Without looking at him, Hollis said more than asked, “All her vitals are normal, I take it.”
“Yeah. By every measurement they know, she’s asleep.” He waited, watching the two feds as they stood only a few feet away and studied the room. As far as he could tell, neither one of them had a queasy lump of horrified sick fear in the pits of their stomachs.
It might have been easy to resent their control, their seeming indifference to this scene of slaughter, except that they exchanged glances just then—and he could, for a brief moment, see the sick emotions that training and experience hid beneath control.
They felt it too.
Agent Templeton looked at Archer steadily. “Normally—if I can use that word—we’d want to check out the entire house. Look for signs of behavior to explain this. Profile the scene.”
“But not this time?”
“No. We don’t believe doing that would help us to understand what happened here. Why it happened.”
“Why not?” he asked, mostly because he couldn’t think of another question.
“You had another violent death today, a suicide,” she said, maybe answering his question. “Sam Bowers?”
“Yeah. Nice, ordinary family man blew his brains out with a shotgun this morning. Just sat down on a couch in the basement, dressed for work, put both barrels of his shotgun under his chin, and . . . In the basement, with his wife and kids upstairs.” Archer drew a breath and let it out slowly. “What’s left of him is at the hospital morgue, waiting for Dr. Easton. The local doc I called to the scene said he wasn’t up to the job. I didn’t blame him. He’ll assist her if needed, but the last time I saw him, he was throwing up everything he’d ever eaten in his life.”
“I can relate.” She nodded, then immediately added, “Bowers didn’t leave a note?”
“We thought he didn’t. Looked for one in the basement, the rest of the house. None of us were too eager to touch the body, and there didn’t seem to be any question as to who he was, so his body wasn’t searched at the scene. But then when he was lifted to go into the body bag, the doc heard something. Paper. It was in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. It’s at the station now. Bagged.”
She nodded again. “What did it say?”
“It didn’t make sense,” Archer told the two feds. “It was . . . crazy. The same sentence repeated over and over, all down the page, with the handwriting getting worse and worse. All it said was . . . Just me, not them. Over and over again. Just me, not them.”
EIGHT
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8
Galen had come into Prosperity separately from Hollis and DeMarco and a bit earlier, in an ordinary light-colored sedan that didn’t scream fed or anything else to attract attention. As per orders, he drove around the town of Prosperity and surrounding neighborhoods, seeing what he could see in the daylight that was rapidly becoming twilight.
His psychic ability—if it could be called that, and he had often doubted so aloud—was not one that required any sort of mental shield. But in his work for the SCU, he was most often cast in the role of watcher or guardian, and both suited his innately guarded, watchful nature, all of which had built or intensified a pretty impressive shield.
He was, other psychics had told him, buttoned up tight.
But that natural shielding had failed him during the SCU’s extended investigation of a deadly, charismatic cult leader more than a year before, and though not another soul blamed him for what went down, he still blamed himself for the terrible toll taken when everything hit the fan, the loss of innocents, and the blows dealt to the SCU.
No matter what Bishop said to the contrary.
Galen had taken time away from the SCU after that, time he’d badly needed to come to terms with what had happened because the blows to him had been both unexpected and deeply personal. And time he’d needed to also come to terms with his own once-latent and now-awakened abilities.
Bishop hadn’t said anything about that, about new abilities, and neither had Galen. All Bishop had said, mildly, was that Galen’s natural shield had developed into one that was “nearly seamless.”
Seamless or not, Galen’s shield had not stopped the blast of sensations that had summoned other psychics to Prosperity. Even though he had not been summoned himself. And yet he had been. Galen hadn’t explained it to anyone, least of all himself; all he knew was that he needed to be here. That he had a part to play as well in whatever would happen here.
And once in the valley, he had felt the energy. His skin wasn’t crawling, but he was nevertheless aware of it. The longer he drove around, minding the speed limit and not otherwise calling attention to himself, the more aware of it he became. It was . . . pressure. Something bearing down on him.
And on Prosperity.
It was not pleasant.
At first glance, both citizens of Prosperity and obvious tourists looked and seemed perfectly normal. But Galen looked closer, and he observed signs that virtually everyone he saw was both a little tense and almost imperceptibly distracted. He noted a few arguments breaking out here and there, nothing violent but . . . tense. Unusual sort of thing to see out in public in a small town like this one.
Then again, he was also aware by the time he had completed a very thorough exploration inside the town limits of Prosperity and around the periphery that details of the morning’s inexplicable suicide had gotten out, that details of this same day’s multiple homicide were also spreading rapidly, so it was no wonder people appeared tense.
They were quite likely scared shitless.
Galen had not contacted Base or the team of Hollis and DeMarco in order to learn about the multiple homicide; there was a single radio station in town, and even though the local news report had been interrupted frequently by bursts of static, Galen heard what he needed to over his car’s radio. He’d already tried his cell, but, as Hollis and DeMarco had suspected and warned Base before coming into town, it proved to be useless. There should have been a strong signal given the four very tall cell towers he’d seen well placed in the valley, but on his cell the bars indicating signal strength were literally dancing up and down, from absolutely no signal to a full-strength signal—the entire end-to-end dance lasting for about three seconds. Not nearly long enough to even attempt a call or text.
He turned it off and tossed it over his shoulder to land on his go bag in the backseat.
Then, having explored as much as he could before darkness made that a fairly useless proposition, he turned his car toward the sheriff’s department to meet up with Hollis and DeMarco, as previously agreed.
His timing was perfect. He pulled into a parking slot beside the newly arrived hulking black SUV before its brake lights could go off.
Getting out of his car, he spared a long moment to study the Foxx County Sheriff’s Department. He found it to be a newish, fair-sized two-story building two streets back from Main and occupying most of a block if you included the sizable parking lot beside and behind the building.
It looked more than adequate, especially since Prosperity was the only town of any size in the county.
He joined Hollis and DeMarco on the sidewalk in front of their vehicles. “Local radio reported the multiple homicide,” he said.
Neither of them appeared surprised that he hadn’t bothered with a hello.
Hollis said, “Yeah, we heard the report on the way over here, even if the SUV’s radio was crackling with static. How’s your shield?” she added, not bothering to lower her voice because there was no one within earshot.
“Pressure,” he replied.
“Nothing else?”
Galen shook his head in a slight movement.
Hollis eyed him for a moment, then looked at her partner and said dryly, “It’s a good thing you’ve started to be more talkative. Otherwise I’d mostly be talking to myself.”