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“I’m crazy.”
“No, sir. I don’t think that.”
“I saw them looking at me in there. You get old, and people look at you like you’re pathetic, stupid.”
She guided the truck around a bend. “Well, sir. You should try being a woman.”
She saw his lip twitch. A relaxing in the tight hostility of his face.
“My wife, Patricia. She had dementia,” he said.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Dementia is a cruel illness.”
“But this isn’t that.”
Barbara nodded. “What did you mean about hearing them? You mean the Colony?”
The guarded look returned.
“Sir,” Barbara said, “I’ve studied colonies. One of the ways they communicate is through a kind of hive mind—telepathy, if you will. They’ve been known to use it to get into people’s heads.”
Barbara didn’t add that there were certain predilections for this: adolescence, illness, being half-turned and certain mental health conditions. Then there was the more fanciful myth that once you killed a vampyr, you carried them with you.
Beau shook his head. “Damn Colony. We should have got rid of them when we had the chance. Saved ourselves a lot of trouble, and Janice and Ed would still have their boy.”
“Sir, you and I might have different views about the Colony—”
“No ‘might’ about it.”
“But we both want to see Marcus’s killer brought to account. If there’s anything you know about the town or its history that could help…”
“History is history for a reason.”
“But if we don’t learn from it, we repeat it.”
“You get that out of a fortune cookie?”
“Saw it on a bumper sticker.”
He made a noise that might have been a grunt or a short chuckle. “Over here,” he said, gesturing toward a turn-off in the road. Barbara pulled up outside a neat clapboard house. She left the engine running. She had a feeling there was more here. Something had happened, and Beau wanted to talk.
He sighed, then reached for the door and pushed it open.
“Guess you’ll be wanting to come inside—make sure I don’t drop down dead.”
—
The house was cold. Yet Beau didn’t seem to notice. He walked straight into the kitchen at the end of the hall.
“You want coffee?”
It sounded more like an accusation than an invitation, but Barbara said, “Yes, thank you, sir.”
“I’ve not got any milk.”
“Black is fine, sir.”
She followed him into the kitchen, noting the closed door to her left, presumably the living room. She guessed Beau didn’t want her to feel too much at home. She waited while he picked up two mugs from the drainer and set the kettle to boil.
