Halloweenland Read Online Free Page B

before.
    “I haven’t seen you in . . . what, two weeks?” Grant said, mustering his soothing cop voice. He knew he was pretty drunk, but was able to overcome it. He tried to lighten his tone and gave a small smile. “What’s bothering you? Besides everything, that is?”
    The girl continued to stare at her hands on the table. It was obvious she was trying to bring herself to say something, so Grant continued his monologue.
    “I know what you’re going through, Marianne. I lost my wife a few years ago. That hole still hasn’t filled up completely. But it does get better, I can tell you from experience.”
    She was still fighting with herself.
    “I . . . heard about your pregnancy, of course,” Grant went on. “As you probably know, the DNA results on Bud Ganley were negative.”
    This was the spot where, like it or not, he would have to harden his voice a little. “You obviously did have relations with someone that night, Marianne. What I have to ask you is a hard question: who was it?”
    Her eyes darted up from her hands, and Grant saw that they were filled with terror. For a moment, darker thoughts than Marianne Carlin’s private life assaulted him.
    “Detective—”
    Her hands were trembling, now, and when he reached over to steady them they were cold as winter.
    “Don’t say anything yet.”
    He abruptly got up and went to the coffee machine.The cycle wasn’t finished yet but he yanked the carafe out and poured a cup for her anyway. He pushed the carafe back into its place and noted the spilled coffee hissing on the hot plate beneath it.
    He wanted very much to go back to the basement and get his bottle of scotch. But after putting the steaming mug down in front of Marianne and taking a step toward the cellar door, he abruptly turned back and poured himself a cup of coffee.
    “Milk or sugar?” he asked the young woman.
    Her teeth chattering, she answered, “Milk, p-p-please.”
    He yanked open the refrigerator door, pulled out a quart of 2 percent milk, let the door close.
    He sat down in front of his own black coffee, pushing the milk carton over to Marianne. When she made no move to open it, he did so himself, pouring it into her mug.
    “Say when.”
    She focused on him, not on the coffee.
    “Someone in a black cape with a white face was in my bedroom tonight,” she said in a rushed, terrorized voice.
    It might as well have been shouted through a loudspeaker. Grant dropped the milk carton, which hit the table and began to spill. He stared at it for a moment and then reached out and righted it.
    Oh, God. Weird shit.
    Marianne’s eyes had never left his face.
    To take his mind off of what she had said, he grabbed a dish towel from its rack behind him and sopped up the spillage with it. His mind was tightening and loosening like a fist.
    Samhain.
    When he was finished he tossed the wet towel into the sink and sat back down. She was staring at him with a pleading look in her eyes.
    “Just tell me what happened,” Grant said.
    She did, every detail, and Grant’s faint hope that she might have been delusional, or worse, faded.
    “Detective Grant, what’s happening to me?”
    He opened his mouth to speak, thinking of a hundred ways to answer her question, but then said nothing. Mustering all of his cop’s resources, he forced his lips into the same small smile he had showed her at the beginning of the interview.
    “Drink some of your coffee. Believe me, there’s nothing to worry about.”
    Like hell there isn’t.
    For a brief moment, her face showed relief. “You know what I saw? I’m not crazy?”
    With all of his effort, he made his smile widen. “The last thing you are is crazy. I’ve seen this kind of thing before in Orangefield. For now, I just want you to forget about it.”
    “Really?” Her voice was filled with something like hope. “I called my sister, and she said it sounded like a Sam Sighting. She was laughing when she said it. But I heard—Janet heard—that you’ve been