The yelling woke her, the rough voice of her father, shouting into the phone.
“Listen to me. We don’t have days. We have hours.”
The black sky poured through the bedroom window. Shadows crawled along the ceiling.
“Don’t you understand? It’s in his message—Mercury rises with the sun.”
Caitlin curled into a ball, hugging her bear. She knew what Mercury meant. It meant flashing lights and BREAKING NEWS and everybody so scared. A body bag sliding into the coroner’s black van. KILLER CLAIMS EIGHTH VICTIM. It meant you could never close your eyes or turn your back. Because he could get you anytime, anywhere.
“He’s telling us, flat out. When the sun comes up he’s going to kill again.”
And her dad had to stop it.
That’s why each word Mack Hendrix spoke sounded angrier than the last. Why his shirt was dirty and he hadn’t shaved in three days and when he came home for an hour he ignored dinner and the Warriors’ game and her. Why he paced and stared at the walls and yelled into the phone.
The back door creaked. “Because I’ve goddamn worked this case for five years. I know.”
Caitlin slid from under the covers and crept to the window. Her dad stepped outside, lit a cigarette, and stalked across the backyard. Lights reflected on his gun and detective’s shield. His shoulders were bent. That frightened her. The wind blurred his words.
She tiptoed from her room. Her parents’ door was shut, Mom asleep. She slipped into the kitchen to the open window, to hear what he was saying.
“. . . we work the evidence. We keep working. Or somebody dies.”
She stopped. The door into the garage was open a crack.
The rule was: Never go in the garage unless Dad says it’s okay. He spread files on the workbench in there. All his information. But sometimes he let her in, to help stack his papers. Her stomach knotted. She looked out the kitchen window again, into the backyard. The cigarette glowed red.
Answers were in the garage. Truth. She edged to the door and stole through.
She stopped, bare feet cold on the concrete. The walls were covered with photos.
Faces. Flesh. Open eyes. Jagged slices. Blood. Her head began to pound.
A plastic bag on a screaming face. Bite marks. Dogs. At the edges of her vision, starlight shivered. A cut. A cut, he cut with a knife in the person’s chest, a dead person, she’s dead.
A sound rose from her throat. He cut a picture into the woman. Stick figure. It.
She turned in a slow circle. She saw dangling feet. Frankenstein stitches. An arm with words scrawled on it—despair. Her legs started to shake. The cuts the cuts the cuts. The sign.
Dizzy, she turned. The photos seemed to lunge and wail. Devilman him him. She pressed her hands over her mouth, but the sound grew louder.
Footsteps pounded through the kitchen. The door banged open. “Jesus, no.”
Her dad charged in, mouth wide, eyes burning. The sound poured from her throat, uncontrollable screams.
He swept her in his arms. “Don’t look, Caitlin. Close your eyes.”
She buried her face in his chest, but the photos howled and clawed. She sobbed, clutching him, feeling him shake. The work of the killer was everywhere. Mercury, the messenger. The Prophet.
