Free Covenant by John Everson Page A

rocks and spit at us when salvation looms just ahead. The Covenant we keep is death. My child kept his part of the bargain, and I’m betting I’ll get mine before long. And you’ll get it too. Sooner rather than later, if you keep asking people about their dead kids.”
    She took her hands from his shoulders and stepped back, covering her mouth. Then she brushed her eye and stuttered, “I’m s-sorry. I…I still miss my boy.”
    Karen pulled a tissue from her pocket to wipe her eyes, and Joe sensed it was his moment. He could push and lose it all, or try to soothe her, and still find out nothing.
    “Mrs. Sander, I wouldn’t ask you any of this if I thought there was the chance that your son’s death was something normal—some statistic that all parents have to grow old dreading. But I think your son is a special case. As are Margaret Kelly and James Canady.”
    Karen looked up with reddened eyes at him.
    “What do you mean?”
    The moment.
    “Mrs. Sander, has anybody ever noticed that the date that Margaret and James and William and Bob died, May twenty-second, is the same date that Bernadette O’Brien died while swimming with five of her friends in 1981? Those same five friends who have, one by one, been losing children off that cliff for the past five years?”
    Karen sunk back into the sofa and just looked at Joe. Her eyes were surprised, yet seemed relieved.
    “If you had grown up around here, that wouldn’t seem like such a strange thing, Mr. Kieran.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Because everybody knows that Terrel’s Peak is the home of the devil,” she whispered.
    Joe did his best to keep from smiling. Karen leaned forward. Her face grew thin.
    “You think I’m kidding. And coming from a town of thieves and murders like you have, you probably can’t think of anything but that when someone dies, there must be a knife holder. Well, you’ve found the cradle of hell, Joe Kieran. And the knife is invisible. But the chopping block is not.”
    She pointed to the hint of a cliff poking through the swirling mists of the painting. “It’s there. It’s Terrel’s Peak. If you want to understand, go up there after sundown tonight and listen to the wind. But don’t presume that you’ll come back to talk about it.”
    With that, Karen Sander turned and walked from the room.
    Over her shoulder she called, “Please finish your tea, Mr. Kieran. And then let yourself out. There is nothing more I can tell you.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
    Joe shook his head and smiled as he backed out of Karen Sander’s driveway. He tasted a story here. A big story. The kind that gets the Press Guild to send you to a podium in the fall. The kind that brings in the county police scratching their heads and saying, “We don’t know how this could have gotten past us, but we’re certain that we’ll catch it if it ever happens again!”
    He could see Chief Swartzky’s face as the TV cameras blinded him with the lighthouse strobes. Swartzky would swear he’d never had an inkling and no one had ever brought the issue before him.
    “There’ll be a department overhaul starting next week,” he’d promise. “I’m embarrassed that no one ever put a pattern to those kids’ deaths. But I’ve known Karen Sander and Rhonda Canady since they were kids, and they never were anything but the sweetest women. Who could have suspected them of killing their own kids?”
    Oh, when he pulled together some more evidence, he’d offer it to Chief Harry Swartzky. He had no doubt that Terrel’s police chief would find a reason to ignore or bury it.
    And he’d offer the story that he was already writing in his head to the Terrel Daily Times , but he doubted that it would be published there. But there were bigger towns in this county. Maybe he’d take it up north to the Port Haven Dispatch . If he found evidence for what he suspected, he’d have no troubleselling the story to a larger paper. And Terrel would be crawling with state and county cops for a