37. Bad Witnesses
Sally lay in the back of the ambulance, her body leaden and senseless.
Her clothes were replaced with blankets, the wound in her scalp treated.
At some point Logan returned with a hot chocolate.
She sat up and looked out as Silas and Jerome Rook were brought up by armed officers and pressed into their wagon.
Liam stood nearby, sipping his hot chocolate and shaking.
He hadn't changed from his sodden suit. He wasn't even looking at anything, just facing the side of another ambulance. Mayhew stalked past, looked at Sally once then away, barking orders.
DI Gemmell climbed into the ambulance.
"We're going back to Rye," he said, sitting beside her. "We'll run a proper debrief when you're feeling better."
The rear doors closed. Sally studied him. His nice suit was covered with mud. There was a pin in his lapel, a pink cancer ribbon. He seemed uncomfortable, hovering in his seat. The ambulance began to roll away.
"What's wrong, Stephen?" she asked.
He turned but didn't answer, and it chilled Sally.
"Nancy Cagen. Were her eyes missing?"
Gemmell looked down at her. His expression seemed to war for a moment. "Not her eyes. Her ears."
Sally thought she must have misheard. "What?"
"I haven't seen it. Just heard it on the radio. Ears missing."
That took a moment to absorb. Ears, not eyes? It broke the pattern. "What about shells?"
He shook his head. "Not shells. Bulrushes." The pulse in his throat danced. "Pushed into her auditory canals."
Sally sat with that. Nancy Cagen, mutilated, but in a new way. Collier's words rose from her subconscious, the garbled quote from an ancient fragment of Greek philosophy. Eyes and ears were bad witnesses for men with barbarian souls.
The weight of that settled across her like a thick layer of silt.
Jason Harrow had paid with his eyes. Nancy Cagen with her ears. That was the pattern. It matched perfectly. But what about these victims made them bad witnesses? Or barbarian souls?
What did the pattern mean?
She pictured the killer leaning over Nancy Cagen. Cagen had probably been drugged on the same mixture of ketamine and cardiotoxin, immobile. She must've gazed up as the blade came down, conscious as the cuts began.
A wave of nausea washed over her and she gagged.
"Shit," Gemmell blurted, grabbing for a cardboard tray and holding it up, but she managed to get the urge under control.
"False alarm," she muttered. "I'm OK."
"Feel like I'm on uncle duty again," Gemmell said. "When the kids get sick, the parents get sick too. And this is sickening."
Sally gulped. Eyes and ears. The quote ran through her mind. Was this punishment? Harrow and Cagen, did they have anything in common? What had they seen, or heard, or ignored?
"You're an uncle," Sally blurted, trying to push the nausea back. "Nephews or nieces?"
"Two boys, one girl." Gemmell slightly lowered the tray, but didn't put it down. "None over six, and still getting sicker than I've ever seen every winter."
Sally chuckled. "Lot of time indoors. The bugs spread."
"And I get drafted. My brother and sister both." He sat back, relaxing a little more. "You see some gnarly things on the job. When two kids have been projectile vomiting from their bunk beds, though?" he shuddered. "That's real horror."
Sally smiled. The ambulance rumbled on. It felt good to talk about normal things. But Gemmell's hands writhed slowly in his lap, like there was something more, something eating at him.
She waited.
"We're not supposed to talk about it," he said at last. "But the DCI's got up a head of steam about how you did this.
The crash, the shotgun, all of that." He paused, looking in her eyes.
"But from what I've seen, it's all justifiable.
And it worked. You and O'Connell? We'd be nowhere without you, and the DCI knows it too. "
Sally let herself sag back on the gurney. She felt suddenly very tired, and closed her eyes. Nancy Cagen's face came back to her. Those bright eyes. That stubborn energy. The way she'd been on the beach just hours ago, the most alive thing on Dungeness.
The ambulance jolted and Sally woke.
"We're here," said DI Gemmell.
Sally sat up. Her blankets slipped and Gemmell looked away swiftly. "Sorry. I'll get you something to wear."
"Thank you, Stephen. And call me Sally."
He smiled as he closed the doors. "I'll try."
She slumped back, feeling dizzy. There was hunger, too, piercing the exhaustion, which had to be a good sign. She looked at the ceiling of the ambulance, thinking through the pattern again: ears at the Listening Ears. That was obvious. But why eyes on Dungeness?
Was it simply the beach itself, the view of the horizon? Was it the reactor, something to do with uranium atoms ripping around? About power, energy, beams of light?
She sat up again. Beams of light.
The doors opened and the female paramedic returned, holding a spare uniform. "Sorry, there's no underwear, but…"
She trailed away as Sally slid off the gurney and snatched up her marsh-soaked clothing, fingers digging past clots of rotting reed and black mud.
"You'll probably be OK without underwear," the woman said weakly. "I don't think you want those."
Sally got her fingers into the jacket pocket and pulled out her phone. It was smeared with marsh dirt but the screen woke at her touch. She brought up maps, scrolled until she had Dungeness at the center then zoomed in.
There.
She remembered her first approach to the reactors. The giant blocks encased in scaffold. The tall, thin chimney venting steam. And right there on the corner just before the main entrance, the new Dungeness lighthouse.
Sleek, tall, black, modern. A replacement for the one she'd climbed near the Crab Shack. On a direct line of sight through the reactors to where Jason Harrow was laid, his neck craned back, staring right this way.
"The lighthouse," she whispered.
"Uh," the paramedic said. "What?"
Sally snapped back to the moment. The paramedic held the folded uniform across her chest. Sally tossed the blankets away, took the clothes and yanked them on, her weariness fading as she lurched from the ambulance.
She pushed through the thinned ranks of press and into the station, all the way to the bull pen.
The desks were half full, officers and civilian assistants brought in from other stations to handle the sudden influx of paperwork of two murders and counting.
Sally glimpsed one of the Rook brothers being escorted along a long corridor toward processing.
She saw DI Gemmell, looking back at her with concern, but no sign of Mayhew.
She caught a glimpse of herself in a flatscreen TV and almost laughed. She was dressed in a new, clean uniform, but she was anything but clean. Every inch of her had been splashed by the foul sewer water. It was on her face, her neck, in her hair. Her eyes were red, her skin pallid and feverish.
"Where's the DCI?" she asked, her voice coming out so rough that those nearest to her flinched.
"She's in OR1," Gemmell said, pointing.
Sally headed toward it, past Interview Room 1 where Gabriel Rook was in another interview. Trying to nail down just how many crimes to charge him with, probably. Mayhew was in the observation room watching the interview, but turned as Sally entered.
"Officer Rogers?" she hissed. "What the hell are you doing?" She took Sally's arm and pushed her back out of the room.
"You need to hear this, DCI," Sally insisted, letting herself be led away. "I think–"
"I think I was very clear," Mayhew seethed. "You are currently under investigation! You are not supposed to be–"
"It mirrors the land," Sally interrupted. "I get it now. The boys missing their eyes, looking right at the lighthouse? That's a perfect pair. Nancy Cagen at the Sound Mirrors, surrounded by their listening ears? That's the pattern."
"What on earth are you raving about?" Mayhew said, leading Sally back to the training suite. "The bodies of the boys were in front of the reactors, not the lighthouse."
"But they were looking at it!" Sally stopped cold by the door.
"Straight through the reactor, a direct line to the lighthouse.
" Everyone in the bullpen was watching now.
"These murders, they're about witnesses, people who saw or heard something they shouldn't have.
And they're about the land! About belonging. "
Mayhew's face was ashen. "So help me, you will get in that room now, Officer Rogers, or you will check yourself into hospital. Do anything else, and I will arrest you myself for interfering with an active investigation. Is that understood?"
Sally felt herself slipping. "DCI, it doesn't matter if you think I'm crazy. This is the pattern, and we can use it."
"Use it how?" Mayhew pushed the door open. "Now get in there!"
Sally looked at her. She hadn't listened. Maybe she wasn't capable of it. Too angry to hear, too angry to see. Another bad witness. But the bullpen had heard. Gemmell had heard. It was out there, and what else could Sally do right now?
She let herself be pushed inside. Mayhew slammed the door behind her.