KnockOut (15 page)

Tuesday afternoon

A black FBI helicopter set down on the country road in front of Sheriff Ethan Merriweather’s house, whipping up the hot afternoon air and bringing everyone outside. Autumn yelled, “Oh, my. Look, Ethan, Mama, it’s the President! He just landed on the road!”

“Shows you how important we are,” Ethan said, and grinned. “I didn’t even have to call him. Service right to our front door.” He watched a big man wearing a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black slacks, and boots climb down. He turned to help down a woman, tall and slender, dressed as he was, all the way to the black low-heeled boots. She had incredible hair, a beautiful red, vivid as an Irish sunset. The man waved to the helicopter pilot and the bird lifted off.

The two of them were carrying leather jackets over their arms, and the man held a black computer case.

So this was Dillon Savich. Ethan had forgotten how sharp a fed could look. He had dressed like that himself three years ago, before he’d realized they’d cast him in a role he didn’t want to play in the long run and had come back home to the mountains and to flannel shirts, boots, and jeans. He wondered if his deputies would have thought he’d looked as cool as these two back in the day. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

He felt Autumn’s small hand slip into his. He grinned down at her. “Sorry, babe, I don’t think it’s the President. But maybe it’s somebody you know.”

She became very still, shaded her eyes. She shouted, “Dillon!” and broke away from Ethan and her mother and dashed across the front yard, Big Louie barking at her heels, toward that fed who looked hard as nails, his black hair whipped up by the helicopter blades.

Savich recognized the little girl instantly and pulled up. “I believe it’s my midnight visitor,” he said to Sherlock, then caught the little girl when she opened her arms and leaped at him. “Hi, Autumn,” he said. He kissed her cheek and held her close, breathing in her kid smell, different from Sean, not better or sweeter, just different.
A little-girl smell,
he thought,
and wouldn’t that be nice?
“I like finally seeing you in the real world, in real time.”

“Real time,” she repeated. “I like that too.” She reared back in his arms and lightly touched her fingertips to his cheek. “You’re awful handsome, Dillon.”

“Well, my wife thinks so,” Savich said.

“You’re almost as handsome as Ethan.”

“
Hmmm.
Say hello to my wife Sherlock. Sherlock, this is Autumn, who just kicked my ego in the chops.”

Sherlock lightly touched the little girl’s hand, smiled at her. “Do you know we have a little boy? His name is Sean.”

Autumn slowly shook her head. “Dillon didn’t tell me. Is he as big as me?”

“Not quite,” Sherlock said. “And he’s got a terrier named Astro. Astro’s all white, a live wire, and he fits right in Sean’s arms.”

Savich said, “Is that your mama standing over there, Autumn?”

The little girl nodded happily and called out, “Mama! This is Dillon. And Sherlock. They’ve got a little boy named Sean. And Astro. It sounds like Big Louie is lots more dog than Astro.”

“Nice job of ice-breaking,” Savich whispered to Sherlock. “Let’s meet everyone, Autumn. Would you introduce us?”

An hour later, Ethan was cooking ribs and chicken and vegetables and foil-wrapped potatoes on his backyard grill, his eyes searching the woods for any sign of movement, any sign of Blessed. Savich turned twelve pieces of corn on the cob on the grill with a long-handled fork, whistling, asking more questions as they occurred to him, getting a feel for the place, and this bizarre situation, and drinking the best iced tea he’d had in a very long time.

He said, “Did you tell Joanna any details about what happened to the hiker?”

“Not all of it. I couldn’t. She took it pretty hard.”

“This Bricker’s Bowl, where the Backmans live—since you know Blessed’s identity, did you call the local sheriff?”

Ethan turned a chicken breast, slathered on more barbecue sauce as he said, “Yeah, I called Sheriff Cole, for all the good it did me. He asked me straight off if I could identify Blessed Backman as the man responsible for all the trouble, and of course I couldn’t. I never saw him without his mask. I asked him to e-mail me a photo of Blessed and Cole said yeah, yeah, sure, he’d do that. When I told him about what Autumn saw, he sort of chuckled and said it was a private cemetery, no law against shuffling bodies around, now, was there? Of course, in this case, it sounded like the little girl dreamed it all. Sure, he’d go talk to Miz Shepherd, blah, blah. I wished I could have reached his throat through the phone.”

Savich said thoughtfully, “I’m thinking Sherlock and I should pay a visit to Bricker’s Bowl. I followed up on some Web research Sherlock told me about. I found a mention of what may be the Backmans in a blog by a group that calls themselves Children of Twilight. They traced the IP address of the server to northern Georgia, near Bricker’s Bowl. The blog claimed to be written by a Caldicot Whistler, who wrote with the snake-oil charm of a charismatic cult leader. It mentioned only their first names—Blessed, Grace, and Shepherd, as disciples who had developed the powers of mind under Whistler’s guidance. A cult requires money. I want to find out where the money’s coming from.”

Ethan knew where all the money came from, supposedly, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to tell Savich that Theodore Backman was a slot-machine whisperer.

Finally, Ethan couldn’t stand it. As he brushed barbecue sauce on the ribs and flipped the onions, he said, “Did Autumn really suddenly appear in your head one night and talk to you?”

Savich nodded as he carefully turned over the tinfoiled potatoes buried in the coals. He looked at Ethan. “It surprised me but good. At the time I was racing Lance in the Alps, both exciting and scary, since my bike was maybe three inches from a cliff, when there she was, right in front of me. I tell you, at first I thought I’d crashed my bike right over that cliff. I remember it was midnight on the dot.”

“She…just appeared? Like that?” He snapped his fingers. “In your head?”

Savich smiled at him. “Yes. Her voice was clear as a bell, but I couldn’t see her clearly. I asked her to bring her head up so I could see her face. She’s a precious little girl, all that dark brown hair, her blue eyes and the line of freckles across her nose; she’s the image of her mother. She’ll be as beautiful as her mother someday. It’s quite a gift she’s got.”

“But that means you’ve got it too,” Ethan said, and he felt weirded out all the way to his boots saying such a thing. “Has this happened to you before?”

“Yes, several times. Once we were chasing a killer as dangerous as Blessed, called Tammy Tuttle. She was a horror, and if Blessed is anything like her, we’ll have to focus on him like a target on a shooting range. Look, I know getting your mind around what Autumn can do is tough. But it isn’t as important now—getting Blessed is.”

“Fair enough,” Ethan said.

Savich nodded as he turned the zucchini and squash slices and the mound of onion rings on the tinfoil, all coated lightly with olive oil. The smells were incredible, and he breathed in deeply. “I love summer,” he said. “Even when it’s so hot in Washington you feel like you’re frying, there’s something in the air, something sweet and alive.

“You’ve got a nice setup here. You use the grill a lot?”

“At least twice a week in the summer. Friends I haven’t seen all winter show up.”

“Well, I suppose smells this good travel fast.”

Ethan fidgeted with the bottle of barbecue sauce. “But you were surprised when she suddenly popped up, right?”

“Sure. Look, Sheriff—”

“Call me Ethan.”

Savich grinned, which didn’t make him look like any less of an ass-kicker. “Ethan. The last sheriff who asked me to call him by his first name was Dougie.”

“Did you ask him why his parents hated him?”

Savich laughed. “He was sporting bib overalls at the time, his gun belted on top.”

Throughout the afternoon Ethan’s deputies were in and out, drinking a couple of gallons of iced tea Sherlock and Joanna made, with Autumn’s help, all of them eager to meet the two feds and trying not to act impressed or intimidated. When Glenda came into the kitchen with Larch just before dinner, Joanna walked right up to her, studied her face, and said, “I’m sorry I hit you, but I had to.”

Glenda nodded. “I know. You had to get him out of me, so you’re forgiven. Thank you.”

Ethan introduced Savich and Sherlock. Savich said as he shook Glenda’s hand, “You knew someone was there, in your head?”

Glenda frowned. Her head still ached, although the pain pills Dr. Spitz had given her had reduced it to a dull throb. She knew what she’d said had sounded like she’d been taken over by an alien. The pain in her head spiked, and she closed her eyes.

“Here,” Joanna said, “drink some iced tea and relax. Stop thinking about it.”

Glenda drank, took a few slow, light breaths.

Ethan said, “That’s right, try to throttle down, Glen. Take it easy, don’t think so hard about it. Look, when Blessed put the whammy on Ox, he still hasn’t remembered.”

Thankfully the pain eased off again.

“I can’t believe Jeff let you come over.”

“He didn’t want to, but I told him it was my job and I didn’t want to get fired.” She gave Ethan a big grin and looked over at a big rope bone in the corner of the living room, chewed to grimy bits by Big Louie. “You’re right, I don’t remember, but the thing is, Ethan, I do know I wasn’t there inside my head until Joanna hit me in the jaw. Her first punch didn’t knock me out, but I remember the lightning slap of pain, and shaking my head, and for a moment I felt something inside my head slip, like a slippery hand losing its grip on a doorknob, off balance and trying hard to regain control.”

She clammed up and looked terrified. “I can’t believe I said that. I’m crazy, aren’t I?”

“If you’re crazy,” Ethan said matter-of-factly, “then we all are.”

His words did the trick. Glenda’s eyes cleared. “It’s true. He was there, inside me, but I didn’t know it, not until she hit me. Thank God you hit me again, Joanna. That second whack must have knocked him right out of me. I don’t remember anything until I woke staring up at Ethan’s face.”

Larch said, “You scared the crap out of me, Glen. Would you look at that mouse. What did Jeff say?”

“He thought it was cute once I convinced him I wasn’t going to croak.”

ETHAN SAID TO SHERLOCK
and Savich, “Jeff Bauer, Glenda’s husband, is a ranger with the Glenwood District, a real hardnose—I’ve seen him stare down a bear that was stealing food. He and Glen have only been married—what? Six months? He’s one of the many out looking for Blessed. I’m surprised he isn’t here hovering.”

Glenda smiled. “I told him I was okay, but you know Jeff. Don’t be surprised, Ethan, if he comes charging in here any time now. He did freak when I called him, since he knew about what happened to Ox. He came running over to Dr. Spitz’s.”

Savich said, “Glenda, at any point, did you hear Blessed speaking in your head, telling you what to do?”

She shook her head. “It was like I was gone, or buried so deep I might as well have been gone. I was only there after Joanna hit me that first time. And there was Big Louie biting my leg, and then Autumn was hitting me in the back with a pan.” Glenda patted Autumn’s cheek. “You and your mom mounted a full-blown attack on him. Really, thank you. You too, Big Louie.” She leaned down and scratched behind Big Louie’s ears.

Sherlock felt her own shoulders tighten at the overflowing tension she heard in Glenda’s voice, even as she’d tried to joke about what had happened to her. She asked Ethan, “Where did Big Louie get his name?”

Ethan laughed. “My grandfather’s old hound dog was called Big Louie. I remember my folks called him Saint Louie, since my grandfather was such a piece of work and they figured the hound had to be a real saint to put up with him. But the truth is, the two were closer than ham and rye.

“Big Louie was ancient when he died, and he died a couple hours after my grandfather passed. My dad had them buried together. Believe me, no one told the authorities about that. Big Louie was my constant companion when I was a little kid. I guess I didn’t want to let him go. Big Louie doesn’t mind being Louie the Second, do you, boy?”

Big Louie woofed and butted Ethan’s hand with his nose.

Glenda’s husband, Jeff, came striding into the room at that moment looking like a wild man until he heard his wife laugh. He sucked down a deep breath, looked at his wife, winced at the black eye. “Oh, babe, I told you not to mix it up with Cloris over at Ty Harper’s bar.”

Glenda laughed. The headache was nearly gone. “I could take big-mouthed Cloris, trust me.”

Some of the tension leaked out of the room.
Thank God,
Sherlock thought.

Twelve people ate outside on a long picnic table covered with two red-and-white checkered tablecloths and what seemed like enough food to feed them twice over.

Sherlock saw one barbecued rib left on the huge platter, a couple of pieces of zucchini, and that was it. She was so full that the single lonely rib dripping with barbecue sauce didn’t even tempt her. They drank coffee and tea and soft drinks under the slowly darkening sky. The air was cooling, and Joanna put her own sweater around her daughter’s shoulders. It was turning into a fine evening, what with the beautiful mountains hunkered around them, changing colors every minute in the fading light.

Jeff took Glenda’s hand and rose from the large picnic table. “I need to get my princess to bed, maybe put another ice pack on her eye.”

Slowly, everyone got themselves together, and the mood changed. For a while there, it was sharing a meal with friends, the conversation light, but now, as night was closing in, Blessed loomed large again.

Two deputies would remain, keeping watch.

Savich and Sherlock remained seated. Joanna knew there would be more discussion. She thanked each of the deputies, watched her daughter solemnly shake their hands. When only the five of them remained, Autumn leaned up and whispered to her mother, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I’ll take you,” Ethan said immediately, and started to get up.

“No, no, I’ll go with her,” Joanna said. “We’ll be right back.”

They walked into the cottage through the kitchen, Autumn’s hand in her mother’s. Big Louie, so full he could barely move, followed them, tail at half-mast.

Joanna was opening the door to the half bath off the kitchen when she heard Lula hiss. She had been sleeping on the rocking chair in the guest bedroom. Joanna didn’t hesitate. She shoved Autumn inside the bathroom and whispered, “Stay put, Autumn. Don’t you move, you hear me?” She quietly closed the door. She nearly yelled Ethan’s name at the top of her lungs, then stopped. If Blessed was here, it meant she could kill him, then it would be over. She’d had to give Ox back his Beretta. She raced to the gun cabinet she’d seen tucked away just inside Ethan’s bedroom and pulled out a small Smith & Wesson, checked the clip. It was full.

She heard a man curse softly. He was in the guest bedroom. She crouched down and listened. Joanna knew to her soul it was Blessed this time, not some poor soul he’d hypnotized and sent after them. She wanted to end it right this minute, end it once and for all. Joanna ran down the hallway. She heard Lula hiss again, then saw her come flying out of the guest bedroom, tail bushed out, growling deep in her throat, more indignant than afraid.

Joanna was terrified, but it didn’t matter. She crouched and ran toward the bedroom. She knew he was in there, waiting for what? Autumn to come strolling in? Or her?
Don’t look at him. Just shoot him.
She went in low, like she’d seen on TV, saw him standing beside the bed, Autumn’s blue pajamas in his hands. He’d pulled them out from under her pillow.

Joanna knew he was looking at her; she felt the weight of his will pulling at her to look back at him, to look at his eyes, but she kept her head down, stared hard at his hands holding Autumn’s pajamas. They were rough hands with thick purple veins standing out on the back.

Shoot him! Now!

“Hello, Joanna.”

She aimed her gun straight at where she knew he stood. She stood too close to miss. All she had to do was pull the trigger and he’d be dead, but her finger wouldn’t move.

His voice was soft and deep, mesmerizing, almost singsong. “You were a surprise, Joanna, you and Martin’s daughter. Did you know he changed his name when he was twelve, said he couldn’t stand his real name? Do you want to know what his real name was? His name was Harmony. Mother loved his name, but he hated it, said it sounded like he was a New Age dip, and he wouldn’t back down.

“Mother thought you were a good mother, Joanna, but I didn’t. I saw through you to the selfish twisting rot in you right away.”

His words nearly made her jerk her head up. Nearly. Why wouldn’t her finger pull the damned trigger? “Turn around, Blessed. I won’t look at your face, you hear me? Turn around! Now, or I’ll shoot you!”

“No, you won’t, Joanna; you really don’t want to.” His voice continued, soft and soothing, deeper now. In her mind she felt his voice turn to thick liquid that was flowing warm into her blood, then racing through her veins to her heart. As if from a great distance, she saw him raise Autumn’s pajamas in his hands and rub them against his cheek, and her heart pounded, filled to overflowing with revulsion, and something else. He said, his voice making her blood boil inside, “You can’t, and you know it.”

Joanna couldn’t help herself; she jerked her head up, met his eyes for only a fraction of time, and fired.