The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(38)

And there it was again. The creak of rusted hinges. It’s what had jostled him from a deep sleep, deeper than any he’d had since his arrest—definitely not his intention when he put his head down last night. He did not have a watch but it looked to be late morning. He thought for sure he would be up at dawn, his routine at Potter. Now free, without the regimen of a highly structured schedule, he should have realized that his body might react differently.

And right now it had apparently let him down.

He relaxed, his normally razor-sharp senses going on vacation. He would not let that happen again.

Marcks glanced across the barn at the entrance, which was located to the right of an extensive tool rack. A man, silhouetted against the gray light, stood in the doorway.

“Hey! Who’re you?”

Marcks stood up. “I needed a place to sleep. It was snowing, I was cold.”

The man squinted, clearly trying to make sense of what was happening: Did he have a squatter? Was this going to be a problem? Or could he merely ask his house guest to leave?

“What’s your name?” Marcks asked.

“William. What’s yours?”

“Bart.”

William appeared to be a bit over seventy. In decent shape but probably no more than a hundred and fifty pounds. Not much of a challenge for a violent criminal with multiple murders under his belt and seven years of hard time in a max-security prison to his name.

“You have to go,” William said.

“I’m leaving, no worries.” But Marcks knew that he could not trust William to keep quiet about his presence, especially when there had to be police reports detailing the brazen, bloody escape of a convict from Potter yesterday. Not just a convict, a convicted murderer.

William tilted his head, and in doing so his eyes caught the light. Marcks saw something there, perhaps recognition. Perhaps not. But he could not take the chance.

As William stood there pondering the situation, Marcks knew what had to happen. And if William could put two and two together, he would know it, too. But William looked like a simple man and he probably believed that if he talked tough, he would dodge a bullet and his unwelcome guest would be on his way.

Marcks held his hands up in surrender and walked toward the exit—which happened to be past William.

Before William realized what was happening, he was immobilized in a headlock, Marcks’s left arm cutting off the blood supply to his brain and Marcks’s right hand clamping over the man’s mouth, preventing an errant noise or desperate scream.

William slumped into Marcks’s hold, unconscious. Marcks set him on the ground and perused the workbench, ultimately finding his tool of choice: a wicked-looking keyhole saw. Long and narrow, with alternating teeth that were sharp as a knife, it was as imposing as it was lethal.

Marcks jabbed it into William’s chest between the fourth and fifth ribs slightly left of center.

“No witnesses, Willie,” Marcks said. “Just the way it’s gotta be.”

He then yanked out the saw and brought the man to his feet, bent his knees and folded William over his shoulder. With a quick contraction of his thighs, he lifted William and took him for a ride.

No one was going to find William’s body parts for an awfully long time.





19


Vail walked into the command center at 1:00 PM and found Hurdle hunched over his keyboard, examining spreadsheet data. Tarkoff was seated across from him studying other documents.

“Long breakfast,” Hurdle said without diverting his eyes.

“We had a good talk. She’s worried about not being able to finish her book tour.”

“I expect to get Marcks sooner rather than later. But either way, her sales and promotion are not my problem.”

Vail sat down opposite him. “Of course. I think she understood that my sole concern was keeping her safe and apprehending her father.”

“What about the bank account?” Hurdle asked.

“She’s kept it open. And when I hit her with the question of whether or not her father’s gay, she seemed … I don’t know. Like there was something there. Guess I could’ve been reading into it.”

The door swung out and Curtis stepped into the RV. “Just got a call from Warden Barfield at Potter. Wants to know if we’re making any progress on the escape.”

Tarkoff swiveled in his direction. “And you told him?”

“That we’ve got guys working on it.”

“He accepted that?”

“He wanted details but I didn’t wanna give him anything,” Curtis said. “Until we know who’s working with Marcks, we can’t trust anyone there. Not saying the warden’s a suspect, but he’s a suspect. Know what I mean?”

Hurdle shrugged. “Can’t think of a case where a warden helped an inmate escape—not counting incompetence. But there’s always a first. You two gonna follow up on his three friends the daughter gave us?”

“Next on our list,” Curtis said.

Good to know.

“For now, that’s your priority.”

“Well, that and investigating the Hartwell murder,” Vail said as she got up from her seat. “You want us to check back here later?”

“I’ll let you know. If not, see both of you tomorrow morning.”