GROUT TOSSED A dart at the board in his office. He’d just gotten off the horn with Jen and was fried from her asking where the force budget was at and when the new positions were going to open up, both of which he had no control over or information to share. She’d said she’d seen a position online, for security, at the Littleton, NH, mall. A mall. In New Hampshire. Was she trying to give him reasons to strangle her? Had she not heard him all these years about how New Hampshire was the state they were forced to drive through to get to the Maine coast and back for vacation.
A fucking mall.
Fucking New Hampshire.
He thought about Boyd Pratt. Something was off about that one. Grout tossed a dart and almost struck Larkin’s eye with it as he poked his head into the office.
Larkin looked at Grout, who held a pair of darts, his feet propped on the desk next to a growler of his home-brew stout and a half-tanked pint glass of the beer beside it, and said, “Am I interrupting something important?”
“What’s it look like, given the evidence?” Grout said, and finished his pint.
“I guess not, sir.”
“Skip the ‘sir,’ will you?”
“Yes, sir.”
Grout sighed. “What is it?”
Larkin produced a folder from behind his back and slapped it against his thigh. “I got her.”
“Got who?”
“Betty Malroy. I know where she lives.”
Grout sat up, nearly knocked over his growler, just saved it with a lucky, buzzed grasp. “I thought I put you on the satanic bullshit deep dive.”
“I finished with that, last night.”
Grout eyed him skeptically.
“This morning, I should say, at 4 A.M., I’ve been on it like a beagle on a bunny straight out, like you asked,” Larkin said.
Grout had no doubt it was true. It was clear the young officer had stayed up all night not just to impress his superior, or for any delusion of advancement at this stage in his career, but because he loved the work. And was thorough. He’d pulled an all-nighter, and he looked as scrubbed the day after at two in the afternoon as an altar boy at Sunday Mass. And he’d beaten Detective Test to the punch.
“How’d you find her?” Grout said.
“Tax filings. I tried mortgages, car registration, and the like. Nothing doing.”
“Where is she?”
“Connecticut. Newbury. She also is the backer of another entity, sir, called Better Days. A very exclusive, very private adoption agency.”
Grout gnawed his lower lip and processed what he’d just heard. He clapped his hands together. “Shall we pay her a visit?”
“Us, sir?” Larkin blushed.
“Unless you have plans.”
“No, sir, not at all, sir.”
Sir, again.
“But. It’s another state,” Larkin said, “we don’t have juris—”
“Let me worry about that.”
“What about Detective Test?”
“She fell sick yesterday afternoon. Her loss.” Grout stood. “How long a drive you figure to Newbury?”
“It’s two hundred and twelve miles, sir. About four hours and thirty-six minutes. Give or take.”
Grout smiled at Larkin’s preparedness as he looped a finger through the growler handle and hefted it up off the desk. “Ready,” he said.
Larkin eyed the growler as he allowed Grout to pass into the hall.
The young officer fell in beside and a step behind Grout down the hall.
“Question,” Grout said. “What about the sadist deep dive?”
“Plenty of sickos, sir. But nothing linked to Julia Pearl.” He paused, slowed his pace.
“What?” Grout said, slowing his pace.
“There was this old case. It seemed a lot like Pearl, but. But it was too long ago and in another state. Halloween of ’85, in Wayland, Massachusetts. It involved a Marianne King, thirty-two years old, and not pregnant. An apparent isolated incident. But. Look.” Officer Larkin handed his iPhone to Grout.
Grout stared at the image on the screen. “Christ,” he said.
“All sincerity, sir. I don’t think Christ had anything to do with that. But, other than somewhat similar wounds, there are no commonalities. Whoever did this to Marianne King and carved Miss Pearl, maybe had one thing in common though, if I may posit my own theory. The carvings weren’t done by Satanists carving their mark of Satan on the girls, but rather by religious fanatics marking their girl, or woman in Marianne King’s case, as the evil entity.”
Grout studied the pic. The carving into the woman’s belly looked disturbingly similar to the mess found in Julia’s decomposed flesh. “It looks a lot like our girl’s wounds,” he said.
“But,” Larkin said. His voice was low, as if he were a boy telling a horror story around a campfire. “It was twenty-six years ago.”
“This woman on Halloween. Did she say anything before she died?”
“That’s just it, sir. She didn’t die. She’s alive.”
Grout gaped at Larkin.
“She’s fifty-eight years old and lives in Beacon Hill in Boston,” Larkin said. “A domestic-abuse advocate. Her husband is a star prosecutor.”
Grout gawked at the .jpeg. That this woman had survived such a butchering could only be considered a miracle.
“I haven’t spoken to her, sir, but I have set up a time to do so,” Larkin said. “I hope that’s OK. I don’t want to step on toes, but—”
Grout nodded. This kid had something Grout lacked. Something the best detectives possessed: conviction. Instead of feeling jealous of it, however, Grout felt what, exactly? Proud.
“Mrs. King,” Larkin said. “From the reports. She swears a child did this to her. Experts say she remembers it wrong; they attribute it to shock and blood loss scrambling her memory.”
Grout looked at the .jpeg again. A child? No. Nothing could drive a child to such violence. “Well, even if there’s no real tie to Julia Pearl, good work,” Grout said, and started down the hall again, Officer Larkin a half step behind him now.
As Grout pushed open the door and strode out into the cold and darkening afternoon, he said “Another question, Officer.”
“Yes, sir?”
If he said sir one more time.
“And I want you to think hard about it.”
“Of course, sir.”
“What do you think of New Hampshire?”
“I’m from New Hampshire, sir.”
“I see.”
“That’s why I moved to Vermont.”