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“Who can confirm that?”
“My foreman, Jack. He’s a good guy. He used to buy model cars for Joseph and send them home with me. Joey liked Vipers. You know, the Dodge sports car with the big V-10?”
“I know them,” Faith replied.
“Yeah, they don’t make them anymore. I think they did a limited edition model a few years back, but they’re focused on their trucks now.”
Faith and Michael shared a glance. Michael turned back to Daniel and asked, “Are you familiar with Humble Memorial Lawn Cemetery?”
“Who?” Daniel asked, brow furrowing. “This is Houston Hillside Memorial. I buried Joey here so he could be next to his mother.”
He crossed himself, and his lips trembled. “I buried Marta when Joey was only ten. He was all that was left of her. He had her smile and her kindness. I always used to tell him that he got his beautiful soul from his mother, and he promised he would keep her memory alive.”
He shook his head. “Now he’s gone. My poor, beautiful boy. I lost him too.”
He buried his face in his hands and began to weep. Faith and Michael shared another look, and when Turk trotted to Daniel’s side and leaned comfortingly against his leg, the last of Faith’s suspicions disappeared.
“Why did you run?” Michael asked. “When you saw us, why did you bolt like that?”
Daniel sniffed and absently scratched Turk’s ear as though he hadn’t been running in fear from the dog only a few minutes ago. He shrugged. “I just saw the dog running at me. I heard you say you were FBI, but I didn’t know if you were just lying. I mean, I didn’t know why the FBI would be looking for me.” He blinked, and as though just realizing it, he said, “I’m sorry about Dr. Ames. She was very kind to me and my parents. I’m sorry for the paramedic too, Mark?”
“Marvin,” Faith corrected.
“Marvin.” He shook his head. “God, it’s terrible. You think you’re going to have your whole life, you know? You thinkthey’regoing to havetheirwhole lives. You know that bad things happen, but you don’t think about them, you know, you just…” He shrugged. “You just don’t. When the cops called me and said my son was being taken to the hospital, I thought it was a joke, you know, one of those prank calls.” He chuckled. “I actually thought that he was pranking me. Joseph, I mean. I thought he was trying to put one over on his old man. I said”—he chuckled again—“I said, ‘Joseph, I’m forty-four years old. You’re going to have to work harder if you want to scare me.’”
His smile faded. “I’ll never forget the feeling when the dispatcher spoke again and told me this wasn’t a joke, and I needed to get to the hospital as fast as possible.” He took a deep breath, and it wavered when he exhaled. He shook his head again. “It just doesn’t seem real, you know? I mean, I talked to him. I saw him just that morning. He cracked a joke, and I smacked him upside the head.” He chuckled again, but there was no mirth this time. “I don’t even remember what the joke was. I just”—he swung his arm to indicate the lighthearted tap he gave his son—“and said, ‘Watch your mouth, prick.’ Then he grinned at me with that big movie-star smile he’s had ever since he was a baby, and I thought how proud and lucky I was to be his father. And then he was gone.”
He looked away from the agents, his eyes vacant and confused once more. Faith recalled the same look in Julia Prescott’s eyes as she wondered aloud how to tell her daughter that her daddy wasn’t coming home.
After a moment of silence, Faith offered the utterly useless reply that you were supposed to give in this situation.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
A part of her was relieved when Campanelli’s supervisor verified his alibi.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kendra jogged steadily down the road, savoring the contrast between the warmth of her body and the cool of the evening. The fall air was cool but not yet chilly, and she wore her usual outfit, a tight but well-padded sports bra and an even tighter pair of track shorts. Her legs were shaved, and nine years of consistent exercise and a reasonably good diet had afforded her a figure the envy of most women her age.
Not that there was anyone to notice at this time of night. Kendra preferred nights because of the cool, not to avoid stares, but that was a pleasant bonus. She liked looking good, but thoughts about what one might do with her toned body belonged only to her husband, thank you very much. He wasn’t overjoyed by the thought of his wife running at night, but she had a black belt in tae kwon do and she carried pepper spray, and besides, this was a safe part of the city. She had been running here for years and nothing had happened.
She smiled softly as she thought of Kyle, no doubt snoring away like a chainsaw. She giggled at the image of him lying in bed, open-mouthed, a look she found pathetically adorable ever since they met at the University of Texas on the third day of her freshman year. She wasn’t supposed to sleep with someone on the first date, but she knew the moment she saw that little mop of red hair and the perpetually confused expression in those soft green eyes that she would spend the rest of her life with her little pet nerd.
She was so distracted by these thoughts that she almost didn’t hear the bell. When her mind did register the noise, it instantly dismissed it as one of those phantom auditory hallucinations that sometimes occur.
When she heard it again, it drove thoughts of her snoring, nerdy, but adorable husband from her mind. She slowed to a stop even though she had two miles left to run and listened.
She heard it a third time, and when she looked to her right and realized where she was, a chill shot through her spine.
Kendra wasn’t superstitious, but that didn’t mean she could hear strange noises coming from a cemetery and dismiss them. She looked into the cemetery, the gravestones lit by the occasional electric lamp. It was just enough light for her to tell that she was looking at a graveyard, but not enough to see what was there, if anything.
She heard the bell again. From somewhere deep in her mind, a voice shouted at her to run away, to flee before whatever danger there was lurking in the dark turned its attention to her, but she pushed it down. She was an adult, a grown woman, not a child. She didn’t believe in ghosts or zombies or werewolves or vampires. She was probably just hearing the night security or a gravedigger moving around. The sound that her mind interpreted as a ringing bell was probably just their keys jingling.
She turned and started to walk down the road, but she didn’t return to a run. A few yards later, she stopped and listened again. There was no sound.
She started jogging, but the relief she expected at the disappearance of that ringing sound didn’t arrive. She stopped a hundred feet or so up the road and turned around. The cemetery remained as it was behind her, empty.
But…
