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  "Could be a coincidence," I point out.

  "Could be," Alex replies. "I listened to some of the taped interviews with Dencourt. The guy was off his head. Hallucinations, both visual and auditory. Delusions of grandeur. These days, he'd have been locked up, but back then he was just turned out onto the street. Chicago PD were keeping an eye on him, trailing him so they could catch him in the act if he went psycho on any more women. And then one day, he just disappeared. He walked around a corner, and the cop on his tail never saw him again."

  I stare at the file. "You think he had something to do with what happened at Lakehurst?" I ask.

  "We have to consider the possibility," he says. "Old Morris sure kept a low profile when he got to Lakehurst. If you read his file, you'll see that he was widely considered to be extremely mentally unstable while he was in Chicago. It's certainly within the bounds of possibility that he might have experienced some kind of psychotic episode while he was working at Lakehurst, in which case perhaps he took his anger out on the whole hospital."

  "Conjecture," I say. "The case is too thin. Investigators say that Lakehurst was just a great big fucking accident."

  "That's bullshit," Alex replies. "I think Lakehurst was destroyed deliberately, and I think Morris Dencourt most probably had something to do with it. You want to know why?" He pauses for a moment. "Because I think he was crazy enough. I think he was full of ridiculous ideas, and I think he was just dumb enough to carry them out. He had a history of hallucinations, right? So it's no problem to believe that maybe he suffered some kind of severe mental breakdown while he was at Lakehurst. Maybe he kept it under control for years, but eventually he snapped. Started hearing voices or whatever. From there, it's not a big leap to suggest that he went back to his old habits. There were a lot of women working there, and Morris's relationship to women was at best cursory and at worst violent. The guy was a real, absolute fucking psycho." He pauses for a moment. "There's something else you should know."

  I look up at him.

  "Well," he continues, looking a little uncomfortable, "this is kind of where it gets weird."

  "Spill," I tell him.

  "Annie Radford," he says.

  "What about her?" I ask. He stares at me. "Holy shit," I say, realizing what he means. "Seriously?"

  "She'd been at Lakehurst for a few months. Sent there straight after her trial. Top secret, of course. There were plenty of amateur avengers who wanted to track her down and cut her throat 'cause of what she did to her brother."

  "You think Lakehurst was destroyed because someone found out that Annie Radford was there?" I ask.

  "Unlikely," he replies. "We kept her location locked down pretty tight. At this stage, I think Annie's presence was a coincidence, but still... some fucking coincidence, huh?"

  I take a deep breath. "We have to be very careful about this," I say. "We can't just announce to the media that Radford was at Lakehurst. There's already a feeding frenzy about the fire, and a separate one about Radford's location. I really don't want to bring those two frenzies together right now. People are going to assume that the fire was somehow linked to her."

  "Agreed," Alex says.

  Leafing through the file, I come across a series of crime scene photos. Each of them shows a different woman, and they all seem to have had their throats cut. The photos are from the 80s, mostly, back when the old murders were taking place. It's hard to believe that one man could have killed so many people over so many years, and not been caught, but I guess the technology back then wasn't good enough. If we re-opened the case today, we could probably use all sorts of new methods to conclusively tie Morris Dencourt to the deaths. Back then, it was a much more difficult job. I don't know if he was lucky or smart, or a bit of both, but somehow he managed to slip between the cracks.

  "Look at it like this," Alex says. "Morris Dencourt works for years at Lakehurst. He hides there, keeping his head down and working as the janitor. Eventually, for whatever reason, he decides it all has to end. Maybe he thought we were closing in on him. Maybe something went pop in his head. Whatever. So he rigs up some kind of explosion, which shouldn't be too hard for a guy with his technical knowledge, and then he goes and drowns himself in the local river."

  "You really think that's what happened?" I ask.

  "You got a better explanation?"

  "And how does Annie Radford fit into it all?"

  "Coincidence?" he replies.

  I sigh. The truth is, I don't. I've been a cop long enough to know that sometimes the weird explanations are actually true. The criminal mind can be a strange thing, cooking up the most bizarre plots, and sometimes you just have to accept there there's not a whole lot of logic to what's going on. "I guess we'll never know for sure," I say, staring at a black and white photo of one of Morris Dencourt's victims. Reading the file briefly, I find that this particular woman was a nun. "Were all his victims nuns?" I ask.

  "Most of them, "Alex says. "And here's something else interesting. Three weeks ago, a local reporter up in Rhode Island got an anonymous call about one of the murders. I've got a recording of the call. It's rambling, but it sounds like Morris. It sounds to me like he was cracking up. From what he was saying, it's as if he was hallucinating the ghosts of the women he killed, but he wasn't able to accept that he was responsible. In his madness, he created an elaborate illusion in which he believed that someone else had killed them. He claimed to have dug up their bodies."

  "Perhaps he did," I say.

  "No way," Alex replies. "All the bodies were accounted for. Sounds to me like Morris Dencourt simply lost his mind toward the end."

  I close the file. "And all those people at Lakehurst died." Pausing for a moment, I take a deep breath. "We should have caught him. We should have put him away so he couldn't hurt anyone else."

  "There's one person who can maybe help us," Alex says. "The fire at Lakehurst was huge. The building was destroyed and we're still digging bodies out. But there was one survivor."

  Half an hour later, after driving through the mid-day traffic, Alex and I reach the hospital downtown. We sign in before being led up to one of the isolation wards on the top floor. It's strange, but there seems to be a fair amount of security in place, which doesn't entirely make sense. Alex resists answering any questions about what's going on, but soon we reach the door to an intensive care room. During our journey here, Alex has been uncharacteristically quiet, as if something's on his mind.

  "She's in here," he says.

  "What's her name?" I ask.

  He pauses for a moment. "Before you see her, I should warn you that her injuries are horrific. This isn't something you want to see if you've just had your lunch."

  "Out of the way," I say, pushing the door open and stepping into the room. I stop immediately, seeing the true extent of the woman's burns. She's charred from head to toe, barely even recognizable as human. One of her arms is so badly burnt that parts of the bone are exposed, and there seems to be almost no skin left on her face. Her nose is burnt away, and her lips are worn down to expose her teeth. Cooling packs have been applied, presumably to try to keep what's left of her skin from sloshing off, and she's resting on what appears to be a huge pile of gel. She's completely naked, and there's not an inch of her body that isn't crisp and blackened. There's a strong smell of burnt hair in the room, and various wires are coming from her neck. "Jesus Christ," I mutter under my breath. Genuinely, in all my years as a cop, I've never seen anything like this.

  "It's a miracle she's alive," Alex says. "Almost literally. They're still not sure how she's holding on. Force of will, maybe. When she was found, it was assumed she'd die almost immediately, but somehow she's still breathing. She's in a medically induced coma, and she might never wake up. The doctors say that the pain would be unbearable. They've got some of the best specialists in the world here, and even they don't know how to patch her up. You can't just layer new skin onto bone and assume it'll all be okay." He sighs. "The top of her skull is sheared, as if som
eone tried to remove it. But like I said, she's alive, and there's brain activity. In fact, the docs say her brain is completely undamaged. She's dreaming in there."

  I walk over to the bed. Her injuries are by far the worst I've ever seen. Hell, I've seen corpses that look better after they've been autopsied. Some of her muscle looks as if it's turned white, almost as if it's been literally cooked in the fire. It's painful just looking at her.

  "It's a miracle, isn't it?" Alex says. "To think that someone could survive all of that. Every second that she's still alive is a fucking miracle. She should be dead, but she refuses to go. She's just forcing herself to with us." He turns to the monitor that shows brain activity. "Fuck knows what she must be dreaming about."

  I reach down and pick up her medical chart. Most of it's indecipherable to me, just a list of drugs that she's been given. "Do we know how she survived?" I ask.

  Alex shakes his head. "Luck?" he says. "Whatever. She's the only person, out of all the staff and patients, who wasn't killed. Best guess is that she somehow dragged herself out of the wreckage just before the ambulances arrived."

  "Will she ever be able to talk?" I ask.

  "Maybe one day. But not now. Not for years."

  I turn to him. "Is there any chance that this is Annie Radford?"

  "There's a chance," Alex says. "We're still waiting for DNA results to come back. Everything's going slow 'cause we have to be real careful around her. But there were nearly a hundred people in the building when it went up in flames, so I guess the odds of this being Annie Radford are about a hundred to one."

  "Can she hear us?" I ask, looking at the holes on the side of her head where her ears used to be, before they were burned away.

  Alex shrugs. "She's in a coma, so who knows? Probably not."

  I stare at the burnt woman. According to the chart, we still don't know her identity. We don't even know if she was a member of staff, or a patient. One day, if we're lucky, she'll be brought out of the coma and we can ask her what really happened at Lakehurst during those final moments. But it looks like it'll be a long, long time before that happens, if ever. More likely, they'll keep her alive for a while and then she'll succumb to her injuries. Then again, she's already defied the odds by making it this far, so I guess she has to have a chance of recovery. The strength of will and determination required to still be alive after all of this is... Well, it's almost impossible to comprehend.

  Suddenly I notice movement on her face. Slowly, she opens her eyes and stares straight at me. Translucent and gray, her eyes look to have been badly burnt, and I have no idea if she can see me. As she looks at me, her eyeballs start to melt away, dripping down her face in a kind of gray goop until the sockets are empty. But she's still alive. The machine continues to show her heart-rate. Locked in her coma, she's fighting to stay alive, determined not to die. I've got the strangest feeling, as what remains of her eyes dribbles onto her neck, that she might eventually pull through. One day we'll find out who she is, and how the hell she survived the destruction of Lakehurst.

  Part 7:

  Tragedy Day

  Prologue

  A spider crawls out from behind a small stack of books on the table. Carefully, I pick up one of the books and use it to squash the spider. It's not that I'm scared of spiders. I just don't like them. Period.

  "How long can our son be missing before..." My father pauses, the pain and anguish in his voice impossible to miss. He takes a deep breath. "I mean, I imagine that after a certain period of time, you start assuming that he won't be found alive. Am I right?"

  The detective shifts uncomfortably in his chair. We're all gathered in my family's house in Maine. There are police officers all around the room, checking for anything that might help them work out where my little brother Taylor has gone. It's been three days since he was last seen. He went out to play in the garden, and an hour later my parents realized he was gone. The back gate was open, but no-one in the neighborhood had seen him leave. It's as if he just vanished into thin air, except we all know that he must have gone somewhere. Perhaps a mind can just vanish like that, but a body is much harder to get rid of. What makes it worse is that six months ago a kid from nearby was snatched, and found dead a few weeks later. Everyone's frantic with worry, but no-one will quite admit the obvious yet: Taylor is gone, probably snatched by someone, and these types of stories never end well. Miracles don't happen.

  "We try to keep a positive attitude," the detective replies, but I can see from his expression that he doesn't believe what he's saying. Yesterday, he spoke with real optimism; today, there's a subtle change in his demeanor that tells me he no longer has much hope for Taylor turning up alive. Like everyone else, what he says with his mouth doesn't match what he says with the look in his eyes.

  "But at some point," my father continues, clearly close to tears, "you have to switch from looking for a missing child, to looking for a dead body, right?" He waits for an answer. "I'm just trying to understand your procedure here. This type of thing has happened before. You must have protocols that you follow." He pauses for a moment, waiting for an answer. "What's the cut-off point? Two days? Three days? A week?"

  "Mr. Radford -" the detective starts to say.

  "Tell me," my father insists.

  "Five days," the detective replies. There's an uncomfortable silence in the room. "Our standard procedure is to reassess the situation after five days."

  "Thank you," my father says. "That's all I wanted to know."

  "Mr. Radford," the detective continues, "I remain convinced that we'll find your son alive. That's the most important thing. I'd urge you to stay positive and focus on anything you can think of that might help us. Even something insignificant might be useful. It's better to give us too much than too little. Let us do our job."

  My father nods. It's typical of him to focus on rules and procedures. My father hates uncertainty, and he's always been the kind of guy who believes there are regulations for every occasion. He thinks they'll find Taylor dead, that he's been kidnapped by some monster from the neighborhood. I agree with him. I mean, that's almost certainly what's happened, isn't it? For my father, though, the important thing is to work out how to handle the situation. He's given up hope. Last night he still seemed optimistic, but I can tell this morning that something's changed. He can't bring himself to say the words, but he knows this is going to end badly.

  Feeling a buzz in my pocket, I pull out my mobile phone and see a message from Elle, asking if I want to go out to a party with them tonight. I quickly send a message, telling them that I can't. They never invite me to parties, so why did they have to do it tonight of all nights? Moments later, I get a one word answer back: "Loser." I put my phone away and take a deep breath. I guess I'll always be a loser, at least in their eyes.

  "How are you holding up, Annie?" the detective asks, turning to me.

  "Me?" I say, surprised that he's even noticed me. "I'm fine." That's true, I guess. I've been so focused on observing everyone else, I've kind of zoned out of myself.

  "We're gonna find your brother," he says. "I promise you that."

  I smile politely.

  "It's just a -" He pauses as something catches his eye on the other side of the room. I turn and see, with a heavy heart, that my mother is shuffling through from the hallway. Still wearing her dressing gown, she looks awful: her hair's a mess, her eyes are red and puffy from crying, and she's got a rolled-up tissue in her hand. She was supposed to be sleeping, but I doubt she even closed her eyes for a second.

  "Is there any news?" she asks quietly.

  "Nothing yet, Mrs. Radford," the detective says, "but I've got fifteen men working on your son's disappearance."

  "That's good," she says, her voice sounding weak and devoid of emotion. When Taylor went missing, I expected my mother to become a complete wreck, and I was right. She seems to have just assumed the worst. She's probably already started thinking about the funeral arrangements, even if - like my father - she won't sa
y the words yet. There's just this huge unspoken acceptance hanging over us all, as we wait for the inevitable news that a body has been found.

  "There's nothing we can do right now, honey," says my father, walking over to her and putting an arm around her shoulder. "We just have to let the police do their job, and we have to stay positive." He turns to the officer for reassurance. "Isn't that right, Detective Price?"

  "Absolutely," the detective says. "There's no reason to believe that we can't locate your son and have him back to you real soon, Mrs. Radford. We're working flat-out."

  My mother sniffs back some more tears. "That's not how it works, though," she says, "is it? When little children go missing, I mean. They don't just wander off alone for three days. He's gone, which means someone has taken him. It's not an accident or a coincidence. He must have been taken by someone, and why do people take little children away from their homes like this?"

  There's silence in the room for a moment.

  "We have to work on the assumption that abduction is a strong possibility," the detective says. "That doesn't mean -"

  "I suppose it could be something else," my mother says suddenly, interrupting him. "He might have fallen down a drain or something. At least that would be a quick death. If he's been abducted, God knows what's happening to him. Right now, while we're standing here talking, he might be....." Her voice trails off.

  "Don't think about it like that," my father says.

  "There's been no ransom demand," my mother reminds him. "It's not about money. It's not revenge. It's just someone who wants him. They just want my son. That can't be good, can it?"