Central Park by Guillaume Musso (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

to discuss it for long to come to their conclusion. Why waste time in Boston? They would work as partners and strike out on their own, driving north to Lincoln to question Caleb Dunn themselves.

“I must have missed this guy in my investigation,” Gabriel admitted. “Elizabeth Hardy was killed in her house near Augusta. She had deactivated the alarm system, which led us to think she knew her attacker. I interrogated lots of people who knew her: friends, work colleagues. I even went to Sebago Hospital, but this guy’s name never came up. He wasn’t a close friend of hers, I’m sure of that.”

“How long will it take us to get there?”

He examined the map, tracing the journey to Lincoln with his finger. “I would say three and a half hours. Less if we don’t stick to the speed limit.”

“That long, really?”

“As far as Haverhill, we can stay on the interstate, but after that we’ll have to go into the mountains. This is not a bad car, but it’s pretty old. The oil level worries me, and I happened to notice that the spare tire is flat. We should really stop at a garage before we go any farther.”

Barbie, who had been hanging on their every word, exclaimed, “My cousin has a garage! I can call him for you!”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Where is he?”

“In Greenfield, Massachusetts,” she said, pointing out the little town on the map.

He looked at where her finger lay. It was less than an hour away. “You think he’ll know how to take care of an old Mustang?”

“Why don’t you just call him and find out?” Alice suggested.

The cop nodded and Barbie went to get her phone.

Alice shot her a wink but felt another burning in her throat, stronger than before, as if acid were eating away at the lining of her stomach.

When she got the telltale metallic taste in her mouth, she leaped off her stool and ran to the bathroom.

My kingdom for a Nexium!

Retching, Alice leaned over the toilet bowl. Her throat was on fire. She tried rubbing her stomach, but it didn’t help to calm the burning. Why was the pain so intense? Stress? The excitement of the investigation? Fatigue?

She continued to massage her belly for over a minute, then stood up and washed her hands. She did not look in the mirror; she had no desire to see herself reflected, with the rings under her eyes and the drawn features. She splashed cold water on her face and stood there for a moment. Why had she woken up this morning with her blouse stained with Caleb Dunn’s blood? And who was he? A disciple of Vaughn’s, using the same MO to murder that nurse?

Or Vaughn himself?

No—she refused to imagine this possibility. Her father had no shortage of flaws, but she didn’t want to believe that he would lie to her to such an extent. It was too messed up. Too dangerous. The best cops in France had been relentlessly tracking Vaughn for the past two years, without success.

That in itself is proof that the serial killer is dead, she told herself.

As Seymour would soon assure her, Vaughn’s corpse was moldering at the bottom of a well in a scary-looking abandoned factory in a godforsaken hole in eastern France.

Water had trickled down to her chest. She grabbed two paper towels and wiped her neck and the tops of her breasts. Embarrassed, she lowered her eyes.

And that was when she saw it.

A foreign body implanted under her skin, about two inches below her collarbone. Alice pressed down hard on the flesh to make the object stand out.

It was the size and shape of a large SIM card: a rectangle half an inch square. She could see its edges quite clearly when she pulled at her skin.

Her pulse sped up and beat loudly in her temples.

Oh, fuck, who could have done this?

Instinctively, she looked for traces of a recent operation. Standing in front of the mirror, she took off her T-shirt and examined her chest, throat, armpits.

No sign of any recent incision. Not even the tiniest wound was visible.

Sweat ran down her forehead. A hundred questions swarmed in her brain, but two emerged most urgently from the confusion:

How long had she had this thing under her skin?

And what did it do?

17The Devil’s Tricks

THE MUSTANG LEFT the interstate, entered a traffic circle, and took the first exit.

Greenfield, on the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was a small town that seemed frozen in time. The town hall, the post office, the courthouse, and the large white church with its pointed steeple were all clustered within a mile along Main Street. Also on this stretch of road were the public library, a bunch of restaurants, little stores, and an old movie theater, its sign blazing with dozens of electric bulbs. Over each building hung the Stars and Stripes, flying proudly in the wind, colored by the late afternoon sunlight.

“Let me out here,” Alice said, adjusting the strap of her holster.

“Here? But Barbie said her cousin’s garage is at the other end of town.”

“I need to do something, Keyne.”

He sighed. “I thought we’d stopped being secretive.”

“I don’t want to just sit there twiddling my thumbs while they repair the car! I’m going to a café with Wi-Fi. There’s something I need to check.”

“What?” he said, suspicious.

“I want to look at some old newspaper articles about Vaughn. I’ll explain later.”

The car stopped at a red light. Gabriel took out his pack of cigarettes. “There won’t be a café in this hole.”

“I’ll find one, Keyne.”

He thought for a few seconds. “Okay, I’ll drop you off here, but leave your gun in the car.”

Alice was not thrilled with this idea, but she didn’t have time to go into endless discussions about it. The light turned green. She opened the glove compartment and put the holstered Glock inside it.

“I’ll see you at the garage,” she said, opening the door.

She crossed the road and walked up the sidewalk to the town hall.