Along Came a Demon (16 page)

MacKlutzy growled a welcome.

Mike ignored Mac as the small dog hovered, eying Mike’s ankles. A lot of people underestimate Scottish terriers; they don’t know the little monsters have teeth like Rottweiler’s. I kept a wary eye on my stubby buddy.

Mike stood in the hall. “Redecorating?”

He had been in my house only once before, but he noticed a difference. It must be a cop talent. I made a face at the hall. “Threw out a load of junk.”

“
It looks more … spacious,” he agreed. He went in my small, rather gloomy living room, which seemed a more appropriate setting than my kitchen for what could be a solemn conversation.

I was exhausted from being up all night putting the house to rights. Everything breakable in the kitchen, they broke. I couldn’t walk through without stepping on the remains of something. You cannot imagine the mess, and in the pantry. Perhaps they ran out of steam when they hit the upstairs. They smashed my monitor, turned my bureau over and pulled out every drawer in the three bedrooms. They tossed everything in my closet all over the room and down the staircase. But they didn’t ruin my clothes, blankets or linens.

I swept up the remains, filling a dozen big plastic trash bags, and kept the washing machine and tumble dryer going all night.

People speak of feeling violated when their home is invaded and their property destroyed. I can understand this, because the destruction is unnecessary, an act of vandalism and vindictiveness. But it’s not as if someone laid hands on their bodies. I didn’t take having my things destroyed lightly—a few times during the night I got so angry I wanted to throw something myself—but nothing had sentimental value and the rest could be replaced.

I happened to look out of the upstairs landing window at two in the morning, and spotted a big pickup parked way down the street. It was there every time I checked thereafter, but gone when the sun broached the mountain peaks.

Mike stood in the middle of the room with hands plunged deep in pants pockets, as if studying the decor, but I knew he was giving himself time. I let him take in the small wood-burning stove in its brick alcove, the faux-paneled walls, the mangy old flocked wallpaper and the few pieces of old but solid furniture. The small bay window didn’t permit much light and turning on a lamp wouldn’t help much.

Jack hung over my shoulder. “This does not look good.”

I agreed. I think, from what I told Jack about the Lieutenant, he knew Mike almost as well as I did, and he correctly read Mike’s posture. The man was unhappy and uncomfortable. I perched on the arm of the overstuffed couch. “Okay, Mike, give.”

He kneaded his chin and looked at me sidelong. “You’re not going to like it.”

I made a noise in the back of my throat. “Let me see. You come to my house instead of phoning. You stand here looking like it’s the last place you want to be. You tell me I’m not going to like it. What a surprise.”

He pulled in a reluctant breath through pursed lips, blew it out, and looked down at me. “I want you to see if you can get anything from the other victims.”

“
What victims?” Had I missed something? Did we have another murder case on our hands?

“
The bodies we could recover. The children.”

My heart plummeted to my gut and sat like a lump of cold oatmeal.

I shook my head. “Nu-uh. You put me on looking for Lawrence. No mention of me and dead children.”

“
His disappearance and these others, they
have
to be linked. Sure, a tiny percentage of the missing children sharing the same birthday could be coincidence, but too many were born on the same day. This is massive, Tiff. We
will
put a
stop to it. I’ll use any advantage we have.”

“
Like me.” I worried at my lower lip with my teeth. “What about Lawrence? He’s more than just a case, Mike. He’s a little boy in deep trouble.”

“
We’re not giving up on him, Tiff.”

I wished I could offer a solid excuse to refuse Mike. Having to talk to children … it would be tough. Mike didn’t know what speaking to a dead child did to me.

But although I protested, I didn’t really have a choice. I could see no way out.
Nope, I’m not going to help you solve your multiple abduction case. I’m not going to help you discover who murdered little boys
. No more cases would come my way. My only income would be gone, along with my reputation. Not to mention my self-esteem.

“
Mike, I doubt you realize how … painful trying to talk to dead children can be,” I offered. I realized, too late, I said
talk,
but he didn’t notice.

His eyebrows almost met as he frowned. “I never thought about it.”

“
And they don’t communicate well. When they’re so young, and afraid, they have little or no composure. All we’d probably get would be something like ‘it was a big man with black hair,’ if we’re lucky.” I offered him a weak smile. “But if you really want me to try, of course I will. I just don’t think it will help.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, rolled his shoulders. He looked as tired as I felt. “How about we check out a couple. Colorado and Wyoming, right in our backyard. We could do it in a day.”

“
This close? My god!”

“
This close, Tiff. Practically all around us.”

So I agreed, pointless as I felt the exercise would be.

“
Tomorrow morning, bright and early. You, me and Roy. First stop Saratoga, then on to Granby if we have to.”

“
Were they killed at the scene?”

“
We don’t know.”

Great.

I was not looking forward to it. Not one tiny bit.

I drove down to the credit union after Mike left and withdrew two hundred dollars from my savings account. Two hundred buys a lot from the Salvation Army Thrift Shop.

Leaving Mac grumbling on the other side, I latched the gate and walked through the trees to the apartment block. I ambled along with hands deep in my pockets, thinking about relationships. About
my
relationships.

I had not had many.

I had always been solitary. My first memories are of a Division of Child and Family Services children’s shelter, only the state-run agency had a different name back then. When I was eleven, my caseworker told me a groundskeeper found me on the steps of a Presbyterian church on a hot July night. My cute little wicker basket was actually a dog bed. My blanket and clothing were made in Canada. Was I born in Canada? Did my parent or parents come all the way to Providence, Utah, to dump me?

I don’t remember all the foster care placements. I can think back to when I was maybe two, but nothing beforehand. They were not good places. There were always a lot of other children and the foster parents were more interested in the money they got from the state than caring for their charges. I kept to myself as much as I could because I just didn’t like being with people. I left Utah before I was legal.

In Omaha, Nebraska, I worked fast-food restaurants. In Iowa, it was telemarketing. In South Dakota, an auto dealership. I worked as a field surveyor for an oil company in Wyoming for a year. I attended an office occupations school in Minnesota and got a secretarial job at the headquarters of a software manufacturer. Then I found myself at Lake Superior. Canada.

Did something inside want the parents I never knew? Did my subconscious lead me? I couldn’t bear to think I unconsciously craved a family who didn’t want me, so I skedaddled out of there and ended up in San Francisco, and stayed six years.

Then, pow! I could see dead people. No fanfare. No blast of lightning. Just that first confusing, scary moment when I stood outside the Sun and Bun cafe and spoke to a person nobody else saw. And I had no idea why.

My interest in my parents resurfaced. It seemed important to know if one or both had my talent. Did they know I had it? Is that why they dumped me? But there was no trail to follow. I gave up on them all over again.

But I would track them down one day, and maybe they could tell me why I saw dead people.

I didn’t have friends; I had friendly acquaintances. I had two boyfriends before Colin, but I was not in love with them. I wasn’t in love with Colin.

I knew Lindy was not at her apartment when I stepped inside, but I went from room to room anyway. The bedrooms were bare of furniture now and small pieces of trash littered the floors. The manager had started clearing out the place. The air felt dead and fusty. The place seemed lonelier than ever and as I stood in the living room, so did I.

I was on the helipad when the copter landed. Mike and Royal joined me and we ducked and ran for the copter bent over, the downdraught from the rotors whipping my braid. Mike sat up front with the pilot; Royal and I climbed in back and buckled in. I watched the roof of Clarion PD recede, then we flew over Clarion and climbed to clear the eastern peaks.

I was still mad at Detective Royal Mortensen and pretended to ignore him, but those kisses intruded in my thoughts, the memory of them a feather-light pressure on my lips. A couple of times I stopped my fingers going up to brush them. I dozed as the copter headed for Wyoming, jerking awake each time I felt my head nod in the direction of his shoulder.

I know Wyoming well, cities big and small and the vast stretches of empty land between them. I’ve also spent long, happy days in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Ironically, not only had I visited both Saratoga, Wyoming and Granby, Colorado, they numbered among my favorite places to be.

I passed through Saratoga when driving home through Wyoming one summer, and the old western buildings on East Bridge Street, where it dissects the I-130, beckoned to me. I had to check them out. I thought I would take an hour to wander up and down East Bridge Street and discover what was inside those buildings, and ended up staying the entire day. I spent over an hour chatting with shopkeepers and town folk in every little shop I entered. I ate lunch at Lollipops and went back later in the afternoon for another helping of their delicious homemade ice-cream. I rented a motel room for the night and left the next morning.

In fact, I daydreamed of one day living in Saratoga, a tiny old western town in the middle of nowhere with a population of fewer than 1,800, where people are friendly and traffic in the old part of town so sparse you don’t bother to check for cars before you cross the road. And no lingering murder victims.

Of course, when I fell in love with Saratoga, it was the city; I did not explore the surrounding countryside. As we flew over Saratoga, the Hot Springs and the great North Platte River, I wondered if the spirit of a dead child lingered among the sagebrush below, and I said good-bye to my dream.

Ten miles outside Saratoga, we settled down at the Harley B Ranch on their personal pad. A little Cesna poked its nose out between the open doors of a small hangar. In states like Wyoming, where ranchlands are vast, ranchers often have their own planes. But since when did ranch houses become mansions? This place was a huge adobe concoction with red-tiled roof and balconies everywhere.

The rancher came out the house to meet us; a tall, gangling, mahogany-skinned man named Andy Ferrin. After handshakes all around, he told us to follow him to his Jeep. He was a man of few words, or perhaps he didn’t care to talk too much about finding a murdered child on his property. He must have gone over it with various law-enforcement agencies countless times when one of his hands found the body in the summer of 2006.

Mike climbed in front with Ferrin, which left me in back with Royal.

Despite my calf-length down coat, I just about froze until the heater kicked in. I took possession of the two blankets on the seat, wrapped one around my shoulders and put the other over my knees. We drove along a snow-and ice-packed trail heading west from the landing pad. Traffic must have used it regularly, or it would be hidden beneath the snow like the surrounding terrain. Rounding a small hill, suddenly we were in the middle of nowhere. Mountain ranges surrounded us, but they were far away. The landscape looked like a white desert where the merciless Wyoming winds had blown the snow into dunes. Some areas were under several feet, while in others, where the wind bared it, wiry grass and sagebrush poked up through. Fencing intersected the land in the distance, but nothing else broke the monotony.

Royal sat a bit too close for my comfort and I thought the heat between us had nothing to do with the way I was bundled up against the chill. Ahead of us, in the distance, a small stationary figure stood near the trail.

The Jeep bombed along and Ferrin made no effort to avoid potholes. Or perhaps he couldn’t miss so many.

We approached the person near the trail and indeed he stood at the very edge: a small elderly man in a heavy, knee-length overcoat of undeterminable color, baggy gray pants and beat up old boots, a hemp sack slung over one shoulder. He wore a hat like I owned, the one I used in extra cold temperatures, with earflaps, except his looked filthy. Wisps of gray hair straggled from beneath it.

Ferrin didn’t slow and I felt sorry for the old guy who stood motionless in the bitter cold. As we drove past him, I grinned apologetically and waved my hand. He gave me a gap-toothed leer in return.

Yes, definitely a leer.