The FBI Thrillers Collection

by Catherine Coulter

  They ran into the entryway where Mr. Boone and several deputies were crowded together, right inside the front door. Katie said, “I see you can breathe again, Mr. Boone. Just maybe you don’t need Reverend McCamy’s laying on of hands.”

  “This is one too many burning houses, Sheriff,” Charlie Fritz, one of her deputies said. “The fire department wants us out of here right away. Let’s go.”

  Elsbeth’s face flashed in Katie’s mind. Had she just given up and chosen to die with her husband? No matter what she’d been a party to, Katie didn’t want her to be dead. Too many were dead already.

  When they were near the road, they looked back to see the beautiful old Victorian lit up from its bowels, turning the black sky orange, spewing flames upward. Its old wood exploded in shards everywhere. It was an incredible sight, as long as you were away from the devastation.

  Katie stood next to Miles, aware that his arm was holding her close, for warmth, for comfort, to make the world real again, to right the madness. He said, “Reverend McCamy went into that sex room and pulled a bottle full of gasoline out of one of the drawers beneath that marble altar. He lit the wick and threw it at me. It hit the bed, and the flames shot up in an instant.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  Miles touched his fingers to the slash along the side of his face, from his temple to his jaw. “He pulled a whip off the wall and slashed me with it.”

  “And you shot him?”

  “I tried to grab the whip away from him, but he fought me. I could hear the fire, knew time was growing short, and then he tried to grab the gun.

  “I swear to you, Katie, there was madness pouring out of him, and a frenzy that seemed to unleash all the strength inside of him. He was grinning and moaning at the same time. I felt my blood freeze.

  “And then there you were with a pillow over your face.”

  “You never saw Elsbeth.”

  He shook his head. “I heard her voice, but no, I didn’t see her.”

  “She preferred to die with that man rather than survive,” Katie said, shaking her head. She looked up at Miles and shook her head again. “I think we’re going to need a paramedic.” She began to examine the cut and changed her mind. “It doesn’t look at all deep, but no paramedics this time. I want to take you to the hospital.”

  Wade was standing next to them now. “The firemen are already bitching at all this work, Sheriff. Now you want to piss off the paramedics?”

  Miles laughed, he threw back his head and really laughed. He looked up at the burning house. “It’s over,” he said, “it’s finally over. It seems like it’s been going on forever—and it’s been only days. Amazing.”

  Katie nodded and smiled at him. She grabbed Miles Kettering and hugged him to her.

  34

  At ten o’clock Thursday morning the rain had lightened to a thick gray mist, mixing into the low-lying fog that crept up the sides of the mountains, blanketing the land.

  “Do you really think it’s over?”

  Keely pursed her lips, looked doubtful. “I don’t know, but I sure hope so. Last night was real scary, Sam.”

  Sam sighed, thought that every night since early last Friday morning had been scary, and leaned in more closely. “Yeah, I know, but your mom and my dad, they took care of us.” He sighed again, deeply. “But since everything is over now, you know what that means, Keely.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re gonna have to leave and never come back.”

  “I’ll tell Papa that I don’t want to leave, okay?”

  “Do you think he’ll let you stay here and live with Mama and me?”

  “I want him to stay, too,” Sam said, and pulled Minna’s soft wool blanket more closely around both him and Keely because it was getting colder.

  “If your papa doesn’t want to stay, what are you going to do, Sam?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said finally and he fisted his eyes. “I’m only six. Nobody listens to me.”

  “They listen to you even less when you’re five. I heard my grandma talking to Linnie just a while ago. She told Linnie that your papa and my mama should get married and that would be that.”

  “What would be that?”

  “Well, I guess it means that if you leave, I get to leave with you.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good.”

  “Your father would be my steppapa.”

  “Yeah, and Katie would be my stepmama. That’s weird.”

  “We could fight and stuff and no one could say anything about it.” Keely punched his arm, gave him a huge grin, then settled her head on his shoulder.

  They were sitting in Minna’s porch swing. Since Sam’s legs weren’t long enough to reach the porch, he’d taken a walking stick out of the umbrella stand that had belonged to Keely’s grandfather. Every few minutes, he shoved the stick against the wooden floor to make the swing go back and forth.

  “I don’t want you to go away, Sam.”

  “I know and I’ve been thinking, Keely. Papa isn’t stupid. He’ll marry your mom.”

  Keely said, “You’re six years old. You don’t know if your dad’s stupid or not. My mama says this is the most beautiful place in the world. Even if your dad was stupid, he could be happy here. I know, tell him we’ll take him rafting on the Big Pigeon River. That’s in the Smokies.”

  “Papa’s been rafting before. I’ll tell him, but you know, Keely, he’s got that big helicopter business in Virginia. Since those bad men took me he hasn’t gotten much work done.”

  Keely pondered this for a while. “I know, tell him that Mama is the best rafter in Tennessee and she’ll teach him. Oh, and tell him that Sam Houston taught in a log schoolhouse when he was eighteen. I’ll bet your dad will be impressed. Tell him we’ll take him there. Tell him he can e-mail to his business.”

  “Keely, if my papa and your mama got married, what would your name be?”

  Keely didn’t have an answer to that. Sam shoved the walking stick against the porch floor and the swing swung out widely. They laughed and hung on.

  Children’s laughter, Katie thought, there was nothing like it. She and Miles were standing just inside the screened door. Neither said a word and they didn’t look at each other. So this was why her mom suggested they take a look at the beautiful hazy fog that was climbing the sides of the mountains.

  Miles said quietly as he stepped back, “They look like a Norman Rockwell painting.”

  It was true, with their heads pressed together, the swing gently going back and forth, but any words Katie would have said stuck in her throat. She nodded and looked toward the mountains, blurred and softened by the fog, like fine smoke. Her mom had told her that looking at the mountains on a morning like this was like reading without reading glasses.

  “Even in the winter, when it’s so cold your toes are curling under and the mountains look weighted down with snow, they’re still so beautiful it makes you want to cry just looking at them. And down at Gatlinburg—”

  “Katie, what the kids were talking about . . .”

  She turned to face him then. The emergency room doctor hadn’t stitched Miles’s face, just pressed the skin together using Steri-strips. She’d told him to rub on vitamin E and there wouldn’t be a scar on his handsome face, unless he wanted to look dangerous, and she’d waggled her eyebrows at him. Katie said, “I guess this means you don’t want me to tell you about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”

  “Not right this minute, no.”

  “Okay. You mean us getting married?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Maybe we should give it some thought.”

  Katie had firmly believed, up until, say, just four minutes ago, that she’d rather be incontinent than get married again. But now?

  “Katie? Miles? I brought some cinnamon nut bread for the kids.”

  Her mother had excellent timing, Katie thought. She always had, particularly when there’d been horny boys around during high school. She’d given them enough time to overhear the kids tal
king, enough time to think about it, even say it out loud. They were both smiling when they turned to see Minna coming with a platter that smelled delicious from twenty feet away.

  “I’m starving,” Miles said, surprised. “I hadn’t realized.”

  “Glad I had some clothes for you, Miles. Katie’s dad was tall like you, so at least your ankles aren’t showing. Sweetie, those jeans are nearly white they’ve been washed so many times, but you look just fine. Now, I’m going to take these goodies to the kids. They’re having a hard time, you know.”

  “Can we have some first, Mom?”

  “Sure. Take as many slices as you want. You two just go into the living room and I’ll take care of the kids.”

  Minna waltzed back into the living room a few minutes later, and announced, “Sam and Keely aren’t happy campers. I don’t envy you having to separate them.”

  And now, Katie thought, just a touch of the spurs. Katie grinned at her mother, knowing exactly what she was doing. Miles, however, didn’t.

  “We’re not looking forward to it,” he said and sighed. He leaned his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes.

  Minna said, “Linnie called while you were in the shower, sweetie. She said the TBI is going nuts and they’re coming in force today about noon—that was so you could nap a little bit after that long night. Evidently one of the inspectors couldn’t wait to see exactly what had happened here in Jessborough, a town, he said, that’s never had anything more than some dippy DUIs and underage smokers in its extremely long life, until now. Linnie said not to worry, that the inspector really sounded excited. She also said the mayor and all the aldermen couldn’t wait to see you, to hear every gory detail, I expect.”

  Katie said, “Oh yeah, Mayor Tommy will probably want a dozen meetings to thrash everything out.”

  Minna nodded. “Well, it is the most excitement Tommy’s had since he caught his best friend making out with his girlfriend behind the bleachers back in high school. You really can’t blame him. Nor the aldermen. I’m an alderwoman, Miles, and so I’ve already gotten a dozen or more calls.”

  “No,” Katie said. “You’re right, it’s been a long dry spell for Tommy.”

  Miles called his sister-in-law, Cracker, told her it was finally over. He’d considered asking Cracker if she’d ever known Sam to be ill while Miles had been away, but decided against it. He knew to his soul that if Alicia hadn’t told him about taping Sam with blood on his palms, she wouldn’t have told anyone else. But she had given it to someone. Who? Perhaps her ancient priest, an old man who’d been kind and was failing physically and mentally. If she gave it to him then he must have passed it on to someone else, someone who’d given it to Reverend McCamy. They would never know now, and, truth be told, it didn’t matter. The video was now ashes buried beneath more ashes and shards of burned wood.

  When he’d hung up the phone, Katie had nodded. The last thing Sam needed was to have the media proclaiming him the newest candidate for sainthood, or a freak, or a helpless pawn. She could just see a TV guy asking Sam to please try to make his hands bleed again for the cameras. And here was Dr. X, psychologist, to give a historical perspective on the visible stigmata. Or those proclaiming he was a fraud or a victim of abuse, and exploited for it. Thomas Boone could say whatever he wanted, but everyone knew what he’d done, so she doubted anyone would believe him if he talked crazy.

  And he’d said more to himself than to Katie, “What else did she keep from me?”

  Katie hadn’t said anything, merely taken his hand.

  They would come up with exactly what to tell everyone, including the mayor and the aldermen, including her mother, but just not now, not when they were both so tired, like they’d been hung out to dry.

  She looked over at Miles, a paper plate on his lap, a half-eaten slice of cinnamon nut bread sitting in the middle. He was sound asleep.

  She smiled and nodded off herself.

  35

  Although two days had passed, Katie still felt unanchored, her brain adrift. She’d dealt with the TBI, attended a special town meeting called by Mayor Tommy Bledsoe, of the long-lived Sherman Bledsoes, to explain exactly what had happened. She’d swear that nearly every citizen in Jessborough was present, along with her mother, of course, and all the mill employees who’d been given the day off to hear the details. There was some media—not national media, thank God. She had told all concerned that Reverend McCamy had been mentally ill, that he had evidently seen Sam when he’d visited Washington, D.C., that something about the boy had attracted him and so he’d arranged to take him. She assumed he wanted to raise him, mold him into what he saw himself as being, make him his successor, and that was surely the truth. He had just gone over the edge. It sounded idiotic to Katie, but not as idiotic as the just plain crazy truth. She and Miles had repeated their story so often that Katie imagined she’d be believing it herself soon.

  Neither she nor Miles could explain what they’d seen on the video. She wondered if they ever would. She wondered how and why it had happened to a three-year-old boy. Some sort of bloody rash? Had his fingernails pierced his palms? Or was it a reaction to a medicine? More than likely, because Sam had sure looked sick. And Alicia hadn’t said anything of it to Miles. Miles was fretting over that, but Alicia was long dead, and Katie knew he’d have to let it go.

  She’d even called together the congregation of the Sinful Children of God and told them how very sorry she was that Reverend and Mrs. McCamy had died in the fire at their home. She wove the same tale, telling them that Reverend McCamy had been consumed with getting Sam, no one really knew why, and then told them the scene of his final disintegration, his complete mental breakdown, and his suicide. There was a lot of grief, a lot of questions, but most of them seemed willing to let life move on, fast.

  She sighed, thinking about her home. Gone, nothing left at all. She had no idea what she was going to do yet and was still just too tired to think about it coherently.

  “I think it’s a good idea, Katie, what we talked about.”

  She jerked up. Miles was talking about marriage, she knew that even though neither of them had said another thing about it since early Thursday morning. She said, “It’s a huge thing, Miles, a really huge thing.”

  “You lost your house.”

  “Yeah, I was just thinking about that.”

  “I’ve got a house, a really big house, and there’s lots of room, for all of us. It’s colonial. Do you like colonial?”

  “Yes,” she said, nothing more, and continued not to look at him.

  Miles looked over at Sam and Keely, who were sitting on the living room floor, their jeaned legs spread wide, rolling three red balls back and forth between them. They were evidently trying to keep the balls inside their legs.

  “You hit it too hard, Sam!”

  Sam said, as he batted a ball back to her, “Pay attention, Keely.”

  “My God, he said that just like I do,” Miles said. “This parent thing, it’s scary when your kid mimics you. Say yes, Katie.”

  “Say yes to what, Mama?”

  Suddenly both small faces were concentrated on them. Miles shrugged at Katie who sighed and nodded. “Okay, what do you guys think of Katie and me getting married? Not that she’s said yes yet. That way you’d be brother and sister and you could stay together.” And that, Katie thought, was the primary reason for getting married, and not a bad reason, really. At least both of them would be motivated to make a happy home for their children. Sam would be hers. And that kiss, she’d felt it all the way to her size nines. The man was potent. That made her smile, but it fell off her face pretty fast. Married, after knowing a man a week.

  No, not married. Remarried.

  Katie had sworn she’d never get married again as long as there was enough breath in her lungs to say no. It was simple, really, she couldn’t trust herself to choose wisely. Just look at what she’d brought home the first time—Carlo Silvestri, a weak, spoiled jerk whose father had paid her a millio
n and a half bucks to get out of his life. Hmm. At least that was a pretty good trade-off. Carlo’s father had saved the pulp mill and a lot of people’s jobs. And of course, Carlo had given her Keely—she’d put up with a dozen jerks for Keely.

  The fact was, bottom line, she didn’t know Miles well. Not even a complete week, and those days had been filled with nonstop fear and violence and adrenaline rushes so extreme that Katie was ready to swear that her blood sugar had plummeted to her toes because there hadn’t been a life-and-death crisis since the McCamy house burned down, its two occupants with it.

  What was a woman with no house to do? Marry a man who did have a house? A colonial?

  It was funny if you looked at it a certain way. She’d saved a little boy, his dad had come to town, lots of bad things had happened, and now he wanted her to marry him. Truth be told, it was the children who’d started it. She’d wished now that they hadn’t heard Sam and Keely talking on the porch, but of course that was what her mother had intended.

  Then again, she couldn’t forget those minutes in her kitchen. Fact was, she’d wanted to jump him; he’d felt just that good.

  Both children were staring from Miles to her and back again. Sam said slowly, “You guys going to get married?”

  “As I said, Sam, she hasn’t said yes yet. So, what do you think? Keely?”

  “Mama, I’ve given this a lot of thought and I think it’s a really good idea.”

  “Keely, Miles only told you two minutes ago, not all that much time to think about it.”

  Keely slid a glance at Sam, who grinned like a kid who’d just copped an early look at his Christmas presents.

  “Keely and I talked about it,” Sam announced. “And we think it would be okay.”

  “This is the way to go, Mama. We’re right about this.”

  It was Miles and Katie’s turn to stare, both at each other and at their children. Miles said slowly, “How can you be so sure? You kids didn’t even know each other existed until last Saturday afternoon.”