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  “Piper, I wouldn’t come up here and interrupt your life if I wasn’t desperate, please understand that.”

  The envelope hung between them but Piper refused to move.

  “I deserve the mockery and the sarcasm. NO one deserves it more than me. In fact, if you never speak to me again I understand that too but jesus, kid…I’ve really got nowhere else to turn.”

  Piper and Adam stared at the envelope. The room was close, the muted calls of the swallows as they dove over the pond suddenly audible. Piper found she had no voice. She stared at the envelope, knowing without a doubt that whatever was in there was something she didn’t want to see.

  “What is it, Detective?” Adam asked, quietly.

  “Three missing people. Women and children. We’ve done everything we can. Hell, I’ve done everything I can. Interviews, stakeouts, public meetings, you name it. It’s been three months and every time we get close to getting a lead, it just dissolves as soon as I touch it.”

  Piper had gone even paler than before.

  “Three months and three people,” she whispered through colorless lips.

  “It’s been years since anything like this has happened. Five years, actually. Of course, we’ve had homicides but like everything else in that shithole, they’ve all been drug related and we’ve wrapped them up in a matter of hours. But these, these are good people, good kids who just up and disappear. I’m worried it’s a repeat of last time.”

  His cheeks growing red with emotion, Harrison began to open the envelope, fumbling with the aluminum clasp that folded back to keep the pictures within.

  “We’ve even got the FBI involved but nothing, nothing seems to help crack it. The fact of the matter is, Piper, I need you. I need you to come in and talk to some of our witnesses and see if you can give us some idea of who we’re looking for.”

  “There are plenty of artists you can get.” Adam put his tea down. He didn’t like the detective’s manic energy any more than he liked the blank way that Piper was staring at the envelope. His voice was commanding. “Go to the Dixon Justice Institute, hand pick a few graduates. Why do you need Piper?”

  Harrison glared at the doctor, instantly silencing him. There was a steeliness in his eyes that Adam recognized from all the stories Piper had told him. Detective Harrison was not a man to be messed with.

  “Because she’s the best,” he stated plainly. He turned to her where she was drawing into herself on the couch. “Piper, it’s very important that you do this.” Harrison, regardless of Piper’s stress continued. He even reached across to touch her, something he knew better than to do. “Five years ago, you warned me that it would be too late and I didn’t listen. I didn't listen and the person who killed that girl and shot you, got away. Everything stopped after that, Piper.”

  “Leave Harrison, please leave.” Piper’s voice was low and ominous. She pulled her arm away from where he had grabbed it. “Just get out.”

  He couldn’t stop. The information poured out of him, his body leaning toward her like a stiff pillar of intensity. Regardless of the angry gaze from the tiny British man beside them, he couldn’t stop himself now if he tried.

  “Listen, we were able to link the death of those two girls to at least six other missing people. We’ve got fifteen other missing people cases that we think are connected. It’s the Dixon Demon, Piper. While you’ve been up here hiding, we’ve been doing our damnedest to figure out who this sick fuck is, so he doesn’t do it again.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, she wasn’t hiding. She was recovering from a very serious brain injury. She’s still recovering, if I’m honest. I don’t think you shouting at her is going to help convince her of much of anything.” Adam was in a huff, one heavy brow lifted with disgust.

  Harrison ignored the pompous little man and his ridiculous tea set.

  “But he’s doing it again,” Piper said softly. She had drawn her knees up to her chest and was pressed into the corner of the couch. She nodded to the pictures. “Those are his too, aren’t they?”

  “We’ve got no DNA, no fingerprints, no leads. Some people thought he’d died when things went quiet a while back, or slipped out of town. Some people even blamed you, if you can believe it. But five years on and people are starting to disappear again. Scratch that… children are disappearing again and if he’s fucking with them like he did with the others, we need to put an end to this soon. Please.”

  The envelope finally open, he passed the pictures to Piper. When she took them, Adam and Harrison could clearly see her thin wrists jolt as if she had touched an electric fence rather than a pile of photographs.

  Her eyes, which had gone almost comically large before, only increased in size. Adam was reminded of a fear crazed horse, the shadows on the whites actually visible where they recessed into her sockets.

  “No,” Piper said, “Oh my god, no.”

  “What is it?” Adam said.

  Piper flipped through the pictures, piling them up onto each other over and over. She shook her head, the pile slowly losing its form until it tumbled out of her hands and onto the floor and couch. She gripped one picture in her hand and stood up shakily.

  “Piper!” Adam was alarmed.

  “Look,” she said, her eyes bright with something uncomfortably close to insanity. “Look at this picture and tell me that my visions are just dreams. Look at this kid and tell me that it’s all in my head.”

  His head buzzing with shock, Adam reached across the table and took the image from her shaking hand.

  “Oh, my god.”

  The eyes of the boy stared out at him from the black-and-white photo. Rimmed with lush lashes like spider’s legs and seething with all the contempt of puberty’s onset, there was no doubt who he was. Adam took Piper’s crumpled drawing from his pocket and pushing the tea tray aside, he placed both images side by side. The swoop of the bang, the pointy chin, the swan like, pale neck.

  “What the fuck is going on,” Harrison said, his teeth set with frustration.

  Adam looked up at the detective, his face blank with wonder.

  “I think the drive might have been worth it after all.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  Stone’s Fine European Interiors - Dixon City

  The inside of the store was overly chilled for the time of year. That was the first thing wrong with it. The first in what would no doubt be an almost endless list of faults, especially when Kingston held it up against his memories of Entler’s Department Store.

  That was not the best word for his parent’s place, store. That word brought to mind a common little mom and pop operation, not unlike the one he had just walked into. The Entler department store, at its height, had been the center of Dixon City. An amusement park of commercialism, it employed half the town and artfully snatched the pay from the pockets of the remainder. It had been everything that Stone Interiors wasn’t.

  It had had class. It had been otherworldly.

  Kingston adjusted his sunglasses as he stepped further into the store. The frigid air smelled faintly of plastic and cheap MDF board, the odor almost visible to him as it rose from the displays that filled the low-ceilinged warehouse. There was no art here.

  His father, Royal Entler, had gone to great pains to ensure that every corner of his store was like a fantasy. From the elaborate Christmas displays to the kitchen appliances set up and ready to go like some housewife’s wet dream, he had constructed every inch of that store so that it was a waking capitalist dream.

  This, this was drab and common. Were they even trying?

  The fluorescent lights reflected off the polished floors and cast an industrial glare on everything. Now deeper into the store, he could hear the ominous humming above as the gasses flickered in their tubes. It was an ugly, ugly place full of mediocre and revolting household items.

  Kingston picked up a wooden sign from a display, holding it in his carefully manicured fingers. “In this house, we laugh. In this house, we forgive. We live and w
e love.” He read it aloud to himself, mumbling the words through a mouth twisted with disdain. Who would put that up? Who would have the kind of confidence to make those kinds of impossible proclamations about their family? It seemed more like a manifesto of middle-class values than any kind of helpful mantra.

  “Isn’t that awesome? We have it in our house. I must look at it every time I pass.” A voice as perky as the room was cold was suddenly at his shoulder. Kingston quelled his natural urge to recoil. He turned instead, struggling to keep his face neutral.

  Agatha Stone stood beside him.

  Kingston hoped his gasp wasn’t audible. It must’ve been internal as she didn’t seem to register. He had never been this close to her before. When he’d hovered over her bed the last few nights, he hadn’t had the bravery to get as close as he wanted. Her husband, bloated and half-naked, had deterred him with his presence. Now that she was inches from him and under the harsh lighting, Kingston was treated to an intimate examination of her face.

  Like most people, he’d seen her terrible late night commercials. One of the few remaining retailers in Dixon, she’d taken it upon herself to drum up business by staring uncomfortably into a camera and making wooden jokes about furniture. She was a society whore. Before he’d had to ‘take care’ of his mother, she’d even attended a few functions with the miserable old hag. He’d seen her picture in the paper, lapping at Brynn’s hand like a devoted lap dog.

  Taking this one was going to be a bit more exciting than usual. Unlike the others, scooped up like gravel off the streets, Agatha Stone was about as somebody as you could still get in Dixon City.

  “Some people have a ton of these things, all the way through the house. See that one there?” She pointed her finger at another, larger plaque that practically shouted at them across the room “‘Fishing is Proof that God Loves Us and Wants Us to be Happy.’ That’s a big seller with the husbands. A little something for the man den, am I right?”

  She was surgically without fault, her skin stretched the same way his mother’s had been across her cheeks bones and around her mouth. Perhaps they had gone to the same clinic? The way the skin across her skull gleamed and the unnatural narrowing of her eyes certainly made it seem so.

  Those tightened lids of hers struggled to blink as she looked into Kingston’s eyes. Or at least tried to. He hadn’t taken his glasses off for a reason. He’d found that he was much more comfortable in the world with a tinted barrier around him. His senses were too heightened, he was like a tiger in heat, or a shark with the scent of blood in the water. The outside world was both stimulating and exhausting to him.

  There was also the faint chance that he might be recognized. That was mostly his own vanity talking though. No one had seen him in public for years. As soon as Brynn had discovered his unusual tastes, she’d hidden him away from Dixon society like some kind of inbred embarrassment.

  “Is that what you’re in the market for? Setting up your man den?”

  Despite the fact that Kingston hadn’t done much but stare at her, Agatha Stone carried on. She was close enough that he could see where her veneers molded together on her front teeth. “A few decorations for the cave? You know, my husband always says that a woman gets the rest of the house, so a man needs that one spot to just get away from everything, you know what I mean?”

  Kingston nodded. When he finally spoke, he worked more carefully than usual to sound normal. He watched his intonation, his word choice, his facial expression. He sent the information from his brain to his mouth from behind his tinted shelter.

  “Absolutely,” he said, smiling. “A man needs a bit of space, that’s certainly the case for me.”

  Agatha laughed unnecessarily. There was a shimmer in her eyes that gave away her excitement. Kingston was young, dressed well and perfectly groomed, of course she was excited. She had probably already imagined closing up shop early, easily having surpassed her sales goal thanks to her one, designer-clad client of the day.

  “You boys.” She laughed too loudly again. Kingston was careful not to cringe. “Lucky for you, I’ve got practically everything you need for your little private paradise. Stereo surround sound, plasma televisions, I’ve even got a few neon beer signs in the back if that’s where your heart lies.”

  That laugh again. Kingston opened his mouth to laugh as well, being careful to raise his lips at the corner so as to seem sincere.

  “Me? I’m happy with my motivational quotes around the fireplace and a few nice candles.”

  Kingston wanted to tell her she was lying. The motivational quotes weren’t above her fireplace. There was one in the hallway leading to the back porch and one in the upstairs bathroom. Her fireplace was covered with dried flower arrangements that were offensive to him in their inauthenticity. In fact, her whole house was repellent to him. Floral wallpaper, gold fixtures, so many throw pillows that one could fill the in-ground swimming pool in the back if they caught the notion. The times that he had spent walking through the house he had felt like he was trapped in the dream home of some four-year-old beauty queen. He was always happy when he left, slipping noiselessly out of the sleeping house and onto the grass, slick with dew. The sheer tastelessness of it made his brain cramp.

  Agatha was looking at him expectantly. She was wearing the acrylic blouse she had just got back from the dry cleaners a few days ago, the tropical shades doing nothing for her pale skin. Last night he’d considered wrapping her face in the soft plastic it had been encased in but had thought better of it.

  She did have lovely skin.

  “The beer signs,” he said, “Those are hard to find these days, I’d love to have a look at them, if it’s no trouble.”

  “Oh, my gosh, listen to you! If it’s no trouble, of course it’s no trouble.” She squeezed his arm, leaning into him so that her parrot encrusted blouse opened up enough to show where her cleavage struggled against itself. Fake breasts, of course. Her skin was just as stretched over the over inflated silicone sacks sewn under her flesh as it was across her skull. Kingston felt the familiar heaviness beginning in his pelvis. He looked away.

  Agatha had seen him looking and she smiled again. It was a kittenish smile that Kingston found instantly both embarrassing and enraging. He instructed himself to smile back.

  “I don’t want to get in your way, you must be busy.”

  “You goof,” she chastised. “Jennifer! Jennifer! Hang on…” Agatha yelled in the direction of the back of the store. There was a pillar which functioned as a kind of doorway. It led into the backroom where no doubt piles of other tasteless items sat, resting after their exhausting journeys from some decrepit factory in Asia. “Jennifer! Jesus, sorry, just a minute. My daughter.” She looked at him woefully as way of apology and headed off across the store.

  Her legs were perfect. Finally able to see her in action, up close, Kingston found himself more pleased that he had imagined. Almost muscleless and as lean as tree branches, her legs and arms swung with an obvious grace that was as self-aware as every other gesture this woman made. Kingston estimated her to be a perfect size 4. Those were rare. Boys were easier, particularly the last one. Kingston shifted his weight uncomfortably.

  There was no artifice to the way a boy presented himself; no heels to make his ankles seem slimmer or special tights to hold in unsightly bulges. The body that boys presented to the world was their own, free of criticism and the ever-watching masculine gaze. They were pure and perfect. He liked perfect. Even though she was well formed, it was clear that whatever purity Mrs. Stone had disappeared decades ago. Her perfection was created.

  Agatha looked over her shoulder at him as she strutted across the store. “Just hang on,” she called back. “She’s in there somewhere.”

  Agatha leaned into the back room, raising one leg as she did so. Another false gesture concocted to draw attention to the spread of her middle-aged buttocks. Kingston frowned. He hadn’t noticed that before. Not that it would matter. It all got separated in the end anyway. />
  “For heaven’s sake Jennifer, I called you three times, what are you doing back there?”

  Kingston walked noiselessly toward the back, straining to hear the mother berating her daughter in a voice she erroneously believed to be out of earshot.

  He heard the daughter’s mumbled response.

  “Well, bring those two beer signs out. The ones daddy ordered online. I think we might finally be able to get them out of here.”

  Kingston sneered again against his will. That was bad. A sneer when there should have been none. He would have to have a stern talking to himself when he had a moment.

  He paused at a burgundy love seat. When Agatha turned back to him he pretended to be admiring the fabric.

  “Now that’s real leather, there,” Agatha said, clipping on her heels back to him efficiently. “Imported from Italy. I guarantee you won’t find anything of its quality in Dixon, that’s for sure.”