Page 137 of Power of the Mind

“I don’t have a clue and don’t want to know. You two need to stay out of it. Back off, or you’ll ruin my entire life. Please.”

“How does us backing off save your reputation?” I asked.

“If the cops come for her, she threatened to drag me into the whole mess. Make me complicit in her big scheme. I have a family. Whatever she’s done, whatever she’s doing, I want no part of it. So I’m asking you, I’m begging you, to stop investigating her. Let it go.”

“People are dying,” I said.

“I know.”

“Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care. They were my clients at one point. They were preyed upon. They were lured into the cage of a cunning and manipulative woman. They didn’t deserve to be targeted. They only wanted help.”

“Hilty,” Diem interrupted. “Not all of them are dead, but they might be soon if we don’t stop her.”

Hilty frantically shook his head. “No. She’ll ruin me.”

Diem’s shadowy form moved closer again. “If we can figure out what she’s giving them, I will personally make sure you are absolved of any wrongdoing.”

“Giving them?" Hilty’s voice warbled. “What are you talking about?”

“We believe she is drugging them with something. Possibly an untraceable herbal substance of some kind. Whatever it is, our labs aren’t in the habit of testing for it. It could have mind-altering properties. We believe it conflicts with the drugs they are already on, causing heart issues. Was your secretary, Sally or Sandra, friendly with the naturopath next door?”

Hilty’s hold on me loosened another fraction. He was too invested in the conversation to remember his hostage. “Janek? No. Sandy’s son worked for her, but I’m the one who helped himget the job because I’ve known Janek for years. Newt’s a troubled kid. Always hanging with the wrong crowd.”

“Newt?” I said.

“Brodie’s his legal name. Newt’s a nickname. Short for Newall. Sandra’s always called him that.”

“Did you know he was arrested last week for dealing?” Diem asked.

“No.”

Diem asked Hilty another question, but I didn’t hear it. My mind drifted back to our visit with Hilty at his office. To the kid in the parking lot, sitting in a rusted Chevy Caprice. To the night in the cemetery when Sally’s kid had been arrested. The cemetery. Near Rowena’s. Drug dealing in the cemetery. A rusted Caprice. Newt or Brodie or whoever working for Janek.

We’d returned to Hilty’s office the following day, and I’d witnessed Sally in the same rusted car, hauling boxes from the office to the dumpster, which I now figured meant she’d gone to clean out her desk after hours. She’d been fired. According to Janek, Sally’s son had been fired as well.

Same day.

But it was what I’d seen after that suddenly made more sense.

As I’d waited for Diem to calm himself with a cigarette, I’d observed Sally take several garbage bags from the back of the car to the dumpster.

The car her son had used to make deliveries for Janek.

“D? I think I know how we might find answers.”

I’d been dazed out, thinking, so I missed what was happening.

Hilty had fully relaxed.

And Diem was a loaded spring.

The second the words left my mouth, Diem’s fuzzy, oversized form moved in for the attack, swiftly breaking Hilty’s hold on me, wrapping me in a one-armed hug, heaving me againsthis chest while effortlessly unarming the elderly doctor and stepping out of harm’s way.

“Get out,” Diem bellowed, pointing at the office door with the confiscated knife.

“Please,” Hilty stammered. “My career. I have a family.”

---