The carnival takes forever to die down tonight.
I stand at Caesar's enclosure and watch the midway lights blink out section by section—the Ferris wheel first, then the game booths, then the strings of bulbs over the food stalls—and each one feels like it takes an hour, but the clock insists it’s only ten minutes. Caesar watches me pace. He's sprawled in his straw with his tail flicking, and every third pass, he chuffs at me.
“I know,” I tell him.
He yawns.
Wren is in a trailer forty feet away, wrapped in one of my shirts, and I want this done.
Ben kills the last of the midway. The lot goes dark except for the trailer windows and the moon.
Cole appears out of that dark with a duffel over one shoulder. “You're wearing a path, brother. Brutus is going to file a noise complaint.”
“Are we going?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“We're going.” He tips his head toward the access road, where the van sits with its lights off and Logan alreadybehind the wheel. “Silas is loading. Try to look less like a man about to commit a felony. It's unprofessional.”
Logan drives us into town. Nobody talks. Silas sits in the back with his laptop, watching a screen full of camera loops. My knee bounces until Logan reaches over without looking and puts his hand on it.
“Almost there,” he says.
The practice is a low brick building with a plastic sign that says VANCE VETERINARY SERVICES and, under it, smaller: COMPASSIONATE CARE FOR ALL CREATURES.
Cole reads it out loud and laughs without any humor in it.
The front door isn't locked. It swings open into the dark reception area, and the smell of antiseptic rolls out at us.
“He left it open,” Silas murmurs. “Sloppy.”
“He left in a hurry,” Logan counters. “Leaking.”
No lights. We move through the practice using flashlights. I know this building from Wren’s descriptions—the coffee maker Paige runs, the radio on the counter, still on, playing static-laced country to an empty room. Silas clicks it off with a gloved knuckle.
Exam one is where it happened—I can tell instantly. There's gauze scattered across the floor. A stainless tray knocked askew on the counter. A button on the tiles next to a table leg.
And the scalpel.
It's lying three feet from the exam table. The blade is dark all the way to the handle, and there's a spatter trail leading away from it toward the hall.
My hand closes into a fist. The flashlight beam shakes against the floor, and I make it stop. She stood here. Backed against that steel table with nowhere to go.
“He didn't even clean up,” Cole says from the doorway,his voice empty of all amusement now. “Bled all over his own practice and just left it.”
“He's not thinking about evidence.” Silas crouches over the spatter without touching it, reading the trail. “Let's clean it up. I'll take care of the camera feeds.”
I stand over the scalpel a moment longer. Then I get to work erasing all signs of Wren's involvement with Vance's upcoming demise.
Vance's houseis four miles out of town, a ranch-style with a machine shed and a barn behind it, paddocks gone to weed. No dog. No livestock anymore—Silas says he sold the horses two years back when the money started going. The wife's car is gone from the carport.
“She's in Ohio,” he says now, thumbing his phone. “Sister's place. Posted a photo of a wine glass and a sunset four hours ago, caption about new beginnings. She's not coming back tonight or maybe any night.”
“So he's alone in there,” I say with grim satisfaction.
“He's alone in there,” Silas confirms.
The back door is locked, which is almost funny after the practice. Cole opens it in under a minute, and we come in through the kitchen. We don't need the flashlights for long because the television is on in the living room, muted, throwing blue light over the room.
Howard Vance is on the couch.
