"Sir, what is your name?"
"Everyone is dead. I think you can take your time getting down here, but I thought you should know."
"Sir, your name and location, please?"
"Triangulate already. I'll leave this phone on at the scene; my own is dead. Everything's dead. I'm not staying here."
"You're saying people are hurt?"
"No. I'm saying they're dead."
"Are you hurt, sir?"
"No. I might be the only one. I'm leaving now. Good luck--this is a mess down here."
"So how did I get stuck with the backseat of a Moorston police vehicle?" Lue wanted to know.
Art kept his eyes on the road, refusing to look in the rearview mirror or at the red-haired passenger.
"And now no one answers my questions. Perfect."
"We'll be there in a minute and a half," Mercy said with an apologetic grimace. "I'll switch with you on the way back."
"No, no. Not necessary. I can see this is how it is, now. I get it."
"Let him sulk," Art advised Mercy. "He could have taken a separate car."
"You could have taken a separate car. Your car."
"I would have done exactly that, had you not snuck into it in the station parking lot upon your arrival this morning and crammed it full of plush unicorn toys."
"You can not blame me for that," Lue objected, staring at the window with tightly pursed lips. "At least not me alone. It took at least two third-shift patrol officers to buy the toys at Wal-Mart and carry all those things out of the store, another officer to arrange for overnight storage in the evidence room for all of them, and two first-shift patrol officers to keep an eye out for your vehicle and give the rest of us the all clear."
Mercy giggled. "Quite the coordinated strike force."
Art didn't know whether to fume or smile. He settled on, "I'm glad you're getting along better with your colleagues."
"Yeah, well, nothing like an interfering pair of higher authorities to make us all close ranks. Whoa, you missed the turn there--just catch the next block."
"Keep your eyes open for her," Mercy advised, getting serious again. "We may get an unexpected opportunity."
"Evangelina will be gone by now," Art predicted.
"Attaboy, Art. Think positive--ow!"
"Sorry for that. The curb jumped out and attacked my tires on that turn."
"A fine partner, to try to batter me to death with the backseat of a police issue automobile!"
Art grinned in the rearview, showing a great many teeth. "Wouldn't try. Would just kill you."
As they screeched into a narrow driveway, they noticed bunches of neighbors keeping their distance from the split-level. Two other Moorston police cars were already parked there, and yellow tape was going up.
Three dead bodies were inside. All had vicious slash wounds to the throat. The cell phone that had made the 911 call was in their midst.
"This breaks the pattern," Art noted as they learned the IDs of the victims. This had taken some time, as one of them was a minor and had no license or anything else helpful. "These people are not related."
Lue recapped the address information. "Two of them have residences elsewhere in this town. Art, this is weird. The boy has no parent with him in this house, yet here he is with two unrelated adults. All of them now dead. We can assume the blood tests for Mr. Thomas Martin"--he motioned to the male adult victim--"will come up dragon. But what if Ms. Tina Mares and young Mr. Randy Hahn come up different? I have yet to see anywhere in the BCA or FBI files, a case where a scene like this included civilians."
"It would be new for Evangelina, that's for sure," Mercy agreed. "I suspect they're all three dragon, though. Maybe she came here for one of them, but the other two showed up unexpectedly."
"Unexpectedly? They each had packed bags in the garage. They were going somewhere together."
"Just because they expected each other, doesn't mean Evangelina expected them."
"What about the man on the phone?" Art pressed.
"The victim that got away."
"Or the murderer."
"The murderer?" She raised her eyebrows at him. "Do we doubt who the murderer is, here?"
"Due process, Agent March."
"Yes, I get it. But you can't argue with the pattern we're seeing . . ."
"This breaks the pattern."
"You can't seriously think she wasn't here."
"I see no evidence."
"Not yet. I don't get it, Detective McMahon: you've been hunting her down for what, two years now? Why are you so ready to give up on her after one odd scene?"
"I didn't say that," Art snarled. He saw Lue out of the corner of his eye, watching them bat the conversation back and forth like a heated tennis ball. No doubt the other officers milling about would also be listening. "I want the investigation to follow the facts."
"It will." She turned to Lue. "Make sure your officers take careful prints of all available surfaces. We'll see Evangelina's prints, I'm sure--matches to evidence from the Saint George's site and the convenience store."
"The fingerprints on that cell phone will be even more interesting," Lue replied.
"Bag and tag it all. I'll meet you guys back at the station; I'm going to get a ride from one of the patrol officers . . ."
"You don't have to do that," Art insisted, and then looked embarrassed when she smiled back.
"It's okay. I'm not angry, and it's not just for Lue's sake. I need to look into something back at the station, and I need to update the Minneapolis office on this development. Don't worry--I'll be sure to keep it fact based." She wrinkled her nose, winked at him, and left.
"How come you guys are still skulking about?" one of the lab techs said a few minutes later, shuffling through the scene and pulling out a small digital camera. "Like that, Vue? Skulking?"
"Your word of the day toilet paper is working wonders," Lue replied pleasantly.
"Seriously, how come you're still here?"
"Despair led to stagnation."
"Okay," the cute, pale tech replied, not a hair of her fluffy head out of countenance. "Good thing, too, because I've got a present for you." She waved a sample case at them, sealed and ready for analysis at the lab. "This hair was in Mr. Martin's hand. Color doesn't match any of the victims."
Art snatched it from her, nodded at Lue, and they left together.
CHAPTER 26
After they dropped the sample off at forensics, they met up with Mercy in the war room and came up with a plan for the rest of the day.
"We have to find Mr. Hahn's parents," Lue suggested. "Patrol officers found no one at his listed address, and their voice mails have gone unreturned. Similar story with Ms. Mares: according to last known information and all the pictures up in her house, she has a dashing young husband. In fact, I know her husband: he reported a B&E about two months ago."
"Related?" Mercy asked.
"Doubtful. They broke into the Mares's garage and stole some power tools. Anyway, none of the neighbors have seen him in the last twenty-four hours. Mark called me from the scene; he tells me it looks like they buttoned up the place for a long absence."
"Like the packed bags at Martin's."
"Right on, Art. I think these families knew each other. And I think they were leaving."
"Why?" Mercy asked.
Art shrugged. "Wouldn't you, if you were a dragon in this town?"
"An interesting thought. We don't know yet if they're all dragon, of course."
"Whether they are or not," Lue mused, "we might want to look for patterns of disappearances in the other towns."
"Missing persons investigations should be easy enough to check," Mercy noted.
"Not all of them will be officially 'missing,' " Lue guessed. "Some of them may have even told neighbors that they would be away for a long time."
Mercy whistled at Lue, then turned to Art. "Bright partner you have here."
"Yes." Art winked at Lue. "Bright indeed. We should also widen the
interview circle. Check online social networks for friends, see if anyone else has gone missing."
"You savvy enough on the Internet to do that, Art?" Lue teased.
Art whipped up his smart phone. "I'm doing it now."
"You stud. How is the headache?"
Art refused to look directly at Mercy. "It's fine. Thanks for asking."
Lue turned to the FBI agent. "He had a headache yesterday. It gets worse when he spends time with me, but it gets better when he spends time with you, Agent March. You two should track down the networks for Martin and the other victims. The chief and I will get a manhunt going for Hahn's parents. If nothing else, they deserve to know what happened to their son."
Mercy grinned at Art, who stared at the table red-faced. "That sounds like a plan, Lue. Thanks."
Their new plan paid off more than they ever could have guessed, they realized as they checked in over lunch at the Suds Bucket.
"Mr. Martin had 187 Facebook friends," Mercy told Lue as she and Art sat across from the Moorston detective in the back corner booth. "Of those 187, a dozen are on missing persons reports across the upper Midwest. Another six called their local law enforcement, informed them they were on extended vacation, and requested occasional police patrols of their property. Another three match up with murder victims at sites in Rockford and Moline."
"We got similar hits off Mares," Art added. He worried that Lue would notice how much Mercy's body sidled up to his own, but there was nowhere else for him to go, being trapped inside.
"Wow. You guys had more luck than I did. Hahn's parents appear to have vanished. I interviewed twenty neighbors and friends personally, this morning alone. Not a single interview lasted for more than five minutes." He held up his notepad and recited some quotes, exaggerating a Minnesota twang as he read:
"I think they had vacation."
"I have not one idea."
"They were helping their eldest move to college, I think . . ."
"His mother-in-law needed help moving to the rest home, I heard . . ."
"I dunno, they keep to thesselves, I don't like 'em."
"Maybe they couldn't pay the rent? Economy's terrible around here."
He looked up at the two of them. "It reminds me of a greatest hits album by some punk band called the Amazingly Unhelpful Interview Faction. The good news is, we have preliminary test results rushed back from the Martin scene. That hair sample from Martin's hand has no known match. The fingerprints off the cell phone used for nine one one is for a Dean Caligiuri, a Moorston resident. He has disappeared like everyone else. We should add him to the Facebook list."
Art flipped through a printout. "He's one of Martin's 187, and Mares's 205."
"We're going to find out these people all knew each other, aren't we?" Mercy's fingers were trembling. "They were all dragons, and they've all gone missing or dead in the last couple of years. Evangelina's killing them. Why?"
"Facts first, theories later," Art suggested. "Bacon now." He motioned at the waiter across the room, who hurried over.
CHAPTER 27
An afternoon's worth of investigation later, the story was even more clear. They presented it to Chief Smiling Bear, who frowned incessantly at Mercy while the younger woman spoke.
"So each town starts with a murder," she explained as she pointed to a map of the upper Midwest with several dozen pushpins of different colors poking out. "That's the red. In small towns, of course, you'll see only one or two pins, and nothing else. In bigger ones"--she pointed at the Quad Cities, and Sioux Falls, and Bemidji--"you also see some green. That's residents who have been missing, either officially or unofficially, since the day of the first murder within twenty-five miles. You'll notice the green blooms are larger than the red; that's because--"
"I'm red green color-blind," the chief interrupted.
"Huh." Mercy paused and considered that. "Is that, like, an age-related thing? Kicks in around menopause, or . . . ?"
"Your sharp wit notwithstanding, Special Agent March, I don't see how this gets you closer to Evangelina Scales."
"Whether it does or not," answered Lue nervously, "it certainly gives us a better picture of what is happening out there. And the more we tap into those social networking sites, the more easily we can see where dragon networks still exist . . . and predict where the next murders might be."
"That means we catch the murderer more quickly," Art finished.
"You seem awfully enthusiastic about that prospect, Detective McMahon. I hope you plan on following Special Agent March's explicit procedures for nicely bringing in unstoppable mass murderers."
"Chief, I think revisiting that conversation will only . . ."
"I plan on cooperating with my partners," Art replied, "as long as it gets me what I want."
"And what is that?"
The BCA agent pointed up at the map and did not try this time to hide his fury. "That has to stop."
"Agreed," Mercy chimed in. It seemed as though Mercy's hair acted in direct accord with her emotions, because her curls seemed to all be standing up and waving, like sea fronds. "And it will. Thanks to what your staff have accomplished, Chief Smiling Bear, along with Detective McMahon. We're so unbelievably close now."
"We still have some filtering to do, Agent March." Lue lifted up a sheaf of papers he was still going through. "These networking listings expand exponentially. Those 187 friends of Thomas Martin turn into thousands of friends of friends, and millions of friends of friends of friends. I had no idea I was three steps removed from nearly everyone in town, after only a few months here. Most of the police force is two steps removed. Including you, Chief." He winked.
Chief Smiling Bear didn't return the sentiment. "So it doesn't sound like you're really getting all that close to useful information."
"The friends list is still great stuff--we just have to dig through it. And friends of friends can bring up some interesting tidbits, too. Here, Agent March--look who lingers only two steps from the Hahns." He made a mark with his pen and slid the relevant paper across the table. Then he started flipping through a few more piles.
Mercy looked down at the page and her eyes widened. "Oh. Oh." She showed Art.
"Huh."
"Yep, here she is again. And two steps removed from the Martins." Lue flipped some more, then gave up. "You know what? A computer will do this faster. Here, check this out while I warm up the laptop . . ." He slid the new pages over and turned to his keyboard.
Mercy saw the name again, and again. Art saw her lick her lips. "See if you can find an address for her."
"I doubt we will. Maybe we can get an e-mail at least." He tapped at his keyboard for about thirty seconds, which Art actually found more fascinating than he would have thought under different circumstances. "Nope. Her profile is minimal. I guess we should be surprised she even dares to have one."
"She could be a nerve center," Mercy guessed. "An outreach method."
"So soon?" Art asked. "It hasn't been very long."
"She was pretty important to Evangelina," Mercy pointed out. "This may be why."
"If you want to learn more, a warrant will be necessary."
"Right on, Detective Vue. Detective McMahon. Chief." She winked at the last. "I assume I can safely leave you in charge. I have a judge to bully."
After she was gone, the chief breathed, "What a bitch."
Art restrained the impulse to spring at her.
Six Years Ago
Evangelina crouched, ready to spring.
The woman opposite her switched from a "roof" to a "tail" stance, the blade gliding downward and back.
"Are we going to circle each other all morning? I have flu shots to administer to the camp."
"You've been talking about patience all week, Mom. I'm trying to be patient."
"Yes, well, there's patient, and there's catatonic. If you--"
Evangelina shot forward, six of her legs propelling her while the front two reached out to strike. Her timing would be perfect--her mo
ther was in front of a large oak and had no space to retreat.
The fifty-year-old woman collapsed smartly and rolled forward, spinning under her daughter and leaving the girl to crash into the thick tree trunk . . .
"Ooomph!"
. . . then stood up and smacked her tail with the flat of her sword.
"Hey!"
"You're down a tail. Pretend it's lopped off. No using it. Also, try to simulate loss of balance and a general feeling of bleeding to death."
"Funny, Mom." One of Evangelina's tarsi came up to rub her scaled forehead ridges.
"Honestly, you're fighting like you only have two legs, maybe four. You have eight, dear. Eight! Plus two wings and mandibles and, until recently, an elegant yet snappable tail. How are you not kicking my ass?"
"Were you this chatty when you fought my biological mother?"
The older woman paled and took a step back. "I never fought her. I told you, we barely met before she died."
"Jenn told me you slugged her on a hospital roof."
From the expression on her mother's face, Evangelina knew the truth even before the admission came. "Oh, that. Well. She deserved that. But that wasn't fighting, not like I thought you meant it. That was more of a . . . territorial spat."
"Hmmm." She watched her opponent's stance form: the "ox," blade held high and horizontal.
"What's coming for you--for all of us--is more than a short dispute. It's a fight for our lives."
"I know, Mom." It felt weird to say that in the strained, preteen tones one generally reserved for replies to more traditional motherly concerns like:
Bundle up, it's cold outside.
No running in the house with those scissors, now.
The Regiment is coming to kill you, dear.
"So you need to worry less about the past, and more about the future. And how to use eight legs."
"I know, Mom!"
"Yes, yes, you know, you know, you know. All the things you know, Vange, I could stuff a sack with. And the sack would smell like crap." Her mother was smiling, but her emerald eyes were not quite glittering. "I've heard it all before. From you; from your sister; heck, I said a lot of it to my own mother, back when I knew nothing but attitude. Stop telling me what you know, and start showing me. Then I'll be impressed. So. You ready to keep going, dear? We can stop if your tail stump hurts too much."
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