At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(89)

“Give us something,” she muttered under her breath.

Behind her, the lieutenant said, “Detective Bisset.”

She turned. Criver’s stormy eyes were fixed on her.

“Sir?”

His jaw worked. Finally, he said, “Good work.”

She gaped. “Sir?”

“Patrick told me about the fitness tracker. That was good thinking.”

“It hasn’t exactly paid off,” she said, then mentally kicked herself. Why couldn’t she just say thanks and shut up?

Now one of the techs called her name. She spun back around. He stood next to the open driver’s door. He looked sick to his stomach.

“We found something,” he said.





CHAPTER 27


Evan looked away from the computer screen, made a few more notes in his journal, and set down his pen.

He’d found twelve areas that roughly corresponded with the bog burial sites in England. Cemeteries, waterfronts, sketchy industrial sites. He’d then narrowed it down to seven locations based on a set of criteria: the presence of water, sufficient isolation, and—critically but also more subjectively—areas with an air of forlornness and mystery. Even abandonment. Places the killer might consider in-between spaces, like the European bogs. Neither city nor country. Neither civilized nor completely wild. Neither fully land nor entirely water.

Places where the Others gathered, demanding sacrifice.

He typed up his findings in an email, attached the maps, and sent it all to Addie. He’d follow up shortly with a phone call. For the moment, he forced himself to put aside the brandy and instead made a cup of tea, strong and mind clearing. He found an unopened packet of chocolate digestives in the cupboard under the electric kettle. Newly content, or reasonably so, he settled back in his chair and opened his journal to the killer’s poems.

Christina had talked about blood feuds, and trying to find the source of a feud seemed a good avenue for his approach. He dug out a voice recorder from the depths of a desk drawer and hit “Record.”

“Talfour and Desser weren’t men living on the outskirts of society,” he said. “They were deeply involved in their communities. Talfour with his store and his volunteer activities; Desser with his accounting business and service to his synagogue. The killer took great risk in selecting them. They are the mighty men of his poem.”

He glanced down at his journal. Mighty men I undo and unto earth I send their water-weighted corpses.

“What was it about these men that made it worth the risk?” he continued. “What sins had they—wittingly or otherwise—committed against the killer to ignite a blood feud?”

He returned to the idea of a skin-sinner in Talfour’s poem. He’d first thought it might be a reference to the fact that Talfour was a Black man. That the killer was a racist.

But what if it meant something else entirely?

How do you sin against skin?

Ideas rolled through his mind. He spoke them out loud. “Human trafficking. Indentured servitude. Prostitution.” He paused, took a sip of tea. “It’s certainly possible that Talfour engaged a prostitute and paid for it with his life. But it doesn’t fit with the lines from Desser’s poem that hint his sin was something very different.”

He reread the line. She takes back her sons and daughters who rived and tholed and peeled her flesh like ripe fruit.

Translation—She takes back the children who hurt her.

But who was the she of the poem? And what had her children done to her?

Helskin’s dogs, he recalled, had suffered terrible abuse. Perhaps even sacrifice.

He sat up. At the station house meeting, someone had mentioned that Talfour carried furs in his store. And that he also, ironically, supported an animal rights organization.

Evan reached for the computer keyboard and pulled up the website for Talfour’s store. He clicked on the “Shop” icon. And there it was. A wide selection of furs carried by Finer Things. Fox, sable, mink. Coyote and chinchilla.

Furs. Which was to say pelts or skins. A furrier could be a skin-sinner. Especially to a poet writing in kennings.

He did some online digging about Scott Desser. A scan of newspaper articles showed the accountant’s name was linked to development firms whose projects included building homes over marshes and knocking down forests to raise multifamily housing. One of the firms had purchased a Superfund site right here in Chicago, promising to clean it up. But then, months later, the head of the firm had walked out on the deal after pocketing the federal funds. A lawsuit was pending. A third firm whose books Desser had apparently handled was a mining company that boasted some of the largest bauxite and coal strip mines in the world. Here in the United States, they were best known for gold and silver mining.

His gaze returned to his journal. Her sons and daughters who peeled her flesh like ripe fruit.

And another line, Thus from my cottage I came, homeland’s ward.

Speaking into the recorder, he said, “Homeland’s ward. Which we could interpret as earth’s guardian. Is the killer punishing those who hurt the earth and her creatures? In line fourteen of his poem, he mentions Fjorgyn, saying, A slayer of the bone-halls breaking Fjorgyn. Bone-halls is a kenning for humans. And Fjorgyn is the personification of the earth in Norse mythology. Humans breaking the earth.”

That was what his mind had been groping for when he stood beneath the pewter sky at the pond where Desser had died. Some ancient part of himself had recognized the place as one where the spirits of nature still dwelled, crouched and feral before the encroaching onslaught of humanity.