Page 101 of The Executioners Three
And what a lot of connections.
But also, what a lot of holes.
Sometimes people died; sometimes a bell tolled from nowhere; and sometimes descendants like Laina and Bowman and Teddy went off sleepwalking when they heard the bell.
At that thought, a new idea sizzled into Freddie’s brain. She snatched up a final sheet of paper, and in frantic, sloppy scrawl, she wrote down the entire Executioners poem. She’d read it so many times in the last few days the whole thing was firmly planted in there. Especially the last line of the last stanza:
The Oathmaster is waiting.
That was thepersonto tie all these parts together.Thatwas the serial killer behind all these deaths. And all signs currently pointed to Edgar Fabre Jr.—assuming he really hadn’t died in 1975. Sure, Teddy Porter had believed the body he’d found had been his friend’s, but there’d been no head attached to prove it…
“Aha,” Freddie sighed. “Eureka and gesundheit.” There had been a missing person in October of 1975 from Elmore. Freddie had seen that on the microfiche at the library, but she’d dismissed it at the time. Could that person have been the actual body that Teddy had found?
There was only one way to find out, and that was to track down Edgar Fabre Jr. His family had been run out of Berm, but the photo of Teddy and Edgar had shown the young men in front of Elmore High.
So maybe when Edgar Sr. had fled the area, he’d only actually moved twenty miles north of here?
Alright, Freddie knew who she had to track down, and she had a solid foundation for where to start. Now she just needed to develop all her photos from Xena and then maybe pass those images off to the two visiting federal agents. Because Freddie wouldn’t be foolish enough to go to Bowman again.
And honestly, props to Divya for actually being at least partially right back in the forest when she’d speculated Bowman might have been the one who’d moved the water bottle. She probablyhadbeen the one, but only because she’d been hypnotized by Edgar Jr.
God, Freddie hoped Edgar didn’t try to take control of anyone else. Bowman, Laina, Mrs. Ferris…
Would he go for Theo next?
At that thought, a new idea lightninged across Freddie’s brain. “Justin,” Freddie hissed to herself, gazing again at her murder board. “Justin, Justin, Justine…Justine.” She found the paper where she’d written Mrs. Ferris’s words:Teddy and Justine live in Chicago now.
She stared at them.
Teddy and Justine live in Chicago.
Freddie had already wondered if maybe Justine was a descendant from Justin Charretière. And she’d already wondered what it might mean if Theo was descended from not one Executioner, but two…
She hadn’t, however, thought what that might actually mean for Theo.
“Holy crap,” Freddie breathed. She gawped at the murder board for a full two seconds.One Lance Bass. Two Lance Bass.Then she burst into action, grabbing for paper and pencil. In a fraction of a second, she wrote down:
Two candles now lit on the graves. One for Bowman’s ancestor: Portier, aka Ropey, aka the Hangman. One for Laina’s ancestor: Steward, aka Hacky, aka the Headsman.
One candle was still missing, though. Presumably one that would also end up lit at Allard Fortin’s mausoleum.
One for Theo’s ancestor: Charretière, aka Stabby, aka the Disemboweler.
Freddie needed to get to Theo.
HUNTING
Theo hadn’t known death could happen so fast. It had been slow with his mom. Lots of trips to the hospital. Lots of pinched-faced doctors and sympathetic nurses and the never-ending red that rimmed his dad’s eyes.
This time, though, death had come without warning.
One minute, Theo was on top of the world: Dr. Born was going to vouch for him with the Fortin Prep disciplinary board, Freddie Gellar had said she liked him,andhis grandmother had finally woken up.
Sure, the Berm High kids were a bunch of pricks, but their onslaught in the parking lot hadn’t ruined his evening. They were nothing more than an annoyance. Kyle Friedman couldn’t destroy all the good that had just come Theo’s way.
She’s awake,Aunt Rita had said over the phone only one hour before.And she wants to see you. Except that Grandma didn’t want to see Theo anymore. Because now, Grandma was dead.
“I’m so sorry,” the tall, willowy doctor told Theo while he stood in the hospital hall holding the beef jerky she’d requested. Fluorescent lights buzzed. “We did everything we could for her.”
