Darkness Falls (12 page)

The honest response was,
I haven’t got a due.
First rule of interrogation: Never give a perp an honest response.

“One of these flashlights oughtta do it.”

“Then where’s the blood? On the weapon, on my hands? You guys tested my hands, and I bet you did the lights, too—no blood, right? I admit, I haven’t been back here in a few years, but I seem to recall that you still need
evidence.”

In that moment, it all made sense to Henry. Walsh wasn’t affected by the pictures because he knew it didn’t matter. He already knew that they didn’t have any physical evidence, so he knew they had nothing.

Henry had been thrown by the fact that he didn’t lawyer up the minute he walked in. But then, he was still a psycho, even if he wasn’t stupid. Maybe he liked playing games?

Either way, the interrogation was officially over. Henry wasn’t going to get a confession out of him.

They’d just need to find the evidence. It had to be there
somewhere.

After all, who else could possibly have killed Ray Winchester?

The last time Caitlin had been to the Darkness Falls Police Department, she had been a teenager on a field trip. She’d never had any need to come back since.

And she didn’t like being here now. She didn’t like the fact that Kyle was being treated like some kind of murderer, and she didn’t like the way Matt Henry talked down to her.

She didn’t believe Kyle was a killer twelve years ago, and she didn’t believe it now, either.

Matt was taking her statement. “And then what did he say?”

“He told me about his foster parents.”

“His foster parents,” Matt repeated.

“The Fishers.” Caitlin tried not to sound exasperated, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was succeeding. She didn’t know Matt very well, but he’d always seemed like a nice enough guy the few times they’d interacted.

She had never thought of him as obtuse before.

“He told you he had foster parents.”

“Is there an echo in here?”

“Ms. Greene—”

“He’s
not
a killer!”

Now Matt was sounding equally exasperated. “How do you know that? You haven’t seen him in twelve years.”

“Because I
know.
He’s a good man.”

“A good man who had foster parents.”

Matt’s obsession with Kyle’s foster parents was getting tiresome.
“Yes.”

Then Matt passed a file over to her. “Tell me something, Ms. Greene. How do you have foster parents when you’re a ward of the state mental hospital for nine years?”

Caitlin started to flip through the file with barely concealed disdain, which soon modulated to shock and, finally, to abject fear.

Words such as
psychosis, unstable, suicide attempts, shock therapy,
and more jumped out at her.

Kyle had lied to her.

She gave Matt a stricken look. “He never mentioned—”

“It’s not the kind of thing you put on business cards,” Matt said gently. “He’s a dangerous guy, Ms. Greene. We’re just lucky he didn’t go off on you or your brother.”

Caitlin felt the pit of fear in her stomach—already a yawning chasm after watching Michael deteriorate these last six months—grow even deeper.

She whispered, “He said he was fine.”

“He lied,” Matt said. “Murderers do that from time to time.”

Suddenly, Caitlin found herself with a great urge to get back to Michael’s side. “I—I have to get back to the hospital.”

Matt nodded. “We’ll be in touch.”

Caitlin couldn’t believe what she had read. Or that she’d been so stupid.

Why had she trusted Kyle so much, anyhow? Because she used to hang out with him when they were both prepubescent kids in a small town? Was she so desperate to help Michael that she’d—

No. It wasn’t productive to go on thinking that way. She’d made a mistake by asking Kyle to come here. Ray was dead now because of that mistake. She wouldn’t compound it, but she wouldn’t dwell on it, either.

As she worked her way toward the squad-room exit, Kyle came out of the interrogation room with Captain Henry.

“Caitlin—” he started, reaching an arm toward her.

She stopped and glared at him. “They told me everything.”

“I never meant—”

Trying to contain her fury—it didn’t do to lose one’s temper in the middle of a room full of cops—Caitlin said in low, measured tones, “You stay away from me. You stay away from Michael.”

Then she turned to walk away. With any luck, they’d lock Kyle up, and she’d never see him again.

“Son of a bitch, you killed my Ray!”

Caitlin turned back to see that Marie Winchester had jumped Kyle from behind and was now clinging to his back while Kyle whirled around trying to shake her.

The move surprised Caitlin, considering that Marie was the one who had left Ray years ago.

But then, there was a big difference between not staying married to someone and seeing him dead.

Just as there was a difference between what you thought a person was like and what he really was.

As Matt and another cop pried Marie off of Kyle, Caitlin strode out of the squad room.

twelve

At almost four in the morning, it took Caitlin less than five minutes to drive from the Darkness Falls Police Department to the hospital.

She pulled her car into a spot right near the entrance—it was much easier to find a spot this late at night—turned the engine off, and then just sat there for a moment, holding the steering wheel.

One sniffle was all it took for the dam to break.

The cry she’d been holding in since—oh, hell, she thought, might as well admit it, holding in since Michael was first diagnosed with the night terrors—finally broke loose.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there in the driver’s seat of the car, racked by uncontrollable sobs, not even bothering to wipe the tears away as they streaked down her face.

After a little while, though, she felt—not good, certainly, but better than she had before she cried. In retrospect, she wished she’d cried sooner. It might have made her think more clearly.

For example, she might have realized how stupid calling Kyle Walsh would have been.

Taking some tissues out of her purse, she pulled down the sun visor, and looked at her tear-streaked face in the mirror. She dabbed at her face. “It’s okay,” she told her reflection. “You can handle this. You can handle anything.”

She looked up through the windshield of the car at the hospital building. All the lights were out, with one notable exception: the third-floor window of Michael’s room, where the lights were, of course, still shining brightly.

Looking up at that light, she was suddenly determined to make sure that nothing bad would happen to her brother. It was a promise made in the wake of a cathartic cry, aided by the lack of sleep and the lateness of the hour, but her resolve was no less for that.

A
thunk
startled her so much she almost jumped out of the driver’s seat. She did let out a quick scream.

Her head snapped to the front of the car, where a black cat had leaped onto the hood.

The cat licked its lips and stared right at her with deep green eyes.

Caitlin fell back into her seat and actually laughed. “A black cat. Thanks, God, that makes me feel
much
better.”

She got out of the car. The cat kept staring at her, no doubt wondering who this strange human was and whether or not she was going to feed it.

The cat had a collar with a tag. Caitlin gingerly scooped the cat off the hood and checked the tag.

“Alfred,” she read. “Okay, Alfred, let’s go see if we can find your mommy and daddy.”

Alfred meowed his approval.

Caitlin walked toward the hospital entrance. As she approached the ambulance bay, she heard a noise behind her.

Turning to look, she saw nothing but a mostly empty parking lot.

Thinking she was now hearing things on top of everything else, she turned back into the ambulance bay.

She heard the noise again. This time, Alfred hissed, confirming for Caitlin that she
wasn’t
hearing things.

“Hey, Alfred, please tell me that’s not an ‘animals sense bad things before they happen’ hiss.”

Not wanting to take a chance, Caitlin backed her way through the ambulance bay to the entrance, refusing to let herself be caught off-guard by anything.

So, naturally, the door opened before she had a chance to push it open with her back, and someone bumped into her, giving her her second scare in the last few minutes.

It turned out to be one of the nurses—the nice one, the one who gave Michael the Jell-O—who was obviously heading home after a long night shift.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said.

“It’s okay, I’m—I’m a little on edge tonight.”

The nurse looked at Alfred, then back up at Caitlin. “Are you okay, honey?”

Caitlin managed to muster up a smile for the nurse. “I can handle it. I’m just gonna see who belongs to this cat.”

“We have a lost-and-found on two. They don’t usually take animals, but this one looks clean, and it has a tag, so they should take it. I’m sure someone’ll claim him before long. Tell them Alexandra sent you up.”

Again, Caitlin smiled. “Thanks.”

She watched the boy as he lay on his back.

He stayed in the light.

He’d learned that much, at least.

But he was hers now, whether he knew it or not. He couldn’t stay in the light forever.

No one could.

She tried, of course. She stayed in the dark, but they brought her into the light.

The light killed her.

So she had to stay out of the light.

She never had children of her own. So she had to claim children for herself.

The boy finally fell asleep.

She became more attentive now. The mind was less resistant when asleep.

The light over the kitchen sink went out.

At that, she smiled. More darkness for her to work with.

The shadows lengthened. One of them fell over the boy’s pillow.

She waited.

The boy coughed.

He rolled around on the bed.

Her heart soared. At last . . .

No, he rolled away from the shadow.

Then he coughed again and rolled toward the shadow.

At last!

At last she would be able to claim him!

As soon as he rolled into the darkness, she struck.

As soon as the elevator door to the third floor opened up, Caitlin heard screaming.

At first, this didn’t concern her—people screamed in hospitals, it was simply the way it worked—and she went back to hoping that the lost-and-found people would find Alfred’s owner and making a mental note to thank Alexandra the next time she saw her.

Then she made out the words: “Michael! Michael, open the door!”

It was the other nurse, the one who had sicced security on Kyle.

As soon as she registered what was happening, Caitlin ran down the hallway toward Michael’s room.

The door was shut. The nurse was pounding on the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

Caitlin would have thought she’d have a key, but as she approached, the nurse turned to her and said, “It won’t open.”

Trying the door herself, Caitlin saw that it wasn’t locked, but it wasn’t moving, either.

She pounded on the door. “Michael! Shout if you can hear me!”

Michael did not respond.

Caitlin tried throwing herself against the door, but that only served to add a shooting pain in her shoulder to her emotional burden.

She glanced around the hallway, and her eye fell on the fire extinguisher hanging from one wall. Grabbing it, she wielded it like a sledgehammer, smashing it against the doorknob.

“Ms. Greene, you can’t—” the nurse said, but Caitlin ignored her, continuing to attack the doorknob.

It finally broke off, and again Caitlin tried to push the door open, to no avail. A barricade apparently had been built on the other side.

She did manage to crack the door open a bit, however, and saw that Michael’s bed was empty.

Over the howling protests of both her shoulder and the nurse, she again slammed into the door, pushing the barricade aside and getting into the room.