THIRTEEN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9
Archer didn’t immediately realize that the SCU team he’d called in to help had more or less vanished. He didn’t realize for several hours, in part because he and Katie went to talk to Stacey Bowers and that took time because neither of them wanted to make the awful situation even worse for her.
Not that she was able to help them. She had not noticed any sign from her husband that suicide was in any way on his mind, or even that anything was bothering him, and she maintained with absolute assurance that Sam would never kill himself. Never.
When they returned to the station, both discouraged and both tensely anticipating bad news of some kind since the overwhelming events of the day before could not be the end of it all, Archer met briefly with the doctor and okayed moving Jim Lonnagan to the hospital, where he’d be kept sedated and under restraints, at least for the present.
A temporary measure, the doctor had noted.
Archer didn’t know what the hell a permanent measure would be, and hoped to God he wouldn’t have to make that call.
After supervising the transfer, via ambulance, of Lonnagan to the hospital, Archer went into the conference room, where Katie was sitting with postmortem reports spread out around her and her gaze fixed on the big map of the valley pinned to one of the boards.
As Archer came into the room, she said, “Jill’s working fast. She’s done the postmortems on the three Gardner kids.”
“Anything we didn’t already know?”
“Not really. Though she does agree that Luke Gardner was probably killed at least a couple hours before the other kids were killed. Says Ed Gardner was killed last; she’s working on his post now.”
“And when was the other stuff done?”
Steadily, Katie said, “All the postmortem injuries happened within a couple of hours of death.”
Archer tried not to imagine how horrifying that scene must have been. And had to imagine, of course.
“Leslie Gardner is now officially in a coma,” Katie continued. “And the docs say it’s a deep one. Beyond that, they aren’t offering anything we didn’t know before. They don’t know if or when she’ll come out of it, or what shape she’ll be in if or when she does. Though I guess we can make some educated guesses based on Elliot Weston and on Jim.”
“Yeah. I guess.” He looked around. “Where are our federal friends?”
“Looking for the bad guy,” Katie replied.
Archer lifted a brow at her. “The bad guy? You mean the bad guy who apparently used some kind of crazy energy to persuade a woman to murder and dismember her husband and kids, a real estate agent to murder two strangers, Sam Bowers to kill himself, and Jim Lonnagan to nearly kill his wife? That bad guy?”
Katie nodded, and said immediately, “I had to put two deputies and the front desk on incoming calls. A lot of calls, Jack. People are scared. They have a lot of questions and no answers. Except word seems to have gotten around that as horrible as the deaths have been, the killers weren’t in their right minds when they committed the crimes. People are asking if it’s something in the water or the food supply; I guess that’s a lot more likely than . . . energy.”
“You think?”
She cleared her throat. “We have reports of the same sort of things we already know about: tension, headaches, the feeling that their heads are stuffed full of cotton. A few have mentioned their skin crawling. Tempers seem to be unusually short, and we’ve had some calls about loud disagreements and fistfights. Other than recommending that everyone be . . . cautious and vigilant, skip the caffeine, and see a doctor if they’re worried, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot we can tell them to help them protect themselves. Even assuming the threat’s still high, so far we have no idea if there are any visible symptoms to watch out for.”
“I hate assuming,” Archer muttered.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Hollis and Reese didn’t have anything to say?”
“I told you, Jack, they’re out looking for . . . the cause. The rest of their team should be getting settled in the hotel, and then they’ll be out searching as well.”
“For this energy monster.” It was clear that, today at least, Archer had had second thoughts about what he’d been told the night before. With rest and time to think, he was far less likely today to just accept whatever he was told.
Katie sighed. “Jack, I know how hard it is to believe something like that. But we both know what happened yesterday was not in any way normal. And absent some other explanation, doesn’t it make sense to listen to people with a lot more experience than we have with—weird and crazy?”
“Nothing in this entire situation makes sense.” He sighed. “But you’re probably right. Now tell me how we’re supposed to write this up in our reports.”
That actually hadn’t occurred to Katie, but she was nothing if not quick on her feet. Even when she was sitting down.
“Let’s . . . not put speculation in our reports. Just the facts. I mean, unless and until we have more than speculation.”
“Uh-huh.” He sighed. “Every car we have out patrolling?”
“Like we decided last night, yes. Everybody is under orders to look for anything that sticks out to them as different or unusual. And the guys on the call-in lines know to take any complaint as serious. The last half-dozen deputies are still out talking to friends and family of the victims. The dead victims and the ones still alive.”
“I know Jim’s still out, and the doctor apparently means him to stay out for the time being. Weston?”
“Pretty much the same as he was this morning. Worse than yesterday, but not catatonic. Yet, anyway.”
Archer leaned on the table, staring down at the postmortem reports. “Did Hollis say anything before they went out about . . . what might happen today?”
“No. She said the whole town’s on edge, and that’s all she was feeling. Sort of a flood of emotion, I take it. She said she’d get to a landline and call in if she feels or senses anyone struggling the way Jim did. Anyone in trouble.”
“And until then, we wait.”
“I’m afraid so, Jack.”
HOLLIS HAD THOUGHT about it and talked it over with Reese, and had decided that her team needed to be as protected as possible, especially after the brief but chilling attempt to get inside her own mind. But since only three of her team possessed shields she felt would be strong enough—Reese, Victoria, and Galen—it was impossible to send everybody out in pairs.
And she wasn’t at all sure about Galen, whether he would even accept—
“I’ll go with Olivia,” he told her.
Hollis fought to keep from betraying surprise. Now, how had Bishop known? She was also aware of a surge of rather panicked uncertainty from Olivia, and smiled at the seemingly most fragile psychic on her team. “I think that’s a good idea. Reno can make up the third place. Sully, you go with Victoria and Logan. And Dalton comes with Reese and me.”
Dalton, not so angry today but very closed in on himself for someone without a shield, merely nodded without comment.
He really was not what Hollis had expected. At all.
It was Victoria who said somewhat uneasily, “I can’t extend my shield to cover anyone else, Hollis.”
“Yeah, I know. We can’t cover everybody with a borrowed shield, which is why I want one strong shielded mind with each group. Part of your job is to keep an eye on the others in your group.”
“Looking for?”
“Anything that bugs you. Distraction. Any actions or words that seem out of character. Just . . . anything you don’t like. All of you know each other better than Galen, Reese, and I know you; you’re more likely to notice something strange.”
Victoria said, “Damn. You mean something like an attempt to control somebody.”
“Yeah. It’s possible, Victoria. So we have to be prepared for the possibility.”
“Okay, but what happens if any of us notice something weird?”
“As soon as he found out about the energy, and especially about how screwed up communications are in the valley, Bishop had the technicians at the house work on a warning and tracking system for us. They’re installed in each vehicle as part of the radios.”
“Ah,” Sully said. “That’s what was in the bag Bishop sent with me to give Galen.”
“Yeah. Galen installed the enhanced radios in the three vehicles we brought to Prosperity yesterday and last night.”
“So we’re all on the same channel, so to speak.”
“Right. You’ll see tracking dots on the screens for each vehicle; that’s one reason we’re going to spread out in a line and basically work our way across the valley like that. We’re far enough apart to cover the valley, but close enough to each other to be able to make contact as quickly as possible.
“You notice anything wrong, get back to your vehicle and hit the red button on the radio—basically a panic button. Alerts will sound in the other vehicles, which is why nobody gets more than a hundred yards away from them. And the tracking dot for the group sounding the alert begins to flash, so we all know who needs help and where they are in relation to the rest of us.”
“And then?” Dalton asked dryly. “When everybody rushes to help?”
“Then we help.” Hollis looked him in the eye, daring him to question.
He smiled faintly, but didn’t push it. Hollis didn’t know whether to hope he trusted her and his other team members, or to be worried by his lack of concern for them.
She looked around at her team. “Everybody clear? We’re looking for disturbed ground. Old wells, caves, even a plowed field or a gully that looks odd. Trust your instincts. And alert the rest of us if you find anything you consider especially suspicious.”
“You mean if it feels wrong?” Olivia asked.
“Yes. If it feels wrong, if your instincts are in any way telling you to stay away, then do that. And call the rest of us.
“You have your maps with your search grids marked. When we’re all in position, I want to do a radio check. We should have voice communication now. I hope. But even if we don’t, the warning and tracking system is designed to work even in the middle of a much stronger energy field than we have here.”
In less than fifteen minutes, the team moved out from their hotel and headed to their positions beginning about two miles outside town and a mile from the site of the first death.
Then they went to work.
Hollis was surprised but pleased to find that Dalton was very familiar with maps and with the rougher terrain she had assigned them along one of the outer edge of the valley, though when she thought about it she wondered if she should have been surprised. He had, after all, ended up in Kodiak, Alaska. And given his nature, he probably hiked into the wilderness regularly in order to get as far as he could from other people.
Their radios worked, and rather well, which was another pleasant surprise. “But if we don’t find the source soon,” she said to Reese and Dalton, “I doubt that’ll be the case.”
“Is the energy still intensifying?” Reese asked her.
“I think it’s stronger than it was yesterday,” she told him. “Not so sure it’s stronger than it was this morning.” She hesitated, frowning slightly.
“Something?” Reese asked.
“I don’t know. Pretty much everybody in this valley is worried and horrified, so I’m getting a lot of that. A sort of . . . uncomfortable feeling of people watching each other. But for just a minute there, I thought I got a flash of something else. Something . . . driven.”
“A consciousness trying to control another mind?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.” Her frown deepened, and she added slowly, “You know, that attempt this morning, as eerie as it was, wasn’t nearly as powerful as I’d expect. Unless . . .”
“Unless,” Dalton supplied, “everything that happened yesterday took more energy than whatever this consciousness expected. From the timeline you gave us, it looks like the worst murders took place early in the day. By the time Deputy Lonnagan managed not to kill his wife, it was late in the day. What if that was less about his ability to resist and more about how much energy had been expended in that . . . mad rush to kill as many people as possible while scaring the shit out of everybody else?”
Hollis blinked, surprised. She was sitting turned in her seat so she could see both her team members, and caught a glint of amusement from Reese.
“That could be it, couldn’t it?” Dalton asked absently as he studied the map.
“Yes,” Hollis told him. “That could definitely be it.”
“Makes sense,” Reese murmured.
“None of this makes sense,” Dalton said, and then added, “I think there’s a ravine up ahead we should probably check out.”
“FOR ALL THE world,” Hollis told Bishop much later when she reported in that night, “as if he’d said nothing remarkable. Did no one ever tell Dalton he’s a born cop?”
“Apparently not,” Bishop said.
“I think he’s right about the energy field. And I’m beginning to understand why we got the summons when we did. I’ll bet nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary on Monday. Either the energy field didn’t exist then, or else it was . . . contained . . . much lower to the ground and in a much smaller area around the source.”
“Do you believe it hadn’t begun affecting anyone yet?”
“The opposite,” Hollis told him. “Reese and I stopped by the station before we came back to the hotel, and Katie filled us in on the results on all the deputies interviewing family and friends of those affected. It seems that both Leslie Gardner and Sam Bowers were class parents last weekend when their kids’ class took a little prospecting trip out into the valley.”
“You believe they found the source.”
“I think there’s a good chance they did. And probably never felt anything other than a twinge in their heads or a faint pressure they believed was the start of a sinus headache. Family reported that both of them suffered from allergies.”
“Very thorough deputies,” Bishop noted.
“Yeah, Archer has them well trained. They got a specific location for that class trip, and according to our maps it’s in a grid section we would have searched tomorrow. An area up against the raw cliff face that looks so weird all around the base of the valley. Which would have been a perfect place for kids to dig up pretty rocks.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We’ll all head to that area first thing in the morning. If we find the source—and I hope to hell we do given that it’s probably building up to attack mode again—then we’ll try to seal up the portal. Any ideas, by the way, on how we can do that?”
“Call me in the morning,” Bishop said, “before you head out there. We’re still working on possible solutions.”
“Good, because I haven’t given it much thought,” she said ruefully.
Unsurprised, he said, “We’ll try to have some options for you. And one, I’m sorry to say, may be the weather.”
“What?”
“Afraid so. The latest forecasts show a storm system moving over the mountains sometime tomorrow.”
“Anything more specific?” Hollis wasn’t happy for several reasons. Because storms still bothered her, because they still interfered with her abilities, and because she was uneasily aware that the electrical and magnetic energy of a storm could very well intensify, even feed, the energy field in the valley.
Hell, it could detonate the energy, for all they knew. And, poof—no valley. At all.
“Any unusual danger from this storm?” Hollis heard herself ask.
“No, nothing out of the ordinary, not for Prosperity and the valley. According to the weather service, that area of the mountains is well known to play host to highly unpredictable weather, going back hundreds of years.”
Hollis felt an odd sensation she couldn’t immediately identify, and when she could identify it, all she knew was that it was a deeply unsettling sense of familiarity.
“Hollis?”
“Yeah, I’m still here,” she said slowly.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Just . . . déjà vu, or something.”
“Or something?”
She concentrated, trying to grasp an illusive feeling even as it vanished like smoke through her fingers. “Whatever it was is gone now, Bishop. Probably not important.”
“You know better, Hollis.”
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, her gaze meeting DeMarco’s slightly anxious one. “Well, if I’m aware of it later on I’ll try to hold on to it longer. I don’t know what else to tell you, Bishop. Look, I’ll call you in the morning before we head out.”
“All right. I’ll have whatever information and suggestions we settle on ready for you.”
“Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.” She hung up the phone, then looked with faint surprise at the handkerchief DeMarco held out to her. A slight tickling beneath her nose prodded her before he could, and she held the cloth to nostrils pinched shut, continuing to breathe through her mouth.
Neither one of them said anything for several long minutes until Hollis dabbed at her no-longer-bleeding nose.
“How weird is that?” she murmured.
“Hollis?”
“I wasn’t trying to do anything, Reese. Except . . . to figure out what suddenly felt familiar. Bishop said something about the weather here being unstable going back hundreds of years, and I felt like . . . like I should have known that.”
“How? Why?”
“I have no idea. It was just a flash, a feeling of familiarity. Then it was gone.”
“You said déjà vu.”
“It was the first thing that came to mind. Just that the information about the weather didn’t surprise me. As if I . . . Hell, I don’t know.”
“You’re scaring me a little bit.”
“I’m scaring myself.” She shook off the sensation as best she could, even though it left a lingering chill. “Very weird feeling.”
“Are you expecting a spirit?”
She blinked at him. “What? No. Why?”
He reached over to touch her arm, his thumb gliding over gooseflesh. “You’re cold.”
She stared at her own arm, then frowned at him. “Yeah, I am. I must be more tired than I thought.”
After a moment, he said, “I think tonight the hot shower should come before the hot meal.”
“I think you’re right.”