“ So I've been told.”
“ Billy Hawk is suspected of being the trigger man in at least one if not all of the Sioux Falls executions, Lucas.”
“ Christ… the…” Billy Hawk was Lucas's mawkish cousin who would do anything for money and anything to please Zachary Roundpoint.
Jessica Coran hung up, and Lucas listened to the dial tone. It felt like the voice of a nightmare gnome screwing with his brain. The drink and peyote designed to erase his physical pain-pain like a badge he wore from a near-death experience while on the job-were now conspiring to create hallucination. He pictured his cousin in the room, gun in hand, executing an enemy felt to be a threat to Zachary Roundpoint. Lucas focused on the victim of Roundpoint's and Billy Hawk's combined wrath, the man on his knees with hands tied and ankles tied, bent into the deacon's position of prayer. Someone who deserved a bullet to the brain for having literally ripped a young boy apart, using pickup trucks and rope. But the man in the pathetic position now looked up, and his face revealed itself, and it was Lucas's own face staring back at him.
Jessica Coran hung up and leaned back into her chair in her office at Quantico, Virginia, giving some thought to Lucas's predicament, and what a now-healthy Dr. Kim Desinor had told her about the Texas Cherokee detective. Kim had had a full recovery only after DeCampe had been found alive and saved from Isaiah Purdy and Jimmy Lee's death grasp. While her “psychic disease” had halted on Jessica's lie, it had not improved until the reality of DeCampe's nightmare had come to an end.
Kim had taken a long, deserved leave, but before leaving for St. Sebastian Island, she had confided in Jessica that she had given some dream time over to the Claude Lightfoot case. Even while suffering with the psychic wounds that had threatened to kill her, even as she was in a coma, she said, “I saw someone like Lucas do the killings, but in my heart I knew it was not Lucas Stonecoat. He is not responsible for the vengeance murders being wreaked on Lightfoot's killers.”
Jessica now wanted Stonecoat to know that he could count on her, or call on her at any time for any reason in the future. He had proven a valuable ally now in two cases he had been associated with. She feared, however, that he now thought she had him on tape, and with the current level of paranoia normal in a person in his position, he most likely only heard what he wanted to hear.
“ You may go down for this, Stonecoat, but not by my hand,” she said to the empty room.