Cab closed his eyes. ‘Diane—’

‘I know. It was wrong. You have to remember, I’m in politics. I convinced myself that the ends justified the means.’

‘You didn’t do this alone,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Who helped you? Was it someone with the police?’ Then Cab realized that he already knew the answer. ‘Deacon Piper,’ he said softly. ‘It was Deacon, wasn’t it? He planted the evidence.’

Diane nodded. ‘I needed a spy, you see. Someone I could trust. Deacon knew how to do these things. He handled everything for me. It was a private thing between the two of us. But if he really is missing—’

‘Then it means Frank Macy knows what happened,’ Cab said. ‘He’s out for revenge. On both of you.’

42

Dead eyes stared at him from inside the trunk of the car.

Through the overnight hours, rigor had made the body stiff, like an alabaster statue in a museum, fingers frozen into claws. He saw the webbed purple bruise on the forehead where the corner of the flashlight had fractured the skull. Hungry black bugs had already swarmed the hole in his abdomen and begun to feed. Pieces of intestine peeked between their wriggling bodies like a messy plate of pasta.

He retrieved the aluminum pistol case and blew two hitchhiking insects onto the garage floor with a puff of breath. He opened the case and retrieved the gun, which was cradled in gray foam. Checked it. Readied it. The butt felt smooth and sure in his gloved hand. As it had once before.

Ten years ago.

It felt as if he were back in the orange grove. He could feel himself marching in the sandy soil. The crickets chattered warnings that no one else understood. Each hot breath under the hood rebounded in his face. He remembered the sense of freedom as he broke into the clearing. Saw the lights beckoning him. Heard the swell of voices.

He remembered odd things from that night. The first to die, the citrus farmer, had crumbs in his mustache from something he’d eaten. No one had said a thing to him about it, and so he died with pastry on his face. What was his name? He didn’t know; he hadn’t even read the news reports. They say you always remember the first, the look on the face, the sounds of dying, the way the soul gets ready to flee the body. All of that was true, but of course, the man on the dais wasn’t his first.

He remembered his first. He remembered Alison.

He replaced the pistol case in the car and shut the trunk, obscuring the body. When he checked the clock on his phone, he saw that it was ten o’clock. His nerves frayed. Acid rose in his throat. It was soon. It was almost time. Chayla was a bonus, as if the devil had a sense of humor.