Reid’s brain was a thundering mess of white noise by the time he left the nursing home… no. What had Maggie called it? Retirement village. He squinted at the road through the Bronco’s windshield, on high alert for strange cars edging toward them from other lanes, perhaps an ax flying through the murky night toward his open window. But there was only the glittering asphalt, the streetlights.
And, of course, the boy.
Ezra didn’t seem to notice his distress. He kept his gaze on the back seat window, his face blank, lips closed—silent. Thus far, the single sentence he’d said to Maggie hadn’t helped them any, but maybe that would change. Hopefully, Phoebe had managed to catch a lead while Reid was looking at toy trucks and open bathroom windows and shouting to be heard over World’s Most.
The black-and-white parked in the street outside his house eased the pressure between his shoulders. Reid waved to the officers as he pulled alongside them, then turned into his driveway. The garage floods glared through his windshield—safe, secure. Ezra squinted.
He hadn’t told Maggie that he was a foster parent, but she probably knew since Ezra was allowed to go home with him at all. He’d been a foster father to six children over the years, and he’d met all of them on the job. Some had relatives who were able to straighten themselves out quickly, but the kids all felt like his no matter how short-lived their stay. They felt like family.
And they were all the family he had. His father was a cheating jerk, his mother was dead, and his half brother Tristan mostly avoided him—understandable, since Reid had wrongly accused him of murder. He’d been an ass to Maggie when they’d met, too, and though she’d obviously decided not to judge him by his worst moments, it was not a shock that Maggie’s friends didn’t seem to like him. He couldn’t blame them any more than he blamed Tristan. He wouldn’t blame her for hating him either, no matter how hard he tried to make up for it.
Reid yanked the key from the ignition. Ezra grabbed the SUV’s door handle. He glanced over at the boy, ghostly pale in the garage floodlights, blond hair glittering white—zombie-esque. As Ezra pushed the door open, Reid heard the single line Ezra had spoken whispered in the tendrils of night breeze: The mole guy says I’m next.
It didn’t appear that the boy fully grasped what the words meant. He hadn’t appeared distressed by that ominous line as he’d said it, according to Maggie, and it was jarring to see Ezra bounding from the car without a cursory glance at the surrounding landscape. Careful, kid. Careful.
Reid threw his own door open. He’d forgotten what it was to care for a younger child, one so easily distracted from their pain—so easily convinced of their invulnerability. Most of his fosters were in their teens, and had learned that letting your guard down meant exposing yourself to ceaseless horrors. They wore their hypervigilance like armor.
“Hang on a sec, Ezra.” Reid trotted along behind him, then skirted past as the boy reached the top step of the porch. He stuck his key in the lock, and the grinding mingled with the slamming of car doors, a metallic cacophony that made him wince. He glanced back to see the other cops heading over his lawn. Officer Phoebe Gerew and Detective Clark Lavigne, both with folders in their hands. Good.
The officers paused at the base of the porch steps while he finished unlocking the deadbolt. Ezra ducked inside before he’d managed to push it fully open. Ballsy. Reid hurried through the doorway after him—What if the killer is in the house, waiting?—but he saw nothing amiss. The alarm hadn’t been tripped. Ezra scrambled onto the couch as he had in Owen’s office, his feet dangling above the floor, head cocked at the television above the fireplace. A very impressive seventy inches. It wasn’t the size that mattered, it was the number of streaming services you paid for, and on both fronts, Reid was packing.
Reid grabbed the remote off the hearth and tossed it to the couch beside the kid as Clark closed the door behind them. “Knock yourself out, Ezra. I think there are some good cartoons on there.” Eight was still young enough to appreciate cartoons. Then again, nothing smacked the childhood out of you like the savage mutilation of your entire family. Reid suppressed a wince and headed for the adjacent room.
Phoebe met Reid at the kitchen table, a red file tucked beneath her arm, her badge gleaming as if she’d polished it on the way in. Late-thirties like Reid, five-five and fine-boned with a wide mouth and thick curly black hair she wore in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t officially a detective yet, but she was on that track. Whoever ended up partnered with her would be lucky.
She handed him the file, then bent over the table as he laid the papers open. Clark leaned against the far wall. From the living room, a high-pitched cartoon voice said something he could not decipher.
“There are eight people with moles who had brief interactions with someone from the first three families,” Phoebe said. “None of them appear to have had contact with Ezra’s family. And I wasn’t able to find anyone with a mole in Ezra’s inner circle.”
To be expected. If Ezra knew the man who’d killed his family, he’d have said a name instead of calling him “the mole guy.”
“But we have no way to tell if some random grocery checker has a mole on his ass,” Phoebe finished. Her dark eyes shone, but the circles beneath them made her look tired—frustrated.
“Yeah, that’d be an awkward lineup.” And most people had at least one mole, didn’t they? Reid had one on his inner thigh. “What about follow-up with the neighbors or the kid who pointed out the blood in the window? Did they see anyone with a mole?”
“None of the neighbors saw anything. No one lurking around, mole-ridden or otherwise. And there wasn’t anyone home at the witness’s house when we went by. Kole Bishop?” She waited for Reid to nod, then went on: “We’ll try again.”
Reid turned to Clark, a broad-shouldered, thick-bearded Black man who looked better suited to WWF wrestling than the police force. He had a degree in French literature, kind eyes, and a friendly demeanor, but he was tall enough to give the killer pause if he drove past. None of the victims were taller than five-eight, and that, coupled with the late-night killings, had led Reid to believe that the suspect wouldn’t attack if he was outmanned physically… until he’d gone after Grant Connolly. That the killer had attacked a tall, fully awake man was an unsettling development.
“Got anything on the ex-cons?”
Clark nodded and dropped his file on top of Phoebe’s. “Oh yeah—too much. I pulled anyone with connections to both Ohio and Indiana who even remotely matched the psychological profile you gave me, concentrating on those who were released in the two years before the first killing.”
Reid nodded. He’d had no luck connecting the dry spells with arrests, but the killer might have had another reason to stop. Like caring for his own child, as Maggie had suggested.
“It’ll take some time to whittle them down further,” Clark went on. “Like Phoebe said, unless he has an obvious mole on his face, we won’t know from looking at mug shots.”
“How many possibles?” Reid asked, flipping the folder open.
“Two hundred and sixty-one so far.”
Damn. Hopefully Maggie decided to go through her father’s cases. The old man had issues with his memory, might be downright wrong about his facts, but he didn’t strike Reid as the kind of man who misspoke—my guy.
Phoebe righted herself, all five feet five of her. Five-five. About the same height as their killer. “I hope that helps. We’ll be out front if you need us. And Clark ordered up a few pizzas when you said you were on your way back—they’ll be here in ten.”
Man. They had thought of everything. He and Ezra had already eaten, but he wasn’t going to turn down another slice of pie. “Thanks so much, guys. I really appreciate you.”
Clark clapped him on the shoulder. Phoebe nodded, causing a dark curl to tug loose from her bun. Then they were gone, out through the front door, leaving Reid standing at the kitchen table with a mess of scattered mug shots, any one of which might be the man who had murdered Ezra’s family.
Another burst of activity emanated from the television. Reid glanced over to see Ezra leaned back against the sofa with his head angled down—not paying attention to the show. The kid had to be tired. Should he wait until morning to ask him about the photos? Would he manage to get any response at all from the child? There was no one else who might make the boy more comfortable—no other family, no friends that he could find. Sooner always seemed better when dealing with a homicidal maniac, but when the person you had to interrogate was a mute elementary schooler…
He left the folders and the menagerie of photos on the table and made his way to the living room. Ezra did not respond to his presence. His head wasn’t just drooping; his eyes were cast down at his lap.
Reid’s belly tightened. He should have paid more attention to the boy instead of plopping him down in front of a screen. The kid was likely numb, unable to focus. At least he had some ice cream in the freezer—sometimes you could buy that first sliver of trust with chocolate sauce. But not always.
Reid lowered himself to the arm of the sofa and crossed one ankle over the opposite knee. “How are you doing, kid?”
Ezra still did not look up. But from this angle, Reid could see the object in his lap, clutched in his tiny fists. Something shiny. Colorful, too—blood-red.
“What is that, Ezra?”
The boy shrugged, but then he shifted his arm, and the twisting in Reid’s belly intensified. A glass paperweight—a snake. It looked familiar, and it only took him a moment to place it: the weight from Maggie’s desk.
“Where did that come from?”
Ezra glanced at it, then stuck it inside the front pocket of his sweatshirt. It made the word COEXIST bulge strangely around the X.
He’d stolen it—he had to have stolen it. “Can I see that?” Reid opened his hand, palm up.
The boy finally turned to him, glanced at his palm, and narrowed his eyes—bright around the iris and hot with emotion beneath those thick lashes. If Reid hadn’t known better, he might have thought it was rage.