Bentley Little - Dominion

She picked up her empty glass, poured the last few drops of grape juice onto her tongue. She fiddled with her fork.

It was Mother Felice who brought up the subject of Dion.

"So how's your boyfriend?" she asked casually.

"Dion?"

"Of course."

"He's not my boyfriend."

Her mother's next question died in her throat. She looked quickly around the table. There was silence.

"Penelope." Mother Margeaux's voice was quiet, but it was strong.

Penelope looked toward the head of the table. Mother Margeaux dabbed at her lips with a napkin and replaced the napkin in her lap. In the warm low light of the dining room, her lips looked almost as dark as her hair. The whites of her eyes seemed large as she focused her intense gaze on Penelope.

"I thought you and Dion were dating," Mother Margeaux said.

Penelope squirmed in her seat. "Not exactly. Not yet."

"Well, what exactly is your relationship?"

"Why do you want to know?'* Penelope felt herself reddening.

Mother Margeaux smiled. "We do not disapprove of Dion. Nor do we disapprove of you going out on dates. We would simply like to know the status of your relationship. After all, we are your mothers."

"I don't know," Penelope admitted. "I don't know what our relationship is."

"Are you planning to go out sometime?"

"I told you, I don't know."

"But you do like him?" Mother Felice asked.

"Yes!" She stood, exasperated, embarrassed. "May I be excused? I really do have a lot of homework."

"Yes, you may be excused." Mother Margeaux looked around the table.

There were no objections.

Penelope strode quickly from the room, running upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. She had avoided the Big Discussion she'd been anticipating, but her mothers' quiet probing had been even worse. There seemed something secretive about it, something that made her uneasy. The questions themselves had been innocent enough, but they had been asked in a manner that was anything but innocent, and as Penelope flopped down on her bed, she could not get out of her mind the satisfied way in which Mother Margeaux had smiled.

TOHTV Lieutenant Horton stood in front of the printer and read the report as it ran out. He held up the long roll of perforated paper and frowned as he read the DUI statistics. Up two hundred percent from last month? Up a hundred and ninety-six percent from the same period last year? That wasn't possible. Someone must have made a mistake. He dropped the paper.

The printer continued to noisily click out its dot matrix, one line at a time.

Now he would have to spend an hour double-checking the input.

He was going to have a lot of comp time accumulated by the time this was all over. In addition to working full- time on the murder investigations, he still had to perform his regular duties, which meant that he was putting in twelve-hour days as well as working weekends.

He took a drink of his lukewarm coffee, put the paper cup down on one of the shelves housing the tech manuals, and bent down to peer through the printer's smoked plastic window at the latest lines of the report.

Drunk and disorderly arrests up a hundred and fifteen percent.

Something was definitely wrong.

When he had transferred here from San Francisco over a decade ago, Horton had been surprised by the relatively few alcohol-related arrests made in Napa and the surrounding communities. Incidents of public drunkenness, reckless endangerment, DUI, etc., were surprisingly low, particularly for a region so heavily devoted to the production of alcohol. It was as if people, overly conscious of the area's economic dependence on liquor, made a special effort to behave responsibly when it came to imbibing. It was something that had remained constant during his tenure on the force and which he and everyone else took for granted.

Horton sat down on the low, empty table next to the door and waited for the report to finish printing. He pulled a bottle of Tylenol from his coat pocket, shook out two caplets, and washed them down with the last of the coffee. He didn't have a headache, but he could feel the blood thumping in his temples and his thoughts were heavy, muffled, coming to him as if through a thick fog.

He stared across the room at a faded poster someone had tacked up on the wall years ago: a stylized cancan girl kicking up her leg in a dance.

The poster reminded him for some reason of Laura, and he found himself wondering what had happened to her. It was not a thought that occurred to him often these days, but even after all these years it was one tinged with more than a hint of sadness. The alimony payments had stopped when she'd remarried, and though he'd thought at the time that he should still keep in contact with her, still keep tabs on her whereabouts, he had not made the effort. He had moved three times since then. There was no telling how many times she had moved. Periodically, he got the urge to run her name through the computer and find out where she lived now, but he didn't know her current last name, was not even sure if she was still married to the same man.

It was strange to think that two people who had once been so close could now not even know if the other was still alive. There'd been a time when he had honestly believed that he could not live without her, when he had selfishly hoped that they would both live well into their nineties and that he would die first so he would not have to go on alone. He'd been alone for over fifteen years now, and the woman with whom he'd shared his most intimate secrets, his worst fears, was now a stranger, sharing the hopes and dreams of another man he did not even know.

Horton slid off the table, stood. What the hell was he doing thinking about this? Why was he wasting his time on this nostalgia crap? There were enough problems for him to be concentrating on in the here and now. More than enough.

The murders for one.

The murder investigations were not going at all as planned. The police were doing everything they could-- interviewing friends, family, and business acquaintances, combing the nearby neighborhoods for possible witnesses, quizzing the appropriate file suspects--but there was no real evidence to go on, and despite the sophistication of their techniques, none seemed to be forthcoming. With the obvious cult angle, he would have thought Fowler's murder would be a little easier to work up a lead on, but both investigations were stalled at the starting point. They were simply going through the motions, following procedure, hoping something new would turn up. If these two killings were connected--and everyone from the chief on down believed they were--the murderer knew his stuff. He was obviously crazy, but he was just as obviously not stupid.

And that was a terrifying combination.

Jack Hammond thought it was something else entirely. He wouldn't say exactly what he thought was happening --apparently he belonged to some cult or fringe group that required a vow of secrecy--but he'd hinted around about resurrection and prophecy and all sorts of wacky religious crap. Which was why he'd been taken off the case.

Horton walked into the hallway, glanced up and down the corridor. At the far end he saw the captain still in his office, his silhouette outlined clearly against the lit window (hat faced the hall. As Horton watched, he saw the older man discreetly pour a shot of whisky into his Mcdonald's coffee cup. Horton frowned. Captain Furm'er drinking on the job? He could not believe what he was seeing. The captain was the most by-the-book officer he had ever met, a man who went into rages if staff meetings were not conducted according to proper procedure. This was definitely not like him.

Hammond. Furnier.

There were a lot of weird things going on.

The captain looked up, out of the window, saw him.