“Bell couldn’t,” Ledger said. He grabbed the chair from the desk and dragged it over to the bottom of the bed to sit on. There was still some of his salad left, and Ledger grabbed the box to pick through it. “He had outstanding debts to pay off before anything would extend him credit, and he was too sick and too well-known to go hunt for victims. In his letters, he tried a few times to talk one of his fans into coming for a visit, but none of them took the hook.”
Wren pulled a bare foot up onto the bed, denim tight over his knee. He scratched his ankle.
“That’s because it’s not the ‘80s anymore,” he said. “Who writes letters? Troll for victims on Tinder like everyone else.”
“Lucky for us, Bell wasn’t computer literate,” Ledger said. “Orparticularly personable.”
It had never been Bell’s M.O. to charm his victims into going somewhere with him. He’d never had to, not when he had a car and a willingness to run people down with it. Opportunistic. That was the term the courts used to describe him.
It was as good a one as any.
Not like Earl.
Ledger picked up one of the photos still spread across the bed: a man with a kid on his hip at the local school. The same one that Ledger had gone to, but from a few years before. Ledger recognized the woman in the corner of the photo, hand raised to attract someone’s attention. She’d been his first-grade teacher, Rose Aberwell, and by the time she’d taught him, she’d walked with a stick after a riding accident.
“What about Syder?” Wren’s question poked Ledger back to what they were talking about. “He’s the sheriff. If you’re right about him being Bell’s partner, he’d have plenty of access to people that no one would miss. Why not kill one of them for another twenty years?”
It was a good question. Ledger thought he knew the answer, though.
“I was right,” he said. “But partner might have been the wrong word.”
Wren cocked his head to the side. “Some people call that wrong.”
“I don’t.”
Wren laughed. It was an easy, warm sound, and Ledger briefly couldn’t look away from the way Wren’s face creased around his smile. Even if it was at his expense, he could still enjoy it.
“What was it, then?” Wren asked. When Ledger just squinted at him, he elaborated. “The right word. What was it?”
“Employee,” Ledger said after a second’s hesitation.
It didn’tsoundright. Anyone who’d met the two men would peg Syder as the boss, the leader. He was smart, respected, well-spoken, and well-liked. Bell was a dropout and a redneck who worked part-time in the corn processing plant outside of town.
The thing was, Bell had made a serial-killing career out of being underestimated and overlooked. If there was anyone who should know better than to fall for that, it was Ledger.
“How’d that work?” Wren asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I know who yanks my leash. I’m not people, though. This is your world. How would Bell talk the town sheriff into being his demon-worshiping intern without ending up under an involuntary hold?”
“Because Syder was just a deputy then,” Ledger said. “And he was desperate.”
“Desperate for what?”
Ledger stopped mid-stalk to shrug. “A way out. I don’t know why exactly, but after Bell was arrested and the demon deals dried up, Syder’s life went to shit. He lost everything, his house, his family, his reputation. Now admittedly, I was a kid when they would have started working together, but I’m pretty sure everything Syder lost he’d only gotten after he met Bell.” Ledger ticked the items off on his fingers as he talked. “His wife, the promotion to sheriff, the fancy house—Irememberwhen he got that. Everyone wanted to go there for game night instead of playing in our kitchen. Syder blamed his girlfriend for why they couldn’t.”
“That would make sense,” Wren said. “If Bell’s altar was at the house, then every pot was a pooled sacrifice. The coffee they wanted, the smile they’d have gotten from their kid for a McDonald’s… It wouldn’t have been enough to trade with, but it would have chummed the waters.”
He sounded almost… admiring. It shouldn’t have given Ledger pause—Wren hadjustsaid that he “wasn’t people”—but it did. It was one thing to know something, another to really believe it when you didn’t want to.
That could be something to think about later.
“So I don’t know what was going on in Syder’s life,” Ledger said. “Gambling debts. Problems at work. Or maybe he was sick then. That was probably the first deal they split. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever was wrong in Syder’s life, it was bad enough then even the out Bell offered him—demons and murder and magic—sounded worth a go. And, of course, when it worked…”
Wren nodded and finished the sentence.
“When it worked, the next time was easier,” he said. “But why wouldn’t he try to make his own deal once Bell was out of the picture? Isn’t that what happens when the boss is fired, someone else steps in?”
“If they can,” Ledger said. “I think Syderhastried. It just hasn’t worked.”
He grabbed his phone off the dresser and pulled up the search bar to type in the query string. It wasn’t the first result, but it was on the first page. In a place like Sutton County, the sheriff’s family was what passed for celebrity, coming in just after the local high school football team.
