His cell rang as he was buckling his seat belt. Elliot had been expecting Tucker to phone, but the image that flashed up was his father’s.
The photo had been taken a few years earlier, before Roland’s hair and beard had started to silver. The Roland in the photo peered intimidatingly over his round spectacles as though he’d been interrupted in the midst of writing some groundbreaking essay on human rights violations. In fact, he simply didn’t like having his photo taken.
Elliot reached for his phone, pressed to answer. “Hey, Dad. I was going to call you. I’m not going to be able to make dinner tomorrow night.”
They still had dinner every Thursday, a tradition started when Elliot had left the Bureau and returned to teaching at Puget Sound University. But Tucker was going out of town that weekend to visit his recently located biological mother, and Elliot was hoping for a little quality time together before the trip. Quality time was at a premium right now, given both their schedules.
“That’s all right, son,” Roland said. “I was calling about the hearing on Monday.”
“The hearing?” Elliot asked blankly, his mind still on the meeting with Corian.
“You should be worried.”
A playground bluff, right? You better run! Corian was lying. He had to be lying. There had never been any evidence, physical or behavioral, to suggest that he had done other but act alone. Secondly, Corian wasn’t the type who played well with others. It was impossible to imagine him trusting his secrets to anyone.
Except...he did like an audience.
“Nobby’s hearing.” Roland interrupted Elliot’s thoughts with uncharacteristic harshness.
Or with what had once been uncharacteristic harshness. After the events of the summer, Elliot’s relationship with his father had been strained. They still got together for dinner once a week, but that was about it—and more than one of those dinners had given Elliot a serious case of heartburn that had nothing to do with Roland’s cooking.
“Yes. Sorry. The hearing.”
“Are you or are you not going to testify on his behalf?”
Elliot’s heart sank. Roland had brought this up once before, and Elliot had said he didn’t think he’d be able to speak up for Oscar Nobb, one of his father’s ex-revolutionary pals. Roland hadn’t argued with him, but he should have known his father was simply biding his time. No way did Roland Mills ever go quietly into that good night.
“Dad, I told you my feelings on this.”
Roland barely let him get the words out before he was charging, “You know how important this is. A few words from you asking for leniency could mean the difference between Nobby getting probation or serving more time in prison.”
Elliot closed his eyes, summoning patience. “Can we talk about this later? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“In other words, you’re blowing me off.”
“No. I’m just—I would prefer not to have this argument now.” He heard his words and winced. Argument because regardless of when they discussed it, he was not going to agree to speak up for Oscar Nobb.
Roland made the same deduction. “Where the hell is your compassion?”
“Dad.”
“Prison will kill him. He does not belong in prison. You know that.”
Yes, Elliot did know that. Prison was not the right solution here any more than it was the right solution for Corian. There was no good solution. He was adamantly against the plan his father had come up with: that Roland would stay at Nobby’s farm and help him get back on his feet while Roland’s own house was being rebuilt.
He stared out at the tall gray cement blocks of the prison taking up so much of the skyline. Over five hundred inmates—half a thousand people—were incarcerated in that concrete fortress. “It’s unlikely he’ll be sentenced to prison. Tom Baker did a great job of defending him—and Nobby’s already served part of whatever sentence he might receive. If they send him anywhere, it’ll be someplace like M—”
“For real?” When Roland was agitated—hell, even when Roland wasn’t agitated—he had a tendency to slip back into sixties-speak. “You’ve got a lot of faith in the justice system, kid. But then you’re not the one who couldn’t get bail because, despite your advanced age and poor health, the federal government decided you were a dangerous flight risk.” Roland was a tireless advocate, no question. Not hard to understand why his friends loved him and his enemies were still his enemies forty years later.
“I know. I’m not suggesting—”
“And of course it’s not your life nor your livelihood being interrupted.”
Despite his best effort, Elliot’s own voice rose. “Christ. Are you forgetting—”
“I’m not forgetting a goddamned thing. I was there at the beginning, remember? Not you. If Nobby had wanted either of us dead, we’d be dead. You and your boyfriend pushed that confrontation.”
The scathing emphasis on the word boyfriend was not an aspersion on Elliot’s orientation. That was Roland’s compromise word choice because what he wanted to use was something like “storm trooper” or “brown shirt” or even a circa-sixties “pig.” For some reason much of his anger over the events of the summer had focused on Tucker, even though Tucker had largely been a bystander. Elliot was the one who had pushed a confrontation, assuming you bought that version of events.
Elliot drew a sharp breath but then swallowed the angry words. He loved his dad. One of the best parts of moving back to Tacoma had been the opportunity to reconnect with his father. Before the events of the previous summer, they had been closer than they had in years. The bitterness of the past few months was a weight on Elliot’s heart and he was not going to compound the situation by saying something that might drive a greater wedge between them.
He said quietly, carefully, “Dad, we’re not going to agree. I can’t, in good conscience, do what you want this time. I’m sorry. If I can help in another way I will.”
“That’s heartwarming,” Roland said. “Unfortunately, you’ve declined to help in the only way that might mean something.”
He disconnected.
Elliot stared at his phone for a moment and then tossed it on the seat and turned the key in the ignition.
* * *
Andrew Corian’s former residence was an English Tudor-style “cottage” on twelve heavily forested acres in the rural community of Black Diamond.
It was a million-dollar property with proximity to Lake Sawyer and inspirational views of Mount Rainier and the Cascade Mountains. Corian, unfortunately, had been inspired to commit murder and the lake had probably provided the dumping ground for some of his victims.
Elliot parked in the wide tree-lined driveway and got out. It was midafternoon. The autumn sun was hot, but the air was sweet with the scent of freshly mown grass and pine trees. A playful breeze tugged at the red-and-blue for-sale sign planted next to the brick walk leading up to the elegant wooden double doors. He had never been to the house for a social event, but he had seen plenty of crime scene photos and he’d accompanied Tucker on one final trip through the premises after the evidence collection technicians had signed off.
Today his interest was not in the house itself. He wandered around to the back, studying the lawns, flowerbeds and the outlying sheds. Forensic anthropologists had been all over the property with a lidar scanner and other remote sensing technologies, and found nothing sinister. Or useful. And yet...
Elliot would have laughed at the idea that he was sensitive to atmosphere, but something about the place made him uneasy.
Bad vibes, his dad would have said.
And if the twenty-plus homicides that had occurred behind those dark-framed and whitewashed walls hadn’t produced bad vibes, it was hard to imagine what would.
A bird sang and then cut off midwarble. Elliot listened to the silence.
The property was very quiet, very secluded, no question. Plenty of land and tall, tall trees had guaranteed Corian’s privacy. Given the number of serial killers who accomplished their grisly business in crowded cities, it was no wonder Corian had managed to operate undetected for so many years.
His nearest neighbors were Eddie and Gina Hope, an elderly couple with a vacation home behind the wall of trees to the east, and a middle-aged widow who lived year-round about a mile down the road.
If anyone had seen or heard anything, the best bet was Connie Foster, though nothing had come out of the task force interviews with her.
He turned back to the house. It wasn’t the kind of thing he went for—too new, too showy—but by most people’s standards it was a beautiful piece of architecture.
On the surface, Corian had everything, including his health. Financial freedom, tenure in a job he seemed to have enjoyed, leisure to pursue an illustrious art career, an active social life. What the hell could have been missing, internally or externally, that would drive him to serial murder?
Manipulation. Domination. Control. Those were the key words. Every violent serial offender was seeking, compulsively seeking, to compensate for their own inadequacies. But on the surface, Corian had no inadequacies. Would probably not have recognized his own inadequacies if they’d been tattooed to his muscular chest.
What, then?
Had he not been held enough as a baby? Had he been bullied in grade school? Abused as an adolescent? It was the old debate of nature versus nurture. No one really knew what went into the building of a monster.
Ultimately, did it even matter? No sane person was going to be able to make sense of Corian’s motive in slaying over twenty people.
Elliot continued walking the perimeter. High in the sky overhead a plane moved soundlessly across the cloudless stretch of blue.
It was interesting—or maybe just disturbing—that Corian had chosen to bury his victims in his own basement instead of in the nearby woods. If he’d used the woods, he could have tried to claim—
Elliot’s thoughts broke off at the sound of something moving in the bushes to his left. His heart gave a startled leap and, proof of how uneasy he was, he started to reach for his Glock—before remembering that it was at home in the floor safe. As a former federal agent who had left the job in good standing, he had a special permit to carry, but he didn’t typically arm himself before leaving the house. Guns in the classroom were not a good fit, regardless of what the NRA preached.
Though after today’s news that Corian had possibly had an accomplice? He might be rethinking that decision.
Except every potential threat didn’t call for firepower—as evidenced by the bedraggled dog that pushed through the undergrowth to stare at him from a cautious few feet away.
Elliot relaxed, feeling slightly ridiculous. His pulse was still jumping. “Hey, dog.”
The dog whined, came a couple of cautious steps forward, flattened its ears and backed off again. It was some kind of border collie. Black, soft gray and white fur. Very pale blue eyes. There was a special name for them. Blue merle.
This one looked like it had been living wild; even under all the dirty and matted fur he could tell it was skinny.
Had Corian owned a dog? Had the animal been lost and left to fend for itself in all the comings and goings of law enforcement and support services?
“Come here, boy.” He put out his hand.
The dog whined, slinking toward him, wagging its tail frantically. That was as much nervous energy as friendliness.
“Thatta boy.” He took a closer look. “Er, girl.” Did she have a collar? He couldn’t tell and she was too frightened to risk grabbing for.
Still whining, the dog extended her nose toward Elliot.
“There’s a good girl.” Her cold wet nose cautiously sniffed his fingertips.
He knelt and the dog scrambled away in sheer terror, halting a few feet away, safely out of touching distance.
“Okay. Okay.”
The dog stared at him, quivering from nose to tail, but did not try to approach again.
“Up to you.” After a moment, Elliot rose.
The dog bolted back into the bushes. Elliot shrugged and turned away.
He checked out a small garden shed smelling of chemicals and fertilizer, and the large square wooden garage that had belonged to the original house. That structure had been knocked down two decades earlier to make room for the new semi-Tudor-style residence.
He had some vague idea of hidden rooms or underground tunnels—that’s what overfamiliarity with Southern plantation blueprints and the history of the Underground Railroad did to you—but there was no indication either in structure or foundation that these buildings were anything more than they seemed.
The garage was empty except for a couple of tall plastic trash barrels. Corian’s vehicle had been impounded. The usual collection of homeowner tools—saws, hammers, scythes—had been taken into evidence.
He closed the garage door and considered the distance between the garage and the house. Somewhere to his right he could still hear the dog skulking through the brush.
Eerie how normal everything looked. The house windows glittered in the sunlight. The lawn was green and tidily mown, the flowerbeds weeded and neat. That was the realty company doing their best to disguise the fact they were trying to unload a house of horrors.
The price was right anyway. They were asking about half of what the property was worth.
Even if Corian had not just been yanking Elliot’s chain with hints of cannibalism, he would still have had to dispose of a great deal of physical evidence over the years. Why was everything not buried in the cellar? It was a large cellar and there had been space enough.
Plus, possession played a huge part of Corian’s fantasy. It wasn’t enough to take the life of his victims. He wanted to own and control the remaining shell as well. Some of the bodies had been used in Corian’s sculptures. Most had been buried in his basement.
But not the heads. The heads of his victims had been severed and disposed of.
How, where and why they had been disposed of remained a mystery.
Originally the theory had been that Corian was attempting to conceal the identity of the victims, but that hypothesis really didn’t hold up in Elliot’s opinion. First of all, Corian had been way too arrogant to believe he would be caught. Secondly, there were other ways to identify victims beyond dental records, and Corian would surely know about DNA sampling.
No. There was something else in play here.
If there had been an accomplice—and he felt that was a very big if—had the accomplice taken the heads as a trophy? Had Corian awarded the heads of his victims to this mysterious accomplice as grisly recognition of a job well done?
Come to think of it, skipping lunch had actually been a good decision.
Elliot was lost in troubled thought, gazing at the dense, dark woods that sprang up nearly from the point the lawn ended, when he heard a yelp.
A shotgun blast shattered the silence—accompanied by an ungodly shriek that sounded almost human.
The hush that followed was worse.
Elliot sprinted toward the front of the house, his reconstructed knee giving a warning twinge as he came around the corner.
It took a moment to identify the figure in baggy, shapeless flannel and jeans as female, late sixties. He had a quick impression of a brown triangle of unruly hair and harsh features.
“What the hell was that about?” Elliot called.
If she had come by the road, she would have had to see his car, but the jump she gave at the sound of his voice was one of genuine fright.
She swung around and pointed the shotgun at Elliot.