I’d seen its kind on TV ads. It was called a Focus, and apparently it was a popular model in the outside world. Except that I had never seen one in this town before. Most people here drive large vehicles like my own, or station wagons, pickups. There was not much call for compacts.
A woman got out whom I didn’t recognize. But the sight of her set off an immediate, gentle twanging in my nerves.
The first thing I noticed was she looked exhausted. Why was that? Her bright blue eyes were red rimmed. There were squinty creases under them.
The second thing was, however haggard she might be, it didn’t conceal her essential attractiveness. She looked to be in her early thirties, a couple of years younger than me. Stood five seven or maybe eight. Her hair, cut to shoulder length, was slightly curly in a tousled-looking way. And it was pale blond, shining in the sunlight. Her figure was slim and shapely, with plenty of emphasis on leg.
Her face was a narrow heart shape, her features on it delicate, and she didn’t seem to be wearing any makeup in the slightest. Her lips were a natural pale rose color, like my wife’s had been. Her small nose even had a slightly upturned tilt to it.
Just like…
Watching her, my heart began to ache. She looked so similar to Alicia that it hurt.
She didn’t dress as casually as my wife used to, and had less of her calm manner. She was dressed in a charcoal-colored pants suit, which was rather badly creased. A crisp white shirt was buttoned to her throat. She had on sensible black shoes. There was no jewelry in evidence, but a large patent leather purse was slung across one shoulder.
The third thing I noticed? She looked rather lost. A touch off balance, dazed. Her head kept wandering around as though a blow had mildly stunned her. And I couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with her. People in the Landing get a variety of strange expressions on their faces from time to time. But this wasn’t one of them.
I was starting to think she had actually been hurt. And was about to go across and help, when two things stopped me.
Saul’s Pontiac came around one corner of the street. And, as if on cue, Cassie’s Harley appeared at the other end, cruising along noisily.
The blond woman’s eyes went to the motorcycle, drawn there by its twin-cam rumble. But then she reacted in the last way I’d expect. Her shoulders drew up, and her eyes came open wide. The weary glaze I’d seen there earlier dropped away completely.
Cassie hadn’t even noticed. She was drawing up to the café, nodding to me.
As she came to a halt, the blond woman stepped off the curb. And—reaching underneath her jacket—pulled a handgun out.
The only thing that I could do was stare at her amazedly.
And Cassie did the same.
“Step off the bike! Do it now! Keep your hands where I can see them!”
The woman took a couple of steps in closer without her eyes leaving Cassie for a second. She had her piece aimed with a double-handed grip. Looked like she knew exactly what she was doing, and I wondered how that was.
My own hand started going for my Smith & Wesson, but didn’t make it the whole way. Cass was directly in between us. Unless she moved, there was no clear shot. And besides, it didn’t look like anyone was going to open fire immediately. I wanted to find out what was really happening before I acted.
Cassie seemed confused more than alarmed. Never good at taking orders, she kept her hands in view, but remained firmly where she was, still straddling her Harley.
And everything got even crazier after that. There was the clack of a hammer being pulled back. My gaze leapt a little further. Saul had got out of his car and crept up behind the blond woman, pointing his gun at her back.
This, I believed, was called a Mexican standoff. I’d never seen one in real life before, and it made my stomach tighten. I eased myself carefully out of my chair and started edging around, my mind working quickly. But the blond woman noticed that and swung her aim in my direction. If I put her under too much pressure she might fire out of panic, so I stopped moving.
“Put the gun down, lady!” Saul barked.
The blonde stiffened and her face tensed up.
“Put it down by your feet and then kick it away from you!”
She looked slightly frightened, but she didn’t move. Then a thought seemed to occur to her, and her head tilted slightly back.
“You a cop?” she asked in a tight voice.
“Damn right I am.”
“Then what the hell d’you think you’re doing? Look at me, then look at her.”
Her eyes went to Cassie’s weapons. And I thought I saw what she was getting at. In addition to the twin Glocks on her belt, Cass had the usual Mossberg 590 pump-action shotgun strapped to one side of her bike, and her Heckler & Koch assault carbine on the other. But the fact was, they were always there. We needed them a lot of times that trouble came knocking. The sight of Cassie kitted out this way was such a regular sight around the Landing that it barely drew the slightest comment. So which neighborhood exactly was this woman from?
Something else struck me, and I glanced over at her little car. There was a sticker in the back window. I’d noticed it when she had first turned up.
And now I stared at it more closely. It read “New England Aquarium.” Which I’d never heard of. There was no such establishment around here.
The standoff, though, was still in progress, with the Focus’s owner at the center of it. And I couldn’t tell how it was going to end.
“Stand down!” Saul was shouting at the woman. “Lower your weapon!”
But instead of doing as she was told, she came back with another question.
“And you are?”
“Detective Lieutenant Saul Hobart.”
The woman’s expression slackened slightly and she changed her grip on her gun, a Walther. She freed her left hand, and then held it up with the index and middle fingers raised.
“I’m going to reach inside my coat, okay? With just two fingers.”
We watched her closely. When her left hand reemerged, there was a plastic wallet in it.
And when she flipped it open, I could see the flash of a bright golden badge, although it wasn’t in any shape I recognized.
“Lieutenant Detective Lauren Brennan,” she announced loudly. “Boston Homicide.”
CHAPTER 10
“Look, I realize I’m new here,” she was explaining to us a few minutes later, although it felt like a good deal more than that. “But can I be blunt? What kind of community allows anyone to go around in plain view armed like that?”
She jerked her head toward an angry, scowling Cassie, who was propped against her bike and had no plans to join us.
“I mean, I thought she was going to go postal.”
Our weapons had been put away by this stage. Everything had calmed down. Or, at least, to outward appearances anyway. I didn’t know about the others, but my brain was racing, trying to figure all this. An outsider? One who was a normal human being, and who didn’t seem to mean us any harm?
The three of us were seated around my original table, me and Saul both trying to hide our absolute bewilderment. There was almost a feeling like we were being played by some kind of trick. No one just walked in here in this way. Once again, it was Regan’s Curse, cast by a witch named Regan Farrow.
A few years after the Salem witches first arrived here, back in the late sixteen hundreds, she’d managed to overstep the mark. Annoyed a lot of people, got herself burned at the stake for it. She’d begged to be released, to no avail. And, as the flames climbed up around her, she had yelled out the words that had altered this town’s destiny right up to the present day.
“If I cannot leave, then none of you ever shall. And you shall dwell alone here.”
Which meant not only that we could never leave. It meant the outside world practically never intruded. Supplies came in, and we still managed commerce. How could we survive otherwise? But human visitations were a very fleeting thing. People arrived and quick
ly left, without so much as a backward glance. The only types who stayed for long periods—Willets apart—were either totally insane or terminally evil. And this Lauren Brennan didn’t seem to fit into either category.
I stared into her gently colored but attractive face. How the hell had she got past the curse? There was no direct way to ask that question, so we stuck to the subject in hand for the moment.
“Erm, Cass is…how best to put this?” Saul was mumbling, trying to get his own thoughts in order.
There were even more people walking past, and some of the stores were beginning to open. None of the café’s staff would come outside to serve us, though. They’d seen what had been going on, and were staring at us anxiously from behind a counter. And some folk, as they passed by, were glancing at us oddly, like they sensed that something genuinely unusual was happening. It made the way they walked a touch unsteady, like their own balance had been thrown off.
“She’s my assistant,” I put in quickly. “I’m a security consultant.”
The woman took another look at Cassie’s heavy weapons.
“Who do you consult for, Delta Force?”
The only response I could think of was a shrug. So I did that.
“Perhaps you could tell us,” Saul asked warily, “what it is you’re doing here? You’ve no jurisdiction outside Boston.”
Which was a good way to approach this. But she didn’t even seem to hear him straight away. Lauren Brennan pulled a troubled face, then raised her head—her neck was long and slender. And she peered around as if she were caught in some mild kind of trance.
“I’m still trying to figure out where this is,” she murmured. “It’s not exactly tiny, so why can’t I find it on my map?”
Then something slightly peculiar happened. She appeared to forget the question, almost as soon as she had asked it. Maybe that was the curse taking partial effect.
“You’ve heard of the Shadow Man killings, right?” she went on evenly.
Me and Saul both shifted in our chairs. However isolated we might be, news did still reach us from the outside world. In the normal course of things, incidents beyond our borders had very little impact on us. But we’d picked up on this item practically a year ago, and understood the murders she was speaking of were pretty awful things. Entire families had been killed, and their deaths hadn’t been quick exactly. So we knew about the Shadow Man.
But if she was here because of that…? I cast a darting glance at Saul, remembering our conversation of last night.
Then, rather more gravely than before, we returned our attention to our brand-new guest.
“Go on,” Saul muttered.
“It was my case. I saw the first bodies.” When her eyes dropped and she shook her head, I could see that it was something she would never manage to forget. “Of course, not long after that, the Feds took charge. They spent ten months getting absolutely nowhere. But then, finally, we got a break. We tracked him down.”
She pursed her lips.
“Cornelius Caldwell Hanlon. Didn’t you see the TV reports? But it’s almost like the guy has a sixth sense. By the time we got to his apartment, he was gone. We found out when we tossed his place that he’s obsessed with the Apocalypse.”
“Beg pardon?” I asked.
“He thinks the End of Days is coming. So far as we can tell from his diaries, the murders are some kind of ritual.”
Saul bent his head in and inquired, “To achieve what?”
“To turn himself into a higher being, who can survive the world’s end. Have you ever heard of anything crazier?”
I had, but it still sent a cold chill down my spine. If she was hunting down someone like that, then I was definitely on her side. I studied her more sympathetically.
The last time I’d seen anyone so tired and frustrated, I’d been staring in a mirror. But Lauren seemed a pretty hardy type. She ran her fingers through her hair, gathering her thoughts. Then she continued.
“News came to us of another killing. A gas station attendant, about fifteen miles from here. Then a state trooper told us about a stolen Chrysler, headed up in this direction.”
I recalled the grubby old car parked outside Lucas Tollburn’s place.
“So here I am,” she finished up.
“You came alone?” I asked.
That same muddled expression drifted across her face again.
“Some Feds were supposed to be on their way up here. I’ve no idea where they’ve gotten to.”
Which doubtless meant that the curse had driven those guys back. But the question remained—why not her?
“Um, did you have any problems, getting here?” Saul asked.
She stared at him, the bridge of her nose crinkling.
“How d’you mean?”
“Did you feel that there was anything…holding you back?”
His words puzzled her, as well they might.
“I got this creepy feeling driving in, if that’s what you’re referring to. But I usually get that out here in the sticks. And I’ve not got any sleep for the past forty-eight hours, so I’m kind of jumpy, I suppose. How’s this relevant, exactly?”
There was no way we could tell her. But I finally had a grasp on what was happening. I had no doubt that Lauren was a good cop. But more than that, she was an awfully determined woman, and was on Hanlon’s case like a pit bull with its teeth sunk in. She probably had been that way ever since those first few murders. And so, not even our ancient magic had been able to divert her from her goal.
She had ignored its effects and just come steaming in here. That must have been quite a feat, and I started to feel a growing respect for her.
“So you reckon this Hanlon might be here, in our town?” Saul was asking her concernedly.
It certainly wasn’t a comfortable prospect. And seemed to dovetail with what the Little Girl had warned me of. But something else occurred to me at that point.
“Serial killers often have a signature,” I pointed out. I’d read about it in a book. “Did Hanlon have one?”
Faint disgust lit up her eyes. So it seemed that I was right. Lauren let her face tilt, so a lock of pale hair dropped across her brow. It was obvious she saw us as provincial types, inexperienced in matters of this nature, and was wondering how far she could trust us.
“Well, we’ve always held that back,” she told us. “I’m not sure that you guys need to know.”
“No offense,” she added, quickly and rather unconvincingly.
Which was not nearly good enough. I knew that, and so did Saul.
“We had four, possibly five murders in this town last night,” he informed her.
And that changed her attitude instantly. Her pupils flared with stark alarm. She hadn’t even known about that. Hell, there was no reason why she should.
“One an old man. One an entire family,” I put in, picking up the thread. “Need to know, lieutenant? I think we have the right to know.”
And this new information certainly seemed to force her to revise her opinion of us.
“Okay, then.” She threw her hands apart and slid back further in her chair. “Hanlon carved a symbol into each of his victims, on the chest. Do I need to say any more than that?”
Even Cassie, over by her bike, went rigid.
“A theta?” Saul asked. “Thanatos?”
Which was obviously correct. There was no other confirmation needed. Lauren looked like she was being pulled apart by two separate emotions. Anger, that there’d been more deaths. And relief at the knowledge she was firmly on the scent.
“Haven’t lost me yet, Cornelius,” she murmured into the thin air around her. “Man, I’m right behind you.”
CHAPTER 11
“Looks like I might be staying awhile,” she announced, once she had come to a decision. “Where can I find a halfway decent hotel?”
Which—you have to understand—is the kind of question that we’d never been asked before. Saul ducked his head. Even Cassie looked away. So it was lef
t to me to tell her.
“Er—we don’t have any.”
Her expression phased through to astonishment. Or maybe she thought that I was kidding her.
“There has to be something?”
“’Fraid not.”
“A Best Western? Or a Holiday Inn?”
I only had a vague idea what those might be, and shrugged again.
“My God, I really am in the back of beyond.” Then Lauren started looking faintly aggravated. “I don’t want to drive the whole way back to Boston, just to shower and change.”
By the look on Cassie’s face, that wasn’t such a bad idea. But my take on this was rather more fair-minded. Boston’s problem had become our own. Our community was under threat. I had no real idea what had become of Cornelius Hanlon. But his behavior seemed to be unchanged. And we might need this city cop. So it made very little sense if she was forced to go away.
“Someone could put you up for a couple of nights,” I suggested.
I tried to look at Saul again. But he’d already seen what was coming, and wouldn’t meet my gaze. He had a family of four, his wife included, and his house was already full to bursting.
When I glanced around at Cass, it was like staring at a block of wood. The set of her mouth told me everything that I needed to know. There was plenty of room at her place on Rowan Street. But she wasn’t offering an inch of it to this outsider, not after the way that they’d been introduced.
So it appeared there was only one option left.
“I’ve a spare room,” I heard myself say.
“Thank you. It’s appreciated,” Lauren Brennan answered.
We agreed she’d leave her car here. She could pick it up later. Saul would get her from my place and take her to the crime scenes in another hour’s time.
She went to her trunk, and got out a small round blue case that she told me she always carried with her.
As we headed off to my place, she produced a narrow pack of gum.
“Want some?”
I shook my head. We pulled up at a stoplight, a bunch of college kids heading across in front of us, clutching books and chattering. Yes, we have our own college. It was founded by Raine’s great grandfather. I’ve always rather envied them myself, the casual air they have. And the way they’re always talking, happily more often that not. But Lauren stared at them uninterestedly. There were plenty of their type where she came from. I understood that.
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