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This was something new. Yet old. Half forgotten.
A sense that she was not alone.
A faint murmuring in her mind.
A scent, a tingling in her bones.
There was someone coming.
And like her, he was hungry.
4
“Why don’t you tell me what you already know?”
Nicholls pulled open a drawer and placed a couple of dog-eared folders on the desk. High-tech stuff. But then, Barbara was old-school herself. She had a smartphone and a laptop, but the laptop was old enough to be steam-powered and she didn’t use the phone for anything smarter than calls or texts.
She sat back, holding her mug. “To be honest, I’d like to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Nicholls opened one of the folders. Barbara sipped her coffee. She’d given him back control and she sensed that Nicholls was a man who liked to be in control. Not a bad thing. Not yet, at any rate.
“Marcus Anderson, fifteen, left his home after dinner on Friday, the 10th of November. He didn’t return that night. His parents weren’t too worried because he’d said he might stay over at his friend, Stephen Garrett’s house. When he didn’t show the next morning, his mom started to get a little concerned. She texted him. No reply. Then she called Stephen’s mom, who said that Marcus didn’t sleep over. Stephen said that he last saw Marcus around 9 p.m. They’d been hanging around an old hunter’s cabin in the woods with another boy, Jacob Bell. A lot of the kids do that. They go there to drink and smoke and well, you know—”
“I think I can just about remember.” Barbara paused. “And that was where you found him?”
Nicholls nodded and slipped out some photographs. The crime scene.
Barbara studied them. The boy was skinny. Lanky. That was the first thing she noticed. He’d obviously had a growth spurt and the rest of him hadn’t caught up yet. At that age, they can’t eat enough to keep on the pounds. He lay spread-eagled on the dirty wooden floor of the cabin, clad in just a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. The jeans had ridden up at the ankles, exposing white shins and frayed socks. One boot had come off. Barbara swallowed. She wanted to tug the jeans down, to cover him, keep him warm. But the boy was long cold.
She studied his throat. A mess of torn skin and gristle. There was blood around his face and the top of his sweatshirt, but not enough for a throat wound like that. There should be blood everywhere. All over his clothes, pooling beneath him on the floorboards. But there wasn’t. Which suggested it must be elsewhere. Removed, or ingested.
The reports were right. At first glance, this looked like a Colony killing.
Look again, Barbara. She could hear Susan’s voice. You think you’ve looked, but you haven’t. You’ve just observed. Now look again and see it properly.
She fished out her glasses and picked up each photo in turn. This time she concentrated her attention on the scene around Marcus. Several items on the floor had been numbered with evidence markers. Half a dozen joint stubs, three cans of beer, a cellphone lying beside Marcus’s hand, and something else.
“What’s this?” she asked, pointing at the small pink object.
Nicholls reached into his drawer, which seemed to be the stand-in for an evidence locker, and took out a clear plastic bag.
Barbara took it off him and peered inside. A small, jagged piece of pink plastic. She frowned. Hard to say what it was. It looked like part of something else, but she couldn’t say what.
“Any clue?” Nicholls asked.
“Well, it’s plastic. It’s broken off something.”
“Yeah. I bagged it up, but I’m not sure it’s relevant. Might have been there for a while.”
“Maybe, but it looks pretty clean. Rest of that cabin is dirty. You’re right, though—might not be relevant.”
But these things often were. Barbara took out her notebook and wrote down: “Pink plastic?”
“I’m just gonna grab myself another coffee,” Nicholls said. “Call if you need me.”
“Thanks.”
Barbara peered at the pictures again. Despite the lack of blood around Marcus’s body, the perpetrator wouldn’t have been able to inflict those injuries without getting covered in blood themselves. The femoral artery was a geyser. They would have had to hide or dispose of their clothing. She made a couple more notes. There was something else about the clothing, she thought.
