scared the hell out of him. The seeming irrationality of it, the fact that he could make no sense of the situation, was what frightened him the most, and he was suddenly afraid for Penelope. He wondered if his mom would let her move in with them, if he could Penelope squeezed his hand, moved forward.
'No!' Dion said.
'What?'
'Don't go near it.'
She smiled, but there was no humor in it. 'You think a monster's going to pop up and grab me?'
That wasn't exactly what he thought, but it was close.
'I have to know,' she said softly.
He held her hand tightly, and the two of them walked forward into the center of the room. They looked down into the well, expecting to see a black, bottomless pit, or an empty shaft with bones on the bottom. But instead they saw, a foot or so below the stone rim, their own reflections staring back at them from the deep, glassy burgundy surface of wine.
'What is this?' Penelope asked.
'I don't know,' he said, but on some level, he thought, he did know. For the fear he'd felt before, the worry, was gone, replaced by calm. The feeling that things he didn't understand were spinning out of control was not mere anymore. This room, this well, this wine, all of it felt reassuring to him, comfortable, as though he was now ensconced in familiar surroundings. He breathed deeply. The smell of the wine reminded him of the counselor's office, of Mr. Barton drinking from the bottle in his desk, and he thought back to the fight with Paul. On one level he was horrified by what had happened, disgusted witi himself, but a deeper part of him approved, and as he re-.J played the fight in his mind, as he thought of the small ^ changes that would have resulted in Paul's death, hef smiled.
'What are you smiling at?' Penelope demanded.
He opened his eyes, looked at her, blinked. What had^ he been smiling at? The thought of killing Paul? He shook his head. 'Nothing.'
The two of them looked down at the well of wine.
'What now?' Dion asked.
'The woods,' Penelope said.
'Are you sure?'
She nodded. 'I knew I'd have to go there ever since I caught Mother Margeaux sneaking into the kitchen the other night. I tried to pretend otherwise, tried not to think about it, tried to tell myself that--that there was an explanation for it, but I knew there wasn't.'
'Maybe--'
'No maybes.'
He nodded. 'Let's go, then. Let's see what's out there.'
Horton stood against the wall as the computer checked the prints against those in its files, watching as the split screens flashed by, the left half containing the print off the bottle, the right showing the prints against which it was being compared. The process was automated but not instantaneous, and he knew that it was going to take a long time to go through all of the prints stored in the machine's memory. In addition to complete sets of fingerprints for all perps arrested in the county during the last ten years, the computer stored the prints of children fingerprinted at birth, individuals who'd undergone voluntary printing, and unidentified prints from other crime scenes. The computer also had the capability of accessing the print files of other departments across the state who were online.
The search had already been underway for nearly twenty-four hours, and according to Filbert, the technician monitoring the machine, it could take twice that long before all fingerprints were compared.
Hell, Horton thought, with his luck the print would probably end up being of someone not even on file.
He took a sip of his coffee, was about to walk back to his office when suddenly the screen stopped moving, the image locking in place. A red light flashed on and off, a small beep sounding. 'Lieutenant?' Filbert said, turning around.
Horton moved forward, looked over Filbert's shoulder as the technician pressed a series of keys. The identification of the print owner was superimposed over the bottom Portion of the screen.
Margeaux Daneam.
His mouth was suddenly dry, and he finished off his JJ coffee. He hadn't suspected this, hadn't expected it, but f somehow it did not completely surprise him. He stared at the name and the winery address beneath it. A ripple of cold passed through him.
'Print it,' he told Filbert.
The technician pressed a key, and a copy of the screen began printing on the Laserjet adjacent to the terminal.
Daneam.
He rubbed the goose bumps on his arms. It was not the fact that a prominent local businesswoman had been implicated in the brutal rape and murder of two teenagers that spooked him. I was everything else. The peripherals. The rise in DUI's, D&D's, the other murders, his own drinking and everyone else's.
The fact that it was all related.
That was it exactly. He'd been a cop for a long time, had been involved with crimes big and small, but the crimes had always been self-contained. A crime was committed by a criminal or criminals, the case was solved, the perps put away, end of story. But this was different. The drug problem, he supposed, would be the closest analogy to this, but though drugs were related to myriad crimes, the crimes were all separate. Related, perhaps, to a root cause, but individual. They weren't ... like this.
This was spooky.
He thought of Hammond and his wacky theories.
Maybe the detective hadn't been so far off base after all.
Filbert tore off the printed sheet and handed it to Horton.
'Print off a couple more of those,' Horton said. 'And give 'em to the chief.'
Filbert nodded.
'And thanks.' Horton opened the lab door and walked into the hallway.
The station was in chaos.
He stood there, stunned, as men ran past him in both directions down the corridor. Those policemen who were not already armed and in riot gear were in the process of becoming so. Several men were shouting at once, and something unintelligible was being broadcast over the RA.
'What is it?' Horton demanded, grabbing a rookie by the arm.
'A riot over on State Street, sir.'
'What happened?'
'No one knows. A group of fifteen or twenty people from one of the bars suddenly turned violent and started attacking people who were outside marching in the Halloween parade. Five are reported dead.'
'Dead?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Jesus shit.'
'There might be an officer down.'
Horton let go of the rookie's arm. 'Go!' he said.
The officer hurried away, and Horton strode through the activity to Goodridge's office. He had a hunch about this, a weird feeling in his gut. He didn't think that the Daneams had started the riot because they knew the police had a fingerprint and had identified k and were about to come after old Margeaux. Not exactly. But he had no doubt that they were involved. He'd stake his career on it. He had never trusted those lezzies. He didn't know if they were putting something into their wine or were practicing witchcraft, but they were somehow behind all of this violence, and he was damn sure going to put a stop to it.
He walked into the chief's office, showed him the printout, told him about the match, and said that he needed a warrant and some men.
'I can't spare anyone,' Goodridge said. 'Why don't you hold off until tomorrow. Margeaux Daneam's not going anywhere.'
