A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(44)

He walks to the second body and lifts her arm, his gaze going to her wrist. He rubs his thumb over the skin, smoothing it, and as he does, something I missed in the wrinkled, desiccated skin. Lateral scars. Then I realize he went straight to it. As if he knew exactly what he was looking for.

A chill slides over me. “Eric?”

He walks to the first body and checks the knees. There are surgical scars there—I’d noted them. He takes a closer look and then nods.

“Eric…?”

He lays a photo on the first body. A photo of a woman about my age, brown skin, dark wavy hair. Like the body on the table. On the second he places a photo of a woman about the same age, with long dark hair and blue eyes, matching the corpse beneath it.

He turns to the first body. “Robyn Salas. Disappeared March 20, 2010.” Then to the second. “Victoria Locke. Disappeared July 3, 2012.”





TWENTY-SIX

We’re on the back deck at the station, tequila shots in hand. I’ve taken one already. So has Anders, leaning against the railing, bundled up and trying not to shiver. He’s eyeing his second shot. Tequila isn’t really his thing, but it looks mighty good right now, a defense against the cold and the mood, both settling around us.

He downs his. I follow and put my glass aside. Two’s my limit, and not for any reason other than that there have been times in my life when a third looked so good. And a fourth and a fifth. I’ve seen too many cops go down that road, never to return. Up here, restraint is even more important. It’s too easy to use alcohol to push back the darkness.

Dalton hasn’t poured himself a second shot. Two is for home, when it’s just me, and he doesn’t care what he says and, sometimes, says what needs saying. Tonight it’s one.

He’s been talking about the dead women. About Nicole, too. Until now, we haven’t spoken much of her as a person. That’s not disrespectful. It’s oddly the opposite—she’s here and alive, therefore it’s wrong to talk about her. But now we do, both men giving their impressions of her before she disappeared into the forest.

As I’d already gathered, neither had known Nicole well. She’d been here only about six months, and she herself had said she hadn’t mingled much.

“I ran into her now and then,” Anders says. “I’d talk for a few minutes, try to get to know her.”

“Did you sleep with her?” Dalton asks.

Anders looks at him. Just looks.

“What?” Dalton says. “Valid question. Percentage-wise, you’ve worked your way through, what, half?”

“At least I’m sociable.”

“That what you call it?”

“Guys…,” I say.

“Percentage-wise, maybe ten,” Anders says. “Which is better than your zero.” He looks at me. “Sorry. One.”

“Ten percent? Math isn’t your strong suit, is it?” Dalton says. “If we’ve got about fifty women here—”

“Whatever. How about the earlier victims, boss? I seem to recall stories about you getting around back in the day. Or am I not supposed to talk about that in front of Casey?”

“Casey is absolutely fine with it,” I say. “Casey is grateful for those women who took it upon themselves to school a young man. And Casey would be equally fine if one or both of the women in question had slept with Eric. While she’d like to point out that this is an inappropriate topic of conversation about victims, Casey also recognizes that this is Rockton. It is actually, as Eric says, a valid question. Were either of you that close to them? Close enough they may have divulged information there that they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

“The answer is no,” Anders says. “No pillow talk—or sex—with Nicki or Victoria. I postdate Robyn. And by that I mean I arrived after she vanished. There was no actual dating involved.”

“And they all postdate my youthful adventures,” Dalton says. “But, yeah, let’s talk to friends and lovers. For Nicole and the others.”

The others.

Robyn Salas. Aged thirty-three. Ballet dancer in Toronto, she’d had an obsessive fan who turned into a stalker. When she took out a restraining order, he lay in wait and rammed her with his car, breaking her knees so badly she’d never dance again. He got free on a technicality and came after her to “finish the job.” Someone gave her a line to Rockton and she fled here, where like Nicole, she flew under the radar, just another of the dozens of residents that Dalton knew only in passing. She’d vanished four months after she arrived. When a search party failed to turn up anything, Dalton’s father had ruled it death by exposure.

Victoria Locke. Aged thirty-five. Victoria had been one of the white-collar criminals who bought her way in. She’d run a Ponzi scheme with her sister. The sister took off with most of the money, leaving Victoria to the police, with just enough cash to buy two years in Rockton. After she vanished, they’d found her jacket, clawed and covered in blood, and after more searching, Dalton had to admit it seemed like she’d been killed by a bear.

As for her personality? “An odd one,” Dalton says. “Not like Nicole or Robyn. They just seemed quiet. Victoria wasn’t a whole lot different than some of the guys out in those woods. Reclusive. Kinda paranoid. Just wanted to hunker down and wait out her term. I used to think she’d be happier if we just gave her a damn cave—” He stops himself. “Fuck.”