Owen Keane 06 The Ordained by Terence Faherty

Author:Terence Faherty [Faherty, Terence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Terence Faherty
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

I figured I had ten minutes—the time it would take Fallon to drive us to Rapture—in which to complete an impossible task. I had to turn the DEA man, as a character in a spy novel might have put it. Or rather, I had to turn him back. Return him to my side, to Krystal’s side. Ten years might not have been enough time to get that done.

I didn’t waste a second on a sidelong approach. While we were still in Dix’s parking lot waiting for a truck to clear the lane, I said, “You’re judging Krystal too fast. You tend to do that. A few hours ago, you were sure Batsto was behind all of this. You were wrong then. I think you’re wrong now. Krystal could still need our help.”

“I’ll give her plenty of help if I ever find her again,” Fallon said. He was staring at the truck—a big semi—as it passed us, staring as though he hoped to see through its corrugated side.

“I thought of something else,” he said as we pulled onto the highway, “while I was listening to Deputy Dix yak on the phone back there.”

“What?” I asked.

“Wait; it’s a question. Think about this. Who first suggested to you that there might be a tie between Shipe’s vanishing act and the old Ordained legend about the rapture?”

“Krystal did,” I said, remembering the embarrassed way she’d brought up the idea in Shipe’s kitchen and the promise that had lured me down from Indy in the first place, the promise that the mystery had a religious angle.

“Good,” Fallon said. “That confirms my own experience. Now tell me how she could not be involved in those snatches when she was the one running around mumbo-jumboing them up with that Ordained bullshit.”

I thought about it—out loud, because the clock was ticking. “Krystal’s fascinated by the Ordained. They’re part of what she loves about this area. She’s attracted to them because they believe in something. She didn’t have anything like that growing up.”

Fallon grunted. “She was so fascinated by the rapture that she wove it into her own slicko sicko scheme.”

“Everybody around here knows that history. Anyone could have used it deliberately as a way of throwing Krystal or Haas or the whole town off track. Prestina Shipe could have.”

“Are you referring to Prestina Shipe, part-time cookie baker and the evil genius of Rapture? If you’re not careful, you’re going to start to sound obsessive.”

“That would make two of us,” I said.

Fallon braked hard and pulled the Explorer onto the shoulder. I’d won an indefinite time extension, but I didn’t congratulate myself just then.

One of Fallon’s rolled sleeves had come undone. He folded the cuff back while he steadied himself. “Look,” he said. “If I’m a little bitter about Dr. Bowden, I’m entitled to be.”

“You haven’t known her all that long.”

“What’s time got to do with it? How long did you know this Mary Fitzgerald woman before you decided you loved her?”

I opened my mouth, but that was all.

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