Demon on a Distant Shore (29 page)

He straightened up, grabbed my left hand in both his and lifted it to plant his lips on my knuckles. His face contorted, his eyes dewed up. “Sweetheart.”

I couldn’t bear to see him like that. “For crying out loud, it’s just a shoulder wound. Don’t be such a wuss.”

He grinned and delicious demon warmth bathed my cold hand. “I see I need not have worried.”

That was better. I tried a tentative smile in return. “Can I get a drink?”

He released my hand, got a sippy cup with a straw from a steel table near the bed head and held it for me. Boy, that tepid water tasted good.

“How did I get here?”

“You don’t recall passing out?”

“Again?
Jesus!
”

“After you tried to shoot me,” he added.

No matter if your brain is like spaghetti, you do not forget firing at a person. “I did not.”

“Because I took it away from you. Your finger was on the trigger.”

I tried to lift my arm, but failed. “How bad is it?”

“A clean shot, straight through, though the bullet shaved the bone.”

Then I remembered and surged up. “Royal, Pickins is locked in Saint Thomas’ crypt and Fowler’s body is in the graveyard.”

He pressed me back to the mattress. “I know. You had a busy night.”

“How do you know?”

“You told me. You do not remember that either?”

“Not a thing. So what now?”

“Ah. Well.” He cleared his throat and sat down again.

Clearing a throat which does not need clearing is not a good sign. “Royal, tell me.”

He showed his teeth in a grimace. “Pickins tried to kill you. I thought handing him and Fowler’s body to the police would prove it. But it got complicated.”

Of course it did, never met a case which didn’t.

“Sergeant Fordham is waiting to talk to you. Can you manage a few minutes?”

“Yeah. Fine. Let’s get it over so we can go home.”

He muttered something under his breath.

My voice sharpened. “What did you say?”

Royal walked out with the tall, burly sergeant, who made me think of a British version of Mike Warren. Except the sergeant was polite.

A sweat had broken out on my brow from the stress of the interview and the dawning realization the British cops would not let me and Royal fly off to the wild blue yonder in the near future.

A nurse came in to check my vitals and do something with the IV drip. A lovely drowsy feeling seeped through me. She must have upped the sedation level.

“Nice room,” a voice whispered as the nurse left.

So I was right, Carrie was in my room earlier. “You think so?”

“You wouldn’t like the wards. Why do you merit a private room?”

“Because I’m a suspect in a police investigation?”

“You are? What do they think you did?”

“Killed Darnel Fowler.”

She stepped back from the bed. “Did you?”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t get all indignant with me, madam. You’re a mass-murder for all I know. There are so many nowadays, shooting at crowds, barging into work to kill their coworkers because they had a bad day.”

“Mm.” I felt kind of strange, in a good way.

“I think I’ve found my calling,” she chirruped on, changing the topic Carrie-style. “Something I can help with. I found a patient, a young man hit by a lorry. I was there when he died. I told him what happened, what to expect now. It was hard, because he was so distressed, but I think I helped. So I’ll come back now and then.”

I felt warm and lazy. “Won’t you have the same problem you have with other people?”

She squirmed, discomfort in her posture. “Hm. Well. He jumped to the conclusion . . . I let him think I’m. . . .” Her voice sped up. “I’m special, here to help the recently departed. It’s why I can move around . . . because I’m. . . .”

A goofy smile stretched my lips. “He thinks you’re an
angel?
” I sniggered.

She bristled. “Neither of us mentioned angel.”

“But you let him think so.” Oh, this was
too
good. Carrie, an angel of mercy.

“Does it matter what they think if I help them, ease their trauma?”

I yawned. “You’re right. Way to go, Carrie. A whole new lease on life.”
Lease on life
. I giggled.

“Shut it, you,” she said, but she sounded happy.

“So you’ll stay here?”

She moved from the foot to the side of my bed. “I’ll visit and stay as long as I’m needed, but I expect I’ll go back to The Hart and Garter in between traveling.”

“Traveling all over the place must be difficult.”

“No, easy really, but time-consuming. I move in stages. For instance, when I go to Salisbury I have to latch on to someone as they leave the inn, then someone driving to Salisbury if I’m lucky. If not, I look for anyone walking from the village in the direction of The Blacksmith bus stop.”

“Blacksmith?”

“The pub at Charlingham crossroads. The Salisbury bus stops there. If I can get there, I catch someone getting on the bus, then someone getting off in Salisbury. One time I caught the thing and every passenger got off at one of the villages in between and I ended up at the depot in Salisbury. The driver left before I could catch him and I was stuck there till the next morning. Talk about boring.

“Yes, it can take time, but I have plenty of that. The farther I go, the longer it takes, the more complicated the journey. But worth the effort.”

“Mm,” I murmured, and closed my eyes.

I felt like royalty as a nurse steered my wheelchair along the corridor to the exit. The Royal family gets police escorts. One of the wheels wobbled just slightly, making a
crick-crick-crick
sound amplified by the high ceilings in the wide, bright corridors.

Tall and menacing, Royal stalked on my right, little lines puckering between his eyebrows, far removed from the easygoing American tourist the police first interviewed. Royal was steamed. He kept his temper banked down to a smolder and I hoped nobody did anything to make it erupt.

Making a demon angry is unwise.

“I called Fred Sturgis and filled him in. He offered to fly over if we need an attorney.”

“How nice of him,” I said sourly.

“He had Patty on the other line. She said she will pay any legal expenses.”

“I feel better with every word out your mouth.”

We were not going to The Hart and Garter, but to Devizes, where a nice hotel room awaited me compliments of Her Majesty’s government. A nice hotel room real close to police headquarters. A nice hotel room in which Royal would not be allowed, hence his ire.

A small apparition in a tight, loud negligee, Carrie stood near the elevator. She had wandered the hospital and now waited for a ride with me, wherever I went. She knew I couldn’t speak to her, but I smiled a faint acknowledgement and she flapped her hand.

We entered the elevator and rode it down to the hospital basement and followed a narrow passage to an underground parking garage. The nurse indicated I could stand, and just like that she officially handed me over to a female police officer.

We got in a black car. Royal got in another. Away we went.

“Oo-er,” Carrie said. “I’ve never ridden in a police car before. Not very comfortable, is it. Still, better than a black Mariah no doubt. Isn’t that what they’re called?” She made a
tut-tut
noise. “I remember when Jeremy Wooley had a pint too many, went outside and. . . .”

I tried to close myself off from her recollections, an all but impossible feat.

Chapter Fifteen

They didn’t lock me up, but Royal and I spent another week in England - seven whole days - most of the daylight hours in Devizes in the company of Sergeant Willis and his superior Inspector Parley. They hammered away at mine and Royal’s stories. We told the truth, minus any mention of talking dead people or little demons.

They went to Peter Cooper’s office, but naturally found nothing to link him to either the Nortons or Pickins.

The hardest part of the semi-incarceration was not being allowed to see Royal alone.

It was a mess at first, with no evidence in the church apart from my blood, and Pickins told a lovely story about how I lured him there and tried to kill him. I gave them Salt Lake City’s Chief of Police as a reference, and my trusty backup, Captain Mike Warren of Clarion, both of whom are too smart to mention psychic ability unless the other party mentions it first. I think it upped our credibility, so they didn’t immediately throw me in a dungeon. They also called Falkman, Sturgis and Cannon, who confirmed we were in England looking for Scott Norton’s nephew.

Then forensics confirmed the bullet in my arm and the one in Fowler’s head came from Pickins’ pistol. All well and good, except I had Pickins’ pistol. I could have shot Fowler before or after I attacked poor Pickins. I bet Pickins wished he thought to lay that on me, but he didn’t. And I obviously had not shot myself with Pickins’ gun. Still, for a while there I wondered if I’d finish up in a British prison for the rest of my life.

But the British cops couldn’t ignore what we told them about Paul and Sylvia Norton. The bodies were initially examined by a local physician and still on hold for an autopsy, so they were brought down from Scotland and the autopsy performed in Swindon. DNA evidence on their bodies matched that of both Fowler and Pickins. They found other evidence too, and the cops set about trying to discover who else was involved.

Johnny could have told them. Poor Johnny. It seemed his murder would never be made public. But his mother came forward when she heard Fowler was dead and Pickins under arrest. She saw Fowler run Johnny down and drive away, and in her pain and rage confronted him. But Fowler responded by threatening harm to Johnny’s brother if she didn’t keep her mouth shut. He told her to contact him if anyone asked about Johnny, and although our turning up at her house could be coincidental, she decided to play it safe. She called Fowler after I left her house. I don’t blame her; she did what she had to, to protect her son.

Their forensics expert scraped paint off the grill of Darnel Fowler’s car and matched it to Johnny’s scooter.

On our fourth day in Devizes, a guy looking for his lost dog found Peter Cooper’s body partly submerged in a pool of water at the bottom of an old abandoned quarry on the fringe of Avebury. He had a nasty wound on the back of his head, which could have happened when he slipped and fell in the pit. The autopsy found the head wound was post mortem, nor did he die from drowning; he died of asphyxiation
before
he hit the water. The coroner ruled the death a homicide. Time of death was estimated as three weeks before we arrived in Little Barrow.

Unfortunately, no evidence linked Peter to Fowler and Pickins, DNA or otherwise. We would have liked to pin his murder on Fowler, but couldn’t think of a way to do it and not go to areas we would rather not visit. We left well enough alone, hoping the cops would eventually find what they needed to link his death to the whole sorry mess.

Pickins finally cracked and confessed to the murder of Darnel Fowler and attempted murder of yours truly. He was also charged as an accessory to the murders of Paul and Sylvia Norton, Johnny Marsh and William Clarke. But he clammed up when it came to motive, refusing to give the police anything more.