Blind Sight

by Terri Persons

  Bernadette looked at him over her shoulder. “They think it’s Vizner.”

  Garcia repeated the information into the phone. “Our survivors think Karl Vizner is the shooter … Yeah … Right.”

  “Get down on the floor of the truck,” Bernadette ordered the two women.

  The girls blinked at each other and then at the agent. The instructions weren’t registering. “What?” asked Jensen.

  Garcia opened the driver’s door and killed the headlights. “Let’s go, Cat.”

  Bernadette started to close the back passenger door. Roseau thrust out her hand and stopped the door from shutting. “Don’t leave us without a gun! For Christ’s sake, give us a gun!”

  Bernadette disengaged Roseau’s hand. “Help is coming,” she said, and slammed the door.

  Through the window, Jensen mouthed a curse at Bernadette, and Roseau followed with a flip of the bird. Then the feisty young witches dropped down onto the floor of the truck. Bernadette didn’t like leaving them alone, but she and Garcia had to get to the shooting site.

  Guns in hand, the two agents went down the dark road. Garcia took point, training a flashlight on the ground ahead of them. They came to the dead end and entered the trees, threading quietly between the trunks. The only sound was that of their footsteps in the snow and the occasional scrape of fabric against a bush. As thick as smoke, their breath hung in the air in front of their faces.

  Spotting a glow up ahead, they immediately crouched down. Garcia punched off the flashlight, and the pair moved more slowly through the wooded maze. Just outside the clearing, they took cover behind tree trunks. What they saw would have made a surreal still life for an outdoor catalog.

  Illuminating the round space was a Coleman lantern, sitting in the middle of a table draped with a cloth. A pillar candle sat next to the lantern, but it had burned out. A bowl and some other paraphernalia also topped the altar. Scattered on the ground around the table were more candles, and mounds of black velvet. Fallen worshippers. One was on her back, and Bernadette recognized her immediately. The others had gone down on their faces. No one was moving. No one was groaning. Bernadette prayed that they were simply playing possum for the shooter.

  Where was Karl Vizner?

  Garcia pointed to the right, and she nodded. Bernadette worked her way through the trees one way and Garcia circled around the other. At the south point where they met, they found Vizner behind a large boulder.

  He was on his back, dressed in camo. He’d swallowed his own rifle and pulled the trigger.

  “Crap,” spat Bernadette, holstering her Glock.

  Garcia put away his gun while shining the flashlight over the mess of blood and bone and brain matter. From what was left of Vizner’s face, they could see that he’d worn camo paint. “This guy meant business,” Garcia whispered.

  Bernadette heard a moan coming from the trees. “Survivors,” she said.

  “FBI!” Garcia yelled into the night. “Call out your positions!”

  “Over here!” a woman’s voice yelled. “I’ve got an injured man!”

  “Here, too!” yelled a man’s voice. “My wife! Hurry! Please, hurry!”

  Someone coughed and said weakly, “I’m shot.”

  Garcia worked the woods while Bernadette went to the fallen in the clearing. Eve Bossard was dead, her wide eyes staring up into the night sky. Had the obstetrician played any role in the drama that had taken place over the past few days? Someone else would have to answer that question.

  Bernadette moved on to the next two victims: an older man with a white beard and an older woman. The priest and the priestess? Both were dead. The man had his arm extended, as if reaching out for the woman. She guessed that they were husband and wife.

  Sven Hessler was sprawled on his belly. His head was turned to one side and his eyes were shut, but he was moaning. Bernadette kneeled at his head. The back of his robe was wet over the left shoulder. His right arm was outstretched, and his gloved hand seemed to be pointing to the woods. Bernadette leaned down and whispered into his ear, “Ambulances are coming.”

  “Delores,” he groaned, and lifted his right hand.

  Bernadette pulled out a penlight and entered the woods where he was pointing. She found Martini squatting behind a rock, shaking and crying.

  Glancing up at the agent, the woman started babbling. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s not my fault. I didn’t know. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have. Honest to God, I wouldn’t have …”

  Bernadette cupped a hand under the big woman’s elbow and raised her to her feet. “You wouldn’t have what, Delores?”

  Three dead and eight wounded. Hessler’s injury was the most severe, and required that he be airlifted to a medical center in Fargo. The other patients were divided up between Crow Wing Lakes Memorial and hospitals in Park Rapids and Bemidji.

  Martini’s story came out while she was in the back of the sheriff’s squad, one of a fleet of vehicles that had lined up behind the Titan. Garcia and Wharten were in the front seat, and Bernadette sat next to the ER nurse while she told her story.

  Martini said she was there when the Dunton girl’s body came through the doors of the hospital. She saw the inverted pentagram and feared that her coven would be blamed. She took the key to the storage room/morgue from its hook in the cafeteria and sneaked inside to remove the star. It was a visceral, impulsive reaction, and one that she immediately regretted. She learned that the mark had been viewed and documented not only by local first responders and the area’s coroner but also by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

  Martini didn’t completely panic until she found out that the FBI was involved—and that its agents were well aware of the star’s existence and its removal. She tried to steer the bureau toward the only witch who was open about her faith, counting on Ashe to take the fall for the whole coven.

  “It was at least partially her own fault,” said Martini, twisting a wad of tissue between her trembling hands.

  “How do you figure?” asked Bernadette, one brow raised skeptically.

  “She was so … I don’t know … out there,” said Martini, looking from Bernadette to the two men staring at her over the front seat. “If she’d been more discreet like the rest of us …” Martini’s voice trailed off.

  Wharten shook his head slowly. “Jesus H. Christmas, Delores.”

  “Am I going to be charged with anything?” she whined.

  “You tampered with evidence, Delores,” said Wharten. “You interfered with a murder investigation.”

  “I want a lawyer,” Martini blurted, and started tearing up. “I’m not saying anything more without a lawyer.”

  Garcia and Bernadette slid out of the car while Wharten stayed with his weeping passenger.

  The two agents walked to the Titan and leaned their butts against the driver’s side while the crime-scene crew, other FBI personnel, sheriff’s deputies, and medical guys moved around them. They watched as an emergency sled, pulled by a snowmobile, came out of the woods for the third time. The rig glided past the Titan and the other parked cars, heading for an ambulance that was waiting at the end of the road.

  Garcia kicked at a lump of snow. “Do you suppose Vizner figured the witches killed his girlfriend?”

  “My guess is he blamed them for bringing the killer to her door.” She buried her hands in her pockets. “Either way, it was a fucking disaster.”

  Garcia pulled off his stocking cap and vigorously rubbed his head. “We need to sort this thing through, Cat.”

  She peeled her backside off the side of the truck and turned to face him. She thought he looked tired, and she felt the same. Finding so many dead, including the shooter, had been a shock, and then a drain. “Fine. Let’s sort.”

  “For starters, do you believe Martini?”

  “I do. And you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So we don’t know who painted the inverted star on the Dunton girl’s forehead, but we know who erased it,” said Bern
adette. “Then the eraser points us to Jordan Ashe to save the coven’s butt and her own hind end.”

  “We take the bait and question Ashe in the Dunton girl’s murder,” said Garcia.

  “Then word gets out around town that we paid Jordan a visit.”

  Garcia held up his hand to interrupt her narration. “How does word get out?”

  “Jordan made a ton of phone calls before she was killed. Somebody told somebody who told somebody.”

  “Then what?”

  “One of the real killers gets wind of our suspicions about Ashe and latches on to it as an opportunity to continue focusing attention on the witches,” speculated Bernadette.

  Garcia: “He murders Ashe. Paints a pentagram on her forehead.”

  Bernadette: “So the barn scene was either a weak effort to make it appear that Jordan had hanged herself—”

  “Or the killer did a purposely sloppy job so that it was clearly a murder staged to look like suicide,” said Garcia.

  “Either way, the star on Ashe’s forehead would place blame on the coven,” said Bernadette.

  “What about the pig fetus left on the altar?” he asked. “What was that about?”

  “I imagine it was meant to be an exclamation point on the coven’s involvement,” she said. “Insurance that the witches were viewed as a group that practiced blood sacrifices.”

  “Then you surprised the killer in the woods.”

  “It probably didn’t faze him,” she said. “He figured the witches would be blamed. Again.”

  “Was he the same guy as the one who tampered with your motel door in Brule?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “What about Benjamin Rathers? If the witches didn’t kill him, was the star you saw being drawn on his head yet another red herring?”

  “Sure. It was insurance. If he’s found, the witches are blamed again.” She looked toward the trees, tall and uniformly black, even with the moon overhead. Dumped somewhere in their midst was the body of Dunton’s chief of staff. Search teams were out looking for him.

  “If the inverted pentagram was a ruse and the coven members are scratched as suspects—”

  “We need a new short list,” she said.

  “According to the ME, we’re still looking at a medical person with birthing background. Where do we go with that?”

  “Remember what I saw with my sight: The killer—witch or not—was in the cabin where the senator and his wife are staying. The senator’s chief of staff is dead. His daughter is dead after following blackmail letters to Brule and then Walker. It all leads back to the Duntons. That’s where we go.”

  The sound of a helicopter vibrated the nighttime air, and they both looked up. The first of the television-news stations had arrived. Garcia pulled the truck keys out of his pocket. “I guess our guys and Wharten’s folks have this mess under control.”

  She pulled open the truck door. “Let’s go wake the senator and his wife.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Duntons were already wide awake.

  “Ben had a wife! He had young children!” said Michelle Dunton, hugging a robe around her narrow shoulders. “Where is he?”

  “That’s enough, Mickey,” said Mag Dunton, his eyes locked on the gun aimed at his chest. The senator, dressed in flannel pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt, was next to his wife on the trophy-room couch. This time they were sharing the same cushion, because the home invader had ordered them to sit close together.

  The maid was long gone. The two drivers had already left for the Twin Cities in one of the cars. The chief of staff was going to drive the Duntons himself in the morning. It became clear to the Duntons, however, that Rathers wasn’t coming back.

  “Where is he?” asked Michelle Dunton. “What did you do to him? Tell me what you did to him.”

  “Didn’t do anything to him,” said the intruder, who was dressed in a parka. “Didn’t see him at all tonight.”

  “We sent him to your place,” said Dunton.

  “There’s open water,” the intruder said evenly. “He must have fallen in.”

  “Liar.” She rocked slightly as she hugged herself. “You’re a liar. You killed him.”

  “Quiet, Mickey,” said Dunton.

  “Be a good wife.” The silver barrel moved so that it was pointing at the rocking woman. “Listen to your husband.”

  Michelle Dunton fell back against the cushion and twined her arms even tighter around her body, as if she could stop a bullet that way.

  The gun traveled back to the primary target. “Where’s the cash?”

  “I already told you people, I can’t put my hands on that large a sum all at once. It’ll take time.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You’re asking for a ridiculous amount,” said Dunton. “I don’t have it on hand.”

  “Don’t give me that. You’ve got more money than God.”

  “Why did you have to hurt her?” asked Dunton. “At least tell me that much. Why did you kill my little girl?”

  “We didn’t,” said the intruder. “The witches—”

  “Oh, please,” said Dunton. “I’m not a fool.”

  “The hell you’re not,” snapped his wife. “You’ve been helping them. Telling them what you know about the FBI’s moves. Covering up for them.”

  “I was protecting us,” Dunton said.

  “Protecting your office,” continued his wife. “Be honest. For once in your life, be honest.”

  Dunton returned his attention to the person with the gun. “Answer my question: why did you kill Lydia?”

  A grim smile stretched across the invader’s face. “You want honesty? Let’s get it all out in the open. She came to us.”

  “You lured her somehow,” said Dunton. “You wanted to use her for leverage, for more money.”

  “She found us. I have to give her credit. She figured that much out. Got that much right. We accommodated her. Gave her a place to stay. Food to eat.”

  “Why did she go looking for you?” asked Dunton.

  “Who cares?” asked Michelle Dunton. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It matters to me,” said her husband.

  “She wanted to know more about her birth mother, and felt like she didn’t have anyone else to ask,” said the parka. “Pathetic, really. Thumbing rides all the way over to Brule because she thought we lived there. She read something about Brule in a letter.”

  “How did she find you?”

  “Lydia told us she called home while she was in Brule. Someone at home set her straight. Told her we lived in Walker.” The parka looked at Michelle Dunton. “Now who would have done that?”

  Dunton shot his wife a look and continued asking questions. “Why did you kill her?”

  “One night she overheard the two of us talking in the kitchen. She completely misunderstood what we were saying and—”

  “What happened?” snapped Dunton.

  “Little bitch threatened to go to the police.”

  “So you killed her,” said Dunton, swallowing hard. “You killed my daughter and tossed her body in the woods for the animals to finish.”

  “It wasn’t like that. She ran outside. Slipped and fell and hit her head. We had to take the baby or it would have died with her.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Michelle Dunton said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked her husband.

  “You think I’m a fool?” asked Michelle Dunton. “Lydia’s mother, that whore, didn’t die during childbirth.”

  “Shut up about her,” said Dunton.

  His wife’s eyes narrowed, and she sat forward on the couch so that she could turn in her seat and glare at him. “This is all because of you, you and your wandering cock!”

  “Mickey, this isn’t helping,” he growled.

  “You got that tramp pregnant and hired two backroom butchers to kill her during the delivery.”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” said the invader. “That’s not w
hat happened.”

  “Then you bring her daughter into our house, a girl destined to take after her mother. Another little slut!” Michelle Dunton turned and pleaded to the person with the gun, “Let me go. Please.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Let me go and keep him. Make him pay you. He’s got it.”

  The barrel was trained on the angry wife. “You’ve got it, too.”

  “But this has nothing to do with me,” she said.

  “It’s always been about you, Mickey,” said the senator. “If you hadn’t been so frigid, I never would have looked around for someone else.”

  “I can’t believe you have the nerve to—”

  “Save it for the marriage counselor!” The barrel went from one Dunton to the other. “All I give a shit about is the money! Where in the fuck is the cash?”

  Magnus Dunton looked up at their captor. “I am not paying you or your partner another dime.”

  “We’ll go to the cops. It’ll be the end of your career.”

  “I’m going to them first,” he said.

  The gun moved in closer to the senator’s sweating forehead. “You wouldn’t. You’d go to jail. We’d all go to jail.”

  “I don’t care anymore,” said Dunton, his eyes moving from the gun to the angry face hovering over him. Back to the gun. “I’ve had enough of this crap. I can’t live like this, always afraid.”

  “What about your granddaughter?” asked his captor. “Don’t you care about her?”

  “Where is she?” asked Dunton. “I’ve never laid eyes on her. Show her to me. If she exists, let me see her.”

  Bernadette sees the granddaughter while using her sight in the truck, on the fly. Someone dressed in pink is cradling the child. The killer is having trouble holding the baby while feeding her and keeps readjusting the bundle as she rests in the crook of the large left arm. The infant is fussing, throwing up its tiny fists.

  Bernadette blinks and she’s in another place. The trophy room. There are two people seated on the couch in front of the second murderer, and Bernadette recognizes them by their hair. One has a short shock of auburn on his head and the other has a long ash-blond mane. Dunton and his wife. They’re sitting with their thighs touching. They didn’t suddenly become friendlier toward each other. Something is seriously wrong with this picture.