Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) by Robert Gregory Browne, Edward Fallon Page B

finished ordering (hers a terse demand for black coffee), she pulled Weston’s sketchpad out of her handbag and placed it on the table.
    “Explain this to me.”
    “Didn’t we already have this discussion?”
    “I wouldn’t characterize anything we’ve had as a discussion. So please do me a favor and quit avoiding my questions.”
    “Seems to me you’ve already answered a lot of them yourself.” He nodded to the boy. “With Christopher’s help, of course.”
    She tapped the sketch pad. “You told me earlier that people wouldn’t envy your talent if they knew why you drew these. So why did you? Do they come from him?”
    “You already know they do.”
    “All I know is that something happened to me today that I can’t explain. Something Christopher did. And I’m just trying to figure it out.”
    “And what’ll happen when you do?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m in uncharted territory here.”
    She flipped open the sketch pad, found a specific page, then jabbed a finger at one of the drawings.
    It was a sketch of the tattoo on the Beast’s forearm.
    “I assume this came from Christopher, too?”
    “Why do you keep asking me things you already know?”
    She tapped the drawing. “What does it mean?”
    “It’s called a circumpunct. A circle with a dot—or bindu—at its center. Its meaning could be any number of things, but one of the most common beliefs is that it represents God.”
    “How long ago did you draw it?”
    He shrugged. “It’s been a few months now.”
    “And where did it come from? From Christopher’s memory? Because I’m assuming he was a victim of this man.”
    Weston stared at her. “You really don’t know how this works, do you?”
    “How it works?” Her eyes were a little wild. “I don’t even know what this is . What the hell is happening?”
    He watched her for a moment, almost feeling sorry for her. The first time Chris had reached out to him, he’d felt that same sense of confusion. The same disbelief. “Let me ask you a question instead. What exactly did Chris show you?”
    She breathed deep, settled herself, and pointed to the sketch again. “A man with a tattoo just like this. Only it wasn’t a photograph or a drawing.”
    “Then what was it?”
    “I’m not sure,” she said. “Like a vision or a dream. Only it felt real. Like I was stuck inside him.”
    “Inside Chris?”
    She shook her head. “The man with the tattoo.”
    Weston hesitated. This was something new. “I don’t get it. What are you saying?”
    “Exactly what it sounds like. When Christopher did whatever it is he does, I felt as if I was trapped inside this man’s body. He had just killed a woman and was about to cut out her tongue.”
    Weston felt a chill. All he’d ever gotten from Chris were the sketches. “Where did this happen?”
    “In my office.”
    “No, in the vision. Where were you?”
    “In an alleyway behind the Sandy Point Mall.” She paused. “In nineteen ninety-five.”
    “ What? ”
    “The woman I saw has been dead for nearly two decades.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Because she was my mother.”
    This stopped Weston cold.
    The deepest he’d ever seen Christopher go was days, not years. And certainly not two decades. But if what she said was true, then her mother may have been one of the Beast’s first victims.
    Weston watched Christopher rock in his chair, wishing the boy would snap out of it. He thought about the last few days and Chris’s insistence that they leave Reno and head for Santa Flora—even though the crime at the Branford house seemed to have nothing to do with the Beast. Then there was the near meltdown when Weston wanted to ditch the Rambler and disappear. The shouting that had nearly made his head explode.
    Had Chris been planning this encounter all along? Had going to that house been nothing more than subterfuge, designed to bring about a meeting with Lieutenant Kate Messenger?
    That would explain the stop they’d made