Blind Sight: A Novel (26 page)

He moaned as she dragged him.

“Be quiet,” she hissed.

A bullet sailed over her head and slammed into one of the trees behind her, sending bark and wood splinters flying.

“Jesus!” she yelped, and dropped Hessler’s arm. Retreated back behind the rock.

Hessler raised his head again, and this time there was no doubt: he was looking at her as she peeked out from behind the boulder.

“Help me,” he wheezed. “Delores, please …”

Martini slapped a hand over her mouth and started to weep. She turned her back on the injured man and rested her back against the rock. Shivered from fright, and the cold.

“Delores …”

Three more shots cracked the night air, and she heard someone in the woods grunt. Had another member of their coven been hit? Martini curled her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her knees, and buried her face in the soft folds of her velvet robe. She wished she’d never laid eyes on that dead girl and the pentagram on her forehead. Really, all this was that girl’s fault, Martini reassured herself.

“Delores …” Hessler said, this time hissing her name. A tire losing air. A man breathing his last. “Please … help … me …”

She clapped her gloved hands over her ears and rocked back and forth. She prayed a silent prayer, not to the gods and goddesses of her newly adopted faith but to the God of her childhood.

Our Father who art in heaven …

Through her hands, Martini heard another gunshot. It would be the last.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

A
pair of robed figures came crashing out of the woods and onto the road, collapsing in heaps of black velvet in front of the Titan’s headlights. Garcia slammed on the brakes and Bernadette threw open her door. Ran toward the lumps. “Are you injured?”

The witches, both pretty blond girls, were on all fours. “Our friends …” one panted.

Garcia helped Bernadette raise the young women to a standing position. They looked to be in their early twenties. “Is either of you hurt?” Garcia asked.

“No,” the girls answered in unison.

“How many were hit?” asked Bernadette, looking from one mascara-streaked face to the other.

“I don’t know!” wailed the shorter one, collapsing against Bernadette and burying her face in the agent’s chest.

“Our priest and priestess. Roger and Yvonne,” said the taller girl, clutching Garcia’s arm. “They got Roger and Yvonne.”

Bernadette gently raised the young woman off her. “Who was it? Who attacked you?”

“We don’t know!” screamed Garcia’s girl.

“How many shooters were there?” asked Garcia.

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” said Bernadette’s witch, and the young woman grabbed the agent by the shoulders. “Do something! Call an ambulance! Call the cops!”

“We are the cops,” said Garcia.

“Thank God!” sobbed Bernadette’s girl, and she started to crumple.

Bernadette tightened her hold on the young woman and walked her to the truck. Garcia followed with his clinging witch. The two agents piled the shivering, sniffling young women into the back of the Titan.

Garcia stepped away while Bernadette continued talking to the girls. “What are your names?”

“Britni Jensen,” said the taller one.

“Anna Roseau,” hiccuped the shorter one, brushing damp bangs off her forehead. Her hands were shaking.

“Can either of you give us directions?” asked Bernadette.

Roseau looked through the windshield. By the glare of the truck’s headlights, Garcia was checking his gun. Seeing that her rescuers were armed calmed the witch. She took a deep breath and let it out. “About half a mile down the road. It looks like a dead end, but if you keep going through the trees and bushes you’ll come to a clearing.”

“Got it,” said Bernadette, nodding. “The shooter or shooters. Any guess where the gunfire was coming from?”

“The opposite end of the clearing. Opposite from where you’ll enter. You’ll enter from the north and he was shooting from the south.” Roseau dragged a hand across her nose. “I think it was one guy.”

“I’m pretty sure he had a semiautomatic rifle,” offered Jensen. “There’d be rapid fire—but not quick enough to be an automatic—and then a pause.”

“While he reloaded?”

“Exactly,” Jensen said, nodding.

This was hunting country, and even pretty young things knew a lot about guns, thought Bernadette. “Did he yell anything? Do you have any idea who it was? Who outside the coven knew you’d be here tonight?”

Roseau bit down on her top lip and then blurted one word: “Shit.”

“Who?” asked Bernadette.

Jensen looked at her friend with raised brows. “Who are you thinking?”

“Who?” Bernadette asked more loudly.

Roseau swallowed once and answered. “Karl Vizner.”

“We invited him to the Esbat and he pretty much flipped us off,” said Jensen.

“He thought it was our fault that Jordan …” Roseau’s voice trailed off.

Garcia came up behind Bernadette, talking into his cell and telling the rest of the crew where they’d come across survivors. “Correct. Take the turnoff after that.”

Bernadette looked at him over her shoulder. “They think it’s Vizner.”

Garcia repeated the information into the phone. “Our survivors think Karl Vizner is the shooter … Yeah … Right.”

“Get down on the floor of the truck,” Bernadette ordered the two women.

The girls blinked at each other and then at the agent. The instructions weren’t registering. “What?” asked Jensen.

Garcia opened the driver’s door and killed the headlights. “Let’s go, Cat.”

Bernadette started to close the back passenger door. Roseau thrust out her hand and stopped the door from shutting. “Don’t leave us without a gun! For Christ’s sake, give us a gun!”

Bernadette disengaged Roseau’s hand. “Help is coming,” she said, and slammed the door.

Through the window, Jensen mouthed a curse at Bernadette, and Roseau followed with a flip of the bird. Then the feisty young witches dropped down onto the floor of the truck. Bernadette didn’t like leaving them alone, but she and Garcia had to get to the shooting site.

Guns in hand, the two agents went down the dark road. Garcia took point, training a flashlight on the ground ahead of them. They came to the dead end and entered the trees, threading quietly between the trunks. The only sound was that of their footsteps in the snow and the occasional scrape of fabric against a bush. As thick as smoke, their breath hung in the air in front of their faces.

Spotting a glow up ahead, they immediately crouched down. Garcia punched off the flashlight, and the pair moved more slowly through the wooded maze. Just outside the clearing, they took cover behind tree trunks. What they saw would have made a surreal still life for an outdoor catalog.

Illuminating the round space was a Coleman lantern, sitting in the middle of a table draped with a cloth. A pillar candle sat next to the lantern, but it had burned out. A bowl and some other paraphernalia also topped the altar. Scattered on the ground around the table were more candles, and mounds of black velvet. Fallen worshippers. One was on her back, and Bernadette recognized her immediately. The others had gone down on their faces. No one was moving. No one was groaning. Bernadette prayed that they were simply playing possum for the shooter.

Where was Karl Vizner?

Garcia pointed to the right, and she nodded. Bernadette worked her way through the trees one way and Garcia circled around the other. At the south point where they met, they found Vizner behind a large boulder.

He was on his back, dressed in camo. He’d swallowed his own rifle and pulled the trigger.

“Crap,” spat Bernadette, holstering her Glock.

Garcia put away his gun while shining the flashlight over the mess of blood and bone and brain matter. From what was left of Vizner’s face, they could see that he’d worn camo paint. “This guy meant business,” Garcia whispered.

Bernadette heard a moan coming from the trees. “Survivors,” she said.

“FBI!” Garcia yelled into the night. “Call out your positions!”

“Over here!” a woman’s voice yelled. “I’ve got an injured man!”

“Here, too!” yelled a man’s voice. “My wife! Hurry! Please, hurry!”

Someone coughed and said weakly, “I’m shot.”

Garcia worked the woods while Bernadette went to the fallen in the clearing. Eve Bossard was dead, her wide eyes staring up into the night sky. Had the obstetrician played any role in the drama that had taken place over the past few days? Someone else would have to answer that question.

Bernadette moved on to the next two victims: an older man with a white beard and an older woman. The priest and the priestess? Both were dead. The man had his arm extended, as if reaching out for the woman. She guessed that they were husband and wife.

Sven Hessler was sprawled on his belly. His head was turned to one side and his eyes were shut, but he was moaning. Bernadette kneeled at his head. The back of his robe was wet over the left shoulder. His right arm was outstretched, and his gloved hand seemed to be pointing to the woods. Bernadette leaned down and whispered into his ear, “Ambulances are coming.”

“Delores,” he groaned, and lifted his right hand.

Bernadette pulled out a penlight and entered the woods where he was pointing. She found Martini squatting behind a rock, shaking and crying.

Glancing up at the agent, the woman started babbling. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s not my fault. I didn’t know. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have. Honest to God, I wouldn’t have …”

Bernadette cupped a hand under the big woman’s elbow and raised her to her feet. “You wouldn’t have
what
, Delores?”

Three dead and eight wounded. Hessler’s injury was the most severe, and required that he be airlifted to a medical center in Fargo. The other patients were divided up between Crow Wing Lakes Memorial and hospitals in Park Rapids and Bemidji.

Martini’s story came out while she was in the back of the sheriff’s squad, one of a fleet of vehicles that had lined up behind the Titan. Garcia and Wharten were in the front seat, and Bernadette sat next to the ER nurse while she told her story.

Martini said she was there when the Dunton girl’s body came through the doors of the hospital. She saw the inverted pentagram and feared that her coven would be blamed. She took the key to the storage room/morgue from its hook in the cafeteria and sneaked inside to remove the star. It was a visceral, impulsive reaction, and one that she immediately regretted. She learned that the mark had been viewed and documented not only by local first responders and the area’s coroner but also by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Martini didn’t completely panic until she found out that the FBI was involved—and that its agents were well aware of the star’s existence and its removal. She tried to steer the bureau toward the only witch who was open about her faith, counting on Ashe to take the fall for the whole coven.

“It was at least partially her own fault,” said Martini, twisting a wad of tissue between her trembling hands.

“How do you figure?” asked Bernadette, one brow raised skeptically.

“She was so … I don’t know … out there,” said Martini, looking from Bernadette to the two men staring at her over the front seat. “If she’d been more discreet like the rest of us …” Martini’s voice trailed off.

Wharten shook his head slowly. “Jesus H. Christmas, Delores.”

“Am I going to be charged with anything?” she whined.

“You tampered with evidence, Delores,” said Wharten. “You interfered with a murder investigation.”

“I want a lawyer,” Martini blurted, and started tearing up. “I’m not saying anything more without a lawyer.”

Garcia and Bernadette slid out of the car while Wharten stayed with his weeping passenger.

The two agents walked to the Titan and leaned their butts against the driver’s side while the crime-scene crew, other FBI personnel, sheriff’s deputies, and medical guys moved around them. They watched as an emergency sled, pulled by a snowmobile, came out of the woods for the third time. The rig glided past the Titan and the other parked cars, heading for an ambulance that was waiting at the end of the road.

Garcia kicked at a lump of snow. “Do you suppose Vizner figured the witches killed his girlfriend?”

“My guess is he blamed them for bringing the killer to her door.” She buried her hands in her pockets. “Either way, it was a fucking disaster.”

Garcia pulled off his stocking cap and vigorously rubbed his head. “We need to sort this thing through, Cat.”

She peeled her backside off the side of the truck and turned to face him. She thought he looked tired, and she felt the same. Finding so many dead, including the shooter, had been a shock, and then a drain. “Fine. Let’s sort.”

“For starters, do you believe Martini?”

“I do. And you?”

“Yeah.”

“So we don’t know who painted the inverted star on the Dunton girl’s forehead, but we know who erased it,” said Bernadette. “Then the eraser points us to Jordan Ashe to save the coven’s butt and her own hind end.”

“We take the bait and question Ashe in the Dunton girl’s murder,” said Garcia.

“Then word gets out around town that we paid Jordan a visit.”

Garcia held up his hand to interrupt her narration. “How does word get out?”

“Jordan made a ton of phone calls before she was killed. Somebody told somebody who told somebody.”

“Then what?”

“One of the real killers gets wind of our suspicions about Ashe and latches on to it as an opportunity to continue focusing attention on the witches,” speculated Bernadette.

Garcia: “He murders Ashe. Paints a pentagram on her forehead.”

Bernadette: “So the barn scene was either a weak effort to make it appear that Jordan had hanged herself—”

“Or the killer did a purposely sloppy job so that it was clearly a murder
staged
to look like suicide,” said Garcia.

“Either way, the star on Ashe’s forehead would place blame on the coven,” said Bernadette.

“What about the pig fetus left on the altar?” he asked. “What was that about?”

“I imagine it was meant to be an exclamation point on the coven’s involvement,” she said. “Insurance that the witches were viewed as a group that practiced blood sacrifices.”

“Then you surprised the killer in the woods.”

“It probably didn’t faze him,” she said. “He figured the witches would be blamed. Again.”

“Was he the same guy as the one who tampered with your motel door in Brule?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“What about Benjamin Rathers? If the witches didn’t kill him, was the star you saw being drawn on his head yet another red herring?”

“Sure. It was insurance. If he’s found, the witches are blamed again.” She looked toward the trees, tall and uniformly black, even with the moon overhead. Dumped somewhere in their midst was the body of Dunton’s chief of staff. Search teams were out looking for him.

“If the inverted pentagram was a ruse and the coven members are scratched as suspects—”

“We need a new short list,” she said.

“According to the ME, we’re still looking at a medical person with birthing background. Where do we go with that?”

“Remember what I saw with my sight: The killer—witch or not—was in the cabin where the senator and his wife are staying. The senator’s chief of staff is dead. His daughter is dead after following blackmail letters to Brule and then Walker. It all leads back to the Duntons. That’s where we go.”

The sound of a helicopter vibrated the nighttime air, and they both looked up. The first of the television-news stations had arrived. Garcia pulled the truck keys out of his pocket. “I guess our guys and Wharten’s folks have this mess under control.”