World of Trouble (The Last Policeman #3)(50)

I blink back to Jean’s wound, the one I was just staring at while she stumbled through her story, a less messy wound—a single slash, suggesting little struggle or no struggle, contrary to the bruising and lacerations on her face.

So—then—so—I stand up, pace in a tight circle—so she fought back, Jean fights back but is captured and subdued. Let’s say a pill or pills, let’s say the assailant pushes something into her mouth, covers her nose with his hands and forces her to swallow.

No—stop—I stop, smack the wall with my hand, think faster, Palace, think better. We’re in a fast-moving scenario here, victim two—Nico—is already sprinting off into the woods, I’m the killer and I’ve got to catch her, can’t let her go. I hit her with something. Knock her down. Jean’s in the dirt—unconscious?—gets her with one quick smooth slice to the throat and then I’m off and running after victim two, after Nico Palace tearing breathlessly in her sandals through the woods.

But I checked Jean’s body, while she was asleep, when she was still Lily, I checked her scalp for blunt force trauma, surely I did.

She was, though, she was still. Pills or an injection or the blow of a hammer to the side of the head, she wasn’t moving when she was cut and Nico was.

I find that I’m panting, pacing, horrified. It’s out there, it’s up there, the dark heart of the sky, coming in fast.

Focus Palace but I can’t but I have to. Keep going.

Killer catches up to poor Nico in that second clearing, gets on top of her and pins her down, and she’s terrified, she’s awake, she’s writhing, and he grabs her from behind and slashes her throat until it’s open.

I am trembling, like I’m there, like I’m in the scene, like I’m cutting or being cut.

There’s something else, too. I turn around, away from the window, look at her one more time, wiping tears out of my eyes, feeling my knife hand clenching and unclenching. There’s something else.

Among the messiness and the gore of the wound there is something—I crouch—lean forward, take out my measuring tape, and murmuring apologies to Nico, after all that she has suffered, murmuring “holy moly” and then “holy shit,” I peel back small portions of her lacerated skin, one-tenth of a centimeter at a time, and I keep discovering them—smaller cuts within the larger, lines as small as insect legs. I move my magnifying glass across the neck and confirm that these smaller cuts are regularly spaced at quarter-inch increments along the whole line of the wound.

Parallel superficial incisions on the upper and lower skin margin of the wound. Dr. Fenton would say that nothing is certain, that certainty is for schoolchildren and magicians, but that parallel superficial incisions on the upper and lower skin margin of the wound strongly indicate that the weapon used was a serrated blade.

I burst out of the dispatch room and run down the hallway, hands spread out to either side like an animal wingspan, fly down the corridor to the kitchen to confirm my snapshot memory of the knives on the rack behind the kitchen. Butcher’s blade; paring knife; cleaver. Nonserrated.

Back in Dispatch I run it down for Nico, explain to her about her wound, the parallel superficial incisions and what they mean. I remind her, furthermore, that the only serrated blade I am aware of, in the context of this investigation, is the sawtooth buck knife noticed by Atlee Miller, hanging from Astronaut’s belt.

“Policeman.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

Cortez. Tentative expression, narrowed eyes. Looking at me like I’m not actually okay.

I clear my throat. “I’m fine. Did you crack it?”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I am. Did you get us down?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s looking at the tarp.

“Palace,” he says. “Is that her?”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s her.”

I give it to him fast, the thumbnail sketch only. “The sleeping girl, whose name is Jean Wong, originally of Lansing, Michigan—her memory of the incident in question is very uneven, essentially empty, but she was able to lead me directly to a field in the woods where I located the body. Cause of death is a deep wound to the throat with a serrated blade. That’s about—that’s about what we’ve got. So.”

I stop abruptly. I know exactly what I’m doing by talking this way, very rapidly in crisp and distinct policeman diction, I’m stringing words out around my grief like a perimeter, like caution tape.

Cortez nods, solemn, adjusts his ponytail. I wait for him to ask again if I’m okay, so I can tell him I am and we can move on.

“Death,” he says instead. “It’s the f*cking worst.”

“Did you get us down there?”

“Yeah. I did.”

“Okay. Okay, great.”

He backs out of the room rather than turning, and as I stand up I see that for some reason I took one of the knives with me, the blood-stained butcher’s knife from the kitchenette. I’m holding the handle tight in my fist. I look at it for a second and then I slide it into my belt, on the inside, close to my thigh, like a huntsman.





3.


So the group goes underground but then Nico pulls a runner and Jean runs after her and Astronaut chases them both, catches them, kills them one by one.