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Halifax, June 18
4:32 p.m.
Lee Higgins wore a black tank top and black jeans when he answered the door. His entire right arm bore a tattoo of a grim reaper holding a sickle in one hand and resting the other on a gravestone. Skulls littered the ground at his feet. Angels, candles, and pocket watches inked a full sleeve on his other arm.
Without preface, he said, “What the fuck you want, Stanton?”
Allan reached into the paper bag and lifted out the bagged devil’s mask.
“This,” he said. “Ever see it before?”
Higgins tilted his chin up, flexing the thick cords in his neck and narrowing his eyes on the mask. His Adam’s apple bobbed once. The prolonged stare, the sudden stillness of his body, told Allan he knew something.
“No,” Higgins said. “Should I?”
“You tell me.”
“Why’s the bag say evidence? Evidence of what?”
“I found this in Blake’s apartment,” Allan said. “It seems Todd ordered three masks last October, along with some of those...um, colored contacts you wear to make your eyes look scary. Or to disguise their true color.”
Higgins’s jaw muscles bunched up, and some fight crept into his gaze.
He said, “So? What’re you getting at?”
“What’d you guys use them for?”
“You guys?”
Allan nodded. “Well, the three of you were pretty tight. I’m thinking one mask went to Todd. This one went to Blake. The third went to you.”
“Uh, I stopped going out for candy when I was twelve. So fuck off, Stanton. Go sniff around someone else’s door.”
Allan gave him a faint smile. “The scarecrow.”
Higgins frowned. “Say what?”
“The mask. That’s the one you had, right? Todd had the zombie one. You had the scarecrow.”
Higgins didn’t say anything. He held Allan with his dead eyes, and Allan could sense the gears grinding away inside his brain.
He stuffed the mask into the paper bag. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Bottom of what?”
“The killer.” Allan held up the bag. “There’s a connection here.”
Higgins rolled his gaze to the bag, then back to Allan’s face. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it up again.
Allan nodded. “Yeah. I really said too much.”
He turned and walked away. Behind him, Higgins slammed the door shut. Allan knew he’d gambled by bringing the mask here, but he’d gotten the reaction he’d hoped for. He also stirred the pot.
He went outside and jumped in his car. Through the windshield, he spotted the unmarked Expedition across the street from Joseph Howe School. It wasn’t the best place to station yourself, but in an area packed with one-way streets, your options were limited.
Allan pulled his car up alongside the vehicle and rolled down the passenger window. Constable Weisberg leaned his head out.
“How’s it going?” Allan asked.
“All quiet, Detective. Haven’t seen anyone hanging around.”
“Did Higgins go anywhere today?”
Weisberg gave a nod. “Went to Bruno’s Fitness after lunch. Stayed for about ninety minutes and came home. Been in there ever since.”
“Okay,” Allan said. “Good. Whatever you do, don’t lose him.”
“I won’t, Detective.”
Allan gave him a thumbs-up. “Take care.”
He grabbed a coffee and sandwich at a bistro downtown called the Wired Monk, then he headed back to his office.
For several hours, he pored over burglary and robbery reports from the previous October into early November; reviewed the Dory and Kaufman case files again; picked through crime scene photos; reread witness statements; and watched some security footage from the toll bridges the night Kaufman was murdered.
Allan sat back with a weary yawn. He stretched his arms over his head, lacing his fingers behind his neck.
There were a lot of questions but not many answers.
He agreed with Audra’s initial theory—the murder of Todd Dory had been personal, fueled by a high degree of rage and revenge. So was Kaufman’s murder. The two of them—probably even Higgins too—had provoked this bloodshed. But what had they done? It had to have been something bad.
The masks, Allan decided, provided the answer to the entire investigation. He had little doubt about it. Going back to his computer, he printed off the pictures of the masks and contact lenses Todd Dory had purchased. Then he arranged them on his desk.
He picked up the photo of the white contacts and stared at them.
White eyes. White eyes.
They had bothered him when he read about them in Audra’s files, and they still bothered him. He held the picture next to the one with the scarecrow mask and shook his head. Then he moved it next to the zombie mask and kept it there for a minute, his gaze bouncing back and forth between them.
No breath stirred his body.
White eyes. A white-eyed zombie.
Whoa. Allan perked up. That was it. He cursed himself for not realizing it sooner. He’d been too focused on cases in October, specifically around Halloween. This had happened in late November, a month before Christmas. Allan had been the lead investigator, but the case quickly fizzled out on him.
A brutal home invasion.
Murder.
Three suspects in masks.
The family had been attacked while they slept in their beds. The wife had been pronounced dead at the scene. The husband had barely survived. It had taken Allan three days before he could get in to see the man because doctors had him in an induced coma to try to save his life.
Allan went downstairs and dug out the boxes containing the files. Lugging them back up to his office, he picked out the folder with the husband’s statements inside.
“One suspect is six feet, possibly a little taller. Approximately two hundred pounds.”
The physical description fit Todd Dory to the letter.
“Suspect wore black clothing. Disguised himself with a full-head mask of a zombie or corpse. He possibly wore colored contact lenses. Victim describes the suspect as having white irises. Small black holes at the pupils.”
Allan glanced at the photo of the white contacts. Small holes were punched out in the center of them to allow the wearer to see.
“Victim has trouble describing the suspect who attacked him. Claims he was bigger than the one in the hallway. He also disguised himself in a mask with no ears.”
When Allan picked up the photo of the scarecrow mask, he nodded to himself. No ears. But of course. Everything was beginning to make sense.
He read on.
“Victim saw a third suspect in the living room. Cannot provide a physical description at all. Claims the mask he wore had pointy ears that stuck out quite far.”
Heart racing, Allan stared at the droopy ears jutting out from the sides of the devil’s mask. There they were, plain as day.
He found the surveillance disc Audra had made from Atlantic News and plopped it into the DVD drive of his computer. He held the fast-forward button down until the man with the duffel bag slung over his shoulder got close to the camera. Then he hit pause and zoomed in on the still image.
Eyes narrowing, Allan leaned forward in his chair and looked the man up and down.
He whispered, “Is that you, Mr. Connors?”
