“That is true.” He eyed Clyde with apparent delight. “A cop near my level. Does he bite?”
“Only if you’re the bad guy.”
“I hope he has a very narrow definition of bad.”
Clyde yawned.
“You seem to have passed the test, Dr. Wilding,” I said.
“Excellent, then. And please, call me Evan. So it is all right with you if I have a look?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Then it is time to put aside our personal failings and focus on evil men.” His face turned somber as he looked past me toward the church. “The night is passing quickly, and for some the day will never break.”
My eyes met Cohen’s. He shrugged. “Evan fancies himself a poet.”
“I wouldn’t presume,” Evan said, heading toward the church. “I’m merely a scholar.”
I followed. “In signs and symbols.”
“More than that.” He slowed as Officer Vasquez opened the door, spilling light into the darkness. “In the poetry of madmen.”
CHAPTER 19
Think of me as being infinitely large. But on the inside.
—Evan Wilding. Conversation with Sydney Parnell.
Evan said nothing again for a long time.
He stood first near the entrance to the sanctuary, quietly observing, much as Bandoni and I had done. But from what Cohen whispered to me about Evan’s process, I suspected the linguist was mentally excavating the scene, digging down through layers of time. He would start with the arrival of Officers Vasquez and Murphy, and before them, Marcy Pitlor’s discovery of the victim. Then further back in time. The killer—or killers—departing. Before that, his form bending and twisting as he staged Donovan’s body. Donovan’s murder. The killer arriving at the church.
Maybe all the way to a quiet, undesecrated church.
I watched him, wondering what pictures formed in his mind. Did he build scenes from the vibrations of the air, the memories of molecules? Did he read a strange calligraphy from the body itself, images imprinted on skin the way men once believed a killer’s visage remained in his victim’s eyes?
Next to me, Clyde whined in his throat. I rested my hand on his head.
“I know, boy.”
After a while, Evan approached the altar. He walked around the victim, eyes moving everywhere as he read the words carved into and written upon the fleshy canvas of Donovan’s body. Now and again he pointed out something to the crime scene detectives, who jumped into action at whatever he said, taking pictures.
Bandoni watched all this, his arms crossed, one ankle hooked over the other as he leaned against a wall.
Finally, Evan came to a halt and motioned us over. We gathered at the railing. The crime scene detectives began packing up their tools.
“I’ll give you my thoughts,” Evan said. “Take them for what they’re worth.”
“We’re listening,” Bandoni said.
Evan clasped his hands behind his back. “I believe you have multiple killers. Dashiell Donovan is their canvas. He’s the start of their manifesto.”
The doors to the sanctuary opened. A woman rolled a gurney down the center aisle. Another woman came behind her carrying a canvas bag.
“Manifesto . . . like they’re making a declaration,” Bandoni said.
“That’s how it appears.”
“And multiple killers.” The now-bright lights tugged shadows across Bandoni’s face. “I know there’s all that ‘we’ and ‘ours’ shit. But serial killers usually work alone.”
“I don’t think you’re dealing with a serial killer,” Evan said.
I glanced at Cohen. His eyes met mine, and he gave a faint nod, like Didn’t I say he’d be helpful?
But Bandoni scratched his scalp. “I see one victim on that altar. There was one victim in the train car. That says serial killer to me. What am I missing here?”
The women lifted the gurney up the altar steps. The taller of the two women slipped, and one end of the gurney banged to the ground.
Evan watched them for a moment before turning back to us. “Mass murderers will sometimes kill single individuals as they test their own commitment to a larger act. A sort of trial run, if you will. In my opinion, that’s what you’re dealing with.”
Bandoni sputtered. “Mass murderers?”
I turned away as one of the body crew unpacked a body bag. Electric sparks burst inside my skull at Evan’s words. Other terms tumbled through my brain—mass killers, school shooters, workplace violence, going postal. I knew how authorities generally defined mass murder: the indiscriminate killing of four or more people in close geographic proximity, with no cooling-off period between the slayings.
But I still had trouble wrapping my head around the idea we might have a mass murderer of our own.
“You’re a professor.” Bandoni scowled at Evan. “But I’m just a fucking cop. You gonna explain how you know that?”
Someone grunted as Donovan’s body was maneuvered onto the gurney.
“Of course.” Evan stared up at the image of a ruby-red Christ in stained glass. Cleared his throat. “How long do you have?”
The devil’s hour of 3:00 a.m. had come and gone when Bandoni and I pulled in behind Cohen and Evan in front of the Walker mansion. The fog had lifted, and cold stars shone down. When Bandoni and I got out, our breath hung in the air. Clyde jogged toward the front door, his tail high like a flag. I grabbed his bowls and kibble and followed.
Inside the house, Cohen directed Evan up the stairs, to a room he’d prepared. Bandoni tailed after him, carrying the professor’s suitcase.
Cohen turned to me. “You want to start a fire in the library? I’ll get us something to eat.”
“I feel like I could eat an entire cow. And then I’d throw it all back up.”
“Spoken like a true murder cop.”
“You didn’t mention this part when you were telling me how great it is to be a detective.”
“You mean the whole death aspect of being a murder cop?”
“Sarcasm.”
Cohen pulled me close. “Maybe a little.”
For a moment I melted into him, inhaling his scent, reveling in the solidity of his shoulder beneath my cheek.
Then he pulled away and headed toward the kitchen. The space where he’d just been felt cold.
In the library, I set Clyde’s
