The Faceless Killer by Katy Pierce

Author:Katy Pierce [Pierce, Katy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

It had come straight from Carlee’s lips: Ian Garnett was now working the Candice Harkness case.

Zack trusted Ian’s casework about as far as he could throw it. And casework, being an immaterial concept, was unthrowable as far as he was concerned, so Zack was working the Candice Harkness case too.

He pulled his car into a parking spot off a row of brownstone storefronts, his target—the door below a flashing neon arcade sign—just down the sidewalk. In Zack’s mind, the problem with this case was that Carlee was treating it like a grand conspiracy. She was letting herself be influenced too much by the old Marlow debacle, where her own client had used her as a pawn.

Zack had initially scoffed at the idea of Candice Harkness’s conspiracy, but he couldn’t discount the idea anymore. At least, not after Kai’s murder and Harper’s attempted suicide. If it really was that.

And yet, Carlee—and Ian, it would seem—had overlooked the only solid, tangible evidence they had: Candice’s accident, the event that kick-started this whole thing. That was where they were going to make headway, not by obsessing over current leads to the exclusion of the attacks on Candice’s life that began six years ago. And that’s exactly where Zack would look.

Even if the case turned out to be a twisting, knotting mystery worthy of the old seventies thrillers he loved to watch, Zack was confident it would all begin to unravel if he tugged on the initial accident with enough tenacity.

He got out of his car, invigorated by the cool morning air after the stuffy ride, and looked over the flamboyant building awaiting him. Retro signs, obnoxious font, and bright window paintings told everyone in a five-block radius this was an arcade. Zack felt a headache coming on already, but he had a job to do, and Caleb Erickson needed to answer some questions.

Zack’s senses were overwhelmed the moment he walked in. The exterior of the building was only a taste of what lurked inside. Under an unbearable wash of neon, a row of pinball machines, pachinko, and retro arcade cabinets assaulted his hearing with clinks and beeps and boops.

At the center of the action was a spread of multimonitor gaming rigs and VR spaces with top-of-the-line tactile feedback devices.

“Oh my god,” Zack groaned. He saw several grown men—looking goofy as hell—wearing VR goggles and feedback gloves. “Do people not work these days?” he grumbled as he contemptuously watched one man stumble around on a multidirectional treadmill.

He was sure he hated this place. Almost as sure as he was that Carlee would love it. In his mind’s eye, he could see her face light up like a kid in a candy store. Maybe he would suggest it for their next meeting instead of the Catty Corner…

“The driving range was so fun, Carlee,” Ian’s voice piped directly into his thoughts. “Look at how short these golf shorts are!”

Zack growled, unable to scrub the image—or the jealousy—from his mind. He clenched his teeth and set out to find Caleb.

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