Demon on a Distant Shore

by Linda Welch

  I peeled away from the wall, leaving a dark stain on old, pale stone. “Lucky guess. Why did he shoot you?”

  He turned away and said firmly. “I’ll say no more.”

  “Why ever not?” He knew the more information the police had, the easier it would be to get a conviction.

  “I have family.” He stuck out his arm. “Look.”

  I could just make out a turquoise and brown shape huddled between two tall stones. “What is it?”

  Fowler dropped his arm. “I think it’s me.”

  I peered at the bundle; a face in profile limned by the church’s light. I nodded sagely. “I think you’re right.”

  “I don’t understand, not quite. I think I know, but… .”

  I turned away. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “But… .” his voice came plaintively from behind.

  I went over the grass and through the gate. A small panel truck waited on the far side of the lane, rear door rolled up, ramp down. Pickins killed Fowler and came in to kill me. Then he would cart our bodies away.

  I slogged along in the darkness and clammy weight of the fog, past the diffused light from cottage windows, feeling so cold, and heavy, as if weights were fastened to my ankles. No Johnny. He’s gone on his way. Poor kid. Poor, poor kid. A sob burst from me.

  A man-shape loomed in front of me. I brought the gun up.

  My mouth felt full of damp paper towel, the cheap cardboardy kind. I worked up saliva.

  “There-there, dear. You’re safe now,” Carrie said.

  Her hand passed over my hair like a gentle breeze. Impossible. You can’t feel a shade, not even if you walk through one. Must be my imagination.

  My eyelids were sewn together. What the… ? I cranked my eyebrows up as high as I could which lifted my lids a mere crack.

  White light.

  I waited a few seconds and tried again. Easier this time, and the light no longer seared.

  I lay on a bed, elevated from the waist up. I had no problem identifying a hospital cubicle. The sheet under my butt - naked where the flannelette gown gaped open - felt worn, with the hard slipperiness of plastic beneath. Big fluorescent lights on the ceiling. A ticking noise interspersed with tiny beeps from equipment monitoring my condition. The back of my right hand ached from the IV needle.

  Royal sat on a hardbacked chair beside me, bent over with elbows on knees, hands clasped, his forehead resting on them.

  “Hi there?” I croaked.

  He straightened up, grabbed my left hand in both his and lifted it to plant his lips on my knuckles. His face contorted, his eyes dewed up. “Sweetheart.”

  I couldn’t bear to see him like that. “For crying out loud, it’s just a shoulder wound. Don’t be such a wuss.”

  He grinned and delicious demon warmth bathed my cold hand. “I see I need not have worried.”

  That was better. I tried a tentative smile in return. “Can I get a drink?”

  He released my hand, got a sippy cup with a straw from a steel table near the bed head and held it for me. Boy, that tepid water tasted good.

  “How did I get here?”

  “You don’t recall passing out?”

  “Again? Jesus!”

  “After you tried to shoot me,” he added.

  No matter if your brain is like spaghetti, you do not forget firing at a person. “I did not.”

  “Because I took it away from you. Your finger was on the trigger.”

  I tried to lift my arm, but failed. “How bad is it?”

  “A clean shot, straight through, though the bullet shaved the bone.”

  Then I remembered and surged up. “Royal, Pickins is locked in Saint Thomas’ crypt and Fowler’s body is in the graveyard.”

  He pressed me back to the mattress. “I know. You had a busy night.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You told me. You do not remember that either?”

  “Not a thing. So what now?”

  “Ah. Well.” He cleared his throat and sat down again.

  Clearing a throat which does not need clearing is not a good sign. “Royal, tell me.”

  He showed his teeth in a grimace. “Pickins tried to kill you. I thought handing him and Fowler’s body to the police would prove it. But it got complicated.”

  Of course it did, never met a case which didn’t.

  “Sergeant Fordham is waiting to talk to you. Can you manage a few minutes?”

  “Yeah. Fine. Let’s get it over so we can go home.”

  He muttered something under his breath.

  My voice sharpened. “What did you say?”

  Royal walked out with the tall, burly sergeant, who made me think of a British version of Mike Warren. Except the sergeant was polite.

  A sweat had broken out on my brow from the stress of the interview and the dawning realization the British cops would not let me and Royal fly off to the wild blue yonder in the near future.

  A nurse came in to check my vitals and do something with the IV drip. A lovely drowsy feeling seeped through me. She must have upped the sedation level.

  “Nice room,” a voice whispered as the nurse left.

  So I was right, Carrie was in my room earlier. “You think so?”

  “You wouldn’t like the wards. Why do you merit a private room?”

  “Because I’m a suspect in a police investigation?”

  “You are? What do they think you did?”

  “Killed Darnel Fowler.”

  She stepped back from the bed. “Did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Don’t get all indignant with me, madam. You’re a mass-murder for all I know. There are so many nowadays, shooting at crowds, barging into work to kill their coworkers because they had a bad day.”

  “Mm.” I felt kind of strange, in a good way.

  “I think I’ve found my calling,” she chirruped on, changing the topic Carrie-style. “Something I can help with. I found a patient, a young man hit by a lorry. I was there when he died. I told him what happened, what to expect now. It was hard, because he was so distressed, but I think I helped. So I’ll come back now and then.”

  I felt warm and lazy. “Won’t you have the same problem you have with other people?”

  She squirmed, discomfort in her posture. “Hm. Well. He jumped to the conclusion … I let him think I’m… .” Her voice sped up. “I’m special, here to help the recently departed. It’s why I can move around … because I’m… .”

  A goofy smile stretched my lips. “He thinks you’re an angel?” I sniggered.

  She bristled. “Neither of us mentioned angel.”

  “But you let him think so.” Oh, this was too good. Carrie, an angel of mercy.

  “Does it matter what they think if I help them, ease their trauma?”

  I yawned. “You’re right. Way to go, Carrie. A whole new lease on life.” Lease on life. I giggled.

  “Shut it, you,” she said, but she sounded happy.

  “So you’ll stay here?”

  She moved from the foot to the side of my bed. “I’ll visit and stay as long as I’m needed, but I expect I’ll go back to The Hart and Garter in between traveling.”

  “Traveling all over the place must be difficult.”

  “No, easy really, but time-consuming. I move in stages. For instance, when I go to Salisbury I have to latch on to someone as they leave the inn, then someone driving to Salisbury if I’m lucky. If not, I look for anyone walking from the village in the direction of The Blacksmith bus stop.”

  “Blacksmith?”

  “The pub at Charlingham crossroads. The Salisbury bus stops there. If I can get there, I catch someone getting on the bus, then someone getting off in Salisbury. One time I caught the thing and every passenger got off at one of the villages in between and I ended up at the depot in Salisbury. The driver left before I could catch him and I was stuck there till the next morning. Talk about boring.

  “Yes, it can take time, but I have plenty of th
at. The farther I go, the longer it takes, the more complicated the journey. But worth the effort.”

  “Mm,” I murmured, and closed my eyes.

  I felt like royalty as a nurse steered my wheelchair along the corridor to the exit. The Royal family gets police escorts. One of the wheels wobbled just slightly, making a crick-crick-crick sound amplified by the high ceilings in the wide, bright corridors.

  Tall and menacing, Royal stalked on my right, little lines puckering between his eyebrows, far removed from the easygoing American tourist the police first interviewed. Royal was steamed. He kept his temper banked down to a smolder and I hoped nobody did anything to make it erupt.

  Making a demon angry is unwise.

  “I called Fred Sturgis and filled him in. He offered to fly over if we need an attorney.”

  “How nice of him,” I said sourly.

  “He had Patty on the other line. She said she will pay any legal expenses.”

  “I feel better with every word out your mouth.”

  We were not going to The Hart and Garter, but to Devizes, where a nice hotel room awaited me compliments of Her Majesty’s government. A nice hotel room real close to police headquarters. A nice hotel room in which Royal would not be allowed, hence his ire.

  A small apparition in a tight, loud negligee, Carrie stood near the elevator. She had wandered the hospital and now waited for a ride with me, wherever I went. She knew I couldn’t speak to her, but I smiled a faint acknowledgement and she flapped her hand.

  We entered the elevator and rode it down to the hospital basement and followed a narrow passage to an underground parking garage. The nurse indicated I could stand, and just like that she officially handed me over to a female police officer.

  We got in a black car. Royal got in another. Away we went.

  “Oo-er,” Carrie said. “I’ve never ridden in a police car before. Not very comfortable, is it. Still, better than a black Mariah no doubt. Isn’t that what they’re called?” She made a tut-tut noise. “I remember when Jeremy Wooley had a pint too many, went outside and… .”

  I tried to close myself off from her recollections, an all but impossible feat.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They didn’t lock me up, but Royal and I spent another week in England - seven whole days - most of the daylight hours in Devizes in the company of Sergeant Willis and his superior Inspector Parley. They hammered away at mine and Royal’s stories. We told the truth, minus any mention of talking dead people or little demons.

  They went to Peter Cooper’s office, but naturally found nothing to link him to either the Nortons or Pickins.

  The hardest part of the semi-incarceration was not being allowed to see Royal alone.

  It was a mess at first, with no evidence in the church apart from my blood, and Pickins told a lovely story about how I lured him there and tried to kill him. I gave them Salt Lake City’s Chief of Police as a reference, and my trusty backup, Captain Mike Warren of Clarion, both of whom are too smart to mention psychic ability unless the other party mentions it first. I think it upped our credibility, so they didn’t immediately throw me in a dungeon. They also called Falkman, Sturgis and Cannon, who confirmed we were in England looking for Scott Norton’s nephew.

  Then forensics confirmed the bullet in my arm and the one in Fowler’s head came from Pickins’ pistol. All well and good, except I had Pickins’ pistol. I could have shot Fowler before or after I attacked poor Pickins. I bet Pickins wished he thought to lay that on me, but he didn’t. And I obviously had not shot myself with Pickins’ gun. Still, for a while there I wondered if I’d finish up in a British prison for the rest of my life.

  But the British cops couldn’t ignore what we told them about Paul and Sylvia Norton. The bodies were initially examined by a local physician and still on hold for an autopsy, so they were brought down from Scotland and the autopsy performed in Swindon. DNA evidence on their bodies matched that of both Fowler and Pickins. They found other evidence too, and the cops set about trying to discover who else was involved.

  Johnny could have told them. Poor Johnny. It seemed his murder would never be made public. But his mother came forward when she heard Fowler was dead and Pickins under arrest. She saw Fowler run Johnny down and drive away, and in her pain and rage confronted him. But Fowler responded by threatening harm to Johnny’s brother if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. He told her to contact him if anyone asked about Johnny, and although our turning up at her house could be coincidental, she decided to play it safe. She called Fowler after I left her house. I don’t blame her; she did what she had to, to protect her son.

  Their forensics expert scraped paint off the grill of Darnel Fowler’s car and matched it to Johnny’s scooter.

  On our fourth day in Devizes, a guy looking for his lost dog found Peter Cooper’s body partly submerged in a pool of water at the bottom of an old abandoned quarry on the fringe of Avebury. He had a nasty wound on the back of his head, which could have happened when he slipped and fell in the pit. The autopsy found the head wound was post mortem, nor did he die from drowning; he died of asphyxiation before he hit the water. The coroner ruled the death a homicide. Time of death was estimated as three weeks before we arrived in Little Barrow.

  Unfortunately, no evidence linked Peter to Fowler and Pickins, DNA or otherwise. We would have liked to pin his murder on Fowler, but couldn’t think of a way to do it and not go to areas we would rather not visit. We left well enough alone, hoping the cops would eventually find what they needed to link his death to the whole sorry mess.

  Pickins finally cracked and confessed to the murder of Darnel Fowler and attempted murder of yours truly. He was also charged as an accessory to the murders of Paul and Sylvia Norton, Johnny Marsh and William Clarke. But he clammed up when it came to motive, refusing to give the police anything more.

  Why did Fowler murder his neighbors? What did Peter Cooper know for which he had to die? Why did Pickins kill Fowler? When Fowler refused to tell me more than that Pickins killed him, he said, “I have a family.” Did he fear for their safety if he blabbed?

  Did Fowler have a beef with the Nortons, reason enough to kill them, and killed Cooper and Johnny because they could point the police in his direction? Of did someone hire him?

  Suppose they were hired to kill the Nortons. Large sums of money had not been deposited in Fowler’s or Pickins’ bank accounts, but they could have cash squirreled away someplace. No large deposits in Clarke’s account either, and it seemed to me a professional criminal of his ilk would at least demand something upfront. There again, he could have agreed to payment on completion and Fowler and Pickins knew that would not happen, because they planned to kill him all along.

  If the murders were not part of a personal vendetta, and Pickins and Fowler did work for hire, where was the money? Maybe whoever hired the dirty duo promised they would take care of their families if the cops kept their lips sealed. When Fowler mentioned his family, he meant they would get the blood money if he kept quiet. The same could apply to Pickins’ wife.

  Maybe Pickins killed Fowler because he wanted it all.

  Devizes police returned our passports, booked us a US flight and would give us a ride to the airport. We would have to return for the trial, but it could be a long time down the road.

  A plaque etched with tiny script beside St. Thomas’ front door tells you the church first appeared in history in 1086, but nothing of that church survived. Built in 1124, rebuilt in 1332, the new church retained the twelfth century octagonal font with sixteen blind arches, placed on what is probably a reused Norman capital. The graveyard was consecrated in 1402.

  Extensive rebuilding, easily distinguished by being brick, took place in 1812. Further restoration took place in 1873 when the chancel roof was remodeled.

  Most of the graves are gentle mounds, the markers long gone. Does anyone still know who lies beneath, or care?

  We walked among the remaining granite and marble stones and those like tiny cr
ypts with lids a-tilt.I flinched when Royal’s hand came to rest on my shoulder.

  We found Johnny’s grave easily enough, the pale gray marble stone still sleek, the lettering in stark black jumping out at us. Seventeen years old. Poor kid, wrong place, wrong time. How would his life have unfolded had he not gone to the Norton’s house that night?

  I cast my gaze at the church. Darnel Fowler lingered behind it, but I would not walk around back for anything.

  “I give you this, one thought to keep.”

  We turned, both shocked someone managed to come up behind us unawares.

  “I am with you still, I do not sleep.”

  Sally gently smiled at Johnny’s headstone. “I think that came from your part of the country.”

  I swallowed before I found my voice. “Yes, I believe it does. I’ve heard several versions.”

  “I hope, now everything is as it should be, you will destroy the note,” Greg said, his smile identical to his mother’s.

  “You sent it?”

  “I did not say that.”

  “The police have it, and the obituary.”

  “No matter. It will not be traced to who wrote it.”

  “Why the obituary?”

  Greg’s smile widened to a grin. “The Internet is a wonderful tool. You can discover almost everything about anyone, even when they live in America.”

  My brain clicked back in gear. Sally and Greg researched us; they knew what I could do. They hoped Johnny’s shade lingered and I talked to him.

  I tipped my head to one side and eyed them quizzically. “And had I not talked to Johnny?”

  “Then we would have given you another nudge in the right direction,” Sally said.

  “Why couldn’t you come right out and tell us?”

  “We have to live here, dear. Suppose we spoke to you and you went to Fowler?”

  “We had our suspicions when the young Nortons left as they did, it was not true to their nature. And then Johnny was run down,” from Greg. “But as you can imagine, we dare not approach our local constabulary.”

  “They do not call it that anymore, dear,” Sally corrected. “It is a police station.”

  “Ah, right you are, Mother. I forgot.”