Chris erased his phone message and sat in the evening light, his brain spinning. He’d always known the call would come. Now that it had, it was almost anticlimactic. He’d lived this moment a thousand times, dreamed it even more. The call had come and gone, and the world still went on, not stopping like it should.
A large weight lifted from his chest. No more waiting. Time to put the wheels in motion.
He breathed the sweet air deeply and listened to the silence. Only the normal, nearly inaudible sounds of nature reached his ears. The breeze rustled the tall grass around his cabin. No vehicle sounds, no human noise. As it should be.
For ten years he’d speculated every time his cell rang. Would this be the call? Would he be ready when it came? Maybe it’d never come. He’d had his plans in place for several years now. Checked and double-checked every few weeks. He’d thought them through and through, hoping to find a way to avoid them altogether. But there was no way out. He’d known if the call ever came he would have no choice but to act.
An image of the Ghostman flitted across his memories, and he mentally crushed it down. The Ghostman stood for failure; Chris wasn’t going to fail. The Ghostman had haunted his dreams for a long time. Not dreams, nightmares. Nightmares of torture and pain.
He turned to his laptop and typed the usual words into the search engines. Nothing. How had the phone call come before the computer warning? He shifted in his seat, brow wrinkling in mild surprise. Anyone with a little skill could find whatever he needed. Anyone with a lot of skill could manipulate that information to do as he pleased. Like him. Computers hummed under his fingers, their languages as second nature to him as English. Or Spanish. He had alerts on many phrases and names, but none had been tripped in the last twenty-four hours. Tomorrow would be different. The story would be everywhere. The cursor blinked. Taunting him to run another search. Chris closed the lid.
A quiet cough came from the other end of the bungalow. Chris silently padded down the hall and stopped, pushing open the bedroom door. Brian didn’t move. Chris could see the outline of his son under the thin covers and hear the soft sounds of the boy’s breathing.
Chris’s heart clenched, and he ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the faint raised seam of bone beneath the skin where it’d never healed correctly. His son would never suffer. He would never experience the horrors that men can inflict on children. He would only know love and peace. It was a familiar mantra. One he’d repeated every day for the short eight years of his son’s life.
Was that about to change?
“I don’t want to do that again.” Detective Ray Lusco shook his head as he stared into his coffee at the diner. “I don’t know if I can face another set of distraught parents like that. Shit. I feel like the bad guy.”
Mason nodded in agreement with his partner. The only thing worse than discussing the death of a child with parents was being the one to deliver the news. And that was what he and Ray had spent the day doing. The parents had been informed of the find yesterday, but conclusive evidence hadn’t emerged until today. Most of them had long ago accepted that their child wasn’t returning, but the parents of nine-year-old David Doubler had always believed their son would walk in the door one day.
They’d talked with several sets of parents in the office of the medical examiner. Weeping and acceptance had been the staples for the day. Until the Doublers. The Doubters described the couple better. The parents had brought in tiny dental X-rays of their son’s teeth. Twenty-year-old X-rays that the mother had kept in an envelope in case their son’s body was found one day. David Doubler Sr. had argued with Dr. Campbell’s identification.
Mason shook his head. David Sr. had met his match with the feisty odontologist. Lacey Campbell had calmly placed the films on a viewbox next to the films she’d taken on the skull and proceeded to give the father a calm lesson in reading dental X-rays. Even Mason had seen the match. David Sr. had refused. “Baby teeth all look alike,” he’d argued. “Every kid had silver fillings back then.”
Dr. Campbell had quietly pointed out the distinctive white shapes the silver created on the boy’s first permanent molars. David Sr. had shaken his head. It wasn’t good enough for him. The chief medical examiner had stepped into the room at that moment. Dr. James Campbell could tell his daughter was about to pull out her hair in frustration.
“Maybe this would help,” the gray-haired ME had said and held out a plastic baggie to the parents. “You recognize this? It was found with the remains of this child, about where his neck would have been.”
Mrs. Doubler had stared at the silver strands in the baggie and promptly burst into tears. Mason had swallowed hard. He’d known the shape of the pendant on the chain. His son had worn one for years after being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes.
Ray took a sip of his coffee. “Thank God, that was the last one.”
Mason said nothing. Ray was wrong. There had to be another body. One boy was missing, and Mason had already met his parents.
Dr. Brody was a tough woman. She knew her son wasn’t coming back, but Mason wasn’t certain about the senator. The senator had a look of denial that matched Mr. Doubler’s.
“Doesn’t feel right. Why would one body be in a completely different place? Why weren’t all the bodies found on that farm?” Ray asked.
Mason stirred his coffee. His thoughts exactly. His gut was telling him something wasn’t right.
They sat in silence for two minutes, letting the conversations of the other restaurant patrons flow around them.
“Went home and hugged my kids last night.” Ray had two preteens. A boy and a girl who creamed Mason at their video games every time he visited. Ray was looking him straight in the eye. Most cops would have mumbled the words into their coffee. Not Ray. The big guy was never afraid to show his emotions when it came to his kids or sexy wife.
Ray was looking at him expectantly.
“Yeah, I called Jake.” Mason fought the urge to look out the window instead of meeting Ray’s gaze. Jake had been his usual smart-assed self, making Mason struggle to get a complete sentence out of the teen’s mouth. Jake’s stepdad had originally answered the phone. Mason would rather talk to his urologist than the cheerful superdad. The man had done everything right in his life that Mason had done wrong. Now he had Mason’s wife and kid. Ex-wife.
All Mason had was frozen pizza and an empty bed.
Ray’s cell rang, and Mason exhaled in relief. He’d seen the look in Ray’s eye. The one that said his wife, Jill, had been talking about more blind dates for Mason. Jill tried to set him up several times a year, and Mason talked his way out of them. Not easy considering Jill had once been a trial lawyer.
“It’s where?” Ray’s voice raised an octave. “They think this is it? How far?”
Mason’s spine tingled as he watched Ray scribble in his ever-present notebook. Something big. Mason could feel it
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck!”
Mason froze. Ray rarely swore.
His eyes angry, Ray moved the phone from his mouth and whispered to Mason. “They think they found the place where the kids were kept. Before…”
Mason nodded. Before he killed them.