Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(78)

“You’re yelling, Billy,” she said.

“Mom,” said Dad, lowering his voice, “this is a private matter. Go back and watch TV.”

“I know what this is, Billy. It’s your own ghosts come to haunt you.”

Dad’s face drained of color and he wheeled on his wife. “You tell your mother to go sit down. Right now.”

Instead Gran turned to Melissa and Dana. “You should come and watch the TV. Someone you know is saying things you should hear.”

Before anyone could ask what that meant, Dana heard the sound of someone speaking, using the tone and meter people did when they were being interviewed. The voice was very familiar.

“… these were murders and not accidents,” said Corinda Howell. “Those dead children spoke to me in visions.”

Dana bolted from the table. Melissa hesitated for half a second, then followed, edging around Dad and Gran. On the big console TV in the living room, Corinda stood in front of Beyond Beyond wreathed by a dozen news microphones and the words BREAKING NEWS pasted across the bottom of the screen. She had makeup on and a beautiful batik dress and lots of turquoise jewelry.

“It was Maisie Bell who spoke to me first,” said Corinda. “She came to me in a dream and said that she had been murdered.”

The questions kept coming in, and Corinda answered them, detailing how she began having visions of the murders and saw the face of the killer in her mind.

“At first he disguised himself,” explained Corinda, “projecting an image of one of the Watcher angels, a grigori, and then as a nephilim, the offspring of an angel who married a human woman in ancient Canaan. Then I understood right away that these projections were part of his delusions, that this was how he saw himself. Psychotics are like that, you know. Over time, though, I was able to break through his defenses and pull off the mask and see his true face. That’s when I knew that I had to come straight to the sheriff’s department in order to prevent this madman from doing more harm to the beautiful children of our community.”

“She’s doing it,” whispered Melissa, grabbing Dana’s hand, “she’s taking the fall for you … for all of it.”

“And that led me to consider other ways in which the killer’s religious mania could have manifested in his crimes,” continued Corinda. “Maisie Bell had appeared in a vision to a girl at her school, and it was immediately clear to me that she had received the wounds of Jesus, that the killer had tried to simulate stigmata. I made the intuitive leap to the other deaths, and I told the sheriff’s department to look for wounds that correspond with the deaths of the apostles, specifically James the Greater, James the Less, Saint Peter, Doubting Thomas, and even Judas.”

The image cut away to the news anchor in the studio.

“We’ll have more from Corinda Howell, owner of Beyond Beyond on Route 302A, which is Main Street in Craiger. Miss Howell is a professional psychic who reached out to authorities today to help them investigate the case of the string of tragic deaths of teenagers. And this just in,” said the anchor, turning to accept a sheet of crisp paper. “Sources within the Craiger sheriff’s department have issued an arrest warrant for Angelo Luz, a nineteen-year-old Latino male. Luz is wanted in connection with the deaths of those six teenagers.”

“Oh my God…,” whispered Dana.





CHAPTER 71

Scully Residence

April 6, 12:18 A.M.

Melissa crept into Dana’s room after midnight. She closed the door and came into Dana’s bed and under the blankets with her, pulling them all the way over their heads the way they had when both of them were little girls. The rest of the house was dead quiet now that Dad had stopped yelling, and he had yelled a lot and for a long, long time. Eventually, he had exiled the sisters to their rooms and there were growled promises of consequences to come. Mom tried to intervene, but that turned into a more private war behind their bedroom door, and the muffled thunder of it filled the house for nearly forty minutes.

Now Dana and Melissa lay with their heads on the same pillow, faces inches apart, talking quietly in the dark.

“Why did she do it?” asked Dana. “Why would Corinda do this?”

“Do what?” said Melissa.

“Lie like that.”

Melissa shook her head. “Is that really how you see it? ’Cause I don’t. I think what she did was smart and brave.”

Dana propped herself up on one elbow. “Brave? Smart? How?”

“She took as much of this off you as possible.”

“Right, she made it all about her. Sunlight was going to go to the sheriff. She must have stolen the idea from him.”

“That’s ridiculous. And what does it matter who told the cops? That’s exactly what we wanted to happen,” insisted Melissa. “How does it matter to you who actually talked to the sheriff? You don’t own all this, Dana. This is the real world. Sunlight would have done it the same way, which means he’d have left you out of it, too.”

“Sunlight would have done it without TV reporters and being the center of attention. The way Corinda did it was cheap. It was all ‘look at me.’ It was all about her taking credit for everything.”

“Credit? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Corinda made it look like she was the one solving this case,” said Dana, thumping her mattress with a fist.