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Nicholls continued to stare at the screen. And then he sighed. A sigh that Barbara recognized. A reluctant admission that she was right, but he was damned if he was going to say it.
“Why would he take his coat off?”
“It was new. He didn’t want to get it dirty lying on the ground.”
“That’s a presumption.”
“Can you think of any other reason?”
“Even if you’re right, it doesn’t change anything. We still have a video that shows him being killed…by a vampyr.”
“No. We have footage staged to make it look as if he is being killed by a vampyr.”
“The boy is dead, Detective. There’s no faking that.”
“I know. But this indicates it wasn’t a random killing. The fact that Marcus hung his coat up proves he was complicit.”
“In his own murder?”
“Maybe he didn’t think he was going to die?”
Nicholls slipped off his glasses, looking thoughtful. “You think this is a turning gone wrong. Like Todd Danes?”
Barbara considered. She had studied the Danes file. There were certainly similarities. The boys were about the same age. Both killings had taken place at a secluded spot in the woods. But…that niggle again.
“I don’t know,” Barbara said. “What I do know is that we have footage that is partly staged. We have a dead boy with a Helsing tattoo and a live one giving a Helsing salute. You don’t have to be Hercule Poirot to surmise that there could be something more going on here.”
“Hercule who?”
Barbara shook her head. “Never mind. There’s something else.” She reached into her pocket and took out the crucifix made out of incisors. “Someone left this in the bathroom next to my room last night.”
Nicholls stared at the makeshift crucifix. His face darkened.
“Wrote me a message, too.” Barbara opened her phone and brought up the photo of the writing on the mirror.
Nicholls read it aloud: “The sun will be turned into darkness. And the moon into blood.” He glanced at her. “Sounds biblical.”
“Doesn’t it just?”
“You see anyone hanging around?”
“If I had, I’d be talking to them instead of you.”
She waited, watching as the realization settled on Nicholls’s face. He might want her to call this and authorize a cull. He might have gotten used to a quiet life here in Deadhart, but beneath it, he was still a cop.
“Okay,” he said. “What d’you want to do, Detective?”
“I need to talk to Stephen and Jacob…but first I want to look at the crime scene.” She paused. “I want to see where Marcus died.”
Patience. It was something the girl had learned.
Time moved differently for her. Hours shrunk to minutes, weeks to days, years to weeks. The longer she lived, the more time compressed. A fact of her physiology. If time moved for her as it did for others, she would surely go insane.
Despite this, some days she felt the weight of her existence.
Patience was a necessary tool for survival.
As was the small plastic knife she kept hidden in her mattress.
