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North’s features twisted, and for a moment, the armor fell away. Behind it was fear, and fresh pain, and a kind of wildly grappling resolve to take control again. And then everything got buckled down again, and his face closed, and he started to drive.
6
North drove through the night, and as they left Wahredua’s lights behind them, the darkness became a canvas for his nightmares. Shaw in the hospital after the West End Slasher had almost gutted him. Shaw lying at the bottom of the parking garage stairs, the night Marvin Hanson had almost killed him. Those horrible moments when North had been incapacitated after a bad car accident, and all he could do was stare as Tucker pushed Shaw down the stairs. He remembered, the moment frozen for an eternity inside his mind, the way Shaw’s stupid slippers had seemed to float in the air.
He dragged himself back to the GTO, to the drive, to the darkness of old trees and the route between them—like driving through a tunnel, he thought. Like everything is leaning in, bending over you, bearing down. When they cleared the trees, they followed the swells and dips of rolling hills, passed faces of stone where they’d been blasted and cut to make way for modern roads. Those bare stretches were yellowish white in the moonlight. Like dirty teeth, he thought.
They had to stop twice to check the license plate tracking system. They got another hit in Lincoln, which wasn’t too far north of Auburn, and so they kept driving. When they stopped the second time, they got a hit to the southeast—technically inside the city limits of Auburn, North thought, which wasn’t what he’d expected at all. He’d expected the trail to go dark; there weren’t any traffic cameras near the Cottonmouth Club itself. Instead, they’d gotten a hit on the outskirts of town.
When they reached the city limits, North kept a close eye on the speedometer, made sure to signal every turn, and sent up a silent prayer. He had no desire to get pulled over, not in this town. Running into Chief Cassidy again was at the bottom of his list—and only partially because it would give Shaw a reason to launch into that Cassidy bullshit all over again.
They found the traffic camera where the sheriff’s license plate had been spotted most recently, and North eased the GTO onto the shoulder. Then he said, “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Yes,” Shaw said with an enthusiastic nod. “Very good, North.”
North chose to ignore that and stared at the massive building with the words EPIPHANY OF LIGHT CHURCH on its side. A fence marked the limit of the property, and another sign at the entrance—which was gated and shut—said EPIPHANY OF LIGHT CENTRAL CAMPUS.
“Which means what?” North asked.
“Campus is another word for—ow, ow, ow!”
The megachurch itself looked dark—a few windows suggested emergency lights, but the parking lot was empty. North considered the road they’d followed; technically, it was a divided highway, with two lanes in each direction. It was empty too, and he figured it was some sort of state road meant to serve an even smaller satellite community.
“Ok,” North finally said. “All it means is that whoever has the sheriff’s plates, he drove past this intersection.” He indicated the stoplight and traffic camera whose sole purpose was clearly to let the faithful masses turn out of the church parking lot on a busy Sunday morning. “Maybe he drove straight through.”
“Maybe.”
Still no cars coming. North eased the GTO back onto the road. They rolled through the light. He checked the position of the traffic camera, but it didn’t tell him anything useful. “Let’s follow this road,” North said, “and you check the database to see if the plate’s been tagged anywhere else—”
“Or there’s that,” Shaw said.
Thatin this instance referred to a section of the Epiphany of Light fencing that had been torn from the support posts and now lay at an angle, half-fallen across the opening where it had originally hung. The spindles at the lower right corner were bent, some of them even popped out of the railing.
North swore.
“It’s ok,” Shaw said. “I’m a trained detective. That’s probably why I noticed it.”
“I would have seen it.”
Shaw’s silence lasted a beat too long. “Oh. Of course! Of course you would have seen it!”
“I would have! Someone crashed into the fucking fence, Shaw, it’s not like it was some microscopic detail—you know what? I’m not going to do this.”
Shaw nodded with the kind of patience that explained why so many murders were domestic. “Of course, of course. Nothing microscopic. Your vision is completely fine.”
“My vision is—” North cut off with a strangled noise and cut the wheel to the right harder than he needed to. They bumped off the pavement and onto the gravel shoulder again, and North killed the engine.
He didn’t slam the door. He didn’t need to. But he did kick Shaw’s door shut a few times to keep him from getting out of the car. Shaw still managed to ruin the whole thing, of course, by giggling as he yanked on the handle and tried to force the door open over and over again.
North finally gave up and got a high-powered flashlight from the trunk. He made his way across the drainage ditch and over to the damaged fence panel. Up close, with better light, he could see where tires had torn up the perfect lawn. When he played the flashlight over the wrought-iron fence, especially those damaged spindles in the corner, he caught traces of red. Like you might expect, North thought, if a red Subaru Outback hit the fence hard enough to knock the railings out of the support posts.
“So, where’s the Subaru Outback?”
“Maybe if you squint,” Shaw suggested. “Squinting isn’t a replacement for glasses, but the properly trained squinter—”
North got him a good one in the ankle, and Shaw yelped and hopped on one foot as North slipped under the half-fallen section of fencing. He shone the light on the grass, taking his time, ignoring Shaw’s whimpers and groans and mewling. The grass was thick—fertilized and watered and probably softer than the carpeting in the Borealis office. And that meant it took footprints surprisingly well, especially when they were less than a couple of hours old. Several sets milled around, which was interesting all by itself, but one set led across the lawn and toward the Epiphany of Light church.
“Ready to do some exploring?” North asked.
