Virtue Falls

  But it was still Yvonne.

  For twenty-three years, Dennis Foster had pretended that he’d done the right thing when he investigated Misty Banner’s murder. He had convinced himself, almost, that he had done everything possible to convict the man who murdered her.

  But he couldn’t fool himself anymore. That little pipsqueak Garik Jacobsen was right. Dennis Foster was guilty, at the very least, of conspiracy to conceal evidence. He’d thrown away the FBI flyer, but he knew what it said. And he knew what Yvonne’s murder meant.

  The killer wasn’t in San Francisco; or San Diego; or Vancouver, British Columbia The killer was in Virtue Falls.

  He looked down at his own hands.

  He wasn’t sure the killer wasn’t sitting in this chair.

  * * *

  Garik walked out of the resort’s front door, and there Elizabeth was, sitting in his truck, rummaging through her bag, humming as she riffled through the stuff she always carried to the dig. She looked so pleased with herself, so confident, so happy, that he finally yielded to the inevitable.

  She loved geology as much as she loved him, and he might as well figure she was going to work every day whether he liked it or not. And he might as well get enthused about that branch of the sciences, because it would be part of his life forever. And he had better figure out what he was going to do for a living, because he was going to be living in Virtue Falls … with Elizabeth.

  This was no one-way street. She had wholeheartedly joined in his hunt for her mother’s killer, following him through his initial instincts when with her logical mind and his lack of evidence, she must have been convinced he was overreacting.

  Now, she looked up, saw him, and smiled.

  No, she didn’t merely smile. She glowed. Because he was near.

  How cool was that?

  Somehow, the two of them had become the world’s most unlikely couple. In the future, they would fight, laugh, talk, love—but they would always, always be together.

  He smiled back. Glowed back. He walked across the sunny parking lot toward the driver’s door, intent on kissing her, telling her what he had realized their life would be, when something happened that hadn’t happened for far too long; his pocket vibrated. For a moment, he wondered what it was. Then he pulled out his cell phone and stared at the screen. It showed an incoming call. From the county.

  He had service. “I have service,” he said. Then he shouted, “I have cell service!”

  Elizabeth grinned at him. “I do, too,” she called through the open window. Then, “Are you going to answer it?”

  “Right.” He did. “Hello?”

  “It’s, um, Sheriff Foster.” Pause.

  Garik’s grin faded. “Yes?”

  “I’d like to see you ASAP.” Pause. “I’m at the courthouse.”

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can.” He hung up.

  Dennis Foster sounded as if he had finally, really, completely flipped out.

  Garik would go in prepared for an ambush.

  As he stared at the phone in his hand, texts crowded the screen of his phone, the first one from the day he put his gun in his mouth. The numbers mounted up, he felt an absolute sense of WTF. Then he laughed at himself. He’d wanted to be connected again. This was his punishment.

  He walked to the passenger door. “I have to check in with my supervisor at the FBI, and I need to do it while I’ve got service. Can you wait?”

  Elizabeth hopped out of the truck with her bag over her shoulder. With that same happy, I’m-going-to-work smile, she announced, “While I have greatly enjoyed having you haul me all over Virtue Falls, this time I’ll drive myself.”

  Oh, no. “What? Where? How?”

  “First, I’m going to go to see my father. Then I’m going to go to the Oceanview Café and get a coffee. Then I’m going to go to work. And I’m going in my own car.” He was appalled, and she knew it, because she viewed him with a mixture of humor and displeasure. She pulled her car keys out of her bag and dangled them in front of his face. “I can drive, you know, and very well. I’m from California, where only the swift and agile survive.”

  “I know that. It’s the—”

  “I know. It’s the danger.” She stepped closer, body to body. “There’s a killer on the loose. Don’t worry. I’ve got a phone. You’ve got a phone. We’ve got service, which means someone out there in the great big world is actually fixing something.”

  “Like I have faith in that!”

  “I’ll check in. You check in. We’ll be in contact all the time. I will be careful, I promise.” Standing on her toes, she kissed his lips.

  He wrapped his arm around her waist, held her as if he could never let her go, and kissed her back.

  Then he let her go.

  She said, “I have promised to be careful. Now—you promise to be careful, too.” She smiled, but her eyes were anxious.

  “I will.” He watched her walk to her car, get in, and drive away.

  Standing there in the middle of the parking lot, he called Tom Perez. Because he damned well needed to get this case wrapped up, and fast, before Elizabeth got hurt.

  The call wouldn’t go through.

  He swore, viciously and fluently.

  But the phone showed three bars. He had a connection, and he needed Tom Perez.

  He opened his e-mail to see if Tom had tried to contact him.

  He had.

  The first e-mail was from the morning of the earthquake, and had “Scissors” in the subject line. Tom Perez said, I sent out an agent to this helicopter guy’s house and caught him as he was leaving on a job. Agent scared the guy …

  “Good,” Garik muttered.

  … Guy claimed he’d mailed the package the night before, dropped it at a box at the post office. Agent told him he was in trouble if he was lying. Guy insisted he was telling the truth. So now we wait for the USPS to work their magic.

  One from yesterday. Got the scissors. Told the lab which case we were reviewing. Scissors got bumped to the front of the line. Tech said, it’s like having the Shroud of Turin in my lab.

  This morning: Scissors have fingerprints on the handles in the murder grip. Fingerprints not Charles Banner’s. Fingerprint is unknown, but it matches a partial at a murder in San Francisco.

  Garik replied, Urgently need FBI secure network on my phone.

  The software appeared. He logged in with another trick password. And he typed, What murder?

  The latest Edward Scissorhands.

  Thumbs suspended above the keyboard, Garik stared at the screen. Then: What in the fuck are you talking about? Are you saying Misty Banner’s murderer is a serial killer who slaughters … His brain put the pieces together, and every one of them snapped into place. Of course. Edward Scissorhands, who slaughters blond mothers and their children, then mutilates the children.

  Tom messaged: He cuts the children’s eyes out.

  Garik’s mind worked feverishly. Yes. The children … can’t see what he did if they have no eyes.

  Tom agreed. If you’re one sick bastard, that is the way you would think.

  This all comes back to Misty Banner’s murder. Garik sprinted toward his truck.

  He didn’t see Tom Perez’s last message: Keep me in the loop. I’m ready to send agents into Virtue Falls.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  Everyday when the sun shone, the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility residents were encouraged to come outside. Supervised by the medical staff, they wandered the paths of the small garden at the front to the side of the building. It was there Elizabeth found Charles, sitting on a bench, smiling at an exuberant climbing rose.

  “Hey.” She dropped a kiss on the top of his head.

  He stared at her, as he always did, as he tried to place her. Then his face lit up. “Elizabeth! How good to see you.”

  She beamed. Any day when he recognized her was a good day. She seated herself beside him on the bench. “Do you want to see the tsunami video?”

  “N
ot today, dear.” Apparently he recalled it from the dozen times he’d viewed it before. “I was wondering how the work was progressing après tsunami.”

  “In the canyon?” Her enthusiasm bubbled over. “There’s so many exciting discoveries. When we can get marine biologists in to view the remains of some of the creatures the ocean brought up from the depths, I think we’ll have a whole new branch of science buzzing with excitement.”

  “What have you seen?” He faced her, and his blue eyes sparkled.

  “The last time I was at the dig”—the day she was attacked—“I found a shrimp which I swear has only been recorded off the coast of Japan. Here.” She brought out her laptop and showed him photos.

  He frowned. “I can’t quite see…”

  “The fog rolled in. The light was bad. I wasn’t paying attention…” She pulled out her notebook and pencil. “The swimmerets on the abdomen didn’t have the same joints as the common shrimp we see off the Washington coast. They looked more like this.” She sketched them and frowned. “That’s not good. It was more like this.” She sketched again. “Well, that’s not good, either. They had an extra joint right here…” She strained to get it right.

  Charles laughed. “I know where you got your artistic talent from.”

  She looked at him inquiringly.

  “Me.” He tapped his chest.

  “You? But when I was young, the drawings you did were very good.”

  “Not mine.” He laughed again.

  “Yes.” She knew what she was talking about. “You took an art class from Bradley Hoff.”

  “Your mother got good. I was terrible.” He seemed to think he knew what he was talking about.

  “No, really. Look.” Pulling out her album, she flipped to the drawings. “There’s the one that Mama drew of me. I look a little lopsided, and one of my eyes is higher than the other, but I like it.” Her fingers lingered on the edges of the vellum. Then she turned the page. “Here’s the one you drew of Mama. It’s just a pencil sketch, but so lifelike. It’s as if you captured her essence, a happy smile that masked a tinge of sadness. She looks … kind. Loving.”

  Charles’s hand hovered over the drawing, and his fingers trembled. “That is Misty. It is.” He withdrew his hand. “But I have never seen that drawing before. And I didn’t do it.”

  “Who else would have done it?”

  Charles stared at the drawing, and everything about his expression was dry, brittle, like leaves that had fallen and waited for winter to turn to dust.

  She insisted, “Who else would have drawn that?”

  Charles looked up, then away. “One of the other students.”

  “That’s ridiculous. None of the other students would draw a picture like that of my mother. Not one so … so complete. So thoughtful. It had to be you.” It had to be.

  “Everyone loved her,” he said.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Of course. That’s what I’ve heard so often.”

  Maybe Charles couldn’t create that drawing now. But he had Alzheimer’s. He had reverted. He had forgotten.

  Her father had created this drawing.

  He had to have. Because … who else could it be?

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  Garik strode into the Virtue Falls City Hall like the meanest, maddest agent of justice since Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

  Foster must have recognized Garik’s attitude, because when he saw Garik making his way across the floor, around and through the rubble, he got to his feet.

  Garik walked up to him, chest to chest. “We need to go someplace private where we can talk.”

  Foster glanced at Mona. He jerked his thumb toward the back. “Evidence room.” As they walked, he asked, “You know your way around there, don’t you?”

  Garik’s temper simmered. “No. But Mike did. You remember Mike Sun. You burned his house.”

  Foster flung himself around and shouted, “Shut up. You shut up!”

  The chatter in the big room died. Everyone stared.

  Foster glanced around, then headed toward the back again.

  He unlocked the narrow door and stepped aside to let Garik in.

  “After you,” Garik said.

  Foster sneered, but he led the way.

  The cramped evidence room smelled musty; the lack of air conditioning encouraged the humid ocean air to do its damage. The shelves were full, but one white box was on the floor, open and empty. The box was marked BANNER MURDER.

  Garik kept his hands free and stood ready to attack.

  Foster just looked at him out of those bloodshot, hopeless eyes. “You probably wonder why I called you, of all people.”

  Garik’s temper exploded. “I don’t give a fuck why you called me. You know that Mike took the evidence for the Banner case. I sent those scissors to the FBI for testing. Those unknown fingerprints, the ones the killer put on the scissors? They match a print in San Francisco, one from the serial killer called Edward Scissorhands.”

  Foster’s dull eyes didn’t even flicker. He did not say a word.

  “You … knew.” Garik was incredulous—and angry. “You knew.”

  “I didn’t know. I suspected.” Foster looked down. “Yvonne Rudda’s body washed up at Beggar’s Creek.”

  Garik staggered backward. “God. Yvonne. I told her … she had that dog. And her guns. How…?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Someone she knew.”

  “Yes.”

  Garik’s fists flexed. “We have a serial killer loose in Virtue Falls, a guy who’s killed dozens of women and children, a serial killer who’s after Charles Banner and his daughter, and takes any woman who gets in his way—and you didn’t care.”

  “I care.”

  “You care about your reputation more.”

  Foster licked his lips. “It’s worse than that. I’m not sure it’s not me.”

  That made Garik take a step forward. “What are you talking about?”

  “Wherever the murders take place, I’m there.” Foster took a moment to swallow. “I’m close enough to get to those women, kill them and their kids, and get back to my law enforcement conference without anybody ever knowing.”

  “But you know you didn’t do it.”

  Foster’s eyes flickered. “I don’t remember. I go to sleep, you know, and I dream, and I wake up and a few days or weeks later, I hear another woman’s been killed.”

  “You’re not making sense.” Which was, Garik knew, the definition of madness. But was this craziness? Or was this Dennis Foster making excuses for himself?

  “I don’t like women. Okay? I’ve never liked women. Those high-pitched voices and those soft bodies they fling around to entrap men.” Foster’s lips curled as he was nauseated. “Women are evil, created by God to ruin men. We should treat them like cattle. Instead, we exalt them.” He looked at his hands. “So I could have done it. I could have done all of it.”

  “Show me your ribs,” Garik said.

  “What?”

  “Show me your ribs.”

  For one moment, Foster looked as if he was going to refuse. Then his face crumpled. He pulled his shirt out from under his belt, lifted it, and revealed pale, unmarked skin.

  “I kicked the shit out of the killer,” Garik said. “Don’t flatter yourself, You’re not the guy. You don’t have what it takes to be a good cop, and you don’t have what it takes to be a serial killer.”

  At last Foster sparked to life. He reached for his gun.

  Garik took him out with an uppercut that snapped Foster’s head back and sent him careening with a clang into the metal shelving. White boxes fell. Foster tripped on the shower of evidence and landed on his ass.

  Garik leaned over and took Foster by the collar. He jerked his head and shoulders off the floor, and spoke right into his face. “Don’t try and build yourself up in your own mind. You killed your mother. You burned down the Suns’ house. You’re responsible for withholding the evidence that got all those women and the
ir little kids murdered most horribly. That’s enough. That’s plenty. Live with that.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  Elizabeth stood at the counter, holding her coffee in both hands and shaking her head in disbelief. “How was she killed?”

  “The way I understand it,” Mrs. Ubach said, “she got caught by that second round of tsunamis and drowned.”

  “You keep believing that, Pollyanna. I heard she had her throat cut and her eyes gouged out.” Mrs. Branyon smirked. “I wonder who would do that … Elizabeth Banner?”

  Elizabeth comprehended; this old woman was calling her a killer, a woman who would murder a friend and mutilate the body. Fury roared through her; nothing she had done deserved that insinuation. With a snap quite unlike her usual calm manner, Elizabeth said, “Yvonne Rudda was my father’s nurse, and my friend, and if she is really dead, I will mourn her in the fullness of my heart. So let us not make her possible death fodder for gossip.”

  “You tell her, sister,” Mrs. Branyon’s daughter said.

  Mrs. Branyon whipped around and glared. “Frances!”

  “Mother, that was mean. And today, with Yvonne gone, it’s … just…” Frances dug a shredded tissue out of her pocket and wiped her nose. “Really mean.”

  The Oceanview Café was packed with people gathered here to share their shock and grief. They sat with their phones out, staring blankly, typing, staring some more. Conversation came in fits and starts, words spoken in low voices by friends who didn’t know, didn’t believe, couldn’t bear to think it was true.

  Noah Griffin was nowhere to be seen.

  Smart guy, since he had been the reporter who put Yvonne’s name out there for a killer. Sooner or later, someone was going to rightly blame him.

  Bradley Hoff sat on a stool at the end of the counter, picking at a stale cheese sandwich. He looked up now, and in a firm voice said, “I’m sure the first report, that she was drowned by the tsunami, is the right report. The other report, that she was murdered, is unconfirmed. So let’s remember that here in Virtue Falls, even in the best of times, we’re almost completely cut off from the world, and we need to treat each other like family.”