Ingrid frowned, confused by the response, but took Beth’s hand and joined the crowd walking slowly toward the door.
“This is our chance,” said Brooke. “Mills is gone, so we can hide and get away from him.”
“We need him,” I said. “He’s our only way out of this town.”
“You want to leave?”
“I want to kill Attina,” I said. “But first I want to get you out of here.”
“No,” said Brooke.
“No arguments,” I said. “Getting you out is the number-one priority. There he is.” I grabbed Brooke’s wrist and pulled her toward Mills, who was talking to one of the local men.
“… don’t take the law into their own hands,” the man muttered as we came up behind him. I recognized him from somewhere. The church, maybe? Of course: it was Randy, the man in love with Sara. He seemed practically red with rage. “What do you think that Butler girl was doing?” he demanded. “Someone oughta pour some Drano down her throat, see how she likes it.”
“Agent Mills,” I said, “can we speak to you in private?”
Mills gratefully excused himself from the conversation, leaving Randy to rant at the next person who came by, and walked with us toward the nearest door. “Do you have something?”
“You were right,” I said. “Everyone in Dillon is crazy.”
“What?” asked Brooke.
“Not real crazy,” I said. “Gas-leak crazy.” I glanced at the other people and police still filling the room, too close for me to say my true suspicions out loud. “In a manner of speaking.”
Mills hesitated a moment, then leaned in as well. “You think the Withered is making people crazy?”
“The one we’re hunting is named Attina,” I said. “Brooke doesn’t remember his powers, and we’ve been wracking our brains trying to figure them out based on the killings, but what if Attina’s not doing any of it personally? What if he’s making other people do it?”
Mills nodded. “So we can’t find a unifying theory that ties together all five deaths, plus the arson, and you think maybe that’s because there are multiple killers and thus no consistent reason or method. Or, I suppose, the alleged craziness is the consistent reason.”
“It makes everything work.”
“Only in the barest sense,” said Mills. “You tell any cop in the country that their murder case is caused by ‘everyone just going crazy all at once,’ and they’ll laugh in your face. It’s not evidence. It’s not even circumstantial evidence.”
“A gas leak would be evidence,” I said, “if you could find one. Maybe Attina is a supernatural gas leak. He sits here in the town, minding his own business, but then something sets him off and he starts … leaking ‘crazy.’ He starts emitting violent tendencies into the air, like a psychic broadcasting station, and people just start hurting each other.”
“And Glassman’s bigfoot?”
“A lie to cover himself,” I said. “He’s probably the one that killed Jessica, overcome by Attina’s influence, and when he snapped out of it he made up that story to explain it.”
“Maybe he was hallucinating while he did it,” said Brooke. “Maybe he thought Jessica was a monster and that’s why he killed her.”
Mills looked around the room. “So who is it?”
“If it works the way I’m thinking,” I whispered, “it may as well be all of them.”
Mills clenched his teeth, looking around the room, then looking back at the closed interrogation room. “It’s not enough.”
“You have to get Brooke out of here,” I said.
“No,” said Brooke again.
Mills looked at me through narrowed eyes. “You want to leave? I thought you were going to posit some brilliant method of catching the Withered.”
“We’re in a town where random people are killing each other for random reasons,” I said. “This is not a town we want to be in.”
“But you’re supposed to be the idiot who runs into the mouth of hell every time it opens,” said Mills. “Your psych profile’s pretty clear about that: you don’t abandon people while a Withered picks them off.”
“Why else are we even here?” demanded Brooke.