40
ANSON
“Turn,” Detective Moss said, drawing closer. “But keep it slow. Both hands above your head.”
“Turn around, dammit. I’m not going to tell you again.”
I did, but I didn’t raise my hands. Instead, my fingertips crawled across the table and inched closer to her service weapon.
Detective Moss stood at the mouth of the hall, fully clothed, the shower being a ruse. A snub nose .38 was in her outstretched hand, pointing at my chest. “There’s a pair of handcuffs in my purse. I want you to reach in slowly, take them out, and put them on.”
Again, I did no such thing. Instead, I raised my voice and said, “Vincent, don’t shoot her unless you have to!”
Vincent wasn’t in the house—he was nowhere near this house—but she didn’t know that. I could tell by the look washing over her face that she had no idea if I was alone or not. To her credit, she quickly regained her composure, and the hand holding the gun didn’t so much as twitch.
“You,” she said.
“Me.”
“If your hand gets any closer to my gun, I’ll tack on attempted homicide when I book you.”
“I’m leaving.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
I nodded toward the folders. “You really have no clue who is doing this, do you?”
Her eyes narrowed, dug into me. “Well, now I have at least one solid suspect.”
“You know I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“I know you were in the hospital when the medical examiner was killed. Security cameras put you on that floor.”
“I didn’t kill the medical examiner.”
That was true. Twill killed the medical examiner.
I wasn’t about to volunteer that information, though.
Twill seemed perfectly capable of getting in trouble without my help.
“And if you’re half the detective I think you are, you know he was involved in the murders.
Not directly, but helping to cover them up.
Best I can tell, he’s falsifying the cause of death. Blaming it on overdoses when it’s not.”
If she was aware of that, she gave no indication. She said nothing.
“I didn’t know Andy,” I continued. “I didn’t know Emily, either. I never met them. We both know this has been going on a lot longer than I’ve been around. It couldn’t be me.”
Her eyes remained on me for a long time, silently burning into me. Finally, she said, “The red folder to the left of your hand. Open it.”
I saw the red folder on the table, but opening it meant moving away from the gun. She somehow knew I was considering that because she added, “It’s okay. If I try anything, your friend, Vincent, can shoot me, right?”
“Right,” I said, adding, “Watch her, Vincent,” for good measure.
The red folder contained several 8x10 photographs, along with a preliminary homicide report.
The photographs were of a woman. If her eyes hadn’t been open, I might have thought she was sleeping, but they were open, thin slits filled with milky white.
Her lips were tinged purple, slightly parted.
She was lying in a partially open sleeping bag—one I recognized.
“You found her outside Andy’s tent, didn’t you?”
“Nicole Dickson. Thirty-five years old. She died of an overdose; heroin laced with fentanyl.”
“Did you find a hole in the back of her head?”
I don’t think she expected me to know about the hole, because for the first time, her stone face faltered for a moment before she answered. “We did.”
“Why is he doing that?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because I think you want to.”
There was a slight twitch in her left eye; she didn’t look away, but I could tell she was weighing exactly what she was willing to tell me and what she wouldn’t. Then she said something I didn’t expect. “He’s drilling a hole and using some device to remove their brains. Some kind of pump.”
“Removing their . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. My brain was too busy trying to make sense of it. In my mind’s eye, I saw the hole in the back of Emily’s head. I was right about the drill, but why would someone remove the brain? Then Detective Moss said something else that threw me.
“The woman in the sleeping bag was Andy’s mother.”
“His mother?”
She nodded. “How do you know about the holes?”
“I saw the one on Emily,” I told her. “In the morgue.”
“Right before you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Who did?”
I didn’t answer that.
Detective Moss pursed her lips for a second.
“The medical examiner was told not to mention the hole in his reports or with the press. We held it back to help identify the killer. Nobody knows. Outside of investigating officers, you’re the first to mention it to me.
” The hand holding her gun stiffened. “That doesn’t exactly scream innocent. ”
Not just me.
Twill knew.
Stash knew.
Who else?
Then I realized something else. “So the medical examiner wasn’t falsifying his reports—he was following your instructions?”
Detective Moss nodded.
That meant Twill killed an innocent man.
I couldn’t tell the detective that. For all I knew, Twill had heard about it from Stash.
I understood why the police would hold it back, though—they regularly did that in such investigations.
I should have considered that. “Did Andy have a hole too? Like Emily?”
Detective Moss nodded.
“Aside from Andy and Emily, how many others do you have . . . with the same hole?”
“Twenty-six.”
There was no hesitation as she said it. Clearly, it was a number she knew well.
I thought back to the memorial wall at the Quick. Flashes of the red yarn connecting people. “Dating back at least two decades, right?”
Again, she nodded. “The first one was eighteen years ago.”
I had placed the VHS tape on the table to the side of the folders. I nudged it closer to her. “You’ll want to watch this. It’s the security footage from the liquor store on that corner.”
I didn’t say I stole it; I only clarified what it was. She didn’t press me on it. Instead, she said, “The killer is somewhere in the Quick.”
“Watch the tape.”
Her gun hand didn’t falter, but her eyes shifted to my folder on the table. “All those bodies they found in your house. Did you kill them? Before setting the fire?”
Time to go, Champ. You want no part of this dance.
I took a step toward the kitchen. “I’m leaving now, and you’re going to let me,” I told her.
“Don’t move. I called for backup. You’re going to stay right there until they arrive.”
I kept going.
When I backed out of the room and quickly ducked through the same window I’d used to enter her house, she did nothing to stop me.
I heard the window come down behind me and lock.
I felt her eyes on me as I ran down the street.
I wondered if she searched the house for Vincent.
I suspected not. I doubted she really called for backup, either.