Blood Moon

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  They would not, of course, be going anywhere near the Fairchild house. The Reaper didn’t need to know that the agents knew that much about him.

  Roarke kept looking up at the sky. Sometimes he thought he could feel the moon under the banks of clouds, gathering its fullness.

  Chapter Forty-one

  The snow had been falling on and off all day. Not a lot, but enough to keep families out of the village center that night, which was a boon. It meant fewer people that the agents would have to steer away. Night now, and the temperature was dropping steadily.

  Under the coordination of Epps and Jones, Lieutenant Tyson and Detectives Aceves and Lambert, they had assembled a team of local deputies and Los Angeles agents, three dozen in all, and seeded them throughout the village at strategic spots. There were two ambulances with full staffs of EMTs positioned at either side of the village, ready to go into action if needed. Most of the businesses had closed at Sunday hours, five o’clock. The ones which remained open were key locations now “staffed” by agents and deputies in civilian clothes.

  Despite the icy cold, Roarke was close to overheated, wearing a Kevlar vest under a down jacket with a big hood which concealed his face. He was also wearing a beard to disguise his profile, now that he’d flashed it around for the media for two days. Epps was similarly vested but dressed as a maintenance man, moving in and out of back doors and restricted entrances. It was jarring to see his elegant frame in blue-collar clothes. Jones was in a security uniform, driving the tram that ran along the periphery of the village.

  All of the agent/ringers had been in place most of the day, working alongside the regular clerks and store owners to learn enough of the routine to carry off the illusion of normalcy. Roarke himself had been walking the circles of the Village for hours now, getting familiar with the layout, the possible escape routes, the hazardous areas where they might lose sight of Soames, lose track of her. The village center was a far more extensive complex that it seemed on first look. He was impressed at how perfect a stalking ground it was turning out to be, the parking lot beside the lake and the walkways that went straight down by the water, curving around buildings, with lots of secluded areas along the way.

  The shops themselves were already fully decorated for Christmas, with white twinkle lights draping the awnings, windows full of spun white fiberglass clouds and golden angels. Christmas music played inside the stores and out, the fragrance of spiced cider and gingerbread and vanilla candles drifted in the cold air. All an incongruously tranquil stage set for their grim business.

  As the evening came, painting the sky in deep purples and blues, the real clerks and owners went home as if their shifts were over. The agents remained, dealing with the few early Christmas shoppers who had braved the snowy roads. Families with children were quietly approached and steered back to their cars.

  The agents and detectives had divided the Village into four quadrants with Roarke, Epps, Jones and Detective Aceves each commanding a squad of deputies assigned to each quadrant. They had blocked out a path for Soames to walk. The pantomime she was going to play was restlessness: being cooped up in her cabin and now needing to get out. The village center was just a three-minute walk from the lodge, so she would leave her cabin and walk the back road down to the village center, under the watching eyes of deputies posted in other cabins along the way.

  Once she got to the village center she would browse in a few of the open shops: two art galleries, the candy shop, the café where she would sit in the front window having coffee, then the wine shop, where she would buy a bottle of wine. Then she would head down the path to walk beside the lake, a darker, circular path that was heavily staked out by agents. It was a long and secluded stretch to walk, with plenty of opportunity for anyone following to attack.

  Just before Roarke had left his own cabin Snyder had knocked on the door to look in on him. He would be staked out, too, at the restaurant Roarke and Epps had eaten in the night before, watching the path through binoculars.

  Roarke had just been strapping on the body armor they all were wearing, and the two men looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

  “What are you going to do, warn me about forces we don’t understand?” Roarke said finally.

  Snyder’s smile flickered. “Be careful,” he said.

  “You, too.”

  “I’m not the one who—” Snyder began. And then Jones had breezed in with something or other and they had never finished the conversation.

  The one who — what? Roarke wondered now, as he walked the plaza under sparkling strings of Christmas lights. He looked around him at the shops, now only one window lit out of every three.

  He drifted into an art gallery and pretended to study the displays. A few moody paintings of village residents, some abstract sculpture of distressed wood and burl swirls, a few large crosses bound in barbed wire. Edgier than the average mountain fare, which often ran toward calico-garbed teddy bears.

  He moved on to the next aisle and found himself in front of a wall hung with sculptures, a theme of hearts: two blackened hearts bound together with rusted chain link, another pair of hearts twisted in barbed wire.

  He felt something in his own chest twist at the sight.

  Then his phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out to see Singh’s name on the screen.

  As he held the phone to his ear, he could hear the tension in her voice. “Chief, I’m sorry to call so close to zero hour, but it’s urgent.”

  “Wait just a minute.” He exited the shop into the frosty air and found a bench with no one nearby. “Go ahead.”

  “I believe I’ve found him.”

  Roarke felt an electric thrill.

  “Nathaniel Marcus Hughes. He grew up in Arcata, was living there in 1986 and 1987. He drove for an equine transport company based there, which had routes that included all the relevant towns. He was fired for odd behavior some time after the first massacre and before the second, and was arrested four months after the Lindstrom massacre.”

  “For?” Roarke asked sharply.

  “Mutilating horses,” Singh said.

  Her words were a chill and a rush. Of course, he thought. Of course.

  “He was diagnosed schizophrenic and put on meds in prison. His initial sentence was just two years but he stabbed another prisoner while he was inside, which added the extra time. I asked local law enforcement to go by to speak with him, and they have informed me he has disappeared. His parole officer hasn’t seen him since before the Reno massacre. I’ve sent through a mugshot.”

  Roarke clicked over to the message and looked down at a man who looked not unlike Santos, the same dishevelment, the same black void in his eyes. Tanner Fairchild had described him well; the gaunt police sketch was a fair image.

  “The photo is out to every agent and deputy involved in our sting,” Singh told him. “I am sorry it could not have come sooner.”

  “It gives us someone to look for. That may make all the difference.”

  “I hope so,” she said, then: “Be careful, Chief.”

  He stood in the chill, looking down at the photo on his phone, of a man whose face seemed caved in on itself, collapsing from some emptiness within. The piped Christmas music floated in the air, a choir singing.

  He spoke into his collar mike. “Do we all have the mug shot of suspect Hughes?”

  Affirmatives came from the three other quadrants, and he could hear the tenseness in the men’s voices.

  Then his earpiece crackled to life and he heard Jones’s voice. “Soames is en route.”

  Roarke felt a chill and a sizzle of adrenaline simultaneously. He forced himself to stay for another minute in front of the gallery, looking through the window at art he didn’t see and listening to Jones’s muted report of Soames’ walk past the cabins manned by deputies. Then he strolled back in the direction of the parking lot, past souvenir shops, clothing outlet stores. The wind gusted through the plaza, swirling dead leaves.

  He cir
cled the clocktower, where he knew there was a sniper concealed, as well as other L.A. Bureau agents with binoculars surveying the entire plaza. Then he found a bench under a circle of trees and sat, looking across the plaza.

  He saw her instantly as she stepped into the circular space. She wore a down parka to conceal the Kevlar armor he knew she was wearing. Her coat hood was down, the light from the street lamps glinted off her pale hair. He had to admire that she walked with not one hint of the extra weight she was carrying.

  She took her time crossing the plaza, stopping at a billboard to read a posted list of events, pausing at a railing to look out over the view of the lake. The full moon was rising over the dark ridge, heavy and huge, and the sight made Roarke colder. Then Soames turned in to the café. He waited edgily as she sat and had her coffee inside the front of the shop, lit up in the window like a precious object on display.

  And he felt a chill that had nothing to do with the frigid air: that he was setting this very vulnerable human being out as bait for something unimaginable.

  No, not unimaginable, he reminded himself. A twisted man. Just a man.

  Soames finished her coffee and walked outside again, now moving past the two-story high Christmas tree in the center of a landscape island, toward the wine shop. Inside, she stood near the front store window talking to the “proprietor,” who went about selecting a bottle for her, bagging it, ringing her up.

  She emerged from the shop with bottle in hand; a good prop, but a better weapon, should the need arise. And finally, she moved toward the stairs leading down to the lake walk.

  Moving quickly but without rushing, Roarke took an alternate staircase down to the upper path to follow her, descending past a terrace filled with concrete tables with built-in umbrellas, a restroom hut.

  Down by the lake, the wind was icy and merciless, swelling the black water, pushing at the boats. Above the moon climbed higher, icy and round in the sky. Its whiteness made everything colder.

  Soames walked the path, moonlight shining on her golden hair. Roarke followed on the upper path, the walkway in front of the dark shops, watching as she drifted, stopping often to look out over the lake.

  She reached the corner of the row of shops, and he sped up to make the wider curve around. Now he could see the buildings and tents of the small midway: the arcade, the kid-sized bumper cars. He ducked behind the shadow of a post and looked down over the path to find Soames again. Above him, a cloud passed over the moon…

  And then he caught sight of something that stopped his heart.

  A family had emerged on the path that curved past the fun house. Father, mother and four children. It was the littlest girl who caught Roarke’s eye: five or six and blond, clinging to her mother’s hand.

  Cara…

  When he registered the rest of the family, the dread intensified. The family was an echo of Cara’s: the tiny girl, a boy in his mid-teens, an eight- or nine- year old girl… and a boy the same size as Tanner Fairchild. For a moment he could only stare, as if confronted with a ghostly apparition. But the family before him was all too real.

  He backed into the shadows between bushes and spoke into his collar mike, his lips stiff with tension. “There’s a family on the path, near the fun house. Mother, father, four kids. Get those people out of there now. Take them back to their vehicle and drive them out of here. Do not leave them alone.”

  He tried to keep one eye on the family as he turned back to the path to get a visual on Soames.

  She was gone.

  The trees towered, dark and needled; the icy lake stretched out, vast and black, with the moon shimmering a wide swath across the center. Shadows arced across the empty path.

  “I’ve lost visual on Soames,” Roarke muttered into his collar mike. “Jones, Epps, Aceves?”

  For a moment there was silence.

  Roarke vaulted over the railing and dropped into the dirt between the bushes below him. He stood concealed in the dark and stared out through the branches. There was no sign of the family or of Soames; the path was empty. He heard only the thin whistling of the wind, the creaking of the tied-up boats, the splashing of water against the docks.

  Then he froze, staring out of the bushes at the path. Something glittered on the path… shattered glass in a pool of black. The bottle of wine Soames had been carrying, smashed on the concrete.

  “Christ…” he breathed.

  “I see her,” Jones’ voice came back on his earpiece.

  Roarke spoke with sharp relief. “Where?”

  “Southeast of the clock tower. By the pizza place.”

  Roarke frowned, trying to register. The location was on the other side of the Village. “That can’t be right.” He’d only lost sight of her for a minute. Even at a full run she couldn’t have gotten clear across the Village.

  “Blond, slender, parka…”

  Cara, his mind registered. She’s here.

  Chapter Forty-two

  He crashed out of the bushes and half-ran along the lake walk, under white lights strung from poles. The dark expanse of lake stretched beyond, pure black and fathomless. Every few feet gates and stairs led down to docks. Soames could be behind any of the fences. Below him boats creaked and splashed, bobbing wildly in the swells.

  There was a sharp curve at the end of the path and two forks to take, one that headed up into a small park at the edge of a spit, rimmed with trees, with a swing set and picnic tables, benches looking out on the lake.

  The other path curved around to the little children’s amusement fairway, with its miniature golf course and autopia. The rides were closed, but he could hear music: at the far end of the park a small carousel, deserted in the cold, was still eerily piping calliope music. The sound prickled on his skin.

  He turned away from it, back toward the park, and bolted up the short span of steps, scanning the park. The wind tossed empty swings in the air and whistled through the trees… the water lapped at the shore. He strode a wide circle around the periphery of the park, searching the shadows. Past a split rail fence a path curved down to the sand.

  On the pale drifts lay a dark heap: a crumpled body. He caught a glimpse of gold hair in the moonlight under the trees. He lurched forward, ran for it, pounding down the dune.

  He dropped to his knees in the sand beside the body.

  “Cara,” he said, and turned her over.

  It was Soames.

  Her limbs were limp, her skin pale as snow. As Roarke reached to turn her head toward him, he saw black blood oozing from a vicious scalp wound.

  He shouted into his collar mike: “Officer down. I need EMT now. The beach below the park behind the funhouse.” He grabbed for her wrist, digging his fingers in for a pulse. It was there, faint.

  She was breathing.

  The EMTs were on scene in a minute, the ambulance speeding through the village and onto the path. The EMTs bore Soames up from the beach on a stretcher as Roarke hustled along beside.

  “Her breathing is stable,” an EMT told him, and Roarke felt the news as a hot wave of relief.

  At the ambulance, he hovered over the stretcher while the EMTs opened the back doors. His heart lurched as Soames’ eyes suddenly opened, staring straight up at him.

  “Soames?”

  She murmured something he couldn’t hear. “Just rest,” he told her. “You’re okay…”

  “Peace,” she said thickly… then her eyes closed.

  Roare froze. “Soames!” he shouted. But then he saw her lips part, her chest rise in a breath.

  The EMT was beside him, reaching for the stretcher. “We’ve got her.”

  Roarke stepped back to let her go.

  As soon as the van’s doors had closed on her, he was shouting orders into his collar mike. “Epps, Jones, Aceves, meet me in the arcade.” It was their designated rendezvous for that side of the village; Roarke had a key card to get in.

  He used his key and left the door cracked open. He stood in the dark of the small arcade, with funhouse mi
rrors on the walls around him. He stared into his own reflection, distorted, rippling images. Inside his thoughts were screaming.

  He turned as the door was pulled open and Epps and Jones strode inside, followed a beat later by Detective Aceves.

  “What the hell happened?” Epps demanded.

  Roarke moved to meet them. “Someone attacked Soames. Head wound. She’s alive.”

  The other men relaxed almost simultaneously, a palpable relief. They stood with their reflections cast in grotesque shapes in the mirrors.

  “Did you see him?” Jones demanded.

  “I didn’t see anything. There was a family—” Roarke stopped, and felt a sudden stab of dread. “Aceves, did your men get to them?”

  “We couldn’t find them,” the detective said grimly.

  Roarke stared at him.“What do you mean, you couldn’t find them?”

  “We never saw them at all. They must have been parked somewhere besides the main parking lot. We stopped every car leaving the Village entrance but there was no sign of them. I got a man on the fairway entrance right away and we went up and down every aisle. No family of that description.”

  Roarke’s blood went cold. “Jesus. We have to find that family. Now.”

  Epps asked it first. “You want to call off the stakeout?”

  Roarke forced himself to be still, to consider. They were in a dangerous place. The case had expanded to three tracks, their manpower now searching in three different directions: Cara, the Reaper, and the unknown, unnamed family.

  What is the Reaper thinking?

  Why did he attack Soames and not kill her? Why not finish off the job?

  At the same time he was thinking it, Epps was shaking his head, saying aloud, “Why didn’t he finish Soames off? Why not kill her?”