“Maybe it was just an ordinary cloud with a plane or something behind it.” Katie wasn’t certain if she made the observation to pacify Sam or herself. An icy finger skipped down her spine. An attempt to resurrect something from the past. Something she couldn’t remember.
“Maybe.” He shrugged, seemingly disinterested in the subject. Returning to the couch, he plopped down and opened one of the new sketchbooks. Immediately, he began to draw a series of shapes and symbols.
Katie sat beside him. “Are you going to be okay here again tonight?”
“Sure.” Sam tucked his tongue in the corner of his mouth as he worked. It was hard to decipher what he drew this time, the lines crisscrossing one another, settling into a repetitious pattern.
She wished he’d go outside and play. Find a ball or run around the yard. Dig for worms. Anything. “It’s going to be dark soon. Why don’t you go outside and play a bit before dinner? You can draw later.”
“Okay.” He set the sketchbook aside.
She couldn’t tell if he made the concession for her or because he really wanted to be outdoors. Likely, the former. “You know where I’ll be tonight, right?”
“Sure. With Eve and Sarah, at Eve’s place.”
“Grammie has the phone number if you need to reach me.”
Sam sighed. “I know, Mom. But come on—I’m eight now. You don’t have to worry about me all the time.”
She fought the urge to grin. He wouldn’t appreciate the tender response, thinking she didn’t consider him grown up. Which, of course, she didn’t. But it was hard to tell an eight-year-old he still had a lot of growing to do.
“I know. Third grade.” Cupping his chin, she tilted his head up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. It wouldn’t be too long before he put a stop to such overt displays of affection. “But call if you need anything, otherwise I won’t feel like a mom.” Now she did smile, coaxing a grin from him in return. “And I want you to give your eyes a rest, so don’t spend the whole night drawing. Deal?”
“Okay.” He made the word sound like he was getting the short end of the stick, but there was affection in his tone. “I’ll get my coat and go outside. Maybe Rex will come back if he sees me.”
“Good idea.” It would be so much better to have him focused on Rex than sketching strange clouds. As she watched him bound from the room, she assured herself there was nothing to worry about.
Caden Flynn was not prepared to find his brother, Ryan, sitting behind his desk when he arrived for duty. Assigned to night shift at the sheriff’s office, he expected the daylight officers to have cleared out by now.
“Hey.” He tossed his hat on his desk. Constructed from heavy wood, the monstrosity was a relic from the 1950s, in line with most of the furniture in the department. Outdated, it was nonetheless solid, and had seen countless officers through countless years of service. Butted front to front with Ryan’s, the desk’s positioning allowed them to sit facing each other, making it easy to converse. “I thought you were done here an hour ago.”
“I was.” Rapping the eraser end of a pencil against an open folder, Ryan wore an edgy expression. “It’s been a weird day.”
The office was quiet, manned by a junior deputy and a clerk who traded gossip by the coffee pot. Except for his brother, who looked ready to scale the walls, the atmosphere was low-key. At twenty-eight, five years younger than Caden, Ryan still carried a reckless edge. That rashness often bristled through in his work, exposing itself as impatience or agitation. Whatever currently troubled him had obviously gotten under his skin. Either that or he was operating on a caffeine-sugar high from too much coffee and the bite-size Snickers bars he stashed in his desk.
“Weird how?” Caden dropped into his chair.
His brother frowned. “Uh, let’s see…cow mutilation, phantom deputy, missing resident. Does that fit the bill?”
Okay, so Ryan was in a flippant mood. Caden retrieved a few letters the clerk had left. “You’re going to have to explain that.”
“Chester Wilson had a Holstein turn up dead in one of his fields.”
Livestock died sometimes. Disease, even age, but his brother wasn’t headed there. “You said mutilation.”
Ryan nodded. “Lots of blood from the ears, nose, and mouth. No visible sign of trauma.”
That didn’t fit disfigurement or butchering. “Could be illness.”
“I called the county vet.” Ryan sat forward in his chair, leaning on his desk. “He’s got to do a more thorough examination, but based on initial findings, he believes the cow had a ‘concussive reaction’ created by an outside source.”
Caden sorted through the mail. Two notices from the courthouse—probably filing updates—and a plain envelope addressed to Sgt. Caden Flynn c/o Mason County Sheriff’s Department. “What does that mean?”
“That something delivered enough pressure to make her brain explode.”
“Huh.”
It wasn’t the first time there had been animal deaths in Point Pleasant, but one dead cow—no matter how freaky her passing—didn’t mean a similarity. Over a decade ago, a number of farm animals had been found butchered, likely the poor dumb victims of a satanic cult. Caden had been in high school at the time and remembered it well. In 1966, Point Pleasant had erupted with everything from Mothman sightings to nightly reports of UFOs. Animal mutilations were just one more oddity thrown into the mix. The authorities had never caught whoever committed the grisly deeds. Most believed the culprits had moved on to new hunting grounds.
“Huh?” Ryan looked rattled, ready to sprout horns. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
Caden sighed. “No. I was just thinking… Chester lives near the airport. It could have something to do with low altitude flight traffic.”
“I’ll give you that. I thought the same thing until Doc Holden set me straight. He said the decibel level had to be extreme. We’re talking supersonic military shit.”
“Everyone in town would have heard the fallout from something like that.” Caden’s gaze dropped to the letters in his hand. When not reined in, Ryan could pick at something relentlessly. “What about the ‘phantom’ deputy?”