Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

Lawn said, “His boss, Hank Rivers, loves him, said he’d hire nothing but ex-cons if they were all like Evandro.”

“Where’s Evandro live, Officer Lawn?”

“Ms. is fine. His address is, lemme see…here it is—two-oh-five Custer Street.”

“Where’s that?”

“Brighton.”

Bryce was right next door. I wrote down the address and handed it to Bolton.

“Is he in trouble?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “If you see him, Ms. Lawn, do not approach him. Call the number Agent Bolton just gave you.”

“But what if he comes here? He has another appointment in less than two weeks.”

“He won’t be coming there. And if he does, lock the door and call for help.”

“You think he crucified that girl a few weeks ago, don’t you?”

The RV was moving briskly now, but inside, it felt like traffic had come to a dead stop.

I said, “What would make you think that?”

“It was something he said once.”

“What did he say?”

“You have to understand, like I said, he’s one of the easiest parolees I have and he’s never been anything but sweet and polite and, hell, he sent me flowers in the hospital when I broke my leg. I’m no virgin when it comes to ex-cons, Mr. Kenzie, but Evandro really seemed like a decent guy who’d taken his fall and didn’t want to take another.”

“What did he say about crucifixions?”

Bolton and Fields looked at me and I could see that even the usually disinterested Erdham was watching my reflection on his LED screen.

“We were finishing up here one day and he started fixating on my chest. At first I thought, you know, he’s checking out my breasts, but then I realize he’s staring at the crucifix I wear. Usually I keep it tucked under my shirt, but it fell out that day and I didn’t even notice until I caught Evandro looking at it. And it wasn’t just a benign look, it was a bit obsessive, if you know what I’m saying. When I asked him what he was looking at, he said, ‘What do you think about crucifixions, Sheila Lawn?’ Not Officer Lawn or Ms. Lawn, but Sheila Lawn.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘In what context?’ or something like that.”

“And Evandro?”

“He said, ‘In the sexual context, of course.’ I think it was the ‘of course’ that really got to me, because he seemed to think it a perfectly normal context in which to consider a crucifixion.”

“Did you report this conversation?”

“To who? Are you kidding? I have ten men a day, Mr. Kenzie, who say far worse to me, and they’re not breaking any laws, though I could consider it sexual harassment if I didn’t know that my male colleagues hear the same thing.”

“Ms. Lawn,” I said, “you jumped right from my original questions to asking if Evandro crucified someone, yet I never mentioned wanting him for murder—”

“Yet you’re hanging out with the FBI and you said I should hide if I saw him.”

“But if Evandro was such a model parolee, why would you make that leap? If he was so nice, how could you think—”

“Of him crucifying that girl?”

“Yes.”

“Because…You put things out of your mind every day in this job, Mr. Kenzie. It’s, well, what you do to keep at it. And I’d completely forgotten that crucifix conversation with Evandro until I saw the article on that girl who was killed. And then it came back fast and I remembered how I’d felt as he looked at me, just for a second, while he said, ‘In the sexual context, of course,’ and the way I felt was dirty and naked and completely vulnerable. But more than that, I felt terrified—again, for only a second—because I thought he was considering…”

There was a long silence as she groped for words.

“Crucifying you?” I asked.

She inhaled sharply. “Absolutely.”

“Beyond the hair-coloring and the goatee,” Erdham said as we watched Evandro’s photograph take on full color and total clarification on the LED screen, “he’s definitely had his hairline altered.”

“How?”

He held up the last photo taken of Evandro in prison. “See the scar from the shiv on his upper forehead?”

Bolton said, “Shit.”

“Now you don’t,” Erdham said and tapped his screen.

I looked at the photo Angie’d taken of Evandro exiting the Sunset Grill. The hairline was at least a half-inch lower than it had been when he left prison.

“Now I don’t think that’s necessarily part of a disguise,” Erdham said. “It’s too minimal. Most people would never notice the change.”

“He’s vain,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“What else?” Bolton said.

“See for yourself.”

I looked at the two photos. It was hard to get past the shock of white hair turning to dark brown at first, but gradually…

“His eyes,” Bolton said.

Erdham nodded. “Brown naturally, but green in the photo Mr. Kenzie’s partner took.”

Fields set down his phone. “Agent Bolton?”

“Yeah?” He turned away from us.

“His cheekbones,” I said, noticing my own reflection transposed over Evandro’s in the screen.

“You’re good at this,” Erdham said.

“No go at either his address or his place of work,” Fields was saying. “Landlord hasn’t seen him in two weeks, and his boss said he called in sick two days ago and hasn’t been seen since.”

“I want agents at both places yesterday.”

“They’re already on their way, sir.”

“What about the cheekbones?” Bolton said.

“Implants,” Erdham said. “That would be my guess. You see?” He punched a button three times and Evandro’s photo was magnified until we were staring at nothing but his calm green eyes, the top half of his nose, and his cheekbones. Erdham touched a pen to the left cheekbone. “The tissue here is much softer than it is in that photo. Hell, there’s almost no flesh in that one. But here…And see how the skin seems almost chapped, just a bit reddened? That’s because it isn’t used to being stretched out that far, like skin over a blister that’s on its way to the surface.”

“You’re a genius,” Bolton said.