“There’s no phone out here. I’d need to run back to the Big House.”
“Then run.”
Leary thudded off the porch and BC turned back to the man on the floor. He checked his pulse to confirm that he was dead, then grabbed a shredded cushion and placed it atop the pool of blood next to the body so he could kneel beside it. The chest wound was the only serious injury. The only other trauma was to the man’s hands, which were swollen and scraped, covered in blood, paint, plaster. All of this reinforced the idea that he’d punched in the walls, but if he’d driven a knife into his own chest, there was no sign of the blade anywhere.
For the first time, BC turned his attention to the man’s face. The victim was young, only twenty-two or twenty- three, with strong cheekbones and a jawline dusted with dark brown stubble. Even drenched in blood, however, his suit fit him perfectly, so well tailored that it hadn’t ripped once during all his thrashing. It was even buttoned. There were faint bloodstains on his temples, but his freshly cut hair was still relatively neat, meaning that despite his distress the man had run his fingers through it to smooth it. Clearly, he was a man who took pride in his appearance. So why hadn’t he shaved this morning?
All at once BC understood. The man had been here all night. He was guarding something. And even as BC remembered the name Chandler Forrestal—remembered Orpheus and the shimmering trees outside the cottage and the doctor’s comment about “the girl”—he heard a thump above him, and realized he wasn’t alone in the house.
He bit back a curse as he reached for his gun, ascended the stairs as quietly as he could. Someone must have heard him though, because a female voice screamed:
“Get away!”
BC made his way to the edge of the open door frame. There was a picture on the opposite wall, and its glass reflected most of the room. BC saw a bed with a male figure writhing on it, a girl leaning on the floor. Something gleamed in her stained hands.
“My name is Special Agent BC Querrey with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he called loudly. “I want you to put down the knife and step away from Mr. Forrestal.”
“Get away! Please! I beg you!”
BC didn’t ask a second time. He stepped quickly into the doorway, his weapon leveled at the girl.
“Drop it!”
The girl screamed. The terror in her voice was so palpable that BC felt it wash over him like a wave. At the same time, he caught a glimpse of something flying at him from the right. He ducked, and a vase smashed against the door frame, spraying him with bits of pottery. He whirled but there was nothing there save a bureau pressed firmly against the wall. No one could have been hiding behind it.
“It wasn’t me!” the girl screamed now, and BC whirled back to her. Her screams were unnerving—he felt almost as frightened as she was. He fought to steady the gun in his hands even as she waved the knife in hers. There was blood on the blade and handle, on her hands and clothes, too. Not a lot, though. BC knew how much blood spurted from a chest puncture. There should have been more.
“You have to believe me,” she pleaded. “He killed
BC glanced at the man on the bed. He was drenched in sweat and writhing around, but appeared uninjured. He lowered his voice but kept his gun pointed at the girl.
“Is Mr. Forrestal injured?”
The girl’s eyes went wide with fear and confusion. “I told him we’d taken too much, but he gave him more anyway.”
“Who—Leary?”
“Logan? The man downstairs?”
The girl nodded her head convulsively. “I don’t know how much he gave him. Thousands of times the normal dose.”
BC wasn’t sure how one got thousands of doses of a drug into an eyedropper, but talking seemed to be calming the girl down.
“LSD?” he asked, and when the girl nodded again, he said, “Everyone who comes here does so to take the drug. Why would you refuse?”
The girl shook her head. “We’d already taken it, and—” She broke off, shook her head. “We didn’t understand what happened to us. Agent Logan thought Leary might be able to help.”
“You knew Logan before?”
The girl suddenly snapped back into a panic. “He made me! He said he would go to the police otherwise! I had no choice!”
BC took a step closer. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. But what you’re describing sounds a lot like motive.”
“Stay away!” The girl brandished the bloody knife in both shaking hands, but what BC noticed was the ring on her finger. A large ruby, its color deeper and richer than the blood that spotted her hands. He didn’t know why, but it seemed to him that you would take off a ring like that if you were going to commit murder, or at the very least afterward.
“You have to believe me,” the girl implored. “He stabbed
“Take what?”
“I don’t
