The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  The engine was turning over as he grabbed the passenger side door and folded himself in. Not looking at him, Eleri pulled smoothly away from the curb. Only thing was, he hadn’t quite gotten his car door shut.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed. It wasn’t like he had a lot of practice with tough conversations. But he felt wrong. His breathing felt tight, as though he couldn’t move. Twitching his finger just to test his theory, he found he could do that much, but something had taken over any greater control and locked him down.

  Eleri was mad at him.

  Since he’d been a small child left with his grieving father, he hadn’t known this sensation. Growing up, he sometimes was disappointed in himself, missed goals he set, underperformed during rounds in med school. But that was him against himself. It had been decades since he allowed what someone else thought of him to have this kind of effect. As an adult, he was left with no developed method to deal with it. His mouth felt dry and his skin hot.

  “You should buckle your seatbelt.” Her words scorched their way across his revelation—their very ordinariness and complete lack of tone disturbing.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll feel bad if I kill you in a car accident. And I’m not in the best mood, so if I’m going to have one, it will be today.” She stared at the road, not him, as though she were speaking to the air.

  He managed to do as she suggested, only then realizing she thought he was apologizing for not buckling in. It took a moment to sit up straight, to speak. It had been hard enough to get the words out the first time; doing it again was worse. “Eleri, I’m sorry I made you feel bad.”

  It was like he deflated her. Her shoulders sagged, her neck lost its ramrod stiffness and her head listed to the side, her eyes no longer watching the road. He suffered a moment of worry that there wouldn’t be anything left when she was done losing structure. But she stopped. Sitting probably five inches lower in the seat, unshed tears held back by force of will, her voice was no longer strong, and Donovan thought maybe he preferred mad Eleri. “I don’t want it.”

  “It seems cool to me. I’m sorry.” His brain scrambled. “I wish I could do what you do.”

  “No you don’t.” There was a slight pause. “I see killers tormenting victims. I saw a guy burying a kid and using the shovel edge to chop off limbs while he did it.”

  “You also saw the truck. You got our big break in this case.” It was a gift. “There are good things, too. You see your sister.”

  “That’s a mixed bag.” She was speaking clearly now. The tears having vanished, she sat a little straighter, even if she wasn’t at full Eleri yet.

  “You solve cases. You save lives.” There was an upside and a downside to everything. “Don’t you see good things, too?”

  The bark she emitted sounded too harsh against his optimism. “What good things? My sister’s wedding? The birth of her first child? My parents’ anniversary? My parents are shells of their former selves and they weren’t all that solid to begin with.”

  Jesus. The girl needed a dog worse than he did.

  “And by the way, it’s not real psychometry or precognition. I did get curious about it once.” She took the turn into the hotel parking lot and found a premium spot in the shade. That happened in Brownwood at nine a.m. on a Tuesday. “I don’t see the future. My dreams are clairvoyant.”

  Just then, she was interrupted by the ringing of her cell. A shrill sound, he wondered if she’d chosen it specifically to sound harsh or if she’d more liked that it harkened back to the old, corded phone models.

  By the end of the call, she was relatively excited and making promises to the caller. “Grace is awake and ready to be interviewed. Eating solid food.”

  Eleri nodded to herself, but since she made no move to get out of the car, Donovan didn’t either.

  For a moment they talked, Eleri rattling off the to-do list they had. It was just three items: interview the young woman, coordinate and execute another run around the compound, convince the Baxters to come help find their son. It was short, but each task alone would have been more than enough to occupy them.

  If he were choosing, Donovan would talk to the Baxters first. Set them in motion, since it would take a while to get them here. He would guess they were drivers and not big travelers. They would likely arrive a full day or more after they were convinced of the need to come—and who knew how long it would take to convince them?

  He and Eleri would need to get to the hospital next, while the girl was awake and alert. Before she needed more medications, before she got tired and crashed for another twelve hours.

  He was reaching for the door handle, itching to get started on something, even if Eleri had a different idea, but she still wasn’t moving. He’d begun to understand how she worked. Eleri was a thinker. Sure, she blurted sometimes, but mostly she processed first. She was processing now, and the fact that she wasn’t looking at him was a clue that there was probably something big about to come out.

  He was not disappointed.

  “I’ve been working on recalling the dream about the truck, about Collier.” Another pause. “I saw him pick up Ruth. I saw him pick up another girl, too. Given Jonah’s pictures, it wasn’t Faith. . . . I had another dream about Collier, after we met him.” She shook her head as though trying to shake something into or out of place. “If what I saw was true, then there’s another girl he picked up, one he didn’t tell us about.”

  Eleri turned to face Donovan. “I think he’s been relatively eager to help us because he wants it all to be done. But I think more than that, he knows where one of them is.”

  32

  Eleri was surprised by the elder Baxters. Anxious to meet Jonah, even knowing full well he might not be their grandchild, they were ready to leave Zion’s Gate practically before Eleri even finished explaining. They had no issues with the DNA tests. Where Eleri had steeled herself for a full-on science-denial argument, they surprised her again with the core belief that God gave them science, it was just up to them not to abuse it. Using it to save Jonah from the foster system was what God would intend them to do. Eleri was about ready to pack up and ask if there was room for her at Zion’s Gate. It would certainly be less stress than she had now.

  Though Mark and Lilly Baxter had already agreed to help, Eleri felt obligated to tell them the whole deal before they committed. It would be a bit easier for her—for today—to let them travel, then spring the rest of the info on them when they got here, but she didn’t have the heart for it.

  It was Donovan who figured out the key that would hopefully convince the Baxters of the need to travel to central Texas and offer their help. But it was Eleri who got to repeat it on the phone to them. “Flushing out Joseph is important. If we don’t have evidence against him, and if he is Jonah’s father, he’ll have a legal claim to the boy that none of us can break.”

  Mrs. Baxter sucked in a quick breath and it tugged at Eleri even across the miles. She was being a bit manipulative, but what she said was true. If they couldn’t take down JHB, and he was Jonah’s father, then he could take Jonah far away and forbid his parents from ever seeing their grandchild.

  The long pause was full of thought and fear on both sides of the line. It was Joseph’s father who finally broke the tension. “Ms. Eames, we know exactly what our son is. We’ll help the FBI get him into a treatment facility or even a jail, where he belongs.”

  Ignoring the twist in her gut at the deception—there would be no treatment, no jail for Joseph—Eleri started to respond, but she was jumping the gun, Mark Baxter wasn’t done yet.

  “Is there any chance this boy, Jonah, is like our son?”

  “No sir. I don’t see it at all. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, and I realize that doesn’t make me certified to diagnose anything, but your son appears to be a sociopath. It’s a random event that happens to a portion of the population and it doesn’t appear to be genetic.” She was trying to be helpful. To her, “helpful” was information
that set things straight. She floundered, knowing the science behind it wasn’t necessarily what the Baxters needed, but she tried. “Not being genetic means he can’t pass it to his offspring. I’ve met Jonah, he’s a great kid. The other children there look up to him, a natural leader.” Of course Joseph had been a natural leader, too. Eleri scrambled to cover that, “They love him. He thinks of others first. You’ll be proud to have him as your own.”

  She must have said something right. Mark and Lilly thought they could be on the road within a few hours—they had to pack, talk to Father Jim, say their goodbyes to the group and request prayers—but they were anxious to come. They were more than willing to be part of the process bringing down their only son. It was all she could ask.

  Eleri just hoped the interview in the hospital went as well.

  When she and Donovan walked into the ICU room, Grace was awake and alert with an empty food tray pushed to her side. Eleri remembered to put a bright smile on her face and nudged Donovan. He looked at the girl as though he was making the initial assessment over a cadaver, and Eleri poked him again as she said, “We’re so happy to meet you, Grace.”

  Finally Donovan smiled and Eleri accepted it, even if he did look pained rather than pleased. After introducing the two of them, Eleri told the woman the purpose of the interview, and that they were with the FBI. Her tongue tensed as the words rolled off. It was partly a lie that she wasn’t comfortable with yet. Still holding a grudge against her friend for keeping all this from her for years, Eleri decided to call Wade and ask how he had handled it. She made a mental note to call between two and four a.m. if possible.

  Grace didn’t seem bothered by their need to question her, and Eleri had to wonder if that was because Grace was trusting or if she’d seen JHB for what he really was. Maybe Eleri and Donovan seemed tame and trustworthy in comparison.

  The interview started slowly. Name? Only “Grace.” People at the City? She named the same list Jonah and Charity did. They laid out Jonah’s pictures for her and she identified each one with precision and certainty. Then she looked up at them. “Jonah did these.” Eleri nodded and waited and was rewarded.

  “Joseph says that drawing faces captures the soul. He beat Jonah for drawing things. But Jonah is so talented.”

  Eleri noted all kinds of things. She spoke of JHB in the present tense. She didn’t agree with the statement; it saddened her. Her next words confirmed it.

  “Mercy and Sarah and Abraham liked to sing. They had beautiful voices. Joseph says it’s all fine as long as they sing with others. As long as they don’t sing out of turn. When he found them practicing together, he punished them. But they weren’t being vain. They enjoy it. And we enjoyed listening to them.” Grace picked at the thin woven blanket on the bed. “God gave them those voices.” Now she looked up, clearly older than Jonah and Charity. Maybe in her early twenties, but she lacked their confidence. “Doesn’t that mean God wants them to use it? To give us joy? To praise him? I don’t agree with Joseph.”

  Understandably, the last statement was hard for her.

  In most cults, particularly religious ones, the leader was God’s voice on Earth. To go against Joseph, to form her own opinion, would be blasphemy and likely also carried a very earthly punishment. What she said, what Jonah and Charity had said, made JHB sound very typical in that respect.

  Eleri did as she was trained and steered the conversation. Using a soft voice, and a lowered gaze, she asked, “What did Joseph do when they sang?”

  It was hard to sit and nod at the explanation of beatings and blood. At the leader’s refusal to let the others tend to the wounded. Punishment, he said, did not include sympathy. Grace looked up at the two of them, looked to Elaine Coates for confirmation and understanding, each time she said something against JHB. When she described his treatment of her fellow City dwellers, she looked down. Though Grace wasn’t able to truly stand up to the man, she had developed her own opinions. They eventually led her to the roadside and the orange truck with the blue flames.

  “Joseph said my illness was a punishment from God. But I didn’t have the spots. The spots weren’t visited on those who needed to be punished.” She looked down again. “Or Joseph would have gotten them.”

  Grace had not had the measles. She’d had a harsh fever and evidence of several strains of bacteria that should not have gotten hold in a healthy girl. She’d had a severe headache and told them that one of the women slipped her white pills for a while. This woman had gotten these when she snuck out of the City, and she gave them out to the kids and other women who needed them. From the description it sounded like they were probably Tylenol, but there was no way to be certain.

  “Never the men?” Eleri latched on to what Grace didn’t say.

  Grace shook her head. “The men all report to Joseph. He says God made men to lead and women to follow. But the women started leading. The men are . . .”

  Eleri leaned forward, grateful Donovan was just hanging back and taking notes. She was glad that Elaine Coates and the other RN working with Grace were female. It meant the ratio of men in the room was small, because it appeared Grace was used to the men being a separate group and interaction being low. “What are the men?”

  Grace glanced to the side, then back to Eleri, leaning forward. All her body language said that she was revealing something, something she was unsure of or didn’t like. “All the men are going crazy.”

  DONOVAN DID NOT like the collar. It felt stupid, a grown man wearing a dog collar in the middle of a hotel room.

  Worse, it was an invisible fence collar, the kind that picked up radio signals from a buried wire and shocked the dog if he went out of bounds. Certainly Donovan wasn’t going to get shocked. Eleri jury-rigged it—pulled out the prongs, then replaced the inner workings with the tiny GPS. It looked spot on, but he was still a grown man wearing a shock-collar. Not cool.

  If anyone was monitoring them, this would look like a setup for something very kinky—made all the worse by the fact that Eleri did not look like someone who would go for that kind of kink. But here she was, examining his shock collar. Donovan wondered what his dad would think of him, but like always he pushed those thoughts aside.

  “It looks good to go.” She sighed at him and frowned. “Your neck will be a different size, won’t it? Can we guess?”

  “We’re fine, it doesn’t have to fit perfectly, just stay on so I can be tracked.” Eleri was not going to be left at the road this time. Wearing several weapons on her person and her own GPS, Eleri would set up between the road and the City. Westerfield had been alerted to the operation, and Eleri was to call in with a check for both herself and Donovan each hour. If anything went wrong, Bozeman would activate local police SWAT teams to extract them.

  Donovan wasn’t much for prayer, but he prayed now that nothing went wrong. The last thing he wanted was the City of God going crazy and his own life in the gloved hand of some local officer who probably didn’t think very highly of him. If that all went well and he and Eleri were rescued, he would likely be leashed and kept until Eleri could reclaim him and get him somewhere to change. Or else they would find him naked, hopefully having taken off the damn shock collar. Donovan prayed harder.

  Who had thought this stupid thing up? Oh yes, that was him.

  The interview with Grace had taken several hours and was incredibly interesting. She inadvertently gave them more things to look for this time when he went in. The young woman described the layout of the compound, including which buildings had basements dug underneath them. Donovan didn’t know if he could get close enough to check things out, but it might help him account for where people came and went.

  She’d also given him several locations where Ruth might be buried. Grace had told the same story as Jonah and Charity about the older woman. Then Eleri had asked for Grace’s oldest memory. The words had come out on a whisper. “I was six, I was on the swing set with my little brother next to me. And I told my dad to push me higher.”

&
nbsp; She didn’t remember her “dad” but no one called any of the men in the City of God “dad”. And no one had a swing set. It was within minutes of that announcement that Grace became quite saddened. So it wasn’t a surprise when she said she was tired and asked, could they finish this tomorrow?

  Though Grace got to tap out for the day, they did not. When the two of them called Westerfield to discuss the run that night, Donovan had listened as Eleri requested surveillance on Collier and his wife at home.

  “Did you find something else out?”

  “Not really, sir. Just a . . . hunch.” The stiffness in her neck made it obvious Eleri didn’t like being called out for her ability. She saw it more as something that happened to her, rather than a gift she might be able to control. Donovan thought otherwise.

  Apparently so did Westerfield. The man responded, “Eleri, you were brought into NightShade because of your ‘hunches’. We’ll post regular FBI on recon there and see what they report.”

  She hadn’t commented after that, just offered a terse thank you and moved to the next topic. But that conversation helped cement Donovan’s belief that NightShade actively recruited oddities. They hadn’t met anyone else in the division yet, which in turn made Donovan wonder if they had to complete this first mission before Westerfield would introduce them fully or if there was more to it and they might always be on their own, two NightShades floating secretly through the realm of “regular FBI.”

  Eleri stared at him, the clock ticking on the day. Everything was ready except them.

  Neither had slept well the night before. They were exhausted—and the intense interview with Grace didn’t help at all. Donovan only hoped it served to get them both to sleep for the next few hours. They were going to have to sleep through some daylight in order to get up at midnight and be fully alert for this run.