Vincent couldn't afford that. So he silenced her the only way a man like him knows how. A borrowed mask. A dead man's handprint. The perfect cover: a serial killer who's still terrorizing the city, claiming one more victim, and isn't it tragic that the sheriff's own wife was among them?
I leave the scene in a hurry with strict instructions to Miller to hold the scene.
“I will, and I…I already called Vincent,” he says.
I give a sharp nod and then leave.
Vincent is in the break room when I get to the station, surrounded by deputies. Since he was suspended, he wears plain clothes, but his suspension and the accusations against him must mean nothing to those who circle him like a god.
He's sitting in a plastic chair with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. The posture of devastation. Two deputies have their hands on his shoulders. Someone has brought him abottle of water that sits untouched on the table beside a box of tissues.
He looks up when I enter, his eyes red. His jaw is set with the particular tightness of a man holding himself together through sheer force of will.
It's the best performance I've ever seen.
"Eddie." His voice cracks on my name. "I just heard the news. Evelyn. Was it Red Hands?"
"We're still processing the scene." My voice is level, neutral, the professional tone I've used for years, now serving a purpose I never anticipated. "I'm sorry for your loss, Sheriff."
He nods, and actual tears streak down his face.
The deputies shift uncomfortably, a wall of blue sympathy.
"I’ll keep you posted," I tell him.
"Red Hands," he says, looking up. “It has to be him. You have to find him.”
His eyes meet mine, and for one fraction of a second—so brief I might have imagined it if I weren't looking for exactly this—something moves behind the grief. Something cold. Something calculating. A predator checking to see if the trap has been believed.
Then it's gone, replaced by the broken husband, the grieving widower, the tragic sheriff who demands sympathy.
I leave the station and sit in my car to process.
The atmosphere is shifting, the tightening of sympathy around Vincent like a protective membrane. By noon tomorrow, the story will be set: the suspended sheriff's wife, murdered by the serial killer terrorizing their city while the department was too busy investigating “baseless” accusations to protect her. People will soften their opinions about him.
Look how much he grieves for his wife! He can’t be all that bad. Maybe the law should go easy on him even though he’s been accused of all sorts of terrible things.
Vincent will be the tragic hero. The vigils will start. The donations will pour in. The outcry over him will evaporate in the heat of public sympathy.
He killed his wife and turned her death into armor.
And I can't prove it. Not yet. Not with what I have. The staging inconsistencies are compelling to an expert but circumstantial to a jury. The lack of anatomical precision in the cuts suggests a non-expert, but "suggests" isn't "proves."
I need more. I need him to slip. I need him to say something, do something, reveal something that can't be explained away by grief or coincidence or the plausible deniability he's spent his entire career perfecting.
I need to call Sera. I need to see her too, but I stop at Burger King first and order enough for three since devils don’t eat.
When I call her on my burner, she answers on the second ring.
"Evelyn Harrow is dead. Murdered. Staged to look like Red Hands."
"What the fuck, Eddie,” she hisses. “Staged how?”
"The handprint was too big. Wrong cuts. Right nail polish, but wrong application. Wrong victim profile. It was someone with access to the case files and a very good reason to want his wife dead before she could talk to a divorce attorney about what she knows."
Silence, but I can practically hear the gears turning, the connections being drawn, the architecture of her revenge plan reconfiguring around this new variable.
I turn onto my street. My apartment building is a three-story walk-up on the end of Birch Street, the kind of place that attracts single professionals and divorced men who never cared about aesthetics. The parking lot is full at this hour. I pull into my usual spot, cut the engine, and sit for a moment. Someone inside the building has their bass thudding too loudly for this time of night.
