Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (rooftoppers txt) 📕

am?!” Her indignity broke through her calm facade. Sometimes it was just as simple as finding a pressure point.

“Don’t get me wrong, you look good for your age,” Manny said, confident that he was getting under her skin and that she would let slip something he might find useful. “I don’t usually go in for older women, but in another life, I may have asked you to a movie.”

“If you wanna screw me, Detective,” she spat, “just say so. You never know, I might let you.”

Manny felt his jaw twitch. She’d won that round. He tried to say something clever in return but found no words.

“Yeah that’s what I thought,” Maureen said, shooting him a cruel smirk. “Shut the fuck up.”

“That’s no way to speak to an officer of the law.”

Maureen didn’t say anything. She simply rolled her eyes at him and turned back to the window.

“All right,” he said after a moment, keeping up his casual demeanor the best he could. “I’m sorry for teasing. I’m just curious about you, that’s all. You can’t blame me. This is a pretty quiet small town, most everyone knows each other. Not a lot of people moving in and out around here, you know? Most people are boring. You’re not.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, Detective.”

“You can call me Manny.”

“Can, but won’t.”

“Avoiding attachments?”

“Something like that.”

“Seems to me like that’s been your life philosophy,” Manny said, glancing over at her.

“I’m not the type of person that anyone would want to have around for a long time.”

“Because you’ve done things?” he said, believing he knew where she was going with this. She was damaged goods, and most people carrying baggage would respond like this, hyperbolizing actions that were most likely the result of simple human nature and turning them into sensational deeds that damned them to a life of punishment. Of course, most of these people weren’t actual murder suspects.

“You have no idea. I’ve done what I needed to do to survive. But I’ve never killed anyone.” She spoke these last words with a firmness that took Manny aback.

Maybe she really didn’t have anything to do with the actual killings. But whatever was going on, she was going to prove key to solving the crimes. Good God, am I actually buying into this whole psychic thing?

“So, I’m guessing you’ve got some warrants or something out there?” he prodded.

“You could say that.”

“Been in jail?”

“Yep.”

“More than once?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve gotta ask, though,” he said, “what makes a life on the road so appealing anyway? You running from something besides the law?”

“No,” she said far too quickly, turning to look at him.

“That wasn’t very convincing.” Manny met her gaze. He could see her walls finally breaking down. Maybe she was tired of being the only one who knew her secret.

“You really don’t want to know,” she sighed.

“I really do.”

“Your funeral,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. In his peripheral, Manny could see her shifting herself so that her back was leaning against the window and she was facing him. She stared at him out of the tops of her eyes. “I keep moving to stay ahead of the nightmares, but they always find me. They found me here. How’s that for honesty?”

“How long?” Whether or not her psychic visions were real, she genuinely believed them to be, and that fact seemed to inform her entire personality.

“Been on my own since I was seventeen. After running off from a reform school.”

“How do you make your money? Just by bartending?”

“I don’t sell myself, if that’s what you’re asking. Yeah, it’s mostly bartending and waitressing. You don’t need any education to do it, and most small businesses don’t ask too many questions. And, yeah, sometimes I need to get creative to make rent or get a car or something. I sold some of the medications I was on when I was a teenager to other kids at school. I’ve obviously done other things that I’m sure your Fed buddies are going to dig up sooner or later. But that’s life. That’s survival.”

“And you started having these dreams at that school?”

“Hell no! I was there because of them,” she laughed bitterly and tapped her temple with her fingers. “Got a demon up here, they said. All the kids there had something like that. Some were thought to be possessed, some were addicted to sex at fourteen, some were gay. And one girl saw with the eyes of pure evil.”

“And that’s you, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah, well, at least that’s what my mother always said. Some kind of old-country superstition. But she believed it, and so did the zealots running that place.”

“So how did they handle that sort of stuff?” Manny asked. He turned again to Maureen to try and gauge the look on her face. It had turned hard and cold.

“Take a wild guess,” she growled.

“I don’t know,” he replied uncomfortably. “Prayer?”

“Yeah,” she scoffed, her voice soaked with angry sarcasm. “Prayer.”

“So, if the dreams started before you went to that school, when exactly was it?”

“Eight, maybe earlier, but the first time I remember was when I was eight.”

“Jesus!”

“I don’t think he has much to do with it.”

“I can’t imagine how I’d handle something like that.”

“Pain killers and whiskey seem to work.”

The clustered homes and buildings of Sycamore Hills began to surround them. Main Street was still several blocks away, but the first traffic lights on the road into town were just ahead. Manny stopped his truck at the first red light, unsure of what to say next. Maureen’s story, or rather the parts of it she was actually telling, sounded harrowing and seemed to explain a lot about her distrust and evasiveness. Yet, he still felt that somehow, he was going to need her in some way to bring the case to a conclusion. The light turned green.

“Where’s your apartment?” he asked as he drove on.

Maureen glanced around quickly with the look of someone who could only figure out their location by using landmarks. Or at least she was trying to. “Actually, I’m just up here on the right,”