Blood Moon (34 page)

He gestured to the chair across from him. She peeled off her parka and sat.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, and he wondered what he must be putting out that women kept looking at him like this. He fought a tidal wave of weariness.

“That’s natural,” he said.

The waitress came by again and Soames ordered a tonic and lime.
Very professional
, he thought.
Ambitious
.

“I guess I’m a little jumpy,” she said, and he thought there was something under her tone, a subtle invitation.

He made his voice harsh. “You should be. I want you on your toes.”

“Can we talk a little, then?” she asked, looking at him directly.

“Of course,” he said, and braced himself.

The waitress came with her tonic. Soames took a sip of her drink and waited until the waitress was gone before she spoke.

“I’m sorry I went off script today, when—”

He cut her off. “It worked. It was a good call.”

She nodded, and looked toward the darkness out the window beside them, and he could see that wasn’t the real issue at all.

“The killer… he’s only killed families so far. Why do you think he’ll come after Lindstrom? Or me, as Lindstrom?”

It was a fair question, he had to admit. And he couldn’t very well tell her the real answer: that he didn’t understand why it would work, he just knew in his bones that it would. Aloud he said, “It’s a theory. That he won’t be able to stay away. And we’ve put it out that you are able to identify him, which may spur him to come after you.”

“You don’t think that will just drive him underground?”

Sure, if logic had anything to do with anything here
. “It’s a possibility. But we think his compulsion is too strong for him to let this go.”

Soames nodded and sipped her tonic, but she wasn’t done. “You’ve met her?”

In spite of himself, he flinched. “Met” was an absurd word. “I’ve been in a room with her,” he said warily.

“What is she like?”

He felt rage rising from somewhere inside him, barely tamped it down. “Agent Soames, this isn’t a casting call. You don’t have to
play
her.”

She colored slightly. “Sorry, sir.”

He held back a sigh. “Our unsub doesn’t even know what she looks like now. It’s all context. He’ll think you’re her because we’re
saying
you’re her.”

“I understand.” She hesitated, but was bold enough to speak. “I’m just curious.”

Fascinated, she meant.
Who wouldn’t be
? He made his face and voice hard.

“I want you to stay focused on your surroundings. Now that the news is out, we have to act as if he is right there, wherever we go. Anything that feels off to you, any twinge you have, I don’t care how small, you talk to me immediately.”

She looked appropriately chastened. “Understood.”

She had the police sketch, and Snyder had given her the rundown of what the Reaper might look and act like, the general dishevelment and odd affect of schizophrenia. But Roarke stressed again, now: “You need to treat everyone you meet as potentially lethal. We just don’t know.”

“Yes, sir.” There was no more invitation in her voice, only deference to a superior officer.

“Now you should get back up to your room. Try to sleep.”

She stood, and reached for her parka… then she looked back at him. “One more question.”

He looked up at her.

“I was told that Cara Lindstrom is somewhere in the area.”

He looked at her steadily. “She was. She may still be. And?”

She faltered. “I… just wondered if that had any bearing on anything.”

He wanted to say no, to cut her off, but in good conscience he couldn’t. “You need to treat everyone you meet as potentially lethal,” he repeated, and it occurred to him that he needed to be doing the same thing.

Chapter Forty

In the morning the show began.

Soames was outfitted with a radio mike and given the strict instruction that she was to wear it at all times. She moved out of her room in the main lodge into a cabin of her own, close to the others so as not to draw too much suspicion, but a unit chosen for its blind spots, so that the Reaper would find approaching a possibility. Of course she was armed and would be constantly guarded. There was already a deputy planted in her room who would not leave it until the operation was concluded.

They all gathered in the war room they’d set up as headquarters. Every move they made, inside or outside, was accompanied by telegraphing of purported intentions: stopping on bridges and in open spaces to provide maximum visibility for anyone watching, lengthy greetings and conversations outside before retreating into the room. Then there was an equally telegraphed procession to the cars to drive to the Cavanaugh house.

The day was cold and shrouded in white mist; their breath clouded in the air. Roarke had been obsessively checking the weather sites and reports. The prediction was daytime snow flurries, cold and windy that night.

The agents and detectives took Soames on a full walk-through of the Cavanaugh house again. It was all for show, but it couldn’t hurt to go over all of it again. The bodies of the family were gone, but the house still felt like a tomb. Roarke could see Soames bracing herself against every description of the scene.

Snowflakes were swirling in the air by the time the reporters showed up, a few carefully chosen photographers and video teams to create the media show. They staged scenes outside the house, cameramen shooting footage and photographers snapping photos of Soames talking to the agents, circling the house, stopping to point out the side door that was the point of entry, the suspected angle of observation of the house.

They would not, of course, be going anywhere near the Fairchild house. The Reaper didn’t need to know that the agents knew that much about him.

Roarke kept looking up at the sky. Sometimes he thought he could feel the moon under the banks of clouds, gathering its fullness.

Chapter Forty-one

The snow had been falling on and off all day. Not a lot, but enough to keep families out of the village center that night, which was a boon. It meant fewer people that the agents would have to steer away. Night now, and the temperature was dropping steadily.

Under the coordination of Epps and Jones, Lieutenant Tyson and Detectives Aceves and Lambert, they had assembled a team of local deputies and Los Angeles agents, three dozen in all, and seeded them throughout the village at strategic spots. There were two ambulances with full staffs of EMTs positioned at either side of the village, ready to go into action if needed. Most of the businesses had closed at Sunday hours, five o’clock. The ones which remained open were key locations now “staffed” by agents and deputies in civilian clothes.

Despite the icy cold, Roarke was close to overheated, wearing a Kevlar vest under a down jacket with a big hood which concealed his face. He was also wearing a beard to disguise his profile, now that he’d flashed it around for the media for two days. Epps was similarly vested but dressed as a maintenance man, moving in and out of back doors and restricted entrances. It was jarring to see his elegant frame in blue-collar clothes. Jones was in a security uniform, driving the tram that ran along the periphery of the village.

All of the agent/ringers had been in place most of the day, working alongside the regular clerks and store owners to learn enough of the routine to carry off the illusion of normalcy. Roarke himself had been walking the circles of the Village for hours now, getting familiar with the layout, the possible escape routes, the hazardous areas where they might lose sight of Soames, lose track of her. The village center was a far more extensive complex that it seemed on first look. He was impressed at how perfect a stalking ground it was turning out to be, the parking lot beside the lake and the walkways that went straight down by the water, curving around buildings, with lots of secluded areas along the way.

The shops themselves were already fully decorated for Christmas, with white twinkle lights draping the awnings, windows full of spun white fiberglass clouds and golden angels. Christmas music played inside the stores and out, the fragrance of spiced cider and gingerbread and vanilla candles drifted in the cold air. All an incongruously tranquil stage set for their grim business.

As the evening came, painting the sky in deep purples and blues, the real clerks and owners went home as if their shifts were over. The agents remained, dealing with the few early Christmas shoppers who had braved the snowy roads. Families with children were quietly approached and steered back to their cars.

The agents and detectives had divided the Village into four quadrants with Roarke, Epps, Jones and Detective Aceves each commanding a squad of deputies assigned to each quadrant. They had blocked out a path for Soames to walk. The pantomime she was going to play was restlessness: being cooped up in her cabin and now needing to get out. The village center was just a three-minute walk from the lodge, so she would leave her cabin and walk the back road down to the village center, under the watching eyes of deputies posted in other cabins along the way.

Once she got to the village center she would browse in a few of the open shops: two art galleries, the candy shop, the café where she would sit in the front window having coffee, then the wine shop, where she would buy a bottle of wine. Then she would head down the path to walk beside the lake, a darker, circular path that was heavily staked out by agents. It was a long and secluded stretch to walk, with plenty of opportunity for anyone following to attack.

Just before Roarke had left his own cabin Snyder had knocked on the door to look in on him. He would be staked out, too, at the restaurant Roarke and Epps had eaten in the night before, watching the path through binoculars.

Roarke had just been strapping on the body armor they all were wearing, and the two men looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

“What are you going to do, warn me about forces we don’t understand?” Roarke said finally.

Snyder’s smile flickered. “Be careful,” he said.

“You, too.”

“I’m not the one who—” Snyder began. And then Jones had breezed in with something or other and they had never finished the conversation.

The one who — what
? Roarke wondered now, as he walked the plaza under sparkling strings of Christmas lights. He looked around him at the shops, now only one window lit out of every three.

He drifted into an art gallery and pretended to study the displays. A few moody paintings of village residents, some abstract sculpture of distressed wood and burl swirls, a few large crosses bound in barbed wire. Edgier than the average mountain fare, which often ran toward calico-garbed teddy bears.

He moved on to the next aisle and found himself in front of a wall hung with sculptures, a theme of hearts: two blackened hearts bound together with rusted chain link, another pair of hearts twisted in barbed wire.

He felt something in his own chest twist at the sight.

Then his phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out to see Singh’s name on the screen.

As he held the phone to his ear, he could hear the tension in her voice. “Chief, I’m sorry to call so close to zero hour, but it’s urgent.”

“Wait just a minute.” He exited the shop into the frosty air and found a bench with no one nearby. “Go ahead.”

“I believe I’ve found him.”

Roarke felt an electric thrill.

“Nathaniel Marcus Hughes. He grew up in Arcata, was living there in 1986 and 1987. He drove for an equine transport company based there, which had routes that included all the relevant towns. He was fired for odd behavior some time after the first massacre and before the second, and was arrested four months after the Lindstrom massacre.”

“For?” Roarke asked sharply.

“Mutilating horses,” Singh said.

Her words were a chill and a rush.
Of course
, he thought.
Of course
.

“He was diagnosed schizophrenic and put on meds in prison. His initial sentence was just two years but he stabbed another prisoner while he was inside, which added the extra time. I asked local law enforcement to go by to speak with him, and they have informed me he has disappeared. His parole officer hasn’t seen him since before the Reno massacre. I’ve sent through a mugshot.”

Roarke clicked over to the message and looked down at a man who looked not unlike Santos, the same dishevelment, the same black void in his eyes. Tanner Fairchild had described him well; the gaunt police sketch was a fair image.

“The photo is out to every agent and deputy involved in our sting,” Singh told him. “I am sorry it could not have come sooner.”

“It gives us someone to look for. That may make all the difference.”

“I hope so,” she said, then: “Be careful, Chief.”

He stood in the chill, looking down at the photo on his phone, of a man whose face seemed caved in on itself, collapsing from some emptiness within. The piped Christmas music floated in the air, a choir singing.

He spoke into his collar mike. “Do we all have the mug shot of suspect Hughes?”

Affirmatives came from the three other quadrants, and he could hear the tenseness in the men’s voices.

Then his earpiece crackled to life and he heard Jones’s voice. “Soames is en route.”

Roarke felt a chill and a sizzle of adrenaline simultaneously. He forced himself to stay for another minute in front of the gallery, looking through the window at art he didn’t see and listening to Jones’s muted report of Soames’ walk past the cabins manned by deputies. Then he strolled back in the direction of the parking lot, past souvenir shops, clothing outlet stores. The wind gusted through the plaza, swirling dead leaves.

He circled the clocktower, where he knew there was a sniper concealed, as well as other L.A. Bureau agents with binoculars surveying the entire plaza. Then he found a bench under a circle of trees and sat, looking across the plaza.