Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(9)

A few minutes later, he received another report. “I’ve got one hotspot fleeing easterly,” the trooper informed him. “But it jumped over Black Run at about thirty miles an hour. So I doubt it’s our man.”

DeMarco gazed out across the cranberry bog. Fifteen acres of freezing water, he thought. Fifteen acres of vines whipping at your face and arms and tangling around your legs.

Where are you going, Thomas? he wondered. What’s that misfiring brain of yours telling you to do now?

“So how do you think he got out of here?” one of the troopers asked. “You think he caught a ride with somebody?”

Nobody answered.

DeMarco pursed his lips, squinted, and stared out across the swamp. When he inhaled, he could smell a vague scent of something fruity, a subtle tang mixed with the darkness of the bog and the ache of inevitable winter. Cranberries? As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a cranberry in sight.

He glanced again at his map, then reached for his radio, called the station, and told the dispatcher where to send the vehicles for pickup. Afterward, he walked down the short slope to the edge of the swamp and squatted on his haunches. He scooped up a handful of water and looked at it. Up close and in small amounts, the water lost its darkness, looked as clean and amber as good whiskey. He held it to his nose, inhaled its fragrance. He could smell the winter in it, could smell the dying fruit. He cupped his hand to his mouth, sucked in a sip of water. It was so cold that it burned his throat, so cold that it made him dizzy. He tilted his head back, squeezed shut his eyes, put one hand against the ground to steady himself from falling over.

He did not know what to do with the ache running through him. He wished he could lower his head into the water and let its darkness blind him and let its chill numb his brain. Then he could crawl into a shallow depression in the ground and pull pine boughs atop him, and he would never come out, never think another thought.

He knew that the four troopers up on the road were watching him, maybe whispering to one another. The dogs were probably watching him too. “Let them fucking watch,” he muttered to the water. “Let them fucking wonder.”





Seven


The first thing DeMarco did after returning to the barracks was to wash his hands. He washed his hands frequently, eight, ten times a day. He kept a package of antiseptic baby wipes in his car, another one in his desk. But this time, he went to the lavatory in the barracks because he wanted to splash water on his face too, thought the shock of cold water might knock the cobwebs from his brain. He soaped his hands thoroughly, scraped a thumbnail beneath each fingernail, rinsed off the soap, and splashed four handfuls of cold water in his face.

His hands were clean, but the water on his face didn’t work. Fragments of thoughts floated through his brain like charred paper on water, thoughts that would not coalesce.

Instead of returning to his office, he walked to an office down the hall, tapped twice on the glass, and opened the door. Trooper Jayme Matson looked up from behind her desk. She was thirty-six years old, twelve years younger than DeMarco, a tall, thin woman whom some of the troopers secretly referred to as “Ichabod.” But DeMarco knew her resemblance to the Sleepy Hollow ectomorph had more to do with the uniform than with her own physiology. He knew that in a sleeveless summer dress and two-inch heels, with her strawberry-blond hair hanging loose to her jawline and not knotted into a bun, she could look as elegant as a gazelle. He also knew the reason for the melancholy smile with which she now, and always, regarded him.

“You still working on that master’s in psychology?” he asked as he stepped inside her office.

“Nine more credits,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

He pulled a chair up close to her desk and sat down. “Here’s a guy who’s got the world by the tail. Perfect family, great job…”

She was already nodding. “Fame, reputation, respect, the whole package.”

“By all appearances without a care in the world.”

“And yet he snaps.”

“Does he?” DeMarco said.

“It happens, Ry. It does happen. There’s never any way of knowing for sure what’s going on inside another person’s head.”

The way she smiled at him when she said this, the dolefulness of her look, made him avert his gaze for a few moments. He considered his hands.

“Okay, so let’s say he does,” DeMarco said. “He snaps. In a moment of, what, blind rage? He wipes out his family, one after another?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “There’s the nature of the wounds to consider.”

“Right. Very methodical. Deliberate. All except little Davy’s.”

She waited while he thought it out.

“Okay,” DeMarco finally said. “The snap theory. What could make it happen?”

“Just about anything—finances, workload, an argument with his wife.”

“The money was rolling in hand over fist.”

“That can be its own kind of stress.”

DeMarco scowled, thinking it over.

“So maybe he thought he sold out,” Matson said. “He’s a serious writer, correct? You ever read him?”

DeMarco only cocked his head and looked at her. She had been in his house, had perused his bookshelves. In fact, when she had rolled over in his bed that time, had turned her back to him, it had been Huston’s latest novel that she’d picked up off the nightstand. Huston’s latest novel she had flung across the room.