The King of Plagues

some nice pictures to look at.

Nice.

Christ.

When I finished taking the pics I took a small cable from my pocket and connected the camera to my phone and then sent the images via satellite to Church, Benson Childe, Jerry Spencer, Bug, and Dr. Hu.

Photos on the bureau made it clear that the victims were the mother and daughter who had lived here. Laura Plympton, forty-one, and daughter, Zoe, fifteen. They’d both been pretty.

“Look at this,” Owlstone said, her voice dropping into a whisper. She drew a cheap plastic pen from her inner pocket and touched the curled left hand of Laura Plympton. I came around to her side of the bed. I took my penlight and shined it into the dark hollow formed by her curled white fingers. “Is that paper?”

“You have a good eye, Detective Sergeant,” I said, and took some close-ups of Laura Plympton’s hand. “You ought to consider a career in criminal investigation.”

“Oh yes, very funny.”

We very slowly, very carefully worked together to gently spread Laura Plympton’s fingers. She must have been murdered early yesterday morning, so rigor had come and gone, leaving her fingers slack in a creepy, rubbery way. In death her bladder and bowels had released, so the smells that rose from her were eye-watering, and buried beneath them were the beginnings of the sweet stink of decomposition.

Owlstone slid the paper out and I lowered Plympton’s hand back to its resting place on her breast. I knew that she was dead and far beyond any feeling, but I felt like I wanted to apologize to her for this necessary violation.

We carried the paper to the dresser and carefully unfolded it. It was a quarter of a piece of ordinary computer paper folded several times and then rolled into a cylinder. There were several lines handwritten on it in blue ballpoint:

My Sweet Laura and Precious Zoe,

I know that what I have done is unforgivable.

I have damned my immortal soul for all eternity,

but at least what I have done here in our home

will save you both from greater horrors.

It was the only way to save you both from them.

They areeverywhere.

I could not let them do those things to you.

Not even if I am to burn in hell.

God accept and protect you both.

My greatest regret is that I will not be able

to join you in paradise.

I will try to make it right if I can, but I know they are watching.

I don’t ask for or expect forgiveness.

They are not kings. They are monsters.

I am only the monster they made me.

It was unsigned. The paper was stained with bloody fingerprints and the distinctive pucker marks of dried water. Tears, without a doubt.

There was a reference to the Kings, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. Was Plympton not part of the Kings?

I am only the monster they made me.

Was that an admission that he had become corrupted by the Kings? Or had they somehow coerced him into this?

They are not kings. They are monsters.

No shit.

I looked at Owlstone and saw confusion and compassion warring on her young face. As one we straightened and turned to look at the bodies on the bed.

“What the hell are we into here, Captain?”

They are everywhere. He had underlined “everywhere” half a dozen times.

“It’s Joe,” I said, “and in my considered opinion as a professional investigator, it beats the hell out of me.”

Though … that was not entirely true. An idea was beginning to form in one of the darker side corridors in my broken head.

I am only the monster they made me.

My phone rang. It was Church.

“Sit rep?” he demanded.

I told him and started to explain, but he cut me off.

“We have what we need from that site. Leave the rest to the locals. I’m three minutes away. Be downstairs.”

“I think I’m on to something here, I don’t want to bug out now.”

“Would you rather hear about it from the Emergency Broadcast System?”

Shit.

“I’m on my way,” I said.

Interlude Thirteen

T-Town, Mount Baker, Washington State

Three and a Half Months Before the London Event