Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
The fair began to thin out around dusk. Seth made his way toward his car up the street, moving through the smoky, crepuscular light.
A loud pop resounded through the sky, followed by flashes of red, white, and blue behind him.
He glanced back in time for the sizzle as the fireworks rained down like shooting stars.
He couldn’t bring himself to feel any sense of celebration.
There’d been no hits on the sketch so far.
No useful calls on the tip line either. Someone else must have seen this man—he wasn’t invisible, and he had a vehicle of some kind.
Maybe a van. If he did live here, someone must have known him, recognized him.
He thought back to Clementine Dyer’s reaction. The glimmer of recognition. Who would she go out of her way to protect? Marty? The sketch looked nothing like him.
As Seth reached his car, he dug the candle from Claire’s booth out of the deep pockets of his slacks. He held it firmly in his hand, getting lost in the deep red, before he opened his car and placed it on the passenger seat.
He was about to head back to the fair to help with patrol when the police radio built inside his car crackled to life.
“All units, be advised—we’ve got a possible homicide at Carlson Gas Stop, Mile Road 6. Reporting party says it’s a white female, twenties or thirties, long blonde hair.”
Two officers had already arrived—Jacobson and Yess—and were dragging crime scene tape over the scene. An ambulance hung back with two grim-faced paramedics leaning against it. One of the patrol cars blocked Seth’s view, so he got out of his car as another firework popped off in the distance.
The crime scene was bathed in the bright lights of the gas station, unnatural and harsh. He moved closer. Past the patrol car, a pool of fresh blood widened over the concrete.
And in the middle of that blood was a woman’s body, her head angled toward the gas station.
She wore a blue denim dress. Seth hadn’t seen Claire today, so he didn’t know what she was wearing.
Her hair—long and dirty blonde—was tucked behind her ear, the way Claire sometimes wore hers.
It revealed a small ear with a hoop earring on the lobe.
He suddenly couldn’t remember if Claire wore hoop earrings, or if her ears were pierced at all.
He stepped closer until the woman’s face, tucked into the crook of her bleeding neck, became clear. An upturned nose, like Claire’s, but with a stronger bridge. Defined cheekbones, catlike eyes, open and glassy, forever etched with their final moments.
It’s not her.
Both relief and shame made his head light. He hadn’t wanted to see Claire’s dead body—he hadn’t wanted to fail her so spectacularly, but he’d failed this woman. There could be no relief here. Only horror.
But more questions piled up in his mind. This scene was different from the others.
There was no writing on her arm. The pool of blood was massive, trailing like rivers into the grooves of the concrete. A gash tore open her throat—it was hard to tell the thickness, based on how much blood there was, but she had definitely died here. Recently, within minutes.
It was a complete shift in MO, aside from the profile and cause of death.
“Winslow, there you are,” Yess said, and Seth’s eyes snapped to his. Yess looked ill. “Coroner’s on the way. Hopefully within the hour. Paramedics showed up, but… was obvious she was already gone. Asked them to hang back so the scene’s not contaminated.”
“That was the right call,” Seth said. From a cut that deliberate, she’d died within seconds. Just long enough for her to be aware of what was happening before it was too late. “Do you know her?”
“Must be from out of town. I don’t recognize her.”
Feeling queasy, Seth scanned the parking lot of the gas station. A truck was parked on the far side of the lot—the employee’s, most likely. One car was by the pumps, a white sedan with a pair of pink dice hanging from the mirror.
“She came for the fair,” he said. “She was gassing up on her way out of town when he killed her. He’s breaking the pattern.”
“Why?” Yess asked. “Why now?”
Seth thought it over. There was only one thing that changed today. “The sketch. He knows we’re closing in on him, and he’s getting desperate. We need to clear out the event, send people home, warn the public. We have no idea where this guy is or if he’ll do it again tonight.”
“Christ, we don’t have the manpower for this, but we’ll try.”
Seth turned to the gas station, just as his phone began buzzing in his pocket. An unknown number was calling him. He frowned and stepped away from the crime scene so he could answer it, facing the dark field across the street.
“This is Detective Winslow,” he said.
Silence. A breath, maybe a sniffle. The sound of crickets—Seth thought it was from the fields around him, at first, but there was an echo.
“Hello?” he pressed.
Then, finally, that voice. “When I found your card in that house downtown, I couldn’t believe it might actually be your personal cell.”
Seth’s heart stalled. Him. As quickly as he could, he turned on the recording app on his phone so he’d have the conversation saved. “I was hoping I’d hear from you again. Where are you?”
“I didn’t have time to leave my message, but something tells me the point has been taken. He knows who I am. He knows why I’m doing this.”
“Who does?”
“You won’t believe me if I tell you.”
“I will.” Seth held the phone firmer. “I will believe you. Let’s meet, you and me, tonight. Your terms. Just say the place.”
But the caller didn’t seem to register his words. “I know I’ll burn for what I’ve done, but he’ll burn with me. Not without the body. Why haven’t you found it?”
“Celine Dyer’s body, right? I found the map you drew in Detective Haylock’s garbage bin, but when I followed it, the building was burned down. What was I supposed to find there?”
There were several long stretches of silence, in which Seth was sure his pulse might snap free from his throat.
“No,” the caller whined. “No, no, no. Of course that’s how he’d get away with it.”
“Who? Tell me who you’re talking about.”
“You don’t understand. He’ll get away with it—he gets away with everything. It won’t work unless he comes out himself. Or unless you find the fucking body.”
And there it was—the anger.
“Whose body? Celine Dyer’s?”
The man exhaled, relaxing himself. “It won’t work. He has to come out of hiding. How many will he let me kill? I might have to… up the ante, as they say. Bring it straight to the place it happened.”
“The place where what happened?” Seth couldn’t help but sound pleading and desperate, because he was. None of this made any sense. “Tell me who you’re talking about. Please. We’ll figure it out together.”
“Yes, we will, Detective. I’ll make him come out. This time, he’ll listen.”
“Wait—”
The line went dead.
Claire had hated the way Marty looked at her ever since that night ten years ago. Those damn guilty eyes, like he was pleading for forgiveness without ever actually apologizing or acknowledging what he’d done. They’d barely ever been alone together since, not till now.
And Claire had fully expected Marty to call her dad right away. But he didn’t.
He’d asked her to sit with him and listen. “Just listen.”
And so, she had.
Despite the world darkening outside the windows—despite the fact that she needed to get back to the fair—she’d sat down at the kitchen table with him.
“I haven’t been able to forget it,” Marty was saying, hanging his head low, “and ever since we had Sully, I…” He rubbed his teary cheeks with his bare wrists.
It felt almost silly, seeing this six-foot-two man with his long ponytail and farm-earned muscles unable to articulate a mere apology, but Marty always had been a bit simple.
“I only did what your dad asked me to do.”
A whole lot of woe-is-me, as far as Claire was concerned. This had been going on for a while now. “But you still did it.”
“I know. I—I didn’t wanna let your dad down. I’ve been here since I was fifteen, Claire. My dad used to beat on me, say I was a pussy, that I’d never amount to a damn thing. But your dad said I’d be the man of the house when he wasn’t around.”
“You say that like I wasn’t there for all of it. I remember you turning into my dad’s little lapdog.”
“I didn’t know he’d ever ask me to hurt you.”
“Hurt me? That’s what you call it?” She stood and threw her arms up, while Marty stayed down, simply gawking at her. “How many days was I down there, Marty?”
“Three,” he croaked.
“That’s right. Three.” Claire plopped back down in the seat. She wanted to hate Marty. She had every right to, but the truth was, she’d always blamed her dad, because he was the puppeteer. She understood how it felt to fear her father.
“I—I am sorry,” Marty finally said. “I didn’t wanna get kicked off the farm. I didn’t wanna end up like some of the others.”
“What do you mean ‘end up like them’? Did something bad happen?”
“No, I just mean like, fired.”
“Marty. Tell me the truth.”
“That is the truth. Trevor, Dylan with a Y, Robbie—those guys were all guys like me, guys your dad saw something in, but they never lasted, and I—I wanted to be different. I needed to be different from them, ’cause otherwise my dad would be right, and I’d be nothing.”
“You don’t know who you could’ve been. You chose to be in this family. I didn’t.” She sank in the seat. “I’d never choose this.”
The sound of doors slamming outside resounded through the house. Claire’s heart sank as she checked the time—they’d lost track, and it was after nine p.m. The sun had gone down, but the fair would go till at least ten. There was no way her dad could pack everything up so early and be back already.
Yet he—and Clementine, holding Sully—stormed into the house. Claire stood on shaky legs, and so did Marty.
“Well, another girl’s dead,” her dad said, not yet noticing her presence. Claire’s blood froze.
“Another one?” Marty asked.
Both her dad and Clementine’s eyes fell on Claire, confused.