Incarnate Read online

  Zack got out of bed, shaking his head. He’d have to be careful: Holt wasn’t just his surrogate father, he was Brielle’s, too. Brielle wouldn’t understand this tryst. Or rather—she’d probably understand all too well . . . and the last thing he needed was his sister teasing him mercilessly, or worse, running to Dad.

  He was on his way to Kim’s bathroom when he accidentally bumped into a stack of papers sitting on top of her dresser. Several folders slid off the edge, their contents spilling out onto the floor.

  Zack got down on his knees and gathered them up. They looked like financial records, something he had no desire to pry into.

  But one stapled sheaf of papers caught his eye. Along the top, they read Massachusetts Department of Children and Family Services. Underneath: Foster Placement Report.

  He flipped through the pages, unable to help himself. The date on it was August 2004. A photograph of a much younger Kim, with freckles and bangs cut straight, glared into the camera.

  Then his gaze fell on the name.

  Joselyn Miller.

  What? Zack quickly put all the papers back in the stack, his mind filled with questions. He went to the bathroom to wash up. By the time Kim returned to bed with a tray of saltines and peanut butter and two cans of orange soda, he’d managed to compose himself.

  “That looks terrible,” he said. “You should really think about using natural peanut butter.”

  She smiled. “Natural peanut butter tastes like ass left in a hot car for two weeks. Besides, the chemicals in Skippy are what make it taste good. And—I’m having a craving,” Kim said, setting the tray down and snuggling up next to him, her body warm and soft and perfectly molded to his own. She smeared peanut butter on a cracker and held it up to his lips. He took a bite, and found that it tasted just right, artificial coloring, preservatives, and all.

  Kim slid down until her head was resting on his lap, the sheet he’d pulled up over himself doing little to disguise his resurging interest. He stroked her hair, wondering about the mystery of the report but knowing that he wouldn’t bring it up.

  Zack knew that he had issues trusting people, probably because of the way his dad hadn’t always been there for him. There was a reason he could count on two fingers the people he’d let get close. So it wasn’t surprising that a part of him wanted to leave right now, convinced that Kim was lying to him, that she’d never reveal who she really was. That she was untrustworthy, like his father. That things would almost certainly end badly.

  But the bigger part of him had no intention of getting out of this bed tonight. They hadn’t discussed it, but he figured they both knew he was staying over.

  He picked up her hand and licked the peanut butter from her middle finger, eliciting a sigh of pleasure. Kim Patterson was probably trouble—but for the moment, she was all his.

  * * *

  ZACK WAS AT HIS desk the next morning by eight, after an early debriefing session spent with Kim, revisiting some of the pleasures of the night before, as well as discovering new ones. He’d successfully put all thoughts of the foster care report out of his head while they shared a shower and a pot of coffee, and when he kissed her at the door, it felt dangerously natural.

  Now, he was staring at the old materials from the Henry Beaumont case, as well as Albert Sullivan’s file. Holt’s notes were typically terse; the chief wasn’t much for the written word. Sullivan had been arrested twice for public indecency; both times, he’d been caught urinating in public on the way home from one of Jarvis’s seediest bars. More potentially relevant was an incident in which a young mother complained that Albert had been lurking at the playground in the town park, that he’d exposed himself to her and her children; Sullivan claimed that his pants had merely slipped down because he’d forgotten his belt.

  He’d have to see if Holt could remember anything else when he came in. Zack glanced at the clock—it was still likely to be at least an hour until the chief arrived.

  Idly, he checked his favorite news site and scrolled through his Facebook feed, rolling his eyes to see that his sister had posted a terribly unflattering sixth-grade picture of him with the caption “Jarvis’s Finest??” It had already racked up more than thirty likes.

  Zack poked at the keyboard, a thought forming in his mind, a thought very unlike him. Zack prided himself in keeping a certain distance between his career and the women he dated. Better, he felt, for all concerned, particularly given the sensitive nature of his job. But Kim was already inextricably linked to his current investigations, whether he liked it or not. And the photograph on that foster report kept coming back to him. Was it really Kim? And if she’d really been in the foster system, why hadn’t she mentioned it when he told her about Holt taking him and his sister in?

  Zack knew that he and Brielle had been lucky. His experience had been completely atypical, as far as foster care was concerned. Although Holt had been a touch awkward with them initially, he had always at the very least treated them like a beloved niece and nephew.

  Maybe Kim’s experience had been much worse.

  Zack gave in and googled her name.

  Turned out there were quite a few Kim Pattersons out there. Columbia, South Carolina. Englishtown, New Jersey. Sarasota, Florida. He scrolled through at least a dozen more before refining his search. Dr. Kimberly Patterson yielded more information, and after ten minutes, he’d been able to trace her past, from her most recent biography on the hospital website, back through medical school at UCSF, college at Stanford, and an all-girls high school in Massachusetts. Both her hospital bio and an alumni newsletter listed her place of birth as Acton, Massachusetts. Though he searched, records indicating the reason she had left her internship at a hospital in San Diego were murky at best.

  Zack thought for a moment before entering those details into a database not readily available to the public. It was against department regulations to use it for personal use, but in a way, this was relevant to his ongoing investigation of Scarlett. After all, if he couldn’t trust Kim, could he trust her assessment of Scarlett’s mental health?

  After five minutes of searching, he was convinced that Kim had lied. There were no Kim Pattersons born in Acton in 1987 . . . or in the five years before or after.

  Zack stared at the screen, a chill settling into his veins.

  When he and Brielle were growing up, after losing their mother at such a young age, Zack had been desperate for the support of the adults in his life. He’d do practically anything to earn their respect and love. When his first-grade teacher told him he could have an important job someday if he worked hard in school, he practiced the alphabet until his fingers ached. And when his T-ball coach told him that jogging around the field would make him tall and strong, Zack ran until his sides ached and he couldn’t catch his breath.

  But there was one adult in his life who broke his trust over and over: his father. Errol Trainor was a drinker and a brawler, and his wife’s death only increased his need for alcohol. He lost job after job and came home later and later each night. His paychecks seemed to evaporate before the bills were paid. Neighbors took to checking in on Zack and Brielle; if it hadn’t been for the kindness of their community, he and his sister would have starved.

  For every lie Errol told, for every promise he broke, Zack would come up with an excuse, even if he never shared them with anyone, not even Brielle. Dad lost that job only because he got sick, he told himself. It’s my fault he ran over my bike, because I left it in the driveway. He missed my baseball game because he had to work late.

  When he started getting into trouble himself, it was all too easy to make the same kind of excuses for his own behavior. I only stole the candy bar because they charge too much at that store. It’s Mr. Friedrich’s fault I ran into his mailbox, because he didn’t trim his trees. I’ll help Brielle study for her math test after one more game of Tetris.

  All of that changed the day Holt picked him up for loitering outside the pool hall downtown, trying to get older guys to buy h
im beer. “You’re gonna turn out just like your dad,” he’d said. Zack, blinded by fury, had struck out, not caring that it was the chief of police he was hitting. But Holt had blocked the punch as easily as if he was swatting a fly, and twisted Zack’s wrist behind his back in a hold that brought him to his knees.

  “You may think you’re hurting now,” Holt said calmly, tightening his grip. “But it’s nothing compared to the pain of looking back on your life and realizing you wasted it. Next time I catch you screwing up, I’m going after you with everything I’ve got. But if you promise me today to make a real effort to change”—he’d released Zack’s arm and allowed him to get up, tears of pain stinging his eyes—“if you decide to make a change in your life, I’ll help.”

  The best thing Zack ever did was to take that deal. Within a year, his father was dead, having wandered drunk into the path of an oncoming truck. But by then Zack was already working for Holt, and he had a goal for his life: to become a cop.

  He wasn’t about to sacrifice the ideals he’d worked so hard to uphold. He stared at the database, trying to imagine any possible justification for Kim lying about her background in the hospital’s biography, but he came up short.

  The medical school degree seemed real, at least, so she wasn’t practicing medicine without a license. Nothing she had said or done in regards to Scarlett Hascall called her integrity into question . . . her common sense perhaps, but she did genuinely want to help the girl.

  After a long moment, he typed the name Joselyn Miller into another classified database.

  Half an hour later, he logged himself out of the various databases and search engines, cleaning up the trail he’d left. He’d found more than he ever imagined . . . more than anyone could have imagined. It all made sense. And he sympathized with Kim, he really did. But that didn’t change the fact that he’d never be able to trust her again—especially not about Scarlett’s diagnosis.

  “Zack?” Phil Taktuq was standing in front of his desk, and from his expression it was apparent he’d been standing there for a while.

  “Hey, Phil, what can I do for you?” Zack said, attempting to keep his voice neutral.

  “Two things. First—you know the phone we found on the Wilcox girl? Looks like there may be some DNA we can lift off it. The forensics lab found a little bit of hair, wedged in. Not a match for Isabel, we already know that much. We’re running some tests, should have more information in the next few days. Maybe we’ll get a match. My money’s on Sullivan.”

  Zack shook his head. “He’s into little boys.”

  Phil shrugged. “Maybe he’s into the occasional sorority girl as well. That basement Blockbuster you found him visiting? Maybe he was picking up some college porn, too, for a double feature? Just because I like redheads, doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a sexy brunette from time to time.”

  Zack frowned disapprovingly. Not a good comparison.

  Phil smiled. “Anyway, we’ll hear if they extract some DNA off the phone soon.”

  Zack nodded. “That’s great news.” Phil was right. If there was a match in the system to Albert Sullivan, they’d be set—case closed. He tried not to get too excited. “You said two things. What else?”

  “Tech managed to crack Scarlett Hascall’s password. They downloaded her hard drive and mirrored it on the system. Thought you’d want to know right away. Here’s the temporary password—use it to log in and they said it’ll basically be like you’re on her computer.”

  “Thanks,” Zack said, accepting the Post-it note. He waited until Phil ambled off in the direction of the coffee machine, staring at the scrap of paper.

  He’d actually forgotten that they’d confiscated Scarlett’s computer, in the chaos of the last few days’ developments in the case.

  He tapped the password into the departmental server.

  Instantly the background changed to a scene of the coast at sunset, a lone fishing boat silhouetted against the orange-streaked sky. Several browser windows were open: a WebMD article about an antianxiety medication; the Jarvis High football schedule—which made sense, if she wanted to watch her sister cheer; and Facebook. He clicked over to Facebook and started scrolling through the posts.

  It took Zack a moment to figure out what was off. The profile picture, a girl with her lips pursed in a trout pucker, enormous sunglasses, and a flat-rim ball cap, wasn’t Scarlett at all.

  It was Isabel Wilcox.

  Facebook was open to Izzi’s profile.

  Which meant that Scarlett had logged in as her.

  Zack had seen the profile before, after her parents gave permission for the police to search her social media. It hadn’t yielded anything useful then, and the more recent posts were all reactions to the discovery of her body. Expressions of grief and sadness, shared memories, “We miss you” and “Keeping the faith” and “Gone too soon.” There were pictures of her as a little girl, selfies with friends ranging back to her middle school days, poems and inspirational quotes and prayers.

  None of which was unexpected . . . except that Scarlett had no business logging into it. He scrolled even further back, to the weeks leading up to her disappearance. He’d been over all of it before, but he was struck again by how Izzi seemed more like an ordinary young woman than a calculating criminal. She had a sentimental, introspective bent, posting thoughtful musings that sometimes bordered on the poetic.

  Accompanying an old picture of her playing in a sprinkler with a cousin her age, she wrote, “We never thought summer would end / I always thought we’d be forever friends / But life brings pain that we never intend.” Another old photo of a young Izzi sitting cross-legged on the floor and clutching a doll, peeping out of a dark closet into a bright, sunny room strewn with toys—her bedroom, with the same white-painted bed frame and dresser visible in the background that Zack had seen when he visited the house. “Bad dreams chased me all around / But there was a special place I found / Away from scary sights and sounds.” She wasn’t a gifted poet, but neither did she seem like a conniving career criminal.

  Something about the photo caught his eye—something was off. He stared at the image, trying to discern what it was. Eventually he figured it out: the closet was in the wrong place.

  No, wait—it wasn’t the closet; it was only a small space carved out of the wall. The cubbyhole that he’d seen just the other day when they discovered Scarlett hiding behind the wall. The cubbyhole that Isabel had used as a safe space when she was having nightmares.

  The hairs stood up along Zack’s arms. Kim had used that cubbyhole as proof that Scarlett wasn’t faking—saying there was no way that Scarlett could have known about it.

  But now, here was possible proof that she did know about it. She could have studied Izzi’s life, broken into her social media, deliberately adopted details that would make Scarlett’s dead-soul infestation more credible. Perhaps she’d learned about the cubbyhole and used that knowledge to carry out a cruel ruse, causing Izzi’s parents even more pain, just to deflect suspicion from herself.

  On the other hand, if Kim’s theory was correct and Scarlett had these restless souls inside her, Scarlett must have been even more desperate to understand her alters’ history than the police or Kim were, which would be good reason for her to conduct the searches.

  But increasingly, Zack felt that he was having to work harder and harder to sustain his belief in her. Especially when there was another, far more likely explanation: Scarlett had been doing research to help her construct her alibi, her whole concocted story about the alters.

  And there was still the disturbing fact that she had never produced a satisfactory alibi for the possible nights Isabel disappeared. Combined with her connection to Brad, things definitely slanted against her again. Now, if the DNA from the phone was a match for Scarlett . . .

  Zack checked the browser history and somehow wasn’t surprised to discover that Scarlett had made dozens of recent searches into active cases. Isabel Wilcox, Brad Chaplin, Henry Beaumont. There was his
own name—“Zack Trainor Jarvis Police”—and Chief Holt Plunkett. The chill that had come over him was hardening into anger.

  “How’s it coming?”

  Zack was so absorbed in his work that he hadn’t noticed Holt come up behind him. He tilted the screen toward Holt.

  “Check this out. Last week, Scarlett started logging into Facebook.”

  “Her and about twenty million other teenagers.”

  “But how many of them have been logging into Isabel Wilcox’s account? Using Isabel’s password?” He scrolled down to the post with the picture of the cubbyhole. “Look familiar? She knew, Holt. Scarlett knew about the secret hiding spot in Izzi’s room. She could have used it to shore up her whole alternate personality fairy tale. I think she might have played us.”

  Holt leaned down to peer at the screen more closely.

  “She’s been logging in as Izzi for days,” Zack continued. “Look, Scarlett is obsessed with this girl. Killing Izzi might have been a crime of passion for her.”

  “Interesting.” Holt scratched his temple. “What about Henry? What about her fingering Sully?”

  “I don’t know. That asshole killed that little boy. That much I know. How Scarlett fits into it . . . I’m still working that part out.”

  “Well, keep at it, boy genius—see what else you can dig up.”

  “You heard about the hair? On Izzi’s phone?”

  “What?” Holt turned around, face creasing in amazement.

  “They found DNA evidence, a hair, wedged into Isabel Wilcox’s phone case. Fingerprints would have been long gone after Izzi was submerged in the water for so long—but the hair, we can get something off, maybe.”

  Holt appeared pensive. “This could finally crack the case wide open, son.”

  “Yeah, well. Let’s just hope the hair has a match in our system.” After Holt headed back to his office, Zack poked around for a while without discovering anything new, and finally ended the connection. He stared at his shut-down computer for a long moment.