Hope's Peak (Harper and Lane #1)(60)

He asks if he can come in to speak with him. Lester steps to one side to let him in and the man introduces himself as Hal Crenna. “Maybe you haven’t heard of me, but I’ve known about you for a while. I’m your half brother. We share the same daddy.”

Lester shakes his head, stepping back from the man, but it’s undeniable. The physical resemblance between the two of them is uncanny. “My daddy’f dead . . .”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“Mama ain’t never told me about no half brother,” Lester mumbles, trying to wrap his head around it. “Like I faid, Daddy been in the ground yearf now.”

The man smiles. It makes him look like the devil incarnate. “Weren’t your daddy, fella.”

“What d’you mean?” Lester asks. He holds the door open for his visitor. “I think you better leave, mifter.”

“Don’t be so hasty.” The man produces a photograph. “Here. Have it.”

Lester’s mama appears at the top of the stairs. “Who’s that?”

“Vifitor, Mama,” Lester calls up. “Fayf he’f my half brother.”

His mama’s face twists into a furious knot of intense hatred, and she hangs over the banister, pointing one bony claw at their caller. “Don’t listen to him, baby!”

“I’ll not impose any longer,” Hal Crenna says. He heads through the door, then turns back at the threshold. “I’m telling the truth when I say we got the same daddy, Lester. And he’s watching over you. We all are. Making sure you don’t go getting yourself in trouble so deep you can’t pull yourself back out.”

Lester knows what he’s getting at. The girls. He makes their crown and, after, he gives it to them.

“Lester, get rid of that motherfucker!”

Lester fills the doorway. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You better go.”

Hal Crenna nods his head in parting. “As you like. But you just watch yourself, Lester. Everyone’s got needs, and Lord knows I ain’t got nothing against culling a few niggers . . . but watch yourself.”

Lester watches him go and wonders if there’s any truth to what he’s saying. But like most things, the incident is forgotten about soon enough.

Killing once in a blue moon satisfied his urges. But it was never enough. Before long, he was hungry again, yet his mother held him at bay. Her needs, the burden of caring for her in the beginning, was enough to keep him occupied, though he still thought of the girls.

Then, she was admitted to the nursing home and gradually deteriorated. Still, she kept him busy, insisting he visit every day. This left him no time for his girls.

When his mother finally passed, Lester sought solace in the arms of Ceeli, who was eager to give it to him—when Mack was out of town.

The hunger ate away at him. And when he killed, he tasted the lust in his mouth, and he killed again. It was easier. When his mother died, he realized he could finally do as he wanted. He could become the man he’d always wanted to be—the mask had always hidden his true self. He knew that soon he wouldn’t need it.

The darkness grows, yawning wide to swallow him whole. Ida lets go, watches him fall, screaming, consumed by the black until there is nothing of him left but the echo of his voice.

A tether snaps, a filament to which Ida was connected with the monster. She is pulled back out of the darkness as surely as he falls toward it.

To the dark ether. Silent and cold. Endless.

Now his scream has faded and there is no sound, nothing but the light growing around her as she surfaces.

Ida remembers telling Harper that death was warm sunlight from that other place . . . brighter and brighter until there’s nothing else.

But, as she wakes on the floor of the house, Harper asking if she is alright, the smell of gunpowder, death, and sweat filling her nose, the sound of approaching sirens in her ears, the sound of her heart . . . she knows she was wrong. The warm light that pulled her back from oblivion was not death.

It was life.





EPILOGUE

Captain Morelli surveys the scene, John Dudley at his side, coordinating the officers who have arrived to prevent anyone going anywhere near vital evidence.

Morelli looks at where Stu lies in a puddle of his own blood, and he cannot help but feel his heart sink. “Shit.”

“He was a good man, sir,” Dudley offers.

Morelli glares at him. “I don’t think you’ve got a right to pass comment, son, after what you pulled.”

Dudley looks at his shoes. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Look at me.”

Dudley does as he’s told.

“I hear Durham has a spot open. I think you’re gonna take it. It’d be best all round, don’t you think?”

“I—”

Morelli points at Stu. A crime-scene photographer is snapping away, trying to catch the detective from all angles. “That is the price you pay for causing what you did. Be thankful that’s all that’s happening to you.”

The color drains from Dudley’s face and he walks outside. Morelli treads carefully around the blood and mess on the floor and hunkers down next to Stu.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” he mumbles.



“Harper!” a familiar voice says. She feels someone take her hand, looks down, and sees Albie at the side of the gurney. “Thank God you’re okay.”