At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(78)

She looked at the dead man. “For us, maybe.”

“I’m right. I can feel it.” He pointed at the body. “You see those two spots on his right arm? Near the inside of his wrist.”

She stretched her neck. “Little red marks. They look like the burns from a stun gun.”

“That they do.”

“Meaning whoever killed him might have tased him first.”

“Might have.” Patrick tugged on his ear. “Maybe the killer hit him with the electricity, then used the bone when the guy kept coming.”

“He’d be pretty tough, then. Get hit hard enough with a stun gun to leave burns, but not fall down. At least not until he got his skull smashed.”

Patrick gave another thoughtful scratch of his jaw. “Doesn’t sound right, does it?”

“It might work if he were high on meth or another stimulant.” She sent a text to the medical examiner, asking that he look specifically for taser burns on Talfour or any other indication of how he had been subdued.

Patrick continued musing. “Maybe if the killer whacked him with the bone after he was down. To make sure he stayed down.”

Addie walked outside an invisible perimeter, careful not to get too close to the victim. A few feet from the bone, she knelt and leaned in.

“Paddy Wagon?”

He came and crouched next to her.

She pointed, but he squinted and shook his head.

“My eyes aren’t what they used to be,” he said. “What do you see?”

“Look on the underside.” She pulled out her key-ring flashlight and flicked it on, playing the light along the length of the bone.

He stretched out his own neck. “Are those—?”

“Yup,” she said. “Runes.”

He slapped her back. “What’d I say? Faith and begorra. It’s our lucky day.”

She jotted down the runes on a sheet of paper, then pulled out her phone and brought up the chart of runic characters Evan had sent her along with their Latin alphabet equivalents. She did a quick one-to-one transliteration, noting the use of the -ing character to create the word riding. When she’d finished, she rocked back on her heels, trying to find her breath.

?????????????????????

Patrick had gotten to his feet, but now he saw her expression and leaned down again. “You’re white as a sheet, lass. What is it? What does it say?”

She shoved the paper at Patrick, and he read her translation aloud. “‘The sparrow is riding of riding.’ What the heck does that mean?”

She was already trying to reach Evan on her phone. “Sparrow is Evan’s nickname. And the fifth rune means riding. I kind of glossed over that earlier this morning. But based on Talfour’s poem, Evan thinks there will be five victims. Desser was cattle of riding, or first out of five. Talfour was ox of riding, or second out of five. The killer is telling us that Evan is going to be his fifth. Fifth out of five.”

“Mary Mother of God,” Patrick said. “You think it’s because he’s consulting on the case? How does the killer even know he’s involved?”

“That is a very good question.” She pressed the icon for Evan’s number again. Waited while it rang through. Tried again. “He’s not answering his damn phone. I’m going over there.”

She reached out a hand, and Patrick pulled her to her feet. Her legs felt boneless.

“Hold on, partner,” he said. “Evan lives in the suburban equivalent of Fort Knox. And if he’s fifth in line, it probably means we’ve got a little time. It was weeks between Desser and Talfour. And as far as we know, numbers three and four are still walking around, living and breathing.”

She turned on him in a fury. “Do you really want to take that chance?”

“We’ll arrange to send patrol out ASAP, no worries. We’ll find our professor and stash him in a safe house. I promise.”

Addie looked down at her hands. They were shaking. She curled them into fists. “He doesn’t live in Fort Knox. He lives in the country-club version of minimum security. We’ve got to find him.”

“Not arguing with that,” Patrick said. “All I’m saying, Adrianne Marie, is let others do their jobs. I need you here. The smartest thing we can do for Evan is find this Viking Poet before he gets to his third and fourth victims. Whoever those poor souls may be.”



She kept trying. Evan didn’t answer his phone. Not his cell phone or his office phone. Addie called for patrol to go by his house and for campus security to check his classroom and office. She requested the phone number of his assistant, Diana Alanis. But Diana wasn’t answering, either.

With a heart torn between rage and worry, she stared around the yard. The concrete pad, the dying trees along the fence. An old shed in complete collapse. Only the fence and the dog chains looked cared for. She eyeballed the metal stakes driven into the hard-packed earth. No water bowls. No shade.

Fury overcame worry as she watched the CACC officers bring up the skinny, howling dogs from the basement fighting pit—“some of the worst abuse I’ve seen,” said one of the men—and Patrick got on his phone to orchestrate the three-ring circus in blue to deal with Helskin’s murder.

Addie squared her shoulders and reminded herself that Patrick was right—the best way to help Evan right now was to focus on finding the killer. She was a cop.