“What?”
“The Devil. The Devil is here. I’m telling you, the Puritans weren’t crazy. The Devil is alive, and he’s here.” He looked around the room, then back at her. “He could be right here, drinking with us, right now,” he said gravely.
“…last name’s Richardson,” Joe was saying over the phone. “There was no problem. He hadn’t disappeared, wasn’t in hiding. The Boston police picked him up coming off his shift—he’s a construction worker. He’s claiming he’s innocent, of course, that they don’t know what they’re talking about, that it’s not illegal to flirt and buy a girl a drink.”
Jeremy was glad he had moved out of the bar, into the hotel lobby. In the bar, he couldn’t hear.
And he didn’t want to be heard.
“Has he gotten a lawyer? They can’t hold him very long, not unless they have something to charge him with.”
“They can keep him in the lockup overnight. They told him he could get a lawyer, of course, but it seems he thinks if he exercises his constitutional right and gets a lawyer, he’ll look guilty,” Joe explained. “So…bright and early?”
Jeremy was surprised that Joe seemed to have taken him on as a de facto partner, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it was just Joe’s way of watching him.
“Yeah, thanks,” Jeremy said. “But back up. This guy admits to spending the day in Salem with Dinah Green?”
“Yup. He recognized her picture right away. But he denied knowing anything about what might have happened to her.”
“He could be telling the truth.”
“Most murderers deny their guilt,” Joe said. “Hell, he was with the woman most of the day. We have his charge slip from the bar.”
“Yes, but—”
“He can’t prove where he was on Halloween. Boston is a short hop away. His shift ends at three-thirty. He could easily have gotten up here in time to grab Mary,” Joe said.
That was true enough. Jeremy just didn’t think it gelled. Why? he asked himself. There was no reason, nothing but his gut feeling that the murderer was somebody local.
No, there was evidence of a sort: the cornfields. No one but a local would know the fields well enough to have pulled off that scarecrow scene. It was logic, plain and simple.
If only it were Tim Richardson. Then they could—maybe—find Mary alive. They could end the fear, and he could stop looking at every person he met on the street—at Rowenna’s friends—and wondering which one of them was a monster.
“Bright and early,” Joe said again.
“See you then. Thanks.”
He hung up, not certain why he wasn’t more interested in a trip to Boston to question a possible murderer.
He knew the answer.
He didn’t want to leave here.
Why not?
He knew that answer, too.
Because Rowenna could be in danger.
He hesitated, about to call Joe back and tell him to go without him, but before he could dial, his phone rang again. He looked at the number and smiled.
“Hey, bro.”
“Zach, good to hear from you,” Jeremy said.
“Yeah? Hope so. Aidan and I were just talking. We’ve been watching the news—about the corpse found in the field.”
“There’s a real maniac on the loose,” Jeremy said.
“Sure looks like it. No sign of Mary, huh?”
“Not yet. I feel—I think the killer is local, and I think we’re getting closer to narrowing down our list of suspects.”
“We?”
“The lead detective on the case, Joe Brentwood. He’s let me in every step of the way. That’s been a real blessing.” He hesitated and shrugged, though his brother couldn’t see it, or the grudging smile that tugged at his lips. “He even listens to me.”
“Great,” Zach said. “Listen, I can come up, if you’d like.”
“Hell, yes!” Jeremy said. With Zach there, he wouldn’t constantly worry about leaving Rowenna on her own. He could go with Joe in the morning, knowing Rowenna would be with friends, or even Brad. Undoubtedly Zach could book a flight that would get him in by tomorrow night.
“You can catch me up when I get there,” Zach said.
“I’ll be asking you to do some bodyguard duty, if you don’t mind.”
He heard his brother’s soft chuckle. “So long as I’ll be guarding a beautiful woman with black hair and amber eyes, that won’t be a problem,” Zach assured him.
Jeremy grinned. “Great. Get here as soon as you can.”
He hung up and leaned against the wall. There was no one he trusted like his brother. He could accompany Joe tomorrow morning with a clear conscience. And after all, they would only be gone a few hours.
He looked up, still smiling…
…and froze.
A boy was standing against the opposite wall, near the check-in desk.
He was about ten, with brown eyes, and tousled brown hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“Billy,” Jeremy breathed.