“So Caldicot made a good stab at hiding the property, but MAX dug him out anyway.”
The pride in his voice made Sherlock smile. “What sort of property is it?”
“An old flue-cured tobacco farm.”
“What on earth is that?”
“Flue-curing is still used commonly on tobacco farms in Georgia, supposedly produces the best tobacco. Evidently they string the tobacco leaves onto sticks that they then hang from tier-poles in the curing barns. Then brick furnaces heat flues that ‘cook’ the green tobacco leaves.
“According to the deed, the farm was active until the nineteen thirties. There are two curing barns still standing after more than a hundred years, and a huge stone mansion, built in the early part of the twentieth century that now probably houses the cult. I can’t imagine what other use Whistler would have for it. It’s located about two miles outside of a small town called Peas Ridge, ten miles from Haverhill, where Caldicot Whistler supposedly sells cars.”
“May I ask when you worked with MAX on this?”
He shrugged. “I woke up early this morning, couldn’t go back to sleep. You looked so happy in whatever dream you were having, I didn’t have the heart to wake you. I already called Ethan about it.”
Sherlock nodded. “He needs all the info he can get. Good job.” She frowned at him. “You could at least act like you’re a bit tired.”
“Hot tea’s my secret, you know that.”
“All right, macho man, the Children of Twilight. I haven’t told you where I think that name comes from.”
“Yeah, you were going to tell me about that earlier.”
“I found a couple hundred references to the name, but the one that caught my eye was a Children of Twilight group back in the fifteenth century in Spain, which was at the height of the Inquisition. They were called Los Niños en el Atardecer in Spanish. They’d been around for maybe a hundred years before that, living in isolation, causing no trouble.
“Torquemada himself went after the cult. You’re going to like this—the Children of Twilight were all supposedly endowed with psychic powers.”
Savich said slowly, “They wouldn’t have called it that back then. How were they described?”
“Torquemada called them Adoradores del Diablo—devil worshippers—who communicated not only with each other but with the devil himself to further the devil’s evil schemes.”
“Not a good ending for them, I’ll bet.”
“No, not a good ending. Those Torquemada caught were burned at the stake. Auto-da-fé—an ‘act of faith.’ Isn’t that lovely? Some escaped, but the group was never heard from again.”
Savich said, “So if this present-day cult has taken up their name, that leads to an interesting conclusion, doesn’t it?”
“The same direction Whistler’s blog took us—a cult that glorifies psychics—and might risk a great deal for a child like Autumn. Of course, it could all be coincidence.”
“Or maybe not.”
A bullet whistled past Sherlock’s head and spiderwebbed the windshield.
46
SAVICH SHOUTED, “HOLD ON.”
He got control of the car again, glanced into the rearview mirror at a small black Ford Focus not twenty feet back and saw the black barrel of a gun and the hand holding it coming out the passenger-side window. So there were two of them. He wasn’t in his Porsche, he was in a Camry with regular gas in its tank, but it was a game little car. He sawed the Camry back and forth across the lanes, grateful there were no other cars in sight.
Sherlock slithered low across the seat as she pulled her SIG from her belt clip, then twisted around to look at the car behind them. Savich said, “Gun out the passenger-side window. They haven’t fired again because they can’t get a fix on us.”
“Got it.” She rolled down the window, leaned out, and yelled, “Now, Dillon!” She fired off three shots as he steadied the car, then he jerked the Camry hard to the left, through the other lane, nearly into the ditch, before he jerked it back. He heard the ping of bullets hitting the pavement and the car.
“I missed him. Hold steady again, Dillon!”
She emptied her clip this time. He wasn’t surprised when the Ford began careening all over the road, out of control and gaining speed on the decline behind them. The driver had to be hit. He saw the shooter trying to shove the driver aside so he could get control. It was going to be close, because lumbering toward them, not fifty feet ahead, was an old silver pickup truck loaded with hay bales higher than its cab. Savich laid his palm on the horn, blasting loud into the hot late afternoon. Thank God the driver of the ancient pickup wasn’t a slouch. He careened into the right lane and pulled over onto the shoulder, chewing tobacco furiously at them while they whizzed past.