Page 29

29

Diem

T allus tended to be overzealous when working on a case. He pointed fingers before gathering evidence and raced into battle on hunches, unarmed and with no game plan. So when he jolted upright, proclaiming he’d figured out who our killer was, I barely reacted.

He shuffled around on the bed to face me, slapping my knee—about the only part of my body that didn’t hurt. “Holy fuck. Oh my god. It’s right there in front of us. Black-and-white. On the page.” He clutched his chest. “I think I’m having a heart attack from shock. It makes so much sense. Sort of. Oh, wow. D, I can’t breathe.”

“What makes sense?” Calming him down enough to have him concisely explain took almost more effort than I possessed.

When he reviewed the details of his discovery, my soupy brain still struggled to keep up, but then, slowly, the image cleared, the pieces clicked, and I saw it too. I stared at the book I’d been reading and replayed the few facts we’d learned in a handful of chapters.

If Tallus was right, we could prove it. The details were right in front of us, in a book. Ambrose Whitaker wrote from multiple points of view. On occasion, he delivered the story from the killer’s perspective—ambiguously, of course. But if Ambrose Whitaker was our killer and the stories were real, we had a huge advantage. In the cocky way of a sociopath who was convinced he could never be caught, Ambrose Whitaker had found a means of bragging about his kills. Through text. In detail.

And if that was the case, this story in particular was personal.

Detectives Angler and Raven couldn’t solve it because they hadn’t pieced together their suspect’s backstory—they didn’t know the suspect—but we’d met the killer in real life, and we’d learned intimate details about their past. Ambrose might have altered geographical locations or tweaked details, but in the end, it was the substance that counted.

“Am I right?”

Tallus’s eager expression begged for me to agree. Not for the first time, I saw the man who had desperately wanted to be a detective and was rejected because of his vision.

Their loss. My gain.

I touched his face, cradled his cheek, and stroked my thumb under his bottom lip. “I think you’re dead-on, and you make an excellent partner.”

Tallus glowed and leaned in, connecting our mouths. I indulged him for a while before breaking the kiss.

“Is this the part in the story where you nag me about finishing the PI course?” he asked.

I smiled against his mouth. “I should.”

“But you won’t because I’m brilliant.”

“You’re cheeky.”

“I think you love that about me.”

I sobered.

There was that word again. How could it be so heavy and so light at the same time? How could four letters, strung together in a certain order, carry such power and substance? It had poured from the very depths of my soul the previous day after Tallus had escaped what I’d perceived as mortal danger. The fear of losing him had consumed me. It was a scary feeling and an even scarier word. But it felt right like nothing in my life had ever felt.

It would take practice to repeat it, but I pulled Tallus against my mouth and told him with my heart instead. Intimacy, affection, and now love.

We were doing all right. I was figuring this out.

***

“Have you found anything?”

Tallus and I sat in the parking lot outside the diner, intending to have a late lunch after a phone call back home.

The wind howled and shook the rental. Dark clouds on the horizon promised a new winter storm before sundown. The forecast called for six inches of snow.

It had taken a song and dance learning how to hook my phone to the rental’s Bluetooth, but the second I sorted it out, I contacted the one person who could help us.

Doyle cursed on the other end of the line. “Why are you harassing me? I can’t do this in five minutes. You know that. I have a call out to the team in Port Hope, but they haven’t got back to me. As for—”

I cut him off. “We know who Ambrose Whitaker is, and the stories are one hundred percent real. The truth is plainly stated in the details of the books, modified enough to maintain anonymity. We didn’t see it until we started properly reading one of them.”

Doyle went silent.

“We can prove it too,” I added. “What I need is backup from the Port Hope police because this motherfucker has tried to take us out twice, and we’re not confronting him alone lest we end up playing the starring role of DBs in his next bestseller.”

“Talk to me.”

I explained what Tallus had found, told him about finding a particular book in Weston’s room after he’d checked it out of the library, about the marked pages we hadn’t read, and our theory that Weston must have put the pieces together as well, landing him in the river.

“It’s too speculative,” Doyle said when I finished.

“It’s not,” Tallus said. “We’ve gotten to know these people in Port Hope. It’s in the details. Ambrose Whitaker tells us all we need to know. We didn’t see it before because the other seven books were less personal.”

“And how are you going to prove it?”

“We’re going to give you another victim, one with a personal attachment to your killer.” Tallus had a cheeky look about him again, and when our gazes met, he winked.

“How? Who?”

I explained. “You’re going to start by finding out if an unidentified woman in her late thirties with blonde hair, wearing a crimson gown and veil, was discovered at Holy Oak cemetery in the past five years.”

“Why unidentified? We have advanced resources that—”

“No fingerprints. They would have been burned off, and her teeth would have been smashed in, so no dental records. Plus, she wouldn’t have been reported missing, so she wouldn’t be on a list.”

“In the past five years?” Doyle asked.

“Yes. This book was published about three years ago, but we don’t know if our killer does the act then writes the book or writes the book then does the act.”

I listened to typing on the other end of the line. “Where the fuck is Holy Oak?”

“It’s an unused cemetery north of Sylvan Glen conservation area not far outside Port Hope. It was established in the late 1800s but ran out of room at the turn of the century, so they closed it. According to my research, less than fifty people were buried there, so my guess is they don’t maintain it anymore. It’s on a county road in the middle of buttfuck nowhere.”

“Okay. Hang on.”

The anticipation in Tallus’s eyes made me reach for his hand. He wanted to be right. I wanted him to be right.

We were right. Either the body had been discovered, or it was still rotting away in a place no one had been in years.

“I’m muting you,” Doyle said. “I have to place a call to the authorities in the area. Give me a second.”

It took over twenty minutes before Doyle came back on the line. “Nothing. No reports of unidentified female remains recovered in that cemetery or any nearby cemeteries at all in the last five years.”

“Then she’s still there, and no one’s discovered her.”

“And you’re sure about this?”

I glanced at Tallus, who nodded.

“Hundred percent.”

Aslan blew out a breath. “I’ll pass this on to my boss. If she agrees with your assessment, she’ll have to contact the team out there, and they can go to Holy Oak and check it out.”

“That could take hours or days. Meanwhile, we’ve got an unhappy serial killer with eyes on us.”

“My hands are tied, Krause. What do you want me to do?”

A police cruiser slowed and pulled into the diner’s lot. The tinted windows made it impossible to see inside, but they parked in a spot by the front of the diner.

Constable Hercules exited the vehicle, hiked his pants up as he stared directly at us, spoke into the radio pinned to his shoulder, and marched toward the rental Jeep. His expression bordered hostile, not friendly.

“Shit. I gotta go.” I disconnected the call.

“D, what’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Stay quiet.”

I powered down the window. An ominous stirring in my gut told me this wouldn’t be a friendly “how do you do” encounter. Constable Hercules hadn’t come for a bite to eat. He’d shown up specifically to speak with us.

I’d had the engine running and the heat vents aimed at Tallus to keep him warm. The second I broke the seal around the window, frigid air filled the cab. It felt like a premonition.

Constable Hercules bent to glance in the window, eyes narrowed. “I need you two to follow me back to the station.”

“What?” Tallus said as I furrowed my brow. “Why?”

“We need to chat, and I’m not doing it in a parking lot. You can bring yourselves, or I’ll gladly give you a lift.”

I placed a hand on Tallus’s thigh in case he felt the need to get sassy. “What the fuck are you talking about? Chat about what?”

Hercules braced a hand on the roof of the Jeep and smirked menacingly. “We got a call that a couple of out-of-towners might have been responsible for arson out on Abercrombie’s property last night. He reported his old hunting cabin went up in flames, and we have eyewitnesses saying you’ve been poking around the area all week. In fact, I have a police report with your statement attached”—he pointed at Tallus—“that puts you both out there.”

“I made that statement because someone dropped a tree on us,” Tallus said with an indignant huff. Mumbling, he added, “When we were taking a perfectly legal leisurely stroll on the path by the water… minding our own business… looking at… birds.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t buy it. You’re here because Weston Mandel’s mother can’t accept the truth about her son’s accident. You’ve been poking around where you don’t belong, and I also hear you’ve been hassling underage kids in town.”

Before I could defend our cause, inform Constable Asshole that Weston was murdered by one of those kids, he continued. “We’ve also recovered a stolen station wagon at the trailhead registered to Herbert Lace. I spoke with the gentleman this morning. He didn’t know his vehicle was gone, but his wife says you’ve been staying at their B&B. She called you a strange couple. A rough-looking pair. Says you vandalized her property as well.”

“If those fucking clocks wouldn’t go off at—”

Hercules raised his hand to stop my venom. “Enough. As you can see, we’ve got a lot of stuff to clear up. So, I’ll say it again. I need you at the station right now. Either you drive your own vehicle, and I’ll escort you, or we can do it the hard way. I can cuff you and put you in the back of my paddy wagon.”

“Unless you’re arresting us, we’re leaving.”

Constable Hercules looked momentarily taken aback. He probably wasn’t used to people bucking his authority. Not in small-town Port Hope.

“You’ve got two detectives visiting from the Toronto homicide unit. They’re here because you have three dead bodies and no clue who’s responsible. Well, we found the answer for you. You tell those homicide detectives to call Aslan Doyle, and he’ll catch them up. In the meantime, I want you to get a fucking unit out to Holy Oak cemetery ASAP because your killer at large knows his gig is up, and if he doesn’t move a body fast, he’s going to prison for a long, long time.”

Constable Hercules flinched. He didn’t seem to like my tone, the fact I knew stuff I shouldn’t, or that I was giving him orders. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Your phone call reporting arson that suggested we out-of-towners were responsible is a neat and tidy diversion. He’s good at that. He wanted to keep you busy and ensure we wouldn’t show up and spoil his attempt to salvage his life’s work. When did Abercrombie report the arson?”

Hercules didn’t look like he wanted to answer, yet at the same time, I’d piqued his curiosity. “Less than an hour ago.”

“And he called it arson?”

Hercules said nothing.

“Seems to me only the fire department can determine that. Was the fire department called?”

Again, no response, but Hercules’s brows drew closer together.

“They weren’t. I know they weren’t because we’ve been waiting for the news report all day. Abercrombie waited until the fire burned itself out. He couldn’t risk any evidence being retrieved. Then he called you, not the fire department, and told you some out-of-towners set fire to his cabin. Sounds like a good way to keep us both busy, doesn’t it? Did you send the fire department to investigate?”

“Yes.”

“And where’s Abercrombie? With them?”

“No. He said he—”

“Ah, see. While the fire department is on the scene, and you’re busy hunting us down, sticking us in an interview room, and questioning us for fuck knows how many hours, he’s out there taking care of business.”

“Out where? I don’t understand. Are you saying—”

I threw the Jeep in Drive.

“Hey,” Hercules shouted. “You can’t leave. I have enough cause to arrest your ass.”

“Then you’d better get in your car and chase me down, Officer Dumbass. A smart cop would have blocked me in. I’m going to Holy Oak Cemetery. Meet me there.”

I stepped on the gas, and the Jeep lurched forward. Hercules jumped back, still shouting as I pulled into the street with a squeal of tires and burned rubber as I accelerated down the main street of Port Hope.

Tallus shifted to look out the back window and laughed. “Oh, he’s pissed at you.”

“Good. I hope so.”

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

“Yep.” I peeked in the rearview mirror as Constable Hercules ran to his patrol car. “If he’s smart, he’ll follow with lights and sirens. Hopefully, he’ll radio for backup.”

“And you told him exactly where we’re going. You’re a genius, D.”

I smirked. “A genius who’s probably going to spend the night in jail when the day is over.”

“Do you really think Abercrombie is at the cemetery?”

“Only one of his books undoubtedly identifies him as the killer. He knows we figured him out, and his phone call blaming us for arson was a diversion. His only chance of keeping his ass out of prison is to ensure no one finds his wife’s dead body because if she’s not there, it’s only speculation, and no one will be able to prove the truth.”

The roads weren’t snow-covered or slippery like they’d been after the ice storm, so I pushed the rental hard, especially once we left town and landed on an empty county road heading north. I tipped a hundred at one point but didn’t dare go faster since we were driving on packed dirt rather than paved surfaces. An unseen pothole could be disastrous.

I checked my rearview mirror more than once, anticipating the lights and sirens of Constable Hercules’s cruiser, but he wasn’t there.

“Idiot.”

“Where the hell is he?” Tallus asked.

“Probably ensuring he has backup first. Pussy fucking cops in this town, afraid of their own shadows.”

“Maybe we should slow down and let him catch up.”

“No. He knows where we’re going. What street do I want? All the crossroads look the same out here.”

Tallus checked Google Maps on his phone. “It’s just called 4 th Line. It’s your next right. According to this, the cemetery is five kilometers down on the right after we turn. There’s a long drive to get in, I think. It’s not on the roadside but in the forest a bit.”

The left side of the county road we were on showed a vast span of flat farmland for as far as the eye could see. The odd house and barn stood out in the distance. No crops this time of year. A thick forest encroached on the right. It crept to a ditch alongside the road and contained the conservation area we needed to circle.

“Your turn is coming. Five hundred meters.”

I slowed, checked my rearview—still no sign of a police cruiser—and took the dirt road on my right. It wasn’t as hardpacked as the one we’d been traveling. The gravel crunched loosely under the tires, and the Jeep bumped along its uneven surface. I slowed to sixty kilometers an hour, cursing small-town cops and shitty roads.

How hard was it to follow a vehicle that wanted to be followed? If we didn’t arrive with backup, we’d be facing Abercrombie alone, and I wasn’t sure what kind of mood he’d be in if he was interrupted.

Tallus pointed out the windshield. “Do you see that? Are those flashing lights from a cruiser?”

I squinted into the distance. He was right. Had Constable Ding Dong gone a different way? “Was there a shortcut to the cemetery?”

“Maybe.” Tallus lowered his gaze to his phone. “I suppose if we’d taken—”

A car appeared in my peripheral vision too late for me to react. It darted from a hidden service road and collided with the driver’s side of the Jeep with a crunch of metal. The impact tore the steering wheel from my one-handed grip, and the side airbag exploded next to my head, smacking me in the side of the face.

The Jeep spun out of control on the loose gravel. Seconds later, it tipped on its side as we slammed into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. The engine died with a whine.

Rattled, my mind focused on one thing and one thing only.

“Tallus?” I swam in a white powdery pillow, shoving it out of my way so I could see.

“I’m okay.”

Pinned in place and stuck in a slowly deflating airbag, it took a second to get oriented. We landed passenger side down, and my restraint was the only thing keeping me from falling toward Tallus. He scrambled out of his seatbelt and helped get the airbag out of my face.

“Where the fuck did that car come from?” I growled.

“I don’t know. Here, let me help you with your buckle.”

“Careful, I’ll—”

He disengaged it, and I crashed into him, unable to hold myself in place. I winced and cursed as my already battered body took another beating.

“Oh god, you’re heavy.”

Fighting to move with one casted arm, I managed to pull myself off Tallus and brace myself as I glanced around at our predicament. The driver’s side door had taken the impact, and the deep crumple suggested it likely wouldn’t open. Tallus’s door lay on the ground. We would need to crawl into the back and exit through the rear.

“Diem. Look.” Tallus pointed out the cracked windshield at the vehicle that hit us. A white SUV. Its single occupant emerged from the driver’s side door. “It’s Loyal.”

“What?”

The kid stared with a sly smirk, phone pressed to his ear. I had a sinking feeling he wasn’t calling the cops.

Ignoring my aggravated wounds, I wiggled until my feet were angled toward the windshield, and I kicked once, twice, three times. First, the glass crazed then came out in a crumpled piece.

“Help me get out. Don’t cut yourself.”

Tallus climbed from the Jeep and balanced awkwardly in the ditch as he offered me his hand. My body was a fresh bruise, but my anger was a simmering inferno. One canceled the other.

By the time I landed on my feet and we crawled out of the ditch, Constable Hercules and his flashing lights and blaring sirens skidded to a halt, kicking up dirt. The fucking idiot had driven right past the cemetery to deal with the car accident.

Loyal’s attitude shifted from cocky to that of a scared and innocent teen.

Hercules exited his cruiser, and Loyal blurted, “It was all my fault. I was distracted by my phone. I didn’t see them. I’m so sorry. Are you okay, mister?”

A growl resonated in my chest, and Tallus grabbed my arm, keeping me in place and simmering my rage before it boiled over. I could have throttled the brat. It was an act. He’d hit us on purpose.

Hercules spoke into his shoulder radio, communicating that his suspects had been involved in a car accident and could the units formally heading to the cemetery redirect to his location.

He removed a pair of cuffs from his belt and motioned to Tallus and me. “I’ve got backup on the way, so we’re going to take this nice and easy. I want you to step apart from one another and put your hands on your heads. Don’t go causing any more trouble, you hear? We can do this without a hassle.”

“Are you fucking serious? This dipshit”—I gestured to Loyal—“was part of the distraction, you imbecile. It wasn’t an accident. He was camped out on the service road, waiting for us. He’s Daddy’s little prodigy.”

To Loyal, I said, “He planted you here. He told you we might come, and if we did, you were to run us off the road.”

Loyal was as good an actor as Tallus, but his innocent boy persona was a tad overdone. “No. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I didn’t see them,” he told Hercules. “I swear.” His voice quivered as he glanced at the SUV and the crumpled front end. “My dad’s going to kill me. I just got that car for my birthday.”

Hercules wasn’t listening. His whole focus was on apprehending us. He repeated his demand that we put our hands on our heads, edging closer.

“Send your backup to the cemetery,” I said. “Don’t you get it? Abercrombie is out there right now covering his fucking tracks.”

But no. Tallus and I were out-of-towners. How dare we accuse one of their own? A prominent teacher at Port Hope’s only high school would never do something so heinous. Why would Hercules listen to us when they had reports that we’d been trespassing, vandalizing, thieving, and harassing underage kids?

Sirens sounded in the distance. Noise traveled in the middle of nowhere, but I couldn’t tell what direction they were coming from or how far away they were. The minute they arrived on the scene, Tallus and I would be physically removed in cuffs and taken into the station. The only reason Hercules hadn’t already apprehended us was because he was alone and a small-town cop with little experience dealing with hostile civilians who didn’t do as he asked.

Abercrombie would slip through the cracks if we stood here and let his backup arrive. I couldn’t let that happen.

“Tallus.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know the way to that cemetery?”

“We were almost there.”

“Okay. Run.”

“What?”

I snagged his arm and took off down the road away from Constable Hercules. “Run.”

Tallus struggled to keep up, tripping over his feet before he understood what was happening. He was not a runner and made sure to let me know with a long string of curses.

“He’s going to shoot us,” he squeaked.

“He’s not. Go faster.”

“I can’t. I hate cardio. I suck at it.”

A car door slammed, and an engine roared to life behind us.

“Fuck. We need to get off the road, or he’s going to ride up our ass in ten seconds. We’ll cut through the forest at an angle. Which way, Tallus?”

“Fuck me. This way.” He aimed for the ditch and the forest beyond. He stumbled and almost fell more than once, but I kept a secure hold on his arm, ensuring he stayed upright. “I hate you, Guns. My feet… already hurt. My lungs… are… burning. My bones… ah, fuck… So much… hate. You are going to… pay for this.”

“Shut up and run. He’s on our heels.” Constable Hercules abandoned Loyal and any thoughts of chasing us in his vehicle once we diverted into the forest. He was on foot now and about fifty yards behind but gaining ground.

The cemetery was less than a quarter mile away, but the terrain was messy. Roots, mud, fallen branches, and undergrowth prevented us from going as fast as I would have liked. We crashed through bushes and thick foliage, Tallus spitting more curses about his ruined shoes, his torn clothing, his hair catching on twigs…

The abandoned Holy Oak cemetery was accessible from the county road by an overgrown single-lane dirt drive that wove into the forest. We found it less than five minutes into our flight. Parked at the end of the drive was an out-of-place, sleek black BMW with the trunk open.

Surrounded by an ancient rusted wrought iron fence and a broken gate, crumbling headstones stood in crooked rows of eight and ten. Unlike in the book, it was not a churchyard. There wasn’t so much as a mausoleum or chapel. The forest encroached on the area with creeping vines climbing the fence and windswept leaves collecting in corners. The long-forgotten cemetery was victim to time and weather.

At the single obelisk in the center of all the other headstones stood Hugh Abercrombie, cell phone dangling from the hand at his side. He was not rushing around trying to cover his tracks, but a hefty number of supplies at his feet suggested he’d been prepared to do exactly that.

If I had to guess, Loyal had called and warned him the car accident diversion hadn’t worked and that the police were headed in his direction.

At Abercrombie’s feet, propped against the obelisk, were the skeletal remains of a woman dressed in a wedding gown and veil. Not crimson like in the book, but a dingy yellow that must have been white at some time.

Sonya Brydges had not run off on her wedding day, leaving her future husband and children behind. She’d been murdered and left to rot in an abandoned cemetery for years.

Abercrombie didn’t acknowledge our arrival, but I figured he knew we were there since we’d blasted through the forest like a ten-ton wrecking ball.

I could hear Constable Hercules catching up. The sirens in the distance were closing in on our location, so he must have redirected them to the cemetery road.

“D? What do we do?”

“Nothing. He knows he’s done for.” I took Tallus’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t panic, but the police are probably going to cuff us and toss us in a cell overnight, too. It will work out okay in the end. I promise.”