by H. P. Bayne
For some reason, that caused a change in Marc’s countenance. “That’s interesting. Do you ever wonder why it is you can see but can’t hear?”
“I asked you about Gabriella.”
“No, Sullivan. I didn’t kill her. If you must know, I was falling in love with her. All right? She was the first truly good thing in my life since Mariel, and had I known the danger she was in, I would have done everything in my power to help her.”
“She showed me a tattooed arm like yours. Identical to yours.”
“Ah, so that’s why you’re here. Well, I hate to burst your investigative bubble, kid, but as I told you previously, everyone in that coven has that tattoo. And a lot of us put it on our forearms. A few have day jobs that absolutely preclude visible tattoos, so they were the exceptions. I promise you, I don’t have a murderous bone in my body, and Gabriella was the last person who would have changed that. Does that answer your question?”
“Was there anyone else in the group who would have had motive to kill her? Anyone else who was in love with her?”
“As I said earlier, I’m not at liberty to reveal the names of coven members. But I will give it some thought. I’m not restricted, in my view, from naming a killer. The gentleman you named when you came to see me with your brother. Did you check into him?”
“Kenton Barwell? The tattoo is different, on the wrong arm.”
“Just like Ken, always had to be contrary.”
“So most others went for the right arm?”
“That’s right. I’ll tell you what. You keep digging, and so will I. If either of us comes across a coven member with a motive or opportunity concerning Gabriella, we’ll let each other know, all right?”
Sully nodded. He wasn’t completely sold on Marc not being the killer, but he was starting to move in that direction.
He hadn’t checked his phone in a while and felt safe to turn his attention away from Marc long enough to check the screen. One text and eight missed calls from Eva’s phone and one call from a number he didn’t immediately recognize.
“Mind if I make a call?” he asked. “My brother’s in the ER and I’ve missed a bunch of calls from his wife. I need to check something hasn’t happened.”
“Of course. I hope everything’s okay.”
“Me too.” Sully headed to the other side of the kitchen for as much privacy as the space would afford and tapped the call button beside Eva’s name in his contacts list. Meanwhile, Marc slid off his own stool, took his flashlight and left the kitchen, closing the door behind himself.
Eva’s phone didn’t even get to the second ring before someone picked up. A flood of relief washed over Sully as he heard Dez’s voice.
“Sully? Where are you?”
“Are you okay, D?”
“I’m fine. Where are you?”
That wasn’t a question Sully was about to answer. He wasn’t sure whether Marc had anything to do with the murders or not, but the last place he wanted Dez at this point was anywhere near this. No way Sully was allowing a repeat of earlier events, particularly when Dez wasn’t at his best.
Anyway, telling Dez he’d willingly gone to the house of a suspected killer was likely to end with a solid ass-kicking later.
Then again, he’d never been able to lie to his brother, so he settled on a response that wasn’t likely to do much to ease Dez’s obvious worry.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Tell me where you are, right now.”
“No. You already almost died today because of me. It’s not happening again.”
He didn’t wait for the response, clicking the end-call button just as Dez started up again. As expected, the screen of his muted handset showed a call coming in from Eva’s phone, but he just hit the button to ignore it and went to check on the other number that had called.
There was a text and several voicemails, most if not all of which were from his brother. He skipped through all of Dez’s without listening, unable to deal with the mounting anxiety he could hear in his brother’s voice at the start of each consecutive message. But then he came to a voicemail left by someone else.
“Sullivan? It’s Paul Dunsmore. You wanted me to call if I got any information for you. I’ve got something I think you’ll want, but I can’t get into it over the phone. Come to my place in The Forks as soon as you can.”
Two more messages from Dez followed, and Sully skipped them both. He realized he’d ignored the timestamp on Paul’s voicemail, so checked the time on his recents list, finding the call had come in about half an hour ago.
Judging by the weather outside, getting to The Forks wasn’t going to be an easy task right now, so Sully opted to call first. If he could get what he needed without heading all the way over there, all the better.
Paul picked up on the first ring. “Sullivan? Where are you?”
Sully scanned the room, assuring himself Marc was nowhere around before answering, keeping his voice quiet enough to not be overheard. “I’m at Marc Echoles’s place.”
“What? Jesus Christ, kid, get out of there, right now, you hear me? Echoles is dangerous.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He did something really bad, life and death bad. You need to get out now.”
“You mean murder?”
“Damn it, not over the phone. Not with him around. He knows stuff. He sees stuff, you hear me? You need to get out of there and over to me. And hurry up. It’s a mess here and people are starting to pack up and bail.”
“Can’t you come and meet me?”
“No. I’m busy trying to pack up my own stuff. Just get here and I’ll explain. Then I’ll give you a ride back into Riverview, all right? Just hurry. If you’re not here within the hour, I’m going to have to leave.”
“Okay. Okay, I’m on my way.”
“Good. And Sullivan? You be careful getting out of Echoles’s house, all right? Don’t turn your back on him.”
Sully’s phone battery was reading less than twenty per cent when he ended the call, so he turned it off completely, wanting to save the remaining juice in case he should need it later. Naturally, yet another call was coming in from Eva’s number as he powered off his handset.
Sully dropped the phone back into its bag, grabbed his borrowed flashlight off the island and headed for the kitchen’s side door, the one he now knew led to the hallway.
The front door, he recalled, was just down the hall. There was no way he’d manage a full search of the house, no way Marc would allow it. And the last thing he wanted right now was to spend another minute around a potential murderer.
He’d made it most of the way down the hall when he found himself illuminated by light and felt a solid hand close over his arm.
“Going somewhere?”
Sully couldn’t see Marc’s face past the beam, but the voice was as firm as the grip, suggesting the expression wouldn’t be far off.
“I need to go see someone.”
“In this weather? I don’t think so.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“No,” Marc said. “You don’t.”
16
The city had finally gone into a blackout, the generator-run buildings providing the only semi-reliable light in the storm-cast darkness. A sheet of lightning lit the sky, punctuated by a crack of thunder so intense Dez caught himself jumping in his seat as he eyed the shadow of the house next to them.
He’d been racking his brain trying to figure out where Sully had gone, and he’d settled on a few possibilities. Bulldog was a strong potential, given his own interest in the investigation and the fact he was also proving unreachable by phone. A strong second was Marc Echoles, a man who bore a tattoo matching those Sully’s ghosts had shown him.
There were no certainties, but Dez thought there was a strong likelihood Sully had come here—to Marc’s university-area home—looking for answers.
“You really think a university professor is behind the murders?” Eva asked. “Seems far
-fetched to me. What kind of motive would he have?”
“I’m not worried about motive,” Dez said. “All I’m worried about right now is my idiot brother. Wait here.”
Even without looking at her, he knew she had to be shaking her head at him in disbelief. “Right. Screw you, Snowman. Let’s go.”
There was no sense arguing with a woman who, cool and collected as she typically was, cornered the market on stubborn, so they headed up to the house together, flashlights at the ready. Eva made a motion as if to circle around back, which is how they would have handled this were it a call they were responding to as police officers. But right now all Dez wanted was to find his brother and keep Eva in his sights at the same time, so he snagged her free hand and held on as he thumped the edge of his fist against the door.
They didn’t have long to wait before Marc Echoles answered the door.
“What the hell happened to you?” Dez asked, eyes moving to the bag of frozen peas the professor was pressing to his jaw.
“Your brother,” he said. “And if you think this is something, you should see the bruise that’s forming on my shin.”
“So Sully was here?”
“ ‘Was’ being the operative term. I tried to hold him back. I mean, it’s Biblical out there. But he wasn’t having it.”
Dez wasn’t sure whether to be amused, damn proud or to simply continue with his current pattern of worry. The third seemed the most likely to win out, so he settled on that.
“Mind if we take a look around?”
Marc’s dry chuckle was free of humour. “Let me guess. You think I’m up to something, too, do you?”
“I don’t think anything except that my brother’s missing and chasing after something I don’t really want him to find unless he’s got someone at his back. Just let us look around, and we’ll be out of your hair.”
Marc stood aside and waved an arm grandly at his home’s interior as a sweeping yet plenty sarcastic gesture of welcome. “By all means, good sir. But I can assure you, I don’t have Sullivan chained up in my oubliette.”
Dez stopped and turned to face Marc. “Your what?”
“Oubliette,” Eva said. “It’s French, from the word meaning to forget. Refers to a room where people were locked up and left to die.”
Dez wasn’t placated by the definition. “You have one of those?”
“No,” Marc said. “Sarcasm, Desmond. Sarcasm.”
Dez and Eva cleared the house together, finding no sign of Sully, save a bundle of wet clothes left behind in the main floor half bath. Nor, for that matter, did they find any clues to suggest Marc had ever kept a prisoner here at all.
Marc was waiting by the front door for them. “Satisfied?”
“His clothes are in the bathroom by the kitchen,” Dez said. “Why?”
“He was soaked through and freezing. I gave him something warm and dry to put on. It won’t be either anymore.”
“What’s he wearing now?”
“Fleece pyjama bottoms and a dark blue hooded sweatshirt. The university logo is emblazoned on the back.”
“Thanks. And sorry about all this, but we needed to check. Did Sully say anything about where he was headed?”
“He didn’t seem in the mood to share,” Marc said. “Look, all I know is that he said something about needing to go meet with someone. I got the impression he had spoken to somebody on the phone. I don’t know what was said or who it was.”
With little else to get from Marc at the moment, Dez and Eva thanked him and headed back out to Dez’s SUV. Dez’s mood had gone from bad to worse, but it wasn’t until he tried to catch Eva’s eye that he realized he might not be the one most in need of comforting right now. There was no emotion on her face, but Dez read the gathering hopelessness there. It didn’t happen often, not to Eva, and when it did, it scared the hell out of him.
He sought to erase it, landing a hand on her shoulder before dropping it to grasp the fingers of her left hand. “Hey, we’ll find him, all right?”
“I’m supposed to be trying to make you feel better,” she said.
“That’s what marriage is all about, right? You and me, picking each other’s sorry asses out of the emotional gutter.”
That got him the smile he was after, albeit a small one. “You really know how to lift a girl’s spirits, you know that?”
“It’s a gift. Okay, so let’s go through this. Someone called Sully and he went to meet them, and given the fact he didn’t bother to wait around here, I’m thinking it was urgent. That means it had to have been about Breanna, Sparrow or Gabriella.”
“Okay, but that’s if you believe Marc. As of now, he’s the only one who knows anything about Sully’s present movements. And not ten minutes ago, you suspected Marc might have done something to him. He’s admitted Sully left him with those injuries. How do we know it ended there?”
That gave Dez reason to pause. “We searched the place top to bottom. There was no sign of Sully or anyone else. You think he’s still here somewhere?”
“Honestly, no. I think I buy what Marc told us. I’m just saying we shouldn’t dismiss things too quickly. Keep in mind some houses in this neighbourhood have bomb shelters or old root cellars out back.”
“Except Marc was bone dry. If he’d taken Sully out back, he would have been soaked through. And those marks on him were fresh.”
“So you think he’s telling the truth?” Eva asked.
“About Sully taking off on him? Yeah, I do. I’m not so sure yet we can trust Echoles on why he was trying to hold Sully back, but I think we’re safe in assuming the guy’s not holding anyone there against their will.”
“It’s still possible he’s got someone in the backyard.”
Dez grinned. “I thought you weren’t onboard with the whole university professor-as-deranged-killer thing.”
“You’re a bad influence. Okay, so if Sully took off from here, we’re going to have to figure out who he was going to see. It’s possible it was something as simple as his bar manager calling to ream him out for not showing up at work tonight. But just in case it wasn’t, who were you waiting on information from?”
“I haven’t heard from Bulldog in a while and I haven’t been able to get through to him,” Dez said. “That’s weird. He’s been pretty involved in this given it’s centred on his sister and a girl he’s started to identify as a niece.”
Eva started to suggest Dez try his friend again, but he was well ahead of her. Unfortunately, Bulldog still wasn’t of a mind or in a position to pick up, leaving the phone to ring through to voicemail. Leaving Bulldog with instructions to call back as soon as he checked his messages, Dez ended the call, left another fumbling text, and tried Sully again just in case. Unsurprisingly, he got no answer there either.
“Could be they’re together,” Eva said.
Dez shrugged. “Maybe. Could explain why Bulldog won’t pick up.”
“You think Bulldog would listen to Sully over you?”
“I tuned the pair of them in earlier today. Could be Bulldog’s not overly excited about the idea of talking to me again just yet.”
Eva smirked. “And with you probably being so nice and all? Why wouldn’t he be? Look, why don’t we start hitting up some of the shelters, see if Bulldog’s there or if anyone’s seen him? Could be we find Bulldog, we find Sully.”
“There was someone else we asked for information,” Dez said. “Paul Dunsmore. He was going to work some of his contacts, see if he could find us any info on those tattoos.”
“But you’ve got everything you need on those already, don’t you? You know they’re connected to the Black Candle coven.”
“Yeah, but unfortunately, we don’t know who was in the coven. That’s the key to figuring out who might be behind this and why. Maybe Paul’s heard something.”
Dez pulled his phone back out and dialed Paul Dunsmore’s number, but the call rang through to voicemail and Dez found himself leaving yet another message.
“No on
e wants to talk to me tonight,” Dez said. “Either towers are out of commission, or I’ve become a social pariah.”
“I’m thinking we’re going to have to start driving around looking,” Eva said. “Where to first? The Black Fox, Bulldog or Dunsmore?”
“We’re not far from Riverview. Let’s check the Fox and a couple of Bulldog’s haunts and then head across the Forks Bridge from there.”
“Sounds like a plan. But could we stop by headquarters first? My shift’s officially over, and I’m thinking I shouldn’t be running around off duty in my police uniform.”
“I don’t know,” Dez said. “The way this night’s going, I don’t mind the idea of having a sidearm on hand.”
It was no surprise, but Dez felt his heart sinking anyway when they arrived at the Black Fox and found no sign of Sully.
Betty Schuster wasn’t any happier about it, though for different reasons, telling Dez and Eva she’d arrived to a flooded basement, a power outage and a lineup of wet people. It seemed even a torrential downpour wasn’t enough to keep the diehards away from the bar for a night, although Betty—selling what she could by cash and candlelight—was planning on breaking with tradition and closing early. That would keep anyone from getting too drunk and ensure the best chance everyone, including Betty herself, got home safely.
Dez wasn’t sure if and when he and Eva would reach the same point but, for him at least, it wasn’t happening unless Sully was with him.
They next headed to the two shelters Bulldog used the most. Both had already filled up for the night and there was no sign of the guy at either. Dez knew Bulldog well enough to appreciate he was smart about ensuring a roof over his head when needed. He was typically among those who arrived just as the night shelters were opening, ensuring himself the best chance at a bed. That Bulldog wasn’t there either meant he’d found somewhere else to hole up or that he hadn’t been able to get here.
Hoping for the former, Dez and Eva drove over to the house where they’d dropped Bulldog off last night. While they found his friend—a skinny ex-junkie everyone called Mouse—there was again no sign of Bulldog, despite the fact he’d left his stuff there.
