"OK," I say and take his hand. "I am serious. Iwill."
He brushes my hair from mycheek.
"Too bad I didn't make this speech earlier and then maybe you wouldn't have met with my brother –again."
"Michel, he said not to worry. He said he wouldn't try to take me fromyou."
Michel shakes hishead.
"I'll believe that when I know you're mine completely. And even then, maybenot."
"You don't trusthim?"
"Not in this,no."
I sigh, never having expected to get caught between these twobrothers.
* * *
The next day,we charter a Council jet that's specially designed so that Michel will be protected from the sunlight. We fly to Helena in the afternoon, arriving just after sundown, going straight to the hotel once we arrive. It's close enough to the airport that I can stand at the lobby window and watch as a small planelands.
Ed signs in first, flashing his FBI badge. He scopes the hotel out, asking for certain rooms and the clerk complies with all the requests. I feel safe knowing he and Michel will be in the rooms on either side of me and that if I need them, they can just open the door and bethere.
We sit in my room and after I get my laptop set up and internet connected, we go over the details of the current murder. The Helena Valley Regulating Reservoir is about four miles from the airport. That's where local authorities found the decapitated body and after checking in with the local police, it's our firstdestination.
We drive to the Helena Police Department's Criminal Investigations Building, a newer square brick building on 11thAvenue. Ed introduces us to the officer in charge of the case, Detective Brent Fletcher. Fletcher's in his early forties and has that clean-cut All-American look to him, as if he just stepped out of a Wheatiesadvertisement.
"Nice to meet you," he says in a soft Mid-Western accent. We walk down the hallways leading from the security desk to the administration offices at the north side of the building. Fletcher takes us to his corner of the open office and we sit down to discuss the case. His office area is small and filled with bookshelves, filing cabinets, his desk littered with papers, files and half-empty Styrofoam cups ofcoffee.
"An older guy known as 'Fishman' found the body. A vagrant who fishes in the reservoir for his food. Guess he doesn't appreciate the food at the local shelter." He grins atus.
We discuss the cases in Boston, and it's only now, while going over the cases there, that I learn that there are more in other states. Montana is only the latest in a series of states with similar murders. This killer has a widerange.
We drive to the reservoir to check the dumpsite. After the detective explains where the body was found and the way the witness had come forward, we linger behind so I can do a little psychic sleuthing. I take off my gloves, and touch the rocks lining the shore but there's nothing I can find connected to thekiller.
Next we go back to the precinct to watch tapes of the witness interview. "Fishman" is in his forties, with long dark hair that looks like a horsetail down his back. He has a scraggly beard shot through with gray and red, and wears several layers of rotting and frayed clothing, thick with body oils. I can only imagine hisstink.
He'd been prospecting for bottles left behind by teens who parked along the reservoir at night for some action, and was there when a man carrying a large burden arrived and dumped the body on the shore. Fishman hid behind a trashcan and watched as the man rolled the body into the water, and then placed the severed head in the corpse's arms, just like all theothers.
When the killer left the scene, Fishman checked the corpse's pockets for money before making his way to the precinct to inform police of what he'dseen.
"I figured the dead guy didn't need it," he says plainly. "But there was 'nuthinthere."
I examine the crime scene photographs and it doesn't take me long to note the gloves on the corpse's hands. Thin leather. I show it toEd.
"So why hasn't the killer targetedme?"
"Maybe he has. Remember the note. We don't know yet what connects these Adepts. That's why we're here. Looking into each of their pasts is going to give us an idea. Maybe use it to predict his futuretargets."
* * *
We viewthe body at the morgue but there's nothing to see that we haven't seen before. Body bled out then decapitated. Dumped on the shore of the reservoir. Head in shackled embrace. The Adept is a younger man with dark curling hair that's plastered to his pale forehead. When the technician's busy speaking with Ed, I touch the body quickly to see what I can glean but there's nothing. Just a sense of darkness, stars overhead breaking through the clouds. In my mind's eye, a blackness spreads over the sky above and then nothing. Apparently, as time passes, the memories caught in synapses fade, leaving little for Adepts to find. I turn his head to the side and there it is – a tattoo like Julien's. A LorraineCross.
"Look at this," I say and point to thetattoo.
Definitely linked to the others," Ed says. I use my iPhone to take a picture of it when they turnaway.
We have dinner at the hotel and take a brief rest, for our real work starts later. Michel is being unusually distant, as if he still disapproves of my being here. We're going to the sheriff's office in a small town in Montana about an hour's drive to the north. We're there to watch an interview with the owner of the private security corporation that trains people for duty in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. The dead man worked for the owner. Fletcher thinks there may be someconnection.