Sarah finally looked away from the hive, her gaze sliding past Jacob to fix on some middle distance. “He moved in with his new girlfriend. I assume he felt fine about it.”
The way she said it—so flat, so matter-of-fact—made me wonder if she’d felt anything at all. Not about Zach, not about the breakup, not about the apartment. Just...nothing.
A wasp drifted lazily past her face. She didn’t flinch.
“A paper wasp won’t go out of its way to sting you, but it will defend its nest.” Sarah opened her kit and unpacked a gallon sprayer, which she pressurized with an efficient series of pumps. “You might wanna take a step back.”
Jacob, Evelyn and I backpedaled.
Sarah slid on protective goggles, lined up the nest, and hit it with a blast of fluid: clear, odorless, and profoundly noxious.Lifeless wasps pattered out like petals falling from a dead rose. She paused, listened for buzzing, then hit it with another long blast.
“That kid’s lucky these aren’t bald-faced hornets,” she said. “Once those assholes fixate on you, forget it. Screw the nest. If their sights are on you, they’ll chase you down and make you pay. And they don’t lose their stinger, not like a bee. They’ll sting and sting and sting.”
I clenched away the urge to chafe my arms.
“So you haven’t been in contact with Sledge lately?” I asked.
The stream of poison sputtered to a halt as Sarah swung her full attention to me. “Why do you care?” Her eyes narrowed. “Did Zach send you?”
“I’m investigating the apartment,” I reminded her.
“No. I have no contact. I want no contact. I’m done with Zach. That’s why I left.” Her tone had no inflection. But I had no doubt she meant every word.
Evelyn fell back another step, one hand rising to her temple. “I’m sorry, I just need—” She turned away slightly, breathing shallow. “The chemicals must be getting to me. I’ll meet you in the car.”
As Evelyn retreated, Sarah watched her go, expressionless. “Most folks are like paper wasps,” she said philosophically. “By and large, they’ll leave you be, at least until you cross their boundaries. But then there are the bald-faced hornets who just wanna see how much they can make you hurt.” She gave the hive one more blast for good measure. “Zach was a hornet.”
When Sarah mounted a ladder with a scraper and a biohazard bag, Jacob and I took that as our cue to leave. The kids were all inside now, sticky hands and snotty noses pressed against windows as they watched Sarah chip away the source of all the morning’s drama.
Jacob and I turned and headed back across the playground, speaking softly. “Something’s not right about all this,” I said.
“Sledge doesn’t just sound like an asshole,” Jacob said. “He sounds abusive. Sarah could be compartmentalizing, or shut down. Or even on the spectrum.”
Or she could have been so victimized by Sledge that she participated in a murder and a coverup. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but the luminol disco ball could’ve been pointing to one hell of a bloody nose.
But the fact that there was a repeater in the bedroom changed everything.
“I’m guessing Evelyn wasn’t just inhaling insecticide,” I said. “Let’s see what was bugging her.”
We found Evelyn pacing at the far end of the parking lot, tapping on her own wrist like she was trying to reboot her brain. “It really says something that Chicago is so riddled with psychopaths that I can’t wait to get back to DC.”
“Sarah was a little flat,” I allowed.
“She verified that Sledge was abusive,” Jacob said. “Are you sure this isn’t some kind of coping mechanism?”
“Coping implies there are emotions being managed.” Evelyn shook her head. “This isn’t just flat affect—I’m not picking up repression or dissociation. I’m picking up nothing. Completeabsence. It’s like trying to read a mannequin. No fear when she talked about him chasing people down. No relief when she said she left. Nothing.”
As a I pondered what could hollow someone out that completely, another report from Records came through. They’d cracked Sarah’s shut-down Instagram account and plumbed the servers. But on first glance, the photos they sent me looked nothing at all like her.
An array of snapshots showed a thirtyish woman with long golden blonde hair and a ready smile. One pic had her with a group of similar young ladies in sparkly dresses on a girls’ night out, and another was of her petting a llama at some rinky dink county fair. But the one I was most interested in showed her making a cringe duck-face while beside her, Zachary Sledge was flexing his heart out in a sleeveless T-shirt.
Going by her features, yes, it was the same person. But the woman back there snuffing out wasps looked more like this one’s evil twin. Or maybe the good twin, depending how you felt about obnoxious poses.
“She was happy once,” Jacob said.
Evelyn shook her head. “Don’t mistake performance for feeling. People project what they think they’re supposed to be. And psychopaths are especially adept at…masking.” She winced as she said that last bit, and it was nearly lost to a self-conscious mumble. She resumed the tapping on her wrist. “If we’re done here, please take me back to headquarters. I’ve had enough field work for today.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
