Fated (5 page)

“W
HAT
DID
he want?” Freddie leaned against the driver’s-side door of her blue Toyota, arms crossed. The large aviator sunglasses on her nose made her face hard to read.

“Nothing. Let’s go to the station. I need to call the captain, and my phone’s dead.” The damn thing always died when he needed it most. Hart yanked the passenger door open and sank down into the seat, ignoring Freddie’s smirk. Let her think what she wanted, even if she thought he was a homophobic asshole.

“You’re not exactly dressed to go to the station.” Freddie started the car and reversed while putting her seat belt on.

“It’s all I’ve got.” Hart turned his attention to the streets, the sun bright and hard on the shop fronts.

Soon he became drawn into the familiarity of Brightly. The frozen yogurt place was still there, the one where he always got free toppings when he was a kid. Some shops had new owners for sure, but the buildings were the same even if the streets seemed smaller than he remembered, and Hart felt a maudlin melancholy settle over his bones. Traffic was dense as they drove into town, dragging Hart backward in time. Apparently the road to the past was paved with rough tarmac. He’d been happy here as a kid, hadn’t he? The feeling of disappointment hadn’t started until he’d become old enough to know his plans didn’t align with his father’s.

Part of him expected Freddie to start asking questions, but she kept silent as they crawled along with downtown traffic, her eyes automatically searching the road ahead and behind. Once she honked her horn twice, and a man in a dark green ranger uniform looked up and gave her a small wave. Hart didn’t ask who he was, and she didn’t offer an explanation. Shadow Mountain, surrounding the northern half of Brightly, was huge and densely forested, and the state employed a fair number of park rangers to take care of it. Hart and his dad, and later his friends, had gone hiking there regularly. It would’ve been nice to find the time to go back there for a day, but that seemed unlikely to happen now.

They made it out of the slow-moving line of cars and sped up toward the edge of town. Here the Mountain loomed dark and forbidding over the valley, the green treetops almost black against the sharp sunlight. Between those trees, wildlife roamed freely, nothing on their minds but to eat or be eaten. Deer were as common as rats in those woods, and more than once in his childhood Hart had come across a coyote. He’d heard wolves howl but had never seen one, and once Hart and his dad had witnessed the large shape of a bear roaming their campsite while they sat silent in their tent. The memory thrilled him now, despite how terrified he’d been at the time.

“We’re here.”

Hart blinked and lifted his head. “This isn’t a parking spot.”

The Camry sat, ignition off, wedged into a designated walkway between two cop cars. The familiar police station rose above the steps in front of them. Freddie’s eyes searched Hart’s face, and for a moment he thought she’d ask him something, but instead she yanked her purse off the backseat and got out of the car. Without waiting for him, she began to climb the stairs, so he left the car and went after her.

At the top of the steps Freddie whirled around. “Try to act like a cop even if you don’t look like one, all right? I get enough shit from these idiots.” She didn’t give him a chance to respond.

Hardly anyone paid any mind when they entered the building. A man with more hair on his top lip than his head buzzed them in, and Freddie marched past a row of desks without glancing at the officers sitting behind them. Some didn’t look up, a few checked who was passing, and one or two lingered on Hart as he followed Freddie through, probably wondering why he looked so familiar.

At the end of the row of desks was a corridor with four offices, and Freddie marched straight to the one at the end on the left, like Hart knew she would. Freddie opened the door after a brisk knock.

“Freddie, I know you can knock and wait for an answer. I’ve seen you do it before.” Superintendent Miller’s attention didn’t waver from his keyboard as he said it; he just continued typing with his index fingers. After twenty seconds or so, he looked at the screen, and his face fell. “Caps lock? Oh
man
.” He sighed and sat back, finally taking in his two visitors.

“Lieutenant Hart.” Miller slapped the armrests of his chair and heaved himself up. He’d gained maybe ten or fifteen pounds since Hart had seen him last, but he was still an impressive man. Six feet six at least, strong features, with a nose that had been broken more than once. It had been that way when he’d come over from some major city—Hart couldn’t remember which one—twenty years ago to take the superintendent job. “It’s good to see you, buddy.” Miller reached out a hand, and Hart shook it, finding comfort in the warmth of the man’s firm grasp. For the first time since he arrived, he felt something close to coming home. “I’ve been hearing good things about you. Rumor on the mill is you’re up for promotion.”

Hart shrugged. “You probably know more than I do, sir.”

Miller released his hand and sat back down. “We’re not so formal here. Call me Brian. Or Supe. That’s what Freddie here calls me.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Freddie give Miller a wide grin. “Although I’ve got to ask….” Miller looked him up and down. “Didn’t you bring a suit?”

Hart unclenched his teeth with effort. “Only the one, sir.”

“Ah.” Miller rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at Freddie. “Yes, of course. I’m very sorry about…. He was a good man.” Miller cleared his throat and then indicated the chair opposite his desk. “You have something about that coma in Brightly General?”

“Yes.” Hart closed the door, let Freddie take the chair, and grabbed a stool for himself. “We’ve had unsolved murders that fit Drake’s pattern in the past year. Superficially it seems the victims don’t have anything in common. Not gender, not race, no family members or friends, hair color, eye color, anything. What they do have is a strange tattoo-like mark on the back of their necks.”

“A mark?” Miller narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘tattoo-like’?”

Hart left Freddie to explain, while he thought through what he’d say next. It had been too strange for words until now, but with Drake’s cured ALS there was no way it was a coincidence.

“There’s something else.” Hart took a deep breath. “Every single one of the victims we’ve come across had a severe, chronic, or incurable illness that miraculously disappeared at some point before their deaths.”

“Illness that disappeared?” Miller sat down in front of his computer. He began to scroll through something, then banged his mouse on the desk. “Oh for—There we are.” He read for a while, then said, “Captain Johnson doesn’t say anything about illnesses in his e-mail.”

“It’s in the files, Supe.” Freddie rummaged through her bag and pulled out a tablet. With a slim red-nailed finger, she turned it on and tapped on a file. “Mona O’Keefe, ovarian cancer. Arthur Nash, acute liver disease.” She looked at Hart, who was impressed. He had nearly missed the curing of their illnesses since it was barely mentioned in the medical files. He’d begun to suspect if doctors couldn’t explain something, they called it remission. It looked better than medical miracle, he supposed.

Hart turned away from her. “This could be significant, but the really interesting thing is…. Can I?” Hart pulled out his phone and plugged it into the white cable hanging loose from Miller’s computer. The superintendent shrugged like he didn’t know exactly what the cable was for. Hart waited long enough for the battery to charge a little, and then turned on his phone. Freddie came to stand next to him so all three could look at the pictures of the marks. “The tattoo-like marks are all around twenty millimeters in diameter, located just below the occipital bone. The shapes vary marginally, but all of them resemble an
X
. Or as Tob—Doctor Darwin pointed out, a butterfly. Riverside’s pathologist confirmed that these marks aren’t ordinary tattoos.”

Miller sighed. “We’ll have our own pathologist take a look. Hart, these are strange marks for sure, but they’re not evidence of any kind. What makes you think these deaths are related?”

“The first victim, Mona O’Keefe, black female, late twenties, unmarried, and no kids, had stage four ovarian cancer, which had metastasized to several major organs. It took some digging, but I found out that between one checkup and the next, it all disappeared. Then, four weeks later, she was found dead in her bed.”

“Any sign of assault?”

Hart shook his head. “Not with her. But then there’s Arthur Nash. Early forties, Caucasian male, divorced, one child. Advanced liver cirrhosis, woke up healed, six weeks later he was found strangled, with a head wound, in his own office. Samuel Hiatt, Caucasian male, midthirties, married with two kids. Had a car accident, would never walk again. File shows severe depression. His wife saw him walk down the stairs one day like nothing had happened; four weeks later, he was found dead in his basement. He was the first case for our new pathologist, and she found the mark, albeit a very faint one.”

“Signs of assault?”

“None,” Hart said.

“And Connor Martin was the second with a mark,” Freddie added. She read from her tablet. “Twenty-one-year-old on a mission in Central Africa, contracts typhoid fever despite being immunized. Gets evaced back to Riverside immediately, has a reaction to the antibiotics, and is in a coma by the time they touch down. He wakes up again a week later in Riverside’s Sacred Heart hospital, and when they test his blood, there’s no trace of the bacteria. None. Four weeks later he was found in the bathroom of a bar, dead.”

“No sign of assault,” Miller said meaningfully.

Freddie hesitated. “No, sir.”

“It’s a hunch, but there’s enough evidence now to suggest these deaths aren’t natural.”

“Circumstantial evidence. Some of these cases don’t even look like murder at all.” Something the captain had been quick to point out too, before he let Hart on the case.

“I don’t agree,” Freddie said, surprising Hart again. “Those tattoos are really strange, and while they’re not identical, they’re close enough. That’s someone’s signature. Or in Ben’s case, someone trying to copy that signature, which indicates there’s something to copy to begin with. We just don’t know what it is yet.”

“Don’t even try and start on about a copycat, Lesley. I’m not convinced of one murderer yet, never mind two. Maybe this is all just some weird cult. People hacking into medical records to pretend someone can heal the sick. That would be a moneymaker if I’ve ever seen one.” Miller sat back, glanced at his computer, and then at Hart again. He wasn’t trying to get them to drop this; he was trying to make them think it through. He needn’t have worried. Thinking about this was all Hart had been doing lately. Until his dad died, anyway.

“Possible.” Hart turned off his phone and unplugged it. He’d charge it in the car. “But it’s still suspicious whatever it is, and I’d like to get to the bottom of this.”

Miller shrugged. “You’re here on leave. How you spend it is your business, as long as you keep your head down and take Freddie along to any interviews or investigation you plan on doing. But if I were you, I’d see if there isn’t a strange new religious group raising flags.” He nodded at Freddie, who turned on her heels and left the room, and then focused fully on him. “I know you like to work on your own, but not in my district, all right, boy?”

Hart laughed and shook his head. “What are you calling me boy for? I’m not that young.” Miller smiled at him, his eyes growing soft and maybe a little wistful.

“You did good, just like he said you would. He was proud, you know.”

“Yeah,” Hart said. He didn’t know such a thing at all. Even when his mother had died, the world hadn’t come to an end. She’d worked a lot, and while he’d loved her deeply, and her loss had been painful beyond belief, Hart had always looked toward his father if he’d done something worthy of praise. It had hardly ever come.

They parted for lunch. Freddie didn’t suggest grabbing something together, and Hart didn’t ask, either. She dropped him off at his car outside Brightly General, and the first thing he did was drive back into town. Burton & Son was still there, so he parked around the back of the store in the communal parking lot. While their suits were more expensive than what he usually wore for work, he knew they could have something ready for him by the end of the day.

Only Burton had apparently retired, and it was just his son now.

“You look familiar,” the guy said as he led Hart toward the tall section in the back.

“I used to live around here.” Hart didn’t elaborate but studied a lovely gray tie instead. It would go nicely with his black suit for Sunday.

“This light gray suit would really complement your brown hair. It has a slight blue tint to it that will accentuate the blue in your eyes.”

“Uh.” While he liked the suit, Hart wasn’t sure he could pull it off here for work. Its fine cut and unusual color didn’t exactly spell “keep your head down.” “Yeah, sure. I’ll try it on.”

Forty minutes later, he walked out empty-handed. He would pick up the shirts, gray tie, and three suits—including the light gray one—at six o’clock the same evening. The suits should all be hemmed in by then. Hart didn’t quite look the guy in the eye as he left; there were too many questions swimming in his gaze. Hart wasn’t ready to talk about his dad. That grief was too raw still. He needed to cradle it close to his chest until it could burn out a little, and maybe then it could be shared.

Oddly enough that made him think about Isaac and the rough and clumsy hug he’d forced on Hart when they’d parted. It had been quick and a little bit painful, the pat on his back too hard, but it had roused thoughts that took nearly the entire three-hour drive through Shadow Mountain to force down.

He just wasn’t ready to confront it yet.

On his way back to the parking lot, Hart could feel the phantom of that hug, the imprint of Isaac’s arms around him. He shook his head, rolled his shoulders, and looked around. The lot had filled up with the lunch crowd while he was in the shop, and he couldn’t quite recall where he’d left his car.