Hollis had been at this too long to feel sickened. Much. She was even able to hold on to professional detachment, outwardly at least. Steadily, she asked, “I gather you didn’t get enough for a positive ID?”
“Well, I’m running what I have through all the databases, but so far nothing close to a hit. Which, even if it might otherwise identify him, only tells us he probably isn’t in those databases—which is true of most people. If you find a viable suspect, the DNA may at least point at him. Probably not conclusively, though.”
Hollis considered for a moment. “What about the remains of the fetus?”
“You mean DNA?” Jill frowned a little. “I may be able to get a better sample there. You’re thinking paternal DNA?”
Hollis half nodded. “Her fiancé is ruled out fairly conclusively as a suspect in her murder because he wasn’t anywhere near here when she went missing and for weeks before and months afterward. No indication he didn’t believe she had left Salem only weeks after he jilted her. Apparently both families and friends gave him hell over it. But it still might be interesting to find out if he was the father.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Jill looked at them both rather curiously. She had been called in on serial murder cases often enough to be at least aware of how such investigations generally progressed. “Doesn’t sound like a typical serial. A world of difference between how each of these victims was killed and treated afterward.”
“And,” Hollis said, “the third victim was knocked out, tied up, drugged, and buried alive. But left with an oxygen canister pumping air into his would-be coffin. With a timer on the tank. If a very strong telepath hadn’t picked up his call for help, he would have died. We barely got to him in time.”
Jill whistled softly. “Games, a test, or a distraction?” She had certainly been at this long enough to consider the possibilities.
“We’re wondering the same thing.”
DeMarco asked, “Anything else you can tell us?”
Jill’s faint frown deepened. “Something I know but can’t yet prove, at least until all the lab tests come back.”
“Which is?”
“Megan Hales might not have been able to carry the pregnancy to term. And even if she had, the child likely would have been born with severe birth defects.”
Slowly, Hollis said, “There’s usually a reason for that, right?”
“Yeah. In this case, everything I saw was the likely result of inbreeding. Probably not between first-degree relations—siblings, parent and child. Maybe cousins, but if so, first cousins, and there almost had to be a history of inbreeding within the family line to cause the sort of damage I saw.”
THEY EMERGED FROM the hospital into the gray and very cold morning, the heavy clouds still promising snow to come, and Hollis absently zipped up her jacket. “From the timing and what Jill suspects, it certainly doesn’t sound like the father was Paul Ainsworth.”
“No. And if she’s right about the birth defects, it’s very likely the father was a Hales.”
“Wonder if that was what caused the breakup. I mean if she started seeing another man and Paul found out there was someone else.”
“You think she wouldn’t have told him?”
Hollis sighed, her breath misting the air. “That after all those years of being with him, she’d had sex at least once with a blood relation—just before she was supposed to marry Paul? She was very young. So I’m guessing probably not. Maybe the sort of thing that would come out in one of those passionate arguments a very young couple tends to have. But not something she’d have done deliberately, I think, confessing something like that. Plus, from what Finn said, everybody in the town blamed him for the breakup, not her. If she had been the one to cheat first, I doubt he would have taken the blame for the breakup. Sounds more like she was dumped and turned to someone else, someone she already knew. Maybe for comfort. Or revenge. Either way, he caught her on the rebound. At least once.”
“Do you think it could have been rape?”
“I dunno. Possible, at least. She might have been too afraid or ashamed to tell Paul—or anybody else—if she’d been raped, but I doubt she could have hidden it, not with all the trauma and other aftereffects of rape.”
DeMarco accepted that with a nod. “If she even knew she was pregnant, she might not have known which one was the father.”
It was Hollis’s turn to nod, but she was still frowning. “Since he was the one to run off with someone else, it just seems more likely that Megan would have turned to another man after she was dumped practically at the altar. Because wouldn’t it be a bit of a coincidence if Paul realized he loved his cousin too much to marry someone else right after Megan cheated on him?”
“I would think. And I know neither of us has much faith in coincidence. But it does happen.”
“Yeah.”
He glanced at her, but Hollis remained silent until they were in their black SUV and the engine was running.
Then, slowly, she said, “If this is our unsub, if he was the father, he couldn’t have known. About the baby, I mean. That it was . . . wrong. Birth defects. And even if he did, if he thought there was something in his bloodline or hers, that they were too closely related and it could cause problems maybe because there was already a stronger history of inbreeding in the Hales family—we need to check with Finn about that.” She blinked. “Where was I?”
“Even if he knew or suspected birth defects were possible.”
“Thank you. Even then, even if he expected such a tragedy, what about that would have made him decide to go on a killing spree, beginning with Megan? He strangled her, Reese. That’s about as up close and personal as you can get. And nearly always done in rage.”
“One way or another, she had to be his trigger,” he said. “Whether it was because he found out about the baby or because she was leaving Salem, leaving him, something happened between them, something that caused him to totally lose it and strangle her.”
“Okay. But the question stands. Why decide to go after others and kill at least one of them horribly months later? He must have known for certain back in January that he’d gotten away with killing Megan. Cops and agents combed the slopes after Duncan went down, searched for evidence against him and his followers. They didn’t find Megan. Didn’t find any sign of her grave. So . . . she was gone; everybody thought she’d run off after being jilted. Paul had come back here married to his cousin and had taken a lot of flak about all that. Nobody suspected murder. The unsub was safe.”
DeMarco considered for a few moments. “Then it wasn’t enough for him to be safe. Killing Megan wasn’t enough.”
Hollis grimaced. “He visited her grave. Had sex with the body, for weeks if not months. That sounds very like an obsession with her.”
“I would say so.”
“A sick and twisted obsession.”
“Hardly the poster child for a good boyfriend,” DeMarco agreed dryly.
“If he was a boyfriend and not just a little solace or revenge.” Hollis gave him a look. “Yeah. And we’re still left with the same questions. If killing Megan was personal, and since he’d clearly gotten away with it, why grab and kill Cole Ainsworth?”
“Paul’s cousin. Something there?”
“Cousins all over the place,” Hollis muttered, then said, “Finn said Paul and Cole weren’t close. As in friends, I mean. Cole was married himself, and in a relationship that appeared pretty demanding. Not to say volatile.”
“So not much interested in Paul and Megan’s relationship.”
“I’d think not. Of course, the unsub is right here and has been all along. We don’t know what he’s seen, overheard, suspected, much less what his feelings have been. About Megan, about his relationship with her. Cole could have been personal too, in an entirely different way.”
She looked at her partner steadily. “I think we need to call Bishop while he and Miranda are talking to Megan’s family. They may already have found out Megan had been involved with someone else, but if not, there’s maybe a different set of questions they need to be asking.”
AYLIA BLACKWOOD HAD done what she could to calm her family members, but ever since two victims of the killer had been discovered up in the mountains and brought down late the previous day, it was all anyone could talk about. Worry about.
Including Aylia.
Because the more she thought about them, about Megan especially, the more troubled she became. Like everyone else, she had believed that Megan had packed her things and left Salem to start a new life elsewhere.
Unlike everyone else, Aylia had known the real reason why Megan wanted to leave. Not because of all the pitying looks and overt sympathy after she was jilted. Not because she would have had to see Paul and his new wife virtually every day.
Because she’d been afraid.
Aylia had not dismissed those fears. She had believed Megan had been unwise in her own actions, careless and even reckless, that Megan had acted out of hurt and only further complicated her life, but she had certainly not deserved scorn for her very understandable actions. She had, after all, done no more than many a young woman—and quite a few not-so-young women—had done before her, turning to another man in hurt and bitterness after being dumped.
A man she had trusted, a man who had been her friend. Or so Megan had believed. But after their one afternoon together, after Megan had “come back to my senses” and told that other man she’d made a mistake . . .
He hadn’t taken it well. And though Megan hadn’t gone into detail, it had been clear that whatever had passed between them had scared her. Scared her enough to prompt her decision to leave Salem.
But . . . it had still not seemed such a serious situation to Aylia. Young people hurt each other. They were careless. They were selfish. They got over it. Usually. Now, looking back, Aylia wasn’t at all sure she herself had taken the situation as seriously as she should have.
Because Megan was dead. And the shock of that was compounded by the fact that she had apparently been killed last summer before she could leave Salem.
Had Aylia’s own counsel somehow made a bad situation immeasurably worse? And if so, was there, now, anything she could do to make up for that? Was there anything she could tell Finn, tell the federal agents? She had never known who the man was, just that he had been . . . possessive. Possessive enough to have refused to allow Megan to leave?
Aylia went out her back door, still frowning in thought, and headed across the yard toward her little cottage. She knew she needed to settle her mind, to think clearly so that she could decide what to do.
Perhaps she could tap into her farseeing again and that would help her to decide. Her Talent had helped her in all the difficult moments of her life, after all. Surely it could help her now.
She was vaguely aware of how cold and still the air was, a glance upward showing her gray clouds growing darker and heavier. It was supposed to snow. There hadn’t been much snow this winter, though lots of bitter cold, and she had the notion that the valley needed a good storm right now.
Everyone was so tense—
It was no more than a faint sound behind her, but suddenly Aylia felt a wave of overwhelming cold that had nothing to do with the gray day, and before she could do more than begin to turn, something struck her head, pain exploded in a red burst, and everything went dark.
“WAIT. WE NEED to stop here.”
DeMarco immediately pulled into the lot beside a small and beautiful old church not far from downtown Salem, but even as he was parking in the otherwise deserted lot, he asked simply, “Why?”
Hollis was staring at the church, unconsciously rubbing her left temple. “Hmm? Oh . . . just a feeling. We need to talk to the pastor.”
“Why?” DeMarco repeated.
She looked at her partner, then gestured toward the sign outside the church where there was an invitation for all to attend Sunday school and Sunday services. Atop the sign was perched a large crow, staring at them.
“The crow called you?” DeMarco guessed.
“Nothing as definite as that. I think.” She rubbed her temple harder and watched as two more crows joined the other on top of the sign. All three were gazing directly at them. “Just . . . we need to talk to the pastor.”
“About?” DeMarco was patient.
Hollis frowned at him for a moment, then said slowly, “About Danny Dryden.” She turned her head and stared at the crows, the fluttering sensation in her mind distinctly unsettling. “Damn. That’s . . . weird. Not images and concepts this time. His name is clear as a bell. Almost in neon.”
“The name Bishop and Miranda got from Megan’s sister. Who Megan was involved with before she decided to leave Salem.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re going with Finn to talk to him.”
“I know, but . . . I think . . . the crows have been sharing information with each other. Connecting things they’ve seen. One of them saw Danny Dryden up where Megan was buried. More than once.”
“So more evidence he could be the father of Megan’s baby and so possibly our unsub?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Her voice was a bit absent. “They really didn’t think anything about it, about him being up there, because he was up in the mountains a lot. It didn’t seem strange to them until Megan’s remains were found. Until . . . Tia . . . started asking her family and friends if they’d noticed anything odd during the last few months.”
DeMarco eyed her. “Another coincidence is bothering you.” He didn’t have to explain how he knew that.
“Well . . . yeah. Danny. Daniel.”
“Don’t spirit guides have to be dead by definition?”
“You’d think. But living people do appear in the gray time. Diana and me. That psychic Bishop sent in to prove to Diana that she could be deceived there. God knows who else.”
“Okay. But Daniel the spirit guide was a kid. Right?”
“Appeared to be. But one kind of deception in the gray time pretty much clears the way for other kinds. Samuel certainly was able to appear as someone—something—else. To be something else or project the image of someone different.”
“But?”
“But . . . mediums aren’t even supposed to exist in Salem, at least as far as we know. Not an ability any of the five families has. So if Danny is Daniel, then how did he even know about the gray time, much less be familiar enough with it, or strong enough, I guess, to go there and draw Diana there?”
“However he discovered it, he must have visited it more than once.”
“Maybe lots of times, yeah. Which is really going to creep Diana out. It creeps me out.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“But what’s really bugging me is why. Assuming he did know about the gray time, had visited it before however many times, why use it the way he did? Why go there, appear as a kid, a spirit guide, and offer a warning to Diana and me about what was happening in Salem?”
After a moment, DeMarco said, “It was the warning that brought us here.”
“But Finn called Bishop later that same day. Asking for help, because of the Blackwood elder’s farseeing. That was going to happen, him asking Bishop for help, because the farseeing had happened. Maybe Finn wouldn’t have had quite the urgency, maybe we wouldn’t have, but Bishop wouldn’t have said no. Some of us, if not all of us, still would have come.”
“Agreed. And Daniel might have heard about the farseeing, might have known or deduced that Finn would ask Bishop for help, because he had once before.”
“Makes sense.” She brooded for a moment. “So, did he just want to make sure we came? Why? All that so-called warning in the gray time really did was . . . spook Diana and me. Convince us the threat was real, and awful.” Slowly, she added, “Convince us that the threat was from a serial killer, out to destroy the Five. No other rhyme or reason.”
“Convinced you that the victims were only that. Members of the Five.”
“Yeah.” She looked at her partner. “Maybe that was the distraction all along. From the very beginning, even before we came here. What he didn’t want us to look at, to pay too much attention to. Megan. Personal ties and motivations. The longer we were focused on the idea of a serial killer, the longer it would take us to look at those victims for personal ties.”
“Maybe.” DeMarco nodded slowly, then looked at the neat little church, so quiet on a Thursday morning. “And we’re at this church because?”
“The family goes here. Danny Dryden’s family. And—because the crows want us here. To talk to the pastor about Danny Dryden and his family.”
“Okay,” DeMarco said. “Let’s go see the pastor.”