Elijah felt like he’d been run over by a Mack truck. One of those honking, two-ton beasts with tires as big as a T-Rex and an attitude to match.
Which was ironic, because he’d just run over a woman.
Not funny, he knew that. But it was the truth of it.
Ached something fierce, from top of the head to his tippy toes. A wicked pain lanced from ear to ear. Throat was rawer than sandpaper, and his lungs burned like he’d run a marathon. Surprised his eyeballs hadn’t popped out of his sockets and were still moist with all he’d cried.
Worst of all, though, was the embarrassment of it all, his head blooming with anxious dread returning to Johnny and Jae. Could manage well enough with Gina, knowing she understood their kind did that from time to time.
Melted down.
And by meltdown, Elijah meant full-on Chernobyl out there in the middle of Herb Warner’s onions. Didn’t even have time to rumble, to get worked up and build up the typical head of steam like Mount St. Helen, the tremors foretelling what was to come.
Nope. Blew right past the foreplay and straight to the Big Kahuna.
Was just flat completely overwhelmed by what had happened.
Not only that he had hit some poor soul—the whacking of her face against Gina’s glass window, the thwapping of her body against the aluminum sheet-metal door, the rumbling and rattling of her head and torso and limbs against the undercarriage and exhaust piping still clattering in his head (was a bell that would not be unrung for quite some time).
But that the poor soul had stepped out from the shadows in the first place—on purpose and with purpose. One singular purpose.
To kill herself.
To end her life.
To pull the plug on whatever gloom and depression and despair, anxiety and hopelessness—whatever darkness had gripped her so much that she thought the only way out was stepping in front of a Cadillac Escalade barreling through a country farm road, making her the eighth victim of whatever cosmic power of this present supernatural darkness had its hold on this small town.
No way around it, this was a hostage takeover by a maniacal Power not of this world—one so gripping and totalizing that women and girls as young as twelve couldn’t resist, couldn’t find release.
Because mark Elijah Xavier Fox’s words: It was not of this world. No doubt about it.
And it was dragging Image Bearers of the Creator of the universe himself into the darkest valley, strangling and striping the life out of them—mawing and mangling and destroying!
He’d be damned if he let it happen to anyone else.
The gentle swish of boots across soil changed to crunching gravel, then the soft settling of his boots on pavement, yanking Elijah out from his contemplation and back to the moment, back to the investigation at hand.
“You got this, Eli,” Gina whispered from behind, the scent of lavender and vanilla from her perfume suddenly giving him resolve. Her presence, standing beside him in the Ford’s headlights, gave him all the confidence he needed, more than even her words.
Wanted to believe her, but Elijah could see it written all over their faces, the pair of them glancing at one another with wide eyes and licking lips and furrowed brows and shifting feet. Not knowing worth a lick what to do with what had gone down in the field.
His heart was pounding in his ears, that lancing pain returning. Lungs burned something fierce again, too, his ratcheting ticker searching for more air with the spike in anxiety.
But he knew what he needed to do.
Address the ginormous, smelly hippo on the road.
“I had a meltdown,” Elijah announced matter-of-factly.
“Uh, yeah, you sort of did…” Jae said, taking a step back that smacked of self-defense. She quickly added: “But anyone of us would have, given what’d happened to—”
“Nope. Not like that,” he said with interruption. “I’m autistic. That’s why.”
The word landed hard. He could see it. Hated those looks. The uncertain ones that quickly morphed into pity before painting him as broken, disabled, disordered.
Less than.
“Meltdowns,” Gina explained, clearing her throat, “are a way for autistic people—” she turned to him, one end of her mouth edging upward “—for people like the two of us to cope with overwhelming conditions that can be difficult to express in other ways.”
Johnny and Jae stood in silence, listening without response.
She went on, “It happens when someone becomes completely overwhelmed by some situation and temporarily loses control of their behavior, expressing this overwhelm verbally or physically—”
“Or both, as you heard,” Elijah explained.
Gina nodded. “I understand it may look like a temper tantrum, something bad and naughty.”
“Nutty, even,” he added again, discomfort growing with the silence and being put on display like some frog to dissect.
“So, what,” Jae was the first to say, “you’ve got Asperger’s or something? One of those high-functioning types?”
Elijah shook his head. “Nope. That’s not what it’s called. Not anymore. At least, not after revelations about Herr Asperger’s experiments on children for the Nazi Great Cause. Society switched things up real quick after that little nugget of revelation, making a switcheroo to the Autism Spectrum Disorder lingo.”
“I see…”
Earlier in his life, he had simply been called a retard. And a difficult, out-of-control retard at that. The kind who drove his birth parents to the brink, and then made the guardians at the Commonwealth of Virginia’s orphanage and his eleven foster parents want to pull their hair out.
And beat him with the backs of their hands, and their belts, even copper pipes and coat hangers when they were within arm’s reach.
It wasn’t until a psychologist and her pastor husband adopted him that the world finally got him. An Evangelical Baptist minister and a practicing Catholic adopted an ethnic Jew. Only in America.
Johnny said, “Alright, so you’re a person with autism—”
“Autistic person,” Elijah corrected.
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“Nope.”
“Umm, alright…”
“So, what are you,” asked Jae, “some sort of savant or something?”
“Nope. That’s a common misconception. Only point five percent of autistic people are savant. I’m not one of them. I suck at math. And playing the piano.”
Gina chuckled. “Eli’s being modest. He does have an eidetic memory, so he might as well be a savant.”
Johnny said, “Bet you were a real asset to the FBI, I reckon.”
Elijah nodded. “I was…”
“Well, you’re certainly an asset to us, to this investigation. And I don’t care if you’re a one-legged purple people eater, so long as you put it all on the line to get the justice these women—that woman deserves.”
Elijah eased in a measured breath, his heart settling and a sort of calming hope washing over him at Johnny’s apparent acceptance.
He glanced at Jae, who had clasped her hands behind her and widened her stance, nodding and throwing him a reassuring smile.
They had his back. He saw it; he knew it.
What a great feeling that was.
Elijah said, “It’s one-eyed, one-horned purple people eater, but I’m picking up what you’re putting down. So, thanks.”
Took a beat, but Johnny snorted a laugh that rolled into a full-on belly one. Same for Jae, the tension from the last half an hour melting.
“You’re alright, kid,” the man said. “How about we get to it?”
He took a breath and nodded, following Johnny’s lead.
They all did, the four taking careful steps over to the remains of the mystery woman still sprawled out like a rag doll on the cracked pavement. Understood why Pastor Peter had remained inside Johnny’s pickup. He wanted to join him…
Looked like something out of a nasty Stephen King fever dream—the broad’s face crunched into a bloody, black-crimson pulp; hair matted with the same sticky fluids crusted on the rest of her body, her arms and legs; those same limbs jutting this way and that at odd angles and bent in places Yahweh never intended when he created the human body.
Almost retched at the sight, adrenaline flooding his veins and hitting his stomach hard, compounded by that lancing headache again. But he held it together. Had to. For the mystery woman’s sake.
Johnny bent to one knee beside her, pulling out something from the inside of his shirt.
A gold cross attached to a string of beads.
Then the man started muttering something under his breath, a prayer.
“Lord Jesus, holy and compassionate,” Johnny intoned, “forgive this woman of her sins. By dying you unlocked the gates of life for those who believe in you: do not let our sister be parted from you, but by your glorious power give her light, joy and peace in heaven where you live and reign forever and ever. Amen.”
“Amen,” Elijah whispered, joined by Gina and Jae. Supposed it made sense a former priest would find his first impulse to pray for the dearly departed.
“Do you recognize her, Johnny?” asked Jae, voice betraying a tremble.
He stuffed the cross and beads back in his shirt and gave his head a rapid shake. “Been here forty years and I can’t make sense of her.”
Elijah replied, “Perhaps if her head weren’t smashed like a Halloween jack-o-lantern you could.”
Gina said, “Maybe she has some identification on here.”
“Good call.”
Elijah and the others got to it, searching the road in the dim moonlight augmented by the vehicles’ headlights.
Bupkis on his end, and it seemed like the same sad result for the rest.
The four paced several feet up and down the road in search of a purse or wallet. Again, bupkis.
Hustling back to the body, he had an idea.
“Maybe she’s got ID on her, in a pocket.”
“Could be,” Johnny said.
“Watch the crime scene,” Gina advised. “Gotta be careful we don’t mess with anything the authorities would want to use for their own investigation.”
“Yeah yeah yeah…” he said, carefully easing the broken, bloodied body around for a better—
The woman flopped to her back, giving Johnny a start that sent him skittering backward.
Elijah flinched, his heart soaring through his throat and into his eyeballs! Expected her to rise to her knees, then feet, then come lumbering after him to exact her revenge.
But there was no more movement.
Swallowing, he caught sight of a bulge at her front right pocket. Had to reach across her to fish it out. Averted his eyes from her face, that smashed jack-o-lantern looking more like Mason Verger from that crazy Hannibal movie—all puckered and swelling and bulbous; one eye punched clear through, the other hanging by an optic-nerve thread.
Elijah sucked in a stabilizing breath and got to it, slipping his hand inside the tight pants and pulling with one, two, three yanks until it popped out.
Yuppers. A wallet.
“Bingo!”
A smile raced across his face at the good get.
It was a pink little thing with a gold zipper and a loop handle. Large enough for a driver’s license, a credit card or two, some cash, but not much else.
“Let me see it, kid,” Johnny said.
Elijah stood and handed it off, knowing the man who had lived there most of his life would know who she was.
Johnny unzipped the thing and flipped it open, fishing for the mystery woman’s ID.
And muttering a curse.
“Sonofa—”
He dropped it with a start, as if a scorpion had crawled out. It flopped face down with a thud, some coins clattering out onto the cracked pavement.
Confused, Elijah picked it up.
Jae said, “Did you recognize her?”
Johnny nodded, grabbing his chin without a word.
“Who is it?” asked Gina.
He didn’t answer, his hand covering his mouth now and clearly too stunned for words at the revelation.
Elijah squinted in the faint moonlight, finding a New York address, both the city and the state.
“Name is Rebecca Lynn Goodall.”
“Goodall?” Gina looked at Johnny, walking up to him now, almost getting in his face. “Who is this? What aren’t you saying? Why aren’t you—”
“The Mayor’s daughter,” Johnny interrupted. He took a breath, then a beat, clarifying: “Chet Goodall. His daughter is Rebecca.”
Elijah said, “But the license says she lives in New York.”
“She does!”
“Then why the hot Hades did she step out in front of our Escalade?”
“I don’t know!”
“This breaks the pattern…” Jae said.
Elijah turned to her, confused. “What pattern?”
“Victims one through seven were from Mill Creek Junction. Every one of them.”
“That’s right,” Gina said. “And from Peter Young’s church, amiright?”
“Exactly.”
It dawned on Elijah. He turned to Johnny. “You’re saying Rebecca ain’t from around here?”
He swallowed and nodded, eyes returning to the twisted body.
“Then presumably,” Jae continued, “she’s not part of Peter’s Baptist parish. Doesn’t attend his church.”
“Presumably…” Gina agreed.
“Bingo. Breaks the pattern,” Elijah announced. “Just like Jae said.”
“But what does it mean?” Jae asked.
“The worm has turned, that’s what.”
“The worm hasn’t only turned—”
“It’s gone belly up!” Gina said, swallowing hard. “If I were British, I’d say it’s gone bloody belly up!”
“Bingo…” Elijah whispered. Then: “We need to pray!”
“Pray?” Jae said with skepticism.
He turned to her. “The shiznit that just hit the fan—or, well the Escalade—it’s straight out of the Unseen Realm, I just know it. If we’re to have any hope of standing against the darkness, then—well…we need to pray!”
Johnny said, “Not the worst idea in the world.”
“You got one for us, Father?” Jae said.
“As a matter of fact…”
Johnny Pope (which was too awesome for words) closed his eyes, Elijah and the others joining. He intoned:
Most loving Father, you will us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our cares on the One who cares for us. Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested unto us in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
“Amen,” Elijah said, crossing himself, feeling the weight pressing in against him lifting. Head even felt better, too, and so were his lungs, the ache seeming to evaporate from the prayer.
Amen, the other three muttered in agreement.
“Now what?” Jae said.
Gina replied, “We follow our lead.”
“The doc?” Johnny said.
“Still,” Jae added, “after all that just happened, what we discovered about the pattern break?”
Gina said, “We don’t know what we discovered.”
“Technically, we didn’t discover anything,” Elijah clarified. “She popped out of the shadows at us!”
“I mean about the pattern break. You’re on to something, Jae, for sure. The suicide cluster isn’t looking as clustery with this outsider.”
“Who’s also an insider,” Johnny added, “given the connection with the mayor.”
Elijah said, “Suppose it’s about time we call the police.”
“I’ll call Chet. Let him know his daughter…” He gestured toward the mangled woman and pulled out his phone.
Gina said, “In the meantime, we should get some shuteye.”
Elijah protested, “I don’t want to get some shuteye. I want to find this woman her justice—all eight of them!”
Johnny shook his head. “Too bad, kid. We’ve all just been through it—you both twice over now, with what happened to Katrina.”
“But—”
“Butts are for toilets, Eli,” Gina said, “you know that.”
Elijah went to bite back but took a breath instead, running an irritated hand through his hair. Now that the ex-priest mentioned it, he did feel tired, knackered, bushwhacked, a sudden weariness coming over him.
So he said, “Meet at Mill Creek Community tomorrow morning?”
“First thing,” Johnny agreed.
First thing. Because the darkness will not slumber tonight.
But tomorrow…
Tomorrow it will meet its Maker.
Elijah would make certain of it.
Dead certain.