by S W Vaughn
I opened my mouth to say that I didn’t, that I’d grown up in the Bronx and had never heard of Landstaff Junction, Vermont, until Sunday night. Just in time, I realized that he wasn’t asking me that question. He was asking Donovan North.
Who had definitely told me that he’d never been to Vermont.
He’d lied about that. The same way he’d lied about everything else.
Go figure.
I couldn’t think of a thing to say. If I made up some bullshit, they’d know I was lying. I could mention New Heights, since I knew that Donnie had been there, but that was as much truth as I knew about his past.
If he’d lived here, how the hell did he end up at juvie in the Bronx?
“Donovan,” Clarke said almost gently, shocking me to the core. It was the first time she’d used that name, instead of Detective or North, and she actually seemed concerned. “We know about your foster mother. And the charges, how she was arrested, what she was convicted for. Maybe … you don’t want to talk about it yet?” she suggested.
She’d thrown me a lifeline, and I grabbed it with both hands. “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t say anything before,” I managed in a rough tone that I didn’t have to manufacture. I was plenty shaken up, between Beauford trying to kill me and finding out that my doppelganger had lived in this nowhere town at some point. “It wasn’t the best time of my life, you know?”
That had to be true for Donnie. I knew he’d been abused, like most of the kids who spent time in juvie. He had that look. We could always recognize our own — it was a bizarre, silent kinship, a wordless acknowledgment of the suffering we understood all too well. When the people who were supposed to take care of you turned against you, turned your childish trust for grownups into fear, it marked you for life.
Now they were both giving me sympathetic looks. I’d been forgiven.
At least until the next time I didn’t know something I should about Donovan North.
“By the way,” I said offhandedly, more to change the subject than launch another dramatic episode, “Oren Beauford tried to run me off the road on my way in.”
Detective Clarke gasped, and August’s mouth dropped open. “Why would he do that?” the senior officer said. “I mean, he can be … cranky sometimes, but he never bothers anyone.”
I shrugged. “No idea. I guess he really doesn’t like city people,” I said. “And I’m not even a Yankees fan.”
Clarke shot me a puzzled look, but she didn’t ask for clarification.
“Do you want me to bring him in?” August said earnestly. “I can probably still catch him at Daisy’s.”
I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t want to press charges or anything. I just hope he got whatever’s bothering him out of his system.”
“Wow. You’re a lot nicer than I would be.” August glanced aside at the clock on the wall and did an almost comical double-take. “Hey, I’d better get moving. I have to get these guys out on patrol,” he said. “You need anything else right now, Preston?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks, August.” The detective’s tone was quiet, thoughtful.
I wondered if she was having second thoughts about forgiving me.
When August was out of hearing range, Detective Clarke gestured to the unoccupied desk that sat across from hers. “You’re going to be there, once we get everything settled,” she said. “Listen … there’s something I have to do right now. You’re welcome to come with me, but if you don’t want to, I’ll understand.”
I frowned. “Is it about the case?”
“One of them. The old one,” she said, and released a slow, trembling breath as her eyes met mine. “We’ve identified the body from the woods. It’s Diamond Schilz.”
She watched me carefully as she said it. That name was supposed to mean something to me, but it didn’t.
“She was Eleanor Schilz’s biological daughter,” Clarke went on when I failed to react. “Your foster mother’s. I have to go out and see her, tell her that we found her daughter.”
“Wait. She’s not in jail?”
I blurted it out before I could think about it, but from the dismayed look on Clarke’s face, it was the right thing to say. “You didn’t know,” she said unevenly. “God, I’m sorry. She was released two months ago.”
“No, it’s okay,” I told her. “And I’ll go with you.”
It was crazy, but I actually wanted to see this woman. I wanted to meet the person who’d put that blank, haunted look in young Donnie’s eyes — the same look I saw in the mirror when I was alone and let my guard down.
Even though it wasn’t true, I wanted her to think that she hadn’t destroyed him. That he’d rose above whatever she’d broken in him, because it was at least partially true. He’d graduated from juvenile delinquent to New York cop, though even that was tainted by his mafia connections. But this woman would never find out any of that.
She didn’t deserve to know she’d succeeded.
“Are you sure?” Clarke said after a long pause.
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s fine. I’m over it.”
She thought it over for a minute, and then said, “All right. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Preston
The house was even creepier than she remembered.
They hadn’t talked much on the drive up from town. Detective North seemed lost in thought, probably reliving whatever horrors he’d suffered in his childhood, and Preston hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him the worst of it: that one of the foster kids from this house had probably killed Diamond Schilz, and might also be the serial killer.
It would sound like an accusation. One she wasn’t sure she was ready to make … yet.
She sincerely hoped that she would never have to.
Already she’d tried to picture kind, cheerful Anton Fehily as the killer, but that didn’t make a lot of sense. She would still look into it, she had to, but she doubted anything would come of it.
Despite the fact that she’d listed First Baptist as a connection between the victims, and that there was no one more connected to that church than Reverend Fehily.
Still. Probably not Fehily, probably not North. Almost definitely not Eva Carrol. Female serial killers were so rare, especially with this level of violence involved. So that left the last name on the short list: Jacob Butler.
And there was another possibility, one she was starting to lean more toward with every passing minute. It hadn’t been one of the foster kids at all. Her father was wrong about whatever boy he’d decided was pure evil, and it had been someone else in the woods that day. A friend of Diamond’s, maybe — or more likely, an adult.
Preston had seen the girl clearly enough, but the killer was only a hooded figure in her memory. Shapeless, faceless, even genderless.
Now she was here again. Back where it all started.
In the rough and uneven, weed-pocked driveway, she turned off the engine but made no move to get out of the car. Detective North stared through the windshield, silent and expressionless.
Eventually, Preston said, “I saw her, you know.”
She didn’t know why she’d said it. Maybe to see if it got a reaction from him, a hint that he could have killed the girl after all — which was insane.
But he only turned to face her, his brow knit in confusion. “Saw who?”
“Diamond,” she said, watching him. “I saw her get killed, right out there in the woods. When I was twelve.”
The look that washed over him was part sympathy, part understanding. “God, that’s awful. I’m so sorry,” he said. “But it does explain a few things. Like your notes on the board in the conference room.”
No guilt. No evasion.
She was reasonably confident that either he wasn’t the killer, or he was the world’s greatest actor.
“Yes, it does explain the notes,” she said after a beat. “I never knew her name, but I had so many details. When she died, where, how. The way she … sounded.” She shuddered involuntarily as
the ghosts of Diamond’s dying cries streaked across her mind. “And I still don’t know who. Who killed her. They were wearing a hoodie, and they never turned around.”
North lifted a hand, but then seemed to change his mind about whatever he’d been about to do and lowered it. “We’ll find him,” he said. “Whether or not it’s the same guy we’re looking for now.”
She nodded, wishing she had his confidence. “You ready to go in there?”
“No.” A half-smirk lifted his mouth. “But let’s go, anyway.”
They exited the car at the same time, but Preston took the lead as they approached. The house loomed above, the cluttered and snarled yard seeming to press in on the worn dirt footpath that led to the front steps, which were the only solid-looking things here. The steps were new, apparently built recently to replace the old porch that had collapsed at some point and was left where it fell, in splintering piles of rotted wood on either side of the door.
Just as she reached the first step, the door slammed open and a shotgun emerged, braced by a shapeless apparition. “Get the hell off my property,” a voice snarled.
Preston’s heart jumped into her throat. Behind the shotgun was a woman, solidly built and dressed in black stretch pants and a flannel shirt, pale gray hair pulled tightly back and held in a bun with a few flyaway wisps that floated around her set face like cobwebs.
“Mrs. Schilz?” she said firmly despite her fluttering heart. “Deputy Clarke with the Landstaff Junction police.”
The woman grunted and lowered the shotgun. Her pale, faded eyes flickered between the two of them. “What do you want?” she said. “I did my time.”
Preston hesitated. She hadn’t introduced North yet, and she wondered if the woman would recognize him. Finally, she said, “We’d like to talk to you about your daughter.”
Eleanor Schilz narrowed her eyes. “What daughter?”
The words were so cold that Preston broke out in gooseflesh. “Diamond,” she said.
“She finally turn up somewhere?” the woman sneered. “Well, you tell that high-and-mighty bitch I got nothin’ to say to her.”
Preston glanced at North, who was just behind her. He was frozen, furious, glaring at Schilz as if he’d happily rip her guts out then and there. She swallowed and turned back. “Your daughter is dead, Mrs. Schilz.”
“Oh.” Her tone was flat and uncaring. “Guess you’d better come in, then.”
The woman pivoted in the doorway and moved back inside.
Preston shivered inwardly. “You okay?” she asked North.
“Fine,” he said in a thick voice that suggested he was anything but. “Let’s just get this over with.”
She nodded and went up the steps before she could change her mind.
The inside of the place was in no better shape than the outside. A thick, musty, sour smell clung to everything, and dust blanketed what little furniture there was, with the exception of a threadbare easy chair in the living room situated in front of an old television.
Faint sounds drew them toward the back of the house, and they found Eleanor Schilz in a spacious but oppressive kitchen that looked like something out of the Great Depression. Bulky, rusted appliances, grimy surfaces, the window above the sink caked in filth. Cracked linoleum tiles on the floor, half of them peeled away. An ancient table with four mismatched chairs in the middle of the room.
The woman of the house leaned against the far counter next to the icebox-style refrigerator, arms folded and shotgun propped beside her. “Get you a drink?” she said grudgingly.
“No, thank you,” Preston said quickly.
Schilz stared at her, and then her gaze slid to North. “Who’re you, then?”
“Detective Donovan North,” he said without hesitation as he came up beside Preston.
Recognition flashed in the woman’s eyes, and she smiled. Leered, actually. There was something dark and awful in that smile. “Donnie,” she said, lowering her arms and starting to move toward them slowly. “Thought you’d’ve skipped town, way back when. And my, didn’t you grow up to be a looker.”
“Mrs. Schilz, we need to talk about Diamond,” Preston said.
The woman stopped. Went cold again. “I ain’t paying for no burial for that little bitch,” she said. “So if that’s what you’re here about—”
“I’ll pay for it,” North interrupted in a hard, terrifying tone.
Schilz raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so you’re Mister Moneybags now?” she drawled. “How about you spread some of that around for your old Mama Ellie?”
The sound that came from North was like nothing Preston had ever heard, but she thought of coyotes. Predators in the night. “How about you go to hell?” he growled.
“You still got a smart mouth, boy.” Schilz took a threatening step forward. “Looks like I didn’t beat you hard enough when you was here before. Maybe I ought to start again.”
“Stop it!” Preston stepped in front of her partner, and her hand moved to rest on the gun at her hip. For the first time in her life, she almost wanted a reason to draw her weapon. “Mrs. Schilz, your daughter was murdered, and we’re trying to find out who killed her. We need to ask you some questions about her.”
The rage that the woman had been directing at North drained slowly, and her face went slack. “Haven’t seen her in twenty years now,” she said. “Don’t know anything about her.”
“That’s when she was murdered,” Preston said flatly. “Twenty years ago, in the woods outside this house.”
A flicker penetrated the mask of Eleanor Schilz’s face, and the frigid expression returned. “Might as well ask every man within twenty miles of here, then. That girl could never keep her legs shut, or her mouth. One of ’em probably just wanted to shut her up.”
Shock and disgust over the way this woman talked about her daughter took Preston’s breath away, and she couldn’t summon a response.
North took over for her.
“She doesn’t know anything,” he ground out. “Come on, Clarke, let’s—”
“I know something about you.”
That terrible, dark leer stretched the older woman’s mouth as her pale eyes drilled into North.
He snorted. “I doubt that.”
“I know you liked it.”
The bottom dropped out of Preston’s stomach. It was impossible to miss the suggestive undertone, the clear meaning behind what she’d said.
North stood rigid for a long moment. Finally, he turned on a heel and walked away without another word.
Preston ached to go after him, but there was one more important question she had to ask. “Mrs. Schilz,” she began, almost choking on the bile that rose in her throat. “Where is your … husband, Douglas Schilz?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Took off when the police came before,” she said, but her gaze was on the doorway that North had vanished through, and the hungry smile still lingered. Suddenly, she looked straight at Preston. “You going to hit that? My God, the ass on him.”
Preston was going to vomit.
“I’ll let myself out,” she managed, and then pivoted and nearly ran from the house.
Outside, she made it down the steps and halfway down the dirt path to the driveway before she had to stop, gasping and hunched over. The nausea passed slowly, but at least she didn’t puke. She’d never met a more repulsive human being than the woman who lived in that house.
Now she understood perfectly why North had never mentioned his past.
He was waiting in the car. When she got in, he turned toward her and asked, “You okay?”
“Me?” She let out a shaking, startled laugh. “After … that, you’re asking if I’m okay. What about you?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I’m over it.”
She wasn’t so sure about that, but for now she’d have to take him at his word. “Okay, so we’ll head back to the station,” she said. “I think you’re right. She doesn’t know anything.”
His silence was thick enough to
cut with a knife.
She decided not to mention Eleanor Schilz for a while.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Marco
The rest of the day passed in a blur. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the encounter with Eleanor Schilz, that piece of human garbage. It was like she’d reached into my soul and left a trail of slime that would never wash off — and I hadn’t even been there before, when she must have been at her horrific peak.
Donovan North had spent five years under that monster’s roof.
Clarke showed me the records when we got back to the station. Thirteen foster kids had cycled through the hellhole that was the Schilz house, and one biological daughter had spent all fifteen short years of her life with the creature masquerading as a mother, until she was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant. It was the reason I’d offered to pay for her funeral when that callous bitch refused.
From the little I knew about Donnie, I thought he would’ve wanted to take care of Diamond. She was basically his sister.
And the Reverend Anton Fehily, I learned, had basically been his brother.
No wonder he didn’t want to talk to me. I wouldn’t want my memories of that place dredged up, either.
Somehow I got through a full day at the station. Though I couldn’t stop thinking about that woman and the monstrous things she’d hinted at, I tried to pay attention as Detective Clarke worked the case, making calls and running down the other foster kids, chasing the list of similarities she’d made between the serial killer victims. Things I was supposed to know how to do. It was all frustratingly slow, with a lot of waiting involved.
She either didn’t notice that I wasn’t pitching in much, or she was cutting me some slack because of that morning’s encounter.
I was determined to do better tomorrow.
We hadn’t made much progress by the end of the day. Most of the fosters had been placed in other towns, other cities, and had since scattered to the four winds once they aged out of the system. Of the two besides Donovan and Anton who’d been there at the end, Jacob Butler was living in Connecticut, married with two children — and Eva Carrol seemed to have vanished without a trace.