where she’d taken a seat on the floor next to Rochelle. Her face was pale, and she was still shaking, but oh, she had been so brave. So strong. So . . . sure . . . when the moment had really counted.
He had never been so impressed with anyone in his life. And all he wanted to do was hold her and make sure she was still alive. Even though he could see reality right in front of him, his heart was so terrified at the prospect of ever losing her that he kept worrying that somehow the ending had been different and he just refused to see the truth.
“Helania shot him once,” he concluded. “Exactly where she needed to.”
Butch glanced over at the females. “Are you both okay?”
Helania put her hand to the back of her head. “He hit me with something.”
“It was the butt of the knife.” Rochelle reached out. “Are you all right? I should have stopped him, but I didn’t know what to do.”
“We’ll get you checked out right away,” Butch said as he leaned down over the body. “Doc Jane should be here any second.”
As the Brother dropped on his haunches and examined the gunshot wound, Vishous shook his head and lit up a hand-rolled.
“Holy fuck,” the Brother announced, “the butler did it?”
Confirmation bias was one thing, Butch thought as he reemerged from a walk-in freezer the size of a garage.
“But evidence is evidence,” he murmured as he looked down at the meat hook in his hand.
Glancing back into the cold storage, he shook his head at the two sides of beef that were hanging in the center of the room-sized freezer unit, ready to be thawed and hacked. The hooks were exactly like the one Mai had been strung up with.
“Did you find what you required, sire?” the household chef asked. Butch nodded. “Yeah. I did.”
The doggen bowed. “Is there anywhere else I may show you?”
Thomat had been great: Taking him into a suite of rooms just down the hall, showing him the closet out of which Butch had carefully taken a bloodstained cloak. It had been in the butler’s office area that he’d retrieved a small vial of cobbler’s nails. He also had the knife from the front foyer and then the firsthand accounts of Helania and Rochelle, Boone’s former intended.
“I think I’m good,” Butch said as they walked back out into the kitchen proper. “Thanks for the paper bags.”
“My pleasure, sire. May I open another up for you?”
“Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks.”
The chef flapped one free of its folds and Butch put the meat hook in there. Then he grabbed the two that had the cloak and the knife and headed back to the foyer. Rhage had come late and was making up for his delay by doing the duty with his camera phone, taking pictures of the body and the door.
But like the stuff in the Hannaford bags, all of that was kind of belt-and-suspenders irrelevant. The explanation had been provided, the faith in God’s powers of revelation rewarded, the this-then-that-thenthe-other-thing finally spelled out. Still, habits of a professional lifetime and all that malarkey.
Setting the bags down, Butch went into the parlor, where Boone was sitting with the two females and Helania was getting checked out by Doc Jane.
“You’ve got a heck of a knot back here,” the doctor was saying. “And you probably have a concussion of sorts, although I can’t do any diagnostic imaging to prove that. The good news is your pupils are equal and reactive, and you passed your neurological exam just fine, so I think you’ll be right as rain. Just let me know if you see double, feel nauseous, or can’t seem to stay awake, okay? And no . . . you don’t have to worry about any effects on anything else that may be going on.”
“Thank you,” Helania said as her hand found her lower abdomen. “I’m grateful.”
As the doc gave all three a hug and then took off, Butch shook his head. “I know you guys have got to be in shock.”
“That’s an understatement,” Boone murmured as he stroked Helania’s back.
“Listen,” Butch said, “I’ve got a good idea of how things went down tonight, but just so we can close the case, I’ll have to ask that you all come into the training center for something official. But we can wait. Tomorrow is fine for that.”
“Thank you,” Rochelle said. “I’m not thinking straight right now.”