Laws of Nature -2 by Christopher Golden (i can read books txt) 📕

stern-looking woman whose eternally pursed lips made Jack think of a prissy, tyrannical librarian he'd run into more than once at the Boston Public Library. Without a word, they collected what little the inn offered by way of breakfast and fled the lobby to escape the woman's intense scrutiny.

Jack drove them south along the Post Road, the way they had come the night before. In the passenger seat, Molly spread a map out in her lap. They had pored over news reports of the mailman's death, and it looked as though Phil Garraty had been murdered on his route, just beyond the intersection of the Post Road - Route 31 on the map - and Route 219, which ran east-west just south of town.

They parked on the side of 219, fifty yards from the intersection with the Post Road. Jack spread the map on the hood of the Jeep and Molly stood still, apparently trying to get some sense of the place. From time to time, a car or an SUV whizzed by on 219, mostly headed east. East made sense to Jack. There wasn't much to the west except more towns like Buckton, more green hills and mountains.

Molly walked over and stood behind him, staring over his shoulder at the map. "I'm curious. What are we doing here exactly?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are we doing here?" she said again. "Exactly?"

"Just getting our bearings."

Molly stared at him. "The information the ghosts have given you is pretty clear. There are Prowlers here. A pack, though we don't know what size, exactly. But don't you think we should call Bill now? I really don't think we should try to take them on by ourselves."

His eyes widened. "Neither do I. Are you kidding? But Courtney and Bill have a lot on their plates already. We're keeping them posted, but I figure before we drag Bill all the way up here, we can at least try to figure out what's going on, see if we can't narrow down where the pack might have their lair. We might even be able to figure out who some of them are."

"And we're supposed to do this without drawing attention to ourselves?" Molly prodded.

Jack shrugged. "Basically. Look, the second we have any solid information or feel like we're in danger, we'll call him, all right?"

Molly seemed to roll that over in her head for a minute. Then she nodded. "Let's just be careful."

"Absolutely," Jack agreed. Then his attention turned back to the map. "Foster Marlin was killed in his home. Garraty was murdered out here, in the middle of the morning, while on his route. But the locals . . . the ghosts . . . they say those guys are the exceptions. Up until now, the pack hasn't hunted in Buckton. All the killings were in the mountains and other towns. If the information I got was right, they changed the rules because of some book that was stolen that they want back."

He had explained to her what Artie had told him, though without revealing it was Artie who had supplied the information.

"Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to do," Molly noted. "There have to have been ways for them to get the thing back without attracting attention."

"Maybe they panicked," Jack offered. He looked around at the trees and shivered, despite the heat. Though cars passed intermittently, they were pretty much alone out there. "Look, I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out what to do next."

Molly took a breath and reached out to stroke his arm once. "I know. You talked to Courtney this morning. Did she and Bill have any suggestions?"

"Other than 'don't get killed'?" Jack asked. He shrugged and walked along the Post Road a bit. "Not a whole lot, no. They both want to come to be with us, but there's the pub to be dealt with. I told them we'd be careful, to hold off until we really need them."

Molly rubbed the back of her neck, then leaned against the Jeep with her arms crossed, regarding him carefully. "So how are we supposed to figure out where the lair is?"

For a moment Jack felt at a total loss. The wind kicked up and blew the map off the hood of the Jeep and he ran to get it. Twice he bent to retrieve it, only to have it blow out of reach. The third time he stamped a foot down on it, then bent to carefully pick it up. The grimy print of his sneaker was smeared across the entire Buckton area.

Jack stared at the map.

"What?" Molly asked.

"We chart them. The corpses, I mean. We chart them out, and see if there's a pattern."

He went to the Jeep and rummaged in the glove compartment for a pen, then circled the spots where he thought the postman had been murdered, and where he thought Foster Marlin's house ought to be, based on the address he had gotten out of the phone book.

"Are you expecting help from Deputy Vance and the sheriff ?" Molly asked. "'Cause, no offense, but if you don't want to draw attention, asking about mysterious deaths and murders going back forty years or so is not the way to go unnoticed."

"They won't have any idea what we're doing until we have something solid to give them," Jack assured her.

"Then I don't get it," she said. "How do we find out the exact locations where all these people were murdered, where their bodies were discovered?"

Jack turned to her, aware that his smile had dissipated, his features now grim, but he felt unable to pretend with his emotions in front of her.

"We ask them," he said simply.

Eyes wide, Molly stared at him, then glanced around anxiously, as though aware for the first time that the lost souls of the dead were not there only when Jack saw them, but all the time. She took a step closer to him, one hand on the sun-warmed hood of the Jeep.

"You can do that?