“Thank you,” Sara replied, stepping inside. “That sounds perfect for a day like today.”
The sheriff followed her in and, while Mrs. Whitney closed the door behind them, they took off their coats. She hung them in a closet so as not to mar the immaculate house. It looked more like a museum than anything else.
“I’m afraid that my husband was called away at the last moment to meet with a client,” the woman said. “So it will just be the three of us.”
Sara glanced at the sheriff, who didn’t seem at all surprised. It was Saturday morning. She suspected that Julianna Whitney’s father simply didn’t want to talk to a stranger about his vanished daughter. Though Sara did not like the pretense this forced on Mrs. Whitney-the poor woman shouldn’t have to lie for her husband-she understood.
“That’s all right. We won’t take up too much of your time, anyway,” Sheriff Norris said.
“Oh, please,” Mrs. Whitney said, waving away his concern. “Time is all I have, these days.”
She brought out a tray with a pot of cocoa and a plate of shortbread cookies. Sara had never tasted better hot chocolate. It had to have been made from scratch and she let it warm her. Very little could.
When they had all sipped at the cocoa for a few minutes and the sheriff was on his third shortbread cookie-this strange pantomime of civilized behavior a soothing mask over their grief-Mrs. Whitney fixed Sara with her gaze.
“I’m glad of the company,” she said. “But I think perhaps it’s time for you to tell me what it was you wanted to talk about.”
Sara managed a smile as she set down her cup. “More than anything, I just wanted to meet you. I’m…well, I’m making plans to go back to Atlanta soon. That’s where I live. I don’t think there’s anything else I can do here, and I have responsibilities.”
“Of course you do,” Mrs. Whitney said kindly, but there was a kind of sad envy in her expression, as though she wished that she too had responsibilities that would take her away from this place and the specter of her daughter’s disappearance.
As she tried to continue, Sara’s breath hitched and she paused, fighting not to cry.
Mrs. Whitney reached out and laid a hand over hers. Whatever differences were between them-age, social status-none of it mattered. As of last December, they were now far more alike than they were different.
Sara nodded, though the woman had said nothing.
“I just thought maybe you could tell me a little about Julianna,” she said, studying Mrs. Whitney. She gnawed her bottom lip a moment, then shrugged and gave a soft laugh. “I guess I thought if I knew her, knew who she was, I mean, then I’d feel like maybe my dad wasn’t out there alone. Wherever he is.”
Julianna’s mother put a hand across her heart. Her eyes were moist.
“I think that’s a lovely idea.”
Jackson Norris sat and sipped cocoa and ate shortbread cookies while the two women talked. They shared stories about Julianna, and about Sara’s father, and before they knew it more than an hour had passed.
Sara saw the clock and sighed.
“We should go. I really wanted the sheriff here to introduce us, but I hate to have taken so much of your time, and his.”
“Oh, Jackson doesn’t mind,” Mrs. Whitney said. “Do you, sheriff?”
“Not at all,” he said. But Sara knew that the man had other things to do. There were politics involved in his position, but there was police work as well.
“Still, we should go.”
Mrs. Whitney stood up with them and fetched their coats. As the sheriff put his on, the woman’s hands fidgeted.
“I presume there’s nothing new, Jackson?” she said.
Sheriff Norris zipped his coat. “It’s on my mind every day, Margaret. And it will be until I find them.”
The woman nodded, and then a frown creased her brow.
Sara noticed. “What is it, Mrs. Whitney?”
One hand fluttered in front of her. “Nothing, I’m sure. It’s just that I’ve been thinking lately about Friedle.”
“Who?” Sara asked, turning to the sheriff.
“Marc Friedle,” he replied. “He was the Bascombes’ household manager; basically, the butler, valet, driver, and everything else in one. He hired and fired gardeners, cooks, painters, that sort of thing.”
The sheriff looked at Mrs. Whitney. “Margaret, you know I looked into Friedle. We have no reason to suspect him of anything. His fingerprints were everywhere, but he practically lived in the house. There’s no evidence he had anything to do with Max Bascombe’s death or the disappearances of Max’s kids.”
The woman nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. But more and more, lately, I’ve been thinking about him, and about how odd it seems to me that he rushed out of Kitteridge so quickly when Max Bascombe was killed. Oliver and Collette had vanished, and everyone was searching for them frantically. But Friedle was the manager of the house. It was his responsibility, and he left so fast it was almost like he was the one person who never expected them to come back.”
Sara turned toward Sheriff Norris. A dark twist of suspicion began to tighten in her chest and she knew the moment she saw the sheriff’s brows knit together that he had the very same feeling.
It seemed her return to Atlanta might be delayed after all.
Halliwell felt the anger burning inside the Sandman. The creature had no veins through which poison might flow, but the anger churned in him just the same. It was part of the storm of his essence, just as Halliwell himself had become part of the Sandman. He was integral to the creeping, murderous thing, and its iniquity stained his soul. The Dustman was still there as well, a grave voice rising up from within Halliwell’s own mind like an echo down a canyon or a conscience long subdued.
Subdued, Halliwell thought. Is that it? Have I been subdued?
The question rankled. He had never been subdued in his life. Oh, he’d taken orders from superior officers and employers, certainly. But he had never kept silent when the situation called for someone to speak up. He wondered if that had changed. Between discretion and cowardice, where did one draw the line?
At murder, his conscience told him. Or perhaps it was the voice of the Dustman, the monster’s grim, less savage brother. One draws the goddamn line at murder-at the bloodthirsty mutilation of children.
Of course. Such a thing should not even have had to be considered. What kind of man would hesitate to agree with such an assertion?
But he was adrift within the Sandman’s essence and powerless. Briefly, when he had realized his fate, Halliwell hoped that perhaps he would be the poison that would infect and cripple the monster. But the Sandman didn’t seem even to notice his presence, or that of the Dustman.
It was the worst horror imaginable. It was Halliwell’s own poison, twisting his heart with hatred and his mind with hopelessness. He had heard the screams of the Sandman’s victims and seen the terror in their eyes-seen the monster reflected in the mirror of children’s eyes, just before he plucked them out and placed them between his teeth.
The nightmare had no end. He could not command the hands that murdered or the black lips that pulled back in a leer. In every way that mattered, he was the Sandman. The atrocities were not within his control, but he suffered through each moment, mind screaming in silence.
Lemon-yellow eyes glanced upward at the sky. The moon was a sliver, the heavens sable black. The stars seemed withdrawn, as though they dared not come too close to the world of the legendary in these ugly days. The monster had learned that Oliver Bascombe was being held in the dungeon at the king’s palace in Palenque. Bascombe wasn’t going anywhere, so he would kill Kitsune first. He would shred the fox-woman’s flesh, just as soon as he found her.
A rasp accompanied the Sandman as he slipped through the nighttime streets. The village slept, but fitfully. Spectral, little more than a wraith, he moved toward a building whose first floor was a candy shop. A soft glow illuminated the eyebrow windows set into the gables of the roof-an attic room, a candle still burning.