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No, Barbara thought. Maybe not. But there was doubt about what happened afterward.
“Look,” Nicholls continued. “I’ll be honest, I don’t much care for Nathan Bell. He drinks too much, doesn’t seem to care if Jacob gets to school or has clean clothes, but that’s not Jacob’s fault.”
Barbara nodded but made a mental note. “Can’t choose your parents, right?”
“Right.”
“What about Marcus’s parents?”
“Good people. Run the general store. Marcus was their only child. They’re with relatives in Talkeetna right now.”
“I’ll need to speak to them.”
“I know. They should be back in a day or two.”
Barbara nodded. She didn’t relish that conversation. But it was necessary. Something else occurred to her.
“Are Todd Danes’s parents still living in Deadhart?”
Nicholls shook his head. “I heard they moved to Fairbanks with his younger sister not long after his murder. Wanted to make a fresh start.” He gave her a pointed look. “If you can ever really make a fresh start when you have to pack up your kid’s ashes in a suitcase.”
Heard loud and clear, Barbara thought.
“Okay,” she continued briskly, “So, Stephen and Jacob last saw Marcus at around 9 p.m.?”
“Yeah. Marcus was walking home with them when he realized he’d left his phone in the cabin and wanted to go back for it.”
“The others didn’t go too?”
“These are boys. They don’t stick to each other like girls do.”
“Well, girls wouldn’t have to do that if it wasn’t for boys, sir.” Barbara moved on before he could reply. “So, we only have the boys’ word that Marcus was alive when they left him?”
Nicholls rolled his eyes. “You don’t think we didn’t consider that? A fight. A drunken fall-out. If it was, with all due respect…you wouldn’t be here.”
“May I ask what makes you so certain, sir?”
Nicholls reached back into the drawer and produced another clear plastic bag. Barbara could see it contained a cellphone.
“Marcus’s phone?”
Nicholls smiled, self-satisfied. He’d saved this till last on purpose, she thought. Humoring her while she asked her questions.
He pushed the phone across the desk toward her.
“Proof that this was a Colony killing.”
5
The footage was dark and grainy. Less than a minute long. But it felt longer. It started with a view of the dirty cabin floor. Marcus must have grabbed his phone as he was attacked. A last-ditch attempt to record what was happening to him, perhaps? Somehow, he had managed to turn the phone around, and Barbara could see a figure on top of him, on all fours, pinning him to the ground.
Impossible to tell whether they were male or female. It was too dark, and the figure was dressed all in black. Jeans, a hoodie. They didn’t look big, but vampyrs were strong.
Marcus squirmed and struggled. The figure raised their head. Barbara got a glimpse of sharp white incisors before they pressed their face to Marcus’s neck. Marcus screamed. Barbara felt her heart lurch. The phone must have slipped from his fingers because now all she could see was the floor and a portion of wall. Marcus screamed again. The static image continued for another few seconds. Then abruptly stopped.
Proof.
That was what Nicholls had called this (and her boss, that fucker Decker, hadn’t told her about it).
