Show of Evil

memory and mother of the nine muses.' Then he chuckled.

Woodward laughed. 'Raymond has a wonderful sense of humour,' he said, as if Vulpes was not in the room.

Vail said, 'And you simply got rid of Roy?'

'Let's just say he had enough,' Vulpes said. 'He retired.'

'So what did you learn from Roy and Aaron?'

'Well, Roy wasn't as intelligent as Aaron, but he was a hell of a lot smarter.'

'You mean street-smart?'

'I mean he wasn't naive.'

'And Aaron was?'

'You know that.'

'Do I?'

'The way you ambushed that prosecutor, what was her name?'

'Is that what Roy said? That I ambushed her?' Vail said without answering the question. Vulpes knew damn well what her name was.

'That's what I say.'

'Really.'

'I've read the trial transcripts. And Roy told me you played it just right. Started to ask about the symbols, then backed off. No wonder they called you a brilliant strategist.'

'Did Aaron and Roy ever talk about killing the old preacher… uh, I can't think of his name, its been ten years.'

'Shackles.'

'Shackles, right.'

'Roy bragged about that one, all right. They really hated that old man.'

'That's an understatement,' Vail said.

Vulpes almost smiled and nodded. 'Guess you're right about that. He was their first, you know.'

'So I heard.'

'Why, hell, Mr Vail, you probably know more about the two of them than I do.'

'Oh, I think not.'

Their eyes met for just a second. Nothing. Not a blink, not a flinch. It's the eyes, Vail thought. His eyes don't laugh when the rest of his face does. They never change. Ice-cold blue.

'How about the others? Did he talk about them?'

'You mean his brother and Aaron's old girlfriend, Mary Lafferty?'

'I'd forgotten her name, too,' Vail said.

Vulpes looked him directly in the eye. 'Lafferty,' he repeated. 'Mary Lafferty.'

'Oh yes,' Vail said.

'Actually, Roy also talked about Peter Holloway and Billy Jordan,' Vulpes said. 'The Altar Boys.'

Vail stared into Vulpes's barren eyes, devoid of everything but hate. Bile soured his throat as his mind darted back ten years to the night he had found the devastated remains of the two young men. The flashback was a collage of horrors: the dark, ominous, two-storey lodge framed by the moon's reflection rippling on the lake; fingers of light probing an enormous den in the basement, a sweeping fireplace separating it into two rooms; a large raccoon racing past Vail followed by the rats, flushed by the light, squealing from behind a sofa; a hand rising up from behind the sofa, its fingers bent as if clawing the air, the flesh dark blue, almost black; the rest of the arm, a petrified limb stretched straight up, and then the naked, bloated torso; the face, or what was left of it, swollen beyond recognition, the eyes mere sockets, the cheeks, lips, and jaw gnawed and torn by furry night predators, the gaping mouth, a dark tunnel in an obscene facsimile of something once human; the throat sliced from side to side, further mutilated by the creatures that had feasted upon it, and the stabs, cuts, and incisions and the vast sea of petrified blood, black as tar, and the butchered groin. And the fossilized corpse next to it - a smaller version of the same.

I am responsible for this human ghoul, he thought. It took