At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(30)

She looked surprised. “The mystical alphabets guy?”

Everyone, it seemed, had heard of Ralph Rhinehart.

She shifted in her seat. “Do you know that he talks about how to use writing as an instrument for conducting black magic? It gets a little uncomfortable for a good Catholic girl like me.”

Evan kept his voice gentle. “If Talfour and Desser were blood sacrifices, then Rhinehart might be exactly who we need.”

She glanced over at him. Her freckles stood out sharply on her pale face. “You think these murders have to do with black magic?”

“By posing his victims as bog bodies, the killer is likely trying to catch the essence of those hallowed and fearsome fens. Which is to say, bogs. Just as our Iron Age ancestors did.”

“A bog is fearsome?” she scoffed. “Because of the size of the mosquitoes?”

“Not at all. Think about it, Addie. Bogs are neither solid land nor true water. They’re places where people wander in and never emerge, forever lost. Bogs are in-between spaces where strange mists rise, where poisonous creatures live. Where an unwary traveler can become trapped and slowly drowned. As happened to the villain in Sherlock Holmes’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, if you’ll recall. Jack Stapleton gets caught in the Grimpen Mire and suffers his just deserts.”

Addie’s hand flew to the cross around her neck. “Now you’re the one giving me the creeps.”

“Says our fearless homicide detective. Rhinehart could be useful.”

“Then you go talk to him. Stay vague. Or have him sign a nondisclosure agreement. But I’m reluctant to bring in someone who isn’t a PhD or at least a recognized authority in their field. We have to consider how things will look when we go to court.”

Light glimmered on the windshield from behind the scrim of clouds; Evan found his aviator sunglasses in his coat pocket and slid them on.

“We’ll find someone else, then,” he said. “Maybe a professor from the university’s faculty. Or from another school. We could even reach across the pond and consult with someone from my alma mater.”

“Now that is a great idea.”

They fell silent, each absorbed with their own thoughts. Addie turned on the radio, flipped through the stations, and turned it off again.

“If you’re right about the numbering system,” she said as they approached the highway, “then I figure our mysterious Mr. X has the missing bones. I think Tommy Snow collected all of them—minus the one you found—and sold all but these three.”

“Maybe.”

Addie had asked Tommy a lot of questions. Who was Mr. X, how had they met, why was he supplying the man with deer and cow bones? But on the identity of Mr. X and all other questions about the mysterious man, Tommy had gone mum and refused to relent. His mother claimed this was the first she’d heard of Mr. X and Tommy’s side gig collecting bones.

Evan stared out the window at the brown fields flowing past. “The bones could also have been carried off by scavengers before Tommy found the body. Or he might be hanging on to them. I can’t see him giving up all of them to the police. He wants to help. But he also wants those bones for his collection.”

“Because he knows they’re special.”

“And Tommy likes special things. It’s why he wanted that turtle.”

“I’ll ask the sheriff to get a search warrant.”

“That will be upsetting for him.”

“You’re awfully protective of the kid. He’s a suspect, for heaven’s sake.”

“You see him as a killer? He shows not the slightest interest in Vikings or runes.”

“He’s good at dissection,” she pointed out. “Handy with a scalpel.”

“So is any biologist.”

She turned right, onto the entrance ramp, and accelerated toward the highway. “You have to admit, his workshop was creepy.”

“I do not share Tommy Snow’s interests. But I understand the drive for firsthand knowledge.”

“And he’s clearly into death. Did you see all those animals he’d mounted?”

“Have you ever been in a taxidermist’s shop?”

“What if Desser—?” She slammed on the brakes and honked as a pickup sped by without moving to the left to let them in. She shook a fist. “You jerk! Why don’t you go back to driving school?”

Evan tapped her shoulder. “You were saying?”

“They’ll give any jerk a driver’s license.” She gave a sniff and merged onto the highway. “I was saying we should look at other possibilities. What if Desser was, I don’t know, hired by that developer Wharton to keep an eye on the property? And Desser told the boy the pond was off-limits? No trespassing. That might be enough to enrage a kid like Tommy, who could have been used to roaming the place at will, looking for bones. And those turtle things.”

“Macrochelys temminckii.”

She waved a hand. “Please tell me what gives on the snapping turtle thing. Macro-whatchacallit. How did you know all that? And how did you know that would break through Tommy’s shell?” She laughed. “Pun not intended.”

“Deductive reasoning. Plus the lesson you taught me about finding something in common with a witness. I was just being prepared, like a good Boy Scout.”