Deputy Chip Harkins met the sheriff as he stepped from his car.
“It’s a massacre,” he said, looking at Cameron, then at the house, then back at Cameron again. “Bodies everywhere. And blood … lots of blood.”
Harkins was twenty-four years old and every bit as green as he appeared. A tight crew cut accentuated his boyish appearance, along with high cheekbones, awash in a flush of red—a good-looking kid by most anyone’s standards, in a high-school-football-star-turned-local-cop sort of way. He’d joined the department less than a year before and seemed anxious to prove his worth.
“We know how all this started … or why?” Cameron asked as they reached the front of the house, stopping at the top of the steps.
Chip shook his head with more enthusiasm than the situation warranted. He was out of breath.
Cameron studied his eager expression, then poked his head through the doorway, peering down the foyer. He looked over the doorframe, following the weather-stripping from one end to the other, searching for signs of a break-in, then leaned in closer, inspecting the locking mechanisms, careful not to touch them with his hands. “How ‘bout a suspect?”
“Got one,” said Chip, sticking a pen in his mouth and frantically flipping through the pages on his clipboard. “It’s the son, Ben.”
Cameron stopped what he was doing and felt the blood drain from his face. He looked up at Chip. “Ben? You’re telling me Ben Foley is the cause of all this?”
“Hell, yeah … I mean … well, sure looks that way,” Chip replied. He frowned. “You know the kid?”
“Ben, yeah, I knew him,” Cameron said, sighing, nodding. “Coached his Little League team last summer.”
“Wow,” the junior deputy said, shaking his head.
Cameron stared at Chip again, then gazed up at the second floor as if it were harboring some kind of secret. Memories of the previous summer flashed through his mind: a balmy evening in a dusty parking lot at the Dairy Queen. Kids in soiled uniforms perched on tailgates, feet dangling as they celebrated victory. Laughing. Hurrying to finish ice cream cones that were quickly melting in their small hands. Ben was there, too.
Chip had been talking, but Cameron barely heard a word of it. He was pretty sure he hadn’t missed much, catching only the tail end of a sentence. “You okay, boss?”
“Is he in custody? Ben?” Cameron finally said after returning to the present. He surveyed the area, then rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m gonna need to speak to him.”
“He’s dead, boss …”
Cameron flinched.
“Killed himself. He’s still in there. Hey, you gonna be okay?” Chip asked, cocking his head and trying to make eye contact with his boss.
Cameron nodded but didn’t look back at Chip. Instead, he stared into the front entryway, wondering how the boy he’d taught to catch a fly ball could turn cold-blooded murderer.
Ben Foley a killer? Not even close.
Chapter Thirteen
Old Route 15
Faith, New Mexico
Cameron passed through the front door, careful not to touch or disturb anything while trying to absorb his surroundings.
He stopped at the bottom of the staircase and took a deep, steady breath.
Climbing the steps, he looked down and scrutinized every inch he traveled, knowing even the smallest bit of evidence could turn out to be a big break. But when he reached the top, he got far more than he’d expected: stamped across the floor were small, bloody footprints that went past him, then vanished down the dimly lit hall. A child’s footprints, he thought, knowing they probably belonged to Ben. A sudden wave of nausea began to arc through him while thinking about the eleven-year-old boy, walking through the house, tracking his slain family’s blood on his feet.
Entering the parents’ room was like stepping out of one nightmare and into another. The scene was a bloody battlefield—bodies lying tossed about like ragdolls, walls perforated with bullet holes, the mattress a giant sponge for all the blood.
No matter how hard he tried, Cameron still had trouble envisioning Ben Foley—the unassuming kid with a big heart and even bigger smile—as the one responsible for the massacre before him.
“Looks like the dad took the first shot,” said Deputy Jim Avello from behind, surprising Cameron. “Probably never even knew what was coming. His head never left the pillow.”
Cameron turned around, studied the deputy’s face for a moment, then gazed back toward the victims. “I suppose that’s for the best.”
“Doesn’t appear the mom was so lucky. I’m guessing she woke up when she heard the gunfire. See how she’s lying across her husband’s lower legs?” Avello asked, running a pointed finger back and forth to illustrate direction. “Threw herself over him out of pure instinct … tried to protect him.”
“It would make sense,” Cameron agreed, kneeling down by the bed to take a closer look at the gunshot wounds, “since the bullets look like they entered through the right side of her body.”
“Not much of a payoff—they both ended up dying.”
Cameron shook his head. “I don’t think she was looking for a payoff.”
“I mean in terms of saving her husband’s life.”
“What about a make on a weapon? Got one yet?”
Avello walked over and stood beside him, staring at the bodies. “A .30/30, lever action of some sort, looks like. Gun’s in the closet with the boy, but you can tell just by the number of shots fired. With a bolt action, it would have taken too long to chamber the rounds.”
“And required more strength than Ben probably had, considering his build,” Cameron added. “He wouldn’t have been able to operate it quickly enough to deliver that kind of power in such a short period of time.”
“You can get all the specifics—make and model—once you check the boy. I didn’t get close enough to look.” Avello frowned. “Left the honors for you.”
Cameron caught his gaze and nodded, but said nothing.
“The picture’s not much better down the hall,” Avello added. “You have a little girl in the first bedroom. Then further down is the boy’s room.”
As soon as Cameron crossed the threshold into the girl’s bedroom, he stopped abruptly and stared, dazed. The child was sprawled on the floor, facedown, arms splayed out in front of her. To him, it seemed suggestive of fear, panic, or both. A puddle of blood converged around her head and drenched her hair, with the nightgown she wore sopping up the rest.
It appeared that Ben’s sister had been awake just before he gunned her down. Cameron theorized she’d woken up to the sound of gunfire coming from her parents’ bedroom, then, before she could do anything, saw her brother standing in the doorway aiming the rifle at her. From there, she probably jumped off the bed and tried to get away. Cameron wondered what went through the poor child’s mind when she saw her brother’s face at the end of that long, metal barrel.
Her bedroom had all the requisite heartbreaking little-girl things one might expect. A collection of dolls. Posters of the boy-band-flavor-of-the-week. A series of award ribbons for scholastic achievement.
Cameron took a few steps toward her desk, just a couple of feet from the bed. A picture frame sat on top, decorated with a colorful array of circus clowns and balloons. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, snapped them onto his wrists, then held the picture in his hands. A beautiful child, he thought—milky white complexion, eyes bright and cheerful, and head tilted sideways. Big smile for the camera, almost to the point of silliness. Cameron realized she looked nothing like her brother. He had brown hair and darker skin—she, blonde with fair features, appearing to be around five or six.
The same age his own son had been.
He dismissed the thought, leaving the girl’s room and moving to the end of the hall, toward Ben’s bedroom farther down on the opposite side.
Once inside, Cameron paused and stared at the closet door. He stepped up to it, then placed his hand around the thinnest outer edges of
the knob so as not to disturb any prints on the front or back sides. Giving the door a gentle tug, he pulled it open.
Ben Foley lay in the corner, crumpled up like a pile of dirty laundry. The sight wasn’t just tragic; it was revolting. Blood saturated the carpet beneath him, turning it a deep shade of red. Right beside him was the gun, a Winchester Rifleman, and—just as Avello had called it—a .30/30 caliber.
The impact from the blast had probably slammed Ben against the rear wall. From there, he likely plummeted forward, chin tucked against his chest as he flipped sideways, leaving the body strangely contorted on the floor.
For Cameron, no matter how many times he’d seen death, smelled it, and touched it, each time, it seemed just as familiar, just as vivid, and worst of all, just as unsettling as the last. As much as he wished it would, the ugliness never faded.
Cameron stepped away from the closet and turned his attention to the rest of Ben’s room. All around were signs of a burgeoning adolescence beginning to take shape. It seemed a contradiction of sorts, a typical representation of a boy passing from childhood into his early teens—still a lot of little-boy things, but also signs of approaching pubescence. The baseball memorabilia was falling away, becoming upstaged now by his new heroes, the ones holding electric guitars instead of baseball bats. It seemed Ben had bypassed the rap scene in favor of heavy metal. Posters hung along the walls featuring his favorite groups: Mary’s Stepchild, Revenge, and Daily Spawn. Typical kid stuff, he figured, a boy struggling to find his way in the world, searching for something to which he could relate.
Cameron walked over to Ben’s dresser and began pulling out drawers. After removing the clothing, he looked inside, searching for false bottoms, then he held them up and looked underneath; these are common places kids often use to conceal contraband, but there was none. He walked over to the stereo speakers positioned on the floor and removed the cloth grills, shining a flashlight through to the hollow spaces inside, but again, nothing was there.
* * *
The sun was beginning to rise as Cameron headed out the front door. It imbued the air with warm, orange-hued rays of light, almost as if washing away the lingering negative energy surrounding the place.
Almost, but not quite.
Except for a few stray reporters and their crews still wrapping things up, and some deputies, things were beginning to settle down into a dull hum. The curious onlookers had finally gone to bed, probably exhausted by what they’d seen.
About twenty feet from the house, Cameron stopped and turned around to take in the scene. A gloomy cloud of uncertainty had wandered not only over the Foley house, but also over the entire town of Faith, casting its shadow, leaving everything unsettled, uneasy, and–worst of all—unsaid.
Five murders and one suicide in just a few days—all in a town, which before this had never seen even one suspicious death. A deputy lay dead, the victim of a sadistic murder. Next, a teacher, slaughtered like a piece of meat while she was still alive. Now, Ben Foley, a boy who had appeared as normal as could be, had waged bloody war on his entire family before ending his own life.
What the hell is happening to this town?
Cameron turned away from the house, trying to do the same with his mind, then felt his past catching up with him again, paying yet another unwelcome visit. He’d moved back to Faith so he could come home, start anew, and forget the pain he thought he’d left behind.
But it seemed that the harder he tried to resist or ignore it, the harder it seemed to come right back at him, lingering, much like a bad stain. Every time he saw someone’s life come to a tragic end, it was just like going back and reliving that horrible day all over again.
Cameron was learning that the past is a lot like a shadow on the ground behind you. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not still there.
Chapter Fourteen
Abrams Medical Center
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Kyle Bancroft was examining a patient at her Albuquerque office. That was when it started.
A torrent of images blew through her mind at warp speed, each one leaping over the next, like bending back the pages in a book, releasing them, then watching them flutter down. Some passed as nothing more than a blur, while others looked like amateur video—a grainy quality—random, dark, unstable. The lens would zoom in on something, then abruptly jerk elsewhere. She could barely keep up with it all.
But they weren’t all that way. In fact, some were just the opposite, so vivid, so real, that Kyle could almost reach out and grab them. Unfortunately, those were the ones she could have done without.
Panic breaking out everywhere. Feet pounding frantically across a convulsing floor. People scattering in all directions. It was unparalleled hysteria, and it was everywhere, like a herd of animals running for their lives. Only these didn’t look like animals; these were human.
From whom or what were they all running?
If the pictures weren’t enough to unnerve her, the blaring racket surely would. Just as indiscriminate as the images, it would start loud and clear, then cut out intermittently, like a stereo with a faulty wire.
ON-OFF-ON-OFF.
Kyle thought she’d heard screams but couldn’t be sure. The noise kept rising to ear-splitting levels, then falling, making it hard to distinguish. Bits and pieces of sound—they were everywhere—exploding in her ears. Intense and rhythmic, the vibrations resonated throughout her body. She could feel them in her bones, her throat, and inside her head too, like the pounding of a drum, incessant and brutal.
With each passing moment, the experience grew even more intense. Soon, the vibrations gave way to a forceful rattle, becoming so powerful it almost knocked Kyle right off her feet.
Then it was all gone. Vanished. Swallowed by silence.
But the unexpected calm offered little comfort for Kyle. After all the noise, the confusion, she felt smothered by the stillness.
“You okay, doc?” It was her patient, twenty-three-year-old Amanda Shively. She’d noticed Kyle’s face had turned a ghostly shade of white.
“Yeah, fine. Just dizzy for a moment is all,” Kyle replied, blinking hard a few times, and forcing a less-than-convincing smile.
Then it started again.
Thundering, quaking sensations charged through her body with the speed and intensity of a fast-moving locomotive. The images returned as well, now flickering at an even more hurried rate than before and brighter too—it reminded Kyle of a film projector spinning out of control.
Flip, flip, flip—they just kept coming.
Kyle flinched. The visuals were more violent now.
A woman lay on the ground, curled into a ball, a halo of blood surrounding her head. Even more blood trailed past her, smeared across the floor—a child’s finger-painting—in shades of crimson.
And silence again.
“Doc?”
Kyle looked at her patient, puzzled, as if seeing her for the very first time. To Amanda, the doctor appeared disoriented. Kyle’s voice was soft and breathy. “Can you excuse me for just a moment, Amanda?”
“Sure thing. You gonna be okay?”
Kyle ignored the question, stumbling toward the door, then out into the hallway and toward her office.
Once inside, she dropped into a chair, letting her face fall into her hands. A few stray images still flickered in her head, but much slower now, almost as if nearing the end of the film reel. She sat completely still for a moment, face still buried in hands, trembling, allowing whatever was in control of her mind to run its course.
A few seconds later, it was all gone.
Cautiously, she looked up to make sure everything had really stopped this time. All she could hear was a distant and faint ringing. Kyle scanned the top of her desk, spotted a half-filled water bottle, grabbed at it. She began pouring it greedily down her throat as if she hadn’t had any in days, squeezing the sides so hard that it began to collapse inward. After finishing, she placed it down, spread her fingers apa
rt, and stared at them; she could see her pulse pounding through the tips.
Her mind had ground to a halt, but her body was still reeling.
Kyle knew what was happening. She’d experienced this before, but nothing quite so powerful. Intense, yes, but overwhelming and incapacitating? Never.
For as long as she could remember, images had often dropped into her head as if from nowhere. Like scattering raindrops—some she caught, others fell past. Usually, however, it would be one or two, not hundreds, not like this. Often, the visions revealed things about to occur or ones that already had, but again, never in such a disruptive or unsettling manner.
This time she couldn’t ignore it.
This time, it meant business.
Kyle hurried from her office and across the hall, sneaking into the bathroom. Once there, she grabbed onto the sink as if it were the only thing keeping her upright.
“Jeez, Kyle, you look like hell,” she said, barely recognizing the reflection staring back in the mirror.
She ripped a handful of paper towels from the dispenser, ran it under the faucet, then pressed it against her face. The coolness felt wonderful on her skin. Kyle sighed as relief passed through her. She felt close to normal again.
Almost.
The only question now: how would she explain her strange behavior to her patient?
Chapter Fifteen
Office of the Medical Investigator
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Ben Foley’s remains lay on a stainless steel autopsy table. The child-sized body bag surrounded him like a cocoon, zipped tight and topped off with a tamper-proof tie-seal. He was nothing more than a number now, one scribbled across the white plastic with a dark marker.
Cameron just stared at it.
It was hard to believe someone so small could inflict harm on such a large scale. So tiny, so fragile, he thought, so broken. Had he not known better, he could just as easily have mistaken Ben for the victim.
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