Incarnate Page 27

  THIRTY-SIX

  The human resources department suggested Kim come in on the following Monday, which coincided conveniently with the start of the month, which in turn made some detail of accounting easier. The result of her reinstatement schedule was that she had several days before she officially reported back to work—after the punishing hours she was used to, Kim felt like she was drowning in all the free time.

  Two mornings later, she’d finished every chore she could think of around the apartment. Her books were alphabetized, she’d purchased new towels and sheets, and she even invested in a houseplant—not a plastic one, but an actual living houseplant—never mind the fact that it was a cactus so that when she’d forget to water it, which would inevitably happen, it would take an extra month or two to die. She even finally called her parents to let them know that everything was fine. She’d gone for a run that would leave her sore the next morning, and visited her elderly neighbor for a spirited match of Hearts.

  Kim was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing and her whole-wheat bread to pop out of the toaster when her phone rang. It was Kyle, her phone displaying the goofy photo she’d snapped of him before things between them had become strained. In it, he was peeping through the hole in a hospital cafeteria bagel and grinning, looking happier and more relaxed than he’d been in quite a while.

  He was probably calling in his capacity as her supervisor, to formally welcome her back onto the staff. While Kim was surprised and grateful that he’d stuck up for her in the review board meeting, she felt a little hesitant about seeing him anytime soon. She doubted whether she could wholly trust him again. She let the call go to voice mail.

  The rest of the morning stretched out in front of her, without an obligation in sight. Kim felt a bit at a loss on how to fill the time. She couldn’t very well water the cactus yet. Maybe she’d put on her sneakers and go for a jog down to the water and along the trail that led up to the cliffs. Maybe she’d Facebook-stalk some of the guys she liked in high school.

  Or maybe she’d just curl up in the corner of the couch and watch a scary movie on cable. 1977’s Satan’s Cheerleaders was about to start—its commercial promised that is was: “Funnier than The Omen . . . Scarier than Silent Movie.” Sold.

  She fixed herself a cup of coffee, heavy on the cream, and drank it with her toast at the kitchen table, alternating between watching the movie and enjoying the activity on the street below. A mom was getting her kids into the minivan on the way to school. A guy headed to work on his bicycle, his tie flapping behind him. The postman was getting an early start, stuffing flyers into the apartment complex mailbox. Ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.

  There was going to be a memorial service for Henry Beaumont on Saturday. A tree was going to be planted in the hole where the capsule had been, with a plaque bearing his name. His parents and the mayor were going to speak. They’d reported these details on the Anchorage syndicate, the on-air reporter looking suitably grave, saying that Sullivan’s arrest “closed the book on a sad chapter in Jarvis.” The news reporter had speculated about some of the other missing people in Jarvis throughout the years, whether Sullivan may have been responsible for their deaths, too. It was possible they would never know for sure.

  Maybe Kim would attend the service. But probably, she wouldn’t. She hadn’t been a part of the community two decades ago when Henry disappeared, wouldn’t know what to say to the grieving parents. They’d almost be old enough to be grandparents now—Henry would have been about Kim’s age if he’d lived. Kim wondered if they’d gone on to have other children, if they’d stayed married, if a day ever passed that they didn’t think about Henry. If they really did feel better now, knowing what had happened to him.

  Kim contemplated if it would have been different for her if her parents had simply disappeared, rather than being killed right in front of her. The trauma was the source of her initial dissociation with reality and her adoption of an alternate identity. Psychological repression erased not just the horrible memories of that night but all the memories of her childhood. As she had explained to Scarlett in one of their first sessions, her brain just blew a fuse to protect itself. She wondered what it would have been like to, instead, spend all these years wondering whether her mother and father were alive or dead. Agonizing over their loss without ever knowing for sure if she’d see them again.

  Kim had let her coffee go cold. She got up, dumped out the rest, and poured herself a fresh cup. While she was stirring in the cream, she called Scarlett.

  “Hey,” she said. “You busy?”

  * * *

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, Kim drove to the Hascalls’ house, and she and Scarlett went for a walk on the dirt path that led from the cul-de-sac up the slope to a ridge from which they could see the entire town laid out below. Scarlett took a couple of protein bars from her day pack and offered one to Kim. They ate in silence, enjoying the sunshine.

  Since she had last seen Scarlett, Kim knew that Scarlett had twice been to see Kyle for psychiatric sessions. Until Kim was officially “on the clock,” Kyle wanted to help her avoid breaking any more rules than she normally would, and he felt that being a stopgap with Scarlett’s therapy was the least he could do to help.

  “You have to agree, there are a few things that just don’t add up,” Kim finally said. Kim’s doubts had been nagging her for the last few days, as she watched the coverage of the case on television, and corresponded with Scarlett online, who was anxiously hoping, upon Albert Sullivan’s arrest, that the Izzi alter would disappear, too, just as Henry had. Here, with Scarlett, was the first time Kim allowed herself to voice these doubts out loud.

  “Cops sure seem to think it’s all neat and tidy.” Scarlett’s expression was hard to read.

  “Well,” Kim said, making a face, “they’ve been known to be wrong before. I mean—how did your DNA end up connected to Isabel? How could a strand of your hair possibly have ended up in that phone case?”

  “A mistake.” Scarlett shrugged. “Down at the lab. With the DNA sample.”

  “Yeah, okay, let’s say you’re right. A simple mix-up. I guess it’s bound to happen now and again, even with something this important. But what about Albert?” Kim pushed. This had been bothering her, and it felt good to finally get it out. “The way he denied knowing anything about Isabel? Didn’t you feel like Albert’s whole energy was different around that?”

  “Mmm,” Scarlett said, folding up the wrappers and stuffing them back in her pack. “I don’t know. I mean, he’s a criminal. He lies; it’s what he does. He could easily have killed her and a half-dozen other people, like they’ve been saying on the news.”

  “Yes, but then why would he confess to killing Henry but not the others? Why even admit he was attracted to children at all, instead of just denying the whole thing?”

  “Kim, you were pointing a gun at him. I was there. You shot out a mirror. He just didn’t want you to kill him! He confessed to save his own life.”

  “I don’t know. It still doesn’t add up for me. I feel like . . .” Kim paused, knowing that what she was about to say would be taking the top off a hornet’s nest that had just barely, finally settled down. “I feel like we should say something.”

  “Say something? To who?”

  Kim took a breath. “I feel like we should talk to Chief Plunkett.”

  Scarlett’s face fell and she slowly shook her head. Kim could read the weariness and reluctance in her expression. She felt terrible for dragging the girl through more ugliness, but she was convinced it would be better to dig down to the truth than to lay the case to rest now.

  After all, Scarlett’s alters apparently wouldn’t move on until they had seen justice done. And while Albert deserved the harshest punishment a jury could give him for what he’d done to Henry, Kim wasn’t convinced that Izzi had been his victim. If the incriminating photos were real, and Albert Sullivan killed Isabel Wilcox, why hadn’t she . . . moved on?

  “We can drive over
to the station now,” Kim said. “I’ll be right there. I’ll do the talking. You’ll be safe.”

  “Dad won’t like it,” Scarlett said, but Kim could see that she’d already resigned herself to the task. “Could we at least talk to Detective Trainor instead?”

  “Seriously?” Kim asked, surprised. “Holt’s always been more open-minded about your condition than Zack. Zack’s the one who pushed for your arrest, was convinced you were involved in Izzi’s murder. Why would you want to talk to him instead?”

  Scarlett shrugged. “He’s nice, most of the time. Besides, he’s into you. So that might come in handy.” Scarlett smiled. “I mean, come on, you call him Zack.”

  Kim blushed, wondering if Scarlett was trying to do a little matchmaking. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything . . . and, besides, he had to go out of town. He’s chasing down some lead in the missing-hunter case. Anyway, it might be better for us to talk to Chief Plunkett . . .” She quickly corrected herself to make a point. “Holt.”

  “You feel like . . . Holt . . . might be more receptive?”

  Kim considered. “Put it this way—I don’t think he’ll be any less receptive.”

  “I just don’t know.”

  “I do,” Kim said. “Did you kill Isabel Wilcox?”

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t. But neither did Albert Sullivan. Which means that there’s still a very bad person out there.”

  Scarlett sat still, going over all this in her head. But Kim went in for the kill. “Look, I’ve thought about it a lot these past few days . . . what if your alters have been just wanting justice all along? What if—I mean, Henry kept talking about how cold he was, how dark it was. Now finally his parents are going to be able to lay him to rest. Maybe that’s what he needed all along. And I saw Izzi after we took down Albert. You tell me, Scarlett, is she gone? Is Izzi gone?”

  Scarlett shook her head silently.

  “You know I’m right. I mean, presumably Izzi wants the same thing as Henry did—to see the person who killed her locked up, so he can’t hurt anyone else—so she feels like she was avenged. And yet, even though Sullivan is behind bars, she’s still there, waiting for something more. If the wrong person is blamed for her murder, and then the case is closed, she’ll never be able to rest.” And, she didn’t add, she might continue to plague Scarlett indefinitely.

  But it seemed like Scarlett didn’t need her to draw that connection for the truth to sink in. After a few more moments of thought, she stood and shouldered her pack. “Okay then,” Scarlett said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  THEY WAITED AT THE front desk while the receptionist went to find Holt. The station was a hive of activity. Some of the officers were working at their computers, while others crowded around the open-case bulletin boards; Phil Taktuq was alone, sitting calmly at his desk. He gave them a long, pointed look as they walked in, as if he knew why they were there. Kim looked away, pretending to be interested in a phone conversation that Evelyn was having. “I told you I can’t comment,” she kept repeating in exasperation, presumably to a pushy reporter.

  The receptionist came back and said that the chief could give them a few minutes in his office. Kim and Scarlett made their way back, and Holt stood up behind his desk and gave them a tired smile that quickly faded from his face.

  “Might as well shut the door, girls. Kind of a crazy day out there.”

  He offered them chairs and took a seat with his meaty forearms resting on the desk. “I don’t want this going anywhere before we take it public,” he said. “Gonna have a press conference this afternoon. But I feel like you two deserve to know. Albert Sullivan killed himself in the holding cell overnight.”

  “What?”

  “I take the blame—he just used the usual crap sheets on the bed. He hung himself.” Holt shrugged. “Wouldn’t have thought the old bastard had it in him. Anyway, that’s pretty much the end of the road for the Beaumont and Wilcox investigations. We’re shutting ’em down. I’m just disappointed that we haven’t been able to link that degenerate to any of the other disappearances first.” Holt looked beaten, like he had let the community down by not stopping Sullivan sooner. After a long moment of reflection, he shrugged. “I guess Albert gave himself the easy way out.”

  “Chief Plunkett,” Kim said. “Sir. We wanted to talk to you. We’re concerned about the inconsistencies in Isabel’s murder.” She laid out the issues they’d discussed earlier—Albert’s stark denial of ever having met Isabel. How Scarlett still felt that the Isabel alter was inside her, waiting for something more.

  “Now hold on a minute,” Holt said. “You two, I know you’ve both been through a lot. We owe you a debt of gratitude and probably an apology for not giving your story more of a chance the first time you brought it to us. But what you’re talking about, honey, is evidence that pointed to Scarlett. I’m sure you can agree there isn’t much sense to opening up that whole can of worms now.”

  “But I never knew Isabel,” Scarlett protested. “I don’t think I ever even met her. There’s just no way that my hair could have gotten on her phone. What if—”

  “Listen, dear, let me tell you something I’ve learned in forty years of being a cop,” Holt said kindly, folding his hands on the desk. “Sometimes, you get to the end of the road and you still don’t have all the loose ends tied up. Our evidence room is full of cases like that, all the odds and ends that didn’t perfectly fit. Who can say why? Life is messy. Crooks don’t generally help clear things up much. So you do the best you can. And the best we can do here is to give the families the chance to bury their children and finally sleep at night knowing the monster who took them will be punished.”

  “I guess,” Scarlett said reluctantly.

  Kim started to speak, but Holt pushed back his chair, signaling the end of the conversation. “Okay, ladies, I sure appreciate you stopping by, but I need to run home and change into something presentable before the news conference. You see all the news vans in town? They’ll all be up here soon, taking up every damn space in the parking lot, acting like they own the place.” He shook his head in disgust. “They’re like a swarm of piranhas. Only way to control ’em is to feed ’em a little bit of what they came lookin’ for.”

  He offered Kim his hand, nearly crushing hers when he shook it.

  Back in Kim’s car, Scarlett slumped dejectedly against the door. “Well, that didn’t go anywhere,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Kim said, regretting that she’d ever brought it up.

  “It’s okay. I mean, once I started thinking about what you said, it kind of bothered me, too. Kim . . .”

  She paused, clearly unsure of what she was about to say.

  “It’s okay,” Kim reassured her. “You can tell me anything.”

  “About Isabel . . . her alter, I mean. I don’t even know how to explain it, because I sort of go blank when they take over, but I can sort of feel her underneath my thoughts, waiting.” Scarlett was silent for a long moment. “She’s not happy.”

  “You think she’s waiting for us to solve the case, like with Henry? That she doesn’t feel the right person has been arrested yet?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” Scarlett shoved her hand through her hair in frustration. “I mean, whenever I sense her presence, I feel all these emotions sort of flash by. It scares me, because I know it’s only a matter of time before she comes out again. She’s afraid, and sad, and desperate. I feel like she’s trying to . . . not get out exactly, but see out, to understand what happened to her, if that makes sense.”

  “Can you tell me a little more about—about what that feels like? For you?”

  Scarlett squeezed her thighs. “I mean, it’s nothing new. I never talk about it, because it makes me sound, you know, crazy, but ever since I can remember, sometimes these weird thoughts flash through my mind that aren’t connected to whatever I’m doing right then. It’s them, I think . . . just, like, waiting. And usually I don�
��t even notice, but whenever they get upset or whatever, sometimes it sort of . . .” She shrugged, unable to find the right words.

  Kim came to her rescue. “I think what you’re saying is that when an alter experiences a powerful emotion, it can spill over into your own thoughts.”

  Scarlett took a deep breath. “Sometimes, I feel this . . . uncontrollable urge to run. As fast as I can. But I just can’t run away from myself. You know?”

  Kim reached over and grabbed the girl’s hand. “I do know.” She squeezed it. “I know.”

  Scarlett twisted a lock of hair around her finger, unable to meet Kim’s eyes.

  Kim ached for her. She’d spent most of her own life plagued by memories and thoughts that she couldn’t share with anyone—that she couldn’t run away from—so it was devastating to know that Scarlett felt the same way.

  “I believe we can compel the alters to leave,” Kim said carefully, “but the only way to convince them is to resolve whatever issues are keeping them from moving on. In your case, it seems like what they’re waiting for is justice.”

  “But how can we possibly give them that?” Scarlett said. “If Albert Sullivan didn’t kill Izzi, how are we going to possibly find who did?”

  Kim responded resolutely. “We’ve already succeeded with Henry. And we’re going to find out the truth about Izzi, too. Come on, let’s go talk to the chief again. We’ve got to try, before he makes an announcement that the case is closed.”

  “You want to talk to him now? Before the press conference?”

  “Why not?” Kim asked, pointing across the parking lot, where the chief was just walking over to his car. “There he goes. He said he was going home. Maybe we can talk to him there. He might be more open to . . . alternate theories.”

  “You were going to say ‘crazy’ theories.”

  “Fine. Crazy theories. He might be more open away from the pressure of the station, and all the press.”