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The Shimmer
Carsten Stroud


�Carsten Stroud is a world-class storyteller… He effortlessly combines hard-nosed cops, mafia dons, and supernatural events with convincing ease. The prose is music. He had me reading late into the night.’ STEPHEN KINGHow do you hunt a killer who can go back in time and make sure you’re never born?Sergeant Jack Redding is hot on the trail of a time travelling serial killer who rides The Shimmer across the decades. The stakes turn brutal when the chance to alter past events offers Jack a terrible choice.Taking us from modern-day Jacksonville, to 1950s Mafia-ruled St. Augustine, and on to the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1914, The Shimmer is a unique, time-shifting thriller that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.Readers love Carsten Stroud:“Great pacing, intriguing plot twists, evocative prose.”“page-turner with a satisfying and ingenious plot”“a very clever time travel mystery that is fast-paced and engaging”“Exciting, suspenseful, violent at a couple of points, frightening and heartwarming”“a magnificent literary gift”







How do you hunt a killer who can go back in time and make sure you’re never born?

A police pursuit kicks Sergeant Jack Redding of the Florida Highway Patrol and his trainee, Julie Karras, into a shoot-out that ends with one girl dead and another in cuffs, and the driver of the SUV fleeing into the Intracoastal Waterway. Redding stays on the hunt, driven by the trace memory that he knows that running woman—and he does, because his grandfather, a cop in Jacksonville, was hunting the same woman in 1957.

Redding and his partner, Pandora Jansson, chase a seductive serial killer who can ride The Shimmer across decades. The pursuit cuts from modern-day Jacksonville to Mafia-ruled St. Augustine in 1957, then to the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1914. The stakes turn brutal when Jack, whose wife and child died in a crash the previous Christmas Eve, faces a terrible choice: help his grandfather catch the killer, or change time itself and try to save his wife and child.

The Shimmer is a unique time-shifting thriller that will stay with you long after its utterly unforeseen and yet perfectly diabolical ending.


Also By Carsten Stroud (#u28112b36-bc24-5294-8754-1428358201f5)

The Reckoning

The Homecoming

Niceville

Sniper’s Moon

Cobraville

Cuba Strait

Black Water Transit

Deadly Force

Iron Bravo

Lizard Skin

Close Pursuit


The Shimmer

Carsten Stroud







Copyright (#u28112b36-bc24-5294-8754-1428358201f5)






An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright В© Carsten Stroud 2018

Carsten Stroud asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition В© June 2018 ISBN: 9781474082839


For The Love Of My Life


Contents

Cover (#uff3c5c23-ad69-5e5b-a916-a5f6d6a2e751)

Back Cover Text (#u739f6cc4-b4be-551d-9a89-09b335b44bb0)

Booklist (#u2b4629f1-fb75-5274-92e7-956aba668040)

Title Page (#u2c9c6605-914b-50bf-aeb6-a7993ecc4099)

Copyright (#uece71d1a-43bb-5877-a5be-037293608849)

Dedication (#ubfe0b4b7-accb-5aeb-b6fe-4c2f512d3678)

go down to the river and prey (#uf42a7614-2ce1-5713-98bd-dd822f661863)

seventeen days ago (#u729eb4b4-bcba-5dbc-9c26-4ab1c0bb9ba3)

the lady in the lake (#ua4a71e49-2e90-5119-ab33-1df79fc0afe4)

karen walker reaches a vital conclusion (#ud190797e-72d7-5bc7-8858-6737af2a0cea)

selena contemplates the past and the past contemplates selena (#litres_trial_promo)

things get antediluvian (#litres_trial_promo)

selena consults the crocodile (#litres_trial_promo)

the last walker breathing (#litres_trial_promo)

nostalgia...from the greek nostos (to return home) and algos (the pain) (#litres_trial_promo)

selena finds a curved space in the air (#litres_trial_promo)

objects in the mirror are closer than they appear (#litres_trial_promo)

selena dreams of home (#litres_trial_promo)

the truth about truth (#litres_trial_promo)

the death and life and death of mary alice (#litres_trial_promo)

you’re not from around here are you (#litres_trial_promo)

never send to know for whom the phone rings (#litres_trial_promo)

time lockets (#litres_trial_promo)

death in the afternoon (#litres_trial_promo)

though hell should bar the way (#litres_trial_promo)

feral is as feral does (#litres_trial_promo)

you know what, tony, I believe you (#litres_trial_promo)

event horizon (#litres_trial_promo)

september first nineteen fifty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)

the beach house (#litres_trial_promo)

departures (#litres_trial_promo)

author’s note (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


go down to the river and prey (#u28112b36-bc24-5294-8754-1428358201f5)

An afternoon in late August, a Thursday, four hours and sixteen minutes left on Day watch, cruising down the A1A twenty miles south of St. Augustine in an unmarked shark-gray Crown Vic, Sergeant Jack Redding of the Florida Highway Patrol and his rookie trainee were watching a black Suburban with heavily tinted windows and Missouri plates. They were watching the black Suburban because it was lurching across two lanes of heavy traffic like a wounded rhino.

Far out over the Atlantic a tsunami of storm clouds was filling the horizon. An onshore gale gritty with beach sand was lashing at the rusted flagpoles over the tired old lime-green and pink stucco motels—Crystal Shores, Pelican Beach, Emerald Seas—the gale fluttering their faded awnings. The air smelled of ozone and sea salt and fading magnolias.

Redding looked over at his trainee, a compact sport-model blonde by the name of Julie Karras. Since she was fresh out of the Academy and this was her first day on the job, she was on fire to pull the truck over and carpet bomb the driver’s ass.

“What do you think, boss? Can I hit the lights?”

Redding went back to the truck. It had eased up on the lurching. It was now more of a wobble. Maybe the driver had been fumbling around in the glove compartment or checking his iPhone and had finally stopped doing that. Or maybe he was totally cranked out of his mind and had just now noticed a cop car riding his ass. Whatever it was, the guy was slowing down, doing a little less than the 60 per allowed.

“Grounds, Julie?”

He could see her mentally running the Traffic Infractions List through her mind. She was too proud to check the sheet on her clipboard. Although he’d only met her at 0800 hours, when Day watch started, Redding liked her. She had...something.

Style was the wrong word.

No. She had bounce.

“I Five,” she said, after a moment, “Improper Change of Lanes.”

Julie Karras was in Redding’s unmarked cruiser because her regular training officer—who had been born in Chicago, the frozen attic of the nation—had confused Canadian ice hockey with a real American sport, such as football, and had gotten all of his upper front incisors duly redeployed. So the CO had handed her off to Redding for the week.

“Try not to get her killed on her first shift,” said the CO, whose name was Bart Dixon but everybody called him, inevitably, Mason, often shortened to Mace. “It’s bad for recruitment.”

Dixon, a bullet-shaped black guy with a shaved head and bullet scar on his left cheek, had grinned at him around an Old Port cheroot that smelled like burning bats. The part about not getting her killed wasn’t entirely irrelevant because Redding’s main job wasn’t Patrol.

He worked Serious Crimes Liaison with the State Bureau of Investigations. He’d killed five men and one woman while doing that because, while he didn’t go looking for gun fights, he didn’t do a whole lot to avoid them either. And in a hellhole city like Jacksonville, gun fights were always on the menu.

Redding didn’t mind taking on Julie Karras. She was crazy pretty, it was a fine summer day—or had been up until just now—and late August was slack time for the SBI, with most of them off on vacation. So if you were a career criminal and you desperately wanted to get your ass busted you were going to have to wait until after the end of the month.

Karras was from up North he remembered her saying. Charleston or Savannah so she had that sweet Tidewater lilt in her voice. She had the infraction number wrong though.

“I Six, you mean,” he said, but gently.

I Five was Improper Backing. Both infractions, but when he’d been in Patrol that’s where you started off, with a possible infraction. It hardly ever stayed there, but you had to have probable cause before you could make a stop. Otherwise everything that flowed from the stop—drugs, guns, illegal transportation of underage gerbils across state lines—would get thrown out of court.

“How about you run those plates first? Let’s see what we’re getting into here.”

Karras swiveled the MDT display around on its base, punched in 407 XZT, hit the search tab.

The Suburban had steadied and was now doing the speed limit. Exactly the speed limit. Redding’s unmarked was several cars back, in heavy traffic. Maybe they’d been seen and maybe not. But something was going ping in Redding’s cop brain.

He didn’t like big black SUVs with dark-tinted windows. Most cops felt exactly the same way. Big Black Boxes packed with Explosive Situations.

A gust of wind blew a cloud of beach sand across all four lanes of A1A and everybody’s brake lights flared as the drivers reacted. Grains of sand were peppering the glass at his shoulder and he could feel the car rocking. He looked east past the roofs of the beach houses that lined the coast, and there it was, heading their way, a white squall.

Karras looked up from the computer screen.

“Comes back with a Gerald Jeffrey Walker. DOB November 10, 1971. Address of 1922 Halls Ferry Road, Florissant, Missouri. No Wants No Warrants.”

Redding started to back off, letting his ping fade. Not every black Suburban was full of—

“Now this,” said Karras, giving him a puzzled look. “It just popped up on the screen. A ten-thirty-five? What’s a ten-thirty-five?”

Redding kept his eyes on that black Suburban. It had suddenly become much more interesting.

“That’s the code for Confidential Information.”

“What does it mean?”

“You’ll see in a moment,” he said, letting the Suburban drift farther ahead, falling back out of the guy’s rearview, if he was watching the cruiser at all. Which he sure as hell was because everyone did. A cop car in your rearview was like a scorpion in your martini. People noticed. He heard the MDT chirp, and Karras read off the radio code.

“It says ten-seventy-six?”

Redding was expecting that.

“It means switch radio channels,” he said, leaning over to click the channels controller to Tactical and picking up the hand mike.

“Central, this is Jax 180. Come back.”

“Jax 180, this is Six Actual.”

Six Actual was Mace Dixon.

“On that Suburban you just posted, St. Louis PD is asking for a ten-seventeen on that. Can you give us your twenty?”

Karras was getting a little bug-eyed but Redding didn’t have time for that right now. A 10-17 code meant maintain surveillance but do not stop the vehicle.

“Roger that, Central. Our twenty right now is southbound on A1A at Cedar Point Road. What’s up, Six? Plates come back No Wants No Warrants.”

“Roger that, Jax 180, wait one.”

Silence on the radio, and outside the windshield the weather was building up fast, the way squalls do along this coast. The traffic had thinned out, people looking at the skies and running for cover. In this part of the North Coast the A1A ran right along the shoreline, the ocean maybe a hundred yards away, booming and roaring.

On the west side, sprawling residential blocks, a few gated but mostly not, and beyond them, scrub forest, swamp and wetlands and then the Intracoastal Waterway, the inland canal that ran all the way from the Chesapeake to the Florida Keys.

The Suburban was speeding up, starting to pull away, which was okay with Redding. There was nowhere for it to go but south on the highway or turn off onto a side road, and they were all dead ends, either into the swamps to the west, or turn east and drive into the ocean.

“What’s going on, Sergeant Redding?” Karras asked in a tight voice.

“Call me Jack, okay? Dispatch is asking us to monitor that truck but not to spook them. St. Louis cops are following up for some reason we don’t know yet.”

Redding could feel Karras’s adrenaline rising. She had her hand on her sidearm and her skin was getting a tad pink.

“Are we stopping it later? I mean, what’s—”

“Not sure yet, let’s—”

“Jax 180, this is Six.”

“Six.”

“Yeah, look, Jack, what we have here is that the St. Louis PD is listing Gerald Walker and his wife and their three daughters as Whereabouts Unknown. Relatives up in Florissant have been trying to contact them for over ten days now. They were staying in their condo on Amelia Island. Management checked the condo and there’s nobody there. Signs that the departure was sudden. Clothes all over, dishes in the sink. Security logged the truck out of the north gate at 2013 hours ten days ago. Guard couldn’t confirm the occupants of the vehicle because of the tinted windows. Gate camera’s no help either, wrong angle. Family is not answering their cells. Can’t GPS them because their phones are turned off.”

“Roger that, Mace. Not getting the urgency. So they went for a shore drive, didn’t call the relatives. Maybe the relatives are all pains in the ass. I know mine are. Are they using their cards?”

“St. Louis says yes. Gas and motels along the coast. They were in the Monteleone in New Orleans seven nights ago. Then east along Ten... Ruby Tuesday and Holiday Inn and Denny’s along the way.”

“Any security video at the check-ins?”

“Not yet.”

“So we’re ten-seventeen on it until when?”

Dixon respected Redding’s gut feelings. He thought it over.

“Okay. Take your point, Jack. Just watch the truck for a while, see what develops.”

“Well, we maybe had an I Six on him. But he’s stopped doing that.”

Silence from Dixon. The CO was telling him to use his own judgment. Redding put the mike down, keyed it off. Thought it over. Stop or not.

Decided.

“Okay, Julie. Got an assignment for you.”

She came on point.

“Survey that truck. Gimme a plausible reason for making a stop.”

They were now in much thinner traffic. In this part of the coast, A1A ran on a kind of elevated levee. The palms and scrub brush along the shore were bending and whipping in the wind. The sky was closing down like a lid.

The Suburban was running straight and steady at 65 per. Staying in the curb lane. They were now about fifty feet back, and holding, with no other cars in the way. Karras was staring hard at the truck’s tailgate. She went on staring. Redding felt her pain, because she was about to say...

“I got nothing.”

Redding gave her a grin.

“Me neither. Maybe you could shoot out a taillight. That would give us an E twenty-one.”

She gave him back a look and a fake-perky tone.

“I think you should be the one doing that, you being, like, the responsible adult and all.”

Redding smiled.

“Hell, I probably couldn’t hit it from here,” said Redding. “I suck at rolling fire. Why don’t—”

And then the Suburban went full jackrabbit, a sudden growling roar from the engine, the rear end dropping, a burst of smoke from the exhaust as the driver just jammed it, accelerating, racing away up the highway, going away fast.

“Hit the lights,” Redding said, checking his side mirrors as he jammed the accelerator down, “and tighten your belt!”

“Fuck yes,” said Karras, as the roof rack lit up and the siren started to wail. “And on my first day too. Fuck yes! Thank you, Jesus!”

“Call it in.”

She snatched up the mike.

“Central, this is Jax 180—we are ten thirty-one in pursuit southbound on A1A at Flagler Beach of a black Suburban, Missouri marker four zero seven x-ray zulu tango. We have just crossed Eighteenth Street—”

She glanced at the speedometer.

“Speed ninety, Central.”

“Roger that, Jax 180, we have a unit northbound on A1A at Ocean Palm. Jax 250, come in.”

“This is Jax 250. Ten-four lighting up now.”

“Jax 180, we have County units available too.”

“Tell him no thanks,” said Redding.

Karras clicked the button, said, “Negative on County, Central.”

“Roger that.”

Karras wanted to know why they didn’t call in some Flagler County Sheriff cars on this pursuit.

“Because so far this is containable, and highway pursuit is our thing, not County’s. They’re good folks, but in a car chase they go all squirrelly because they don’t train for it. We do.”

“Got it,” she said.

What little traffic there was veered right and left out of the way as Redding closed in on the Suburban, which was whipsawing as the heavy truck lurched in and around other vehicles.

A pickup truck popped out of a side road, almost T-boning the Suburban before the driver wrangled his ride into a ditch, the guy getting out to shout something at Redding as the cruiser flashed by. Karras stayed on the mike, calling the cross streets—Nineteen, Twenty-One, Twenty-Three—as the Crown Vic’s Interceptor motor rapidly overtook the Suburban, the siren howling.

Gusts of wind were lashing the highway, and now the white squall hit, sideways rain and clouds of sand, shredded palm fronds and scrub branches tumbling across the highway, flying through the air.

Redding put the wipers on full but they could hardly see the truck through the rain. The truck was not slowing down, although visibility had dropped down to twenty yards. Karras strained to read a street sign as they powered past it, keyed the mike again.

“Central, this is Jax 180. We are southbound A1A at Twenty-Seventh still in pursuit—”

The Suburban’s brake lights flared on, bright red smears in the driving rain, the truck tilting wildly to the left as the driver bulled it into a right-hand turn. The right side wheels of the truck actually lifted off the road for a second, and Redding tapped the brakes, falling back, waiting for it to roll, but it didn’t.

The wheels came back down with a thudding impact, the truck wobbled and weaved as the driver fought for control, got it back, and now the Suburban was accelerating down a residential street lined with ranch-style summer homes and palm-shaded yards.

“Central, vehicle made a right turn onto Twenty-Eight.”

“Roger that. Copy that, Jax 250?”

“Jax 250. Ten-four copy we are a half mile out.”

The Suburban almost took out three kids in wetsuits walking in the street, carrying surfboards, shoulders hunched, heading home to beat the storm. They dropped the boards and dodged as the Suburban blew by them. It struck one of the boards, smashing it into shards, and one of the larger pieces flew up and smacked into their windshield, making them both flinch away. The truck reached an intersection—South Dayton—veered hard right again, accelerated away, now headed back north.

“Shit,” said Karras. “He’s going to kill somebody. Should we back off?”

Redding flashed a sideways look at her.

“You wanna?” he said. “Remember we have a dash cam. This goes south we might be in the barrel.”

“We? Or just you?”

Made him smile.

“Me. I’m the one in charge.”

“Then fuck no,” she said, looking back at the truck, her right hand braced on the dashboard.

She keyed the mike again.

“Central, target is now northbound on South Dayton—we have just crossed Twenty-Seven.”

“Copy that.”

South Dayton was a long residential street that ran along the edge of a shallow slope covered with trees, a few large summer homes on the east side, no one on the streets now that the storm had hit and hit hard, the branches on the trees thrashing in the gale, the undersides of their leaves showing silvery white. A palm frond struck their windshield, got jammed into their wipers.

Redding swore, jammed the car to a stop, jumped out and tore the frond away, leaped back into the vehicle before it stopped rocking, accelerated hard, the tail end sliding on the slick tarmac.

“Ask Jax 250 where they are,” said Redding, fighting the wheel as they hit a pothole in the road and the Crown Vic slammed through it, bouncing crazily, the rear end coming loose.

Karras keyed the mike again.

“Jax 250.”

“Roger, Jax 180.”

“What’s your twenty?”

“A1A northbound crossing Twenty-Eight.”

In this section South Dayton was a straight run, and the truck pushed it to a flat 100 miles an hour. Jesus, thought Redding, this is not good.

“Ask Jax 250 to go to afterburners, get north of us and turn left. If they really punch it, they might be able to block the guy off there.”

“Roger, Jax 250, can you shoot up to block at Nineteen and South Dayton?”

“Ten-four, Jax 180.”

“Roger that.”

The truck blew through stop signs, almost nailed a van pulling out of a driveway, braked crazily and spooled it right back up to 60...70...

The Suburban’s brake lights flared up and beyond it they could see the flicker of red and blue lights and the glare of headlights as Jax 250 squealed to a skidding halt that blocked the intersection. The truck slid to a stop, sat there for a brief moment, wavering.

They were almost on it.

The brake lights flicked off, the truck swung a hard left and punched it, racing west toward the swamplands and the Intracoastal.

“There’s nothing down there but South Palmetto,” said Redding. “It’s a crescent, no way out. Nothing west of that but swamplands. Guy’s trapped.”

“Unless he breaks into a house along here, takes a whole bunch of hostages.”

Redding shot her a look. She was having the time of her life. Hell, so was he. Who didn’t love a totally batshit car chase? Was this a great country or what?

“Jeez, Julie. Don’t even say that.”

“But wouldn’t it be, like, a teachable moment?”

In the middle of all this vehicular insanity the kid still had her bounce. He was still grinning when the truck powered away down a short block, wheeled crazily right around the curve onto South Palmetto, big ranch homes, maybe a dozen of them, spread out on the east side, and on the left, dense forest, broken ground down a slight slope—the only kind of slope Florida had—and then the driver hit the brakes.

Hard, the truck slewing around crazily, correcting and then skidding to a stop in the middle of the road. The driver’s door popped open and a woman—not young, but lean and solid-looking in tight jeans and hiking boots and a black leather jacket—hopped out, nothing in her hands, which were the first thing you looked at.

She sent them one quick glance. They got a glimpse of a tight hard face, no fear at all, even a fleeting defiance, strong cheekbones and wide eyes, maybe green, black hair flying in the wind as she ran. Something in Redding’s memory flickered like a goldfish in a pond. He knew that face. Then she was gone, racing across the street, running like a wolf. She vanished into the trees, a flash of blue, and then the forest folded her in.

Redding slammed the brakes hard as Karras got onto the radio, telling Jax 250 what had just happened. Then they were both out of the cruiser, doors still open, running toward the truck, which was idling in the street, engine rocking the frame, windshield wipers still ticking, rain steaming off the overheated engine hood.

As they reached it, Jax 250 came rushing up and stopped on the far side of the truck. Two troopers got out with their guns drawn, LaQuan Marsh and Jim Halliday.

“A runner, LQ,” Redding shouted to them. “White female, black hair, black jacket, blue jeans, no visible weapons. She went into the trees.”

Marsh and Halliday broke right like a pair of pulling guards and went flying into the forest after her. People were popping out of their houses, standing on porches, on lawns. Redding shouted at them, warning them off, gave a go sign to Karras, and she moved in, her gun up and trained on the passenger-side doors of the Suburban. The windows were closed, dark as black ice.

The truck engine was running hot and loud, the rain hammering on its roof. Water was running down Julie’s face and she blinked it away, wishing she had put on her Stetson.

Redding was going left, and he came to a stop about ten feet off the left rear wheel, his gun up. Karras had taken the same position on the right rear side. They could smell scorched rubber and overheated metal steaming in the rain.

The driver’s door hung wide-open, the seat belt dangling. From the interior of the truck, someone crying, a woman’s voice.

“In the truck,” said Redding in a voice of brass, “show me your hands. Do it now!”

Faint, from deep inside the truck, a shaky female voice, young. “Don’t shoot us. Please.”

Karras moved up a yard, reached for the rear door. Redding told her to stop. He stepped up to the left-side rear door, leveled his gun and jerked the rear door open.

Two teenage girls were lying on the rear bench seat. They were cord cuffed to the front-seat floor struts. They were crying, beyond hysterical.

“Help us,” said one of them, dark haired, possibly the older one.

“Please. She’s crazy. She kidnapped us.”

Karras popped the other rear door, put her gun on them, wary, tense, her finger almost inside the trigger guard. Both girls were in jeans and boots, T-shirts, hair every which way, eyes red from crying, faces flushed and frightened.

In shock, scared to death.

“Who are you?” he asked, in a softer tone.

“I’m Rebecca Walker. This is my sister Karen. Help us please? That woman kidnapped us!”

Redding looked at Karras. She looked back, and they both did a quick check of the interior. Luggage scattered around. Remnants of a Happy Meal, candy wrappers, water bottles. No one else. Just the girls, cuffed to the floor.

Redding lowered his weapon and after a moment Karras did the same.

“I’m gonna go after the runner. Can you take care of these two?”

Karras said she would, lips so tight they were blue.

“You go, Sergeant. I’ll get EMT in here.”

“Search them first, Julie. Before you cut them loose. You never know.”

“I will. Go get her.”

Redding took one last look at the girls, showed them his teeth, a quick smile that was supposed to be comforting and wasn’t even close.

Redding turned away and raced down into the trees, a big lean rangy guy who could move like a linebacker when he had to. He pulled out his portable.

“LQ, I’m coming in.”

“Roger that, Jack.”

Redding jogged into the trees, ducking under the dripping branches, feeling the mossy ground squelch under his boots. He had his Glock out, down by his side, and every nerve on redline.

The stand of scrub trees was dense, maybe a hundred feet deep. When he came out from under them after a paranoid two-minute jog-trot during which he checked out every treetop he passed under, he could see Marsh walking the shoreline, gun out but down at his side, his back to Redding. He was facing out across the swamps and reed beds toward the Intracoastal, head turning back and forth. Halliday was down the shore about fifty yards.

Marsh heard Redding sloshing through the seagrass, even with this rain lashing down and the wind ripping through the trees.

“Jack.”

“LQ. Got anything?”

“She left a trail all the way down,” he said, his face slick as patent leather in the rain, a puzzled expression in his eyes.

“You can see it over there, that silver streak in the grass. Comes right down to the shore here, stops dead.”

Redding looked out over the swamp, sort of a mini Everglades, clumps and islands of sawgrass and reeds and cattails, all of it bending down under the rain. The sky was shredding, wisps of lighter gray showing through the cover. The wind was backing off but it was still raining hard.

Halliday walked up the shoreline toward them, staring down into the shallow murky water that ran in curving channels under and around a thousand little islands of seagrass. He was a big blond Panhandle kid who had played two years as a starting DB for the Gators. He did a 180 to check the tree line one more time, and then came back to them, his face as blank and confused as Marsh’s.

“Sure she’s not back in the woods?” Redding asked. Halliday and Marsh shook their heads in unison.

“Not back there, Jack,” said Marsh. “We were close, we could see her going through the forest—”

“She ran like a fucking gazelle,” said Halliday.

“Yeah, she could move real good,” said Marsh. “Faster than us. We lost her in the rain here, and the branches were in our faces like whips. By the time we cleared the trees all we could see was that.”

He tilted his head toward the silver track in the tall grass.

“Ending at the water,” Halliday finished. “Broad just flat-out vanished. Fucking weird, Jack. Like into thin air. Too fucking weird. We walked the shore up and down, looking for a ripple where she coulda gone in. Mud bottom kicked up. Nothing.”

“That’s right, Jack. Vanished.”

All three of them turned back to the swamp.

It was about two hundred yards wide at this point, running for about a mile along the shore. On the far side of the marsh was the Intracoastal. The Intracoastal was like a marine version of I-95. In the summer it was as crowded as an interstate, although the squall had driven everyone except a few crazies into the marinas.

“How deep do you figure this is?” Redding asked, meaning the swamp.

Marsh, who was a bass boater, shook his head.

“No more’n two maybe three feet. But the bottom is thick muck, just like quicksand. You think she had a boat waiting? Why she came down this way?”

“You see one?” Redding asked.

They both shook their heads, water running off the brims of their Stetsons. Redding looked back at the muddy water and the reeds bending in the rain.

“What do you figure lives in there?” he asked of no one in particular.

Marsh laughed.

“Nothing you’d want to take home to the wife.”

Marsh immediately regretted that comment, considering what had happened to Redding’s wife and their little girl last Christmas Eve, but it couldn’t be unsaid, and Redding didn’t react. So Marsh went on.

“Snakes. River rats. Leeches. Every kind of biting, stinging, itching bug you can think of. I’ve seen gators around here, but not real big ones.”

Redding smiled at him.

“Define �not real big.’”

Marsh just grinned back at him.

“Could even be monitor lizards,” said Halliday, trying to be helpful. “They been finding huge ones—two, three feet long—down in West Palm. People had them as pets till they got too damn big. Let them go into the rivers. Monitors. Smart as dogs too. They got these monster mouths full of huge backward-curved fangs, sharp as needles. But huge.”

“And don’t forget the giant anacondas,” added Marsh, just to complete the picture.

Neither man had any intention of letting Sergeant Redding order either of them into the swamp to start searching. If Redding did, Marsh had already decided he was going to push Halliday into the water instead and say he stumbled into him. Which Halliday was already braced for, because he knew Marsh only too well, and he wasn’t going in there either.

Redding, aware of all this, and thankful that they hadn’t thrown in mutant vampire unicorns, looked up at the sky. The storm was starting to break up. The rain was coming down hard.

“Can the dogs follow a trail in this weather?” Halliday was asking, mainly to distract Redding from the whole “into the swamp, boys” idea. Redding had run a K-9 car for a couple of years.

“A light rain will freshen up a scent, but heavy rain and wind, that’s a lot more difficult.”

“Been done,” said Marsh. “Remember that case last year, prisoner goes into the Glades, in a hurricane, but the dogs found him anyway?”

“Because he was half eaten by a gator,” said Halliday, “and he’d started to stink. My mom coulda found him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Redding. “Worth a shot. Let’s get the dog cars down here. And I want some Marine units out there. And let the Flagler County deputies know what’s going on too. I want a tight perimeter—lady could sure as hell motor—”

“Damn straight,” said Halliday. “She was going away so fast I thought I had stopped to pee.”

“So where the hell is she?” Redding said, a rhetorical question.

“Gotta be here somewhere,” said Marsh.

“LQ’s right, she’s still around. Have Flagler County set up a cordon around these blocks.”

“All this for an F thirty-seven?” said Marsh.

“I know. A lot of overtime. I just...”

“Got a feeling she’s worth chasing?”

“Yeah. I do,” he said, thinking about the expression on her face, cool, defiant, not frightened at all. And he knew her from...somewhere. “She got my attention.”

Marsh was reaching for his portable to make the calls when they heard two sharp flat cracks close together, a brief pause and then one more.

“Gunfire,” said Halliday, but Redding and Marsh were already running back toward the trees.


seventeen days ago (#u28112b36-bc24-5294-8754-1428358201f5)

By the time Gerald Jeffrey Walker and his family arrived at their vacation condo at Amelia Island on Florida’s Atlantic coast—after thirteen hours on the road from St. Louis—the feeling inside the family’s GMC Suburban was sharply split on the issue of the Harwoods.

The Harwoods—Marietta, pronounced Mayretta, and her husband, Ellison—were Christian Evangelicals and they ran a very large and very rewarding ministry—financially rewarding at any rate—called the New Covenant Celestial Ministry, and one of their many income streams came from the sale of their Evangelical Christian audiobooks.

Walker—sometimes known as “Jerry Jeff” after the blues guy—was a forensic archaeologist working for a unit of the US Army Corps of Engineers based in St. Louis. His team was called in whenever artifacts or bones were unearthed at a construction site, sometimes in remote corners of the world.

He considered this calling a sacred duty, since it involved an effort to determine exactly where these artifacts or bones came from, and what sort of spiritual beliefs had once been attached to them. This information was hard to come by.

It required bone and DNA analysis, the assessment of causes of death, including weapons that might have been used if there were indications of murder or human sacrifice, as well as a grip on local cultural history and a great deal of spiritual imagination.

Perhaps because of his work and the moral challenges it presented—bringing peace to the spirits of the dead—in his off-hours Walker served as a Worship Leader at the Glad Day Assembly, an Evangelical Christian megachurch in their hometown of Florissant, Missouri.

Walker and his wife, Marilyn, who ran the childcare center at the Glad Day Assembly, tried very hard to believe that they had a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ, a difficult exercise in faith that met with varying degrees of success, particularly for a man with a PhD in forensic archaeology and a woman with a master’s degree in education.

In an effort to bridge this gap they had invested in the Marietta and Ellison Harwood Collection of inspirational Christian audiobooks.

They did this because Walker’s work had brought him face-to-face with mass graves, with human sacrifices, with the residue of every kind of violent evil, and the only protection from the fallen world, both ancient and modern, seemed to be found in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

So they decided to take advantage of the drive down from Florissant to share the Harwood Ministry’s latest releases—Ellison’s The Power of Love and his wife Marietta’s My Celestial Heart Sings—with their three daughters, admittedly a captive audience.

The Suburban seated seven, but divisive forces relating to the Harwood Ministry had affected the family dynamic on the way down Interstate 75.

This had resulted in the front bucket seats being occupied by Walker and his wife, Marilyn, of course, since they shared the driving, and the bench seat immediately behind them had become the private domain of the youngest Walker daughter, six-year-old Alyssa.

Alyssa had set up housekeeping across the entire bench seat, surrounded by her Hello Kitty and Littlest Pet Shop collections.

Jerry and Marilyn and Alyssa composed what had become the pro-Harwood faction. Since the trip from St. Louis covered just under a thousand miles their time on the road lasted several hours, which is a long time to be in a car listening to inspirational evangelical audiotapes; it was longer for some than for others.

Which brings us to the anti-Harwood faction, the two older Walker daughters: Rebecca, seventeen, and Karen, sixteen, both very beautiful in that Midwestern corn-fed style, and both of them in many ways typical American teenage girls. And, as it turned out, in other ways, not at all typical.

Rebecca and Karen were sitting at the very back of the truck, in the two fold-down seats, pressed up tight against the luggage stacks that crowded the rear deck, isolating themselves as much as they could from the pro-Harwood faction up front, because, after a few hundred miles, they were both totally sick unto eye-rolling, please-kill-me-now death of Ellison and Marietta Harwood.

So it won’t come as a surprise to hear that, upon finally reaching their condo, a four-bedroom Italian-themed palazzo with a terrace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, Rebecca and Karen had thrown their luggage onto the king-size bed in their shared bedroom, torn off their clothes, slipped into their strictly forbidden Tommy Bahama bikinis, censored by Ralph Lauren hoodies and baggy shorts, and bolted for the beach at a dead run.

Where, around sunset, strolling north through the crystalline water toward Fernandina Beach, the surf rolling and booming and sparkling all around them, the echoes of Ellison Harwood’s well-oiled baritone gradually fading from memory, they saw a woman walking south toward them.

She was alone. She was barefoot and tanned and wearing a one-piece suit in creamy white under a gauzy tourmaline beach wrap. She moved as if she were inside music, something rhythmic and Caribbean.

Her face was partially hidden by a broad-brimmed white straw hat, secured around her neck with a scarlet ribbon. Her eyes were cast down, as if she were lost in thought. She was less than twenty feet away before she seemed to sense rather than see them, and then she stopped and lifted her face up and considered them, as if she knew them, as if she had been looking for them.

Which, of course, she had.

They stopped to talk, then walked and talked and found themselves gradually...enchanted. How old she was—thirty, forty, even fifty—it was impossible to tell, and, after a short while in her effervescent company, it didn’t seem to matter.

Later, sitting by the palm-tree-shaded pool, sharing sips of her margarita with the girls when the waiter wasn’t looking, she told them her name was Diana Bowman, that she was a dealer in antique jewelry based in Palm Beach, that she was here on a much-needed vacation from her wealthy and demanding clientele, and that she loved meeting young people like Rebecca and Karen.

They each felt that galvanic spark of instant rapport that is not an uncommon event when people go on vacation, and by the second round of margarita sharing they decided that they should be newfound friends together and have such great fun while they were all here at this beautiful resort.

By now, thanks to the margarita factor, the girls had relaxed enough around their new friend that they had begun to open up to her about their trip down from St. Louis, and the Harwood-inflicted grinding hell it had managed to become.

Diana Bowman was cautiously sympathetic.

“Well, yes, I confess I do find certain types of religious practice to be, how to put it, so spiritually confining...but I sometimes feel that it is as much a sin to ignore the sensual pleasures that God has given us as it is to, what to say, overindulge in them?”

Rebecca and Karen agreed, or thought they did, although her reference to sensualpleasures definitely touched them on a more primal than theoretical level. But Diana seemed to feel she had said too much.

“You know, I have no doubt that your parents—they are here with you, yes?—oh, how nice—Jerry and Marilyn? And Alyssa, the youngest? That they are doing this out of love. I’m sure they just want you to be...happy and safe.”

“Too safe,” said Karen, with some heat. “They never want us to have any fun—”

“You’d think we were in jail,” Rebecca finished, caught up with the injustice of it all.

Diana listened with every sign of sympathetic understanding as the girls raved on for a while about the unbearable oppression of patriarchal fascism disguised as parental kindness.

Eventually they ran the subject down, realizing from Diana’s sleepy-eyed attention that perhaps they were boring their new friend. But what she said next surprised them.

“I’m a Roman Catholic myself, on my mother’s side, and I do feel that the effect Jesus had on the world was, on the whole, a good one. You need only to look at the world these days to see how important His teachings were to Western Civilization.”

Rebecca, the historian, brought up the Crusades and Diana, sipping at her margarita, agreed that the Crusades were simply awful, but that they had happened nine hundred years ago, and what Jesus had brought into the world, long before the Crusades, could be seen in the artifacts connected to Him.

“Oh God,” said Karen, “don’t tell us about artifacts.”

“Really?” said Diana.

It turned out that Rebecca and Karen knew all about artifacts and relics, since Daddy never shut up about them—he had even brought a lockbox full of them along to classify or decipher or something—but by now their heads were dizzy with the surging sea and the margarita sipping so they missed the sudden sharpening of Diana Bowman’s attention.

“So your father works with these artifacts?”

“God yes. He brought them along, these...”

“Artifacts,” Rebecca repeated with careful precision, feeling the tequila. “He lays them out on the dining room table and studies them for, like, hours. He has a microscope and all kinds of tools.”

Diana was intrigued.

“Truly? He sounds very dedicated. What sort of artifacts are they?”

Rebecca made a hand-waving gesture of dismissal.

“Creepy old dead stuff. From wherever Daddy has to work. All over the world. From New Orleans, this bunch anyway. They were moving graves after that stupid storm?”

“Katrina?”

“Yeah. That. It was like years ago, but now they’re doing something about flood protection, so the graveyards have to be built up. You know the way they bury people in New Orleans? In those concrete churchy-looking little stone houses?”

“Crypts,” said Diana. “They have to be aboveground because the water table is so high.”

“Daddy says they just stuff new bodies into the crypt and shove the old ones to the back of the...whatever...the...?”

“The vault.”

“Yeah, the vault, so that whoever was buried there a hundred years ago gets all crammed up with the new people and it’s all mixed up in a jumble.”

“So your father is trying to sort out who was who, now that the bodies have to be moved?”

“Yeah, although it’s only temporary, ’cause they’re putting them back when the work is through, but he has to figure out which bits belong where, and then there’s all the jewelry.”

“You mean, like gold bracelets and rings and that kind of thing?”

“And lockets and brooches and stuff,” said Karen, not really interested in whatever her daddy was up to. They both felt a spreading warmth moving through their bodies as the tensions of the trip receded and Diana’s silky voice seemed to pull them into a conspiratorial circle. They were too young to notice the voltage that the word locket had sent pulsing through the woman’s body.

“Well, it sounds as if your father is doing the Lord’s work,” Diana said, changing the subject. “You should be proud of him.”

“Oh, we are,” said Rebecca, feeling that they were sounding disloyal. “I mean they’re good people and all that. It’s just this whole Christ thing. Christ this and Jesus that, all the way down from Florissant. It was all, like, so...lame.”

Diana gently disagreed.

“But there’s a true power there, girls. In Jesus. Do you know about the Shroud of Turin?”

This was something important to Diana. They could both feel her...chemistry...change. In spite of their reflexive dislike of the subject, what she was saying—or rather how she was saying it—got their attention.

She was talking about the Shroud of Turin, the moment of Christ’s Resurrection, when His Spirit had flashed out, shimmering so brightly inside that darkened sepulchre...

“A shimmer so powerful that it actually burned itself into the burial cloth he was wrapped up in,” said Diana, leaning in close and placing a soft warm hand on Rebecca’s knee.

“Can you imagine what that must have been like? And Jesus teaches us that that very same Shimmer is inside each of us. That divine spark shines inside us all, waiting to be...released. How beautiful.”

Rebecca found she liked the feel of Diana’s hand on her knee, but the subject of Jesus Christ’s Light Bulb Moment was not nearly as interesting to her, at this twilight hour, as the particular hazel-and-gold colors in Diana Bowman’s eyes and the spicy scent that was coming off her body. From the look on her sister’s face, she was feeling the same sort of sensual pull.

Rebecca felt a warmth rising on the skin of her belly and flooding up to her breasts, her throat, her cheeks. She’s gay, Rebecca was thinking. And she likes us. Both of us.

Diana drew back, smiled at them.

“But it’s getting dark, and you two need to be going back to your room, don’t you? Your parents will be worried, no?”

Rebecca looked at her cell phone.

There were three text messages, all in the last few minutes. She had felt the phone buzzing but ignored it, knowing what they were about but feeling that, where Mommy and Daddy were concerned, it was easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Mommy: We’re going out to get something to eat. Coming?

Mommy: Leaving in five?

Daddy: Girls?

After a moment’s thought, as Diana watched her with some amusement, Rebecca texted back.

Becca: We’re at the Chapel for Eventide. So pretty here. Can we stay?

A pause. The resort was fenced and gated, studded with security cameras and patrolled by armed guards. And it did have a little chapel beside the tennis courts.

Daddy: Okay. But home by midnight. Pinky swear.

Becca: Pinky swear. Hugs.

Daddy: Karen got her puffer with her?

Rebecca tipped the phone to Karen, who read the message, fumbled in her pocket and came up with a small silver canister with a little plastic mask attached—her rechargeable puffer. Karen had asthma, usually caused by stress.

Becca: Yes, Daddy, we just checked.

Daddy: Okay be good love you both.

Rebecca put the phone away, looking up to catch a strange, almost hungry expression on Diana’s face, a kind of pale yellow light in her green eyes.

But then Diana smiled and it was gone.

“Was that your parents, Rebecca?”

“Yes. They’re going out to dinner.”

“So late? Without you?”

“Yes,” she said. “They like to eat late. Alyssa won’t go to sleep unless she has something later on in the evening—”

“She’s so spoiled,” said Karen.

Rebecca ignored that. “We can stay for now, but we have to be home by midnight.”

Diana looked at her watch.

“That’s a while away. Perhaps we can have a quick dinner? Room service? In my suite?”

The words were innocent, but both Karen and Rebecca understood what wasn’t being said.

“We’d love to,” they said in one voice.

“How perfect you both are,” said Diana, taking them in. “How simply...delicious.”


the lady in the lake (#u28112b36-bc24-5294-8754-1428358201f5)

As soon as the three cops disappeared back into the tree line, she surfaced. She was two hundred feet away, in the heart of the swamp, neck deep in the stinking water, hidden behind an island of seagrass, her face coated in lagoon muck.

She slowly lifted her head up, her black hair matted to her skull. She had a pretty good idea of what had happened back there at the Walkers’ truck, what the gunshots really meant, why the cops had bolted, and it warmed her through and through.

The girls had done what she had asked them to do. Well, they had done what Diana Bowman had asked them to do, but she was no longer the woman called Diana Bowman. She was Selena.

* * *

She had never actually been Diana Bowman, but she had met the original at a resort in the Keys last year, a lonely older woman without family or close friends, looking for affection, or at least kindness, which Selena had freely given her with all of her loving heart.

And they lived happily ever after, until late one shining afternoon while they were out cruising in Diana’s boat, when Selena had shoved her over the side into shark water.

Four minutes later, while Selena fended the terrified woman off with a boat hook, a big whitetip, attracted by her thrashing struggle, flashed in, hit her hard and took her under in an explosion of bloody foam.

Other sharks arrived, and things got nasty, the way they do when sharks disagree. For a brief moment Diana’s horrified face reappeared in the middle of a churning vortex of pink water, staring wide-eyed at Selena, her open mouth filled with blood. Then she was jerked back under, the sharks shredded what was left of her and it was over.

Selena had watched the whole thing, fascinated, wishing she had thought to film it for YouTube. But it was too late for that now, and anyway it would have been a risky thing to do.

Amusing, certainly, but risky.

Since Diana, being newly dead, didn’t need her life anymore, Selena took it over, maxing out all of her credit cards and discreetly liquidating her assets—which were considerable, since she was a very successful dealer in estate jewelry and antiques—over a few months.

She banked the results in one of her accounts in the Caymans. Selena was good at that sort of thing because she had been doing it for years and had pretty much perfected it. Bowman’s banker was troublesome, but nothing Selena couldn’t finesse. You could say it was her profession, what she did for a living, but it wasn’t her purpose.

That was something else entirely. And it had to do with finding something she had lost somewhere in time, something perfect and round and made of gold, a locket, and inside the locket was peace and her last childhood memory of loving kindness.

* * *

Selena thought about the cops, the way they had run back up the slope and into the trees, three big heavy men, slow and clumsy and stupid. They had been easy to outrun.

She felt a smile coming but suppressed it. Her teeth were very white and they would show. Some kind of crawling sucking things were up under her clothes and digging into the flesh of her back and her lower belly. She could feel them starting to feed on her. Leeches.

A tiny carp-like fish was nipping at the side of her neck but she didn’t try to drive it away. A large red centipede was moving slowly across the exposed skin of her left wrist. She could feel the feathery tickle of its feet. Mosquitoes and midge flies hovered in a cloud around her face and neck, biting and stinging whatever they could get at through the mud she had smeared all over herself.

She had a long filleting knife in a sheath at the nape of her neck, so if there was a big snake or a gator in this water, she could probably kill it. But killing it would require movement and movement would show the police where she was.

Her long and complicated time in this world had taught her many things, and one of them was that the secret of the hunt was not to run. It was to be still. Humans were born predators. Some of them, anyway, the ones who weren’t born prey. But, like dogs, they were attracted to motion. They would chase anything running. They never saw the thing that was perfectly still.

Cats were different. Cats could be still far longer than their prey. Fear made the prey run to meet its death when it could have been still and lived a little while longer. This was why cats were better hunters than dogs. This was why cats could hunt alone. It was in their nature to hunt alone.

But she had learned that all police officers were like wolves. They hunted in packs. That was their nature. Like those three cops. They heard the gunshots; they all ran off together. In a wolf pack. But they would come back.

The rain was drumming on her skull and she could feel her body heat draining away into the swamp all around her. In a while she’d be shivering badly. She considered the sky. The clouds were breaking up. The white squall would end soon and then the sun would come out.

Full dark was hours away.

They would bring boats to search the swamp but that would take a while. They might call in police dogs but Selena had learned that police dogs were no threat to her. They would set up a perimeter with their cars, a few blocks out, and then wait for her to move. If they caught her, they would put her in a concrete box for the rest of her life.

No. Not right. This was the South.

They would kill her.

She suppressed a sudden flaring of rage, and the fear that shivered underneath it. She couldn’t just die, she couldn’t just be ended. Not before she had accomplished her mission, her reason for being alive. It wouldn’t be fair.

It wouldn’t be right.

So...be still.

She lowered her face into the reeds, made herself go limp, sinking deeper into the little island, becoming a part of it. She visualized herself as a shapeless patch of black mud in a cluster of reeds. And soon that was what she was. It was one of her particular gifts, to blend into the background, to seem to disappear. To vanish.

She ignored the clouds of mosquitoes and the leeches that were crawling on her flesh and feeding on her, and all the tiny fish that had come to nip at her, and the fat white snake that was staring at her from his nest in the clump of marsh grass. She ignored the miasmic reek of the swamp itself. She went inward and shut down. She waited.

—* * *

Halliday was right beside Redding and Marsh as they broke through the trees and came out onto the roadway. Julie Karras was sitting on the ground beside the Suburban, leaning back against it, blood running down the side of her face. She had her Glock out and was holding it on one of the teenage girls who had been cuffed in the back of the truck.

The girl was lying on her belly on the ground, her hands cuffed behind her. She was swearing and screaming, spitting rage into the slick hot pavement under her chin.

The left rear door of the Suburban was wide-open and the other sister was sprawled in the open doorway, half in the truck and spilling out onto the ground, down on her knees, facing out, upper body thrown backward into the truck, head hanging sideways, painted lips slack. She had a bullet hole in her left cheek and another one in her neck just under her chin and a third one in her belly. You could see it on the exposed skin, where her T-shirt had ridden up as she slid down to the roadway. A little black hole, and blood oozing from it onto her jeans. The T-shirt had bright red cartoon words on it: I’m a Belieber!

Blood and brains and hair and bone shards were splattered over the side of the truck. Her eyes were wide-open, sightless, staring at whatever comes next after this life ends. Lying on the road below her right hand was a collapsible steel baton called an ASP. It was extended, and there was blond hair and blood stuck to the tip.

People, gawkers, were standing around in the dwindling rain, mouths slack, gaping at this scene, but no one had come in closer to help or shelter or comfort Julie Karras. She tried to sit up as Redding came to her, her eyes unfocused, shock setting in.

“She...she hit me. Pulled my baton out while I was helping the other kid out of the truck and...she hit me.”

Redding was saying something soothing as he gently lifted the Glock out of her right hand. He ejected the mag, checked it, put it back in, but he didn’t chamber a round. He slipped the pistol into the back of his belt. He lifted her face up by the chin, gently, assessed her eyes, his manner calm but his heart was hammering in his chest.

She looked back at him, both eyes the same—fear. Shock, anger—but no sign of brain injury, pupils the same size, reactive. Her lips moved in a whisper and then in a stronger voice.

“Is she alive?”

Marsh had been checking the girl out while Halliday was kneeling beside the other sister, on the ground, looking for injuries. And weapons.

Marsh glanced over at Redding, shook his head.

“No. She’s gone, honey,” Redding told her.

Karras started to cry, choked it back.

“Can you stand, Julie?”

“I...I think so.”

Redding did a quick inventory, decided she was not hurt in some way that he couldn’t see and she couldn’t feel, put his hands under her arms and got her to her feet, put her back up against the driver’s window of the Suburban, turned her head to the side and studied the damage.

It was a nasty wound.

The ASP was an impact weapon, two feet of solid steel when extended, with a little balled tip. It was meant to be used on muscle mass—thighs, calves, biceps. Never against bone. Bone shattered. Used like that the ASP was a killing tool.

Blood was still pulsing out of a three-inch rip in the flesh just above Karras’s right ear. Her ear had actually cushioned some of the impact. The upper part was crushed and flattened and ripped open. An inch higher and the blow could have punched through her temple. She’d be dead, or brain damaged. The girl had meant to kill her and had come damn close.

Halliday jerked the other girl to her feet and had her up against the hood of the squad car, spread out on it, facedown.

He was searching her pockets, putting whatever he found onto the hood of the unit—a wallet; an iPhone; a roll of candy; a small silver can with a breathing mask attached, presumably an asthma puffer; a small notepad with a unicorn on the cover. She was ferociously angry, her voice a birdlike screech, steel on slate.

“She killed her. That bitch killed Rebecca. You’re dead, you cunt, you’re so fucking dead.”

Halliday finished searching her, told her to shut the fuck up in a low growl and frog-walked her around to the rear door of his cruiser, not gently. He popped the door and shoved her in, ran her cuffs through a ringbolt and chain welded to the floor of the cruiser and slammed the door on her string of obscenities. He walked back, his face white, scalded by her anger.

He collected the items off the hood.

“Got ID there?” asked Redding.

Halliday flipped open the wallet, found a Florissant High School ID in the name of Karen Anne Walker, age sixteen, a couple of credit cards and a membership card for something called the Glad Day Assembly, with an address in Florissant, Missouri. Florissant was a suburb of St. Louis, Redding recalled.

“Check the other one, see if she’s got any ID on her, but don’t move her body if you can help it, okay?” Halliday stepped away, went over to the dead girl and carefully went through her pockets, looked back at Redding.

“Nothing.”

“See if there’s a purse or something in the truck.”

Halliday checked the truck, came back with a small lime-green leather wallet, flipped through it, found a Missouri driver’s license.

“Got a Rebecca Walker, seventeen, same address, picture matches.”

“Run the names, Jim. Let’s see what we get.”

Halliday went off to his cruiser to do that.

Redding turned to Marsh.

“Let’s get an EMT for Julie and bring some County units in here. We need to control this scene.”

“Still want the dogs?” Marsh wanted to know.

“Hell yes. Two units.”

Marsh stepped away to make the calls and then went back to his cruiser for a roll of crime scene tape, started to string it all around, from signpost to telephone pole, herding the people back as he did this, the rapidly growing crowd babbling and staring, their smartphones and iPads out, taking video, chattering into their phones, snapping shots.

Whatever they were doing, Redding could feel the electrons radiating out into the cyberworld, flashing around the town, the city, the state, the globe. Redding asked Karras if she could walk.

She said yes, and he walked her back to their unit, sat her gently inside on the shotgun seat, tugging a first-aid kit out of his glove compartment.

He put a sterile pad up against the wound and then wrapped it in place with a roll of gauze, making those pointless little comforting sounds parents make when their kids are hurt.

It reminded him of when he’d been a husband and a dad. That hurt to think about so he stopped thinking it and concentrated on what he was doing.

Karras was staring through the window at the Suburban, where Marsh was draping an aluminum foil thermal blanket over the dead girl’s body.

“She’s really dead, isn’t she?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

“She is. You okay to tell me how it happened, before all the official machinery starts up?”

She managed to look at him, one eye half-covered with the gauze strip.

“I did what you said. I checked them both for weapons, knives... They were crazy, panicked. I got them calm, but I searched them first, I really did, Sergeant Redding... They were both in shock. At least, that’s what I thought. I wanted to get them into the back of the cruiser, away from the truck, because it was now a crime scene, get them out of the rain...”

She went away for a moment and Redding let her. She’d have to tell this story over and over again. Let her remember it as it came to her.

He was thinking about the dash cam. It would all be on the dash cam. Not just on the dash cam either. It was likely that half the people in the crowd gathered around had already been taking cell phone shots when the shooting happened.

It was entirely possible that somebody was loading it onto YouTube right at this second. Or selling it to one of the cable networks.

He hoped to God it was a righteous shooting because if it wasn’t, they were both in the barrel, but especially her.

Although, now that we’re on the topic, he was the dickhead who left a rookie in charge of two kidnapping victims while he raced off like some dumb-ass greyhound chasing a mechanical rabbit. No, whatever happened, this one was on him, not her.

“I was helping the younger one—Karen. I think she said Karen was her name. I was helping her out of the truck, she had trouble walking and I remember holding her up and walking along with her—she was holding on to me like she was drowning, I was half carrying her...and then she looked back over my shoulder, like behind me, back at the truck, where Rebecca was, and I saw her eyes get big, and she—”

Karras went quiet, remembering it.

“She smiled, a big happy grin, and I turned to look and I felt a tug at my belt—Karen was holding my arms down, wrapping me up tighter, like she was holding me? I threw her off, I was turning—and my head exploded—I went down—I was trying to get my weapon out... Rebecca was right over me with that baton and Karen was screaming, �Kill her kill her smash her skull,’ and Rebecca started to swing it down at my head and I had the Glock in my hands and I shot her. Saw the rounds hit her. I don’t know how many I got out—”

“Three rounds.”

She thought about that.

“Three? Okay. I don’t know.”

Redding had already checked her mag. She had fifteen rounds left in the seventeen-round mag. And she’d had one already chambered, as she’d been trained to do. Which was good because, if she’d had to take the time to rack the slide and chamber a round and then aim and fire, she’d probably be dead now. So three rounds out, and all of them hits.

“Three is pretty damn good, Julie. Most cops would have emptied the mag into her. Or tried to.”

“I...was thinking about the backstop. About ricochets. About all the people standing around.”

“Good. Good for you. That’s trigger control. All three shots were right on target, center of the visible mass. That’s textbook fire discipline. Remember that, when they ask later. The shooting board.”

Karras took a moment to absorb that idea—the shooting board—and then shook it off.

“Anyway...she was going back and down, back into the rear door. I pivoted on my hip and Karen was coming right back at me—I could hear her coming, her shoes scraping—and I figured she was after my weapon because that was what she was focused on. I put the gun on her and I said... I have no idea what I said. She lay down on her face, I went over and cuffed her...and next thing I knew my legs gave out and my ass was on the ground and my back was up against the side of the truck and there was blood in my eyes.”

She looked down at her hands.

“My first day,” she said, mostly to herself. “I can’t fucking believe it. I’m on the job five hours and I’ve fucking killed someone.”

Tears close but not there yet, her blue eyes wide, blood in the right eye and on her cheekbone, a little blood on her teeth as she tried to find the words. Redding put his hand on her right shoulder, feeling the warm wet blood on her uniform shirt, the red stains on her gold braid.

“If the dash cam shows the same thing—”

She hardened up.

“It will.”

“Then it was a good shooting. Take a deep breath. You did just fine. Better than fine. I’m proud of you, Julie. Remember that.”

The EMT bus had arrived, complete with sirens and lights, and now there were County cars rolling in from both ends of the street, along with two K-9 units of the Highway Patrol. And right behind them, Mace Dixon in his Supervisor truck.

Redding leaned in close to her, speaking low but urgently, making the point.

“It’s going to get real intense real fast, Julie. You’re not to talk, got that? Not to anyone. You can answer health questions for the EMT people. Everybody else, you have nothing to say. Got that? Nothing. Not even to the CO. You’re just confused. Your head is killing you—”

“It really is,” she said, trying for a smile.

“You’re too shook up to talk right now. Mace will understand. You don’t talk until you’re discharged from the hospital and you’ve had a good night’s sleep, and we’re back at Depot, and your Patrol Advocate is sitting beside you. And I’ll be right there too. It’ll take a couple of days before that happens. They’ll be taking you to Immaculate Heart to look at that head wound. Our guys will be around everywhere and they’ll keep you safe. They won’t ask you about the shooting. They all know better. But you don’t talk about the shooting to Flagler County. Or any city cops. Or to the medics. Basically, not even to Jesus Christ Himself if He appears in your room with a six-pack of Coronas and a box of Krispy Kremes. Not to anyone.”

She managed to laugh at that, and then the tears finally came, and she was looking at her hands, at the blood on them.

“I killed a living person,” she said. “That girl was alive just a few minutes ago, and now she’s dead, and she will be dead...forever.”

Redding put a hand under her chin, lifted her head and turned her to face him.

“Yes, you did. It was your sworn duty to do that, and you did it. You put the aggressor down and you stayed alive and no civilians got hurt. It was your job to protect the public, and you did that. You killed a crazy bitch who was trying to kill you. And when you were dead she’d have taken your gun and then what could have happened? She could have started firing into the crowd and killed a lot of innocent people. But you stopped her. Stopped her dead. And you know what you need to think about, every time you think about this?”

“What?”

“Fuck her. Better her than you.”

She looked up at him, trying to take that in.

“Really?”

He put a hand on her shoulder, a thin smile.

“Yeah. Really. Welcome to Cop World, Julie.”

* * *

A few minutes later Redding and Marsh and Halliday watched the EMT wagon roll away with Julie Karras, lights but no siren, as Mace Dixon, who’d been speaking to a Flagler County staff sergeant, came across to talk. To listen, actually.

They laid it out for him in the most basic terms, and he took it all in without a comment, other than one or two clarifying questions.

Dixon made sure he got it all straight, and then he lit up an Old Port, using the brim of his Stetson to shelter the match from what was left of the rain.

“Okay. We’ll look at the dash cam. If it holds up, I think we’re gonna be okay on this. Media is gonna make a BFD out of it being a kid killed. A female. And all of these people around here, the civilians, every one of them has probably got sound and video on the whole thing. Look at them, they’re still shooting cell phone video. They’re like goddamn zombies with little metal rectangles attached to their foreheads. What happened here, it’s going all over social media. They probably know about it in fucking Oslo by now. Nothing we can do about that. It is what it is.”

The Officer Involved Shooting Unit was on the scene, dropping tiny yellow cones all over the place and taking video. Two satellite trucks from the Jacksonville stations, Fox and CNN, were being held off a block away. So far no Eye in the Sky news choppers had arrived to screw up the crime scene with rotor wash. Redding could see the hard white lights as the reporters did Eyewitness to the Shooting interviews with everyone who wanted to be on television, which was close to a hundred people by now.

Dixon blew out the smoke, turned to the three of them. “You figure she’s still out here somewhere?”

“Has to be,” said Redding. “Flagler County guys have sealed off the entire neighborhood.”

“Might have broken into any one of these houses along here,” said Dixon. “We’ll have to get foot patrols out, go from door to door.”

“Might be out there in the reeds,” said Dixon.

“I think she is,” said Redding. “That’s where we last saw her. We’ll get the flatboats out looking for her. If she went in there, Mace, we’ll flush her out.”

They turned as a burst of angry barking came from the direction of the Suburban. Two K-9 Unit officers were dragging their dogs away from the driver’s side of the truck.

Redding watched the dogs, both big German shepherds. They were both fighting to get free of their leads, barking furiously. The handlers were pulling them away from the truck, the dogs resisting as hard as they could, straining against their harnesses. Both handlers were looking confused, angry, fighting the dogs.

“What the...” said Redding, walking across to talk to one of the K-9 handlers, a serious heart-attack blonde named Jennifer St. Denis. St. Denis had the dog under a tight grip as Redding reached her.

“What’s with the dogs, Jen?” Redding asked.

St. Denis shook her head, looking exasperated and puzzled. “I have no idea.”

Now her dog, a big muscled-up German shepherd, was staring up at Redding, panting heavily, gazing up at him as if he knew him, which he did.

He’d once spent nine months with this fine dog before he’d handed him off to another K-9 officer, the one before Jennifer, a guy who was KILO now, killed in the line of duty, after which this same dog, Killington, had mauled the shooter so badly he lost his left ear, most of his left cheek, all of his left eye and over two quarts of blood from his ripped-out carotid. Killington’s DNA made him nothing less than an apex predator.

Guy later sued the Highway Patrol and the State of Florida for Excessive Use of Force. He was on Death Row at the time. He lost. A while later they spiked him dead and buried him in unconsecrated ground.

The dead K-9 officer’s friends took Killington out to the convict’s grave every now and then and they’d stand around drinking beers until they were all charged up, at which point everybody would unzip and piss on the grave, including Killington.

Redding bent down and offered a hand to the dog, which took some nerve, even if they were old friends.

“Hey, Killington. What’s up? What’s the problem?”

Killington twitched his ears and then whimpered, showing the whites of his eyes. He ducked his head and then licked Redding’s hand.

“What’s with Killington?” he asked.

“You ask me,” said St. Denis, in a low voice, “I’d say he doesn’t like whatever he can smell in that vehicle. I’ve never seen him do this. Never.”

Across the road the other K-9 guy was putting his shepherd into the back of his cruiser. He glanced across at St. Denis and Redding, shaking his head, lifted his hands in a WTF gesture.

“Got a feeling we’re not gonna get a lot of help from the dogs today,” said St. Denis.

One of the forensic guys walked across to Dixon and got into a close conversation with him, Marsh and Halliday listening in.

Redding said goodbye to Jennifer, ruffled Killington’s neck again and walked across to hear what the techie had to say.

“I don’t get it,” Dixon was saying.

The tech, Redding didn’t know his name, a skinny kid with glasses and large ears, shook his head, staring down at something in his hands, a small digital camera. On the screen, a picture of a steering wheel with black smudges all over it.

“No prints, but it hasn’t been wiped.”

“You saw the woman, Jack, when she hopped out of the truck, didn’t you? Was she wearing gloves?”

Redding thought about it. He had a good memory for things like that. And you always looked at the hands first. He went back for the image, concentrating on the brief glimpse he had gotten.

“No, Mace. Hands were empty. If she had gloves, they were pink. Skin colored.”

He glanced at Marsh, who grinned back at him.

“Okay, white skin colored,” said Redding.

“So maybe latex?” Dixon asked.

“Not latex,” said the tech. “We’d have residue. Anyway, there was fresh sweat on the wheel, which you wouldn’t get if the driver had been wearing any kind of gloves.”

“Human sweat?” Marsh asked. Of course everyone stared at him like he was totally bats.

He sent the vibe right back.

“Hey, she fucking disappeared, into thin air, like she was a fucking ghost. Didn’t she, Jim?”

Halliday wasn’t backing away from it either.

“Well, we were right on her ass, Cap, and she broke outta the trees and... LQ’s right. It was like she just...vanished. I’m just sayin’.”

“Lousy visibility with this rain,” said Dixon, and then there was an uneasy silence.

“Ghosts I don’t know about,” said the tech, after a moment, and mostly to himself, as if the idea was a new one to him. He smiled.

“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll run it for ghost DNA.”

“You do that,” said Marsh, not amused.

“And while you’re doing that,” said Jack, “run it for real DNA too, see if she comes up on any database. Tell the lab we want this done right away, not a week from next Tuesday.”

The tech promised to push it to the top of the list, and then Dixon’s duty cell phone beeped at him. He glanced down at the screen, gave everybody the “sorry, gotta take this” look, stepped away a couple of yards.

* * *

The three of them, Marsh and Halliday and Redding, watched the accelerating activity that was buzzing all around them, and the people on their porches and under their garage roofs, staring out, watching. Getting it all on cell phone cameras.

The block was swarming with uniforms, the tan and black of the County guys, the charcoal gray of the Highway Patrol, the OIS people in their white pajamas. The rain was tapering away and far off in the west the sun was threatening to show up for a brief appearance at the tail end of the afternoon.

“What do you want us to do?” asked Marsh.

Redding considered the girl in the backseat of Halliday’s squad car. She was staring back at them, gunning them, a fixed and angry scowl on her pretty young face.

“Jim, you drive that...creature...to see the docs, but don’t Mirandize her yet. You follow? No Miranda. It’ll just get her attention. Get her to Immaculate Heart ER, have her checked over, and then get her admitted into one of those secured rooms on the fifth floor. Put a PW into the room with her. Tell her she’s in Protective Custody until we can figure what’s going on. Tell her it’s because her kidnapper is still on the loose. She’s in our care, right? Not under arrest. Here’s why. She’ll likely end up being charged with Resisting Arrest with Violence, Battery on a Police Officer and Attempting to Elude. Accessory to Attempt Murder of a Police Officer, if I have anything to say about it. But she’s a kid, a yoot like they say in the Bronx, and I don’t want her skating on some fucking juvie technicality.”

“I ran her ID,” said Halliday. “No hits other than a misdemeanor shoplifting beef last year. Nothing on the dead kid either.”

“Okay. Look, LQ, you go up and see to Julie. They took her to Immaculate Heart too. Stay with her. Stay close. Don’t let anybody from Depot or HQ lean on her. You are hereby authorized to shoot any media folks who get within ten feet of her. If they keep her overnight, can you stay with her?”

“I can,” said Marsh.

“Good. Thank you. Call her people, if she has any. Call whoever you need to. Take good care of her, LQ. She’s a keeper.”

“What about you?”

“I gotta see that this Suburban is sealed up and towed to the Depot. I want Forensics to take it apart in the motor pool. There’s luggage in the back, backpacks, a couple of boxes too. And it’s stuffed full of fast-food junk, candy wrappers, soda cans, like there was some kind of rolling party going on. Like serious fun was being had. I should have picked that up.”

“Lot of shit going on at the time,” said Marsh.

“Should have seen it anyway. Make sure Forensics goes through all that stuff. Get receipts for everything. Truck has OnStar so get our IT people to contact them for any route info they might have. I want every parking ticket and restaurant receipt and candy wrapper bagged and tagged. We’ve got their iPhones so lean on the carrier to unlock them and get location data and a list of calls. Also get our people to look at all the security film they can get from gas stations and restaurants they went to. That stuff will be on their credit card records, so jump on VISA and AMEX and those guys.”

“They always give us grief, Jack.”

“Give them more. Scare the fuck out of them. Tell them there’s a killer loose, and if she kills again because they fucked us over, we’ll put it on Fox and CNN and make them look worse than United Airlines did last year.”

“Yow. Okay.”

“Yeah. Look, mainly I want to know why a kidnapped girl would try to kill the cop who freed her, and why her sister was helping. I want to know where the rest of the Walker family is, the dad and the mom and the other sister. I want to know where those three broads have been the last few days and nights, why were they in New Orleans and what they were doing there and who they were doing it to.”

“If she’ll talk,” said Halliday. “She could lawyer up, the PD would start up with all that Juvenile Offender bullshit—”

Redding glared at him, a cold steel look.

“We’re not gonna make it look like that. Like I said, we’re just gonna be these Officer Friendly cops, we’re just worried about her—is she traumatized, can she tell us what happened? That’s why no Miranda. If she does lawyer up, we make sure she gets the right PD—”

“Hobie Pruitt is the PD on duty tonight,” said Marsh. Redding took that in.

“Good. That helps. He’s not a complete idiot, and his father was a city detective in Savannah.”

Marsh and Halliday said nothing.

They knew he wasn’t finished.

“One last thing, guys. I think that runner is still around. If she is, I’m gonna try to have her in the back of my squad before the night’s over.”

He paused, smiled at them.

“So. We’re good to go?”

“We are,” said Halliday.

* * *

Dixon finished his call, stepped back to Redding, a troubled look on his face.

“That was Rod Culhane from HQ. Fernandina Beach PD called a while ago. They were doing a search around the island.”

“Yeah? And?”

Dixon’s expression was grim.

“They located the rest of the Walker family.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

Dixon shook his head.

“It isn’t. Couple of their harness guys found them in a storage unit that belonged to the Walkers’ condo. Down in the second-level basement, off in a corner. Padlocked, pretty much airtight to keep out the bugs and rats. But it had one of those roll-down gates. Stuff was leaking out from under it.”

“Oh jeez.”

“Yeah. They were inside, all three of them—mom, dad and the little sister. If it was done by the runner, she must have had a gun on them. Not easy to control two adults without one.”

“Didn’t find one in the truck.”

“So she’s still got it, I figure. They’d been tied up with plastic cable binders, had their mouths duct-taped, left there on the floor. Ten days.”

“Cord cuffs and duct tape sounds like she came prepared. The runner, I mean.”

“Not really. The storage unit was full of that kind of thing. The dad is some sort of collector, had boxes full of bones and shit.”

“All dead?”

“Two of them. The wife and the little girl. Heat stroke and dehydration. But the father, Gerald Walker, he was still alive—”

“After ten days?”

“Yeah. Guy must be half-lizard. He’s in the ICU at Baptist. Got a pulse like a moth in a bottle. Might make it. Might be a vegetable. No way to tell. Who the fuck could do something like that?”

It was a rhetorical question. They’d both been cops long enough to know that the world was packed with people who could do that and much worse.

Dixon shook his head, threw his Old Port into a ditch. He sighed heavily.

“Fuck this. I’m gonna go up to the ER, see how Karras is doing. Then I’m gonna go up to that kid’s room and turn her inside out. You wanna come for that? If your runner is still here, which I doubt, Flagler County will find her.”

Redding thought it over.

“No, I’m gonna stay here, Mace. Whatever the hell happened up at Amelia Island, this runner is at the heart of it. I’m not leaving until we get her.”

Dixon considered him for a while.

“Is this personal with you?”

Redding thought about it.

“I don’t know... Maybe... I sort of felt like...like I had seen her somewhere.”

“Like on a Wanted sheet?”

“No. Something else. Don’t know what. Anyway, now that we got a rookie hurt, that makes it personal.”

“Yes, it does. See you later.”

“Mace, you be careful when you talk to the kid. Now that what we have is two, potentially three dead victims. That kid is sixteen going on sixty. She knows what the hell happened. Don’t Mirandize her. We don’t want her to ask for a lawyer—”

“If she does ask?”

“Try not to make her ask. I told the guys, we’re Officer Friendly. Be nice. Be caring. Get one of the PW’s to bring her milk and cookies. Get her a fucking blankie. She’s not under arrest, she’s a victim in Protective Custody.”

“And if she asks for a lawyer anyway?”

“If you work it right she won’t. If she insists, the duty PD is Hobie Pruitt. He’s a good man. If you have to get her a PD, make sure you get him, and not that stainless-steel bitch—”

“Marylynne Kostic.”

“Yeah. Her. Anybody but her. We can slow-walk that issue for twenty-four hours. Mace, this is too fucking serious now. This is Attempted Murder of a cop. One of ours. I know you’re pissed—”

“I’m pissed, yeah, of course, but this isn’t my first rodeo, Jack.”

“I know that. I just...”

You’re a great cop, Mace, but you have already fucked up two good beefs when you lost your temper.

Redding didn’t say that.

He didn’t have to.

“I know,” said Mace, aware of what was not being said. “We don’t wanna lose her on a...technicality.”

“Yeah.”

A technicality.

Like throwing a handcuffed suspect down a flight of stairs. On camera.

“Well, neither do I,” said Dixon, hardening up. “And I won’t. Any OT you need, I’m authorizing it. Good hunting. See you back at Depot. You bring that woman in, Jack.”

“I will.”

Redding stepped back, watched Dixon pull away, put his Stetson on, squared it up, took a couple of deep breaths and headed back into the trees.

* * *

A squad of Flagler County Deputies was moving through the forest, slowly, working their way down to the shoreline. Night was coming on, the short sharp twilight you got in these latitudes, the sun a dying flame in the far west, low enough to light up the underside of the clouds.

He got to the shoreline and watched as two flatboats marked FHP Marine Unit were slowly paddling their way through the reeds.

Redding pulled out his portable.

“Jax 180 to Marine.”

He saw one of the cops tug out his radio, put it to his lips.

“Roger, Jax 180.”

“That you, Leo?”

“It’s me, Jack.”

“How you doing?”

“Bugs are murder out here. Driving us all nuts. Must be a billion of them.”

They were buzzing around Redding as he stood on the shoreline, but not as bad as it must have been out there.

“Getting anything at all?”

“Other than my nose and ears bit off? No.”

“Well, do your best, Leo. They found the rest of the Walker family.”

Leo didn’t come back for a second.

Then he keyed his mike.

“All three?”

“Yeah. The mother and the kid were dead.”

“But not the dad?”

“He’s still with us. So far.”

“In the ICU?”

“Baptist Hospital in Fernandina Beach. Listed as Grave.”

“How’d it happen?”

“Someone left them tied up in a storage locker. Ten days. The wife and the kid died of dehydration.”

“Eventually.”

“Yeah. Eventually.”

Silence.

Then, “Shit.”

“Yeah,” said Redding. “That’s about it. So look real hard, Leo. We want this woman.”

“If she’s in here, Jack, we’ll find her.”

But they didn’t.

* * *

They came close.

Close enough for Selena to hear what the boat cop was saying into his radio. They had found the mother and the father and the little girl. The father was still alive. She regretted that. He must have had a very strong life force to survive that long. When Rebecca helped to force them into the storage unit, helped to bind and gag them, the mother had begged her daughter not to do it, with tears and pleas.

But Selena had the pistol, and Rebecca really wanted to go to New Orleans, and the sex was pulling her along, so the thing was done.

She wondered if, in the airless dark of that place, the father had seen the Shimmer when his wife and child passed. It would have been better to kill them all—and perhaps to have taken the Shimmer for herself when she did it—but the girls weren’t up to that. Not yet. They were too young.

But they had done very well, Rebecca and Karen, right up to the end here in this place. Selena was proud of them. They had been strong and brave. They had made it possible for her to escape and continue her work.

The three gunshots might have been for them, because they had tried to do what she had asked of them. If that was true and they were safely dead, it was all for the best. Selena would always remember them with fondness. And they had been delicious.

The hull of the boat actually brushed against the back of her jacket as it drifted by and she could smell the cigarette one of the cops was smoking in a vain attempt to ward off the mosquitoes.

In a way, what saved her were those mosquitoes, because they went for the eyes and the faces and straining to see clearly through a swarm of biting flies was a difficult thing to do properly. And she was being still, even as she felt the hull of the boat sliding across her shoulder blades and little icy jabs of panic were flickering up and down her belly. That was the hardest part, not moving with the boat so close, not giving in to the urge to burst up out of the water, knife them deep, kill them both before they could do anything but die.

But then the men in the other boat would shoot her and she’d be dead. And that was unthinkable. So she did not move. And after a long while, the boats went away, rowing back out into the waterway, rowing back to the big motor launch that had brought the flatboats in two hours ago.

* * *

Another half hour and the dark was now almost complete. She lifted her head...slowly...slowly...and there was one lone figure at the edge of the marsh, facing out into the dark.

That big cop, standing there in the dying light, was one of the three who had chased her until they heard the gunfire back on the road. This was also the same cop who had spotted them first, back there on the coast highway.

She had seen his face in her side mirror as he followed the truck, a craggy cowboy face, a big man with heavy hands on the steering wheel of his cruiser, his pale blue eyes, sharp and steady, fixed on her. He had the look of a raptor. She’d known then that she was going to have to run. She’d told the girls to prepare to do what they had talked about if something like this happened.

The same cop was now standing on the shore, stone still. She could see gold chevrons against the dark gray of his uniform, a sergeant. His right hand was resting on the butt of his service piece, and he was staring out at the swamp. Selena could feel his mind reaching out for her, feel the force in his animal spirit. He was burning for her.

He stayed there for an unknowable time, watching as the police launch slowly churned away to the main canal and the night came down. She got a vibration off him that wasn’t like the feelings she got from other officers, that wolf pack feeling.

This one was different from the others. She had encountered his type once before, but not in a very long time. She couldn’t quite catch that distant memory. But this cop was strangely familiar. As if they had known each other in another life.

She put these thoughts away. Eventually he would tire and leave and she could come back to shore. She knew what to do once she got back to the shore. She had done it often. So she waited.

Time passed slowly and still it was just the two of them, the police sergeant standing motionless by the shore, and Selena two hundred feet out, shivering violently in the water, aware that something large and slithery was close by her, only a few yards away, resting on the floor of the swamp, lidless eyes considering her.

She could feel its reptilian mind working, thinking dim slow thoughts about catching and ripping and swallowing, maybe mixed up with a bit of doubt, getting strange signals off her, its hunger and its fear fighting with each other. There was nothing to be done about that.

She was very cold and very hungry and starting to be just a little afraid, her skin on fire with bites and wounds and stings.

Beyond the trees the streetlights came on, and over her head the stars were shining through shreds of cloud. She could hear the cop’s radio crackling with chatter and out on the roadway blue and red and white lights were slicing up the sky and spearing through the treetops.

And still he stood and still he stared.

And now he was beginning to worry her.

She idly wondered if she should slip a hundred feet down the shoreline, try to get behind him and kill him. If he didn’t go soon, she might try it, even though moving—not being still—would be acting like prey instead of predator.

But a few minutes later he walked away up the slope until he reached the tree line. He stopped there and turned back to the swamp. And called out, a deep rolling voice, a strong Southern accent, Georgia or the Carolinas.

“Lady, if you’re still out there, I have something to tell you. I know you. I’ve seen your face somewhere. So I’m gonna look everywhere I can until I find you. Every police record. Every newspaper story. Every official site in the US. I’m gonna hunt you. And when I have your file, I will come for you. My name is Sergeant Jack Redding of the Florida Highway Patrol. Enjoy your evening.”

Then he turned and disappeared into the trees and Selena was alone in the swamp and she had a lot to think about. Redding. She knew that name, but she couldn’t quite remember from where, or why.

* * *

She was still thinking about it when she reached the shoreline a while later and moved silently, invisibly, a darker shadow in the night, gliding up the grassy slope and slipping through the trees toward the backs of the houses, where most of the people would be out on their front porches, watching the police cars, talking to their neighbors, having a lovely time savoring all the excitement, enjoying the delicious idea that something dangerous, something fatal, had happened right in front of them.

But it hadn’t happened to them.

* * *

Two Flagler County Deputies, Danika Shugrue and Luke Cotton, knocked on the front door of a trim little white bungalow two hours later. The porch lights were on and old-timey music was coming through the door, what used to be called big band music. While they waited for an answer, Deputy Shugrue checked her clipboard, a list of local residents.

“We’ve got a Willard Coleman, eighty-seven, a widower. Lives alone. He’s in a wheelchair—”

“Hence the ramp we’re standing on,” said Cotton.

“Stop saying hence, will you? Next it’ll be hither and forsooth.”

Cotton, who was hunting a promotion, was taking a college-level English Lit course online and Shugrue felt it was having a bad effect on him.

The door opened. A pretty woman was standing in the doorway, in a ratty powder blue terry-cloth bathrobe, obviously naked underneath, since the robe was not quite pulled in tight enough for modesty, her hair wrapped up in a big white towel and her face covered in some kind of lime-green cream. She smiled at them.

She had a great smile.

“Evening, miss,” said Deputy Shugrue, the senior deputy in this pair. “Can we talk to Mr. Willard Coleman?”

The woman made a pursed-lip expression, thinking about it, but then she brightened.

“Well, I think he’s asleep, but of course, come on in. Is this about the shooting thing earlier?”

“Yes it is, Miss...?”

“How terrible. I’ve been watching it on Fox. They have all sorts of video on it, I guess from people and their cell phone cameras and stuff. That poor lady police officer. The whole thing is on film. They’re playing it over and over. Is the lady officer okay?”

“She’s in the hospital,” said Shugrue, stepping inside and scuffing her boots on the doormat to clean off the mud. “But we think she’s going to be okay. Thank you for asking.”

“And the little girl who was shot? They’re not saying whether she was okay too?”

Shugrue exchanged a look with Cotton.

“She, ah, she died, I’m afraid, Miss...?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m Catherine Marcus. Call me Cathy. I’m with Helping Hands? We’re the assisted-living people?”

Marcus backed away from the door, inviting them into a neat little front room with a green leather sofa and two chairs, antique lamps, a fireplace with family pictures, a flat-screen TV with the sound off—Fox News—an oxygen tank in one corner.

“I’m the resident nurse for the night,” she was explaining. “Will... Mister Coleman...has some mobility issues, and he suffers from sleep apnea. So we try to have someone here through the night.”

“Can we talk to Mister Coleman?”

Marcus seemed worried, distracted, as she wiped some of the night cream off her face.

“He’s finally gotten to sleep... He has a terrible time...insomnia. But, of course, you need to check on him... Let me take you to him. His room is just down the hall here.”

She led the deputies down a narrow wooden-floored hall past a bright galley kitchen, dishes piled neatly in a rack, the counter gleaming in the glow of halogen downlights.

She reached a door, half-closed, tapped gently on it. “Will...are you awake?” she asked in a whisper. No answer, but the sound of some sort of breathing machine came from the darkened interior.

“Like I said, Will has sleep apnea,” Marcus explained. “That’s where your breathing just sort of stops, while you’re sleeping. It can be fatal. He has to wear a mask at night, to keep him breathing. Poor dear, he hates it. Says it’s too hot. But he needs it.”

“Can we just look in?” asked Cotton.

“Of course,” said Marcus, in a whisper.

Shugrue pushed the door open softly. The room had been stripped down to the basics, a dresser, a small flat-screen TV on top of it. Wooden floors. It was spare and neat. There was a single bed in the center of the room. In the dim light from a night table lamp they could see an elderly man lying on his back in the bed, covered by a fluffy pale blue comforter.

His eyes were closed and sunken but his bony chest was rising and falling in a steady rhythm. A rubber mask with a flexible tube attached to it covered his nose and mouth. The hose ran down to a machine that was puffing and venting in the same rhythm. The room smelled vaguely of antiseptic and some kind of lemon-scented air freshener, and under that just a teeny tiny hint of old-guy pee.

The cops stood in the doorway for a while, listening to Willard Coleman breathe. Then they backed out quietly.

“Okay with you if we do a walkabout?” asked Deputy Shugrue. “Make sure there’s nobody in the house who shouldn’t be here?”

Marcus gave her a broad smile.

“You go right ahead. It’s a pretty small house, just one floor. There’s no basement because of the water table around here being so high.”

Shugrue and Cotton went off down the hall, poked around in the bathroom, a tiny second bedroom, stepped out into the lanai-covered backyard, looked at the locks, flicked on the backyard lights for a moment and then they came back down the hall, where Marcus had stayed to wait for them.

“Everything looks good,” said Shugrue, and they all headed back down the hall, two large deputies carrying heavy gear, looming over a curvy barefoot woman in an increasingly scandalous bathrobe—in all the distraction, Marcus seemed to be unaware that her robe was not quite doing all it could to keep her decent.

They went out into the living room and across to the front door, where Shugrue stopped, as if she had just remembered it, and asked Catherine Marcus if she had some ID.

“Of course,” Marcus said. “Hold on, I think I left it in the kitchen.”

She fluttered off, leaving a soapy scent in the air, came back in a moment with a laminated ID card, the Helping Hands logo, and a photo with a security hologram over it and the name printed under the photo, which read Catherine Marcus, RN.

Shugrue studied the ID, made a note on her clipboard, tipped her Stetson to the nurse.

“Thank you, Miss Marcus. We’d like to advise you to keep everything locked up tight tonight. We’ve got a dangerous fugitive in the area, so don’t be answering any knocks on the door, okay?”

“Well, I had to answer yours, didn’t I?” she said, with a bright smile and a touch of tease.

“Yes, you did,” said Shugrue. “But no one else. Okay? Be careful. Have a good night.”

“You too, Officers,” said Marcus, holding the door open as they left. “And you both be sure to get home safe tonight, okay?”

“Thanks, miss,” said Shugrue, and they walked back down the wheelchair ramp and out to the street.

“Pretty lady,” said Cotton, who had enjoyed the half-open bathrobe more than was quite right for a happily married guy with two kids.

“Yeah she was,” said Shugrue, writing something on her clipboard. “Except for the acne. Her cheeks looked like she’d been bitten to death by ducks.”

“Didn’t notice her cheeks,” said Cotton.

“Yeah,” said Shugrue. “Because her cheeks were all up here and her boobs were all down there. I thought you were gonna trip over your tongue.”

“More likely my dick,” said Cotton.

“You wish,” said Shugrue.

* * *

Back in the bungalow Selena watched through the blinds as the two deputies walked away into the darkness between two streetlights. Then she slipped back down the hall and into the bedroom where Willard Coleman lay on his back in the hospital bed. She pulled off the sleep apnea mask and contemplated the old man for a while.

The mask was still breathing in and out for him, but Willard Coleman had drawn his last voluntary breath an hour and fifty minutes ago, when Selena had pinched his mouth and nostrils shut and then held them that way for six and a half minutes, because there was no point in doing something if you didn’t do it right, and it had been her experience that six and a half minutes did the trick for pretty much everyone.

She’d watched his eyes as he fought for life, his bony fingers scrabbling at her wrists. She had hoped for the Shimmer, but it didn’t come, which happened most of the time, the Shimmer being as elusive as St. Elmo’s fire. She had rarely seen the Shimmer come when old people died. Maybe their life forces were already at a low ebb.

She had better luck with younger subjects, but so far only a few of them had been able to bring the Shimmer in a way she could use.

* * *

Once she was sure the old man was dead, she had found an old bathrobe in the bedroom closet, gone down the hall and taken a long hot shower, which she really needed.

While she was showering she thought about the cops who would be around soon, making sure all the residents were safe and not taken hostage by that horrible evil fugitive person. She had a plan for that. She always carried a variety of IDs and credit cards and cash in a waterproof belt.

So she was safe for now, once the cops had come and gone, and afterward there was work to do—yes, a lot of work. The old man had a big iMac computer in the second bedroom. She would need that.

Redding. Jack Redding. Sergeant Jack Redding.

She was going to have to think about him, because he showed every sign of turning into a big problem. But that was for the morning.

* * *

After her shower she had watched the cell phone video on all the news reports, showing the police shooting out on the street. That female cop had shot Rebecca dead, but Karen was still alive.

She had already planned for that. There was a better than even chance that it would take care of itself, possibly sooner rather than later. Not a certainty, but in this life, what was? All you could do was your level best.

Planning. Foresight. Take pride in your work. Selena was meticulous. That was her gift.

And then the cops arrived, much later than she thought, but she was ready for them, and it had gone just the way she expected, as things usually did if you planned ahead. So what she wanted right now was a bottle of cold white wine and something hot and spicy to eat. The old man’s fridge was full of food. He even had a wine closet.

And Selena had never been hungrier.


karen walker reaches a vital conclusion (#u28112b36-bc24-5294-8754-1428358201f5)

Redding drove to Immaculate Heart Hospital with his mind mainly on the woman in the marsh. He was almost certain that she was still there, but the flatboats had been all over it, and he couldn’t just wait her out. He had to see Julie, and then make sure that Mace Dixon hadn’t done something radical to get Karen Walker’s full attention. Such as throwing her off the roof of the hospital.

The ER entrance at Immaculate Heart was cluttered with ambulances and police vehicles, County and State—another busy evening in Paradise—Redding found a space next to LQ Marsh’s cruiser and shut the car down, feeling a wave of exhaustion settle over him.

He checked his watch. It was going on midnight and he had a feeling it was going to be a while before he got back to his seaside bungalow on Crescent Beach.

Not that going back there was anything he looked forward to, but it was where he had lived for many years with Barbara and Katy and he wasn’t ready to pack up all their things. Yet.

He leaned forward until his head was resting on the steering wheel, closed his eyes and let the same old feeling pull him down. He had gotten over the central illusion about grieving, which was that grieving was something you got over.

How he felt now was just the new normal, the way it is for a vet who comes back from the wars with nothing below his knees but stainless-steel sticks. Life was that before, and now life was this.

* * *

Anson Freitag.

An eighty-three-year-old retired surgeon with cataracts and a pacemaker. Loved by all, so all the papers said. A pillar of the community, so all the cable news folks said.

A celebrated cardiovascular surgeon credited with saving literally thousands of lives over his decades-long career, most of it spent right here at Immaculate Heart Hospital in downtown Jacksonville.

Anson Freitag, northbound on A1A last Christmas Eve, around 9:30. Driving a tank-sized navy-blue Mercedes-Benz 600. At 80 miles per hour. In a fog bank. Coming up on the Matanzas Inlet Bridge at the north end of Rattlesnake Island.

And southbound on A1A, at the same time, in their black Jeep, Redding’s wife, Barbara, at the wheel and Katy in her safety seat in the back, strapped in tight, playing with her iPad Mini. Coming up on the Matanzas Inlet Bridge at the north end of Rattlesnake Island.

Barbara was on the hands-free phone, talking to Redding. Redding was on duty that Christmas Eve, the price for getting Christmas Day off. Otherwise he would have been at the wheel, which might have meant Barbara and Katy would still be alive. Or Redding could have managed to die with them, which would have been better than what actually did happen.

Barbara’s voice.

Talking to him about Christmas Dinner.

Through the cell phone he could hear music in the background. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by Bing Crosby. Barbara was a sucker for all those old Christmas songs. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland. And the classic films. Miracle on 34th Street




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