The Healer (17 page)

Ahern started to hedge, then Jonah kicked the sole of his shoe and said, “Don’t lie.”

Ahern’s nose was so swollen he could barely see, and his mind was in a panic, trying to find a way to shut up. But like before, he began spilling his guts without reserve.

“I’ve been doing it for years. It’s what I do. Luce was only one of many. I pick out the ones who are alone. They’re the easiest.”

Mize felt like he was going to throw up.

“What are you saying? That you’ve been stalking and torturing women for years?”

Ahern nodded.

Jonah held Luce a little tighter as he glared at Ahern, who quickly shut up.

“Mize…before you search his house, you might want to get a warrant, just so everything is proper. Because besides the notepad and pens on his desk, which match the notes he was leaving for Lucia, there’s a trunk in his office with trophies from his other kills.”

Luce gasped as her legs went weak.
Kills?

Tom Mize swayed as if Jonah had punched him. “Kills? He kills them?”

“Said he’d been doing it for years. He keeps mementos of his victims in that trunk. You may be solving a lot of cold cases with this arrest, so do it right.”

Then Jonah squatted down in front of Ahern. “Don’t lie. Don’t leave out a thing, or I’ll know it, and I’ll make you sorry.”

Ahern glared. “You can’t—”

“I can, and I will,” Jonah said, then leaned closer to Ahern until his lips were against his ear. “And they’ll never find your body. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Something slid through Ahern’s mind—something darker and more frightening than the thoughts that already lived in him—and he knew, without understanding how, that the Indian could do what he said.

He blinked. When he looked again, the Indian was gone.

Jonah moved past the crowd without looking at any of them. His focus was on Lucia. She was trembling and crying, and it was making him sick. He couldn’t stand it any longer.

He picked her up in his arms and cradled her against his chest, carrying her as he would have a child. She shuddered on a sob, then laid her head in the crook of his neck and closed her eyes.

Shock rippled through every facet of her body. She couldn’t quit thinking of all the times she’d served that man food, laughed with him, been alone with him as he’d stop to visit when he delivered her mail. It was nothing short of a miracle that she was still alive.

“You’re going to be all right,” Jonah said softly, as he carried her toward Bridie’s old truck.

Harold had fallen into step behind them without talking, but once they reached the diner, he called out to Jonah.

“She left her purse upstairs. Hang on a minute and I’ll go get it.”

Jonah eased Lucia into the truck seat, then laid his hand against her cheek.

She could feel the warmth of his hand and hear the deep timbre of his voice close to her face, but she couldn’t seem to keep her eyes open.

Jonah kissed the side of her face, then whispered softly, “It’s over, Lucia. You have nothing left to fear. You are strong. You are safe. Rest. We’ll be home soon.”

Lucia sighed as his voice swept through her, wiping her mind clean of everything except peace.

She remembered leaning back; then, within seconds, she was asleep.

Jonah stepped forward and took the purse from Harold at the bottom of the stairs and had started toward the truck when Harold called him back.

“I just want to shake your hand, son,” Harold said gruffly. “You did a fine thing, taking care of her like you did. I don’t rightly understand how it all happened, but I’m sure grateful she doesn’t have to live in any more fear.”

“So am I,” Jonah said, as he shook the man’s hand. “We’ll see you tomorrow,” he added.

Harold cleared his throat nervously. “Listen…if she isn’t up to—”

“She’ll be fine,” Jonah said. “You’ll see.”

And then they drove away.

He carried Lucia into the cabin, then laid her on her bed.

Hobo whined anxiously as he followed Jonah into the bedroom.

“She’ll be fine,” he said gently. “But if you feel like staying with her, I know she’d like that.”

Hobo sniffed at her hand hanging off the side of the mattress, licked the ends of her fingers, then lay down on the rag rug beside her bed and put his chin on his paws.

“I’ll leave the door open,” Jonah said. “Let me know when you want to go out.”

Hobo blinked.

It was enough. Jonah got the message.

Outside, night was upon them. For the first time in months, all was well in Lucia’s world.

And Jonah’s was about to come undone.

D. J.
Caufield had been in West Virginia for several days, flashing Gray Wolf’s picture around in small towns along the way, but with no success. Disgusted and cold, D.J. finally stopped for lunch at a little café in a small town just inside the Monongahela National Forest. Local programming was showing on the television hanging over the counter while D.J. was chowing down on a BLT, when they began flashing a news bulletin. Caufield listened absently as the journalist began his report from a town called Little Top, where a serial killer had been jailed days earlier. According to the reporter, the man who’d committed the murders, Mark William Ahern, would not be moved from where he was now incarcerated until jurisdiction for his crimes could be determined. And also, according to the reporter, the FBI would be taking over the case, since there were many deaths and they crossed several state lines.

None of this story was of much interest to Caufield, until the name Jonah Gray Wolf was mentioned as the person who’d brought him in. At that point, the sandwich was forgotten.

Caufield pulled out a map and began looking to see how far Little Top, West Virginia, was from this current location. At best guess, it was about a half-day’s drive. The town had better have a decent motel, because that was going to be the first order of business. It was too damned cold for stakeouts.

Luce felt like the weight of the world was gone from her shoulders. She went through the days with a permanent smile on her face. All the regulars at Harold’s diner had their say about what she’d endured, then added their own choices for meting out justice to Mark Ahern.

Luce kept reminding them that it was only thanks to Jonah that she was still alive, unlike the earlier victims, who’d been reduced to nothing but trophies in Mark Ahern’s steamer trunk.

But Jonah’s heart was heavy, although he did a good job hiding his concerns. He hadn’t known that a national news crew had descended on Little Top until he’d gone to pick Luce up from work the day after Ahern’s arrest. But the moment he’d seen them and learned that Sheriff Mize was giving out interviews right and left about how he’d come to be in possession of a serial killer, his heart had almost stopped.

It was no longer a case of
whether
Bourdain found him again so much as
when
the next hunter would arrive. He wanted to grab Lucia and run, but he’d already made up his mind not to drag her into the kind of life he was forced to live. And yet, leaving her behind was equally impossible, even though everyone in town knew about them, which not only meant Lucia’s life was in danger again, but that he’d been the one to put it there.

The small mountain town was still full of news crews, and would be until Ahern was moved to another location for incarceration until trial. There were many—too many—unfamiliar faces, which kept Jonah on constant alert. He had no way of knowing who was legitimate and who might be hunting bounty. He was sick to his stomach about the mess he’d put her in. Even worse, he didn’t know how to tell her.

But there was one thing he
had
done right in the past few days. He’d brought Bridie into town to spend the day with her old friend, Ida Mae. Bridie was over the moon with excitement, already dressed and waiting for her ride when Jonah arrived to do chores.

Jonah saw the light on in the kitchen and stopped at the back of the house to check on Bridie before he went to do chores.

She met him at the door, pink-cheeked, her eyes sparkling. “Good morning, Jonah. Have you had your breakfast?”

“Yes, ma’am. I have.” He eyed the clothes she was wearing and realized she was already ready to go.

“Have you talked to Ida Mae?”

Bridie nodded. “Oh, yes. We talked on the phone last night for almost an hour. She’s been piecing a quilt for a Christmas present for one of her granddaughters, and I told her I’d help her set the batting. That’s quite a job for one person, you know…trying to get the backing and the quilt top in proper perspective with the batting in between.”

Jonah smiled. “I hope you’re not planning on working all day?”

“Oh, no…we’re going to go to Harold’s for lunch. Land sakes, it’s been ages since we’ve done that. And Ida Mae says she’ll run me by the library before the day is over. I can’t remember the last time I checked out something to read. They’ve probably got all kinds of new books since I was there.”

“That’s good,” Jonah said. “Remember, Luce or I can always return them for you, and whenever you want to check out some more, or go into town for another lunch with Ida Mae, all you have to do is say so.”

Bridie patted Jonah on the cheek as if he were a child.

“You’re a good boy, Jonah. I don’t know what set you to thinking about me this way, but I’m sure glad you did. Ever since I quit driving, I’ve just turned myself into a hermit. Franklin would have had a fit at the way I’ve been acting.”

“It’s all in the past,” Jonah said. “You’ve given me the use of your truck while I’m working for you. The least I can do is act as chauffeur now and then.”

“Can we go now?” she asked.

Jonah glanced at the clock. “It’s not quite eight o’clock. Do you think Ida Mae will be up this early?”

Bridie grabbed her coat from the back of the kitchen chair and began putting it on as she reached for her purse.

“Oh, yes. Ida Mae is an early riser, just like me. We can have coffee and catch up on some gossip before we get to the quilt.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Jonah said.

He promptly loaded her up and took her right into town and dropped her off at Ida Mae’s house, which was on the edge of town. As soon as Ida Mae opened the door to let Bridie in, she turned and waved him away.

He was still smiling as he drove back through town. The light turned red just as he reached the intersection. As he was waiting for it to change, he saw Deputy Farley standing outside the sheriff’s office, and from what he could tell, it appeared that Farley was being interviewed.

To his dismay, the moment Earl saw him sitting at the light, he waved, then pointed the news crew in his direction. He saw the cameras swing toward him just as the light changed, so he accelerated through the intersection and headed up the mountain as fast as the law would allow.

All morning, as he went through his chores, he kept watching the road, making sure no one had followed him. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about Mark Ahern or his part in the man’s capture.

He finished the chores before tending to a task Bridie had mentioned on their way into town. She had three big pumpkins and a half dozen gourds of all shapes and sizes sitting out on her front porch. Her plan was to add a couple of square bales of hay to use as part of a harvest display.

Tomorrow was Halloween, and even though no one trick-or-treated this far away from town, she still liked to observe the occasion. And, she had claimed, the decor went right into Thanksgiving without changing a thing.

Observing holidays was a luxury Jonah had never had. Yet here he was, unloading hay and stacking her pumpkins. When he finished, he dug through the old toolshed until he found some lumber and a hammer and nails, and loaded up the truck. There were panels in the corral fence that were broken, and one that had rotted through. And so he worked, stopping only to eat the lunch that he’d brought for himself.

It was nearing time to go get Lucia when he heard an odd sound in the distance. Sounds carried in the mountains, and it was difficult to tell exactly what he was hearing or how far away it might be. He had begun dusting the hay from his clothes as he paused to listen, and he heard what sounded like the squeal of brakes and then a terrible noise of shattering tree trunks and crushing metal. He didn’t know what had happened, but he knew it wasn’t good. He jumped in the truck and headed down the mountain as fast as he dared.

He sailed past Luce’s cabin without a glance. The closer he got to town, the more anxious he became. He could feel the oppression of pain and fear, and in his mind, he was hearing screams and cries for help. When he topped the next hill and started down, his chest tightened. There was a path of broken trees a few hundred feet ahead that led past the ditch, then into the sloping forest and down the side of the mountain.

When he got closer, he could see rising smoke from somewhere down below. As he slid to a stop and jumped out, the smell of diesel fuel and the scent of burning rubber was thick in the air. Then he heard voices screaming and crying for help, and he ran to the verge, where the trees had been mowed down.

Through the trees and the smoke, he could barely see the rear end of a vehicle, but what he saw stopped his heart. The back door of a yellow school bus was hanging ajar. From where he was standing, he could see one child hanging headfirst out of the back of the bus, while another had been thrown free and was lying near a wheel. He had no way of knowing if the bus had run over the child before it had come to a stop, or if either one of the two was still alive.

Just as he started to go down, a car came around the curve. He stopped, ran back up to the road and waved them down.

The man and woman inside leaned forward as Jonah spoke.

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Uh…yeah, but what—”

“Call the ambulance. Call the sheriff. Tell them to get all available medical help up here. The school bus went off the side of the mountain.”

The woman suddenly screamed and jumped out of the car before anyone could stop her.

“My child! She’s on that bus! Oh, dear God, she’s on that bus!” Jonah grabbed her by the shoulders. There was no time to waste on protocol as he yelled at the man, “Make those calls! Now!”

The man’s face was colorless and his hands were shaking as he tried to punch in the correct numbers. When Jonah was satisfied that help was on the way, he turned to the woman.

“Stay here. I’ll find your daughter.”

“I’m going down!” she screamed. “She’s my child. You can’t stop me. She’s mine!”

She wrenched out of Jonah’s grasp before he could argue, and down she went, stumbling and falling, then rolling before she could get back to her feet.

Jonah leaped over the side of the mountain and went down behind her, slipping as he ran but managing to stay upright. He passed the woman and kept on going, past shattered tree trunks, jumping over a backpack full of schoolbooks, dodging someone’s Power Ranger lunch box, trying not to think of the children who owned them, or if they were still alive. He just needed to get there.

The inside of the bus was in chaos. Children were crying, some calling for their mothers, others only moaning. There was a little boy named Travis, who was caught between two seats that had been crushed together. He was crying for his mama in between screaming from the pain.

Suddenly he felt hands on his face and heard a man’s deep voice pushing through the panic, ironing out the pain.

“What’s your name, son?” Jonah asked.

“Travis…my name is Travis.”

“Okay, Travis, I’ve got you now. Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right,” Jonah said, and with a surge of adrenaline, pulled the seats far enough apart to get the boy out.

Jonah ran his hands over the boy’s body like a scanner, searching for internal injuries and blood loss. When he determined that the child was not in immediate danger, he picked him up and moved to the open doorway at the back of the bus just as the mother arrived.

“My daughter! My daughter! Her name is Susie. Do you see her? She has red hair, with a green hair ribbon.”

“What’s your name?” Jonah shouted.

The woman stuttered. “Georgia Benton…but—”

“Take this child. Lay him down over there beside the other two, then come back.”

“Susie! I need to find Susie!”

“Take the boy!” Jonah said, and thrust Travis into her arms. “I’ll find your daughter.”

Georgia Benton looked down at the child in her arms, then somehow pulled herself together.

“Well, my goodness, Travis Mize, you’ve gotten yourself all bunged up, haven’t you, son? Don’t cry, sweetie. It’s gonna be all right.”

She carried the boy over to where Jonah had laid the first two he’d found, the ones he’d seen from the road; then she ran back to the bus. As she ran, she saw her husband coming down in much the same way she had and said a silent prayer that he got down in one piece.

By now several cars were gathering up on the roadside, and in the distance, the sounds of approaching sirens could be heard. Jonah worked as fast as he could, assessing the seriousness of the injured against those that had escaped injury and were simply crying from the shock of the wreck.

He moved from seat to seat, helping the ones who weren’t hurt to get out, while making sure that the ones who were still trapped weren’t in immediate danger of dying.

It wasn’t until he got to the front of the bus that he found the first fatality. The driver was dead, and there was nothing Jonah could do about that.

Sick to his stomach, he turned away and began renewing his search for a little red-headed girl named Susie, but she was nowhere to be found.

More rescuers had arrived, and they began piling into the bus with Jonah, asking what needed to be done.