The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (17 page)

“You know who they are.”

“You’re not making any sense, Eddie.”

“You’ve been a busy man. Local politics, all these meetings.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why would a man armed to the teeth attend an anti-gun rally?”

He said nothing.

“Because you were looking for a certain kind of person, one who doesn’t like guns.”

“That’s who usually attends those rallies.”

This next thing I wasn’t sure of but I put it out there anyway. “You get the giggles a lot from what I hear.”

“I have what is known as pseudobulbar affect. It causes me to—”

“Laugh a lot.”

“Right. At the strangest times.” My mind jumped back in time a few hours. Melanie had laughed a lot also, as she got ready to disembowel Mobray.

I said, “You’re not laughing now.”

“I’ve learned how to control it over the years.”

He sat so still in the relative darkness of the pool room, his face lit up from underneath by the pool lights. I’d been paying so much attention to him I hadn’t seen what was on the seat next to him. Megan’s roller skates box.

“Call it off,” I said.

“Call what off?”

“Your search for Megan. And for the others with her.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Eddie.”

“You hired me to find her. The real you, the healthy you wouldn’t want me to find her right now. So I’m not going to. And I’m not going to let you or anybody working with you find her.”

“How do you propose to stop me?” He snatched the blade quickly and laid back down on the deck chair.

I pointed the gun at him. “I’ll shoot you. I’ll take you in. Without you, your people won’t know what to do with themselves.”

“Eddie, I’ve been sick for a long time. Off and on. It doesn’t get any easier as time passes, but after awhile you become accustomed to the sickness. You can control yourself in ways you wouldn’t have thought possible during your first bout. Eventually you can pretend like you don’t have it. There are others like me out there.”

“They’ll listen to you. Call it off.”

He held the blade up and poked one finger with the tip of the knife. “You do not understand. There is no command structure. My orders won’t have any force. They’re
compelled
. We can only herd them so much. After a while, the need overwhelms us.”

“We won’t know until we try, will we? Call it off now.”

“No.”

“I know everything, Turner. I know why you brought me out here. It wasn’t because Megan had read a book about me and followed me online. That was just a smokescreen. You brought me out here because Chester Leonard had already started to turn and Megan’s people could see him coming a mile away. You brought me out here because the sickness is linked to a person’s length of exposure to this area, so you figured I’d have less chance of turning either way and not being able to help you. Megan would trust me if I came to help because I wouldn’t be one of you.”

He was smiling and crying at the same time. “You won’t believe this, but part of me is actually glad you haven’t found her.”

“Call it off.”

He flipped the knife from one hand to the other. His dexterity was impressive. “We’ll find them. It is only a matter of time. They never leave. They can’t.”

“Drop the knife.”

He grabbed the knife by the blade, holding it in the perfect throwing position.

“Drop the knife or I fucking shoot you.”

He laughed. “You have it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Everything I need to have figured out.”

“Eddie.”

Manetti appeared on the pool patio in the backyard and padded quickly inside. “I don’t see Strongbow anywhere.”

“Where’s the rest of the team?” I said so Turner knew we weren’t alone.

“Team?” Turner said.

Manetti formed a two-point cover on Turner. “Out and about.”

Turner said, “You must be Agnes Manetti. It is an honor…”

I didn’t know what was weirder. Manetti’s first name or Turner’s reaction.

Turner stopped talking and buried his face. The knife fell into his lap. He made some weird, choked noises and his body shook.

Manetti said, “Take your hands away from your face. Eddie, keep an eye on the perimeter.”

I got why. Turner’s strange reaction might have been a diversion. I swept the patio and backyard but saw nothing, nobody. But Strongbow was out there. He had to be. When I looked back, Turner was just taking his hands away from his face.

He was laughing so hard he couldn’t open his eyes.

“Ken Hernando, nice to meet you,” I said.

Turner kept laughing his ass off.

“You’re the man who laughs,” Manetti said.

“That’s right…but I don’t laugh all…the time…”

“Your network.” I put my gun back on Turner. “We want the names.”

“You are…fucked…you have no…idea…”

I looked at Manetti. “I can’t shoot my client. But maybe you can put the fear of God in him.”

“Pater, I need immediate evac with an extra package,” Manetti said.

“Start moving him in sixty seconds,” Patterson said through the earpiece.

“Names,” I said to Turner.

“You’ll get them when…you…you interrogate me.”

“No time like the present.”

“You think…there’s a list?”

“List, no list, I don’t give a shit and you know who they are. Start talking.”

“We don’t need…to remember…we know who we are and…who they are.”

Turner’s face had gone from red to purple and he could barely breathe. His pulse throbbed in his neck. He grabbed the knife out of his lap.

Manetti said, “Put the blade down or I’ll shoot you.”

“No, you won’t,” Turner said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Strongbow coming at us from the backyard.

Manetti did too.

We both turned our guns on Strongbow, leaving Turner unguarded. Before I realized the mistake, Turner’s knife was flying toward us.

Manetti squeezed off a shot but I lunged into her so the knife would miss. The blade zipped past us harmlessly but Manetti’s bullet missed Strongbow. We landed in a heap at the foot of the pool.

Strongbow was alongside the pool and closing fast. I’d watched him hit the target earlier with his throwing knives from a good thirty feet. He was well inside his kill zone.

From the ground I fired. Strongbow recoiled and went down.

I got to my feet in time to stop Turner’s charge. He had another knife. He was within arm’s length so I didn’t have time to bring the gun around. I grabbed his wrist. He grabbed mine. His blade stopped six inches short of my neck. He kept my gun pointed away from him.

We danced like that as Manetti scrambled to her feet. I heard her gun firing but had no sense of what Strongbow was doing.

My gun was pointed away from Turner’s head, inches from his ear.

He tried to force the knife. I held his wrist tight.

He was still laughing but not as hard. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

“You’re right.”

I pulled the trigger.

The blast of the gun inches from his ear rang his bell. I let go of my gun, which confused him, and I took advantage. I came inside his reach and pivoted and flipped him over my back. He landed with a smack against the concrete of the patio.

He still had the knife.

I still had his arm.

I twisted and I felt something pop in his shoulder. Then he was screaming. I got the knife away from him.

“Eddie!”             

Strongbow was grappling with Manetti. She had a knife and he was pressed against her. One side of his torso was blood-soaked. I must have winged him.

I broke into a dead run and put everything I had into my kick. I connected with Strongbow’s bad side. He grunted from the pain and went down on one knee. I kicked him again. He fell but hung onto Manetti.

She brought a knee up and jawed him. His head snapped back and his eyes went backwards. He slumped to the ground.

“Get away from him!”

Turner had my gun. He had a loose grip on it like he was holding a dirty diaper. His hands were trembling. It was everything he could do to hold the gun. The barrel wavered. He couldn’t keep it on me. He didn’t even try to put it on Manetti.

“You’re not going to shoot me.” I wasn’t so sure. I’d gambled by dropping my gun. Maybe I’d pay for it.

“Get…” He took his eyes off me and looked at Manetti for one second and broke into hysterics again. “…away from him.”

Behind us Strongbow was moaning. Manetti and I spaced ourselves so Turner couldn’t hit us both easily. I decided to test him.

I kicked Strongbow in his bad side.

“D-d-don’t!”

I kicked Strongbow again.

The gun went off. It surprised Turner more than us. The bullet hit the floor six feet shy of me. Turner shook even worse.

I walked right up to him and ripped the gun out of his hands. He was still laughing.

“Now tell us who your people are, and what they’re doing,” I said.

He couldn’t talk. He was crying he was laughing so hard.

“Eddie, he’s got a knife!”

The voice wasn’t Manetti’s. It was coming from the house. Eamon had opened the door to the pool room and was charging forward. Turner’s hand had disappeared behind his back.

Turner lunged. I reacted.

Badly.

Turner was on the ground, bleeding out. Pater had taken the knife from him.

My voice was thin, weak. “Call an ambulance.”

“Already have,” Pater said. “Local emergency services are bombarded this evening. Too many calls.”

Turner picked his head up and motioned for me to get closer. I handed my gun to Pater, not Eamon, and kneeled.

“I’m glad…you shot me…”

His eyes were having trouble focusing on me. His voice was soft.

“Morgan, tell me about your people.”

He chuckled. “Too late.”

“Do you know where Megan is?”

He shook his head. “…will find her…before you.”

“They won’t.”

“We have a lot more looking for her than you.”

“How many?”

“A lot.”

His eyes drifted from mine. I shook him.

“Where are your people?”

“Few hours, getting…ready.”

“Where are they?”

“I love Megan…so much.”

He was done laughing. He was done everything.             

The life went out of him. I grabbed the back of his head and lowered it to the floor gently.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. Manetti.

“Strongbow,” she said. “Before the ambulance gets here.”

***

I kicked the Marine in the side. Nothing makes you feel less human than hitting somebody when they’re already down.

He moaned and opened his eyes.

“Names.”

I heard the sirens in the distance.

I kicked him again.

“Names.”

He shot up and tried to tackle me. I jumped back and kicked out in the same motion. My instep connected with the side of his head. He didn’t black out again but he was dazed. He tried to push himself up off the ground.

I wound up and kicked him in the side again. If the feds had any problems with my interrogation they weren’t voicing them. Years ago, right after I was arrested, there was no bigger fan of the Constitution than myself. Now here I was ignoring it. I felt low, the worst kind of low because I was wailing on somebody that was sick. Somebody that, a few years ago, had served his country presumably well.

But we were out of options and out of time.

Pater and Manetti didn’t stop me. Eamon stayed in the corner, as if distancing himself from the scene would absolve him of responsibility.

“Names! Where are they?”

The sirens were loud.

“Fuck you, convict,” Strongbow said.

I wound up to hit him again but Manetti stopped me. “That’s enough.”             

“If they find Megan before—”

“EMTs are here.”

I heard them.

Strongbow gave up trying to get to his feet. He pancaked on the floor and grunted from the force of the fall.

Five seconds later the emergency crew hurried into the room. Detective Quick was in tow.

“Jesus. You people could fuck up a wet dream.”

***

They wheeled Strongbow out on a stretcher. He was in and out. Quick led me away from the feds.

“Start talking,” he said.

I saw no reason to keep anything from him. I told him about MPI and our theory of two disparate groups, one intent on killing, the other intent on defending themselves with violence if necessary.

“Your theory fits the facts. I got people with no interpersonal history going after each other. Families…”

“What are you doing?”

“Mayor called a curfew, staties are coming in but it’s a disaster. Streets are a mess. Lot of people missing.”

“How many?”

“Officially? A lot. Unofficially? More.”

“Hundreds? Thousands?”

“Say a couple thousand to be on the safe side. But that’s a wild guess.”

“Have you crossed paths with Chester Leonard?” I said.

“I hauled his fat ass down to the station. Got him in a cell. He went after his sixty-year-old neighbor. She locked herself in her house and called us.”

“Mind if I talk to him?”

He looked over my shoulder at Pater and Manetti. “I or we?”

“Come on, Quick. Move past that. It’s a shit show and we have to work together or more people will die.”

His eyes turned hostile. “Yeah, it’s a shit show. How long have you been sitting on this working theory of yours?”

“Things are moving fast,” I said but he saw through the evasion. “We didn’t have ti—”

“Time to make a five minute phone call? Bull-fucking-shit.”

“The truth is, Detective Quick, we couldn’t trust you.” Pater came over and stepped between us. “Not you personally, but the town in general. If MPI is the correct diagnosis, the disease is likely tied to exposure to something in this local environment.”

I saw him working it out. “You’ve been exposed too, why should I trust any of you?”

“I’ve got the least time with boots on the ground,” I said. “You can trust me.”

“Come on.”