“They might. They’re so mad right now, they probably won’t. If they do, it won’t matter, because she says Phelps does it himself half the time. Pretends like he hasn’t gotten Webster’s call, that he has no bars. Guy’s a fuckup. I just sped it up a little.”
“But this time, Phelps didn’t do it himself, and this time a woman died. If they check his phone records, this whore of yours will be the first person they haul in. And if you don’t think you’ll be the first person she implicates, you’re dumber than I thought.”
“She won’t talk and I’m far from dumb. I have it all planned out.”
Harvey stared at his son, wondering how Dell had veered off course. He needed to drag his son back on task. “I’ll let this go, this time. But nobody else better die because of you. That’s not the way to fix this and I’m not going down with you. I’ll stop the whole operation first.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Dell said agreeably. “Gotta go.” He hopped out of the Subaru and into his own vehicle and, stomach churning, Harvey watched him go.
Wednesday, February 24, 5:15 a.m.
Noah disobeyed Abbott’s order to go home, stopping by the holding cell where he found Axel Girard, pacing frantically. Girard looked up, wild-eyed with panic.
“I didn’t do anything. You’re ruining my life.”
“I’m trying to save it. I need to talk to you. Will you stop pacing and listen to me?”
Girard stopped, but his body still vibrated with pent energy. “What do you mean, save it?”
“Another woman was murdered tonight,” Noah said. “A car with plates registered to your wife was seen driving away.”
Girard paled. Blindly he sank to the edge of the cot in his cell. “Why?”
“Damn good question. Why do you think someone would target you? Does anybody hate you? Have you pissed anyone off lately?”
Girard pressed his knuckles to his lips. “No. I get along well with my patients, with my neighbors. I don’t have any enemies. How long will you keep me here?”
“I don’t know. I need to find some connection between you and a killer.”
“Oh God,” Girard said, the panic returning to his eyes. “My wife and boys.”
“The plainclothes detectives are still watching your house. Your family is safe.” Noah left holding, finding Abbott standing in the hall outside, frowning. And waiting.
“I had to talk to him,” Noah said. “Had to find out what he knows.”
“And?”
“He says he doesn’t know anything. I’m inclined to believe him. Well, that he doesn’t know he knows, anyway. He’s a squeaky clean guy who couldn’t have made it from the crime scene back to his house before we had him dragged from his bed.”
“Did you tell him another woman was dead?”
“Yeah. He looked shocked. I bought it.”
“Okay. I was going to talk to him, too, but I’ll leave him to ruminate on his nonexistent enemies for a few more hours. Now go home. Go to bed.”
Wednesday, February 24, 5:15 a.m.
He was clean now, the smell of smoke gone, the clothes he’d worn tonight already decomposing in the pit. Carefully he placed Rachel Ward’s shoes next to the men’s Nikes he’d placed there earlier that evening. He adjusted Rachel’s left shoe, making sure it was completely straight, then tilted the round spectacles he’d placed inside one of the Nikes so that it better caught the light. That’s better. He liked things… precise.
They were already at Rachel’s house, the cops. They’d find nothing there that he didn’t intend for them to find. He’d been precise in his execution of Rachel.
He’d thought it all through and concluded that other than speeding up his timeline, nothing terrible had really occurred tonight. The Hats knew about Shadowland. They knew about the participant list. Neither of those things gets them even close to me.
However, Eve’s knowing about Rachel was getting too close. It didn’t matter though. His sixth of the six would be a dark horse. Not on anyone’s list. Not on anyone’s radar.
Still, Eve’s involvement had sped things up too quickly. The press hadn’t caught up to what the police knew, and importantly, what the police did not know. There had not been enough time for the headlines to roil, for police failures and public frustration to mount. The Hat Squad wasn’t close to being ruined. He’d have to let them spin their wheels for a few days. Give the reporters time to close the gap.
In the meantime, he needed to rest. Although he was in good shape, he wasn’t as young as he once was. Pulling this off twenty years ago would have been a piece of cake. Now… Well, he’d need to pace himself. Cut back on the physical and ramp up the mental. Focus on Eve. She was indeed a challenge. He did enjoy a good challenge.
He opened the drawer where he kept the cell phones he took from his victims. It was quite a little walk through the past, amusing to see how far cell phone technology had progressed in the last decade. At the bottom of the drawer were the beepers, positively archaic now. But on the very top of the pile was the cell he was looking for.
He slipped it in his pocket. To make the call from here would be stupid, indeed. It was easier back in the beeper days, he thought. No pesky GPS to give the cops a technological advantage. He’d place this call from a place that would have the cops chasing their tails. A threat and a red herring. A veritable twofer.
Wednesday, February 24, 6:00 a.m.
Eve jerked awake and blearily lifted her head. She’d fallen asleep at her kitchen table, facedown on the stack of usage logs and graphs. Then she muttered a curse. She’d also knocked over the damn mug of cocoa, spilling what was left all over one of the stacks she hadn’t reviewed yet.
There wasn’t much cocoa to clean up, most of it having soaked through the paper. Luckily it was all stored on her hard drive. She’d print this batch again. Quickly she thumbed through the graphs until she came to a page unblemished by brown cocoa stains.
And lowered herself onto a chair. It was a graph showing steady play, upward of sixteen hours a day, and then… nothing. The graph was three weeks old.
Dread cold in her gut, Eve opened her laptop to the list. Subject 036 was Amy Millhouse, an ultra-user. A Google brought the results Eve expected, still her stomach turned over as she clicked the article open and read. Amy Millhouse of West Calhoun was found dead on Sunday, February 7. She had…
“Hung herself,” Eve read aloud. She closed her eyes. “Of course she did.”
Wearily she found her cell phone and hit dial. Noah’s cell was the last call she’d made. The last five calls she’d made. “It’s Eve. I need to talk to you.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“No, you don’t- Wait.” But he’d hung up. She closed her phone, somehow unsurprised at the knock at her door, not five seconds later. He stood on her welcome mat, hat in one hand, cell in the other. Looking like… everything I ever wanted.
“I’ve been standing here for fifteen minutes, trying to decide if I should knock or not,” he said, then one corner of his mouth lifted. “Sure you don’t believe in fate?”
She opened the door wider. “No. Come in.”
He did, putting his hat on her bookshelf. “No, you do, or no you don’t?”
She stared up at him, her head aching. “What was the question?”
He cupped her face in his palm and she wanted to weep. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t want to utter the words. Not yet. Instead she turned her face into his palm and drew a breath, then drew back, new horror registering. “Rachel was afraid of fire.”
He nodded, his eyes full of pain. “Yes.”
“By how much were we too late?”