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“But that’s the least he has to worry about.” North kept the voice recorder running on his phone, but he opened the video from Kingston. “Funny you should mention the Cottonmouth Club. That place is a fucking cesspool. Every time I turn around, I’m stepping in that shit. We’re not here about those girls. We’re here about one girl. Remember Ambyr, Gid?”
He played the video. The screen was tiny, and even at full volume, the phone’s speaker couldn’t fill the vast space of the sanctuary. But it was enough. Gid’s breathing became labored, and he rocked unsteadily, hands clutching the lapels of his jacket. Jed watched, his expression shifting from incomprehension to shock. Only Mrs. Moss seemed unaffected. If anything, she grew whiter, colder, a frozen statue of herself. On the hand she was using to keep Pastor Moss upright, the bones stood out in pale lines under her skin.
When the video ended, no one spoke. The sibilant movement of air continued in the background. North thought he could even feel it, like the darkness of the sanctuary was moving too, brushing his cheek, and he couldn’t tell if it was his imagination. He thought, for a moment, of the man in black, the way he had moved.
“What the fuck did you do?” Jed demanded.
Gid started to cry.
“You need to come with us now,” North said. “You killed Ambyr. You arranged with Philip Welch to kill Dalton Weber. Because of you, Sheriff Engels is dead, and Adam Ezell is dead, and Philip Welch is dead. Time to go, Gid.”
But Gid stood there, struggling to get his breath as silent sobs wracked him. Mrs. Moss was still staring at them. Pastor Moss began to tip; he looked like he was about to slide right out of his suit jacket.
Jed recovered first. “This is ridiculous.” He fumbled the walkie to his mouth and said, “Security to the sanctuary right now.”
Gid stood up straight. His breathing slowed. His face relaxed, and with one hand, he dried his face.
Jed stepped toward North and Shaw, saying, “I don’t know what that video is or how you made it look like that, but you can believe Chief Cassidy will get to the bottom of this, and when he does, the truth will come out—”
He was mid-shout when Gid pulled out a gun and shot him in the back of the head.
A mist of blood—North only allowed himself to think of the blood—touched North’s face. It was already cool by the time it reached him, and so fine that he couldn’t see it. Just the sensation of cold. It made him think of a ride in an amusement park. A haunted house, maybe. Some dumb trick on set.
Shaw made a horrible noise.
Jed was still walking. Not really, North’s brain tried to inform him. Because he was dead. But for a moment, the movement of his body continued the illusion. What looked like another energetic step toward them became a fall. The sound of his body hitting the carpet was swallowed up by the vast space of the sanctuary.
Another, even softer thud came a moment later. Mrs. Moss had lost her grip. She was staring white-faced at Jed, and Pastor Moss looked like a rummage sale heap on the floor at her feet.
Gid was taking those huge, deep breaths as he swung the gun toward North and Shaw. North showed him his hands, holding nothing but the phone. Next to him, Shaw’s breathing was so quick and light that it made North think of the sound of skates cutting ice. He wanted to look. He needed to look, to see Shaw’s face. But Gid was staring down the length of the gun, using one arm to clean the gore from his cheek.
“You need to slow down and think—” North began.
“Jed!” Mrs. Moss said. It wasn’t a shout, not really, and her voice quavered on the single syllable. Then North understood the sound. A call. Like she was calling upstairs because he’d overslept. “Jed!”
“They made me kill her,” Gid said.
His momentary calm seemed to have deserted him, and his chest heaved. The gun wobbled, the muzzle drifting towards Shaw and then yanking back to North again. Shaw was still doing that horrible ice-skating breath. A vast, black sound—that rushing noise of air moving through darkness—blew through North’s head, and he couldn’t find words, couldn’t think of anything. There was the gun. There was Shaw. And he was paralyzed.
“Because I ran my mouth,” Gid said, as though that explained anything. “Because it was all my fault. And then Adam called, and he was going to tell everyone, and I knew I’d fucked up. So, I called him. I told him he had to help me make it go away.” He stopped. His mouth hung open, his breath rasping unevenly. “I didn’t want anybody to get hurt.”
“Nobody has to get hurt,” North said. A part of him couldn’t even believe he managed the words. His tongue was dry and stiff inside his mouth. That rushing noise was like a high wind, carrying everything away.
“Jed,” Mrs. Moss said, her voice breaking this time. She stood and took a step toward her fallen son, but it carried her into her fallen husband. Pastor Moss was tangled around her feet, and Mrs. Moss went down. She screamed, the sound furious and frustrated and helpless, and began to kick at the old man.
“I didn’t want anybody to get hurt,” Gid said again, and his eyes were pleading, focused on North with an intensity that demanded a response.
“Put the gun down.” North tried to swallow. “Put the gun down, and we’ll figure this out. Nobody has to get hurt.”
Gid’s hand steadied. The gun steadied. He smiled, sad and tired and disbelieving. And shook his head. Tiny drops of blood fanned up across his temple and into the rockabilly hair. “You have no idea what they’re going to do to you,” he said. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
And then he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
26
North woke in darkness and listened.
Shaw’s breathing was flat, even, regular. Close. In the tiny motel bed, he must have only been inches from North. And awake. Awake in the dark. And alone. And not close at all. Lightyears away from North. That was the gap, the amount of time it took light to cross darkness.
