My monsters. One who worships with his mouth and his fists, one who loves me with the quiet of a grave, and one who protects me with his mind.
I’m still trying to remember how to breathe when the bell jingles again, and Eddie walks in. His detective’s eyes take in the scene in one swift, comprehensive scan: me, flushed and disheveled, straightening my clothes; James leaning against the counter while licking his lips; the charged, sex-thick air.
Eddie’s blue eyes spark with hunger as he comes closer. “I feel like I missed the party.”
“Here, the party never ends,” I say and lean over the counter to peck him on the cheek. But when I pull away, I notice the tension in his shoulders. “What is it?”
“Vincent’s wife, Evelyn,” he says, his voice low and flat. “She filed for divorce three days ago. Hasn’t been seen since.”
The cold from the back room intensifies, frosting the glass of the cooler doors. James’s smile vanishes, replaced by something cold and sharp. I look past them, at my pyramid of Crown Royal, my little throne of false security.
What has Vincent done to Evelyn?
Chapter 15
Eddie
It’slaterthesameday I hear about Evelyn’s divorce and subsequent disappearance that I hear the other news.
"We've got another body,” Deputy Miller says. “The abandoned gas station in front of the creek. Female, mid-thirties, blonde. A real estate investor found her twenty minutes ago."
Another body? I'm already heading out the door.
There’s a pause, then, "Red handprint on the wall. Red nail polish on the fingers. It’s Red Hands, Detective."
The words land in my chest like boulders.
"I'm en route. Fifteen minutes. Nobody touches anything."
This has to be a previous kill, just now found. Red Hands himself admitted that there are far more victims than I thought. Fourteen total, twelve within city limits, two in the county. We've only recovered seven. The math leaves plenty of room for a body to surface in an abandoned gas station that nobody's checked in months.
When I get to the crime scene, two patrol cars are already on scene, their lights painting the fading daylight in alternating blue and red.
The abandoned gas station sits at the end of a short gravel road that dead-ends at Clearwater Creek, one of those places the city forgot about the same way it forgot about the industrial corridor where we found Sera. The pumps are gone, pulled out years ago, leaving stained concrete islands. The building itself is a single-story cinder block rectangle with a flat roof and windows that have been boarded over with plywood.
The door hangs open. Someone propped it with a chunk of concrete. Yellow tape stretches across the entrance in a bright X.
"Investor's name is Dale Pruitt," Deputy Miller says, reading from his notepad. "Says he came to assess the property for a potential buyer. Walked in, found her, called 911. He's in the back of unit two. Pretty shaken up. Forensics is on the way."
"Anyone else been inside?"
"Just me. I confirmed the victim was deceased and backed out. Didn't touch anything."
"Good." I glove up and duck the tape.
The smell hits me first—mold, rat shit, and decomposition. Not the full assault of advanced decomposition. This is recent, a day or two at most.
She's arranged like all the other victims. Kneeling. Hands bound, fingers laced together in her lap around a burnt rose. Head tilted down in submission under a ceiling that's sagging with water damage. A broken mirror is scattered around her knees. The pose is Red Hands's signature, the victim arranged in the posture of someone forced to watch all of their reflections die and thus finally see the truth.
The red handprint is on the wall beside her head, positioned at eye level. A deliberate calling card left by a killer who wanted hiswork witnessed, who craved an audience for his acts of spiritual undressing.
Her fingernails are painted red with Crimson Kiss. I recognize the shade immediately. The color he used to mark them as finished. Finally unmasked.
The same color I scrubbed off Sera's nails in a hospital room, working carefully around the IV line, using acetone pads I bought from the gift shop downstairs because I couldn't stand the sight of his signature on her hands for one more second.
I turn on my flashlight app and crouch in front of the victim to look at her face. Then I squeeze my eyes shut to try to erase the image.
Evelyn Harrow.
