Read Online A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online Page A

guess.”
    “It is,” he confesses. “Missing children cases almost always involve a parent, family member, neighbor, or pedophile with a prison record. It’s a matter of investigating the home situation and canvassing the neighborhood for suspects.”
    “The same might hold true here.”
    “It might,” Stiel says. “If she was brought here for a reason.”
    “It’s a working theory.”
    Thunder performs a contrapuntal to our voices, booming during pauses, in a slow but rhythmic collision like waves striking the shore. He’s unnerved by the noise, and after three days of it, so am I. He’s so emotionally battered that he’ll be able to deal with the townsfolk’s customs and the bad attitude of the granny witches. There’s distrust among their kind, but anyone with eyes like his has a better chance of being welcomed.
    “She still doesn’t remember anything?” he asks.
    “That’s what she says.”
    He nods. “You sound as if you don’t believe her.”
    “I suppose it’s possible.”
    “But unlikely.”
    “Yes.”
    Nick Stiel moves slowly, shifting in his seat, facing the window as rivulets of intense rain streak sideways across the glass. “You know these people. Are there any suspects?”
    “I’m not even sure a crime’s been committed.”
    He looks at the list of names. “What the hell is the Holy Order of Flying Walendas?”
    “A monastery nearby.”
    “Sounds more like a cult.”
    “I suppose it is.”
    “How might they be involved?”
    “Seekers are drawn to the abbey.”
    “Seekers?”
    “As I said. People looking for something in their lives. God, faith, a retreat from the cities maybe. Some stay on but most don’t. This girl was found out at a place we call the flat rock. It’s an ancient slab and might have some pagan or pseudoreligious significance.”
    Something very much like a smile nearly lifts the edges of his lips. “You really believe that?”
    “My father did.”
    Despite his current mental state, he’s subtle, superior, and already on the case. Stiel still has his instincts. He can ask me anything but knows that I might be the culprit myself, playing games with lives, looking to be captured. He’s judging reactions and trying hard to get a bead on me.
    “What do you think happened?” he asks.
    I could tell him that the girl was brought out to the flat rock in order to be sacrificed to an old god or quite possibly a new one. Or that she’s a demon in disguise. Or a nymphet who’s left a trail of smashed middle-aged men exactly like him in her wake. She’s only playing eight. Eve could be thirteen or eighteen or eternal.
    “That’s what I’m paying you to find out, Stiel.”
    I can see him sticking around in Kingdom Come whether he solves this matter or not. He’ll have to spend a lot of time interviewing the girl and talking with Lily, his misery alive within him but his lust making itself known. Each day in Lily’s small empty house, sitting in front of her bare walls and facing that stern glance, watching the vague proportions of her body. Always seeing more of her, the many sides of Lily, that slope of her big tits, the turn of her ankle, the way she snatches her glasses off her face and grips the plastic arm between her teeth, tongue darting.
    In six weeks they’ll probably be married or dead, and if Eve’s true nature is not discovered, he might find himself becoming her father.
     
    H UDDLING IN THE DIM RECESSES OF L EADBETTER ’ S , not caring about the lightning strikes in the hills or the fact that the floods are now high enough to cover their license plates, they continue to meet and share pain. This is custom. This is ritual.
    Verbal Raynes, having his third pitcher of beer, throws his mug against the wall with the wild boar’s head on it and shouts, “God damn it, I wish Gloria would go back to her husband!”
    The others respond with deep sympathy and soothing, comforting words. “Fuck that bitch!”
    Verbal scratches at his three-day