KnockOut

the little girl’s hand, smiled at her. “Do you know we have a little boy? His name is Sean.”
    Autumn slowly shook her head. “Dillon didn’t tell me. Is he as big as me?”
    “Not quite,” Sherlock said. “And he’s got a terrier named Astro. Astro’s all white, a live wire, and he fits right in Sean’s arms.”
    Savich said, “Is that your mama standing over there, Autumn?”
    The little girl nodded happily and called out, “Mama! This is Dillon. And Sherlock. They’ve got a little boy named Sean. And Astro. It sounds like Big Louie is lots more dog than Astro.”
    “Nice job of ice-breaking,” Savich whispered to Sherlock. “Let’s meet everyone, Autumn. Would you introduce us?”
    An hour later, Ethan was cooking ribs and chicken and vegetables and foil-wrapped potatoes on his backyard grill, his eyes searching the woods for any sign of movement, any sign of Blessed. Savich turned twelve pieces of corn on the cob on the grill with a long-handled fork, whistling, asking more questions as they occurred to him, getting a feel for the place, and this bizarre situation, and drinking the best iced tea he’d had in a very long time.
    He said, “Did you tell Joanna any details about what happened to the hiker?”
    “Not all of it. I couldn’t. She took it pretty hard.”
    “This Bricker’s Bowl, where the Backmans live—since you know Blessed’s identity, did you call the local sheriff?”
    Ethan turned a chicken breast, slathered on more barbecue sauce, he said, “Yeah, I called Sheriff Cole, for all the good it did me. He aked me straight off if I could identify Blessed Backman as the man responsible for all the trouble, and of course I couldn’t. I never saw him without his mask. I asked him to e-mail me a photo of Blessed and Cole said yeah, yeah, sure, he’d do that. When I told him about what Autumn saw, he sort of chuckled and said it was a private cemetery, no law against shuffling bodies around, now, was there? Of course, in this case, it sounded like the little girl dreamed it all. Sure, he’d go talk to Miz Shepherd, blah, blah. I wished I could have reached his throat through the phone.”
    Savich said thoughtfully, “I’m thinking Sherlock and I should pay a visit to Bricker’s Bowl. I followed up on some Web research Sherlock told me about. I found a mention of what may be the Backmans in a blog by a group that calls themselves Children of Twilight. They traced the IP address of the server to northern Georgia, near Bricker’s Bowl. The blog claimed to be written by a Caldicot Whistler, who wrote with the snake-oil charm of a charismatic cult leader. It mentioned only their first names—Blessed, Grace, and Shepherd, as disciples who had developed the powers of mind under Whistler’s guidance. A cult requires money. I want to find out where the money’s coming from.”
    Ethan knew where all the money came from, supposedly, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to tell Savich that Theodore Backman was a slot-machine whisperer.
    Finally, Ethan couldn’t stand it. As he brushed barbecue sauce on the ribs and flipped the onions, he said, “Did Autumn really suddenly appear in your head one night and talk to you?”
    Savich nodded as he carefully turned over the tinfoiled potatoes buried in the coals. He looked at Ethan. “It surprised me but good. At the time I was racing Lance in the Alps, both exciting and scary, since my bike was maybe three inches from a cliff, when there she was, right in front of me. I tell you, at first I thought I’d crashed my bike right over that cliff. I remember it was midnight on the dot.”
    “She ... just appeared? Like that?” He snapped his fingers. “In your head?”
    Savich smiled at him. “Yes. Her voice was clear as a bell, but I couldn’t see her clearly. I asked her to bring her head up so I could see her face. She’s a precious little girl, all that dark brown hair, her blue eyes and the line of freckles across her nose; she’s the image of her mother. She’ll be as beautiful as her mother someday. It’s quite a gift she’s got.”
    “But that means you’ve got it too,” Ethan said, and he felt weirded out all the way to his boots saying such a thing. “Has this happened to you before?”
    “Yes, several times. Once we were chasing a killer as dangerous as Blessed, called Tammy Tuttle. She was a horror, and if Blessed is anything like her, we’ll have to focus on him like a target on a shooting range. Look, I know