KnockOut - Catherine Coulter [129]
“Good evening, Sheriff Merriweather. You will be fine in just another moment. The gas is a special compound that acts very quickly and dissipates just as quickly. Caldicot told me about the clothes both you and Joanna used to try to keep out the gas. Very creative. Caldicot was amused, except for the fact that you killed poor Kjell. And of course Blessed is injured. He is on the floor of my study, weeping. He is inconsolable. What did Autumn do to him, Sheriff?”
“I don’t know.”
“Surely you must have an idea. You have been with the child and her mother for nearly a week now. I must know, Sheriff.”
“Where are Joanna and Autumn?”
“They are both fine at the moment. What did the child do to Blessed?”
“Who are you, Whistler’s father?” Ethan had the mad desire to laugh.
The old man didn’t say anything, continued to look at him, as if he was trying to figure something out.
Ethan said, “Who are you?”
“I, Sheriff Merriweather? Why, I am the Father, but I am not, however, related to Whistler. This is my home, and all those who reside here, for however long a time, are my children. They obey my wishes and in return are enlightened about powers beyond themselves.”
“So Caldicot doesn’t run things around here?”
“I’ll tell you what, Sheriff. It seems we need each other, and so I will answer your questions and then you will have no reason not to answer mine. Caldicot does not run things here. Caldicot is my fine first lieutenant. He fancied the name Master, and so I gave it to him. Sometimes, when he doesn’t realize I’m looking, he struts like he is the important one here, but he is not. I allow him his little conceits since he is something of a financial wizard, a blessing, since I find such things boring. He gathers our people from all over the world, and if he deems them worthy, he brings them here.”
He raised a gnarled hand, pointed a thin finger at Ethan. His fingernails were long and curved inward. His old voice quaked with anger. “I have answered your questions, Sheriff. Now you will tell me what Autumn did to Blessed. I must know.”
“I have told you, I don’t know what she did. As far as I know, she only looked at him, that was it.”
“I don’t believe you. All of this—the death of Kjell, my poor Grace shot by your hand, my wife calling me, desperate because they were taking her to jail, and it’s all your fault, Sheriff. But Blessed, we cannot do without Blessed!”
Ethan said slowly, “Well, if this doesn’t beat all—you must be Theodore Backman.”
The old man gave him a regal nod. “Of course. Autumn is my granddaughter. I have lost two of my three sons, Sheriff. I will not lose my granddaughter as well. She appears to have more power than Blessed, even at her young age. She belongs to me, to my family, to Twilight. Her gift will draw the devout from all over the world. She will be revered. Under my tutelage who knows what she will become, the power she will have.”
Ethan said, “Your wife said you died in a mugging in Reno some time ago. So, it didn’t happen. It was all a fiction so you would be free to set up this cult. It occurs to me you could have done this without dying.”
“I had no choice. I had to die. The gangsters who ran the casinos decided they didn’t want to lose any more money to me, that I was stealing from them, though I played by their rules. The mugger was an assassin they sent to kill me, but I killed him instead. I was forced to cut all ties to Bricker’s Bowl because of those vermin.”
The old man sighed.
Ethan said, “So that’s when you decided to open this place? Children of Twilight? I’m wondering, Mr. Backman, why all the white? And the robes—you wish to be seen as a prophet? Or perhaps as something more than that?”
“You speak so very simply, Sheriff, so unequivocally. You don’t know anything about it. All of this, it was a huge undertaking. I was not a young man, even then.”
“And Caldicot? What does he get from this?”
Theodore shrugged. “Shepherd and I found Caldicot one day in a strip mall in Huntersville, an out-of-the-way place we chose because we had to