“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—”
Beck had anticipated the question. “All of them. Twenty-seven, ranging from eighteen months to eleven years old.”
Halliwell slid his hand over his mouth and stared across the room at nothing.
“Hello?” Beck prompted.
“I’m still here. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . a lot to take in. I’ve been doing this a long time, but twenty-seven kids—”
“Thirty-three, if you count them all, including yours. Plus one adult. That seems odd, doesn’t it?”
Halliwell laughed, the sound hollow in his ears. “Odd? What the hell is odd, in this context? There’s no way one guy is doing all this. That means there’s some kind of conspiracy. Maybe it’s Internet-based, a bunch of psychos sharing ideas in a chat room or something, going out and doing this and then reporting back to one another.”
“Maybe.” Beck didn’t sound convinced. “I’d almost be happy with that as a solution. Except in every case there’s no sign of entry, no physical evidence. Your situation is the only one I’ve heard about where there are any witnesses. If there were multiple perps, you’d expect at least one of them to screw it up, to leave something behind that the investigating officers could use.”
Halliwell couldn’t argue with that logic. Neither one of them wanted to admit that they were baffled, but it was obvious in the conversation. It was only a matter of time before other agencies became involved, including the FBI. Once it began to look like a serial killer and the case involved more than one state, the Bureau would get into the fray. Halliwell would normally have bristled at the idea, but at this point, he thought he might welcome anyone who might be able to help.
And he knew that eventually they’d get around to focusing on him and the Wessex County sheriff’s department. Their case was the only one involving an adult, and the only one with witnesses. There were also missing persons to consider, an aspect that seemed unique to the Bascombe murder.
Yes, Oliver and Collette Bascombe seemed to disappear at will, with no known means of transportation, and in the brother’s case, in the middle of a blizzard. In that way, they were like the killer, leaving no trace of themselves behind.
When Halliwell was through talking with Beck, they exchanged information and he hung up. Sheriff Norris registered only a flicker of surprise when he knocked on the man’s door and quickly entered. Jackson had been getting several phone calls each day from Max Bascombe’s law firm, the man’s partners in the firm pushing hard for results from the investigation. Those lawyers wanted a quiet inquiry and quick results, and they wanted Jackson Norris to make sure that was what they got.
They were not going to be happy.
At the edge of the city of Perinthia, a patch of the world was on fire. It was not quite morning, nor even dawn, when Oliver and Kitsune rode toward the darkened towers that loomed on the horizon, thrusting up from the Euphrasian soil without any suburban preamble. There was only the Truce Road bisecting grassy plains and then the eruption of shadowy spires and formidable edifices whose shapes all combined in the dark to present themselves as a sort of wall or massive gate. Yet Oliver was surprised to discover, as they drew closer and the indigo sky lightened to cobalt, that there was no wall around Perinthia, only a series of watchtowers spaced perhaps a quarter of a mile apart from one another.
South of the road, twice that distance from the city’s edge, was that patch of fire. The earth was a volcanic pit there, black and riddled with cracks that glowed with the hellish red of burning magma. Streams of liquid fire shot upward with no warning, and all around the edges, where no grass grew, the circumference was a ring of flame burning several feet high.
A mile out from the city, Oliver let the horse canter to a stand of trees and then pulled the reins up to halt the beast as Kitsune joined him on her own mount. The horses snorted conspiratorially to each other as though decrying their treatment these past hours by the thieves who’d stolen them away.
“It’s nearly dawn, Oliver. We cannot afford to rest now. Once the sun rises we haven’t a hope of getting into Perinthia without being noticed,” Kitsune told him.
Her eyes were wide and alert and her face flushed with the exhilaration of the ride. The wind had blown her hair into a wild tangle that spread across her hood and over her shoulders. Though her tone was cautionary, there was that familiar light of mischief in her eyes, as though she couldn’t help it, despite their circumstances.
Oliver felt only trepidation. “I don’t think we have a chance in hell of going unnoticed. The watchtowers are too close. This is impossible.” He shook his head, but could not stop his gaze from drifting back to that patch of infernal, volcanic earth.
“And what the hell is that anyway?” he asked, gesturing toward the burning earth in the distance, troubled by the sight.
Kitsune knitted her brow impatiently. “I’d thought Frost had explained all of this to you. On this side of the Veil, nothing can exist unless it does so in a space parallel to public land on your side. When public land is sacrificed to development, it devastates portions of the land here. Our world diminishes. Often such destruction leaves a fragment of scorched ground behind, a wound in the Veil. Such wounds heal in time, but the world is diminished afterward.”
The horse shifted beneath Oliver, chuffing softly, as if something had unsettled it. He pulled the reins taut in his hands, surveying the dark, brooding shape of the city on the eastern horizon. The tallest of the towers were silhouetted now with diffuse light, the sun flirting just at the verge of showing itself. At this distance it was impossible to be sure, but the watchtowers seemed still.
“Shall we?” Kitsune asked.
Oliver nodded, but then he frowned and glanced around. “All right. But where is Frost?”
The leaves in the birch trees where they had taken cover rustled with a gust of wind and Oliver shivered as cold air swirled around him. He could see his breath, and a few flakes of snow fell as though shaken from the trees. The two horses stamped their feet and one of them sneezed.
“Here,” Frost said, even as the wind began a small, frigid twister of ice and snow. It subsided, and the the winter man stood before them.
Kitsune pulled her cloak closer around her against the chill of his arrival. “I wondered when you would return. I thought perhaps you had abandoned us.”
The winter man fixed her with a hard look, mist rising from his eyes. Then he glanced at Oliver, the familiar chime of his icy hair tinkling together welcome after his absence.
“I went ahead to determine our best point of entrance. We’ll need to make our way around to the south side of the city.” Frost turned to Kitsune. “The guards change shift at sunrise, so that will be our best hope. But it means we must move now. And without horses.”
Oliver let out a breath. “Is that wise? What if we have to run?”
“Our approach will be less conspicuous on foot.”
“Don’t you mean our approach?” Kitsune said. “You can drift in on an errant breeze with no risk at all.”
“True enough. But once within the walls, the two of you will have to do some of the advance work. You might blend in in Perinthia. I will not.”
Oliver grabbed the pommel of his horse and dismounted. “Quit bickering. We’ve got maybe twenty minutes before the shift change. We’ve got to get going.”
The two Borderkind looked at him as though surprised he’d spoken so curtly to them. Oliver was amused. As amazed as he was with everything around him, including his companions, the awe he had felt upon first piercing the Veil was lessening with every hour. He figured that would be helpful. Awe might cause him to hesitate at the wrong moment and get him killed.
Kitsune laughed softly and climbed down off her horse. She leaned in to whisper something to it, and though he was curious Oliver didn’t bother to ask if she and the horse could understand each other.
The winter man stayed with them as they set out from the trees and across the grassy plains toward Perinthia. They took a diagonal path that cut across the Truce Road, moving as quickly as they were able across that mostly open space. The only sounds were Oliver’s footfalls, the occasional chime of Frost’s hair, and the wind. Their path took them right up behind the patch of burning, volcanic earth, and a sulfurous stink rose from that pit so powerfully that Oliver had to breathe through his mouth— and even then wished he could have stopped entirely.
All three of them watched the city as they ran, keeping low and moving through the areas of the tallest grass. More lights came on, the early risers greeting the dawn. Still the watchtowers were dark and quiet.
They’d been approaching at an angle but now with a gesture Frost turned them on a direct path that would take them between a pair of watchtowers perhaps a quarter of a mile apart from each other. The sky continued to lighten and Oliver thought he saw a dark figure in the upper window of the tower to their right. At the left, nothing stirred, but suddenly their error struck him.