Free John Jordan05 - Blood Sacrifice by Michael Lister Page B

would appear on her skin, her face would change into someone else’s, her skin would rip and tear, and this time, her body elongated. She became taller and thinner and just pulled her hand and feet through the straps.”
    Suddenly, Steve’s eye’s widened and he sat up. “I get it,” he said. “Now I see what you’re doing.” Turning to Reid, he added, “Did you put him up to this?”
    “What?” Reid asked.
    “You guys are trying to set up an insanity plea, aren’t you?”
    “Steve,” Father Thomas said sternly, “I know how all this sounds. Believe me, I wouldn’t be saying it if I hadn’t experienced it. You may think it’s crazy or I am, but I do not, and I will not plead insanity or anything else except not guilty, even if I face the chair.”
    “Sorry,” Steve said, though it hardly sounded sincere. “So she got free and ran down the path and you followed her. Then what?”
    “Before she ran from the cabin she flung me across the room, so I wasn’t right behind her. In fact, I never saw her again. Not really. When I ran out of the cabin, she was gone. And the truth is, I can’t run. I was barely walking fast.”
    “How’d you know to follow her down the path?” Steve asked. “Wasn’t it far more likely that she would run up to the chapel or to the dorms?”
    “I followed the blood.”
    “You followed the blood,” Steve said patronizingly.
    “It led me to the right, away from the lake and down toward the clearing. When I reached the edge of the clearing, I could hear her breathing, but I couldn’t see her. While I was looking around, I heard a rustling in the leaves behind me and I turned to see what it was. That’s when someone grabbed my head and bashed it into the tree.”
    “Someone?” Steve asked.
    “The person’s hand was covering my eyes where he grabbed my head,” Father Thomas said, “so I couldn’t see who it was. At the time I thought it was Tammy.”
    “And now?”
    “Now I don’t know,” he said. “Mr. Reid thinks it might not have been.”
    “Please enlighten us, Mr. Reid,” Steve said.
    “My client was unconscious when Ms. Taylor was murdered. Obviously, his first assumption was she was killed by whatever was inside her that had caused her to do all the things to herself she had already done—be it drugs, mental illness, or demons—and maybe it was. Honestly, we don’t know, and frankly, the burden’s not ours to prove, but we now also believe it’s just as likely that Tammy was murdered and that the person who did it is the same person who knocked Father Thomas out.”
    “So this discriminating murderer kills Tammy, but just knocks
him
out?” Steve said.
    “Maybe,” Reid said. “Maybe he or she couldn’t kill a priest or only wanted to kill Tammy or maybe they thought they
had
killed him. That was a powerful blow. Whatever the case, the implication is clear.”
    “Not to me,” Steve said. “So maybe you’ll be kind enough to break it down for me.”
    “Not only could my unconscious client
not
have killed Ms. Taylor,” he said, “but his very injury provides the possible evidence of the real murderer’s presence—be it the demon or disease that made Ms. Taylor strong enough to deliver the blow or an as yet unknown assailant. And in the likelihood that it’s the latter and it’s the same person who killed Tommy, I suggest you begin interviewing the other residents at St. Ann’s.”

Chapter Sixteen
     
    “It’s dismissive and dangerous to call the incarnation of all that’s evil mere mental illness,” Father Thomas said.
    I glanced over at him in the passenger seat, then into the rearview mirror at Ralph Reid in the back. Both men looked like I felt. Beyond tired. Bone-weary.
    I was driving us back to St. Ann’s in the seemingly sourceless soft light just before dawn, feeling fatigue in every stiff joint, every sore muscle.
    “Mental illness can’t do what was done last night,” he added.
    Breaking our long stretch of silence,