunshine, my head throbbing. Three cups of coffee and a dose of Extra Strength Bayer later, my head was still spinning, the swirl of thoughts almost nauseating me as the stripes on the road rushed under my truck.

  I headed straight for the campus when I got back to town and went for a swim, hoping to clear my head. I needed to keep moving. I was looking, I guess, for the comfort—that false sense of progress—that forward movement can provide.

  McKnight had left me a message by the time I got out of the pool. John Mulvaney had refused to submit a fingerprint.

  I dialed McKnight.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Threatened to call his lawyer, accused me of invading his privacy, violating his constitutional rights. Stuff like that. Lame, white-collar, intellectual horse manure.”

  “Did you tell him why you wanted the fingerprint? You didn’t mention the note, did you? Or me?”

  “Dr. Foster, you seem to be under the impression that I recently fell off the back end of a cattle truck. Of course I didn’t mention the note. Or you. I am not a complete imbecile.”

  “Sorry. What are you going to do now?”

  “Get a warrant. Man’s got something to hide. That’s obvious.”

  “So you think he did it? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “I didn’t say that. Did I say that? I said the man had something to hide. That’s all.”