My stomach rolls, threatening to eject my morning coffee.
“We get it, Terry,” Myrtle snaps. “When did it happen?”
“Last night,” he tells us. “In the parking lot of the Drunken Moose.”
26Feather
Kathy is gone, bagged and loaded, headed to the coroner’s office for postmortem, but her killer is not. I’d be lying if I said I wanted to get here in time to see her discarded on the corroded concrete, face ashen and still as stone, maybe not so different from my own. But I see her anyway, ashedid, eyes fading to a lifeless horizon, a heap of parts.
He’s still here—the Saranac Strangler—in the earth, in the air, in the weeds that grow in the cracks of the parking lot. And he’s hungry. His appetite has doubled, tripled in the last few weeks, and he can’t understand why. It unnerves him, makes him feel out of control. And that makes him angry. Kathy’s death was more violent than the rest, more brutal. I see it play behind my eyes in cinematic flashes. He didn’t stop squeezing until the skin around her throat began to split and her eyes bulged from their sockets like balloons. Her lungs are swimming in fluid, her skin freckled with hemorrhages. And still, he is not satiated. The craving is overpowering him. He thinks that makes him weak, but it only makes him more dangerous.
In answer, my own cravings begin to kick in, a tickle at the back of the throat, the memory of destroying angel on my tongue, the bitter spores of yellow wart. It’s time for me to feed. He’s so close, so present, it could be any day, any moment, when we collide.
Police tape wraps the back lot, strung between the building, a patrol car, and a couple of traffic barrels they’ve set up. I look for the little plastic stands used to mark evidence, but there aren’t any.Which means our Strangler, true to form, left this scene as clean as the last. I skirt the edge of the yellow tape, scanning the ground, the cars, the back wall of the Drunken Moose with its pitiful gray siding, and scrutinize my surroundings, examining the faces of everyone nearby.
There are a few curious onlookers—a woman and two men—too unabashed to realize how inappropriate their presence is. The woman meets my eyes, impassive. Her nylon jacket has faded from a deep cranberry to a sickly lavender over the years, and the coffee-stain of her boots has been scuffed tan on the toe. She’s a nosy resident, nothing more. I break eye contact with her and study the nearest male—in his seventies and leaning on a quad cane, too old to be a threat. The second man is wearing a thermal under his T-shirt and a stupid grin across his face. He’s still in his twenties. This is probably the most exciting thing to happen in his hometown for years. He doesn’t have enough life experience to know he’s making a spectacle of himself.
If the Strangler is still nearby like I believe, then he’s not letting himself be seen.
I stare at the concrete and think,thisis what Henry was becoming.Thisis what he wanted more than anything. Who will he asphyxiate now that I have gone if my plan fails? What woman will suffer Kathy’s fate, the one meant for me? What a disservice I have done the world to kill myself and leave him alive.
“Acacia?”
I look up and see Regis walking toward me from the other side of the police tape.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
I lift a shoulder. “I was drawn.”
He glances behind him where an officer is snapping pictures of the ground.
“I didn’t know if you’d be here,” I tell him.
“Crow Lake is very small,” he says. “Makes more sense for them to contract with us than maintain their own police force.”
I should have realized as much, especially with all his trips tothe café. But Myrtle’s place is at the edge of town. The Drunken Moose, however, is located squarely in the center of it. It’s another departure for our killer. He’s closing in.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he tells me. His lips depress into a thin line behind his sandy facial hair. His eyes remain wary.
“Shouldn’t I?” This is a prime opportunity for me to collect as much information on our common foe as possible, while the scene is fresh. He had to know I would come.
His head dips, eyes cast down. “Look, about last night—”
“Don’t,” I tell him before he can go on. I don’t blame him, knowing what I do, what he doesn’t. It sits at the surface, ready to tumble out of me, the truth. For a second, I think it might. My mouth opens, lips poised, tongue stiff with it, and his eyes are on mine, searching, waiting. I bite it back. It’s impossible. Why would he ever believe me? And yet, there is something between us already, an unspoken understanding, a yoke of intuition. “I know how it looks from where you stand, but I promise you, Aunt Myrtle and I—we’re not the enemy here. We’re onyourside.”
He hangs his head, then lifts it to cut through me with those impossibly gray eyes. The officer behind him calls his name and he waves over a shoulder. Turning back to me, he adds sadly, “You should go.”
I cross my arms, annoyed to be shut out when we both know I could tell him more about this murder than any of his officers could. “I hear she looked like me, the victim.”
Irritation flashes across his face. “Who told you that?”
“Terry.”
He rolls his eyes. Everyone knows Terry can’t keep his mouth shut to save his life. “Maybe a little,” he says impartially. “Same age. Same coloring. Similar hair. But it’s coincidence. You have nothing to worry about.”
I have plenty to worry about. “We all have something that keeps us up at night.” The words are so loaded they drop like bullets. I hope he understands. Ineedhim to understand. We are hunting the same person.
His eyes are penetrating. I can feel the pressure building in his chest, his hands, creeping up his neck. “I guess we do.”
