The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,31

place or suspicious, but it was hard to tell. There were so many people, and most he felt sure were friends or family. There were quite a few children as well, most likely Sarah Jo’s classmates, all huddled together in a somber group, some of them crying. Even the mayor had been here; he had given a small speech before the service (some drivel that had been captured for posterity by the news cameras) before being escorted to his car and whisked back downtown.

Chapman loosened his tie and blew out a breath. His freckled forehead was glistening in the heat. “See anything unusual?”

Halloran shook his head. “Other than the fact that we’ve got the TV news covering a Cedar Hill funeral, no.” He looked over the crowd, wondering if, as he had suspected, Sarah Jo’s killer might be mingling with the mourners, passing himself off as just another grieving friend.

“This is crazy,” Pettus said. “I’ve spent my whole life in this area. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Chapman stared straight ahead, not looking at him. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “This scares me.”

Halloran glanced at him, then went back to studying the crowd. Chapman wasn’t the only one who was scared. Halloran was more than a little uneasy himself. Hell, Cedar Hill hadn’t had a murder in over ten years, back when he was still patrolling the streets. That was the Bollinger murder—the kid that had stabbed his grandmother to death before school one morning. Shane Bollinger. That was the kid’s name. He’d been tried as an adult, but his attorney had skirted the death penalty by having him plead insanity. Now the kid (shit, he must be about thirty by now) was rotting away in some prison somewhere.

But that had been a family squabble. This was something else entirely, and if his instincts were correct, Carmelita Santos was already victim number two.

They had gone over all the possibilities with the Santos couple and the other people living in the house with them. Everyone’s whereabouts could be accounted for during the time Carmelita had disappeared. And no one else in the neighborhood reported seeing anything or anyone usual. Chapman had raised the question of looking at the other migrant workers in the area, especially anyone who might have suddenly disappeared and grabbed the opportunity to take a pretty little Mexican girl with him. But so far, visits to local farm owners concluded that all their summer help was accounted for. There were absolutely no leads at all.

“What’re you thinking about?” Chapman asked.

“Carmelita Santos.”

Chapman nodded. “Me, too.”

“Time’s running out.”

“Yep.”

Halloran watched the news people scrambling about. He thought he recognized a couple of the reporters from TV, and he realized that none were from the local station over in Springfield. “This is turning into something big,” he told Chapman. “One murdered girl is one thing, but now that another one is missing, I think the people of this town are going to demand some action. And they’re going to want it real quick.”

Halloran looked at his watch. A press conference was scheduled in front of the city hall for 3:00. Police Chief Pettus and Halloran would be detailing the efforts of the investigations so far, and Mayor Carver would be there for public reassurance. He hated these things, and luckily he had had to do very few over the years. But they were important, and sometimes they led to some very promising leads. He had to admit, though, that scheduling this conference was one of the few good things Pettus had done; he seemed to understand now the depth of what was going on, the magnitude of it. And that was surely good.

Halloran blew out a breath. “Guess we’d better get downtown and get set up,” he said.

* * *

6:02 PM

All day Joel had been obsessing over his experience in the mayor’s basement. And while he had to admit to being both alarmed and turned on by the red room with its suspended sling, he was mostly still wondering about the newspaper clippings and what they might mean. Could the mayor somehow be involved? Could he actually have killed Sarah Jo McElvoy? Why else would he have kept those articles?

Wade hadn’t seemed to notice that Joel was preoccupied all afternoon, even though Joel failed to respond to Wade’s inane conversation a couple of times. More than likely, Wade was too concerned with whatever he had been doing all weekend to worry over whether Joel was paying attention to him. Joel