Hemlock Bay

could find you where you are, but I want you to be careful, Savich, really careful.”
    “You can count on that, Ollie.”
    “Okay. How are things going out there with Lily?”
    Savich said, “She managed to hurt a guy who tried to kill her on an empty bus a couple of hours ago. Clark Hoyt in the new Eureka field office is checking all the hospitals. No word yet. Lily drew a picture of him and we just heard from a Lieutenant Dobbs at the Eureka Police Department that the guy’s a local hood-for-hire, a freelancer, who would kill his own mom for the right price. Name of Morrie Jones. Everyone’s looking for him. He’s a kid, just turned twenty.”
    Savich could see Ollie shaking his head back and forth as he said, “Big troubles on both coasts. Ain’t nothing easy anywhere in this world, is there?”

    • Lily slept for three hours—no nightmares, thank God—and awoke to see her brother seated on a big wing chair pulled near her lovely Victorian canopied bed, a gooseneck lamp beaming light over his right shoulder, reading through a sheaf of papers.
    He looked up immediately.
    “You’re fast. I just opened one eye and you knew I was awake.”
    “Sean got both Sherlock and me trained in a matter of days. He yawns or grunts, and we’re ready to move.”
    She managed a smile, but truth be told, the day’s events had caught up with her. She’d gone from being euphoric about drawing Remus again, to nearly being murdered, to getting back her paintings. At least she’d had a great Mexican lunch and it hadn’t made her sick to her stomach.
    But now, even after a very long sleep, she still felt wrung out. Her side ached something fierce, and her head sat heavy and dull on her shoulders. “No, Dillon, don’t get up. What are you reading?”
    “Articles and reports MAX found for me on weird phenomena. I’m trying to find other reported crimes with similarities to the Tuttles’ rampage and the Ghouls.”
    “You told me just a little bit about the Tuttles and these Ghoul things, Dillon. Tell me more.”
    “There were two of them, two distinct white cones that sometimes came together. You can imagine how the two boys—Tammy and Timmy Tuttle called them ‘Little Bloods’—were reacting. I’ve never seen such terror. I nearly swallowed my own tongue I was so afraid. Then Tammy Tuttle called to the Ghouls, yelled for them to bring their axes and knives, their ‘treats’ were ready for them. The boys wanted out of that circle and Tammy pulled her knife. She was going to nail them to the barn floor, inside that damned circle. That’s when I shot her, and the bullet nearly tore her arm off. Timmy pulled his gun then, but he wasn’t going to shoot me, no, he was aiming at the boys, so I had to kill him clean and quick, no choice. Then one of those white cones was coming at us, and I shot it. Did the bullet hurt it? I have no idea. I pulled the boys out of that circle and then both of the white cones just whooshed out of there. No one outside the barn saw them. So it was just the two boys, me, and Tammy, who had called them.”
    “My God, that’s scary.”
    “More than you can imagine.”
    Lily said, “I wonder, did their victims have to be inside that circle?”
    “Good question. Since I was there and saw all of it, I think they did have to have their victims inside the circle. Or maybe it was just a ritual that they themselves had developed over time, a ceremony that gave the Tuttles more of a kick out of what they were doing. However, I didn’t see that the Ghouls had any knives or axes, so why did they say that?” He paused a moment, thinking back. “You know, Tammy had a knife but I didn’t see any axes anywhere.”
    “Maybe she was just speaking dramatically.”
    Savich thought about the teenage boy, his body mutilated. “Maybe. I don’t think so.”
    “What sorts of things has MAX dug up?”
    He paused for a moment, then gave a slight shake of his head as he said, “You’d be surprised what’s turned up over the years.”
    “Yeah, I bet I would, only you’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
    There was a knock on the door.
    Sherlock’s voice. “Quick, Dillon. Open up!”
    She was carrying three covered trays, stacked on top of one another. “From Mrs. Blade, downstairs,” she said and handed them to Savich. “Besides doing crossword puzzles, she likes to cook. She insisted that if we couldn’t come down to the dining room, she was sending this up.”
    Two huge plates