Curse of the Painted Lady (The Anlon Cully Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  “Do you think the Munuorians were somehow involved with the clock?” Anlon asked.

  “If they weren’t directly, I think they may have known about the culture,” Cesar said. “The missing piece, the answer I’d like to find is — what was so important about the movement of stars for thousands of years to relatively primitive people?”

  Anlon thought of Pebbles’ description of the Munuorian Fandis and their religious-like dedication to watching the Breylif constellation. “Maybe they weren’t tracking the movement of constellations, per se. Maybe they were looking for something else?”

  “Like what?” Cesar asked.

  “Changes in constellations. Their shapes, the brightness of their stars, the spacing between their stars,” Anlon said. “Maybe they were watching for asteroids? Maybe the clock served as their early warning system?”

  There was a commotion behind them and Anlon turned to look. The maître d’ had run into a waiter carrying a tray laden with someone’s dinner, spilling the dishes of food onto two sets of diners. Anlon winced and said to Cesar, “Ouch.”

  As Anlon turned back around to concentrate on his dinner, he heard a voice call, “Dr. Cully?”

  Surprised, Anlon looked up to see the maître d’. The man was out of breath, his suit coat covered in mashed potatoes, and his face looked like he’d seen a ghost. Before Anlon could speak, the man said, “I have a Dr. Wallace on the phone at the front. He says he needs to speak to you immediately. He says it’s an emergency.”

  Chapter 7 – Eve of Destruction

  Burlington, Vermont

  September 27

  Jennifer was only a mile outside Burlington when Detective Hall called back. She answered immediately. “Hi, Tim. Thanks for calling me back.”

  “Hey, Jennifer. How could I not? You know who our perp is?”

  “Um, sort of. I know, well, I’m pretty sure she’s the same person who killed Anabel Simpson. I think the weapon she used at the bank was the same one she used to torture Anabel.”

  Hall was silent for a moment. In the background, Jennifer could hear other people talking. Hall returned to the line and said, “Hold on a sec.”

  She listened to the muffled sound of Hall speaking to someone else. When he came back on the line, he said, “I’m going to put you on speaker. I’ve got my captain here and a couple other detectives.”

  A second later there was a click and he said, “Go ahead, Jen. Repeat what you just said.”

  “Okay, no problem.” Clearing her throat, she said, “I’m pretty sure the Middlebury suspect is the same person who murdered Anabel Simpson. From the video, I think the weapon she used to escape today was the same she used to torture Anabel. They’re called Dreylaeks.”

  “This is Captain Bennett,” said a gravelly voice through the phone. “Tell me about the weapon. You called them dreadlocks?”

  “No. They’re pronounced ‘dray-locks.’ They are two magnetic stones, each about the size of drink coasters and roughly the thickness of a cookie. When you slam or rub them together, they can create different effects, say, a blast of air or directed electrical charges. They are only effective at close range — no more than thirty feet. At least, that’s as far as I’ve seen them work. She might be able to do more with them; she’s got a lot more experience using them than I do,” Jennifer said.

  “You’ve used these things?” Bennett asked.

  “Uh-huh. I’ve got a pair with me now. I can show them to you, if you want.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Um, driving south on 7, right now. Looks like I’m coming up on a town called Charlotte.”

  There was more low-voice conversation on Hall’s end of the line before Bennett spoke again. “Hall tells me you used to be a detective with Mass PD.”

  “Yes, lieutenant detective, to be accurate. Worked out of the Berkshire Detective Unit in Pittsfield.”

  “For Bruno Gambelli?”

  “Yes. You know him?”

  “I do indeed. He’s a good man.” Bennett paused, then asked, “He’ll vouch for you?”

  The question surprised Jennifer and she hesitated before answering. Her resignation from the force had occurred under controversial circumstances, a fact Hall must have learned and passed to Bennett. “I believe he will. I’m on good terms with him.”

  After a few seconds’ delay, Bennett said, “All right, Stevens, get down here as fast as you can. I’m going to give you back over to Detective Hall.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Through the phone, Jennifer heard Bennett speak to Hall. “Give her directions to the station. Make sure you alert the team at the junction with Route 17 to let her through. Tell her to use my name.”

  A moment later Bennett came back on the line. “One question before Hall jumps back on. You said you know the suspect?”

  “I don’t know her personally, but I know a bit about her backstory,” Jennifer said.

  “What’s her name?” Bennett asked.

  Jennifer had hoped to delay the conversation until she could do it in person, but she understood the urgency to discover the suspect’s identity. “The only name I know her by is Muran, but I’m sure she’s using an alias.”

  “Spell it,” Bennett said. Jennifer gave her best guess on the spelling. He asked if Muran was a first or last name. She told him she thought it was her first name, but she couldn’t be certain. He followed with a question about Muran’s last known address. Jennifer said she didn’t know and told him it was her understanding that Muran moved frequently. Finally, Bennett grumbled, “All right, get a move on, Stevens. Every second counts.”

  Middlebury, Vermont

  When she arrived at the Middlebury police headquarters, Jennifer couldn’t help but recall her days as an army M.P., for the small-town station had been converted into a battlefield command post. While armed officers guarded the cordoned perimeter, other officers hustled between the main HQ building and temporary tents erected in the station’s parking lot. The air was filled with sounds of radio chatter and conversation, and everyone in Jennifer’s view wore stern, intense expressions.

  A patrolman led Jennifer inside the headquarters and into a conference room where a dozen officials were gathered in three different groups. One group was positioned in front of a wall map while the other two groups engaged in separate conversations at opposite ends of the conference table. Jennifer spotted Detective Hall at the wall map and waved to him. He immediately tapped the shoulder of the white-haired man standing next to him, and they both broke away from the map group. Hall gave a brief introduction. “Jennifer, this is Captain Bennett. Captain Bennett, Jennifer Stevens.”

  While Hall spoke, Bennett eyed her up and down. Jennifer, clad in jeans and sweatshirt, suddenly felt underdressed in the room full of besuited and uniformed officers. Yet, if Bennett disapproved of her appearance, he didn’t show it on his face. “Good to meet you, Stevens.”

  “Thank you, Captain. Wish it were under different circumstances, but same here.”

  The captain nodded and turned to address the others in the room. “Folks, attention, please.”

  The groups silenced and all eyes turned toward Bennett. Jennifer recognized three of the people from the televised press conference. Colonel Springer, the VSP commander, was one of them. The other two were the Middlebury Police chief and the VSP public relations officer. Bennett placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “This here is Jennifer Stevens, a former detective from Mass PD. She’s got knowledge of the suspect’s weapon. She’s also the one who gave us the lead on the suspect’s name earlier.”

  To Jennifer, he said, “Under normal circumstances, we’d go around the room making introductions, but we don’t have time for that. We need your help and we need it fast. We think we’ve found the suspect. Before we try to nab her, we need to know more about the weapon she has. You brought it with you? The dray-locks, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Jennifer said. Her heart racing, she asked, “You found her?
Where?”

  “Later. The weapon — please show it to us.”

  “Okay, understood.”

  She reached inside her tote and retrieved the two Stones. She held them up for the group to see, then placed them on the table in front of her. The other people in the room converged around the Dreylaeks.

  “Williams,” said the Middlebury chief. “Do those look like what you saw?”

  A short, stocky uniformed officer stepped closer to the Stones. Leaning over the table, he said, “Can’t say for sure, Chief, but they look pretty damn close. Same color, about the same size, but I didn’t get much of a look at them before she attacked.”

  The chief looked unconvinced. Jennifer directed her gaze at him while pointing at the Stones. “I’m one hundred percent certain she used Dreylaeks.”

  “You said they’re stone?” Bennett said, recalling their earlier conversation.

  “Yes, magnetized stone.”

  “Is it military?” asked Colonel Springer, lifting the Stones.

  “They’re not necessarily intended to be weapons, but they can be used that way,” Jennifer said, wary of getting into too much detail about their lineage.

  “You ever seen anything like this, Bobby?” Springer asked, handing the Stones to a man dressed in a gray camouflage uniform. His black baseball cap read “S.W.A.T.”

  “No, sir. Never,” answered the man, turning one Stone over in his palm. He cast a skeptical eye at Jennifer. “These look more like skipping stones than a weapon to me. You’re telling me these stones can slice a car in two? Send it flying over a bridge and into the creek?”

  “Easily,” she answered, maintaining eye contact with the SWAT team leader. “I’m not very experienced using them, certainly nowhere near as experienced as Muran, but I’ve seen what they can do firsthand.”

  “Show us,” the SWAT leader said, exchanging “she’s full of shit” glances with Springer.

  “Um, here?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” the smirking officer said, handing the Stones back to Jennifer.

  “Not a good idea. I can do it outside, but it’ll cause a fire if I demonstrate in here.” Jennifer motioned for the group to follow her outside and started for the conference room door.

  The SWAT leader held up a hand. “Hold up. We don’t have time for that. Do it here.”

  Jennifer turned to Bennett. “Captain?”

  “Time’s a-wasting, people,” Springer interjected.

  “Go ahead, Stevens,” Bennett said.

  “Okay, but can someone please get a fire extinguisher?” Jennifer asked.

  She heard the SWAT leader chuckle as an officer left to retrieve a fire extinguisher. Jennifer had only been in the man’s presence for five minutes, but already she’d had enough of “Bobby.” With a smile, she asked him, “Want to be the test dummy?”

  “What?”

  Before the word finished spilling out of his mouth, Jennifer pointed her aim at his midsection and smashed the two Stones together. The gunshot-like sound caused everyone to flinch. Everyone but Bobby. He was otherwise occupied, flying backward over the table and crashing into the wall next to the map. He uttered a loud “oof” at impact and slid down the wall with a bewildered expression.

  Jennifer didn’t wait for reactions from the others in the room. She quickly began to rub the Stones together in her hands. When she felt them beginning to warm, she aimed at a chair at the end of the table and slapped the Dreylaeks together again, this time grinding them against each other long enough for a bolt of electricity to shoot forth and pierce a hole through the chair’s backrest. The bolt continued through the wall, catching both the chair and the wall on fire. She released the hot Stones onto the table. The glowing Dreylaeks wobbled to a standstill while the gaping onlookers stood frozen in place.

  “Holy shit!” Springer blurted out.

  Bennett yelled for the fire extinguisher just as the officer ran into the room with it. He doused the small blazes with two gushes of white foam while the woozy Bobby was helped to his feet. Springer pointed at Jennifer. “You’re coming with us. Come on, people, let’s roll.”

  Ticonderoga, New York

  The police motorcade raced along two-lane roads, headed for the northern shore of Lake George. They initially proceeded northwest from Middlebury and crossed into New York over the Lake Champlain Bridge. From there, they turned south on Route 9N and continued on to the city of Ticonderoga.

  During the thirty-five-minute drive, Jennifer learned more details from Colonel Springer and Captain Bennett. They confirmed that the car Muran used to escape Middlebury was indeed found at the parking lot of the Ticonderoga ferry. Unfortunately, they told her, the discovery had not been made until two hours after the robbery. Bennett explained the robbery and aftermath had unfolded so quickly, Muran slipped away before Middlebury police recovered from her attacks and gave chase.

  “They knew she went south, across the bridge, and ran down a side street. Two patrolmen chased after her, but, by the time they reached the street corner, she was gone,” Bennett said.

  According to Bennett, it took officers an hour to search the area around the side street, during which time other officers interviewed eyewitnesses who were near the bridge when Muran had run across. By then, the Middlebury police had also alerted VSP and other departments in the neighboring towns about the robbery, but Bennett said the alerts hadn’t been very helpful. “The description of the suspect they provided was too generic. They couldn’t tell us if she was holed up in town or if she’d taken off. But then we got a couple breaks.”

  The first one came from a teenaged waiter for a café two blocks from the bridge. He had been on a smoke break out back of the café, sitting on steps leading to a public parking lot, when he noticed a woman sprint into the lot. Bennett told Jennifer the waiter hadn’t been able to provide a better description of the woman, but he had noticed the car she drove off in. “Turns out the young man has a passion for cars.”

  “Anabel Simpson’s Honda CR-V?” Jennifer ventured.

  Springer and Bennett looked at each other with mild surprise before Bennett confirmed Jennifer’s guess. He told her the waiter had said the Honda turned onto College Street and away from town.

  “We weren’t sure it was our suspect at first, but it was the best lead we had, so we put out another alert. The teen didn’t get the license plate number, so it was a total crapshoot, but then we got our second break,” Springer said.

  With the vehicle description in hand, police in the area had canvassed roads and neighborhoods surrounding Middlebury, including two VSP patrol cars that were dispatched to the Ticonderoga ferry. Upon arriving at the ferry, the officers had noted a silver CR-V in the small parking area. They called in the license plate number and discovered the plates were stolen. They traced the VIN number and determined the vehicle belonged to a Miss Anabel Simpson of Bennington. The commander said the officers also questioned the ferry operator, who told them he was pretty sure a woman fitting the suspect’s description had taken the ferry across the river earlier in the afternoon.

  “Once we ID’d the vehicle, we realized we were probably dealing with Miss Simpson’s killer,” Bennett said.

  Jennifer had made the connection between the robbery and Anabel as soon as she’d seen the newscast video of Muran obliterating the police dragnet outside the bank. That supposition was confirmed by the later broadcast of the bank security camera footage that had shown Muran removing a Sinethal from the safe-deposit box. At least, that’s what the grainy image had looked like to Jennifer. Whose Sinethal was it? Jennifer had pondered. At Indio Maiz, Foucault had told them he believed Muran was seeking a Tuliskaera, a Taellin or possibly both. He’d said nothing about a Sinethal. Was it Muran’s? Or possibly another Munuorian’s?

  And what else had Muran expected to find? At the earlier press conference, the bank security cam video showed Muran had continued to search the boxes after she removed the Sinethal. When she had finished searching, her mannerisms
on the video implied she was upset. If that interpretation was correct, it implied she had expected to find something else. Given the Taellin was a helmet, Jennifer thought it too large an item to fit in the boxes. That left open the possibility of a Tuliskaera. The cone-shaped Stone was about the length of a Sinethal, so Jennifer was confident it could have fit in one of the boxes. Another thought crossed her mind as she pondered the conundrum. If she wasn’t after a Tuliskaera, maybe she had been looking for a Naetir. After all, she thought, the hockey-puck-shaped Stone was needed to activate a Sinethal.

  Regardless of the answers, it seemed a safe bet to Jennifer that the safe-deposit boxes had been Anabel’s. With this supposition in mind, Jennifer had stitched together a scenario on the drive to Middlebury — Muran had tortured Anabel to get her to divulge where the Stones were located. Given the degree of torture and the condition of her house, Anabel had died before revealing her secret. After killing Anabel, Muran had then combed through Anabel’s possessions looking for clues to the Stones’ whereabouts. Somewhere she found the safe-deposit box keys, and somehow, she had figured out that the keys were meant for the boxes in the Middlebury bank.

  “Why did Anabel have safe-deposit boxes in Middlebury? It’s ninety miles from Bennington,” Jennifer mumbled.

  “The boxes aren’t registered to Anabel Simpson. They belong to a woman named Evelyn Warwick,” Bennett said.

  “Huh? Who?”

  “We’re in the dark, too. We’re trying to track her down right now.”

  At that moment, Springer received a call, ending their conversation. As they passed through the city of Ticonderoga, Bennett said, “Command post is up ahead.”

  Jennifer looked out the window and spotted a horde of flashing lights in the distance. As the procession of Vermont police vehicles began to slow, she asked, “How did you find her?”

  “She stole a car after getting off the ferry. Knocked some poor old biddy unconscious and took her car,” Bennett said.

  “Oh, no. Is she okay?”