Incarnate Read online

  Still, he wasn’t exactly confiding case details. “He deputized me at sixteen, after he caught me tagging the water tower, drunk on rotgut whiskey. That’s what started to turn me around, you know, thinking I had a chance to be on the police force. I mean, Holt was totally acting outside his authority, and I’m sure none of it ever went on the official books. He’d just toss me a few bucks here and there, called it my training pay.” He frowned, pouring them each more wine. “That was around the time people started disappearing in Jarvis, though, so Holt was pretty preoccupied.”

  “Yeah, what is it with this town, anyway?” Kim asked. “There has to be, what, twice the rate of disappearances of a normal town? Three times?”

  “More than that. Town the size of ours, you’d expect to have maybe one unsolved every decade or two. And it’s always the same thing—no trace of a struggle, no clues left behind, maybe a few false leads that turn out to be nothing—and in the end, no body is ever found, except for Isabel Wilcox. That’s pretty damn unusual.”

  “How many have there been?”

  “Around a dozen, give or take. And they’re from every walk of life, which is also not so typical.”

  “Do you think one killer is responsible? Or several?”

  Zack frowned. “A single killer . . . I don’t personally see that. It’s really hard to determine any kind of pattern. If it was one person, we’d see some sort of logical progression. There was a guy Holt had picked up a few times for break-ins, but then there was a housewife with a couple of kids in middle school. Next was a five-year-old boy—”

  “Henry Beaumont,” Kim broke in.

  “Yeah. His parents were heartbroken. Last time they saw him was when they tucked him in one night. Couldn’t identify any signs of a break-in, but they were the kind of folks who moved here because they wanted to feel safe at night—safe enough not to lock up the house.”

  Kim took a moment before introducing her theory again. “Listen, have you had a chance to think about what I said earlier? The fact that Henry disappeared—potentially died—on the same day Scarlett was born?”

  “I have, actually.” Zack felt his guard going up, his voice going hard. “And the conclusion I came to is that all of that is in the public record. All Scarlett would have had to do was go down to the town clerk and she’d be able to find out all kinds of information. For instance, this Julian you think she’s ‘harboring’? His criminal record is an online search away. Easy for her to construct a ‘personality’ based on what she read.”

  “Okay—but how about the cubbyhole? How was Scarlett—who never even met Isabel as far as we know—supposed to know such an intimate detail of her life?”

  Zack shrugged. That detail had confounded him, too, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “Scarlett could be working with someone who knew Isabel well. They could be working as a team, and using her so-called DID as a distraction. I mean, she slept with Brad Chaplin—maybe she wanted more. A real relationship. Maybe Scarlett thought she was his girlfriend, or could be if Isabel was out of the way . . . or maybe he took advantage of her interest in him in other ways. I mean, I’ll give you this—Scarlett is an intelligent girl. I do believe she’s capable of a complex strategy.”

  He could see Kim growing irritated as he laid out his thoughts—and he couldn’t help noticing that anger brought color to her cheeks, and made her lean in across the table. Intense—that was a word he’d use to describe Kim. He shook his head and forced himself to focus on the moment.

  “She hasn’t mentioned anyone in our sessions who would have had access to the kind of details of Isabel’s life that she would have needed,” Kim was saying.

  Zack got up and began clearing the dishes to help distance himself from his wandering thoughts. “Well, there’s Brad Chaplin, of course. And we know he and Scarlett have a connection.”

  “Oh, come on—you can’t be serious!”

  “Or maybe someone in Scarlett’s life was close to Isabel—like Scarlett’s sister. Or her father, even. Don’t assume, just because he does a good job of acting concerned about her welfare, that he’s looking out for her,” Zack cautioned. “He could be covering up his own agenda.”

  “What kind of agenda?”

  “I don’t know,” Zack admitted. “That’s why it’s called an investigation. But it wouldn’t be the first time a parent sacrificed a child’s welfare to cover up a crime. I arrested a guy a couple of years ago who raised hell about the band teacher’s conduct at his son’s middle school, when it turned out he himself had been molesting kids in the band on field trips. Pete Hascall hasn’t exactly helped the investigation—he flies off the handle every time something comes to light on her case.”

  “Scarlett’s father isn’t a criminal,” Kim insisted. “He’s just a concerned parent—he’s watching his daughter fall apart before his eyes and he can’t do anything to stop it.”

  “Oh, so you’re a psychic, in addition to being a shrink?” Zack scraped the dishes in the sink. “You know, I’m not exactly fresh out of the pumpkin patch here. I’ve testified on sex abuse cases where no one suspected the predator. Ministers, teachers . . . even psychiatrists. Parents can seem benevolent when they aren’t. Isabel Wilcox wasn’t a model citizen. There are plenty of reasons that Peter Hascall could have wanted her dead—and if he had a connection to her, that would explain why his daughter, who has plenty of challenges, might have locked in on her and become obsessed with her.”

  Kim glowered at him, but for once she didn’t seem to have a comeback. “It’s just one possibility,” he said, softening. “Look, maybe it wasn’t Scarlett. Maybe it’s just being pinned on her by some third party. There’s a reason we haven’t charged her with the murder yet, you know. The evidence is still mostly circumstantial.” He stopped, thinking. “A lot of people know Scarlett’s unstable. She’d be an easy target if someone wanted to frame her for murder. A smart perp would know she’d have a hard time defending herself.”

  Kim chewed her lip and stared off into space, and for a moment Zack regretted drawing her into his thoughts on the subject. After all, she wasn’t an investigator. She was a thorn in the side of the investigation. So far she’d done more obstructing than assisting.

  Still . . . in her own way, she was just trying to help. Her professional insights into Scarlett’s behavior, wild poltergeist theories notwithstanding, were certainly valuable. He had never encountered a person as unhinged as the troubled teen. And Kim clearly cared a great deal about this case. “Hey, I’ll admit that Scarlett’s situation . . . the things she’s been able to tell us . . . are unusual,” Zack conceded.

  “Because she’s harboring alters!” Kim burst out, clearly frustrated. She got up and carried the wineglasses into the kitchen. “I know it flies in the face of conventional thinking, but—”

  “Conventional thinking? I think it also flies in the face of ‘rationality’.”

  Kim implored. “Isn’t your job to explore every possibility?”

  “Within reason.”

  “This is within reason! Scarlett Hascall did not kill Isabel Wilcox!”

  “Hey, hey, calm down,” Zack said.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” she snapped. “My patient’s life is on the line here. I’m just asking you to open your mind. Just a little! Just because someone is neuro-atypical doesn’t mean they’re capable of murder! It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be taken seriously!”

  “Are we still talking about Scarlett?” Zack countered. He wasn’t sure what was more frustrating: being lectured as though he’d done something wrong—when he considered himself one of the most open-minded members of the department—or the fact that he couldn’t find any evidence to prove to Kim once and for all that Scarlett was faking. “Or are we talking about you?”

  Kim gaped at him for a moment, and Zack instantly regretted his words. He knew that his frustration with not being able to convince her about Scarlett didn’t justify attacking Kim personally.

  Kim, visibly colle
cting herself, strode up to him. “You’ve got a smudge,” she said imperiously, tapping her cheek. “Also, I’m leaving.”

  She stalked out of the kitchen. Zack tried to check himself out in the reflection of the stainless-steel refrigerator, wondering if it was true or if she was just distracting him and making an easy exit. “Where?” he demanded, following her into the living room.

  “Where what?” Kim whirled around, so that they were almost face-to-face, and Zack felt something ignite within him.

  “Where do I have a smudge?” He struggled to keep his voice steady.

  “It’s just tomato sauce,” she said grudgingly. Her expression was aloof, but still, she didn’t move away.

  “I didn’t ask what.” Zack put his hand on her wrist and pulled her even closer. “I asked where.”

  Kim gazed up at him unblinkingly, her lips parted in surprise, and possibly something else. Slowly, she raised her free hand and used her thumb to wipe a spot on his left cheekbone. “There,” she whispered, letting her hand fall to his shoulder. Her fingertips curled around his neck.

  Zack put a hand on the small of her back and pulled her against him. Now their faces were only inches apart. This close, he could make out a tiny, pale scar running through one of her eyebrows, not to mention the silver flecks that seemed to sparkle in her green eyes.

  “I don’t know who’s crazier,” he said. “You for all your crackpot theories . . . or me for listening.”

  He wasn’t sure if he was in for a slap, an argument, or a kiss.

  After a moment that seemed to last an eternity, she twisted out of his grasp. “Thanks for dinner,” she muttered. “But don’t for a minute think you can charm me out of my convictions. There’s one person in this whole mess whose fate I take personally. And guess what—it’s not yours.”

  Seconds later, his front door slammed.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The troubling discussion with Zack kept Kim stark awake—and for once, it wasn’t Scarlett Hascall on her mind. The conversation with Zack, and his hand on her back before she’d fled his house, kept replaying in her mind over and over until finally Kim took two sleeping pills from her medicine cabinet, before slumping back down on the bed in defeat. The next time she opened her eyes, the sun was beginning to rise.

  She got up, made coffee, and wondered what the hell she was supposed to do with herself. A two-week suspension meant more time off than she’d had in the entire time she’d been in Jarvis. This was the first day in months that she didn’t have to go in to the hospital. Someone else was seeing her patients, making her rounds, and taking care of her paperwork.

  One thing was certain—she needed to do something or her anxiety over Scarlett’s welfare would overtake her. She took a good look around the apartment, realizing how little she had actually done to settle in and make it her home. It wasn’t a bad place; its best feature was the view out onto the street that ran along the docks, a sliver of the ocean visible beyond the rooftops. She still had almost nine months left on her lease. If she got canned from the hospital, she could always wait tables, or learn to drive a snowplow, or . . . something. But she was going to do everything in her power to convince the hospital to keep her on—once she was off probation, that is.

  Kim sighed and strode toward the wall of unopened boxes that she hadn’t touched since she moved in. She pulled down the top box from the teetering stack along the wall, ripping open the flaps. Inside were books she’d lugged from one apartment to the next, the beloved science fiction and fantasy novels that had sustained her during her foster placements before she was finally taken in by the Pattersons. The old books were as good a place to start as any, and Kim lined them up in the shabby oak bookcase that had come with the apartment.

  For the next six hours, she cleaned and organized, trying to make the apartment feel like it belonged to an adult rather than a lazy fraternity brother. When her stomach started growling, she made a trip to the store and stocked up on groceries for the first time in over a month. She was sitting at her dinette table, eating a turkey sandwich that she’d made herself, when a call came in from Zack.

  For a moment, she just stared at the screen, tempted to let it go to voice mail. She wanted to believe she was angry with him for the crackpot comment. She’d had to defend her profession much too often to put up with casual dismissal, especially from a man who was openly interfering with her treatment of a patient.

  But the truth was that she was mad at him for completely different reasons. Or maybe she was mad at herself for feeling drawn to the very person who was trying to charge Scarlett Hascall with murder. Either way, the last few seconds they’d been together the night before played on an endless, mortifying loop in her head.

  She stabbed at the answer button. “Yeah, what?”

  “I have some information I thought you’d want to hear right away,” he said stiffly. “We just released Scarlett Hascall. We don’t have enough to charge her. For now.”

  Kim exhaled in relief. “Thank God.”

  “In my profession, it’s considered a good thing to keep an open mind,” Zack said stonily. “If I find definitive evidence that someone else killed Isabel Wilcox, I’ll be ready to admit I was wrong. But until then . . .”

  “Whatever. You can save the speech for someone else. I get it. Nothing’s going to make you consider that something could be true if it isn’t part of your narrow worldview.” Still, she felt her body sag with relief, even while her hand trembled as it held the phone. “But one of these days, something’s going to happen that you won’t be able to explain away even if you investigate it for the rest of your life. Not everything in this world is black and white . . . people’s motives aren’t always simple.”

  “You’re seriously going to give me a lecture on the criminal mind?” Zack sounded both angry and amused. “That’s just great, Kim. I’ve got a whole file full of cold cases. I guess I should have just asked you to take a look at them from the start.”

  Go to hell, Kim thought, but she hung up without saying the words out loud. Because as much as she hated to admit it, Zack was right about one thing—she didn’t have any definitive proof of Scarlett’s alters. The handwriting, the bloody water—all those things could have been faked, as much as Kim’s instincts screamed otherwise.

  Sighing in resignation, Kim realized that she had been moving toward this decision for days. There was one way she might be able to prove to even the staunchest skeptic that Scarlett’s alters were real. But if the hospital board ever found out, Kim would never work as a doctor again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Within twenty hours of Scarlett’s release from custody, she was reclining on the couch in Kim’s newly organized apartment. It felt a little like they were hiding out—Kim from her colleagues at the hospital, and Scarlett from her father, who had forbidden her from seeing Kim again. But when Kim had told Scarlett her plan, she’d instantly agreed it was worth the risk.

  “I told Dad I was meeting a friend to see a matinee,” she confided. “Never mind that I don’t think I’ve been to a matinee since I was like ten years old. Or that I don’t have any friends. But he just wants me to be normal so bad . . .”

  “I can understand that, I think,” Kim said. Her own parents had pushed her into extracurricular activities from the moment she’d been released into their care: ballet, music, soccer . . . playdates with every kid in a five-mile radius. They’d wanted so desperately to make her happy, to help her forget the horrors of her past, that they couldn’t see that sometimes solitude—painfully lonely as it could be—was critical to her recovery.

  “It’s not like he really fell for it, though. He sent Heather to follow me. But I ditched her in the Starbucks. She’s probably still standing outside the bathroom that I climbed out the back window of.”

  Kim nodded. “I’m sorry we’re having to be a little deceitful.” She corrected herself. “A lot deceitful. I wish it were different.”

  “So do I. But that’s why we’re here, ri
ght?”

  Kim offered a warm smile and a nod.

  Over the next half hour, Kim took Scarlett through the relaxation exercises, priming her to allow the alters to reveal themselves. When Scarlett had entered the semiconscious state where she was most suggestible, her breathing even and deep, her chest rising and falling slowly, Kim invited Henry to reveal himself.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said gently. “Nothing bad will happen if you come out. Can you open the door, Henry, and come into this safe room where we can talk?”

  For several long moments, nothing happened. Kim continued speaking to the little boy, wondering if maybe he’d disappeared, if he’d vacated Scarlett and moved on. But just when she was about to give up, Scarlett’s eyelids twitched rapidly and her lips formed a frightened O.

  “Hello?” Kim said tentatively. “Henry?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Are you still in the spaceship, Henry?”

  A tear rolled slowly down Scarlett’s cheek as Henry spoke through her. “It’s so dark. And cold. I want to come out now.”

  Kim’s heart broke for the little boy, who’d been trapped all these years without understanding what had happened to him, or why his soul couldn’t move on. What would it be like to be five forever, desperately missing your parents and never understanding that they hadn’t abandoned you?

  “I want to talk about when you went into the spaceship,” she said, as calmly as she could. “It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

  Scarlett’s face twisted in concentration. “I think so.” She shifted on the couch, the cheap fabric of the cushions rustling.

  “Do you remember your parents? Your mom and dad?”

  The tears started again. “I just want my mom,” she whispered.

  Kim forced herself to press the issue, despite the fresh pain it seemed to be bringing to Scarlett’s alter. “Can you tell me how you ended up in the spaceship? It’s important, Henry. I want to help you get out of there, but I need to understand how it happened.”