“Do you think he put Kirstin’s head in the crypt like the others?” she asked suddenly.
Nick looked sideways at her. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “I suppose it would give us proof that she’s really gone if he did.”
“That’s not the kind of proof I want to find,” Jenn whispered.
“Of course not,” he said. Then he realized: “If she’s okay and wandering around San Francisco somewhere, she can’t get back into the apartment since she doesn’t have a key.”
“She has my cell phone number,” Jenn said. “She’d call.”
“She didn’t take her phone.”
“She could find a phone,” Jenn said. “But face it: she’s not going to call because she’s not there anymore. Not among the living, anyway.”
Nick didn’t answer. There just wasn’t anything else to say.
The highway slowly changed, crawling first through populated urban sprawl, then curving through wide-open fields, the rocky outcrops of low hills rising in the distance. Nick left the 101 and took increasingly less populated roads, and at last Jenn saw the now-familiar signpost at the outskirts of her new hometown. River’s End.
They wound up the steep incline, and she hopped out to open the gate at the bottom of the driveway of her aunt’s house. Correction: her house. Then they were driving up to it and staring at the two police cruisers out front.
“End of the line,” Nick said, putting the car in park.
“In more ways than one,” Jenn murmured.
They exited the car and stretched, and then they walked up the short front path. She ducked an X of yellow police tape and stepped up to the door she’d already keyed open and shut enough times to feel like this was home. Feeling funny, she rang the doorbell. She didn’t want to get arrested for screwing up an investigation, even if she was just entering her own home.
A tall, thin man opened the wooden door. Jenn explained who she was, and he looked a little stressed when he realized she intended to come inside. He pushed a pair of thin silver glasses up a long hook of a nose.
“Can you just wait a minute? I need to check in,” he begged. Then he stepped back, pulled a cell phone from his pocket and talked in a low voice for a couple minutes before hanging up and forcing a smile. “The captain will be up in just a few minutes, if you could just wait out here . . .” And with that, he closed the door and disappeared. Off to search for more blood and gore, no doubt.
“Let’s take a walk,” Nick suggested. He took Jenn’s hand, and they walked around toward the back of the house.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. They were following the path to the cemetery.
Nick shrugged. “I dunno. They’re all focused on the house and the basement, but there’s something about the cemetery that creeps me out. I have to think it’s a part of all this.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “The graveyard is definitely a part of this.”
“It’s more than just the fact that it’s connected to that tunnel,” Nick continued. They stepped under a rusting black metal arch and entered a small plot of gravestones. “There’s just something especially weird about this place. It creeps me out. If we’re going to believe in things coming back from the dead . . .”
He knelt down to look at a weathered and pitted gravestone that read PETER LUCAS PERENAIS, 1854–1923. “There’s a lot of history here,” he said, straightening.
Jenn nodded. “It’s exactly why I wanted to come back. The answer to all of this has to be here. I just have to find it.”
“We have to find it,” Nick corrected. He ran his hand over the rough stone of another grave marker, but this one had deteriorated to the point of illegibility.
“No,” Jenn said. “You promised to go back to the city after you dropped me off. This is my problem to deal with. My family curse, I guess.”
Nick smiled. “One: I never promised you that. You just demanded it. And, two: Why, so you can die trying? You’ll have a lot better chance if you get some help. And right now, I’m all that you’ve got. Unless you plan to tell everything to the police.”
Jenn opened her mouth to say something but stopped. She’d been about to say Kirstin would help.
“I don’t want you to get hurt, too,” she said.
Nick slipped an arm around her waist. “I will do my best to remain unharmed,” he promised.
“I’m sure Brian and Kirstin would have said the same, and look where that got them.”
Nick nodded. “So we’ll work fast.”
Jenn sighed, knowing she wouldn’t be able to talk him into leaving. “Well, first we have to get into the house, if there’s anything left to find there.”
“I think we may be just about to find out,” Nick replied.
A figure was making its way across the field toward them. Captain Jones. They walked a few paces to meet him.
“You’re back early,” the cop said. His voice was quiet but questioning.
“When we got up this morning, my friend Kirstin was gone,” Jenn blurted. “There were pumpkin pieces left behind.”
The police captain raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing, waited for her to finish.
“We looked all around the neighborhood, but we couldn’t find a trace of her.”
“Did you contact the local police?”
Nick shook his head. “We figured she hadn’t been gone long enough to file a missing-persons report. We have no real evidence but those pumpkin pieces, and nobody in the city is going to believe our story. I mean, a Pumpkin Man killer from beyond the grave?”
The captain shrugged. “Some of them might have heard what’s going on up here by now.” He shook his head. “But no, they probably wouldn’t believe—or understand. Hell, nobody does. Even those of us who have been here our whole lives.”
“The answer is here,” Jenn said. “And this isn’t going to stop until I find it.”
“I’ve got two of the best detectives from Sonoma County in there right now—” Jones began, but Jenn cut him off.
“And you and I both know they’re not going to find a thing. Not in terms of real forensic evidence. They can take all the fingerprints and chemical readings and photographs they want, but they’re not going to find a clue that really leads them to the killer. You know that. Because they can’t.”
Jones didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked behind her at the cemetery. “There’s a lot of darkness up here,” he said. “If you’re going to start turning over old ground, be careful what you dig up. I bet there are some secrets here worse than the one we’re hunting. Trust me.”
He turned and slowly began walking back to the house. “Let’s see how the boys are doing,” he called over his shoulder. “They should be about done, and we can probably let you back in.”
Nick and Jennica followed him down the worn dirt path. Back at the house, Jones excused himself and went inside. When he came back out, he promised them that the place would be theirs again. For the night at least.
“The boys’ll be done in five more minutes,” he said. Then he cocked his head and looked at Jenn. “I want you to know something. When your aunt first came here, she was a sweet, innocent thing just like you. I remember her as she was. This place changed her. There are plenty of mysteries here, so I’m warning you: if you dig too deep, you might never get out.”
He paused and looked from Nick to Jenn. “Don’t make the same mistake your aunt did. Go back to where you came from while you still can. There is nothing you can do about this—there’s nothing any of us can, not really. So don’t throw away your life. I don’t want to be responsible for losing another one.” The captain held her eye for a moment, then nodded. “Have a good night,” he said, and he walked back to his cruiser. The car kicked up a small spume of dust as it started back down the hill.