Incarnate Read online

  Holt nodded reluctantly. “Yeah . . . I see where you’re going. I just can’t see Pete as an accessory to murder, though.”

  Zack looked away in frustration. What was that about keeping an open mind?

  It wasn’t hard for Holt to sense Zack’s irritation. “What about George DeWitt?”

  Zack reengaged. “The missing hunter?”

  Holt nodded. “I’ve been thinking about how we found Isabel’s body—you know, with the bear trap around her leg.”

  Zack’s mind pondered the possibility. “It could just be coincidence, but maybe there’s a connection there. You said you knew him, what do you think?”

  “Now we might be getting somewhere. Did game and wildlife records come back with an ID on the bear trap, from the piece that washed up?”

  Zack shook his head. “Still waiting.”

  “Let’s stop waiting, son. No day like today.” Holt picked up his phone and started dialing.

  “And he’s still MIA, right? Could be guilty,” Zack said. “Then again, could be dead—like everyone else in this damn town.”

  “I’m on hold.” Holt put the phone on speaker while he waited. “I guess while we’re hovering at five thousand feet, we should consider a few more suspects, add a couple long shots to the board.”

  “Long shots?”

  “Did you explore Scarlett’s mother yet? Not sure you would remember her, she left town before your time. Been in Juneau for years. Daughter got a bit of her looks, and a lot of her crazy. Maybe we could see if she’s left town recently—could be she’s mixed up in this somehow.”

  “Okay. Well, I guess we just about tripled the suspect list.”

  Holt slapped him on the back. “Just keeping you busy, son.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  By nine thirty the next morning, a crowd had gathered on the lawn in front of City Hall, watching a trio of city building and grounds workers unearth the capsule. The day was overcast and humid, and it was hard, sweaty work; they’d made the initial dig with a backhoe but switched to shovels to avoid damaging the capsule.

  A hushed murmur went through the crowd when the first shovel hit metal. There was a sense of anticipation, which, on another occasion, might have led to cheering—but word had spread quickly about the purpose of the dig. The police department hadn’t made any sort of official announcement, but the news had leaked anyway, and in a town the size of Jarvis, the memory of a missing child was still fresh all these years later.

  Kim had noticed Zack standing off to the side the minute she arrived. His face was tense behind his mirrored sunglasses, but he stood back behind the barriers erected by the grounds crew, his expression giving nothing away as the capsule was slowly unearthed. The metal no longer gleamed; dirt and roots clung to its sides. The crew ran ropes underneath the capsule so that it could be lifted out with as little disruption as possible.

  It was a slow, laborious process, and Kim found herself distracted by Zack. She couldn’t stop replaying images of their dinner, and the moment when it had seemed as though he wanted to kiss her. Maybe it was time to admit some things to herself. Kim wanted him. It would be silly to pretend otherwise. He was undeniably gorgeous, and, at the same time, he was a formidable opponent in what had become a high-stakes battle over Scarlett Hascall. She’d always liked a challenge—she couldn’t deny that.

  But there was something more to her feelings about him that went beyond just simple physical desire, or even the forbidden appeal of sleeping with the “enemy,” so to speak. Kim recognized herself in Zack. They were both deeply committed to their work, both ready to put the needs of others—victims, in Zack’s case, and the mentally ill in hers—ahead of their own. Then there was Zack’s history of loss, his relationship with his sister and with his surrogate father. Kim couldn’t help but be drawn to people whose journeys paralleled her own.

  But with Zack, there was something more as well. And it both frustrated and fascinated Kim that she couldn’t figure it out, catalog it, and put it away for later. That it kept coming up again and again, right when the moment was least convenient.

  As the crew finally lifted the capsule from the hole and lowered it carefully onto the grass, Kim forced her attention away from Zack. The crowd pushed closer, talking in hushed tones. Kyle was there, along with a couple of members of the hospital review board. As far as Kim knew, they’d come out of genuine curiosity rather than any sort of official inquiry, since it seemed that half the town had shown up. The mayor was there, ordering her staff around as though she were about to kick off a parade; so far, they’d set up a cordoned-off area and succeeded in directing foot traffic to go around the lawn. There were a couple of people about Kim’s age who were glued to their tablets. They might well have been reporters, probably from the chain of small papers that served this part of Alaska.

  The crew worked at the seam of the capsule for a few moments before it became clear that it was jammed or corroded shut. One of the men went to his truck for tools, and the others rested with their arms on their shovels. The crowd seemed to collectively exhale, and some sat down on the lawn to wait out the delay. Zack turned and appeared to notice Kim on the edge of the crowd for the first time. He headed her way—just as Kyle came striding over.

  She cringed as both men seemed to arrive at the exact same moment—then reminded herself that she hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Hello, Dr. Patterson,” Kyle said formally. “Detective,” he added in a chilly tone, nodding at Zack.

  “Doctor,” Zack replied, equally tersely.

  “Wow, this is just like the summer concerts in the park we used to have back in California,” Kim said, falling back on sarcasm, one of her oldest defenses against social awkwardness. “Except the music sucks, and so does the food, and—oh, yeah, the weather does, too.”

  “I heard it was getting up to sixty-five today,” Zack offered. He scanned the crowd while he spoke, his head moving fractionally, his eyes invisible behind his glasses. “Around here, that’s bikini weather.”

  Kyle’s eyes narrowed as he looked from Zack to Kim, and she wondered if he was picking up on the tension between them. “Looks like it might be a while. I guess I’d better get back to the hospital,” he finally said. “Afternoon rounds.”

  “I think they’ve got it, actually,” Zack pointed. The worker had returned with a long-handled wrench and his toolbox. He knelt over the seam of the capsule, and, with the help of his coworkers, pried at the opening with the wrench and a hammer. After a few moments there was a scrape of metal on metal and the two halves of the capsule creaked apart. The crowd found its energy again and everyone pressed closer.

  Holt had been standing under a bank of trees with the mayor, but now he came forward, holding up his hand. “Hang on a sec,” the chief said. “Let my guys in, please.”

  Zack went to join him, pulling on gloves, along with Officer Phil Taktuq. Zack had mentioned to Kim that Taktuq had worked on the Henry Beaumont disappearance case all those years before. Holt gave a slight nod, and the guy with the tools set down his wrench. He slid his fingers along the opening. “Ready?” he said, to no one in particular.

  Then he pulled the hatch open.

  A half-dozen boxes and padded envelopes fell out of the hatch onto the disturbed earth. Zack picked up one of the packages from the ground. “Nothing but papers,” he said, examining the label. “This one’s marked ‘Mrs. Piercy’s Third-Grade Class.’ ”

  The mayor walked over to join them. “They had the kids write essays,” she said. “Every class from third through sixth grade.”

  The crew carefully pulled the sides farther apart. The smaller segment rolled onto its back, like a bowl; the other stayed on its side. The sun went behind a cloud, and Kim felt a chill move through her. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands, squinting and leaning forward in spite of herself.

  Zack knelt on the ground and peered inside the dark interior of the capsule. The mayor crouched next to him, unmindful of her skirt and hee
ls. Kim felt as though everything paused for a moment.

  Then the mayor gasped. “There’s a skeleton in there. It’s—it’s so small.”

  “Henry,” Kim said, mostly to herself. Her mind was racing. Part of her still hadn’t believed he’d be in there, she realized. But he was. This was real, all of it. Henry—Isabel—all of Scarlett’s alters.

  Kyle pressed forward with the rest of the crowd, trying to get a glimpse of the body, Tigger pajamas still wrapped around the corpse.

  Kim, however, just watched from where she stood, rooted to the spot. She could imagine the condition of the body. She’d seen many bodies in various states of decomposition, so she knew it wouldn’t be much more than a collection of bones by this point. But that wasn’t what was bothering her. Her mind was reeling about her theory, and what it meant.

  Henry Beaumont had died on the day Scarlett was born—a cruel, violent death. Somehow, his young soul had slipped into another body, unable or unwilling to pass through to whatever lay on the other side of life.

  Was his restless soul seeking comfort? Revenge? Or just understanding of what had happened?

  Kim was now certain that Scarlett’s alter was Henry Beaumont, the real Henry. There was no other explanation for how the girl could have secret knowledge of something that had happened the day she was born. But the only hope of learning the truth, learning what exactly happened to Henry and why he ended up in that capsule, did not lie here, on this verdant lawn on a beautiful late summer day, in this sad gathering of citizens confronting the evil that had stolen one of their children.

  Kim turned and began threading her way back through the crowd toward her car. Behind her, she heard Kyle’s voice.

  “Kim, wait!”

  But for once, Kim didn’t care about what Kyle had to say to her, or even about keeping her job at the hospital. There was only one person she wanted to talk to: Henry Beaumont.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Scarlett said nervously. She had been chewing two pieces of gum furiously ever since Kim picked her up, a block away from her house. The girl now tossed the mangled wad into a trash can outside the police station’s front doors.

  After leaving the town square that morning, Kim had texted Zack that she urgently needed to talk to him. After she typed her request, there had been a long silence on Zack’s end, so long that Kim had been close to giving up. But finally, he texted back:

  I’ll give you one hour.

  “I mean, you saw what he thinks of me,” Scarlett continued. “What if he decides to arrest me all over again? If Dad takes any more time off work, I’m worried he’s going to get fired.”

  “It’s going to be fine,” Kim said, with more conviction than she felt. She’d actually been surprised that he’d agreed to talk to them. Maybe Zack was desperate enough to give her a chance. The community would be clamoring for justice, now that after almost two decades it was clear that an innocent young boy had been brutally murdered. And what other leads could he possibly have? She forced herself to ignore the accompanying resentment that he hadn’t listened to her until now, that it had taken her possibly throwing away her career to treat the frightened girl he had wanted to arrest, not to mention the gruesome discovery of Henry’s remains, to convince him.

  Kim took a deep breath and opened the door, letting Scarlett go ahead of her. The receptionist smiled wryly and invited them to go on through—Kim was back in good graces here, she supposed. Kim and Scarlett made their way to Zack’s desk. He stood waiting for them, and he gave them a terse nod. “Dr. Patterson,” he said stiffly.

  “Call me Kim.” He shot her a look, and she pretended to reconsider. “Actually, I prefer Dr. Patterson. But can I call you Zack?”

  The detective just stared, but Kim could tell he was holding back a grin. Then again, maybe not. “Ms. Hascall. I’ve secured a room for us. Right this way, please.”

  He led them back to the interview room, where he’d set cans of soda in front of two chairs, one a folding plastic chair, one a bit more comfortable. Kim chose the plastic, leaving the cushioned seat for Scarlett. After she and Scarlett were settled, Zack closed and locked the door behind them and pulled down the shade on the window.

  Kim glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room. She turned to Zack. “Are we live?”

  Zack shook his head. “No camera. No tape. Just the three of us.” Off Kim’s reticent look, he offered, “Would you like me to turn the lens away?”

  Kim shook her head, reassured.

  “And just so you know,” he said, “nearly everyone’s already gone for the day anyway, so we can be sure we won’t be disturbed.”

  In the silence that followed, Scarlett kept her chin down, staring at the scarred oak table where generations of suspects had carved all manner of graffiti.

  After several moments passed, Zack cleared his throat. “I’m not sure exactly how this is done. Do I need to drag a couch in here or something?”

  “No, this is fine,” Kim reassured him. “I mean, the lighting is a bit industrial . . . and I wouldn’t call the atmosphere particularly calming, but if you’re ready, I can lead Scarlett through the relaxation exercises and we can see if we can summon her alters.”

  “All right, have at it,” Zack said.

  Kim could tell he was at the limits of both his credulity and his patience. “I just want to say thank you for giving this a chance,” she said. “I know it’s not . . . something you’ve run across before.”

  Zack leaned back in his chair and thrummed his fingers on the table. “You can say that again. And I’ll be honest, I’m not expecting a whole lot. But Ms. Hascall, your . . . prediction turned out to be correct, and because of your help we’ve been able to find a boy whose disappearance has haunted this town for almost twenty years. I don’t need to point out the obvious—if you hadn’t been a newborn at the time, the fact that you knew about the body would make you a suspect. I’m mindful of the possibility that Henry’s killer could have shared that location with you, so don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re in the clear.”

  “Wow,” Kim replied. “You really know how to give a pep talk. Have you thought about coaching peewee baseball?”

  Zack let out a frustrated breath. “I was about to add that Henry Beaumont’s family will finally be able to give him a proper burial. So, you’ve bought yourself a chance to show me what you’ve got.”

  Scarlett peeped up at Zack from under her long fringe of lashes, her pretty eyes momentarily visible from under the curtain of hair behind which she so often hid. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice.

  “Dr. Patterson has advocated tirelessly for you, so if you want to thank anyone, it should be her. If she’s right, and your, uh, alters can help us solve other cases, then I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.” The tone in his voice said anything but. Kim had to keep herself from rolling her eyes. “But I have to warn you,” Zack continued, “if you turn out to be faking, or trying to get attention, I’ll come down on you with the full force of the law.”

  “She knows that,” Kim said, exasperated. “And the more stress you put on her, the harder it’s going to be to make this work. Hypnosis requires a relaxed patient—remember?”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll be quiet. Do your thing.”

  Kim nodded and turned toward Scarlett, but before she could start, Zack interrupted again. “So, if Henry’s home, you can just ask him who the killer is?”

  Kim shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Convenient.” If Zack was trying to hide the sarcasm in his voice, he wasn’t doing a good job of it.

  Kim turned back toward him, knowing that the sooner she could satisfy his question, the sooner they could get to work. “The personalities we’re dealing with have experienced intense trauma. Usually, when we’re dealing with patients with actual dissociative identity disorder, the reason the condition manifests itself in the first place is that the psyche is dissociating from
harrowing memories. They might not even know who did this to them. Now, can I begin?”

  “Sure thing, Doc.”

  “Thank you, Detective.”

  Zack shifted in his seat. “Do you use a metronome? Or a crystal ball on a chain or something?” Kim shot him a look, but he quickly added, “That was me lightening the mood. Helping everybody to relax.”

  Kim nodded. “Appreciated.”

  After a full ten seconds, once Kim had already turned back to Scarlett, Zack added, “That’s what I’m here for.”

  It took a little longer than usual to guide Scarlett into a relaxed state, given the stark, overly bright setting and the remaining tension in the room. Kim knew that Scarlett found Zack’s presence deeply unsettling, and patiently repeated the exercises over and over until Scarlett’s breathing finally evened out and slowed, and Kim sensed that she was ready.

  “Are you in the room, Scarlett? The room with the doors?”

  The girl had curled up in the chair, an enormous old upholstered desk chair that looked like it had been dragged in from some higher-up’s office, her arms wrapped protectively around herself. She nodded, her eyes closed.

  “All right. Behind one of the doors, is Henry waiting?”

  Kim held her breath as she waited for Scarlett to answer. She’d half hoped that the discovery of his body might have given Henry the permission he needed to leave, to let his soul finally rest. But after a moment, Scarlett nodded. So it was as Kim suspected—the little boy wasn’t done with Scarlett yet. And presumably he wouldn’t be until his murder was solved.

  “Can you please invite him to come out and talk to me?”

  A few minutes passed and then Scarlett’s face changed. Her mouth pursed into an O, and her eyes fluttered open, as she looked uncertainly around the room.

  “Is that you, Henry?” Kim asked gently.

  “Yes.” Scarlett’s voice, small and quiet, was no longer as frightened as it had been before. “It’s nice here. I like the light.”