MARTIN: Why? What happened to them?
KENDRA: No, I answered your question, now it’s my turn again.
MARTIN: Okay, fair enough.
KENDRA: What happened to Steph Black?
MARTIN: You are wasting a question on something you already know, Kendra.
KENDRA: Tell me what happened.
MARTIN: I got there too late. Her mother and father killed her, then they killed themselves. They were unstable, unable to deal with the truth. They made a deal, and I was sent to make sure they upheld their part of the bargain. I never wanted her to die, Kendra. I was there to save her, not kill her.
KENDRA: Truth? Bargain?
MARTIN: Tsk, tsk. My turn. What happened when you were four?
KENDRA: When I turned four, my father and mother dropped my off at a church. Left me there with a letter, telling whoever was inside to look after me, I guess. I stayed there until I was fourteen, then I left. Throat cleared. Now my turn: where is Meghan Miller?
MARTIN: She is with her mother.
Inaudible.
KENDRA: This is bullshit, Martin.
MARTIN: You are asking the wrong questions, Kendra—I am telling the truth, I assure you. Now, how did you get your scars?
KENDRA: My what?
MARTIN: Your scars.
KENDRA: All right, this is fucking over. You had your—
Door opens.
BRETT: Kendra, take a break.
KENDRA: I don’t need a break, what I need is to—
BRETT: Take a break, Kendra!
Pause.
Chapter 28
“Tell me where they are! This is only going to get worse for you, just tell me where the fucking girls are!”
Brett fought the urge to wrangle the man who refused to even look at him. He knew that he was doing the exact same thing that he had admonished Kendra for, the very reason why he had relieved her from the interview. But he just couldn’t help it. He prided himself on being a patient man, but even Brett Cherry had his limits.
He took a deep breath to calm himself, then he turned back to the prisoner.
“Martin, no matter what, this is not going to end well for you, I can promise that. But it can either badly or very badly. So why don’t—?”
Brett knew he was wasting his breath; the man wouldn’t even look at him.
“I’ll only talk to Kendra,” he said flatly, eyes still focused on the one-way glass.
Brett felt his ears redden.
This time when he spoke, the words came out in a rush, spit flying from his lips.
“Just tell me where the—”
But a sound behind him made the words catch in his throat. He turned, and heard more commotion from the behind the mirrored glass.
Fuck!
He turned and quickly headed back to door, ignoring Martin altogether. Each step was more difficult than the previous, as if his shoes had been replaced by cement cinderblocks.
Brett was tired, more tired than he had been in a long, long time. He was getting too old for this; to not only try to find missing children, to solve these truly heinous crimes, but also to babysit Kendra.
And regret; he felt momentary regret for not heeding the director’s words, for being so stupid as to convince the man to let Kendra stay on.
Just look at where that has gotten us: Kendra playing the psychotic man’s game, me screaming my face off at him, and now some sort of fight in the police station.
And surely no closer to Lacy.
Brett gripped the door handle and pulled it wide, trying his best to keep the shouts coming from within from reaching Martin’s ears.
He failed at that as well.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kendra shouted, aiming her index finger at Father John Simone.
Brett slipped inside, quickly closing the door behind him. What had once been a private affair had become a party, it seemed.
There were four people in the outer interrogation room now instead of just Kendra; his partner’s face had turned an angry shade of purple, and her shouts were volleyed at Father John and Peter McGuire, who looked worse than Brett felt. There was also the officer that had given them access to the interrogation room—Dwayne or Dave or something—and he had a stupid look plastered on his face.
“Keep it down,” Brett urged, but as usual his request went unheeded.
Too old; I’m getting too old for this.
“I found Lacy’s hair elastic in the car,” Peter said suddenly, holding the thin piece of rubber in his hand like some sort of treasured artifact.
Brett took it from him and slipped it into his pocket, and as he did, Kendra turned to face him.
“I told you to tell Peter not to bring him,” she shouted accusingly.
Brett shrugged; he had had no idea that the priest was coming with Peter.
“Keep it down, we are trying to interrogate the man, for Christ’s sake.”
Kendra turned back to the priest.
“You do not belong here.”
“Agent Wilson, I am here on Peter’s request. I don’t want to interfere—”
“Interfere? Interfere? I know what you are,” Kendra hissed. “And if you are involved in this in any way, I will make sure that you rot in hell.”
“Kendra!” Brett shouted. He reached for her, but she pulled away. “Take a fucking walk, Kendra!”
“I will find—”
Brett snapped.
“Take a fucking walk!”
Kendra looked at him, just a passing glance, and then she took two steps toward the door leading into the hallway. The priest moved to his left just in time to avoid being rammed by her shoulder.
“I’ll find out,” Kendra whispered, then left the room.
Chapter 29
Kendra was seeing red; everything, the generic hallway, the door to the interrogation room that she had just exited, and even the two or three police officers milling about were all bathed in a shade of crimson.
Fucking priest… fucking Martin… fucking missing girls…
Her normally analytical mind was on the fritz, unable to process anything, unable to put together any of the pieces to this puzzle. Part of the problem was that her judgment was clouded by the presence of Father John—who she was convinced she recognized from somewhere, but was drawing a blank—but it was also the fact that none of the puzzle pieces seemed to fit, as if someone had cut all of the nubs of the squares, leaving her with an unconnected wash of colors… mainly red.
Kendra gritted her teeth together so tightly that her jaw started to throb.
Memories flooded back to her as she walked down the hallway without purpose, without acknowledging or even caring about who was staring at her or what she looked like.
She was beyond that now.
And in a moment, she was no longer in the hallway of the Rickshaw Police Station; she was walking away from the only suspect in three missing and one dead girl, and was now back in the heat, outside on the bare, sun-beaten dirt, knocking on the door to a gigantic church.
And then she was whisked inside, her parents gone, enveloped in the cool, damp darkness with only the priest and his kind face.
“Can I see the letter?”
It was strange the way the priest led her into the church after only a casual look around to see if her parents were outside. It was almost as if he had been expecting her.
Or there might have been something in the letter that let him know that they weren’t coming back.
Kendra recalled her father’s tears and the way her mother had refused to look at her, the way she had stared ahead as if there was something so interesting on the bleak road before her that she couldn’t risk missing it.
At four years old, her tiny, underdeveloped worldview was such that trying to piece together what and why her parents had left her was simply not possible.
But the letter… maybe the letter would help.
“Can I see the letter?” she asked again, but the priest tucked it into the
pocket of his dark robe.
“Not now, sweetie. Not now.”
And then the dreams had come… the dreams that seemed oddly similar to the picture that Stephanie Black had drawn with pencils and crayons, the image of the—
Kendra snapped out of her head and looked around.
“What the fuck?” Her words were a whisper. Shock, confusion, and then fear struck her—in that order.
She was standing in front of a large wooden door, her fingers moving up and down the worn surface as if she were delicately caressing angel hair. Kendra yanked her hand back, and in doing so a splinter caught her right index finger, drawing blood.
She barely noticed.
Careening backward, Kendra desperately tried to regain her senses, to get out of whatever hell of a hallucination she was experiencing.
Did the B52 somehow seep through the syringe and into my skin, or did I accidentally inject some into myself when I stuck Martin?
Impossible.
Two more stumbling steps backward, her heart racing in her chest as her eyes drifted upward, anxiety of seeing the steeple high above like that morning more than three decades ago overwhelming her.
Please, I can’t be back here.
Her hands were shaking, sweat forming on her brow.
I’m not here, I’m not at the church. I’m at the police station… I’m in the hallway, taking a break from… from…
But thoughts had become mush in her head, a kaleidoscope of images of the priest then and the one now, of the three members of the Black family all stacked, all dead, and of Brett fucking her.
Kendra felt nauseated and took another large step backward.
A horn honked so close to her that even in her confused state, she jumped forward, narrowly avoiding being struck by an oncoming car.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going!” the driver shouted from the open window.
And with that, Kendra finally began to make sense of where she was.
She wasn’t at the church, but she wasn’t at the police station, either.
In her meanderings, lost in thought as much as the demented reverie, she had left the station and had wandered some distance down the main street.
And the brown door that had drawn blood from her fingertip wasn’t a church door.
It was the entrance to a bar.
A bar with a glowing red sign, advertising ‘2 for 1’ specials on rail shots.
Kendra brushed off her slacks and shoved the door open.
Chapter 30
Brett resisted the urge to follow Kendra, and instead settled for watching her walk down the hallway, her pace slow and slightly meandering like a drunk trying to pass a field sobriety test.
Kendra, I know, he wanted desperately to say. I know that you were abandoned and raised by a priest. I know about the cuts, I know about the dreams, and most of all, I know about your parents.
But he couldn’t do that—he couldn’t do that to her, not now, not ever.
It would crush her.
“Is that him?” The man’s voice was so low that Brett could barely make out the words. He turned, and caught sight of Peter McGuire back inside the outer interrogation room, glaring at Martin through the one-way glass.
“Shit!”
Brett pulled the outer door completely open with his foot and went back inside, hurrying toward Peter.
“No, no!” he said, reaching for the man. “You can’t be in here!”
Peter McGuire wasn’t physically large, and Brett’s hands nearly wrapped all the way around his upper arms.
Yet despite this, Peter somehow managed to squirm and break free.
“Is that him?” he hissed.
Brett grabbed him again, but Peter continued to wrangle. When Peter turned his head, the light bounced off his face in such a way that Brett caught the man’s reflection in the glass.
His eyes were wide, his mouth slack.
He had seen this kind of look before, and it wasn’t a good sign. Losing first his wife and now his daughter had made Peter a desperate man.
A broken soul.
He had to stop this before it degenerated.
“Calm down!” he shouted, and put a bear hug on Peter a split second before he yanked the door to the inner room open.
Peter grunted and tried to shimmy free, but Brett, prepared now, overpowered him. The FBI agent spun, noting for the first time that the priest had followed them into the room.
Fucking party is right.
Peter kept trying to turn his head, to stare at Martin Reigns, but Brett held fast, gradually shuffling them both forward until Peter was pressed flat against the wall opposite the one-way glass. Brett removed his hands from around the man’s waist, and drove his forearm into the man’s back, laced across his shoulder blades.
“Please, Peter, keep calm. I don’t—”
“This is the work of the Devil…”
Brett whipped his head around and flashed a look at the priest, who had taken Peter’s spot in front of the glass. Father John Simone seemed oblivious to the wrestling match that had just taken place.
Perhaps sensing the change in pressure on his back, Peter again tried to spin away from Brett’s grip.
“That bastard took my daughter!” he shouted, spit flying from his lips.
Brett sidestepped to stay directly behind Peter and slid one arm around the man’s waist, the other returning to his upper back, this time applying even more pressure.
Peter’s face was pushed up against the cold cement wall, his lips forced into a fish face.
“Peter, please, don’t make me cuff you. Please.”
“—this Devil’s work, twisting his—”
Brett chanced a quick glance to his hip in search of his cuffs. Like Kendra, he didn’t carry his gun often, but he was never without his cuffs close at hand.
But this time they weren’t there.
“—evil ways like a burning trident, grinding—”
Brett had had enough.
“Shut up!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Just shut the fuck up!”
Peter shifted again, and Brett realized that he had used his cuffs to chain Martin to the table.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
He wanted to tell the priest to fuck off, tell Peter to fuck off, Martin, the director, and most of all Kendra—he wanted to tell them all to just fuck off.
The door suddenly flew open and the police officer who had initially brought both him and Kendra to the room stepped inside, his face red.
“Where the fuck were you?” Brett shouted.
The man tried to take the whole scene in, his mouth gaping.
Brett shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter, just give me your cuffs!”
The shouts finally seemed to snap the man out of his stupor.
“My cuffs?”
Peter shifted again, but Brett was already moving with him. A second later, Brett had the man’s right arm—he had noticed back at the house that Peter had taken the tea cup from the priest with his right hand—and twisted it behind his back. Peter grunted, but he stopped moving.
Fuck, I don’t want to do this.
But he had no choice.
“Yes, your cuffs! Give them to me!”
The officer still looked confused but he obliged. Brett snatched the cuffs and then turned to Peter, taking the man’s other arm and forcing the back of both hands together behind him.
“And get the fucking priest out of here!”
As Brett reluctantly snapped the handcuffs on Peter McGuire’s hands, his mind quickly moved elsewhere, first to Kendra, then to the director.
He was going to have to suck it up and call Director Ames again.
Shit had definitely hit the proverbial fan… and it had sprayed down a deluge of diarrhea all over him.
Chapter 31
“Another,” Kendra said simply, overturning her shot glass and pushing it forward with two fingers.
The bartender committed a cardinal sin: he raised his
eyebrow and passed judgment. The man was in his mid-sixties, his bald head speckled with liver spots, his face covered in lines and white stubble.
Kendra cleared her throat, reached into her wallet, and put a twenty on the bar.
“Give me another fucking drink,” she demanded, her voice and face deadpan.
The man swallowed hard and took the shot glass from in front of her. He seemed to stare contemplatively at the glass cylinder for a moment before he retrieved another glass and placed both on the bar in front of Kendra. Then he filled them with Jameson.
“Sorry,” he grumbled, pocketing the twenty and then turning.
Kendra swallowed the first shot, barely tasting the caustic liquid as it first coated her tongue, then slid down her throat.
The bar was quiet for a Sunday afternoon, and aside from the bartender and a young man with red headphones alone in a booth toward the back, Kendra was the only patron.
Which didn’t bother her one bit.
Even when the man with the headphones came over and sat beside her, she didn’t really mind. In fact, she actually enjoyed being pulled out of her head—something that the alcohol hadn’t quite achieved.
“Girl must have some demons to be downing Jack like that.”
Unlike Martin’s game, this was one that Kendra knew well. Instead of answering, she kept her eyes trained on her full shot glass, not terribly unlike how the bartender had looked at it but a moment ago.
Her whole body ached all of a sudden, as if she had just run a marathon.
And tired, Kendra was fucking tired.
“Ah, I see… must be some bad demons, then. Hey, barkeep, hit me with another beer, would you?”
Kendra glanced up and saw the old man move to action. This kid—had to be a kid, closer to twenty than thirty—was clearly no stranger to him.
This didn’t bother her either.
When the kid’s drink came, he indulged in a massive gulp. Then he too stared straight ahead.
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