“If there wasn’t the possibility of this connecting to those murder cases, I wouldn’t be doing this,”
Anthony said, for about the tenth time.
“You’re the one who told me about the deposition,” Teag said. “Flora Beam was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial because she raved about demons and ghosts and claimed that she had to kill Fred Kenner because he was possessed.”
I knew that Teag had spent the afternoon online, using his magic and the darker recesses of the Internet to get a look at the court records regarding Flora’s testimony. It wasn’t hard to see why the judge ruled her unable to stand trial, with talk about demons demanding blood sacrifices, malicious ghosts, haunted objects and supernatural menace. But to Teag and me, Flora was dead-on. What she said she witnessed would put any normal person around the bend.
“I saw photos from the trial,” Teag said, turning toward Anthony, who was driving. I sat in the back.
“Not many people ever showed up on Flora’s side of the courtroom. But there was one man who was there every day. Fifty-ish, balding, looked like he might have been ex-military. Any idea who he was?”
Anthony shook his head. “Probably a friend or relative. There wouldn’t be a record of who attended if they weren’t part of the proceedings.”
Teag had shown me the photos, and we both agreed the older man’s consistent presence raised questions. Was he a loyal friend, sticking with Flora despite the awful testimony, or one of Moran’s people, sent to keep an eye on things?
Anthony coached us on how to get past security. Teag and I had dressed up, looking like paralegals in our spiffy business suits. It was interesting watching the up-and-coming young lawyer in his element.
Teag just grinned, proud of his partner.
The interior of the psychiatric hospital tried to be homey looking, in a high-security institutional kind of way. Meaning that the room where individuals committed to the hospital could have supervised visits had upholstered furnishings instead of hard plastic prison chairs, but the couches, tables and chairs were all bolted to the floor.
An aide brought Flora out to meet us. I caught my breath. Teag had shown me the employee photo in the Stor-Your-Own database that had been taken when Flora was hired. She had been a plump, grandmotherly looking woman with gray hair, cheerful blue eyes and a welcoming smile. In the photos from the trial, she had looked understandably haggard from stress. But now, with her baggy state facility jumpsuit, handcuffs and the ankle manacles that hobbled her, she looked emaciated and haunted, like someone who has stared into hell and found something staring back.
“Hello, Flora,” Anthony said in his kindest tone. “We have some questions for you about what happened at the storage unit.”
I met Flora’s gaze and saw madness there, but I also saw intelligence. Maybe the madness was a form of self-defense, I thought. Maybe it’s how normal people deal with finding out there really are monsters under the bed.
“I said everything I mean to say,” Flora replied. She didn’t sound belligerent, just weary. No doubt she had done her best to warn people of the danger, alert them to the real source of the problem, only to have her testimony disregarded out of hand and her reports mocked.
“Have you ever heard of a man named Corban Moran?” I asked.
Flora slowly turned to look me in the eyes. “Best you forget you ever heard that name.”
“Did he do business with Fred Kenner? Was he around the storage facility?” I hoped Flora would trust me, woman-to-woman. I saw wariness in her expression, along with the longing to have someone, anyone, believe her.
“Yes,” she said. “To both questions. And when he showed up, all hell broke loose.” “What about Russ Landrieu?” Teag asked. “Did he and Moran cross paths?”
A pained look came over Flora’s face, and she began to rock back and forth in her chair. The aide started toward us from where he waited by the door, but Anthony shook his head and the man withdrew.
“Oh, Lordy. Oh, Lordy,” Flora said. “Yes, Mr. Landrieu and his folks used to come by when they went out on their boat. Nice fellow. Always waved when he came in or out, paid his bill on time, never caused any trouble. When I found out he was a celebrity with all those treasure dives, I asked him for an autograph. He seemed to get a kick out of that.”
For someone who had been portrayed as a raving lunatic at the trial, Flora was calm and well-spoken.
Then again, so are most serial killers, I reminded myself. Intuition could be mistaken, but I didn’t sense that Flora was dangerous. If Kenner really had been possessed, she might have done us a public service in getting rid of him, although I suspected Moran had done the killing and let Flora take the fall.
“What about Landrieu and Moran?” I prompted. Flora’s mind seemed to wander, and I wondered if she couldn’t remember, or didn’t want to.
“The last time I saw Mr. Landrieu, he and his team came out to get their things. He told me that this was the ‘big one’, the dive that was going to put them in the big time,” she said. She rocked back and forth as she talked, and her palms ran up and down her forearms, self-soothing her way through memories that had caused her plenty of trouble.
“Mr. Moran was there,” Flora recalled. “And they had a big argument, him and Mr. Landrieu. I was up in the office, so I couldn’t hear what it was about, but I could see them arguing on the surveillance cameras.” She shook her head. “That was a bad thing to do. You don’t want to argue with Mr. Moran.”
“How did Moran know Kenner?” I probed.
Flora shivered. “Moran’s trouble,” she whispered. “And Mr. Kenner didn’t need more problems. I figured Mr. Moran loaned him money, since Mr. Kenner had a lot of people looking for him to pay them.” She leaned forward. “I don’t mean bill collectors – they called, too. I mean guys who would throw a brick through your window when you were late with your payment.”
“Did Moran store anything at the units?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Flora said, and I saw her gaze grow distant, as if she was retreating into herself.
I leaned forward. “Yes, I do. Because the thing that killed Mr. Kenner is back, and it’ll keep on killing until we know enough about Moran to stop him.”
Relief warred with the need to shield herself from what she had seen. “You believe… about the thing I saw? The demon?”
I nodded. “I’ve seen it too, Flora. We both have. We’re going to stop it, but we need to know what you saw – what you really saw.”
We had read her deposition, but it was clear that the claims she made seemed so far-fetched that the attending psychologist and lawyers had taken it with a grain of salt. It was also possible that Moran had somehow managed to tamper with the evidence. I wanted to hear it straight from Flora’s lips.
Flora drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. “All right,” she said. “But it ain’t pretty.”
“I know,” I said. “But we need to hear it. All of it. Please, don’t leave anything out. It’s important.”
Flora’s arrest paperwork said she was sixty-two, but she looked at least ten years older since the trial.
Outside of work, Flora had volunteered with the local garden club, collected canned goods for the food bank and helped out at her neighborhood animal shelter. Nothing in her past would have suggested she would be convicted of murder, especially of such a gruesome killing. Now, as she mustered the courage to revisit her story, I saw strength in her features that even madness could not erase.
“Mr. Kenner wasn’t a mean man,” Flora said. “He was just weak. Took the easy way. Money got tight and trouble came. He got scared. Didn’t know what to do. Then Moran showed up with lots of money. Mr. Kenner was in so deep, he’d have bargained with the devil himself.”