Dead Demon Walking (19 page)

“
I thought your shades
recognize us for what we are.”

“
When they are shades,
yes.” I swallowed. “
After
they’re dead. But they’re still alive when they
see their killer, the last few seconds before they die, and at that
moment. . . .”

He looked like an exotic human being,
which is how Dark Cousins appear to me. I saw the killer as they
did, his speed, and assumed. . . . How could I have been so
dense?

I went cold as I digested the
possibility the murderer could be a Dark Cousin.

Is that why Rio Borrego scoped out
Janine Hulme’s house?

Royal slid one arm beneath my
shoulders and drew me close so I huddled on his chest. Despite his
delicious demon warmth, his arms holding me so tenderly, I couldn’t
relax.

Chapter
Thirteen

Royal slid off the bed and answered
the knock on the door. Agent Vanderkamp stood outside.

We followed him down the hall to a
small conference room. Four long tables with white tablecloths and
chairs to seat forty, a huge screen on a small stage. Naturally, we
couldn’t have a cozy chat in our room, it had to be the nearest
thing to an interrogation room they could find.

Gunn waited inside. He held out a
small brown sack. I took it and peeked in. Deodorant for man and
woman, two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. I dropped the
sack on the table. “Not my brand.”

Gunn folded his arms. “You’ll
cope.”

Vanderkamp pulled out a chair and
gestured to the facing chairs. “Let’s talk.”

“
Yes, let’s,” I said with a
singular lack of enthusiasm. Royal and I sat across from him. Gunn
remained on his feet.

I turned the Celtic Knot in my
fingers, liking the feel of the smooth, cool, connecting silver
loops.

Vanderkamp put his elbows on the table
and threaded his fingers together. “What did the victims, ah, tell
you?”

The idea I talked to dead people made
him uncomfortable.

“
Mrs. Welsh saw a tall man
in his mid-twenties, long black hair, dark complexion, and dark
eyes with a moderate epicanthic fold.” She didn’t mention that
about his eyes, but I saw them as he spun to face me. “He had a
square face and broad cheekbones. She thought he was South
American, possible Guatemalan.”

“
And?”

“
And nothing. She saw him,
she’s dead.”

“
What was he
doing?”

“
Looking at papers, maybe
from the desk, but she couldn’t corroborate that.”

“
Did she see the murder
weapon?”

Sure she did. But I couldn’t tell the
agents, because with all their expertise, no agency in the world
would go anywhere near the idea a man could tear people apart with
his bare hands.

“
I told you what she
saw.”

“
Can you prove any of
this?” he shot at me.

Okay, that was it. I’d had enough of
his antagonism. I wasn’t angry, I was weary. “You brought me into
this. You really didn’t give me a choice. But you question
everything I say, you want me to prove I’m not lying. I don’t have
to, not to you, not to your damned Bureau. I’m out of here. Get
yourself another psychic.” I shoved my chair back and got
up.

Royal stood next to me. “Good day,
gentlemen.”

“
Sit down,” Gunn said.
“Your involvement in this investigation goes deeper than an ability
to talk to the dead.”

Royal’s arm pressed against mine. “Is
she a suspect?”

“
She is a person of
interest,” Vanderkamp said.

Suspect. Person of interest. Same
thing. Both mean law enforcement suspects you, but does not have
enough to pin anything on you. I felt slightly nauseous. They must
know my history with Janine. It was the only
explanation.

I could tell them why I went to see
Janine. I came across Elizabeth Hulme’s diary, it intrigued me and
I decided to have a stab at tracing her ancestors. But why I didn’t
tell the agents - what reason could I give? They would say I
withheld information.

“
Why take Tiff to the crime
scenes? When the FBI want to know something, they go the direct
route, they haul you in and question you,” Royal said.

Gunn sat next to Vanderkamp. “We
assess a person of interest. Garrett decided to hire you, take you
to Arkansas and observe your reactions. However, we didn’t expect
this.”

He lifted a TV remote and
clicked.

The screen on the dais came to life.
And there I stood, in the Fensham’s den, talking to thin
air.

”
Ahem. I’d like to ask you
a few questions, if it’s okay with you.”

On the screen, I stood in the doorway,
unmoving as I stared into the den.

“
I can see and hear you
Mr. Fensham.”

A longer pause.

“
Force of
habit?”

Gunn clicked the remote.

I watched myself walk into Janine’s
house, the camera angles altering as I moved along the hall and
into the great room. I stood there a second.

“
Janine?”
I whispered.

A silence of a few seconds,
then,
“Hello, Janine.”

“
Both, Janine.”

“
I’ve done it for
years.”

I sat. Royal stood behind
me.

I gripped the sides of the seat. “It
was an act. Not wanting me to go in the Fensham home on my own,
busting in on me in Janine Hulme’s house. So I wouldn’t suspect you
bugged their homes.”

Vanderkamp smiled smugly. “Role
playing was one of the things we learned in FBI Agent
School.”

“
The Bureau recognizes that
those with a psychic talent, specifically mediums, have provided
law enforcement with valuable information. However, we had not
personally encountered it before, so I hope you’ll forgive John’s
cynicism,” from Gunn.

Vanderkamp’s mouth twisted wryly. “We
operate on facts, Miss Banks. Although I saw it with my own eyes,
my training insists there should be a logical
explanation.”

“
Therefore, before we
begin, let’s settle this question of credibility once and for all,”
Gunn said as he looked at Vanderkamp. “Miss Banks, how did Mrs.
Welsh die?”

I sat with my back stiff,
hands clasped on the table. Gunn gave me a nod I interpreted as
“
go ahead
.”

I swallowed to clear my throat. “She
was slit open down her back, half her vertebrae gone.”

Gunn’s expression was apologetic, as
if countering his partner’s skepticism pained him. “As I told you,
John, she didn’t inspect the bodies. She didn’t enter the room. She
stayed on the stairs.”

Vanderkamp had lost a
little of his ruddy color. His tone became brisk and businesslike.
“Let’s get down to business, shall we? Miss Hulme died a few days
short of a month ago. The second murder happened a day later in El
Paso. Then nothing for a week, but three more - four now - since
then. There
is
a
connection.”

He gave me a piercing look.
“Hulme.”

Dramatic pause.

“
The third slaying, in
Arkansas, Daphne Fensham was Janine Hulme’s stepsister.”

As that sank in, my ire rose as
scalding heat on my neck and face. I can get potty-mouthed when I’m
truly angry, and I was livid. “Way to go, fuckwad. You told Janine
her sister is dead.”

Ignoring my outburst, Vanderkamp
addressed Royal. “First, Janine Hulme. Third, the Fensham family.
Fourth, Jordan and Celia Thompson nee Hulme. Fifth, Constantina
Hulme and her son. And now, David and Gwen Welsh, who just moved to
their new home, formerly owned by Vernon and Marianne
Hulme.”

I
chuffed
through my mouth. “So what
happened here? The killer got hold of an outdated telephone
directory?”

Vanderkamp straightened his tie. “It
could be as simple as that.”

Royal’s hands closed on my shoulders
“What about the second family?”

“
They did not bear the name
Hulme, or were related even distantly to a Hulme, nor did they live
in a home vacated by Hulmes.”

I picked at a minuscule thread in the
linen tablecloth. “I guess that messes up your theory
then.”

“
Yet that incident led us
to you, Miss Banks,” Vanderkamp said with a stretch of the lips
which could not be called a smile.

Here it comes.
But if the victims of the second slaying had
absolutely no connection to Janine, what had any of it to do with
me?

He scrutinized my face as he spoke. He
didn’t even blink. “Austin, Texas. The Blackwells. Family of three:
mother, father and daughter. The daughter, Maureen Owen, was
visiting, taking a break after a messy divorce. The parents were
slaughtered, but Maureen untouched. Unfortunately she couldn’t cope
with what she saw. She refused to speak, had to be force-fed and
her health deteriorated while in the local hospital. Her aunt and
uncle had her moved to an intensive care facility.” He leaned in.
“When she finally spoke, she said the same thing over and again.
‘Daughter, now you are free.’”

Gunn took over. “The facility allowed
her to make two calls a week to her aunt and uncle, calls she never
made, was incapable of making. We approached you because she
regained some lucidity last week. She even made two phone calls,
but not to her aunt and uncle. She chose to call you instead. Can
you explain how you know each other, why she asked for your
help?”

If that was supposed to
blow me away, it did.
Hell.
The phone calls.
But I
relaxed a modicum - nothing to do with my first meeting with
Janine, they didn’t know about that after all. That saved me from a
whole mess of explanations I didn’t want to give.

“
I don’t know her. I did
get two calls from a woman. She asked for help, then hung up. Must
have been her. I tried to trace the call, but no luck.”

“
Calls from the facility
are monitored and the ward nurse disconnected the moment she
realized what Maureen was up to.”

I got edgy
again
.
“What did
Maureen tell you? Why did she call?”

“
We didn’t talk to her. She
hung herself last week.”

The icing in the cake. No wonder the
Bureau came after me. Multiple murders, and a survivor calls me for
help, then commits suicide.

My brain performed acrobatics. Janine,
Janine’s sister, other Hulmes, people who lived where Hulmes had,
and victims with no apparent connection to the other
slayings.

Why didn’t he kill
Maureen?

I almost missed Vanderkamp’s next
bombshell. “What would you say if I told you our forensic
pathologist thinks the murder weapon has the same attributes as the
human hand?”

Uh oh.

Talking to FBI agents can
be tricky when you know more than you want to admit. Believe it or
not, my natural inclination is
not
to lie, and lying by omission does not sit well
with me either, but I have found it necessary before and no doubt
will again. I tried to sound shocked. “Surely that’s
impossible!”

“
We think it’s an animal,
possibly an ape. An adult orangutan is seven times stronger than
the average human male; it can crush a golf ball in its hand. A
full-grown Silverback gorilla is twenty times stronger than a man,”
Gunn said.

An ape, huh.
Whew
. Not a six-eight
human male with the strength to tear people to pieces.

I rubbed my index finger back and
forth over my lower lip. “An ape or apelike creature.”

Three pairs of eyes zeroed in on
me.

“
Yeti?”

Royal dipped his head, no doubt to
hide a grin.

“
Amusing, Miss Banks,” Gunn
said dryly.

I have a fondness for the Yeti legend.
I don’t believe a person can morph into a vampire or werewolf or
some such, but Yeti don’t fall into that class of fantasy. They
could well be entities which have survived in isolation over the
centuries. I know Gelpha and Dark Cousins exist, why not Yeti? But,
yeah, I was yanking their chain.

Royal cleared his throat. “Then your
shades saw whomever is controlling the creature,” he said to me
with a perfectly straight face.

“
You’d think we’d find the
animal’s spoor, or tracks from a vehicle with the weight to
transport something that size, but nothing. This guy is good,” Gunn
said.

“
No doubt of that,”
Vanderkamp allowed. “So we could be looking for someone who has a
grudge with the Hulme family. The question is, are they killing
randomly as they find a family member, or trying to locate a
specific individual?”

“
The description you gave
us is a start.” Gunn laid the remote on the table. “This man will
stand out in a crowd. He appeared to be searching for something in
the homes so we’ll look into that.”