Chapter Eleven
The manin the hoodie turned out to be Stan Lawson, according to his driver’s license. Lawson had said nothing about his name, or anything sensible since he regained consciousness on the ride to the FBI field office. He sat in the chair across the interview table from Jesse. His hands were still bound behind his back because he tried to bite Jesse when he went to remove the restraints. He stared down the table at the clay statue he’d stolen.
The statue had the sort of fine detail that made Jesse envious he couldn’t do more than draw a stick figure, but the artist had used skill to make it too lifelike. Four tentacles held the figure aloft, while two more reached out and seemed to grope the air. A cloak covered most of the tentacles, the bottom edge of it ragged. The figure’s smile was nearly as wide as its head and sharp teeth filled its mouth. There were vague outlines of eyes, maybe as many as six around the whole skull. Jesse didn’t want to look that closely.
It felt like another person in the interview. Jesse kept glancing at it out of habit. He’d never admit he was making sure none of those tentacles were moving on their own. Or that the figure’s sharp-toothed smile wasn’t growing wider. Its cloak certainly couldn’t be moving or shifting, because statues didn’t move on their own or change their shape.
Jesse cleared his throat and put his attention back on Lawson. “You have the right to an attorney. Do you understand that right?”
“No sense asking him again,” Milton muttered. He paced the space behind Jesse, which wasn’t helping Jesse’s nerves any. But then, maybe the statue was getting to Milton, too.
“Just covering our bases,” Jesse replied. “Mr. Lawson is there someone we should call for you? Maybe a doctor?”
Lawson snorted. “Doctor wanted to take God from me.”
“God,” Jesse repeated.
Lawson nodded at the statue.
“I’m getting a psych consult in here,” Milton said on his way out the door.
Jesse agreed that they needed one, but as soon as a doctor showed up, his chance for answers would likely come to an end. While anything he asked would probably get thrown out in court, the statue bothered him the same way the gallery at the Valless mansion had. It was like the statue exuded a sense of otherness, and not because it depicted an inhuman creature. If he didn’t know it was inanimate, he’d swear it had a mind of its own.
But that wasn’t possible.
Or was it? Uncle Ephraim had described weirder things than thinking statues in his journals.
A man who might know sat right across the table from him, but Lawson wasn’t talkative. However fractured his mind, he seemed to understand that silence was one of his few defenses at the moment. Jesse had to get him to talk.
“I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” Jesse asked. “You look familiar.”
Lawson flicked his gaze over to Jesse, and then was about to turn back toward the statue, but paused. He frowned, then narrowed his eyes more. After looking Jesse up and down, he said, “Drop sugar in the acid. No milk.”
A mind teaser, but not impossible. Jesse opened the folder in front of him. They didn’t have much on Lawson. The folder was meant as an intimidation tactic. Some people spooked when they thought the authorities had shit tons of information, though Lawson didn’t seem to give a crap about anything in the room besides the statue. They had Lawson’s address, so Jesse used his phone to search for it. Lawson’s apartment building was about four blocks from Jesse’s. Right down the block from the coffee shop he frequented.
And right across the street from the Crowley Construction building that had been bothering him. Lawson lived inside what Jesse had labeled a hot zone. And now Lawson was stealing statues from homes and museums.
Well,huh. That deserved a much closer look.
“You’re that guy who’s always on his laptop,” Jesse said.
Lawson leaned in and whispered, “Threw it away. They can see it.”
“Who?”
Lawson looked at the camera in the corner of the room.
Jesse closed the folder. “Do you know you’re in FBI custody?”
“Positions in space are relative to one another, but space will be devoured and relation will cease to exist, as we are atoms among atoms.”
“Basically, you know and you don’t care,” Jesse said.
Lawson shot Jesse a wolfish grin. “You keep your eyes open, but you don’t worship. The gods will devour you last if you aren’t at the door. Serve them and let it be quick. Once you are atoms among atoms, oblivion will embrace you.”
The reverent matter-of-fact tone slid under Jesse’s skin and nestled alongside the sense of wrongness he felt from the statue. Lawson was a zealot, but Jesse had never heard of his faith. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, but clearly Lawson’s ideas impacted his behavior as well as his mental state.
“Are you in a cult?” Jesse asked. “Are there others who believe as you do?”
