“You keep saying that,” said Diana.
“Because it doesn’t,” I said. “Now we’re looking for a Withered who eats people, and sedates people, and ritualizes the sedation wound, and is also a veterinarian and a park ranger, and stalks women who go shopping, and—come on. It’s too much. Why go to all that trouble?”
Diana rolled her eyes. “People do weird things, John.”
“No, they don’t,” I insisted. “People do rational things based on normal reasons that we haven’t found yet. None of this makes sense, which means we haven’t found the right reasons.”
“We don’t need to find the reasons,” said Potash, “just the killer.”
“You keep asking the same question,” said Diana. “What does he do that he doesn’t have to do? Why did he try to hide the injection marks? This is your answer: because they’re a massive clue that will help us find him.”
“But it doesn’t hang together,” I said. “Ms. Hess, are you still there?”
Her voice was tinny over the phone. “They’re right about this one, John—”
“Why is the sale of this sedative so restricted?” I asked.
“I told you,” she said, “it’s incredibly potent.”
“And how much do you need to knock out a human? Especially a small one like Kristin Mercer?”
She gave a curt laugh. “According to the product specs it takes around five milligrams to knock out an elephant, about three milligrams for a rhino—the closest thing I could find to a human dose is in the safety notes, where it says even scratching the skin with the needle could be enough. There’s a huge risk of accidental exposure.”
“So think about that,” I said, and turned back to Diana and Potash. “This drug is so powerful even touching it could knock a man unconscious, and we’re supposed to believe this guy injects it into his food?”
There was a moment of silence, eventually broken by Diana’s uncertain voice: “Maybe he’s immune. A Withered who can eat anything, like … that kid from the comics. Matter-Eater Lad.”
“You’re stretching,” I said. “Anything might be correct with a supernatural killer, but the simplest explanation is still always the best.”
“I know,” she said, and looked back out at the stopped car. “Damn.”
“We know this guy’s trying to deceive us,” I said. “He wants us to think he’s killing them one way, when really he’s killing them in another.”
“It seems to be,” said Potash.
“So which is more likely?” I asked. “The cannibal who’s feral yet meticulous, who’s magic but also uses sedatives, who’s a park ranger but also a veterinarian, who defies our profiling attempts at every turn because nothing he does makes sense, who not even our two Withered insiders have ever even heard of? Or a man who’s killing people in a bizarre, indecipherable way specifically to throw us off?”
“Start driving,” said Diana. “I’m calling Ostler.”
13
“He’s sent a letter after every victim,” Ostler told us on the phone. “We don’t have much time before he sends the next one.”
We got the address for the Mercer family and joined the cops already on the scene. The father was holding his boy tightly, crying in shock while detectives scoured his home for clues. The boy, about six years old by the look of him, seemed disturbed by his father’s crying and by the strangers in his house, but mostly he was curious. They hadn’t told him about his mother yet.
“It doesn’t look like anybody came inside,” Detective Scott whispered. “There’s no signs of forced entry, and the attack itself took place on the highway.”
“We’ll start talking to the neighbors,” said Diana.
I checked my phone again, but The Hunter hadn’t written back.
Nobody was home at the first house. The woman in the second house hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary and said that the guy from the first house left for work at five every morning.
“Define ‘nothing out of the ordinary,’” I said. “Did you not see anything, or did you see the same people you see all the time?” If the killer lived on this street, he might be one of the ordinary things this woman had seen and not thought twice about.
“Who’s the kid?” asked the woman.
“He’s one of our investigators, ma’am,” said Diana. “Can you tell us exactly who you saw this morning, if anyone?”
“Seems awfully young to be a policeman,” said the woman. She was older, with her gray hair dyed brown, and wearing some kind of shapeless bag with a floral print. “How old are you?”
“I’m forty-seven,” I said.
“You don’t have to get sassy about it.”