Jericho was back at the crime scene that afternoon, with the body gone and caution tape on all the doors, when he got the call from dispatch. A man had jumped out of the forest just a few blocks down from the scene, scared a couple of girls who’d been playing in the alley, and then had run back into the woods. The description wasn’t great, but it was close enough for Jericho to call the hardware store as he drove to the spot where the man had been seen.
“It might not be Will,” Jericho told Mr. Appleby. “And even if it is him, we may not be able to let you get close. Our priority will be your safety. But if it is him, and if he’s calm enough to pay attention, hearing a familiar voice and seeing a friendly face may help us bring him in peacefully.”
“I’m on my way out the door,” Mr. Appleby promised.
Jericho arrived to find the two girls, maybe ten or twelve years old, huddled close to a man he assumed was their father. “They don’t need to be here for this,” Jericho told the man. “If you’ve given your information to the deputy, you should probably head out. We can take it from here.”
“They were badly frightened,” the man said. “I think they need closure. They need to see it was just a sad, pathetic excuse for a man, not a monster from the woods.”
Jericho didn’t have time to argue, and it wasn’t like he was some sort of parenting expert anyway. “Stay behind the cars, then.”
A few deputies had already been sent into the trees to circle around behind where they hoped the man was hiding, and Jericho approached the edge of the forest with caution. He could see the bent branches, the scuffed ground, and didn’t have much trouble tracking what had clearly been a panicked flight rather than a disciplined retreat. Why had the man jumped out in the first place if he’d been so easily frightened away?
Jericho was about thirty feet into the forest, two deputies following close behind, when he saw the bright eyes staring at him from under a shrub. He lifted a hand to stop the deputies and slowly crouched to get a better look.
“Will,” he said gently. There were scratches on Will’s face, damage that could have been caused by tree branches—or by the fingernails of a woman desperately fighting for her life. “Hey, Will. I don’t know if you remember me. Jericho Crewe? We went to school together, but that was a long time ago.” Did Will have any memories from before the accident? Jericho had dropped by Will’s apartment with a deputy, checking to see if the suspect had made it home, and found a tidy, Spartan space with no personal touches whatsoever. No signs of who Will was or what he cared about.
But a record check had shown several violent incidents in his past. Times when he’d gotten scared or angry, or more likely some toxic combination of the two, and lost control of himself. That matched what Jericho had seen at the crime scene. He’d have to wait for the coroner’s report to be sure, but it looked like Lorraine had been beaten and then strangled. A crime of passion with no discipline, no strategy or forethought. It felt like a fairly logical escalation of Will’s past behavior.Damn it.
“Ned Appleby’s here,” one of the deputies hissed from somewhere close behind Jericho. “Do you want him with you?”
“Yeah,” Jericho said, keeping his voice low and calm. “Let’s give that a try. Tell him to come up beside me but not go any farther.”
Jericho stayed crouched down, just like Will, with his gaze somewhere over Will’s shoulder. Nonthreatening, but paying enough attention that he’d be able to react quickly if Will started to move.
There was rustling in the duff behind him, then Mr. Appleby’s voice. “Will, it’s me. We need to get you out of here and clean you up, okay?” A pause, then, “This is Jericho Crewe. Do you remember him? He’s going to take care of you. He’s going to figure out what’s going on, and he’ll help us make things right again.”
It was a pretty generous interpretation of Jericho’s plans, but he didn’t object.
“You need to come out of there, now,” Mr. Appleby said. Will appeared to be listening, at least. His gaze was locked on the older man, and his body seemed coiled just a little less tightly. “You’d like to get cleaned up, wouldn’t you? Like to have a good shave and go back to being your handsome self?”
Mr. Appleby started to ease his way closer, but stopped when Jericho put his arm out. “He could be armed,” Jericho said.
“He’d never hurt me!”
“That may be what Lorraine Mackey believed,” Jericho said. “I’m sorry, but if you can’t get him to come out from a distance, we’ll have to go in. Us, not you.”
“He’s scared, Jericho.”
“That’s when people are the most dangerous. No closer, Mr. Appleby.”
Mr. Appleby clearly wasn’t pleased, but then Will moved, just shifting his weight, and everyone refocused on him.
“Come on out of there,” Mr. Appleby said again. “My Mary’s worried about you. You don’t want to worry her, do you?”
It was slow and painful, but Will gradually shuffled closer and closer to them. Jericho snuck his cuffs out as quietly and unobtrusively as he could manage and kept his eyes on Will’s hands. No sign of a weapon, but his knuckles were bruised and scabbed over. Damn it, had he killed Lorraine with his bare hands? He was probably big enough—almost as tall as Jericho, and as wide, although with more fat, less muscle. He’d played baseball in high school, and football too, Jericho recalled with a pang. Back when he’d been himself, instead of the man the accident had made him into.
“Do you need to cuff him?” Mr. Appleby whispered. “He’s calm now. He’ll come without a fight.”
“Cuffs are standard procedure.” It was a bit of a cop-out, because he was happy to bend the rules when they seemed to be getting in the way, but this time, they made perfect sense. Will didn’t need to get into any more trouble, and resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer would both make him look guiltier.
Another few minutes and Will was right out in front of them. Jericho nodded to one of the deputies to come close enough to assist, and then, as gently as he could, he eased Will’s hands behind his back and slipped the cuffs on. Will made a horrible sobbing noise when the metal clicked shut, but otherwise remained impassive as Jericho frisked him and read him his rights.
“I’ll drive him in,” Jericho told the deputy. But really he was telling Mr. Appleby, telling him he’d do what he could to make sure Will was treated fairly. Respectfully, the way Mr. Appleby had always treated Jericho, even when he hadn’t deserved it.
A crowd had gathered in the alley. There were the girls, their father, and several people who were probably neighbors; there was a middle-aged man who covered stories for the local paper; and, somehow inexplicably and yet inevitably, there was Wade Granger. He stood silently, a step or two away from the rest of the onlookers, and stared as Jericho led Will past the crowd.
There was a moment when it seemed like Will wasn’t going to cooperate: he jerked away and tensed his whole body, ready to flee or fight. Jericho kept himself relaxed and just stood there for a while, eyes on the trees in someone’s backyard, like a bird-watcher hoping to see a rare species. When he felt Will’s shoulders slump, he quietly said, “It’s not far to the station,” and guided Will toward the cruiser.
