Cole ignores her. “Within the first seventy-two hours, Bailey identified sixty-five people who were purchasing significant amounts of materials that could be used to dispose of human bodies but who had no legitimate reason to be purchasing those materials.”
“Materials?” she asks.
“The materials you need to melt down flesh and bone.”
Charley swallows. In her mind’s eye, she sees a glittering digital net stretched across a map of the night-dark country. Sees it laced with red threads where it catches the cybertrails of anonymous psychopaths who believe they’re working in secrecy. That’s probably not how it works, in a visual sense anyway. Still, the idea of it fills her with something that’s either excitement or stark terror. Probably both.
“You put sixty-five people under surveillance just to find Davies?” she asks.
“No. We still have them all under surveillance. Davies popped first.”
“What does that mean? Popped first?”
“It means he started acting suspicious right away. And he ticked all the boxes of a typical serial killer profile. An angry white male loner with a traumatic past. And then, of course, there was the fact that he’d invested heavily in a personal leather-tanning operation but for some reason had never made any effort to sell or present the fruits of the labor to the world. So once Bailey gave me the signal, I devoted resources to tracking Davies on the ground. And the rest is history.”
“What about the other people under surveillance? How did you eliminate them?”
“We haven’t eliminated them, Charley. We’re still watching them. For all we know one of them might be the next Richard Davies or Frederick Pemberton.”
He falls silent, maybe giving her time to process the enormity of this. Or maybe he’s bragging. Either way, she’s impressed.
“You realize what the purpose of this is, right?” he finally asks. “I mean, aside from giving you targets.”
“Untold billions for Graydon Pharmaceuticals?” she asks.
“We’re not waiting for the horror movie idiots to get our attention by writing letters to the local paper. We’re not targeting the ones who are so desperate for media attention they’ll escalate to incompetence by their fifth kill. We’re targeting the quiet ones. The effective ones. The ones who are content to work slowly and steadily year after year, who might be responsible for an untold number of missing persons cases to which no one’s connected them yet. We’re targeting killers like the Bannings, Charley, who killed for almost a decade because they knew better than to leave a single body by the side of the road, including yours.
“Even better—and I do say this with some amount of pride, so forgive me if my chest is puffing up a little bit—we’re devoting a level of resources and attention to serial predators that no aboveboard, legitimate corner of law enforcement will ever give them. And do you want to know why? Because most of them don’t kill enough people fast enough. That’s why you’ve got some boutique wing of the FBI devoted to hunting them that only springs into action every now and then.
“When it comes to resources, dollars, manpower, humanpower, the people who make those decisions make them based on how many bodies pile up and how fast. They don’t have a metric for what it means to die by the hands of a sexual sadist. Or to have a loved one who does. But I’m different, Charley. I do take those things into account. For you. And for me. And that’s why, together, we’ve built a system that marshals the resources typically reserved for tracking terrorist organizations and applied them to lone human monsters who stalk the night like sharks cruising the deep sea.”
“What does that make me?” she asks.
“A hook,” he says.
“OK. Are you eating them, then?”
He laughs quickly, nervously. Maybe the thought frightens him. “I was trying to be respectful of your personal ethics. But honestly, if you want to act more like a harpoon every now and then, you won’t get any complaints out of me.”
Cole smiles, pats the edge of the bed. “Get some rest. If you’re not running a fever in another eight hours, I’ll let you go.” He’s almost to the door when he says, “And in the meantime, I’ll find someone who can send your boyfriend a text.”
Dead, she thinks once Cole’s gone. Bled out.
The sound of Davies’s cackling laughter still rings in her ears. It chases away anything that feels like guilt. Will it always? Will she have to spend the rest of her life summoning her worst memories of their brutal encounter to keep his death from choking her with guilt? This might be the price of vengeance, she thinks. You have to spend the rest of your life living inside the memories of the worst things done to you so you can constantly justify what you did to avenge them.
19
If Luke Prescott checks his cell phone one more time, his fellow sheriff’s deputy, Pete Henricks, will probably rip it out of his hand. Maybe a little tussle would be preferable to this endless back and forth over whether they’ll ride patrol together or separately. It’s not like anyone else inside the sheriff’s station would notice. Friday nights aren’t as peaceful as they used to be. Not since the new work crews rolled in to start renovating the old resort and the term boomtown became applicable to Altamira for the first time in its history.
Back in the old days, each weekend night they’d see maybe one or two drunk and disorderlies, tops. Tonight, they had five inside the holding cell by nine o’clock.
Still, Luke’s new relationship to his phone seems to have Pete concerned, regardless of what Luke might think. Over the past few weeks—five and counting since Charley shipped out—checking his texts and emails has gone from a regular habit to a jittery compulsion. Which is silly because the two had agreed on radio silence while she was gone.
Luke’s every waking moment since she left has been dogged by the dark fantasy that he’ll soon get some cryptic summons from Cole Graydon or one of his mercenaries, demanding Luke meet them at some isolated warehouse on the outskirts of town. They’ll march into the room with guns drawn and explain in vague platitudes how something went wrong and Charley’s never coming back to him or Altamira. Maybe the drug didn’t trigger as expected, and whatever psycho they went after this time was able to mortally injure Charley before Cole’s men could rescue her.
Or maybe the drug did trigger, but in the end, it finally went haywire, sending Charley into the same orgy of self-mutilation that killed their first test subjects. In both cases, they’ll demand he be relocated and given a new identity so they can sweep all evidence of Project Bluebird under the rug. Then they’ll monitor him for the rest of his life, ready to assassinate him if he ever talks. And all the while, he’ll be left to wonder if their story’s bullshit, a cover for the fact that they’ve locked Charley up in a lab somewhere because letting her run around in the world, with him, has proven too risky.
Or inconvenient.
A man as rich and powerful as Cole Graydon can easily move mountains just because one of the mountains annoys him.
They’ve never threatened anything quite like that, of course, and Zypraxon’s successfully bloomed inside Charlotte’s bloodstream so many times now, it’s hard to believe it would suddenly stop working. But given they still don’t know why it works in her—and only her—maybe that part of his nightmare has more fact to it than he wants to admit.
She chose to go, Luke tells himself for the thousandth time. She chose to work with them. And she chose not to fight them when they said you couldn’t help.
He doesn’t want to resent her, but anger’s been a steady temptation these past few weeks. Anger can give you a false sense of direction when sadness makes you feel lost. If she’d fought harder for him to join their team, he wouldn’t be stuck here in Altamira, arguing with Pete Henricks over whether they should drive patrols together or separately.
Henricks is a few years more experienced than him, but he’s hardly Luke’s idea of a stellar cop. Or anyone’s, for that matter. He used to have a habit of volunteering for the worst a
ssignments, which Luke appreciated, but that was back when the worst they had to do was separate a drunk couple before a bottle was thrown. Now that Altamira’s turning into a burgeoning center of Central California nightlife, Pete Henricks has turned into a strange combination of lazy and smug.
“So where is she?” Henricks asks suddenly.
“Excuse me,” Luke says.
They’re next to the coffee maker, which is not where Luke needs to be right now. He’s already had five cups. And after extensive testing, it’s clear that caffeine highs don’t make the waiting game any easier. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Charley.” Henricks fills his mug, then slides the pot back inside the coffee maker. “No one’s seen her for weeks. People think maybe she skipped out on you.”
“People, huh?”
“Look, I notice stuff is all. That’s my job.”
“And skipped out is code for what exactly?”
“Left your sorry ass. I don’t speak in codes, pal.”
“She’s visiting family,” Luke says.
“Family?” Henricks says the word like it’s a slur. His implication is so obvious Luke can feel it in the back of his throat. Does he think she went to Haddock Penitentiary to visit the woman who killed her mother? She’s got some actual family, for Christ’s sake, even if you don’t count Martin Cahill, her grandmother’s former boyfriend, who’s probably the best family she’s ever had.
Henricks is twice Luke’s height, with a flop of brushed-forward blond hair that screams toupee, but he’s about a fourth of Luke’s width, so when Luke fantasizes about shoving the guy off his feet, it’s not hard to imagine him going over backward like his legs have been ripped out from under him.
“Why are we talking about Charley?” Luke asks.
“Well, we were talking about patrols, but you keep looking at your phone so I figured we might as well address the elephant in the room. Not that I’m saying she’s an elephant or anything, but you get my—”
“We need to do patrols together, Henricks.”
“Why? You like shitty music and wear too much cologne.”
“Because we got about five times the nightlife crowd we used to, thanks to all the new business the construction is drawing to town.”
“Which is all good when you get down to it.”
“Sure. It’s also good for drunk and disorderly arrests. Domestic abuse calls. And DUIs. The kinds of calls we shouldn’t be handling alone.”
“Oh, cool your jets. You just don’t know this crowd yet. Come out to the Gold Mine sometime and just hang out, Luke. They’re good people, and they’re spending money hand over fist. The resort. The tunnel. It’s what we’ve dreamed of for years. Why are you acting like it’s a punishment?”
Because I know who’s paying for all of it, and I still don’t know exactly why he’s doing it.
“Be that as it may,” Luke says, “we should still up our patrols. Especially on Friday nights.”
“OK. Well, we would be upping our patrols if you and I did them separately, because then we’d cover more area. That’s how math works.”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you, Henricks? But if we don’t patrol together, you usually don’t patrol at all. That’s how you work.”
Pete’s holding his coffee cup close to his chest, as if he’s preparing to hurl its contents in Luke’s face. But his expression’s blank, lifeless. “We have a boss, Luke, and it’s not you.”
No way is he letting Henricks in on the secret of what’s been calling their boss away from the station so much lately. Staying quiet about it means he can’t tell the guy just why Mona Sanchez has repeatedly asked Luke to cover during her absences.
Before he can respond with some misdirection, Henricks goes rigid, staring at something over Luke’s shoulder.
Luke spins.
At the sight of the woman who just walked into the station, his stomach lurches and then he feels as if he’s been struck across the back of the neck. He’s seen her around town, but she looks so different, he’s sure she’s wearing some sort of mask. The swollen cheeks and eyes, the bruised lips—they give her face a rubbery lifelessness that reminds him of the grotesque masks a psychopath named Frederick Pemberton left on statues throughout Southern California a few months before.
But this woman’s very much alive, and she’s shuffling toward the reception desk, where the night dispatcher, who’s so new Luke keeps forgetting her name, is rising out of her seat.
“Jordy . . .” the woman manages, then she grips the edge of the front desk to keep from falling to her knees. And that’s when Luke and Henricks take her arms and guide her through the waist-high gate into the bull pen.
“Jordy . . .” she manages again before they settle her in the nearest empty chair.
And that’s when it connects. She’s the girlfriend of Jordy Clements, the project supervisor for the new tunnel they’re getting ready to blast through the mountains on the west side of town, all thanks to Cole Graydon.
Luke can’t tell if she’s asking for her boyfriend’s help or blaming him for her current condition. She smells of dirt and wild things, and her T-shirt’s got something on it that might be dirt stains, but there are no leaves or twigs in her long, slightly curly hair. It looks like she brushed it. If human fists did this to her face, Luke hates the thought that she felt obligated to stop and pretty herself up before going to the authorities.
He hates most of the thoughts he’s having right now.
The new night dispatcher pushes a plastic cup of water toward her, but she shakes her head, lips trembling, nostrils flaring. “Get Jordy.”
“Jordy’s your boyfriend?” Luke asks.
She makes a sound that’s something between a sneer and a groan.
“You want to talk to him or you want us to talk to him?” Luke asks.
“How about some medical attention, Lacey?” Henricks asks her. Then to Luke he says, “How’s that sound? How ’bout we get her over to the urgent care and they can—”
“She’s sitting right here, so why don’t we talk to her? And you know her name, apparently?”
“Lacey,” Henricks says, as if he’s ashamed to have the information. “Lacey Shannon.”
She shakes her head furiously. The gesture seems to ignite bone-deep pain throughout her neck and shoulders, so she stops abruptly, wincing and sucking breaths through her nose.
“Jordy . . .” she says again.
“What about Jordy, ma’am?” Luke sinks to a crouch so they’re eye level. “What do you need us to do about Jordy?”
She raises her head and stares right into his eyes. Given her battered face, it’s like being surveyed by a Halloween ghoul.
“Put him in a cell,” she whispers.
Henricks straightens. It’s like he’s recoiling from the woman and the obvious implication of what she just said. He’s given Luke more than one speech about how most domestic violence calls are “complicated things” and how there are two sides to every situation. It’s clear that the idea of Jordy Clements, a key figure in Altamira’s newfound good fortune, being accused of beating up a woman has Henricks’s shorts in a knot.
“Jordy did this to you?” Luke asks.
“Why don’t we slow our roll a little bit?” Henricks says. “Make this a little more formal.”
“Formal?” Luke asks.
Henricks seems to realize he’s speaking too casually in front of a possible battery victim. “Let’s get her into the interview room.”
Luke’s about to agree when Lacey says, “Jordy Clements is a bad man with hate in his heart.”
Nobody says anything for what feels like a minute. There’s conviction in her voice, even though it’s a little slurry, but the word choice is odd—it’s studied, rehearsed. Not the kind of furious and agonized string of accusations Luke would expect from a woman whose boyfriend just beat on her.
He realizes how many eyes are on them. The night dispatcher, and also the few new deputies Mona called in fr
om county. The old storage room was recently converted into the kind of interview room you see on TV, and so far they’ve only used it twice. Before the new work crews rolled into town, increasing the town’s population by about a third, they’d conducted their interviews right out in the middle of the bull pen, or maybe inside the holding cell if the interview was sensitive. In those quieter, more peaceful days, there was rarely more than one person in the holding cell at a time.
A few minutes later, they’ve walked Lacey to the back of the station, past the giant fake ficus he brought in to pretty the station up a little.
There’s a small clicking sound as they enter the windowless, white-walled room, with its gateleg table lengthwise against one wall. The new camera system is motion activated; it starts recording the visitor’s chair every time someone opens the door. Henricks seems to jump at the clicks. No doubt he thinks Lacey’s bullshitting them, and now he’s realizing the trade-off for getting her away from prying eyes is that everything she says is going on camera.
Lacey settles into the metal visitor’s chair with the slow, methodical movements of someone with a sunburn.
“All right,” Luke says, “how about you take us through—”
“No.” It’s the clearest and most forceful tone she’s used since entering the station.
“I’m sorry?” Luke asks.
“Put Jordy in a cell, then I’ll talk.”
“He can’t hurt you in here,” Luke says.
“Did he hurt you?” Henricks asks.
“Put Jordy in a cell.”
“Ma’am, we can’t just go around arresting anyone who—”
“Henricks,” Luke interjects. “Lacey, why do you need us to put Jordy in a cell?”
“So I can talk.”
“About what?”
She looks into Luke’s eyes again, and the hair goes up on the back of his neck. “About who he really is.”
“Have you had anything to drink tonight, ma’am?”
“I don’t drink,” she says, staring at Luke.
“Any medications?” Henricks asks. “Maybe ones you don’t have prescriptions for?”
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