Chapter Thirty-One
THIRTY-ONE
MAVEN
Rattled, I comb my mother’s room for evidence like a forensic technician. I need something to help me stop spinning in mental circles and point me in the right direction.
I rummage through every drawer, searching for hidden compartments.
I lift the rug and look for loose floorboards.
I peer under the bed, ransack the closet, and delve into every pocket in every coat, dress, and sweater of hers that still hangs there, covered in a fine layer of dust. I look behind picture frames and inside the bathroom cabinets.
The only thing of interest I find is handwritten on a torn piece of notebook paper and wedged between two books on a shelf.
Boil equal parts belladonna, hemlock, henbane, rosemary, and monkshood in flying devil oil until reduced to a thick paste. Dress with full moon water and apply to skin.
It’s a salve recipe, one of the Blackthorn home remedies the townsfolk pay so well for. For hemorrhoids maybe. Or acne, insect bites, sunburn, doesn’t matter. What matters is that she didn’t leave a clue about what, if anything, she meant by “righting a wrong.”
Upstairs in my room, I spend a few minutes pacing the floor, going over every second of the bizarre interaction with Ronan, then I call Cole Walker.
“Hello, Ms. Blackthorn.”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Remember all those missing people in Solstice you told me about?”
“Sure do. What about them?”
“I think Croft Pharmaceuticals is conducting illegal human trials on an experimental medication and kidnapping people for test subjects.”
He pauses to absorb that, then whistles. “That’s quite an accusation.”
“I know. But you told me yourself that they’re crooked.”
“There are a million miles between crooked and abducting people for forced medical experiments. Connect the dots for me. Where’s this testing supposedly taking place? The lab in Boston?”
“No. Somewhere more private than that. Somewhere nobody could accidentally discover what’s going on.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Where?”
“The basement of their old family church.”
In the ensuing pause, I can almost hear his mind working. I’m unsure if he’s taking me seriously until he says, “All right. Let’s rewind a second. Start at the beginning. Tell me everything that’s brought you to this conclusion.”
I take a breath, gather my thoughts, then tell him about the empty graves at Pinecrest, Ronan’s strange demeanor at the church, his mother’s suicide, and the circumstances of my own mother’s death at that same church, though we already went over that when I hired him.
I tell him about the odd studies Croft Pharmaceuticals funded, the strange behaviors of the animals, the appearance of the blue morpho butterfly, and Ronan’s sickness that he refused to elaborate on.
I tell him every detail I can think of, with the exception of the missing male infants in the Blackthorn family tree.
I’ll decide how to deal with that horror later. There are only so many I can handle in one day.
Finally, I tell him about the scream I heard in the woods.
The anguished, primal scream that sounded like someone was being tortured.
“So you believe there’s a link between the sickness Ronan mentioned and the studies?”
“Yes.”
“But Ronan Croft is a young man. People have been going missing from that area for a long time.”
“I thought about that. And here’s the thing: his father’s been in a wheelchair since we were teenagers.
Nobody knows why. One day he just stopped walking.
His grandfather shot himself at thirty-five.
I never met him, but I remember Ronan telling me about him.
He said he was sick. At the time I thought he meant mentally ill, but now I think he meant physically sick with a disease he didn’t want to live with.
And both Ronan’s uncles drank themselves to death before they were forty.
Like you told me when you heard about my ancestors’ odd deaths, one or two is a coincidence.
An entire family tree, and you’re dealing with something else. ”
I take a breath and try to remain calm. “The bottom line is that I think maybe the Crofts have a genetic disorder they’re trying to find a cure for.”
A long, thoughtful silence follows. Then Cole says, “Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No.”
“Good. Until I get back to you, don’t say a word.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What I do best. Investigate. Stay by your phone.”
He disconnects, leaving me unsettled. I pace until he calls back about twenty minutes later.
“Hi.”
“I found something interesting.”
I can tell by his tone that by “interesting” he means “suspicious.”
“Such as?”
“There was a mechanic’s lien filed about fifteen years ago for some repair work done on that church. It was released the same week it was filed, which means it was either filed in error or it was paid immediately.”
“Repair work? The place was in shambles. It’s totally crumbling.”
“According to the document, the work done was in the basement.”
I think of Ronan standing at the top of those stairs in the church, warning me to leave, and all the hair on my arms stands on end. “What kind of work was it?”
“Doesn’t specify, but the company sure has an interesting name. Safari Large Exotic Animal Enclosures.”
My stomach drops. There’s another word for enclosures.
Cages.
There are cages in the Crofts’ church basement. Big ones.
That funk of musk and animal I smelled wasn’t from raccoons or rodents who’d moved in. It was from much larger two-legged creatures.
So that was the wrong my mother was righting the night she went to the church. She somehow discovered what I have and went there to help those poor people being held underground.
Except Elijah Croft made certain she couldn’t.
Which Ronan surely knows.
He lied to me. Over and over, about everything. Every word that came out of his mouth was total fiction, designed to get me to lower my defenses and gain my trust.
But why bother with any of that? Sex? He can get that from any woman he wants. All he had to do was ignore me when I came back. Instead, he made it a point to get close to me …
Realization hits me so hard, it’s like a punch to the gut.
Bea shares half his genes.
There’s no better test subject.
He doesn’t want me, he doesn’t want her, what he wants is her DNA.
Cole’s voice cuts through my shock. “We’ve got to be careful how we proceed from this point. We don’t have nearly enough to get a search warrant. Let me dig a little deeper, talk to some people.”
“We don’t need to talk, we need to do something.”
“We can’t just go in there, guns blazing, with nothing but a hunch and an expired lien. They’ll have us thrown off their property and probably prosecuted for trespassing. Or worse.”
I know what he means by “worse.” My mother was already introduced to that.
My brain skips back a few steps to something he said a moment ago.
“We can’t just go in there, guns blazing.”
I walk over to the dresser, yank open the top drawer, and stare down at the pistol nestled among my underwear.
Cole was right when he told me the Crofts own the media, the politicians, everyone who counts, as low and as high as they go. There’s no way we’ll get a search warrant. All he’d have to do is make a phone call to make an inconvenient accusation go away.
Unless there’s irrefutable evidence that can be distributed so far and wide, it would be impossible to bury.
“They can’t have us thrown off their property if they don’t know we’re there,” I say, determined to see my plan through.
I need to see it with my own eyes. I need to see what killed my mother.
And I need proof that Ronan is the monster I suspect he is so my heart can let him go once and for all.
Judging by his aggravated tone, Cole isn’t on board.
“There’s no way they don’t have that entire property wired with cameras. They probably have all sorts of sophisticated monitoring and surveillance, maybe even silent alarms. You could find yourself cuffed in the back of a police cruiser before you could blink.”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”
“Are you willing to gamble your life, too? Because if those people are as ruthless as you think they are, they won’t hesitate to take you down, either. You could just disappear like everybody else!”
“I appreciate your concern. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
After a beat, he says warily, “Why does that sound like I’m being fired?”
“Because you are.”
His voice grows louder. “Ms. Blackthorn, I strongly recommend you don’t—”
“But you can do one last thing for me,” I interrupt. “Do you know anyone in law enforcement that you trust?”
His pause is grudging. “I do. Guy I went to the academy with way back. We work together on some cases. He’s as solid as they come. Why do you ask?”
“Because we can’t trust the cops around here. We can’t trust anybody. So if you don’t hear from me by noon tomorrow, call your friend.”
“And tell him what?”
“Everything I told you.” I draw a steadying breath. “And that he can find me in the basement of the Croft family church.”
I disconnect without waiting to hear the argument I know is coming, then silence the ringer on my phone. I grab the pistol, shove it into the waistband of my jeans at the small of my back, and pull the hem of my sweater over the grip to hide it.
Then I hurry silently down the stairs and slip unseen out the front door.