Page 44 of The Woman Who Couldn't Scream
“Kid sick?” Mike asked.
“Aren’t we all?” Kateri countered.
Around the lighted circle, heads nodded.
“We’re almost there,” Kateri said to the men on the scene. To Moen, she said, “Can you drive?”
He pulled himself back into the car and put the car in gear.
She wanted to tell him to put on his seat belt, but she knew he was afraid he was going to be sick again.
He slowed at the sign for Lupine Point, turned onto the narrow, winding road and pulled into the usually quiet parking lot packed with bright lights and grim-faced police.
“You going to be okay to get home?” Kateri asked Moen.
“Sure, Sheriff. I’m fine.”
Stick in hand, she got out and watched him drive away. Moen had dreamed of illustrating graphic novels. Maybe this would give him the push he needed to follow his dream. Or maybe, like a hot flame, it would harden him into steel.
She limped over to the body and the men surrounding it.
Her officers had fanned out in the parking lot, the grass and up the dune toward the beach. Most of them were in uniform; all of them carried flashlights and occasionally one would call Officer Bill Chippen over to take a photo. These guys knew the procedure all too well.
She glanced at Carolyn Abner, but didn’t quite look at her straight on. There was no need, and she had to be steady and on her feet for the next God knew how many hours. She asked the first, most important question. “Bergen, do you think John is doing this?”
“I sure as hell hope so,” Bergen said.
He was so prompt and emphatic, she almost laughed. Except that the truth was so awful.
He continued, “Because if it’s not John Terrance, we’ve got not just one sick bastard on our hands, but two.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it. Give it to me straight.” But he only said what they all were thinking. “How did this guy arrive at the scene?”
“Don’t know. Too much evidence, we’re working to narrow it down. Car probably. All kinds of tracks. It’s the high season for bikes, and those tracks are here, too.” Bergen pointed toward the beach. “And he could have parked down at the dunes and walked up the trail or along the beach. It’s only a couple of miles.”
“Mike, any of his DNA?” she asked.
“She should have flesh and blood under her fingernails.” Mike lifted one of her hands. “He cleaned them out. I’ll have to get her back to the morgue to see if he dropped a hair or missed a molecule of skin.”
Kateri stared at Carolyn Abner’s circled, rigid fingers, at the wide silver ring, the torn nails and the broken skin over the knuckles. Then she had to look at her, all of her, and acknowledge the woman beneath the tragedy.
Carolyn Abner was dressed like a typical summertime tourist, in loose white capris and a pink sweatshirt jacket. Her hair was styled in a bob. She’d lost a sandal. Kateri thought of all the other tourists, some already spooked by the specter of John Terrance, some completely unaware, some determinedly going on with their vacations. She thought of Terrance, belligerent, skinny, scrawny, so mean he starved his own dog to ensure the beast was vicious. She was going to have to do something, and fast. “It’s our second slashing, and fatal. When I get back to City Hall and pull the preliminary reports together, I’ll call Garik Jacobsen at the FBI and see what he knows.”
Mike Sun reached up and punched Bergen on the thigh. “I told you she’d think of it herself.”
Bergen smiled with genuine relief. “Yeah, baby. That is best news I’ve heard this week.”
So. They’d been talking about her, speculating what her next course of actionshouldbe. Kateri wanted to punch them both on the thighs. She contained the urge and in an excessively pleasant voice said, “It’s the logical course of action. No one understands the situation in Virtue Falls better than Garik, who grew up here, whose wife was almost killed by the last serial killer in town. Garik, who was the former sheriff.”
Mike and Bergen exchanged glances.
They were both married. Maybe they’d recognized something about her tone.
Because Bergen said, “He’s in the position to know all about serial killers. That’s why we need him. Not because we think that you…” He trailed off.
Mike picked it up. “Really, it’s not that you aren’t doing a great job in this case. It’s not your fault Terrance threw his son’s body out and disrupted the chase. Everybody knows that. And this slashing thing is just bad—”
Bergen surreptitiously kicked him.
