The Executioner

Sixty-Seven

The statement was so surprising that it took several seconds for it to register with both detectives.

‘Was it your voice?’ Hunter queried, still a little stunned by how much she knew. ‘When you said those words to the woman. Was it your voice or somebody else’s?’

‘My own,’ she whispered.

Garcia rubbed his face vigorously, lost for words.

‘Somehow I knew the woman in the chair was scared of fires,’ the girl continued. ‘That’s why I said those words to you.’

Hunter leaned back in his chair and thought about it for a moment.

‘These visions last only about thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I don’t know why I see them. I don’t know why they feel so real. I don’t know why I wasn’t a spectator like all the previous ones. I wish I did, but I don’t have all the answers.’ She paused and looked away from Hunter. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is: whoever this killer is, he knows about their fears.’

Click, click, click. The person holding the camera on the other side of East First Street quickly snapped three consecutive pictures without anyone noticing.

‘Is there anything else you remember about these visions, Mollie?’ Garcia asked and saw the girl’s eyes widen in shock. She looked uncertain for a split second before reaching for her bag.

Hunter reached for her hand. ‘Wait.’

Mollie looked at him, then jerked his hand away angrily and stood up.

‘Please listen to me.’ Hunter and Garcia shot to their feet at the same time.

‘This has all been a mistake.’

‘No, it hasn’t.’ Hunter’s tone was firm but unthreatening. ‘Just give me one minute to explain. Then, if you still wanna go, no one will stop you.’

She paused just long enough for Hunter not to allow her uncertainty to settle. ‘I didn’t know if you’d ever call again. You left before an officer had a chance to write down your details. You left us nothing, so I had to go with the only thing we had – your Pennsylvanian accent. We did a quick search. Your name came up as a missing person.’

She went rigid.

‘We didn’t tell your father.’

Earlier on, when she told them about her obsessively religious parents, she kept the story centered around her mother, rarely mentioning her father. When she did, her body tensed, her posture shifted and her movements were nervy. Hunter saw how scared she was of him.

‘And we won’t tell him,’ Hunter said positively.

Her eyes held Hunter’s gaze for a while longer before shifting towards Garcia. He nodded and gave her a confident wink as if saying ‘we won’t tell if you don’t’.

Her body relaxed slightly.

‘I promise you, Mollie, we weren’t intruding.’ Hunter paused. ‘And we could really use your help.’

There was something calming, something trustworthy about the man standing in front of her. The tense moment evaporated and she sat back down. ‘The reason why I called you today…’

‘You had another vision?’ Garcia guessed.

‘No. Not a vision, a flash.’

Click, click, click. Three more pictures.

‘What do you mean a flash?’

‘Sometimes I have quick flashes of one of my previous visions. Something that wasn’t there before. They last only a couple of seconds.’

‘They’re called residual flashes,’ Hunter said without going into a detailed explanation.

Mollie looked at him curiously.

‘He reads a lot,’ Garcia explained. ‘So what was this flash about?’

‘Something I said.’

‘Something you said to who?’ Hunter this time.

‘To the priest. Just before I killed him.’

Click, click, click.

‘But you said there was no sound in the priest’s vision,’ Garcia said.

‘There wasn’t. Not in the vision.’

‘But there was in the flash,’ Hunter acknowledged.

Mollie nodded and sighed.

‘So what did you say?’

A deep breath.

‘They will all die.’