And Erin, damn her soul, was right: Nick got such a
charge
from those cases. Deep down and visceral. He’d never felt too guilty about that in the old days; he liked to hunt, it was how he was wired. But, God forgive him, now people in Hopewell were
dying,
and others—like Hannah and Erin—had been placed in harm’s way. Carl Whitmore and Lud Ferguson and Rebecca Engel were dead. Nick shook his head at that last, hurrying to correct himself: Rebecca was
missing.
But in his gut, he thought she was dead. There was no movement surrounding her. No momentum.
But, dead or alive,
where?
He ran his hand through his hair. Of the enormous list of missing persons in the world, a huge number of them would never be accounted for. They just disappeared. But if Jack had really killed Lauren McAllister and three, maybe four other people over the years, where were all the bodies? Lauren’s had been found in the Everglades and Robin Weelkes’s in the wilderness
of Minnesota. That left Sara Daniels and Shelly Quinn. Where were they? Dumped in a lake in Virginia, or on some remote mountain for the bears or coyotes to dispose of?
Could be, but if Rebecca was dead, discarding her body wasn’t that easy here. For all its remoteness, Hopewell was transparent: People watched one another. A cornfield? A quarry? Weighted and dumped in Lake Erie? Multiple victims right here in Hopewell now, and besides Rebecca’s suitcase, not a single piece of them found. Now
that
was a lucky killer…
And why not Whitmore or Ferguson? Why not bother disposing of them? Nick knew that answer and it sent a chill down his spine: Whitmore and Ferguson were left behind because they weren’t part of it. They’d just gotten in the way. But the others—Lauren McAllister, Sara Daniels, Shelly Quinn, Robin Weelkes, Rebecca—they were about something else, and the idea that it came from being Jack’s lovers didn’t hold up anymore. Not with Weelkes thrown in. Not with Shelly, either.
He spent fifteen minutes rolling it around. In the end he didn’t have any great revelations that solved the case, so he sat down and read through all the paper they’d collected—for the umpteenth time. Nothing there, either. He called Alayna and found her sitting in traffic on a Florida highway, on her way to the Attorney General’s office. He caught her up on the murder of Lud Ferguson.
“I can’t use that, Nick, it’s not relevant,” she said. “Ferguson’s nothing like Lauren McAllister.”
“But Robin Weelkes is. And Justin was in prison when Weelkes was murdered. You gotta tie Weelkes and McAllister to the same murderer.”
“Gee, thanks. I’d’ve never thought of that.”
“And get someone you trust to find the cop on the McAllister case voted Mostly Likely to Sell Out. There’s a reason this never hit the light of day until now.”
Rebecca had a small collection of books, thrown haphazardly in the bottom of a blanket chest: a handful of old teen novels, a couple magazines, and an oversized volume of fairy tales and nursery rhymes leftover from childhood. Erin sifted through a few of them, sighed, and sat back on her heels.
“I don’t know what else there could be. I’m out of ideas,” she said, looking at Katie. “Is there anyplace else she might have kept a diary or anything?”
“No. Becca wasn’t much of a wri—” She stopped, catching herself, and hiccupped a huge sob. “Oh, God. Oh, God…”
Erin spoke firmly. “It was a slip of the tongue, Katie,” she said. But she’d done it, too—caught herself referring to Rebecca in the past tense. She’d been close enough to court cases to know the statistics—those critical first twenty-four hours, the plunge of hope for finding a missing person after that. The probability of finding Rebecca alive was plummeting now.
Erin’s cell phone rang. It was Nick.
“Have you been watching the news?” he asked.
“No. We’ve been searching Becca’s room, looking for…” she felt like a fool “… clues, I guess.”
“I have some bad news.”
Erin’s heart stopped. “Is it Becca?”
“No, no.” His voice was strained. “Is Katie there? She okay?”
“Yes. Nick, what’s wrong?”
“Lud Ferguson—he’s the man we questioned last
night, who found Rebecca’s suitcase and took her I-pod—was murdered this afternoon. Someone ran him down with a car. He’s dead.”
“Oh, God.” But Erin was confused. “Why?”
“Presumably because the news made it sound like he might know something about, or had something to do with, Rebecca’s disappearance.” Erin waited. He’d left too many blanks to be filled in. “Leni’s car is the car that killed him,” he finally said. “That’s not just a theory, that’s for real.”
“Oh, no,” Erin said. She looked at Katie, trying to keep her face from showing anything.
“Has Leni been home at all today?”
“No. She went to the restaurant around ten or ten-thirty, I think.”
“Okay. What about Katie?”
Erin went still. “No.”
“She’s old enough to drive, Erin.”
“She’s been here with me all day.”
“
All
day?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” There was relief in his voice. “Look. I’ve got Leni here now. She’s talking to a lawyer. I don’t know what to do about Katie. Jesus. Maybe you should bring her here.”
Erin looked at Katie, who was watching with unabashed interest in the conversation.
“No,” she said, looking straight at Katie. “I’ll tell her. And we’ll keep working here. There’s got to be something.”
“You sure? She gonna be okay?”
“I’m sure. And,” she paused before answering his second question, “we’ll see.”
C
ALVIN WANTED TO
hide after school. Scared. Embarrassed about being in jail. Mad.
Mostly scared.
He got off the bus and headed to Rodney’s cabin. Rodney liked him. He didn’t see the weirdness, didn’t care about it. His cabin was a good place to hide.
Calvin walked into the cabin like always, frowned. Something strange. The couch was different. The coffee table moved and the rug folded up.
Not good. Rodney would trip. Not good at all.
He went to straighten the rug and blinked. Stairs.
Stairs? A basement? Calvin didn’t know there was a basement down there. Heat rolled up the stairs. It smelled like vanilla, the smell of the church his mom always took him to on Sundays.
Calvin started down the stairs. Hot. That was weird, too. Usually basements were cold. He slowed, moving quietly. Scared again. Didn’t know why.
He came to a landing at the stairs and peered around the corner.
Oh, Jesus.
Calvin backed up, but couldn’t stop staring. Rodney was there. He had eyes. They glowed red. Red, red, red, like the flames in the kiln. Calvin had never seen his eyes before, just glasses. Didn’t know Rodney had eyes. Eyes like red fire.
He leaned back against the wall. So that’s why Rodney needed medicine.
Tuesday, November thirteenth, two-
thousand-twelve, five-thirty-two a.m., thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.
Kroger garbage bag. Bring the whole bag. For his eyes.
Rodney stepped back from the kiln and the red glow went away. Calvin ducked. Hide-hide-hide. Been here a lot but didn’t know Rodney had a kiln. Giant, bigger than Margaret’s. Didn’t know he had a cellar, either. Creepy. Red, red, red. Flames in the kiln. Hot. One-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty degrees Fahrenheit, Wednesday, November fourteenth, two-thousand-twelve, five-thirty-two p.m…
Calvin slunk around the edge of the doorway. Didn’t know why. Can’t be scared. It’s Rodney. Friend. Friend. Firing sculptures, like Margaret.
One-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty degrees Fahrenheit
. Hot-hot-hot.
Not right, not right. Too hot for sculptures.
Calvin began shaking, clutched his arms over his chest. He shook his head back and forth, bones trembling. He thought he knew something important but wasn’t sure what. Didn’t want to know.
Had to know.
He slipped back down the stairs, partway. A little further to see around the corner. His nostrils twitched. Vanilla. But something else, too. Roasted meat. Burned.
Sweat popped out on his forehead. So hot down here. He took another couple steps. A motorcycle leaned against
one wall. Motorcycle? He peeked past it, past the giant kiln to a table, and on the table—
Oh oh oh oh oh oh.
Calvin ran. He knew. He knew. Didn’t want to know, but he knew. He ran, and thought about Mr. Reinhardt:
Don’t talk, don’t talk
. He was mean about it. Had scared Calvin.
Don’t talk
.
That was okay—it didn’t matter. Calvin hardly ever talked. When he did, it came out jumbled so no one understood. Sometimes the dates and times and temperatures didn’t make sense to Calvin, either. Like the ones in his head now…
Tuesday, November thirteenth, two-thousand-twelve, five-thirty-two a.m., thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit… Wednesday, November fourteenth, two-thousand-twelve, four-twenty-eight p.m., one-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty degrees Fahrenheit… One-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty degrees Fahrenheit…
Too, too hot.
Oh, God. Don’t want to know this.
The candles had all burned out. The music was finished. Rebecca’s breathing had gone from strained and raspy to almost imperceptible, but she was still alive—barely. The Angelmaker had poked a tiny hole through the clay in each nostril, like a kid putting holes in the top of a bell jar for lightning bugs. Just enough to keep her alive until the mask was ready. It was too hard to move the body once
rigor mortis
set in; he’d learned that the hard way. Had let Shelly Quinn suffocate beneath her mask, and had a helluva time handling her body afterward. Had to cut her into pieces.
Yuk.
But Rebecca was still hanging on and the clay was completely dry.
The Angelmaker picked up a rib, one of the smaller ones Maggie had in her collection of sculpting tools. Careful, now. Getting the mask off could be difficult. Go easy, or it won’t be good enough to give to Maggie.
He tucked the narrow end of the rib barely under the edge of the mask beneath Rebecca’s left jawbone, and pressed down on the flesh.
Fwsht
. The skin separated from the clay with the sound of a vacuum pack opening. The Angelmaker smiled.
Now, work the rib around the edges, open the vacuum seal every half-inch or so, all around the perimeter of the face. The forehead was the hardest—the flesh there had little give—but a few moments later, the mask came off clean.
Rebecca wheezed with the increase in air, and the Angelmaker set aside the mask and looked at her. Her chest heaved, but her eyes were utterly blank. Seeing nothing now. He smiled. A little foreshadowing there.
He checked the temperature on the kiln—almost to eighteen-hundred-and-fifty. Not long now. Time to finish.
He picked up his .38 and placed the barrel against her breast, closed his eyes and remembered when he was ten, reaching out and finding the gun against his mother’s chest, one of her hands shaking on the pistol and the other clinging to the mask he’d given her. Recalled his own hand sliding over hers—
Rodney stopped. A noise. He cocked his head and listened. Fucking Christ, what was that?
He slid around the table, peering up the stairs. Damn it, someone was there. Footsteps.
Mann? Maggie? Calvin? Fuck, this wasn’t supposed to happen. He hadn’t planned for this.
Rodney dashed upstairs, looked out the door and tried
to see, but there was no one. There was no one in his house, outside, anywhere, yet his heart was going like a trip-hammer.
Imagining things?
No, someone had been there. Someone had seen—with the rug moved and the cellar door open.
Son of a bitch.
The story investigators got from Engel’s was good but not quite good enough. Yes, the employees had seen Leni come in this morning. Yes, it was much later than usual. Yes, she was there most of the day until mid-afternoon.
Was there ever a time when she might have been gone?
Well, she had holed up in her office for a while…
Long enough to slip out and get out to Elmwood Road?
Four of Nick’s better thinkers—Bishop, Jensen, Hogue, and Schaberg—were working the Ferguson killing. Between restaurant patrons, restaurant employees, and people who happened to be out and about downtown today, they had compiled a list of about sixty names of people who would need to be interviewed: people who might have seen Leni getting in or out of her car, someone
else
getting in or out of her car, or who might have noticed her leave the restaurant. Keys? they asked at every juncture. It was common knowledge that Leni hung her keys on a hook just inside her office, with her coat and purse. Anyone could have grabbed them.
Quentin stuck his head in Nick’s office, waved a piece of paper. “Forensics on your firebomb.”
Nick blinked. God, his house had been firebombed last night and things were so crazy today he’d almost forgotten.
Quent said, “They’re looking for prints or tracks, but it’s mostly leaves and pine straw right now so they don’t know
what they’ve got yet. No fingerprints on the cocktail itself. Rag, gasoline, and a wine bottle. Some Liquid Joy mixed in.”
Liquid Joy.
The back of Nick’s neck prickled, as if something had crawled across it. Dish soap thickened the mixture, made it more likely to burn more.
“And the bottle was scored.”
“Scored?”
“Like, with a glass cutter. So it would be sure to break.”
Christ. Nick took a deep breath and thought about Hannah and his mom—safe with Luke. Erin, too—she was under the watch of two Feds at Rebecca’s house. Of course, she’d been under watch at his house, too. His jaw ground.
“What about the .22s?” Nick asked.
“They found one in a tree. No one has shown up at any nearby clinics wearing the second under his skin.”
Too much of a long shot to think Erin had hit anyone, given the circumstances.
Nick’s phone rang and someone knocked at the door at the same time. At the door was Feldman, but Nick answered the phone before he could speak.
“I’m at the Pub.” Schaberg. Nick put him on speaker so Quent could hear. Schaberg said, “A reporter from one of the morning news shows called here this morning and asked for Ferguson. Bartender doesn’t know which show, but said Lud was bragging about going out and being on TV and getting paid for it.”