I stepped up to the window. A woman of about Isabelle’s age was slumped in the driver’s seat. She had dyed red-gold curls that looked like they cost a lot of money. A long white mark ran up her cheek and across her nose. Her lap was drenched in blood. She had been gut shot. A bloody butcher knife was in her hand, and there was an off-color circle on the passenger door.
It was feeding, I suddenly realized. Whatever the sapphire dog was doing to these people to make them kill one another was how it fed itself.
And it had just spent more than two decades in a plastic cage. I bet it was
“I can’t understand it,” Steve said, ending his call. “The hospital is back the other way.”
“This is Clara, isn’t it?” I asked as I went around the front of the car. The engine was still running.
“Yes,” Steve said. “Why did she leave her grandson? Why didn’t she call 911?”
“What’s out on that road?” I asked.
The runner stepped into my field of vision. “Who are you?”
“I’m Ray Lilly. Who are you?”
“Justy Pivens. I’m part of the neighborhood watch. What do you know about this?”
“I know people in your town are starting to kill one another. What’s out at the end of this road?”
Steve was too shaken to play cop for a moment. “Nothing. The camp and fairgrounds, and a feeder road that connects to I-5, eventually, but there’s nothing out there for a woman with a bullet in her. Not for miles.”
I went around the car. There was another discolored circle on the outside of the passenger door. Steve and Justy hadn’t noticed it, so I didn’t point it out. There was another line of soup-can footprints in the mud leading away from the car.
“What are you looking at?” Steve asked. He came around the car. “What the heavens could those be?”
Justy frowned at the prints. “They aren’t animal tracks,” she said. “They look like stilts. Four-legged stilts?”
The tracks went up a bare hillside toward a lonely farmhouse.
“Is your gun loaded?” I asked.
Steve hesitated before he answered. “Yes, it is. I loaded it this morning.”
“What about you, Justy?”
“In the car.”
“Get it and follow us, if you want.”
We went up the hill, following the footprints in the mud.
“Ray, I need you to tell me what’s going on. I can’t just go on this way without knowing what to expect. And we’ve had more deaths in town today than we’ve had in the last three years. Gosh darn it, don’t keep me in the dad-blamed dark!”
He was whining again. I wondered what it would take to drag a little profanity out of him. “I’ll be honest with you,” I said. Justy had followed us, and I made sure to address her as well. “I don’t know. Let’s go up to the house and see if anyone is still alive.”
It was only about twenty yards to the front porch, but Steve was an old guy. I tamped down a tangle of scraggly bushes and steadied him over an old log. He was slowing me down, but he and Justy were locals. I wanted them with me.
The porch was made of unpainted cedar, weathered until it was as gray as Steve’s hair. A small stack of fertilizer in plastic bags gave off an unpleasant farm stink. The strings of lights around the porch were dark. The boards creaked loudly under our weight.
Steve walked up to the front door and slammed the knocker three times. I was a bit surprised at that; I’d been peeking in windows and breaking into houses since last night. Actually knocking on a door seemed quaint.
Heavy boots clumped toward us, then the door was yanked inward and a woman leaned out. She was in her mid-thirties, plain-faced, and had what looked to be permanent bedhead. She was dressed head to toe in fleece sweats. A set of keys jangled in her hand.
A long white streak ran from her jawline over her ear and up into her hair.
“Penny, have … are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Steve,” she answered. “What do you want?”
“There’s been some trouble in town.” Steve’s tone was cautious. “It led us out front.”
Justy said: “What’s that on your face?”
Penny shifted from one foot to the other, obviously anxious to get back to whatever she was doing. “Nothing’s on my face. And there’s no trouble here. Okay? Gotta go.”
She glanced at me without interest and started to close the door. Steve blocked it with his foot. “I’m sorry, Penny, but you do have a white something on the side of your face. Where did you get it?”
“I was baking earlier,” she said, her voice flat and unpleasant. “It’s flour.”
“Is Little Mark here? I’d like to come in to talk some more. To both of you.”
“It’s a bad time, Steve.”
