Evangelina Read online

  She reached out and felt his forehead. There would be a lump there. He loved the feel of her fingertips on his brow, even though she was pressing too hard. The headache wanted to grow, but she kept it at bay.

  After a few seconds, he realized what he was letting get away and batted her hand away.

  "She's not that far," he said. "Let's go."

  Mercy frowned. "You're in no shape to keep running, Art."

  "Don't tell me what I can and cannot do." He got up dusted himself off, trying hard to keep his balance.

  "Art, a footrace is not the way to go here," Lue suggested. "You made a door in a fence with your face. There are two patrol cars trying to cut them off a few blocks away. We can join them. There are plenty of officers here securing the scene. Come on." He took Art's arm, which was both annoying and welcome. "Let me drive."

  That was a good enough compromise, and Art nodded.

  Back in the car, Lue traveled a block or two before opening his mouth again. He kept searching out the driver's window as he did so, scrutinizing the alleys and backyards and copses they passed. "Hey, Art. You, uh. Said some weird stuff on your way through that yard. Nothing I could really make out. What were you saying?"

  Art rubbed his temples. "I said, get the other perp."

  "Really? Because I figure what you said would have sounded more like 'look over there, get the other perp' than what I heard."

  "What did you hear?"

  Lue didn't answer. Art didn't press.

  Through radio contact, they felt Evangelina and the mysterious "other" slip away. No one was seeing anything. Every report came back negative. They tightened the cordon and began searching door to door, but within thirty minutes it was clear to both of them: the net had holes in it, and both suspects had slipped through.

  Not only that, whoever was back at the house was almost surely dead.

  "We should go back there."

  "Fine," Art answered listlessly. The pain from the fence bump was gone, but the headache remained. He cared about whoever was at the house, but he cared even more that Evangelina was gone, once again.

  It's not fair. She shouldn't get away. Not after all this. Not after getting so close.

  Next time, I won't let her. No matter what.

  CHAPTER 30

  Back at the crime scene--the Enrickson house, according to Lue's knowledge of the neighborhood--he and Lue passed two patrolmen, one of them vomiting, one of them with a gray green I-just-puked expression.

  The public thought throwing up at crime scenes was such a shameful thing, that cops crept away to do it away from all eyes (and, one hoped, away from any critical evidence). The reality was, if a scene was bad enough to make men and women who scraped corpses off pavement throw up, you did what you could to comfort your fellow officers, even if it meant a shoulder pat while he or she advertised his or her stomach contents.

  "Karl Enrickson was in Martin's network," Lue pointed out as they entered. "Young bachelor, lived alone."

  Art paled as he looked around the kitchen. "Looks like he should have left town, too."

  This was more horrendous than any previous scene-- here in Moorston, over in Bemidji, or anywhere in the files and photos Mercy had tacked up in the station war room.

  First of all, the interior was in ruins. It looked as though the stove had exploded or there had been a severe microwave mishap. It was more than those appliances, however, and things hadn't just exploded. They had smashed . . . been smashed. They had been torn and shattered and destroyed. They had been wrecked and splintered and hammered. Some of them had been split and some of them had been wrenched and some of them had been set on fire.

  Second was the smell. All of the things that had been ruined, gave off fumes as if they were still smoldering . . . which they probably were. Burnt plastic, wool, and hair were only the top notes in the odors assaulting Art's sensitive nasal passages.

  Third--third!--was the gore. It was hard to believe it was only one body at first, but here was the proof: only one arm and leg over here, plus one leg over there, plus a second arm way over there, still only equaled one corpse. Karl Enrickson was spread from the kitchen down the hallway into a study, and--

  Wait.

  This victim wasn't male, he realized as he came to the eviscerated torso (and, a few feet away, the head). It was a female. Blonde. The head was still facedown; this scene was complex enough that everyone was waiting for photographs before touching anything.

  "Art. Look." Lue was pointing to the lower torso, where the buttocks barely existed anymore. A flimsy fabric, probably the victim's underwear, was soaked in blood save for a small corner.

  Three pastel unicorns seemed to be dancing away from the advancing blood.

  "You don't suppose . . . ?"

  Art looked more closely at one of the arms. The broken hand was holding something shiny. He minced through two steps of gore and crouched down.

  It was a small brass unicorn, with an incredibly long, shining, blood-flecked diamond horn.

  "Lue."

  "Yes?"

  "I think we have a murder weapon here."

  Lue maneuvered into a place where he could have a look. "You think Evangelina did all this"--he motioned around them, and then pointed at the unicorn--"with that?"

  "No. Lue, maybe this isn't the murder weapon for this scene. Maybe it's the weapon for all the others."

  "So. You think Pamela Pride was not here to, what, recruit a jogging partner?"

  "Probably not invited at all."

  Lue exhaled and gave a sickly smirk. "Whew. I guess I had a chance with her, after all."

  "That's pretty awful, Lue."

  "Cop humor, my friend. We laugh to avoid crying." His face did get more serious, now. "We should have seen this coming, Art. In fact, you suggested it when I said she was lying about her school. I blew that off."

  Art saw where he was going immediately. "We can't be sure yet, Lue. We'll run tests. I might not be right."

  "You'll be right. I can feel it."

  "It doesn't matter. This is not your fault."

  "It is. I thought she was a harmless attention grabber. I let her play me, even while I thought I was playing her. If I had been more objective, I could have stopped her before she killed Martin, and Mares, and the Hahn kid." He looked around in despair. "And absolutely before this."

  Art stood up, stepped through the gore, and grabbed Lue by the collar. "Don't you dare," he hissed. "This is not your fault. I didn't see it coming either. And I have more reason to."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  Flustered, Art let him go. "I know the type."

  "You mean beaststalker."

  "I mean Regiment."

  "You think Pamela Pride was Regiment?"

  "If I'm right, wouldn't it start to look like that?"

  "So who killed her?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" Art waved his hand, feeling as helpless as he ever had. "Evangelina did. Like Loxos at Saint George's. Just bloodier."

  "What about the other guy--the one you saw running away ahead of her?"

  "I don't know. With any luck, it was Karl Enrickson."

  "Who was . . . a dragon?"

  "Sure, why not? Lue, I don't know how many more answers I have."

  "No, I get it. This is seriously screwed up, Art. Susan Elmsmith was trying to tell us that Special Agent March is Regiment. If Pamela Pride is Regiment, and so is Mercy: Art, what if Mercy has something to do with all of this?"

  Art said nothing.

  "Art. Look at me, man. My ex-wife, Nancy. Her name is on Thomas Martin's network list, if you know what I mean."

  "Yeah. I figured."

  "The last I saw her was a couple of days ago. She leaves calls unreturned, and no one I know has seen her. I want to believe she escaped, Art. But with a federal agent trailing her . . ."

  "Oh, my God."

  Mercy was standing by the kitchen door, staring in at the remains. Neither Art nor Lue had noticed her arrival, but Art didn'
t think she had overheard Lue. At least, he hoped she hadn't.

  He tried not to notice her rebellious curls and pretty (yet professional) blouse, and the shape she made as she stepped gently into the bloody room.

  "No luck on catching Evangelina or your second suspect," she updated them. "They're taking down the net. She got away again."

  "Not exactly," Lue said. At Mercy's inquisitive look, he presented the room. "Does any of this look familiar to you, Agent March?"

  It was a more aggressive tone than Art might have used--bordering on accusatory--but he couldn't blame the Moorston officer.

  Mercy didn't seem to understand the tone herself, but she looked around anyway. Her face was like glossy printer paper, and sweat began to dampen the curls closest to her cheeks. When she craned her neck to examine the hallway, she quickly withdrew.

  "I'm not . . . excuse me." She took a stumbling few steps back out the porch door, leaned on a railing outside, and took several deep, steadying breaths.

  Art and Lue looked at each other. Not exactly conclusive. They both had felt the same way, and some officers were still outside recovering themselves.

  Thus began a long afternoon, and all three of them stayed at the crime scene--partly because they wanted to learn everything in real time, Art knew, but also to keep an eye on one another.

  He was actually glad for the sedate excitement that came with processing a crime scene. There were other eyes here besides his own; other people looking, and being careful about what they showed on their faces. That was always a good thing and, right now, was a wonderful thing. Because even with all the cops and techs, Art felt exposed, stared at. He almost wished Mercy had thrown up . . . it would have been yet something else for everyone to look at.

  It wasn't just the gore. It wasn't the square footage, which was admittedly impressive for a nonvehicular homicide. It was the sheer malevolence of the scene, a sort of gloating I . . . got . . . youuuu. There was no attempt to hide anything, to misdirect, to cloak in shadow.

  He had never seen this from Evangelina before. It was terrifying, and the last thing he wanted to show the other cops was how terrified he was.

  "So anyway . . ." Mercy said, taking a careful step toward him. They were almost beneath what was left of the living room ceiling fan, now hanging by a bare wire with all blades broken off. "You look unusually pensive."

  He tried to smile at her but knew it came off as fake. "There's a lot here to think about."

  "Yeah, what a mess," she whispered sympathetically.

  "Lue figures you might have known Ms. Pride." He didn't know any other way to put it.

  Her reaction was satisfying, either in that the idea took her aback or she was a phenomenally good actress. "No. That name is new to me. Though the face over there isn't exactly recognizable. If it turns out I know the face under a different name, I'll happily speak up." She bit her lip. "Let me guess. You both figure Ms. Pride for the other crimes in Moorston, and maybe more?You say to yourselves, what kind of sick person would do this? And you hear about this thing called the Regiment, and you listen to Susan Elmsmith talking about the Regiment, and you say to yourselves: hey, maybe Mercy March is Regiment. And then you figure: maybe Mercy has a room full of stuffed unicorns at the AmericInn, and crazy unicorn panties, and a brass unicorn in that big briefcase of hers. Am I close?"

  "Yes."

  She looked around. Since the body parts were in the kitchen and hallway, most of the officers and techs still on scene were out of eyesight, and the two or three they could see were busy examining evidence and consulting with each other. She turned slightly and pulled her suit jacket up and her pants down a bit.

  "See? Normal underwear."

  He coughed. "Ms. Pride's neurosis was likely singular."

  "Likely enough. Plus, I've done a lot of thinking about the dangers in my job, and what kind of underwear I want the coroner to see. So we're back where we started. I could be deranged, but in a different way."

  "I don't think you're deranged."

  She smiled genuinely. "You're sweet. Look, lingerie aside, I'm not going to be able to convince you what I am or am not, here in this house. Or in a day. And what I am or am not part of, doesn't matter as much as who I am and what I do. My honest feelings, my honest actions, right?"

  He nodded.

  "I'm sure you want to be judged the same way, right?"

  He nodded again.

  "Then I swear to you: you have nothing to fear from me. I am not involved in this crime, save as the principal investigator. I want to find out who's murdering people, and I want to stop that person."

  "Maybe Evangelina just did."

  Mercy snorted. "Pamela Pride did not destroy half of the Saint George's Medical Facility and kill Professor Loxos."

  "Separate crimes, separate suspects, separate motives."

  "And so is this crime, and if nothing else, Evanglina is still a suspect in her first murder, if you really want to be that naive. Look, Detective: we can parse this all night long, and we probably will. I want you to be as sure of me, as I am of you."

  "And how sure is that?"

  She chuckled, and the color returned to her face for the first time since she had entered from the kitchen porch. "Not one hundred percent. But willing to learn."

  Four Years Ago

  "Everything is going to change soon."

  Silence.

  "When I was a kid this place terrified me. I think it goes back to a game of hide-and-seek that went kinda wrong."

  Silence, broken by the rumble of thunder.

  "Do you remember that day?"

  She didn't expect he would. She wasn't even sure he had been there. But that didn't matter: he was here now.

  It was going to rain. It was going to storm, which was even better. Evangelina loved the way the air felt before a storm, the way her body seemed almost in tune with nature's bitchiness. The crack of lightning could have come from her mind's core.

  Outside, it began to sprinkle, and the wind picked up. It wasn't yet raining hard enough to hear inside the barn.

  "We can't stay here forever, you know. We're hours from home." She turned to look at the boy who'd been standing behind her all this time. He had followed her when she'd flown to the barn, had been right behind her as she checked the outbuildings and slipped past the grain silos into the barn. He'd felt no more than one big step away the entire time . . . the reach of someone's arms.

  To put it another way, as Aunt Susan would have said, he was only a hug away.

  "Home," he repeated, and she expected him to keep going, but he didn't.

  "They'll be expecting us."

  "But this is home," he said. "Or it was, long ago. Wasn't it? Why not stay?"

  "We can't stay." She felt her irises swirl, the way they did when she looked at him and only him. She knew he would lose himself in them. "Not for long, anyway."

  She reached out. He came to her at once: yes! He had been a hug away. And now he was not. Aunt Susan, so wise when not being a wiseass. It was a quality she admired.

  Evangelina smiled down at this man, who was older than her but still felt so young. His sculpted flesh trembled beneath her fingertips.

  "Everything will change," she said again, and sighed.

  He shook his head. "I love you. Nothing will change that. Ever. No matter where you go, I will follow."

  Pretty words. Almost stalkerlike. But pretty.

  She was neither cruel nor a liar, so she kept her thoughts to herself and instead held the boy's hand. Her fingers slid down to his wrist and felt the slow steady beat of his pulse.

  "I believe you," she finally said, and kissed that part of his wrist, and felt his heart on her lips.

  CHAPTER 31

  "Okay, boys." They were back in their Suds Bucket booth. None of them had ordered food, but tea and juice was enough of an order to keep the waitstaff at bay. Besides, it was late afternoon, so the shop was deserted. Mercy looked at Art and Lue expectantly. "What do we think happen
ed here today?"

  Lue, whose concerns about Mercy Art knew had not subsided, chose his words well. "The picture changed dramatically, Agent March."

  "How so?"

  "Well." He sipped his tea. "We learned the difference between a crime scene Pamela Pride leaves, and a crime scene Evangelina Scales leaves."

  "That's a bit of a jump, Detective. I'm surprised you'd rush so quickly to conclusions. The same murderer can use different tactics in different scenes."

  "Is it your position that Evangelina Scales borrowed Pamela Pride's supersharp brass unicorn for a few days, before returning it in spectacular fashion today?"

  "Of course not. I'm warning us against sloppy logic. There's a much simpler explanation."

  "Which is?"

  "Evangelina Scales and Pamela Pride are collaborators."

  Lue didn't respond, and Art mulled that over. "It fits most of the facts we've seen so far," he admitted. "Two suspects appear at most of the Minnesota scenes."

  "And elsewhere," Mercy added. "I had the Minneapolis office send agents out to recheck those crime scenes in other states. We've only heard back from a couple, but they did indeed find those parallel scrapes on the exterior of each house. It was like Pamela or Evangelina was marking the house before entering it and killing the victims."

  Art continued. "One could be lookout, the other the killer."

  Lue rubbed his chin. "Hmmmph. But then, why the fighting? We saw it before today, too--the blood spatters at the Martin residence, and fabric tears. I imagine we'll find out those samples match up with Pamela."

  "Criminals fight each other all the time. Dividing spoils, petty jealously, suddenly divergent goals . . ."

  "I can think of another explanation," Lue offered. "Evangelina is innocent of the crimes Pamela Pride committed."

  Mercy couldn't hide a snicker. "Then why be at each crime scene?"

  He shrugged. "She could be a stalker. She could be trying to learn what Pamela's up to. She could even be trying to stop her."

  "Stop her?" Art interjected bitterly. "If so, she's done a lousy job of it."

  "Okay, I can see my theory is a minority opinion. Give it time. We should track how many people get their throats cut under mysterious circumstances, in Moorston or anywhere else, over the next few days."