Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

"And who would steal a child?" Diana said slowly.

"Exactly. There was enough fear and outrage that the men who were heavily invested in this land and in The Lodge decided to hire a Pinkerton detective to try to get to the bottom of things before their workers began walking off the job."

"I didn't know Pinkertons looked for killers."

"It was generally outside their area of expertise, but apparently the man assigned was what they called a good tracker. Now, the public record on all this is virtually nil, but I did find a couple of letters in the state historical databases written by people who were here when all this was going down. One of the construction workers, especially, wrote about the hunt for this killer in detail in a letter to his sister. It's pretty clear his conscience was troubled."

"Because there was no trial?" Diana guessed.

"No trial, no arrest, nothing official at all. The Pinkerton found enough evidence to trace the killer, he believed, to a shack up in the mountains." Quentin paused, frowning. "It's still there, I think, an old stone building; I saw it five years ago."

Diana didn't question him on that point. "So the Pinkerton found the killer there. And—"

"And he, along with a small group of trusted workers that included the project manager, went up there and grabbed the guy. Whose name, by the way, was Samuel Barton. They'd already decided that hanging him would draw too much attention, and the consensus was that shooting was too good for him."

"So they dropped him down that shaft?"

"Pretty much. The shaft had been discovered when excavation was going on for the stables, and the ladder put in place because somebody had the notion they might be able to use the caves for storage. But the tunnel was so long and narrow that transporting anything down there turned out to be too much trouble. It made a dandy prison cell, though."

Diana frowned. "Did they intend for him to die down there?"

"I don't know what they intended, but they must have known he would die. The men were so angry that in catching him they had pretty much beaten him to a pulp. Dropped him down the shaft and bolted that trap door shut. He must have known nobody within hearing distance was going to help him. Maybe he just followed the tunnel hoping there'd be another way out."

"But there wasn't one."

"Moot point. According to the man who wrote the letter, Barton only got as far as that big cavern we found. The man felt guilty enough that he went down there himself a week or so later, secretly, at night. Found the body in the cavern. And left it there."

Diana drew a breath and finished the likely story. "The Pinkerton and the project manager reassured the others that the... problem... had been taken care of. The killings stopped. And The Lodge was completed."

Quentin nodded. "That's pretty much it. Except that the killings didn't really stop, except for a while. At least that's what I think. Because people kept disappearing in these mountains. Not many, a few every year. Travelers, people passing through. Transient workers. People who wouldn't be missed, for the most part. The difference was, they didn't find any more bodies."

"Until Missy?"

He nodded again.

"Quentin...you're not saying it's been the same killer all these years. Are you?"

"You said it," he reminded her. "Down in the caves."

She remembered. Scary though it was, she remembered it all. But... "Whatever Missy knows, I only know what I said. I mean, I don't understand how it could be the same killer. How a dead man could still be killing more than a hundred years after his own death. And I don't understand why, if it is somehow true, his — its — behavior changed with Missy. Anything hunting and killing that long, successfully, wouldn't change. Would it?"

"Not likely." Quentin was too good a profiler not to have thought of that, and offered a possibility. "Unless something external forced the change."

"Something like what?"

"Diana, spiritual energy has its own plane of existence. It can only exist in our world temporarily, and only then if a doorway is provided, or if the energy itself is strong enough to force its way through."

"So you're saying the spirit of this killer was strong enough to cross over, strong enough to kill?" She was dimly surprised that she didn't sound more incredulous.

"My guess is that it killed by — for want of a better term — possessing a person. Most likely someone who was vulnerable to that kind of attack. Mentally or emotionally unstable, or physically weakened in some way. The killer took them over and... used their bodies for a while. Enjoyed their terror and confusion. Maybe even forced them to kill someone else."

"Quentin—"

"That would help explain the time between these disappearances and deaths. There would have to be an interlude of rest after expending so much of its strength, but the interludes wouldn't be consistent because the amount of energy necessary would depend on whether it was merely possessing someone or using them to physically kill."

"Merely?" was all she could manage.

"It's possible, Diana. It's possible that the spiritual energy left behind when Samuel Barton was virtually buried alive held enough rage, enough evil, to go on killing, and hiding his crimes, all these years. At least until he killed Missy. Until he killed someone capable of somehow preventing him from hiding her body the way he'd hidden or buried all the others."

“How?" Diana asked. "How could a little girl have done that? What could she have done if he'd killed her?"

"I don't know. Yet. But I know that something changed when Missy died. I feel it."

Diana didn't know how to challenge his certainty. She didn't even know if she should. So all she said was, "We have a lot more questions than answers."

"Yeah, I noticed that."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but we won't know anything new from Jeremy's remains, or the bones down in the cavern, for a while yet."

"Maybe quite a while. Forensics takes time, especially when it comes to skeletal remains."

She hesitated, then said, "I have the sense that something is going to happen here, and soon. Something bad. I — I haven't told you, but I've seen other ghosts. People who very obviously lived in another age. Two women, a man, two little boys. Not in the gray time, but here, looking flesh-and-blood real. Like Jeremy. Asking me to help them. And at least one said something about it being time. There was an intentness about them, an urgency I could feel."

Quentin didn't bother to ask why she hadn't told him until now. "I gather they didn't tell you how you could help them."

"No." Diana got to her feet. "But Becca told me there was something in the tack room, and she was right about that. She also told me there was something in the attic I needed to see. That it would help me understand."

Quentin smiled, wondering if she had any idea of how much stronger she was since waking up. He didn't know how, but it seemed that providing a voice for Missy down in those caves had somehow enabled Diana to turn a corner. She had stopped protesting the reality of her abilities; she wanted answers.

"I wondered why you asked Stephanie so pointedly about the attic," he said.

"Now you know. Shall we?"

Quentin took only a few moments to lock his laptop and notes away in his computer case, habit making him cautious. Then he walked with Diana back to the main building.

It wasn't until they were climbing the stairs toward the attic that he said, "I guess Rebecca wasn't very specific about whatever it is she thinks you need to see in the attic?"

"No. As you said, they never seem to be specific when it would be helpful."

"They?"