I stood over the gurney for about twenty minutes after regaining consciousness. About twenty minutes after that, when I had thrown up every bit of everything left in my stomach and about a gallon of bile, I wished I'd never seen David's dead body. It didn't look like him anyway.
After my mouth was rinsed out and my face was milky white from all the cold water I'd used to dissipate the flushed look from crying, I remembered that now there was another victim that I owed something to, this one more than the others. David was someone that I loved. The pain of the families broken by this nutjob's deeds had touched me every time we talked to yet another shattered family. Now I stood beside them, because David was family to me.
Another wave of grief hit me and added a bit of color back to my face.
Johnny was waiting outside the door of the bathroom. We were of course, still at the hospital. It had probably been a little over an hour since David died, and I was still in shock, but with anger slowly leeching its way back around my heart.
I stepped out the bathroom door and said, "Let's get back out there. I'm going to find Billy Maynard. I'm going to find this H. S. Fletcher. God help them both when I do."
"Ma'am—"
"Dammit, Majors, the name is Eriksson," I cut him off, "and if you don't stop ma'am'ing me to death, I'm going to get angry with you too."
"The Director will be here in a couple of hours. He'd very much like to speak with you personally."
I snorted. "Tell him I said to wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets filled faster. I've got a psychopath out there that not only killed a family on my turf, but killed four other families across the country, and while I may not have David anymore to make this jurisdictionally kosher, I'm not letting up on my search. Gary Gates might well still be alive. If I can save him…" I buried my face in my hands again while my shoulders shook.
Johnny's arms went around me, and I heard him mutter, "Give us a minute alone, Agent Majors."
He peeled me off his chest and pulled my hands away from my face. "Here." A handkerchief appeared. "I know you're not going to like what I'm about to tell you, Helen, but you've got to let the FBI and the local police handle the investigation into what happened to David. Baby, think about this, and try to be rational. They need to have this conversation with you, because of everyone, you spent more time with Maynard on that mountain that David or I did. They need your statement about what happened. They need mine too. As for Fletcher, it's too dark to get back up there to search for her tonight. You know I'm telling you the truth. That's why we were going to camp, because in the dark, it's just too damned unsafe to be tromping around up there. I've already made arrangements for first light. We're going out with a helicopter to get us back up there, specifically to look at the tract of land Fletcher owns. It's not a big parcel, so we should be able to cover it quickly. If there's a shack or a cave…we'll find it.
"I suspect that someone who knows her might've tipped her off that we were closing in. She might, as a native, have been able to make it out of there past the agents even, but she'd never be able to do it with Gates in tow."
"You think she killed him already, don't you?"
"I may suspect it, but I don't know it for sure, and we're not giving up on this man until we've either rescued him or recovered his body. Please don't lose sight of that."
I hugged him again. "I can't believe David's really gone."
"I know," Johnny said. "I'm right there with you, sweetheart. I wish I knew what to say or do to comfort you, but I just don't. I know you loved him. He knew you loved him. You know he loved you too. God knows he was there for us in more ways than most people realize, and I'm not just talking about the job."
"The job," I whispered.
The words David tried to tell me were a jumbled mass in my brain for the past two hours. Suddenly, they began to untangle a bit, to iron out and smooth over. I knew in my heart that part of my statement that the FBI would want would include what happened after David was slaughtered like big game on two legs instead of the decent human being he was.
He was trying to tell me something about the case that had been on our minds since the beginning of this one. Harley Shriver, the bastard.
David said he lied.
Lied about what though? Had David uncovered proof of something?
The last two victims Shriver was tried for killing…one of which was actually Keith Rhodes, David said he didn't have proof they were actually killed. Did he focus the bureau away from continuing to hunt for the missing boys because he thought he could get the truth out of Shriver in time to save them?
I wondered. Mostly, my mind began to plot how I might get the old case files on Shriver without alerting the attention of the FBI. That was the last thing I wanted or needed. No, not for my obvious nefarious reasons for secrecy. This time, my concern was that I might do something that would tarnish David's legacy.
As much as I loathed the notion, Johnny was right that I'd have to back off finding David's killer. I had to let the bureau and the local police believe that his murder was completely unrelated to anything we were investigating now.
I had my doubts.
What if Rhodes knew that David made a mistake in the Shriver case? What if he knew that his son could've been saved? Surely the little boy would've died a slow, agonizing death alone, wherever Shriver had him stashed.
"Helen," Johnny cut into my thoughts again, "you're starting to scare me. I can see the mental effort you're exerting right now, but the fact that you're keeping it to yourself disturbs me for obvious reasons."
I grabbed his hand and dragged him down the corridor until I found a small consultation room with the door open and the light out. I pulled him inside with me. "David said something to me before he died, Johnny."
"I heard him trying to talk to you, Helen. Was it about our case?"
"No," I said. "But it did explain to me why he was overflowing with weirdness since the moment he clapped eyes on Jeremy Rhodes."
Johnny sighed. "So it's about the old Shriver case. Again."
"David's comments don't make any more sense to me now than they did when he made them." I related the information to Johnny and then added, "But what if Rhodes knew that David screwed up thirty some years ago when Shriver was caught? What if that was his motivation for persisting in talking to Shriver all these years, because he learned that Shriver hadn't actually killed his son Keith?"
"You're not suggesting that Rhodes killed David are you?"
I gnawed the inside of my cheek and started pacing in the small room.
"Helen?"
"I don't know. I mean, I doubt it. It doesn't seem like cold blooded murder would be Rhodes' style. To be honest, I could see him airing some very nasty expose on television and ruining David's career before I could see him trying to kill someone over this. But I can't completely rule it out. What if he paid Maynard to do it, Johnny, and all that anti-Rhodes bullshit Maynard spouted to me on our little nature walk this afternoon was just a red-herring to cover up the truth?"
"Or, what if Fletcher realized we were coming for her and was waiting on that bluff to take her shot and distract us so she could escape? Isn't that the more plausible scenario?"
I stomped one foot in frustration. "I. Don't. Know."
"Well, don't get pissed at me. I'm on your side, remember?"
"I know you are. This whole thing is so confusing. Why would David say that to me? Why, Johnny? He knew he wasn't going to survive that wound."
"Hope is something that's hard to let go of," Johnny said. "You think he made a deathbed confession?"
"I'm telling you, he knew. He said it. I'm dying. He wanted me to pull the arrow out."
"Jesus, baby," he tried to wrap me in another embrace, but I evaded it.
"He said that he needed to tell me something, and Christ, if I've ever heard an excited utterance from a dying man, that was it. He insisted."
"Tell me exactly what he said," Johnny spoke sternly. "And don't try to convince me that you don't remember every tiny detail verbatim."
I hit the high points again. "He told me he needed to tell me something. I begged him not to talk, to just rest and conserve his strength. I wanted him to fight. He said he was dying. I didn't want to believe it. I told him I loved him, needed him to fight, that I didn't want to lose him. David said he loved me, and truth. And then the told me to stop talking. He said he lied, that he didn't have proof that Shriver killed all of his victims, that the last two might not have been murdered after all. He said that there was absolutely no proof that Shriver killed his last two victims. I know there was proof on the others, because what he sent to the families indicated that the boys were dead."
"You mean the body parts he sent," Johnny said grimly.
I nodded. "But the last two…second to the last were toes, and the Rhodes family received Keith's…his…"
"Testicles, I remember the conversation, Helen. But that doesn't mean that he didn't actually kill those boys."
"Something about it bothered David. He was acting so strangely. I can't even explain it. It was like my best friend was gone, and a stranger who looked like him but wasn't David Levine was sitting beside me."
"How many cases did the two of you work together where child killers were being hunted?" Johnny asked.
I wilted, folded in on myself from the inside out.
"Helen, don't waffle on me now. I need the steel in your spine to get through this. You know as well as I do that the FBI isn't going to give you much more time before you have to make a statement about what happened out there, and I'd like the two of us to be prepared first. How many cases?"
"Dozens," I whispered.
"So what was it about this specific case that put Shriver back in David's mind?" Johnny asked.
"Obviously it was the presence of Jeremy Rhodes," I said. "David was fine until he found out Rhodes would be stuck to us like glue."
"What a mess," Johnny sighed and left spikes in his hair with agitated fingers. "Helen, if you need to stay on this thing with the FBI and David's cryptic last words, I understand it completely. But I've got an obligation to the state to do my job, and I'm here for a very specific purpose. I'm not saying that I don't want to do this other thing with you every step of the way, but I can't."
I moved closer to my husband and laid my left hand on his arm. "Johnny, do your job. It's my job too, and you're right. The FBI needs to deal with why David was murdered and who did it to him. I have a badge from Chris Darnell and Sheila Julliard, not the FBI. My responsibility is to the citizens of Darkwater Bay, to the Gates family, to give them closure and catch this killer that ruined every Christmas for this family for the rest of their lives."
Johnny hugged me tightly. I felt the tension bleed out of his body in that embrace.
"Did you really think I would choose anyone over you and what you need me to do?" I asked.
"He was your best friend, your mentor, a surrogate father after you lost Wendell to the prison system," Johnny said. "I have no illusions about what he really meant to you, Helen, or where the rest of us rank by comparison."
I gazed up at him with watery eyes once again. "I never said it was an easy choice, but it's the right one. And it doesn't mean that we have to give up on figuring out what David's last words to me really meant, Johnny. We can do that later, after this thing with the Gates case is resolved, and it will be resolved. David wouldn't have wanted me to abandon my duty for him. You know it as well as I do. Let's get the local police on board for our helicopter search in the morning. I'll give my statement to Agent Majors tonight. I'll even hang out for the platitudes from the lord Director himself. But later."
He nodded curtly. "Later," Johnny echoed.
A knock at the door interrupted our conversation. Johnny sucked in a loud breath and reached for the knob.
My jaw dropped when the door swung in toward us.
"I was in Idaho when the news broke, so it was a quick flight," Stephen Jarecki said. "I want you to know that every governmental law enforcement agency plans to scour the entire world if we have to. We'll find the bastard that killed David, Helen, you have my word."
I nodded, another numb wave stealing my breath and speech and almost all thought.
"Thank you Stephen," I heard Johnny say. "Understandably, Helen is still incredibly upset."
Jarecki surprised me again when he stepped close and gave me a brief, yet very non-perfunctory hug. "I'm so sorry, Helen. Believe me, I know how much David meant to you. He meant so much to so many people. This shouldn't have happened."
I nodded, my chin bouncing off his shoulder a couple of times. It knocked a few more tears loose.
"They told me the Director's flight just landed. He should be here in another twenty, thirty minutes tops. Do you want to get a cup of coffee and maybe clean up a bit in the bathroom before he arrives?" Jarecki asked.
Something niggled in the back of my brain. Why all this attention to the Director of the FBI meeting me now? What was Stephen Jarecki really doing here?
I stepped away from him, closer to Johnny again. "I can meet with him briefly, but if you're here to get my statement about what happened, I'd rather do it now. Johnny and I still have an investigation active, and I won't be distracted from doing my job."
Jarecki's eyes narrowed in that way that told me he was there for another reason all together. "You don't want to be part of this investigation? Helen, I find that impossible to believe."