“Why do you think your department needs survival training?” Carter asked. “Any particular areas of concern other than the remoteness factor?”
“Getting stranded out in the woods is a concern,” Larry said as he ushered Carter into his office. “Granted, most of us are local, but it’s easy to get turned around in these hills.”
“Anything else?”
Larry claimed the well-worn leather chair behind the desk and gestured for Carter to take the guest chair across from him. “Those hills are also full of cookhouses. Meth mostly. Lots of places to hide. Abandoned moonshine stills and the like. With only six of us, I want my team prepared in case one of those meth heads ever takes one hostage.”
Put like that, Carter actually wanted to teach a survival course to Larry and his team. The chief cared enough about his people to reach out, to go the extra mile to protect and train them. “Fair enough,” Carter said. “Y’all get much other action around here?”
“Mostly Apex U-adjacent stuff. Bar fights, game-day vandalism, and the like, though the rate of those incidents has gone down since Ryan became chancellor. He runs a tight ship.”
“But you get enough action to warrant a detective?” Carter nodded to Detective Lang’s office on the other side of them.
“The meth heads I mentioned. Plus, Jo deserved a promotion. Aside from that, our callouts are mostly vehicular incidents, especially in the winter. Gets slick on the interstate.”
Did that have something to do with how Dr. Fear identified his victims? Car accident, the driver or a passenger winds up in the county hospital but then is gone before anyone in the area really notices them except the serial killer hiding among them. The timing fit with respect to Zia and Anthony.
“That’s the bulk of ’em,” Larry carried on. “But the worst one we ever had was middle of the summer. Clear blue sky that afternoon, thirty-odd years ago.”
Carter’s breath hitched, caught in his chest. He released it slowly, concentrating on Larry’s words, picking them apart for clues he’d spent a lifetime searching for, the case that had led him to Apex. Not the one he was supposed to be working now but the one that always hovered at the back of his mind.
“I’d just gotten my badge,” Larry said. “Was working the desk when the call came in. Dad was the chief then, my uncle the coroner. Barry went out with them too. None of them spoke much for days after. Tore ’em up good. Car was run off the road and into the ravine. Exploded. The family inside it gone, just like that.” He snapped his fingers, and Carter forced himself not to jump. “Wiped out by a hit-and-run.”
All but one, if this was the accident he’d been searching for. “They never caught the other driver?”
Larry shook his head. “And none of the bodies nor the car could be identified. Too badly burned, according to the state police who took over the case. Speaking of town history . . .” He rose from his chair and waved for Carter to follow.
It took Carter a moment to get his legs back under him, but he caught up with Larry halfway down the picture-lined hall that led off from the bullpen. There were various shots of Apex PD—from welcome parties to retirement ones, ribbon cuttings, and other town events—spanning at least four decades judging by the different yet so-similar-they-had-to-be-related men wearing the chief’s badge. Petticoats, multiple generations in charge, and each with another younger Petticoat at their side, the next to be in charge. And all of them gray, early it seemed.
“Don’t need to keep family albums,” Larry said with a smile, noticing Carter’s distraction. “All right here.”
“It’s an impressive family history.”
“It’s what we do. Or rather, most of us.” He stopped near the end of the hall in front of a door with a numbered keypad. “Harry used to access police records from time to time for the archives. His grad student was in here just last week. If the other Mr. Polk needs in here, the door code is 1-2-3-6, assuming we ain’t lost power and you can enter it. Breaker box needs replacing, but that’ll have to wait ’til spring.”
Larry opened the door and Carter poked his head inside, quickly surveying the rows of file boxes stacked on shelves in the windowless room. He also spied a microfiche reader and ancient desktop computer, meaning some portion of what was in those boxes was digitized.
“This will be helpful for Lincoln, thank you.” And for their case. “There a checkout process we should be aware of?”
Larry flitted a hand in the air. “We’re not that formal around here. Just make sure you put things back where you found ’em. Come on now. Let me get you set up at a desk in the bullpen.”
As he drew back, Carter made a final visual sweep, both excited and terrified about what he might find in those files, about Dr. Fear and about that accident thirty-odd years ago. He’d venture a guess the latter was thirty-two, to be exact. The very accident that might have been responsible for the Carter Warren standing here today.
“Hello, anyone home?”
The heavy library doors slammed shut behind Lincoln, and he shivered as a gust of wintry air swirled around him. Yet the banging doors and his chattering teeth weren’t enough to bring anyone to the reception desk.
“Yoo-hoo . . .”
Just his echo, bouncing off the walls of the cavernous space. He slung his bag around behind him and leaned over the reception desk, looking for signs of life, and got immediately distracted by all the signs of beauty.
Directly behind the desk was a large open area filled with polished wood tables, study cubicles, and clusters of oversized chairs, all of them dappled with light in various shades of color cast by the sun shining through the stained glass rotunda above. A grand marble staircase, white marble shot through with blue-and-gold fleck, the same as the reception desk, drew his eye past the study area. Stacks of books stretched behind the staircase as far as Lincoln could see, and at the top of the stairs, a second level of stacks ringed the open area below. Every few rows of books up there were parted by another stained glass window that cast more multicolor light around the space. Lincoln wasn’t sure he’d ever set foot in a more beautiful place on earth. It was like being in a kaleidoscope or, recalling his first thought upon driving into town, like being in a snow globe. Apex’s obsession with winter made a lot more sense now. At the center of campus, with its white marble and filtered light, this building was winter in structural form.
Lincoln’s wonder was interrupted by a ding to his left, from beyond the security turnstiles and around the corner to where Lincoln wasn’t sure. An elevator lobby, by the sound of it, mechanical doors sliding open followed by booted feet on stone. A man appeared from around the corner, arms full of files, his gray head bent, and attention focused on the phone in his hands.
“Hello there,” Lincoln said.
The man’s eyes shot up just as he approached the turnstiles. Before Lincoln could shout a warning or an apology for his piss-poor timing, the man’s hip clipped one of the pylons and the already wobbling stack of files went flying, scattering all over the floor.
