The hospital in Millhaven was not a hospital.
It was a medical centre — the distinction mattered practically if not emotionally — a single storey building on the north side of town with an emergency room that handled what it could and transferred what it couldn't to the actual hospital forty minutes away in the next county. The emergency room had four bays separated by curtains and a waiting area with eight chairs and a television mounted in the corner that was showing a morning news programme with the sound off.
Indigo sat in bay two with her left arm on a tray and a doctor named Fenwick doing things to it that she was choosing not to watch. She was watching the curtain instead. The particular beige of it. The way it moved slightly in the air conditioning even though there wasn't much air conditioning to speak of.
"This is going to need stitches," Doctor Fenwick said. Not apologetically. Just informationally.
"Okay," Indigo said.
"The good news is it missed everything important. Clean through. You're going to have significant bruising and limited mobility for a couple of weeks but there's no structural damage."
"Okay," Indigo said again.
"Have you had a tetanus shot recently."
"Yes."
"Good." He did something that she still wasn't watching. "I'm going to need to ask you some questions about how this happened."
"Officer Reeves will explain," she said. "He's outside."
Doctor Fenwick looked at her. He had the particular expression of a medical professional who has learned over many years that the people who came through their emergency room had lives that were considerably more complicated than the injuries they presented with and that their job was the injury and not the life.
"Okay," he said.
He did more things she wasn't watching.
Daphne was in bay one, separated from Indigo by one curtain.
The wound was serious but not critical — the axe had opened her side rather than going deep, a long cut that had bled significantly and looked terrible and would need proper surgery to close cleanly but had not touched anything that couldn't be un-touched. The doctor on Daphne's side had said lucky with the particular restraint of someone who meant it and understood that lucky was a relative term in the current context.
Tom was in the waiting area. Hannah was with him. Indigo knew this from what she could hear — Tom's voice occasionally, low and steady, the particular sound of someone keeping himself together through the discipline of staying calm. Hannah's voice less frequently, shorter responses, the economy of someone conserving their energy for what came next.
She thought about that — Hannah conserving her energy. The particular intelligence of it. The way she'd been doing it since Friday night in the car park outside Fright Fest, since the family room at the police station, since the gym corridor, since the back garden at six in the morning with her hand over her mother's hand saying the ambulance is coming.
She thought about what Daphne had said.
She likes what she can see of you.
Officer Reeves arrived while Doctor Fenwick was finishing the stitches.
He came into bay two with his notepad and his careful expression and looked at the arm and then at Indigo and then at the arm again with the particular sequence of someone checking that the injury was what he'd been told it was.
"Harpoon gun," he said.
"Yes," Indigo said.
"Through and through."
"Yes."
He wrote something down. He looked at his notepad. He looked at her.
"Ms Derby," he said. "I want to be honest with you."
"You said that yesterday," she said. "About your resources."
"I'm saying it again. Because this morning changes the calculation." He looked at the curtain. At the bay beyond it where Daphne was. "He went to a residential address. He went to the home of a civilian family. That's—" He stopped. "That's an escalation."
"I know," she said.
"It suggests he's not limiting himself to targets of opportunity. He knows who you're connected to. He knows where they live."
"He's been watching," she said. "Since before I arrived. Probably since before the tour started. He knows everyone connected to me in this town."
Officer Reeves absorbed that.
"Maddie Greyball," Indigo said. "She's a friend of mine. She lives in Millhaven. I need someone to check on her."
He wrote the name down. "Anyone else."
She thought about it. About who in Millhaven had a connection to her that Jacob Cain could have observed and noted. The hotel. Page and Spine — Greta the bookstore owner who had done the window display herself and whose name Indigo had heard and promptly connected to a human being with a life and a bookshop and no reason to be anywhere near this.
"The bookstore owner," she said. "Greta. I don't know her last name."
"Greta Halloway," he said. He was already writing.
"And Claire — my publicist. She's in the hotel. Room fourteen."
He wrote that down too.
He looked at his notepad. He looked at her.
"I'm going to be honest about something else," he said.
"Go ahead."
"I've been in contact with the detective you worked with previously. In New York. And the detective from the original Vicrock case." He paused. "They're both coming up. Today."
Indigo looked at him.
"This is bigger than Millhaven PD," he said. "I think you knew that. I think you knew it when you called me Saturday morning."
"Yes," she said.
"I should have escalated faster."
"You escalated appropriately for what you knew," she said. "You know more now."
He looked at her for a moment with the expression she'd seen on various officers across various situations over the years — the particular expression of someone who had expected to be blamed and hadn't been and wasn't quite sure what to do with that.
"There's something else," he said.
She waited.
"The woman from the outdoor theatre," he said. "The one who went into the forest."
She looked at him.
"We found her this morning," he said.
The curtain moved in the air conditioning.
"Okay," she said. Very quietly.
"Her name was Patricia Weller. She was forty three. She was at the outdoor theatre with her husband who got separated from her in the crowd." He looked at his notepad. "Her husband has been informed."
Indigo sat with that for a moment.
Patricia Weller. Forty three. At the outdoor theatre with her husband.
She hadn't known about Patricia Weller until this moment and now she knew her name and her age and that she'd been with her husband and that her husband had been separated from her in the crowd and had spent the night not knowing and now knew.
She breathed.
"Thank you for telling me," she said.
"I thought you should know," he said.
They sat in bay two of the Millhaven medical centre in the particular quiet of a Monday morning and let Patricia Weller exist in the space between them for a moment.
Then Officer Reeves put his notepad away.
"The detectives will be here by noon," he said. "I'd like you to be at the station when they arrive."
"I'll be there," she said.
He nodded. He looked at the curtain.
"How's your arm," he said. Not officially. Just asking.
"It hurts," she said. "But I've had worse."
He looked at her. The expression that acknowledged what that sentence contained without asking her to expand on it.
"I'll see you at noon," he said.
He left.
Doctor Fenwick finished and gave her instructions she already knew and a prescription she was going to fill and a follow up appointment she was going to attempt to keep and sent her through the curtain into the waiting area.
Tom stood up when he saw her. He looked at the arm — bandaged now, the particular white of hospital bandaging — and then at her face.
"How bad," he said.
"Not bad," she said. "It's going to be fine."
He looked at the bandage.
"Tom," she said. "It's going to be fine."
He sat back down. He had the particular look of someone who had been doing very well at staying calm and was finding the staying calm incrementally more effortful as the morning progressed.
Hannah was in the chair beside him. She looked at the arm and then at Indigo's face with the inventory-taking eyes doing their work and seemed to arrive at the same conclusion Doctor Fenwick had — clean through, nothing structural, going to be fine — without having been told any of it.
"Mum?" she said.
"She's going to need surgery to close it properly," Indigo said. "But she's stable and she's going to be okay."
Hannah nodded. She looked at the floor for a moment. Then she looked back up.
"The detectives are coming," Indigo said. "From New York and from the original case. They'll be at the station by noon. I need to be there."
Tom looked at her. "You just got stitches."
"I know."
"You were stabbed with a harpoon."
"Through and through," she said. "No structural damage."
Tom looked at her with the kind face doing its harder thing again.
"I need to be there," she said again. More quietly. "I have information they need and they have resources I need and Daphne is in that bay being looked after and the best thing I can do for this family right now is go and talk to the people who can actually do something about what's happening."
Tom looked at her for a long moment.
"Hannah stays with me," he said.
"Yes," Indigo said.
He looked at his daughter. At the inventory-taking eyes. At the sixteen year old sitting in a hospital waiting area at eight in the morning for the third time in four days.
"She stays with me," he said again.
Hannah looked at her father. She looked at Indigo.
"Okay," she said. To both of them.
Indigo walked to the police station.
She knew she probably shouldn't — Doctor Fenwick had suggested she rest and Officer Reeves had said noon and it was currently eight forty and the walk was fifteen minutes and her arm was doing considerable things that she was acknowledging and managing. But the hotel was on the way and she needed to change and she needed coffee and she needed fifteen minutes of being somewhere that wasn't a hospital waiting area or a back garden or a police station family room.
She needed fifteen minutes of just walking.
The morning was properly arrived now — the particular Monday morning quality of Millhaven, the main street doing its weekday thing, the shops opening, the delivery van that had been there yesterday morning doing whatever delivery vans did when they came back to the same street on consecutive days.
She walked through it with her bandaged arm in her jacket pocket and her eyes doing what they always did.
She stopped outside Page and Spine.
The window. The pyramid of books — thirty two copies, her face repeated, the particular strangeness of it. The space where the envelope had been, the tape marks still faintly visible on the glass where the police had removed it.
She looked at the window.
She looked at her own face.
She thought about the two years of early mornings and late nights that had produced the thing in the window. The particular discipline of turning something that had happened to her into something that could exist on a page. The last line. I don't know what comes next. But I'm the one who gets to find out.
She looked at her face on the cover for a long moment.
Then she went into the hotel.
She showered. She changed. She made coffee from the small machine on the desk and stood at the window and drank it and looked at the main street and thought about what the morning had told her.
The washing line. He'd been in the garden looking at the washing line. And then this morning he'd come back. Not for the washing — he could have taken the jacket any time in the night if that was what he wanted. He'd come back because Daphne was there. Because he'd seen through the kitchen window on Sunday evening that the Forzones were connected to Indigo and he'd filed that information and used it.
The way he always used information.
She thought about what he'd taken. The harpoon gun — gone now, single shot, presumably discharged. The axe. The clothes from the washing line — she didn't know yet what he'd taken, she'd need to ask Tom. The gun from Harry Cleader's basement. The fireworks from Maddie's car.
She thought about what he was building toward.
She thought about the Kuh Kuh Kuh Shhk Kuh. The deliberateness of letting himself be known. The standing at the fence. The coming into public spaces. The escalating visibility.
She thought about what it all meant and arrived at the same cold conclusion she'd arrived at in the spare room bed at two in the morning.
He was building to something. Not just her death — he'd had opportunities for that, he'd chosen not to take them yet. Something more specific. Something that required the preparation he'd been doing, the resource gathering, the particular choreography of the last four days.
He was building to a scene.
Her phone rang.
Maddie's number.
She answered immediately. "Maddie."
"I'm okay," Maddie said. The particular tone of someone leading with the thing they know you need to hear. "I'm okay. The police came this morning. Officer something. I'm okay."
"Good," Indigo said. The particular relief of good information. "Stay home today. Don't go out alone."
"I heard about the medical centre," Maddie said. "Your arm—"
"It's fine. It's going to be fine."
"Indigo—"
"Maddie. I need you to stay home today. Can you do that."
A pause. "Yes," Maddie said. "Yes I can do that."
"Good. I'll call you later."
"Indigo." The tone of someone about to say something they've been deciding whether to say. "Be careful. I know you know that. I know you always know that. Just — be careful."
"Always," Indigo said.
She hung up.
She stood at the window with the empty coffee cup in her hand and looked at the main street and thought about Maddie saying be careful with the particular weight of someone who understood what careful had cost in the past and knew it was going to cost something again.
She put the cup down.
She picked up her jacket.
She went to the police station.
The two detectives arrived at eleven forty seven.
Detective Marsh from the New York case — she remembered him, the careful neutral face, the notepad, the professional quality of someone who had learned to keep their reactions managed. He looked slightly older than she remembered and slightly less surprised to be here than she would have expected.
Detective Cole from the Vicrock case was someone she hadn't seen in six years. He was in his sixties now, retirement age, the kind of man who had clearly tried retirement and found it insufficient and come back. He shook her hand when Officer Reeves introduced them and looked at her with the particular expression of someone who had opened a case seven years ago and had it follow him out of the building.
They sat in the main room of the Millhaven police station — not the family room, the actual working room with the desks and the boards and the window that looked onto the main street — and Indigo told them everything she knew.
She started with the envelope on the bookstore window. She went forward from there — the medical centre, the outdoor theatre, the school gym, the back garden. She told them about the sound. She described it — the Kuh Kuh Kuh Shhk Kuh, the particular quality of it on different surfaces, the way it preceded him now in a way that it hadn't in Vicrock or New York or the burning forest.
She told them about the resource gathering. The axe from the corner store — that had been New York, but it had come here with him. The harpoon gun from wherever he'd found it. The gun from Harry Cleader's basement. The fireworks.
She told them about the washing line. About what she thought he'd taken from it.
Detective Cole wrote things down. Detective Marsh wrote things down. Officer Reeves wrote things down. The room had the particular focused quality of people doing the work of understanding a situation as quickly as possible because the situation was not waiting for them to understand it.
When she finished Detective Marsh looked at his notes.
"The fireworks," he said. "You think he's going to use them."
"I think he's used them before," she said. "And I think whatever he's building toward involves everything he's taken."
"What is he building toward," Detective Cole said. Not rhetorically. Actually asking.
She looked at him.
"A scene," she said. "Something specific. Something he's planned." She paused. "He's been letting me see him. That's not how he's operated before. He's always been about disappearing — the forest absorbing him, the crowd parting around him. Here he's standing at fences. Coming into public spaces. Making himself visible."
"Why," Detective Marsh said.
"Because he wants me to know it's coming," she said. "He wants the anticipation of it. He wants me to see him building toward it and not be able to stop it."
The room absorbed that.
"Or," Detective Cole said slowly. "He's making himself visible because he wants you to focus on him."
She looked at him.
"Misdirection," he said. "Everything you've described — the outdoor theatre, the school, the garden — those are all places you are or people connected to you. He's keeping your attention on himself and the people around you." He looked at his notes. "What if the scene he's building isn't about you."
Indigo looked at him.
She thought about the washing line. The jacket on it. She thought about what he'd taken and what it meant and what he could do with it.
She thought about Chloe Verhoo who had been on the book tour since the beginning and had access to everything — the schedule, the venues, the hotels, the signing tables. Who was supposed to be here today managing the logistics of an event that hadn't happened yet.
She thought about the book tour.
"Where is Chloe," she said. To Officer Reeves.
Officer Reeves looked at her. "Your publicist said she called Saturday afternoon saying she needed to handle some logistics issues for the remaining tour stops. She—"
"She's not in Millhaven," Indigo said.
"Not that we know of," he said.
Indigo thought about Chloe Verhoo who scheduled the signing tables and booked the hotels and sent the reminder emails and knew every stop on the book tour from here to the end of the schedule.
She thought about Jacob Cain standing at the back fence of the Forzone house looking at the washing line.
She thought about misdirection.
She thought about a dark jacket on a washing line and what it looked like from a distance and who it might belong to if you didn't know better.
She thought about the book tour.
"The next stop," she said. "After Millhaven. What's the next stop."
Officer Reeves looked at something on his desk. "Harwick," he said. "Wednesday."
"Harwick," she said.
She looked at Detective Cole. At Detective Marsh. At Officer Reeves.
"He's not building toward something here," she said. "He's building toward something there. He's keeping me here — keeping me watching him here — while whoever is helping him sets up whatever comes next."
The room was very quiet.
"Chloe Verhoo," Detective Marsh said. Writing it down.
"Yes," Indigo said. "I think so. I think she's been involved since before Millhaven and I think she's in Harwick right now."
She looked at the window. At the main street of Millhaven going about its Monday morning outside.
She thought about the tour schedule. The remaining stops. The careful logistics of six more towns and three more weeks.
She thought about who had put that schedule together.
"I need to see the full tour itinerary," she said. "Everything Chloe arranged. Every hotel, every venue, every timing detail."
"I'll call your publicist," Officer Reeves said. He was already picking up his phone.
Indigo looked at the window.
She thought about Jacob Cain somewhere in Millhaven. Moving through it. Watching. Building toward whatever came next in Harwick.
She thought about Chloe Verhoo in Harwick right now, doing whatever she was doing, being whatever she was being.
She thought about misdirection and what it cost and what it was designed to make you miss.
She thought about what she was missing.
She breathed.
In. Out.
She looked at the detectives.
"We need to move fast," she said. "Whatever he's planning for Harwick — he's already started."