Strange Highways

Asherville earlier today. Stopped to chat her up. She wouldn't have hesitated to get in the car with apparently."
     "Let's cover her," Celeste said.
     "You do it."
     He wasn't squeamish about what her eyeless face might look like. He was afraid, instead, that in her empty sockets he would somehow be able to see her blue eyes, still intact, as they had been in the last moments of her terrible agony, when she had screamed for help through the wadded rag in her mouth and had known that no savior would answer her pleas.
     The plastic rustled.
     "You amaze me," he said.
     "Why?"
     "Your strength."
     "I'm here to help you, that's all."
     "I thought I was here to help you."
     "Maybe it's both ways."
     The rustling stopped.
     "Okay," Celeste assured him.
     He lowered his head and saw what he first thought was blood on the floor of the altar platform. It had been revealed when they shifted the position of the corpse.
     On second look, however, Joey realized that it was not blood but paint from a spray can. Someone had written the number 1 and drawn a circle around it.
     "You see this?" he asked Celeste, as she rose to her feet on the other side of the dead woman.
     "Yeah. Something to do with the demolition plans."
     "I don't think so."
     "Sure. Must be. Or maybe just kids vandalizing the place. They painted more of them back there," she said, gesturing in the general direction of the nave.
     He got up, turned, and frowned at the dimly lighted church. "Where?"
     "The first row of pews," she said.
     Against the dark wood backs of the benches, the red paint was difficult to read from a distance.
     After picking up the crowbar, Joey swung his legs over the presbytery balustrade, dropped into the three-sided choir enclosure, and went to the sanctuary railing.
     He heard Celeste following him, but by way of the ambulatory.
     On the front pew to the left of the center aisle, a series of sequential numbers, circled in red, had been painted side by side. They were spaced approximately as people would have been if any had been sitting there. Farthest to the left was the number 2, and the last number, nearest the center aisle, was 6.
     Joey felt as though spiders were crawling on the back of his neck, but his hand found none there.
     On the pew to the right of the center aisle, the red numbers continued in sequence - 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 - to the far side of the church.
     "Twelve," he brooded.
     Joining him at the sanctuary railing, Celeste said softly, "What's wrong?"
     "The woman on the altar ..."
     "Beverly."
     He stared intently at the red numbers on the pews, which now seemed as radiant as signs of the Apocalypse.
     "Joey? What about her? What is it?"
     Joey was still puzzling it out, standing in the shadow of truth but not quite able to see the whole icy structure of it. "He painted the number one and then put her on top of it."
     "P.J. did?"
     "Yeah."
     "Why?"
     A hard blast of wind battered the old church, and a draft swept through the nave. The faintly lingering scent of stale incense and the stronger smell of mildew were swept away, and the draft brought with it the stink of sulfur.
     Joey said, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
     Clearly puzzled by the question, she shook her head. "No."
     "Does anyone else live with you and your folks, like maybe a grandparent, anyone?"
     "No. Just the three of us."
     "Beverly's one of twelve."
     "Twelve what?"
     He pointed at Celeste, and his hand shook. "Then your family - two, three, four. Who else still lives in Coal Valley?"
     "The Dolans."
     "How many of them?"
     "Five in their family."
     "Who else?"
     "John and Beth Bimmer. John's mother, Hannah, lives with them."
     "Three. Three Bimmers, five Dolans, plus you and your folks. Eleven. Plus her, there on the altar." With a sweep of his hand, he indicated the numbers on the pews. "Twelve."
     "Oh, God."
     "I don't need any psychic flash to see where he's going with this one. The number twelve must appeal to him for the obvious reason. Twelve apostles, all dead and lined up in a deconsecrated church. All of them paying silent