The Supernaturals (36 page)

“That was its plan all along,” John said. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand.

“I’m not following.”

“It’s attacking us even now. It doesn’t want us to go to Summer Place, so it’s reaching out for us.”

“And?” Cordero asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

Lonetree looked up past Jenny and found Cordero’s eyes.

“You know the reason. I can see it in your face.”

Sanborn removed the pipe from his mouth and looked at the man next to him as if he had suddenly grown two heads.

“Tell them what you think,” John said, holding his eyes on Cordero.

“Gabe and Julie have left. Kelly has been dragged off by Peterson and their boss, and we’re heading out in the morning to pursue information about the house.”

“Vulnerable,” John said. “It will hit us when we’re weakest, before we gather to fight it.”

“Come on, you’re speaking like a bad horror book. What are you saying?”

Cordero looked at the open door and the bright light in the hallway, grateful for the brief respite from darkness. Then he turned to the others.

“Summer Place wants us separated.”

fourteen

Julie tried to answer her cell phone once again, but for the tenth time in as many minutes she failed to get a clear signal. She looked at the screen in frustration and tossed the phone into her bag.

“Goddamn dead zone out here,” she said. She watched the windshield wipers and their hypnotic rhythm as they swept the heavy rain away.

“Could you tell who was calling?” Kennedy asked. He leaned forward, trying to see through the water that covered the glass between wiper pulses.

“Jason Sanborn.” She glanced at her watch, using the dashboard lights for illumination. “It’s about four hours past his bedtime, which is worrisome in itself.”

Kennedy was worrying more about John Lonetree. If something had gone wrong during the Dream Walk and he wasn’t there, he would never be able to forgive himself. It was his experiment and things seemed to be pulling away from him. In this line of research, that could be deadly.

“Are you thinking about Lonetree?” Julie asked, turned to look at Kennedy through the green and blue reflection of the dashboard lights.

“Yes. I should have been there. This Kyle Pritchard act could have waited.”

“Act?” Julie asked, raising her left brow. “So, you do think the test broadcast was some kind of a put-up job?”

Gabriel spared the reporter a look, and quickly turned back to watch the twisting road. “No, not the ending of Kelly’s little game.”

“Just the beginning—the disappearance?” Julie asked.

“I think it may have started out as a prank, but the house one-upped Kelly and her friends, took it to the next level.”

“The house?” Julie said with a skeptical look.

“Look, if you open a doorway and allow the house into your head, it will take the advantage—it will attack.”

“You’re going off on a tangent. Either you’re advancing a theory that has yet to be discussed with UBC, or you’re holding back historical information from us. Which is it?”

Kennedy shifted in the seat. Through the heavy downpour, he saw the road sign for Bright Waters. “Jesus,” he said as they entered the town.

“Damn Jackson. Little does he know, he’s playing right into the network’s hands with this circus.” Julie leaned over the seat and brought out a camera case and a digital recorder. She started filming the ten state police cars, flashing their blue lights outside of the small constable’s office. There was still an ambulance out front, along with several news vans from Philadelphia with lights blaring. Julie saw that one of them was an affiliate station of UBC, so she stopped filming and put the camera back in its bag.

“Lieutenant Jackson is ever diligent, isn’t he?” Kennedy asked. Julie tried her cell phone again as Kennedy pulled to the curb behind a news van.

“Finally, a signal,” she said, punching numbers on the phone.

Kennedy turned off the car and watched the comings and goings of the police as they made their way from the diner across the street to the constable’s office.

“No wonder you have a signal. You have enough microwaves emanating from this little town to light up Cape Canaveral.” Kennedy opened his door and stood, letting the rain pummel his head as he watched the scene before him. He would let Jackson come to him. He needed coffee.

“Jason, what’s up?” Julie said as she opened her door to follow Kennedy.

Gabriel didn’t wait on her; he made his way through the rising water toward the brightly lit diner. A group of state policemen were standing over something on the concrete. He swallowed when he saw it was the taped outline of a man’s body. Several of the policemen looked up and eyed him with suspicion. Kennedy averted his eyes and walked into the diner.

Julie came in close behind Kennedy and turned as the door closed. She watched the policemen as they noted details. One of those details was the brownish stain that had soaked into the concrete of the sidewalk.

“Okay, I’ll pass along the message. Now inform the news division that I’ll be filing a live report from Bright Waters on the murder, using the affiliate that’s already here. Tell whoever you need to pull some strings and threaten whoever needs to be bullied, and get me that affiliate crew’s cooperation.”

Kennedy removed his coat and shook out the rain as he sat at the counter. He eyed the three policemen sitting further down the counter and the four others in a booth eating breakfast. An old man in cook’s whites placed a cup of steaming coffee in front of Gabriel and then started to move away.

“Quite a bit of excitement,” Kennedy said. The man stopped and turned.

“Don’t know how folks can eat after seein’ things like that,” he said. He placed a cup and saucer in front of Julie when she sat, and poured her coffee without asking if she wanted any.

“Did you see what happened,” Gabriel asked as he poured sugar into his cup. Julie placed her bag on the stool next to her and watched the exchange.

“You bet I did. I never want to see anything like it again.” The old man turned and disappeared behind the swinging doors.

Julie sipped the hot coffee and then turned to look at the policemen, who were in turn eyeing her. She turned back and removed her own coat, laying it over her large bag.

“Jason said that John Lonetree had quite the experience; Sanborn’s about to have kittens. He wants you to call him as soon as you can.”

Kennedy held out his hand, indicating that he needed the phone. Julie started to place the cell phone into his hand, but when the door opened she pulled it back and raised her cup to her lips instead.

“Mr. Wonderful is here. That didn’t take long,” she said, hiding her moving lips behind the cup.

“It seems your cast of characters is fast coming together. Well, minus one of the players. Paul Lowell won’t be making the cast party,” Damian Jackson said as he removed his soaking raincoat. “Why don’t we grab a booth so we can talk.”

Kennedy sat motionless and Julie sipped her coffee. Then they slowly rose and walked over to the nearest booth. They sat, both on one side to face the grand inquisitor. Jackson watched them sit. He eyed the state policemen sitting at the counter, and then the four in the booth at the back of the diner.

“I think we have a prisoner almost ready for transport,” he said to them. “Or do you want the local constable to handle it?”

As Kennedy and Julie watched, the three policemen at the counter and the four in the booth all rose.

“And leave the man a sizable tip. I have to eat here today and tonight.”

The policemen started tossing dollar bills on the counter and booth table. They didn’t meet the large detective’s eyes as they placed their Smokey the Bear hats on and left the diner. As they did, the old man stepped out of the kitchen with his coffee pot, but Jackson waved him off. He sat down across from Julie and Gabriel. This was the first time that either of them had seen Jackson without a tie and not looking as if he had just stepped out of a GQ magazine ad.

He smiled at the two people across from him as he laced his fingers together.

Silence hung between the three like an invisible wall. Gabriel knew he was the focus here, even though he had nothing to do with Kyle Pritchard or Paul Lowell.

“I would liked to have seen Kelly Delaphoy sitting there. I have a few pointed questions to ask her about tonight’s events.”

“She’s conferring with the network legal department at the moment,” Julie said. Kennedy remained silent and kept his eyes on Jackson.

“I imagine she is.”

“Detective Jackson, why would two missing men show up after eight days, and then one kill the other with a state police detective as a witness?” Julie asked. She pulled out her small digital recorder, which Jackson immediately covered with a bear paw-sized hand.

“This is not your interview, Ms. Reilly. It’s mine.”

 
Julie pulled her hand and recorder out from under Jackson’s palm and clicked on the device. “Then I’ll forward you a copy. It will save us all a lot of time. Otherwise, you know what you can do with your questions.”

Damian smiled, the expression falling short of his brown eyes. He pulled a sugar dispenser toward him and started rolling it. Kennedy recognized the sleight of hand gesture as a way policemen had of distracting the person they were questioning—a trick that only worked on people who were scared to begin with.

“Now, what condition is Kyle Pritchard in?” Julie asked, pen poised over her notepad.

“Okay Ms. Reilly, quid pro quo. I’ll play along and then I would like something answered.”

“Fair enough,” Julie said.

“I wasn’t asking you,” Jackson said. He was eyeing Kennedy.

“What questions could I answer that would cast light onto something only you witnessed?”

“In answer to your question, Pritchard is in shock. He looks emaciated and he’s dehydrated.”

Julie wrote down Jackson’s answer.

“His last words to me, after he slit the throat of your network personality,” he said looking from Kennedy to Julie, and then back, “were,
they’re mine
. Does that sound familiar, Professor?”

“In the spoken word, no. Not familiar at all; however, I’ve seen those words written on paper.”

“Don’t play games with me, Kennedy. You did that once before and you paid dearly for it.”

“Yes I did. Both of you saw to that. Let me add that a closed mind, coming from either you or Ms. Reilly here, is a very dangerous thing to have when you’re facing something like Summer Place. I suspect however neither of you will realize it until that house jumps up and bites you both on the ass. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a phone call to make.”

Jackson started to reach out and take Kennedy’s arm, but stopped short. Gabriel looked at him with an intensity the detective didn’t remember Gabriel having before. The professor leaned over and looked the detective in the eyes once more.

“And I would expect my antagonist to allow me an even playing field. Let me speak to Pritchard before you cart him off to Philadelphia for your own inquisition.”

“Of course. That’s why I’m happy to see you here, Professor. I want your take on his state of health and well being.”

Kennedy held Julie’s cell phone up and waved it. “Excuse me.”

Julie watched Kennedy leave. She jotted her observation down in her notebook and then looked up, smiling at the detective. “He seems to have grown a set of balls since the last time you confronted him.”

“No comment,” Jackson said. “I take it you are seeing things quite differently nowadays too, Ms. Reilly?”

“Let’s just say, I have a little bit more of an open mind than I used to have.” Julie turned off the recorder and gathered her things. “I’m going to give you some time to think about my question, Detective. Just where the hell were Pritchard and Lowell all this time? I mean, you searched high and low for them, and then all of a sudden they come strolling into Bright Waters to demonstrate to you personally their culpability in a hoax, and then one kills the other. And please don’t stick with a pat policeman’s answer. This is damn strange and you know it. So think hard, Detective, because in just two days Kennedy may have a point to ram home to you.”

“And that is?” Jackson asked as Julie rose.

“The point is, that house is beginning to look like it just may be capable of reaching out and biting us both in the ass, just like it may have done to Pritchard and Lowell. And you know what else I’m beginning to believe?”

“What?”

“I think that house may have enjoyed scaring the hell out of you personally, and I can see by your eyes you don’t like being scared. So now I guess you know how Kennedy felt all those years ago.” Julie raised her brow as she said the words. “After all, the house may have just sought you out…on a more intimate basis.”

Julie moved off to join Gabriel outside. Jackson watched her go, then turned and slid the sugar dispenser away so hard that it broke against the wall fronting the booth. He closed his eyes. The tables had been turned on him by both Reilly and Kennedy, and he knew exactly why. The reporter’s theory had been spot on.