The Haunted Bones (15 page)

"I can show you if you want to see."

"Oh, yes, yes please."

I wasn't blind to the obvious fact this guy
was playing me. He was trying to see what I knew so that he would
know how the evening would end. But I already had that answer. He
and Llse wanted me dead. I should have died that night, but what I
didn't know was…what for? I pulled my laptop from the bag and
opened it up. I still had access to the copied cloud on my desktop,
so I opened up a few of the shots showing Ferrell and Jim.

He looked at them with interest. "What
exactly am I looking at?"

"That's Mason Ferrell there, and over here
is Jimmy Herndon."

"That was your partner."

"Yes."

"And what do you hope to do with these
pictures?"

I frowned at him. "Nothing…except to
understand what happened that night. I have a different memory of
the events than what Llse testified to. So when the images at The
Alley Haunt showed up, I wanted to see if it would work there."

"How come you don't show up in the
pictures?"

"Because I wasn't dead. Apparently it just
reveals dead people."

He took in a deep breath and sighed as he
gestured for me to shut the laptop. "And she dragged that poor girl
into this for ghost pictures. Damn." He rubbed at his eyes. "I am
sorry, Mr. McNally. I know your surviving the gunshot was
considered a miracle, but sometimes, through no fault of our own,
miracles come to an end."

I did not like the sound of that. "Why?"

"The whys never really matter, do they?"

"They do to the ones who die for them."

He looked directly at me, then nodded.
"You're right. But the reasons for you still aren't going to make
any sense. But for me, they were devastating. You know Mason was my
aide."

I nodded. "And he was your lover."

"I see you're brighter than I thought. Is
this what you suspected when you were investigating the
shooting?"

"Yes."

"Well…you were right. And then one day my
son walked in on us. It upset him to see his father with a man the
same age as himself and he became hysterical. I knew he was meeting
someone in the park some nights, so I always assumed it was another
man. That we weren't so different. But apparently I was wrong." He
leaned in close to me. "He was meeting a girl."

"My niece."

"Yes. They met during a protest rally months
before. So I suspected he was going to tell her or someone else
what he'd seen, and I couldn't allow that."

I shook my head. "So it's true…you put a hit
out on your son."

"It was for all the right reasons, Mr.
McNally. I have a great works to do. And Chad…didn't."

"And Mason Ferrell?"

"He found out what happened to Chad and
threatened to go to the police. So Llse, bless her little black
heart, volunteered to fix things. Next thing I know, Ferrell's
arrested, believed to have murdered my son." He clapped his hands
together. "And it should have ended there. But Llse developed a
crush on you, did you know that?"

I stared at him.

"She did. But you refused her. So she went
after your best friend to get dirt on you. But you were obviously
in love with your wife and she didn't stand a chance. Then the
whole case with Ferrell started to fall apart when he struck a deal
to testify that I hired a hit man to kill my son." Padeaus's jaw
clenched in the shadows cast by the tiny light. "Again, Llse
handled it. Only…you survived. So she stuck around to see if you
remembered anything when you woke up. And imagine to our delight
that you didn't. It was perfect, except for finding the girl Chad
had been seeing. It took us nearly two years to track her down, but
we finally found her. And we found you and your naughty
talent."

Ever have the feeling you're
sitting with the reincarnation of a madman? Well, I had Himmler to
my right, and I wanted nothing better than to jump out of the car
and run screaming away from him. The man killed his own son and
somehow…didn't feel a bit of remorse. I think they call these
people
sociopaths
.

The senator hit a button and the partition
between us and the driver lowered. The driver handed him a pair of
handcuffs, and the senator handed them to me. "Give me the laptop
and the bag and put these on. We're almost there."

I weighed my options, but there really
weren't any. I folded the laptop up and almost hit him in the face
with it, but then I'd have the driver to deal with. Just as I slid
the computer back in the bag, I saw a gun in the senator's hand. We
were at the office park and pulling up to the door when I snapped a
cuff on my left wrist. I started to put my hands behind me but the
senator grabbed the open cuff and fastened it to my right wrist.
There were serious advantages to being cuffed in front.

Did he know this?

The driver got out and opened my door. He
had a gun now, too, and I slid out of the seat. He got behind me
and poked my back so I would move forward to the door, which opened
almost immediately.

Llse was there, wearing jeans and a sweater.
Her hair was up and she was looking very…smug. "You get the
laptop?"

The senator held it up. "Right here.
Now…exactly what is it you're planning?"

"We have to get rid of the girl." She
reached out and took the cuffs and pulled me to her. "But I could
keep him as a pet for a while."

"A pet where?"

"Doesn't that lobbyist of yours…Harmon or
something like that… have that dungeon under his house? I don't
think it's occupied anymore after that last boy got away."

I pulled back from her, but she laughed.
"Don't worry, McNally. You're not his type. So, want to see your
niece? She's in my old room." She pulled me through the office and
down the hallway to the back room. Pink was inside, handcuffed as
well, her ankle chained to an iron cot.

"Uncle Devan!"

"Hey, Pink," I said as I winked at her.
"Sorry I didn't come like the cavalry."

She looked at my handcuffs. "No, more like
the prisoner. So why are you here?"

"Why didn't you tell me you were seeing the
senator's son?"

"I didn't know!"

"Just shut up." Llse turned her head to get
something and it finally struck me that the gesture looked very
familiar. In fact, I'd just seen someone tilt their head the same
way, after she shoved a bar of soap in my mouth. "Llse…is your name
Poulin?"

I had never seen her react like that. She
whirled at me and pushed me against the side wall. My back
connected painfully with the edge of a shelf filled with quarter
gallon paint cans. She a death grip on the collar of my shirt.
"Where did you get that name?"

Wow. Nerve, meet button. "It was the name of
a woman who tried to kill me earlier this evening. Only her name
was Elspeth Poulin. She said she put her mother, Elizabeth Poulin,
into a wall."

I wasn't expecting her to hit me but she
did. I blinked a few times as stars mingled with blood. Then she
did it again. And again.

"Stop it!" Pink said.

"Llse…please…" Senator Padeaus said. "No
need to beat the poor lad to death. Otherwise we're not going to be
able to get him out of the state as easily."

I was still recovering from the blows to my
head so I wasn't sure what that meant. "Out of…state?" I pulled
away from her when her grip lessoned and turned my upper body away.
My left shoulder screamed at me like a dull throb in my ears. I
reached out with my cuffed hands and pulled one of the paint cans
to me. It felt about half-full.

"I'm getting rid of you in a way where there
won't be a body," Llse said. "I wasn't kidding about you being a
pet—just not my pet. There are a lot of very rich people out there
willing to own a tall, handsome man. Especially the kind believed
dead. And once we've gotten rid of all the evidence you think you
have on me, your niece will be on the next plane out of the
country. She'll make a nice little sex toy in Europe
somewhere."

There are few things that anger me more than
someone threatening my family. And doing it in front of me, and in
such a vulgar manner, at least to me, punches all my ass-hole
buttons. I moved before I thought about it and smashed my forehead
down on hers. She staggered back, and I ducked as the senator tried
to shoot me. The bullet splintered the door frame and I noticed
Pink getting under her bed. Good girl.

My aim was a little off because of the cuffs
as I threw the can of paint at the Senator. It bounced off the side
of his head as I lunged forward and tackled Llse. She wasn't very
big, so my weight on top of her was enough as I started hitting her
with my handcuffed fists. After the third strike, a gunshot
somewhere stopped me.

I jumped off and looked at myself. No blood.
No pain. I looked at Llse, who had a pretty banged-up face now.
Nothing. The senator was still standing, though he didn't have his
gun anymore and he was bleeding from the side of his head.

Who fired—

I saw the shadow moving on the concrete
first, and then the form came from the darkness of the office. The
lights there were off and I stood in surprise to see the dark-clad,
golden-masked angel from before. I'd been half on my back before
and he'd seemed too large. But he really wasn't, and a split second
before he moved, I realized he was a she.

The first strike from the masked woman
crushed the senator's windpipe. He put his hands to his neck as he
tried to breathe. But I knew that look. He barely had seconds. Llse
went for the gun, but the golden-masked woman stomped on her
hand.

My stomach lurched when Llse spoke in a
voice like a tiny child. "Why, Mama? He messed everything up."

"No, he didn't." The voice was muffled
behind the mask but it was definitely female. I stood to the side,
too curious to move. "You did. You and this asshole's stupidity. I
thought I taught you better than this." She looked at me. "It is
good to see you again, Devan McNally."

I blinked, not sure what to say.

Llse tried to stand but the
woman—Mama?—kicked her in the head. Llse began crying as she tried
to move out the door of the room, and the woman kicked her again,
in the gut. Llse did make it past the door frame and got up on her
feet. She started running into the darkness of the warehouse when
another shot rang out. I turned to see the smoking barrel of a gun
inches from me.

Then the barrel pointed to me. "Get in the
room, McNally."

I did, and made sure to put myself between
her and Pink. "Just let her go, okay? She's got nothing to do with
this."

"I do not kill children, Mr. McNally." She
turned to the bed. "Child, please come out and lie on the bed."

Pink did what she asked, and I still tried
to stay between the two. But the woman shoved me hard into the
chair beside the bed, reached out with some kind of silver cylinder
and pressed it against Pink's neck. Within seconds Pink was
still.

"What did you do—"

"I think silence is golden, Mr. McNally. I
will only say this once." She turned to face me.

To my surprise, she reached up and removed
the mask.

It was Mary Smith, or a much older version
of her. And it was Llse as well. An interesting mix of the two of
them. "My name's Elizabeth Poulin. The women you knew as Mary Smith
and Llse Wallace were my daughters."

"And you killed both of them…"

"Was that such a hard choice, Mr. McNally?"
Her voice softened when she said my name. "They both kill people,
same as me. Only they do it indiscriminately and without
purpose."

"There is a purpose to killing?"

"To weed out the bad. And sometimes, the
good." She pointed at the now dead senator. "He hired me to kill
his own son. I didn't know your niece was nearby when I took his
life. I believed it was another boy. The senator wanted her killed
as well. But it took a long time to find her. So I waited and
watched my own children, and came to a decision." She reached into
her pocket and pulled out a long chain and a lock. She patted the
bed beside Pink and I sat down as she threaded the chain around my
handcuffs and then through the bed frame. She locked the ends
together with a padlock. "To ensure my retreat only."

I jerked on the chain.

"My daughter tried to kill me the night she
realized I was pregnant with Llse. The father was our neighbor,
George Granger. She beat on me until I was unconscious, and when I
came to, she had chained me inside of the wall and was replacing
the brick. I begged her not to do that, for the child's sake. But
she did it anyway.

"George heard my cries and tore down his
side of the wall. After I told him what she did, he wanted to kill
her himself, but we let her be and I remained there in their house.
It wasn't long before I started showing and his wife, Patsy,
suspected the child was his. But you see, George wasn't a normal
man. He was the kind of man the government likes to find. A man
with…special skills. And he taught those skills to me. And when it
came time to leave and have our baby somewhere safe, Patsy was my
first target."

I sat listening in rapt attention, trying to
figure out how all the pieces fit together. "So you boarded her up
in the tomb your daughter made for you."

"Yes. I always knew where she was. George
taught me how to do that. And I worked for the government for a
while. But eventually George was killed and it was my turn to carry
on his legacy, the one he'd built up on the side when the
government didn't want him anymore."

"Black Angel."

"Yes. I have more recruits that I teach, and
train, and then send to the government. I had hoped Llse would be
one of those, but she loved to kill too much. And Mary…" She shook
her head. "Mary was already dead inside, her guilt eating her
up."