by S W Vaughn
“Jesus, look at him. Holy shit.” Jake giggled and almost nudged me again, but then he thought better of it at the last minute. “I bet he’s about to piss his pants over there. Hey, let’s fuck with him.” The jagged grin spread. “You know what? You could do anything, even in front of the security cameras, and just blame it on that guy. We should burn this place down or something. Oh, wait, how about we kill a guard?”
“No,” I said sharply. Sometimes Jake had to be corrected like a dog, and it was all I could do not to rub his nose in his own shit. “Leave him alone, for now.”
The new guy — my doppelganger — did look unsettled. But unlike Jake, I didn’t believe he was scared. Reserved, maybe. Hanging back, getting the lay of the land. His posture was guarded and self-protective, as if he was expecting some kind of abuse, and that could’ve been interpreted as fear. But I sensed something dark in him.
Or maybe I was only projecting my own darkness onto the spitting image of myself.
Jake lost interest in the other kid fast once I rebuked him. His face only fell for a few seconds, and then his smile bounced back. “Vince and them are trying to crowd the hoop again,” he said, pointing over at the rundown basketball half-court in the far corner of the yard, where four or five of the younger boys had begun a half-hearted game of Horse. “Want to scare them off?”
“Nah. I’m hungry,” I told him. “Go find somebody with a care package. I want good shit, nothing generic or homemade.”
Always happy to serve, Jake nodded vigorously and scuttled off. I watched him absently for a few seconds before I returned my attention to the new guy.
This time, my doppelganger was looking back. And there was no fear in him at all.
There was nothing in him.
It really was like looking in a mirror.
Chapter One
Preston
The blue-white bubble of the glow from the floodlights made it look like the moon had fallen from the sky and landed in the forest.
Detective Preston Clarke shivered as she stood at the entrance to the overgrown, barely recognizable path through the woods that would take her to the crime scene. The scene. The one she’d known was out here somewhere since she was twelve years old, even though no one had ever believed her.
It was a cold triumph knowing that the girl’s body had finally been found, but that the investigation into this twenty-year-old death would be pushed aside in favor of a much fresher murder, one that had shaken the town of Landstaff Junction to its core.
One that remained unsolved more than three weeks after the gruesome act had been committed.
Preston pulled her scattered thoughts together, adjusted the backpack kit she’d brought along, and set off down the path, her Maglite beam playing across the faint ruts choked with roots, carpeted with dead leaves and browned pine needles ahead of her while a silent symphony of flashing lights from emergency vehicles parked along the access road played behind her. She wasn’t really used to thinking of herself as a detective yet. Though she’d joined the Junction’s police force at twenty — after wasting a year in college before realizing that biochemistry wasn’t for her — she had only just made detective a month ago. Four days before the worst homicide this town had ever seen.
It was a hell of a case to cut her teeth on, and she was beyond frustrated at the complete lack of progress they’d made so far. Frankly, they weren’t equipped to handle this level of violent, premeditated murder in a town where the worst charges that had been filed against any person in the last three decades was vehicular manslaughter.
But she couldn’t think about Lynn Reynolds right now. Like it or not, the investigation into the young woman’s grisly death had hit several walls that wouldn’t be easy to get around. At the moment she had to focus on another dead girl, one who’d never had a chance to receive the justice she deserved.
Until now. Finally.
The hum of the portable generators running the floodlights grew louder until she reached the clearing where the girl’s body had been found. This place was at least half a mile away from the huge, creepy house on the TR-28 where Preston had seen the murder, deep into the thousands of acres of forest that bordered the Junction to the north. A couple of diehard, deep-woods campers who’d been scouting remote sites had stumbled across her remains and called it in a few hours ago.
The instant the call came in, Preston knew it had to be her. Now, she just had to prove it — and track down the hooded figure who’d haunted her dreams for twenty years.
August Farnsworth was the first to see her coming. He rushed toward her, waving a hand over his head as if she hadn’t noticed the all the lights and people and activity. No one could accuse August of being especially adept at his job, but he was earnest and hard-working. A senior officer who’d been with the department as long as Preston, he’d put in for the detective position along with just about every other patrol grunt when it opened up.
At least he didn’t resent her for getting the promotion the way some of the others did, even though he was a few years older than her.
“Hey, Preston,” August panted when he reached her, stopping to glance over his shoulder at the knot of people around what she assumed was the body. He turned back with his mouth open to say something, but then his brow furrowed. “Are you okay? You look like somebody walked over your grave.”
Hearing that old expression chilled her. She’d never really understood the sentiment, but now it felt oddly appropriate. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “I need to see her.”
August nodded and fell into step beside her as she strode across the clearing and tried to prepare herself for what she was about to see. Lynn Reynolds’ mutilated body had been horrific, hard to look at, but this — it was personal.
There were three people clustered around something on the ground, two standing and one kneeling. The kneeling man was Tommy Brand, one of the town’s two full-time crime scene technicians. At twenty-four, he was also one of the youngest people who worked with the department. Lieutenant Rufus Krattiger stood next to Tommy, his position blocking her view of the body and whatever Tommy was doing, and there was a uniformed officer on Kratt’s right. Henderson, she thought.
Not her favorite officer. Henderson resented her, to say the least.
Kratt pivoted to face her when she was a few steps away, his expression inscrutable. “Clarke,” he said. “You look like hell.”
She smirked. “Thanks a lot.” Trust the lieutenant to call it exactly like he saw it. Avoiding the inevitable for a moment longer, she panned a slow gaze around the clearing and took in the other uniforms milling around, as well as the young and clearly distressed couple sitting on a fallen tree, talking in muted tones to one of the officers as he took notes. “They the ones who found her?” she asked.
The lieutenant frowned. “Listen, I know what you’re thinking,” he said in a tone that was as close to kind as Kratt could get. He’d been a young officer on duty all those years ago, when a hysterical twelve-year-old Preston had burst into the police station with tales of hooded killers and bloody knives and a dead girl in the woods. “But at this stage, there’s no way to be sure the body is even female, much less what you think you saw—”
Her glower cut him off. “I don’t think, Kratt. I know what I saw.”
“Well, it’s definitely female. You can tell from the pelvis,” Tommy Brand said from behind the lieutenant. “If that makes any difference.”
“It does. Thank you, Tommy.” Preston leveled an even stare at Kratt. “I need to see her.”
He shrugged and stepped aside.
Preston’s breath caught at the sight of what was on the ground — or rather, in the ground, half-buried and partially covered with twigs and dirt and pine needles. Her legs wanted to shake as she approached slowly, but she forced herself to remain steady and took a pair of disposable gloves from her backpack kit. She crouched in front of the body and slipped the gloves on.
The corpse was withered and desicc
ated, little more than leather and bone that had darkened with time and exposure to a dull, flat brown. Only the head, upper torso, and one arm were fully exposed, and the earth had eroded to reveal parts of the pelvis and thighs. Tree roots had spread into the remains, entangling themselves around and through the body until it was difficult to distinguish wood from bone. The effect was surreal, forming some kind of awful, tortured plant-human hybrid.
Most of the clothing had long since disintegrated, but the ragged remains of a jacket still clung to the bones. It was impossible to tell what color the material had been from the above-ground fragments, but if she dug a little…
She turned to Tommy, who’d pulled back from his careful inspection to give her space. “Did you get the pictures you need?”
He nodded. “All documented in situ.”
“All right. Thanks.”
Despite her best efforts, Preston’s hands trembled a little as she reached out and carefully scooped dirt and detritus away from the torso. She uncovered some of the buried material and tugged gently, and then brought her flashlight out from the pack where she’d tucked it away and shined the beam onto the fabric.
The color was faded, but clearly the jacket had once been bright green.
“It’s her,” she rasped with a catch in her throat. “This is what she was wearing.”
Tommy, too young to know about what happened twenty years ago, shot her a raised eyebrow. “You know the victim?”
“I don’t know her name,” she said almost absently. “But I saw her die.”
And now she’d see her killer brought to justice.
This girl had waited long enough.
Chapter Two
Marco
The dingy little twenty-four-hour truck stop and gas station directly off the highway looked to be the only place around for miles. That was probably why the gas prices were twenty cents higher than everywhere else I’d seen in the three hours since I left the city. Good location, zero competition.
I wasn’t a fan of literal highway robbery, but my options were limited. My car was running on fumes.
I’d shaken the bastards on my tail an hour ago, but I still scanned the place thoroughly as I made the left turn into the parking lot and bumped across pothole-riddled pavement. The station was a squat building with industrial-ugly siding, flanked by two cracked asphalt lots — gas pumps and rural convenience store staples on the left, diesel pumps and truck parking on the right. There were entrances on either side of the building, and a neon OPEN sign flashing in the dark-screened glass front window.
The place wasn’t all that busy, probably because it was eleven on a Sunday night in a decidedly rural area. Three eighteen-wheelers stood far back in the truck lot, dark and silent, their drivers likely napping in the sleeper cabs. There was a flatbed tow truck at the diesel pumps. No vehicles at the gas pumps, though there was a maroon two-door coupe parked a few feet back from the entrance on the convenience side next to a stand of bundled firewood, and a light blue sedan out in the lot beyond the pumps that probably belonged to an employee.
It took me about twenty seconds to process my surroundings and store them. My hypervigilance, a “gift” from my ever-so-delightful childhood, made me freakishly observant sometimes — even when I didn’t particularly want to be.
But while I was on the run from armed thugs, exercising my observational skills was probably a good idea.
I pulled up to the pump nearest the entrance and killed the engine. Before I got out, I checked the S&W Shield tucked in the back of my jeans to make sure it was still concealed. Didn’t need anyone making a panic call to 911 when I just wanted some gas, and maybe a snack for the road.
As I opened the car door, I heard the slow crunch of tires on pavement and glanced toward the parking lot entrance to see a dark gray SUV with tinted windows driving in. The vehicle drifted off to the right, the opposite side of the building, and pulled up to the diesel pumps.
My tail was driving a black sedan. I relaxed a little.
I swiped one of my alternate-name credit cards and started filling the tank, and my thoughts turned to Nicky as once again I tried to figure out what the hell happened back in the city. For some reason, the head of the Franzella crime family thought I’d murdered his girlfriend — excuse me, mistress — and his goons had been hunting me down for the past three days.
The problem was I hadn’t done it. First of all, the guy I’d taken out three days ago was definitely not Nicky’s mistress, unless he’d been keeping a burly, forty-something man with a serious drinking problem on the side. And second, I didn’t accept contracts on women or children. Yeah, I was a hitman, but I liked to think of myself as a gentleman first.
Inexplicably, Nicky believed I was responsible for not just killing, but butchering his bit of fluff with a knife. I didn’t do shit like that, and he damned well knew it.
But right now, Don Franzella was not a clear-thinking man.
It was why I’d finally left the city, headed for the hills. The Adirondacks, to be specific. I knew a guy who had a cabin up there, where I could lay low until I sorted this shit out. I just had to make it up there first.
Because somehow, no matter where I holed up or ran to, Nicky’s goons kept finding me.
This was the fourth time I’d lost them on the drive, and the longest so far. But I didn’t dare believe that I was in the clear yet. Nicky had only taken the reins of the family six months ago, after his father died from a classic case of lead poisoning, but the junior Franzella was far more relentless than his old man had ever been.
He wouldn’t stop until I was dead.
I’d pumped ten gallons into the car when my phone buzzed in my pocket. Frowning, I drew it out and stared at the screen, half convinced that Nicky had somehow found my private number and called me directly, instead of using one of my go-betweens. But it was Jake, so I answered reluctantly. “Yeah, talk fast,” I said.
“Marco, thank God,” Jake breathed on the other end. “Where the hell are you? I got the cash. Thought you were meeting me at the docks.”
I grunted. Initially I’d planned a more thought-out departure from New York, and I’d sent Jake out to run errands and gather supplies, namely the money he owed me. Only while I was waiting, I impulsively decided to leave sooner than expected — an impulse largely driven by the bullets that had suddenly riddled the shitty motel room where I’d been squatting.
That had been one of my narrower escapes.
“Change of plans,” I told him. “Just hold onto it for now. And that means don’t spend it.”
“What’s going on?” he insisted. “I only heard that you left the city, and that Nicky had you pinned down somewhere near Jersey. Where are you?”
“Gas station,” I said absently. “I’m fine.”
A strident dinging tone sounded from the convenience store building, and I flinched in spite of myself, but it was only the door opening as a fifty-something man in a Carhartt jacket, oil-stained jeans and shitkicker boots walked out to head for the maroon coupe. He shot me a brief, narrow-eyed glance on the way. Must’ve been a local.
Jake coughed on the line. “The hell was that?”
“Annoying excuse for a door chime.” There was a clunk as the gas hose kicked off in my hand, signifying a full tank, and I pulled the nozzle free and slammed it back on the pump. “Look, I gotta run,” I said to Jake. “I’ll probably call you when I get there. Maybe you can wire the money or something.”
“Get where?” he said with alarm in his voice. “Jesus, Marco, you gotta go back and clear this shit up, or they’re gonna kill you. Where the hell are you going?”
I twisted the gas cap in place and pushed the little door shut. “I don’t know yet. Listen, don’t call me for a while.”
“Marco, wait!” I caught a note of desperation behind his words. “I can help you,” he said. “Just tell me where you are, okay? I’m worried about you.”
My hackles rose suddenly, making the hairs on the back of
my neck stand up. Jake didn’t worry about me — especially when he owed me money. In fact, he tended to avoid me even when he could afford to pay up.
I thought again about how Nicky kept finding me, and how often I’d heard from Jake in the past few days. More than usual.
“You son of a bitch,” I growled into the phone. “You’re singing for Nicky, aren’t you? How much is he paying you?”
The horrified pause before he spoke told me everything I needed to know. “Marco—”
I hung up before he could sputter anything else out. Spineless little backstabbing prick.
I should’ve known, or at least suspected. Jake would roll on his own mother for a cold case of beer, and he’d do a hell of a lot worse for actual money. But he wasn’t smart enough to track me, not with any kind of accuracy at least, so I had to wonder how he’d managed to pull this off.
Right now, I couldn’t worry about the hows of Jake Paladino. I had bigger, uglier problems headed my way.
For a moment there was nothing but the idle of the tow truck engine in the far lot, and the rustling of leaves in the faint summer breeze that blew through the trees across the road. I closed my eyes and silently cursed Jake’s name with every breath. Part of me wanted to get back in the car and burn rubber out of here, make miles with only my rage to keep me company. But I hadn’t told that squealing bastard exactly where I was, and the car wasn’t the only thing running on fumes. I needed food. Plus, I had to take a piss.
I headed for the station. The overly long, high-pitched chime sounded again when I pulled the door open, and I shot a sympathetic glance at the woman behind the cash register counter to the right of the entrance, a thirty-something dishwater blonde in casual clothes with an air of minimum-wage resignation. “You must get sick of hearing that door buzzer all night long, huh?” I said to her.
She gave a tired smile that suggested she’d heard the comment before, and it was just as ‘hilarious’ the first hundred times. “Yup,” she offered in response.