He glanced around to make sure Pippa was still on her cell. “They were home when the fire broke out,” he said. “The fire chief said he saw them in the basement window while the crews were dousing the barn. They wouldn’t come out, though. A couple of hours later, I went back to check on them.
“There was a hole in the stone foundation of the house, like someone had tunneled through. They were all dead. They’d killed each other, starting with the little ones.”
“Any white marks?”
“The parents each had one, and the grandmother.”
“But not the kids?”
Steve shook his head, got into his car, and did a U-turn to head back to town.
Parents killing their own children. I tried not to think about that. The sapphire dog hadn’t touched the two little girls. Maybe it hadn’t gotten the chance, or maybe they were too young. Steve had said the girls were seven and nine, and while Little Mark had a white stain, he was at least fourteen or fifteen. The baby Steve had given to the paramedics hadn’t been marked, either. Maybe the predator needed its food to be ripe.
After a quick circuit of the rental car to make sure the predator hadn’t materialized in the backseat, I drove farther out on the road. There were no more houses or buildings out this way. I passed several signs telling me the highway turnoff was coming up, and I saw a couple of scattered businesses, a campground, and a turnoff for the church and fairgrounds. Another banner told me the Christmas festival was taking place at the fairgrounds, and a little sign below told me the church was having a benefit lunch … well, it was happening right then, as it turned out.
I drove by, passed the school grounds, and entered the town from the other side. I hadn’t seen the turnoff for the highway. I did a U-turn and drove back. I missed it a second time. Maybe some joker had moved the signs.
This time I pulled into the fairgrounds. The church was off to the right on a low hill; it looked like exactly the sort of church I’d expect in a little town: small with a peaked roof and a steeple. I parked below the church in the fairgrounds parking lot, a wide asphalt patch that overlooked the fairgrounds below. The grounds were slightly larger than a football field, which I thought surprisingly small until I realized that level ground must be a pretty scarce commodity around here.
I shut the engine off and sat in the car. The sapphire dog had not come this way by accident. It was possible that Clara had chosen the route, but I didn’t believe it. Little Mark had tried to chauffeur the predator, too, and I remembered the way it felt to be near that thing. Whatever it would have wanted, I would have wanted, too. The sapphire dog was the one in control.
But why this way? Maybe it wanted to go camping. Maybe it wanted to go to church. Maybe it wanted to get on the feeder road—which I couldn’t find—to the highway and then hit the big city, where there were hundreds of thousands of people to make crazy. But it had failed.
Now I was looking across the fairgrounds at a cinder-block building. The door kept swinging open as people went in and out. Why go all the way to Seattle to feed when it could stop off right here?
I climbed from the car and walked along the parking lot. I passed an old fire engine; the firefighters had probably stopped off for lunch after the Breakley fire.
To catch this predator, I’d have to figure out what it wanted.
Maybe it just wanted its freedom. Maybe the most important thing to it right now was not to be captured and starved in a cage again. Then, once it was far away, it would do its thing. Maybe it would call more of its kind here. Or start a cult. Maybe it would create an army and install itself as Pet Emperor.
Unless I destroyed it first.
The cinder-block building was painted white, and I walked inside feeling like a man with a bomb strapped to his chest. I had come eagerly to this little town to kill and possibly be killed, and none of the old ladies smiling at me as I dropped fifteen dollars of Fat Guy’s money into the food-bank kitty had any idea how dangerous I felt. There was a second door right in front of me, and behind the welcome table on the right was a long hall filled with lawn equipment.
I accepted a tray in exchange for my donation and went into a much larger room. As I moved down the line at the kitchen windows, a heap of mac and cheese, a pair of chicken drumsticks, succotash, home-baked rolls, and broccoli-cheddar bake were put on my plate. I said thank you. No one had white marks on their faces, and no one seemed likely to go on a murder spree.
The sapphire dog hadn’t come here. Not yet.
As I stepped away from the serving line, I scanned the room. There were a dozen round tables set up and ten chairs at each table. Most of the seats were full. At the center table, a half dozen firemen were holding court. They were tall, well-muscled men ranging from their mid-twenties to mid-fifties. Several women—two dozen or so in all —sat at their table or chatted with them from an adjacent table. I wondered if I could sit close enough to hear what they knew about the Breakleys.
“Oh, please join us,” a gray-haired woman said from the table nearest me, at the edge of the room. She was sitting with three people: an Asian woman who looked just a few years younger; a brown-eyed toddler wearing tiny earrings; and a woman I assumed was the toddler’s mom, plump, with dark hair and a lot of eyeliner.
The gray-haired woman, who had the whitest skin I’d ever seen, introduced herself as Francine, then went around the table and introduced Mai, Estrella, and Graciela. I told them my name was Ray, and Mai immediately asked me if I was the one who had his car stolen. I retold that story, because it would have seemed odd to refuse. The women clucked their tongues and made a fuss over my black eye. Then conversation turned to the Christmas festival.
Just as I was about to steer the topic toward the Breakley fire, another woman stopped by the table. The others called her Catty, which startled me. For a moment, I thought they had copied my habit of giving descriptive names to people, but no, it was just an unfortunate nickname. They traded forced pleasantries until Catty left, then Graciela admitted that she felt obligated to buy some of Catty’s jewelry at the festival because Catty had helped her out so often.
Mai kindly told me that Graciela’s husband was serving overseas, and while the whole town was happy to help her out, only Catty hinted that she deserved some sort of repayment. Graciela listened to this without looking up from her plate.
