At First Light(Dr. Evan Wilding #1)(9)

“On what? Hobbits?”

Addie’s shoulders came up, and she half turned. Evan touched her lightly on the arm.

“Save it for something worthwhile,” he said.

He was right, of course. He always was.

She waited until they were out of earshot. “Anyway, I’m sorry to drag you in, but I meant what I said. Thanks for coming.”

“Did I have a choice?” he asked mildly.

“One of these days, I’m going to just issue a warrant.”

“Two brawny officers on their fearless steeds—I thought you had.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that bird shit on your coat? And mud on your knees. You look like the proverbial cat draggings. Were you crawling through the woods?”

He brushed at the mud on his pants. “You do care. And here I thought you loved me only for my mind.”

She cut to the right and up a secondary ridge that rose above the water. “Who says I love you at all?”

“I’m crushed.”

“Good.” She stopped at the crest of the hill where the wind blew unfettered. “Now that we’ve reestablished my authority, why don’t you take a look at the scene and tell me you’re not interested.”

The ridge gave them the highest nearby vantage point to look out over the corpse and the riverbank and the dark emerald water rippling outward beyond the dead man. She knew Evan liked to start with the big picture. A murderer’s choice of locale—for the death or to dump a body—was the first step that led Evan into the dark maze of the killer’s mind.

He called it the tug on the thread that would ultimately lead to the minotaur.

He asked, “Do you know the victim’s name?”

“We haven’t turned the body yet, but based on a wallet found nearby, he’s a middle-aged Black businessman from the North Shore named James Talfour.”

“Okay,” he said.

She stepped back, giving him room.



Evan drew in a deep breath and turned slowly in place, absorbing 360 degrees of the Chicago horizon. He took note of the slow current of the Calumet rolling by beneath a light mist. The muddy, beaten-down path through the weeds that provided access from the road to the shore. His eyes tracked the narrow, unpaved lane east, back toward the abandoned gas station he’d driven by moments earlier, the place choked with weeds and saplings and littered with roach clips, shreds of tinfoil, and used needles.

The killer could have arrived at this spot from the road or by water. Either way, he hadn’t simply stumbled upon Talfour’s final resting place. He’d been here before. He’d placed his victim in this swampy location with deliberate care.

Evan brought his gaze back to where he’d started and zeroed in on the body. From this vantage, James Talfour was little more than a vague shape huddled on the ground, his mud-spattered body curled into a fetal position among the reeds and partially concealed by the tarp rattling overhead.

“He’s nude,” Evan said.

“As the day he was born.”

“And is that a noose around his neck?” he asked.

“He was garroted, had his throat slit and his skull bashed in.”

“A triple death,” Evan said. “Three is a number that carries significance in many religions and cultures.”

“A religious killing?”

“Impossible to say right now. The killer was very thorough.”

She nodded. “But the victim’s face is tranquil. As if he’d just gone off to sleep. He might have been drugged.”

“Are his hands bound?”

“With rope. And there are stakes, pinning him down. Also bits of grass on his skin, as if he’d been dragged into place.”

“So he didn’t arrive here by boat.”

“Doesn’t appear so. The killer raked over any drag marks or footprints. Although with so many prints, I don’t know why he bothered.”

Evan turned his gaze on Addie, but he wasn’t seeing her. To himself, he murmured words about men with silvery hair who lay, rotting and foul, in dark water.

“What are you talking about?”

“The author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien—it’s something he said about bogs. Who called it in?”

The wind flapped her coat open, and she zipped it shut. “A kayaker found the body this morning at four a.m.”

“A kayaker was out on the river three hours before sunrise?” He shuddered. “It would have been in the teens then.”

“You’re a wuss, my friend.”

“Unequivocally.”

“Anyway, we’re checking him out. The guy says he goes out every morning before work. Wears a neoprene suit and uses a headlamp. He’s got a spotlight on his kayak. He heard something on the shore as he was paddling by, like something heavy sloshing in the reeds. When he shone his light over, the beam picked out the body.”

“James Talfour.” Evan mulled the name. “Why is that familiar?”

“He’s a big name on some charity board, apparently.” She filled him in on what else they knew about the victim.

“And how long has the body been here?” he asked.

“The coroner is on the way, but I’d guess Talfour has been dead fewer than five or six hours.”