6 Under The Final Moon (11 page)

“But he’s only eight years old,” I heard myself whisper.

“I know.”

“Did he say anything else? Did he say why?”

I could hear Alex suck in a shallow breath. “He said, ‘The devil made me do it.’”

As it was probably the most inappropriate thing possible to do after an admission like this, I giggled.

“Lawson!”

“I’m sorry!” And I truly was. But I had one of those bizarre conditions that made me do emotionally inappropriate things at exceptionally bad times. Seriously. Ask me about my libido at the next murder scene.

“I know it’s not funny. I know it’s horrible, but I just get this mental picture of the little guy dressed up like the Penguin saying, ‘The devil made me do it.’”

Alex didn’t respond, and I was finally able to control my egregious laughter. “So, the devil made him do it?”

“The kid was serious. He said he was supposed to send a message from his new friend who turned out to be the devil.”

“Turned out to be the devil?” I asked. “He didn’t know that before?”

Alex went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “He said he met the man—an adult male—in front of his house when he was out with his nanny. Apparently, the kid spent twenty minutes talking to this guy. He said the man was there waiting for him, outside, every day last week. He gave him candy, ice cream . . .”

I shuddered. “This man is some kind of predator. No wonder why he thinks it was the devil. Outside his own home, a guy approaches him and forced him to do evil. Was the kid able to describe the man?”

Alex cleared his throat. “Actually he had a name. Lucas Szabo.”

I opened my mouth and tried to speak, but all my breath was gone. “He actually said Lucas?”

“Lucas Szabo. Out of the mouths of babes.”

“Murderous, arsonist babes,” I said, the tears rolling down my face.

My whole body started to tremble, and I rooted the soles of my feet onto the floor, fisted my hands, working against the involuntary current. “So my father—Lucas—befriends this kid and forces him to do this?” I could feel all the color draining from my face, could feel the wobbly, uneasy feeling in my head. I pressed my palm to my forehead, pushing as hard as I could. “Oh my God.”

“The kid didn’t say he was forced.”

“He said the devil
made
him do it.”

“Let’s just say he didn’t seem too upset about the order.”

I swallowed, a myriad of emotions coursing through me. What was my father doing? I worked to swallow the growing lump in my throat as I thought of little Oliver Culverson, alone somewhere in the seventy-two-hour psych hold, waiting for my father to rescue him, to reward him. But I knew that Oliver would sit there. People would wonder what his parents did wrong, and my father would abandon him just like he had abandoned me.

“I want to talk to him.”

I dumped half a can of Alpo into ChaCha’s rhinestone dish and she danced around it like it was caviar or donuts, then I grabbed my keys and was out the door in record time—in time enough to ram chest to chest into Will.

He shrank back, folding at the waist, pressing his palm against his wound.

“Oh, Will, oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

He batted at the air and attempted a deep breath, his voice strained. “Hey, no problem. Doc said the best way to get better was to have people slam into me repeatedly. Where you off to in such a mad hurry?”

I bit my bottom lip, unsure of what to say.

“Look, love, I appreciate the secret, but the sky is falling and this is no time for you to be all ‘I am woman, hear me growl.’”

“Roar.”

“What?”

“Roar,” I said again. “It’s, ‘I am woman, hear me roar.’”

He shrugged. “You can make whatever sound you want, love, but I’m partial to a growl.” He waggled his brows.

“So you
are
feeling better.”

“Well enough to come with you.”

“You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Will said, pulling his keys from his jeans pocket. “I’m your Guardian.”

“What if I’m going to buy tampons?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said again. “I’m protecting, not carrying.”

“Come on,” I groaned.

I filled Will in on my and Alex’s conversation on the drive over. We were at the station, staring through the observation window, when Alex approached, his eyes clear and sharp but narrowing when he noticed Will by my side.

“What are you doing here?” Alex asked.

“And thank you for having me.” Will gave a shallow bow. “There was a fire,” he said dryly, making sure that his SFFD department badge was visible. “So technically, the welfare of a fire survivor is within my jurisdiction.”

Alex’s eye cut to mine. “You sure you want to do this?”

I nodded, not sure at all.

“I know what he said about—about Lucas, but before that: was he—were there signs?” I asked.

I know that both Alex and Will knew what I meant: the MacDonald triad. Sometimes called the Evil Three or the rule of three, the MacDonald triad were the three most common traits of sociopaths—chronic bedwetting in late childhood, animal abuse, and arson. In cases where children have perpetrated such atrocities, often the triad was in their past, a misread—or ignored—early warning sign of the extreme danger to come.

But Alex swung his head. “By all accounts Oliver was a great kid. Honor roll, soccer team, Sunday school. He was a happy, popular kid who showed no signs of anger or violence. Everyone who knows him agrees this is something completely out of character for him.”

“I want to go in now.”

Alex and Will exchanged a glance, a rare, joint acknowledgment of silent agreement. If I hadn’t thought Armageddon was on its way before, I was pretty sure of it now, since those two were vinegar and water.

“I’m coming with you.”

They spoke in unison and I blinked, stunned. “No. I’m going in alone. Alex, you’ve got stuff to do and so do you, Will. I can handle this.”

Frankly, I had no idea whether or not I could handle dealing with this angel-faced child who, according to two men I mostly respected, could be a tiny nugget of evil incarnate. But I was going to try. I didn’t wait for Will or Alex to answer me. I shoved past them both, steeled myself, and opened the door to the observation room.

Oliver looked up when I stepped in, and smiled. A great, big, friendly kid smile. It wasn’t creepy at all.

He was dressed in a Social Services-issued gray sweat suit with a zip-up hoodie that was at least three sizes too big, a plain white T-shirt, and a pair of sweatpants that were rolled around the waist, and rolled again at the ankles, making fat donuts of fabric around his socks. I was happy to see that he was wearing plain kid sneakers, the kind of shoe that fit kid feet, not cloven hoofs.

I considered that a big, positive checkmark in the “not evil incarnate” column.

Oliver was sitting at a kid-sized table in a kid-sized chair with a piece of paper in front of him. He was coloring something that could have been the beginning of a cheery sun and rainbow scene or the fiery gates of Hell. He dropped the red crayon he was holding when I walked in the room, and his grin widened when I pulled the mini chair next to him and attempted to sit in a remotely ladylike position.

I wasn’t particularly great with kids—and wasn’t even as a kid. I have no cousins or siblings (except for the one I shish-kebabed and she seriously deserved it), and when I’d grown up it was mainly just my grandmother and me. I’d gone to school and had a few acquaintances there, but when you’re weird—or when you offhandedly mention that you know for a fact that pixies cheat at cards—you tend to get branded as the kid that no one wants to play with. Or be field trip bus buddies with. Or lab partners, hall monitors, or summer camp friends with. Thus, I’d spent the bulk of my childhood years refilling the bridge mix at Grandma’s weekly mah-jongg games and shopping for school clothes at Misha’s Mystical Clothing Mart and Cauldron Emporium with a fashion-forward shape-shifter named Juan. Or Aretha.

I put all of that out of my mind and attempted to talk to Oliver the way social workers talked to all the scarred children on the various
Law & Order
iterations.

“Hi, Oliver. My name is Sophie.”

Oliver glanced at me with his hot-chocolate eyes, his grin still wide and, up close, toothless. He was a darling little boy and everything inside me raged against my father for using this tiny little vessel, who smelled of strawberry shampoo and waxy crayon, as an instrument of evil.

“I know your name,” Oliver said, picking up a crayon. “He said you’d be here.”

A chill ran through me.

“He said?” My heart started to thud. I looked up toward the enormous glass window that ran horizontal across the front wall and Alex gave me a thumbs-up.

“Oh! You mean Detective Grace.”

Oliver dropped his crayon with a tight little snap. “Not him, silly.” He picked a yellow crayon from the pile in front of him and started coloring, bright, brilliant slashes across the page. “Lucas.”

My heart dropped into my socks. “What did you say?”

But the little boy was onto something else now, scribbling a sea of orange over the yellow as he hummed something that sounded a little like a hymn. Having heard very few church hymns— unless you count “Jesus, Take the Wheel”—I tried to take a couple of deep breaths while I convinced myself that I was totally projecting my neurosis and daddy issues on this sweet, little evil child.

“Oliver? You said a name before—what was that name?”

Oliver very deliberately set down his crayon, careful to line it up with the others. Then he turned to me, his pale lips pressed in a serene smile. He stared at me in silence for a beat, then scooted to the edge of his chair. I thought he was going to bolt until he reached out one hand and cradled my cheek. His hand was tiny, his fingers warm against my skin.

“Lucas was sorry he had to go before, but he’s ready now. He can’t wait to see you. He told me you were pretty. You look so much like her.”

My heart lodged firmly in my throat. “Her?”

Oliver nodded, his hands leaving my face as he selected another crayon. He started coloring again, splashing bright red streaks across the page and bubbling over them so they looked almost like hearts. “Your mom.”

Someone sucked all the air out of the room and ripped out all the lights. I saw the blackness, then felt like I was being shot out of my chair, zipped backward, pulled by some imaginary rope. I saw my mother’s eyes, blinking first and terribly bright and behind her was Lucas, his face in a fog that quickly dissipated to show the hard planes of his bleak expression. I thought my mother was smiling at me, but it was a grimace, a tortured, silent scream on her lips as her eyes held mine. Lucas lunged at her—around her—arms outstretched toward me, and something happened. A loud clatter, a flash of light, and I was staring into my mom’s eyes again, but the brightness had been replaced by a dull, lifeless sheen, her blue eyes as pale and as flat as stone. I felt a crack in my chest and my lungs burned, feeling as though they were being squeezed with an impossible force. Then Lucas’s face flashed before my eyes, this time at a distance, at the schoolyard as he held Oliver’s hand, leading him away from the burning building.

I blinked furiously and desperately sucked in air. The lights were on and one of the admins outside gave me a funny look as my eyes darted around the room, as if I were an animal in a cage.

“What just happened?” I clamped my hand over Oliver’s. “Did you do that? Do you have some powers, kid? Some way to make me see things?”

But Oliver just smiled that serene, unnerving smile and swiveled himself back to the table. He chose another crayon, bent his head, and started coloring again.

I burst out of the observation room. “Alex, Will!”

“Will got a call from the chief. He went down to the fire station.”

I was breathing hard, working to keep air in my deflated lungs.

“What’s wrong?” Alex put down the stack of papers he was reading and hurried to me, concern creasing his features. “What? Lawson, what happened?”

“That kid. That kid!” I was pointing toward Oliver, panic vaulting through me with every heartbeat.

“Did he say something to you?”

The admin who had given me the weird look before was staring me and Alex down now so I grabbed the front of Alex’s shirt and shoved him farther down the hallway. He glanced down at my hand fisted on his shirt and wrapped his own hand around mine.

“Lawson, what is it?”

“Your office.”

I could see eyes darting toward us, cutting through the main office, eyebrows rising, but I didn’t care.

I slammed the door to Alex’s office, downed a cup of water from the bubbling jug, and raked my fingers through my hair.

“So, did he admit it? Did he say anything to you about the fire?”

I stopped mid-pace. “The fire?”

“The fire. The fire? The whole reason the kid is here?”

“He knew about Lucas, Alex. He knew about him.”

I waited a good twenty seconds for Alex to gape, to drop his jaw, to grab his cuffs and demand we go martial law on this creepy kid’s ass. But all he did was sit behind his desk, arms threaded across his chest.

“We knew that, Lawson.”

I nodded. “I know. But he said it. To me! He said Lucas was ‘his friend’”—I made air quotes—“and he set the fire because ‘his friend’”—more air quotes—“told him to.”

“Son of a bitch,” he said, shaking his head. “It looks like the devil—or someone pretending to be him—is walking the earth.”

I stopped dead in my pacing tracks, feeling my jaw drop open in what I was certain was a look of pure disbelief. “What? You think there is another Lucas out there masquerading as the devil
and
my father?”

Ales sighed. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of this, Lawson. He’s an eight-year-old kid who just murdered and burned his parents.”

“Yes.” I pumped my head. “Evil incarnate. Little evil incarnate. Isn’t there something in the Bible that says, ‘and a little child shall lead them’? That, that could be that kid. He’s like Satan’s apprentice.” I top a step closer to Alex’s desk and pointed to a yellow legal pad. “You should probably write that down. “A little child shall lead them.”

Alex didn’t pick up a pencil or break his gaze from me. “That’s Isaiah 11:6.”

“I knew it! So what is this? Armageddon? And didn’t you get some kind of heads-up?”

Alex dropped his head in his hands in a gesture of either “You’re absolutely right. All hell is about to break loose at the hand of this little Satan protégée” or “Lawson, you’re out of your mind.”

Alex looked up and sighed. “Lawson, you’re out of your mind.

“The little child is leading a wolf, a lamb, a leopard, a fat goat, and a lion in that passage. Literally, he will be able to lead them.”

“Right. Oliver Culverson, little child. Fire and mayhem, the lion. Or maybe that fat goat. Either way, shit is getting real, Alex. This is biblical.”

I could see Alex biting the inside of his cheek and using all his strength to clench his lips. His shoulders quivered just the smallest bit, giving him away.

“Wait, you’re laughing? How are you laughing?”

“What happened to the cool, new Sophie?”

I gestured in the general direction of Oliver Culverson. “Biblical, Alex!”