Oliver opened his mouth to shout something, but Kitsune was beside him, woman now instead of fox, and she clapped a delicate hand over his mouth. With her other hand she was already propelling him forward. He fumbled with the shotgun, trying to get a better hold on it, and he lost his grip. It hit the ground at his feet and he tried to stop, tried to go back for it, but Kitsune would not even allow him to slow down.
“Run,” she said, a whisper harsh upon his ear. “Marra has come.”
The winter man led the way, and they were running again. As they left the space between those two cottages Oliver took one glance back at the Truce Road and saw several Kirata gathering, starting after them. A guttural voice called to them and they stopped and turned, giving up the chase at the command of a new arrival. The figure that joined them in the street was taller than a man, perhaps seven or eight feet, and seemed to have a human body, but its head was that of a ram, heavy horns blacker than the night.
Then Oliver was around the corner and still running. Kitsune was beside him and she reached out and grabbed hold of his free hand, practically dragging him along. Up ahead, Frost had stopped and grabbed the reins of a pair of saddled horses, and suddenly Oliver understood where they had gotten off to in those moments when he thought he had been abandoned, when he thought he was going to die.
The privileged life he had led had prepared him, in some strange way, for this. Once upon a time it was common for people to know how to wield a sword or shoot a gun or ride a horse, but in the modern world such pursuits were only for the wealthy. Until today, he had only ever shot skeet. And he had never ridden a horse out of need. But he could get himself in the saddle quickly enough.
He mounted the horse in a single swift movement, gripping the reins in both hands, cursing himself for having dropped the shotgun. Kitsune climbed up onto the mare beside him.
“Ride east for Perinthia. Stay off the road!” the winter man rasped in the darkness. And then Frost was gone, disintegrating into snow and wind and sweeping up into the sky.
A roar erupted behind them. A second came from the roof of a house just ahead and Oliver glanced up to see a Kirata up there, preparing to jump.
“Ride!” he called to Kitsune, and he snapped the reins.
The horses were swift and the terrain familiar to them and they galloped as though they had been waiting all their lives for such a flight. The tiger-men gave chase, but they could not keep pace with the horses, and in moments Oliver and Kitsune were riding east into the night, away from the village of Bromfield and toward a city where every citizen would likely be on the lookout for him.
Yet exhilaration made him shout and he glanced over at Kitsune, whose hood had been thrown back by the wind. Her hair blew behind her like the wings of a raven and she laughed at his exuberance, her smile, for once, entirely without guile or mystery.
On the eastern horizon, the black sky had a tinge of cobalt, a whisper of dawn.
CHAPTER 13
H
alliwell had fallen asleep in his chair and slept there all night, shifting uncomfortably while CNN droned on in the background of his dreams. The light of day and the stiffness in his aging body had woken him shortly after eight o’clock, and the long, uncomfortable night had conspired with his old bones to make him feel ancient. He was not on the clock until the afternoon shift, which began at two, so he had taken his time showering and making himself an egg, cheese, and bacon scramble for breakfast, a treat he gave himself once a week.
And he had watched the clock.
It was unlikely a sheriff’s detective from Wessex County, Maine, was going to get much cooperation from the Paris police, but if he could be patient until eleven or twelve, he figured the San Francisco P.D. might be slightly more cooperative. The Paris cops might cooperate once they understood that he had a pair of killings that also included blinding as their primary feature, but then, he didn’t speak a word of French, and what little experience he had with the French suggested that they had an attitude about that sort of thing.
So he had eaten breakfast and kept an eye on CNN for more news. There was a brief report, but it told him only that both victims had been children. No gory details. Blinded how, exactly, he wanted to ask. But first he needed to find someone who might actually have an answer.
It was only as the clock ticked toward noon and Halliwell went to pick up the phone, prepared to dial information for San Francisco, when he realized the call would cost him. Other than Sara, with whom he rarely spoke, there wasn’t anyone he called out of the area. He had the minimum long-distance coverage and it seemed foolish not to let the sheriff’s department pay for the call, especially if he was going to be on awhile, trying to get the information he needed.
As he made this decision, Halliwell had an odd sensation. He was tempted to eat the cost of the call, just so he could make it from here and not have to answer questions from Jackson Norris. The sheriff had every right to get an update on the investigation. Hell, it was the sheriff’s investigation, really. But Halliwell now realized that there was more to it than just the job. Somehow, without him being aware of it, the case had become very personal. The mystery of what had happened to Oliver Bascombe and his sister Collette, how they had seemed to simply disappear— the brother twice now— was getting under his skin. The witnesses who’d seen Bascombe with a woman in a fur coat had said she looked Asian, but he’d considered the possibility that they were mistaken, and that it was Collette with him.
He would have given anything to talk to either of them, but mostly the brother. Oliver Bascombe would have been able to solve a lot of mysteries for him. Most important amongst them, of course, was the identity of the man who killed Alice St. John and Bascombe’s own father. It could be a coincidence, these murders in Paris and San Francisco. After all, how could it be anything else? All the news would say was that the victims had been blinded, but that didn’t mean their eyes had been removed. And even if the murders in Maine were identical to the others, they couldn’t possibily be the work of just one man. The odds were absurd.
Halliwell needed answers, and he was starting to realize that he needed them for himself, not just for the job. On the other hand, he couldn’t get all proprietary about it. Whatever he discovered he would have to report to the sheriff anyway.
Shaking his head, bemused by his reluctance, he grabbed his thick winter coat from the rack by the door and slipped it on, double-checking that his service weapon was properly strapped into his holster and that he had his identification and keys.
When he arrived at the office, he was ninety minutes early for his shift, but he managed to make it past the front desk and the deputies’ break room without anyone taking note. Halliwell shared a large corner room with tall windows and a clanking iron radiator with two other detectives, but at the moment it was empty. He went through the paperwork and mail in his in-box, some of which would require his attention later, then shoved it all aside and picked up the phone. The wooden chair creaked beneath him, as he imagined it had even on the day, decades earlier, when it had first been purchased for the department. He dialed information and asked for the police department in San Francisco, California— homicide division, if they had a separate number— and scribbled it on the corner of his desk pad with a pencil so depleted it ought to have been used to score miniature golf.
Turned out San Francisco homicide did indeed have a separate number. When he dialed, it rang only once before being picked up. The cop on the other end was a detective named Beck. Halliwell introduced himself.
“What can I do for you, Detective Halliwell?”
“Before we go any further, you might want to call me back, look in to it, so you know I am who I say I am.”
Halliwell had been through this before. Reporters would say anything on the telephone, try to trick someone into revealing information that nobody else had. Whatever it took to get the scoop.
“No, we’re good,” Beck replied, his voice a low rumble, yet so clear it was as though he were standing in the same room. “Caller I.D. said Wessex County Sheriff. Two-oh-seven area code is Maine. So what’ve you got?”
“I’d like to ask you some questions,” Halliwell said, “but this will go faster if I just tell you what I’m working on. We’ve got a victim here, adult male, fifties, murdered in his bedroom. Perp removed his eyes. The next county over there’s another one, a little girl this time, same m.o.”
A little sigh of disgust came over the phone line, and then Beck cursed, more quietly but just as clear. “Jesus.”
“You can guess why I’m calling—”
Beck laughed humorlessly. “You saw our case on the news and wanted to find out how our vic was mutilated.”
“Pretty much. CNN said the subject was blinded.”
“All right, Detective. Here we go, then. The best part. No sign of forced entry, no witnesses, no strange cars in the driveway, anything like that. Just a random kid, a quiet nine-year-old boy with a touch of autism, middle-class family, father’s a cameraman at the local ABC affiliate. Only the mother was home at the time, but we’ve got her 911 call on tape and nobody figures her for the crime. But if not her, then how, right? The house was locked up tight. It was bedtime, but Jason was giving his mother a hard time. He begged for another half an hour to finish reading a chapter in a book called
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
. Heady stuff for a nine-year-old. When she goes in, he’s lying on the bed with blood staining the pillow under his head, running down from his eye sockets.
“So, yes, that was the mutilation. The perp tore his eyes out. The medical examiner is still trying to determine what he used to remove them, but it was not done with any delicacy, I can tell you that. My partner and I caught the case. It looked like the guy had used a grapefruit spoon and just . . . dug around in there. Cause of death was heart failure. In a nine-year-old boy. That was the trauma and pain of it. The little guy had a heart attack.”
There was a catch in Beck’s throat and Halliwell felt a chill travel through him, a grim shadow over his heart as he thought of Alice St. John.
“Any leads at all?” Halliwell asked hopefully.
Beck paused a long while. When he spoke again, there was a new wariness in his voice, as if he was thinking maybe he should have checked up on Halliwell’s I.D., after all.
“Not much,” he said at last. “No physical evidence. Like I said, no forced entry. We were starting to look at the mom because we had no other choice, and then the desk sergeant here brought in an
L.A. Times
his wife had picked up when she was down visiting her sister. She pointed out a tiny little piece in the international news about the murder in Paris. The circumstances— the child at bedtime, no forced entry— sounded similar enough that I checked on it. They were too similar.”
Ted Halliwell had been a cop a long time. There were hesitations in Beck’s voice that told him the man was leaving something out. He could almost hear the empty spaces in the story. And he had a feeling he knew what was missing.
“He took them, didn’t he?”
“Pardon me?”
Halliwell sighed. He knew he was right. It couldn’t be, but he felt it powerfully. He told Beck about Alice St. John’s murder, how it had taken place in public and so was vastly different from the Paris and San Francisco cases. Max Bascombe’s murder, however— though the only one not involving a child— fit the m.o. perfectly. He gave Beck what little description he had, knowing it would provide nothing. And then he went back to the question.
“The killer took them. He did, right? In both of the cases here, Bascombe and the St. John girl, the eyes were removed from the scene. Locked doors and all.”
The silence told him all he needed to know. Halliwell drew a deep breath and leaned back in the chair, letting the familiar squeak cry out to the empty room. Questions fired through his mind, echoing around without encountering any answers.
“How can that be?” Detective Beck asked, but Halliwell was sure the man was not speaking to him, but to whatever cosmic force he believed might be listening. “Can you hang on a minute?” he asked. And then, before he put the line on hold, Halliwell heard him calling out, “Lieutenant? We’ve got another one.”
The words echoed in his mind for every second of the nearly two minutes he was on hold, so that when Beck at last returned to the line, he nearly shouted at the man.
“Another one? What’s that about, Detective Beck? The way you said that, it sounded a hell of a lot like—”
“You’re not the only one who’s called.”
Halliwell narrowed his eyes and stared at the blank, dark face of his computer screen, as if expecting it to flicker to life and provide some kind of explanation. “How many?”
“One definite in Prague. One in Toronto. Two that may or may not be related in Louisiana. And an orphanage in Germany, just outside of Munich.”
Nausea roiled in Halliwell’s stomach and he leaned forward, elbows on the desk, running his free hand through his thinning hair. “At an orphanage? Was there more than one—”
