by Leslie Wolfe
Once the girls were wrapped in clean sheets and stood on a large stretch of paper placed on the floor, Jodi slowly and gently combed their hair with a brush. Erin’s blood-caked hair posed the most challenges, but eventually, Jodi cut a few strands and sealed them in a small evidence pouch to shorten the ordeal. Scraping under the fingernails came next, on the off chance they might’ve scratched their mother’s killer.
Finally, the girls were given a shower, Farrell volunteering for the task and cordoning off the women’s locker room for the duration. She was about twenty-five years old and a great cop, smart, energetic, and all heart. She sang to little Erin, trying to keep her attention away from the bloodstained water whirling around the little girl’s feet, her voice occasionally breaking, toneless on shattered breaths, while the child sucked her thumb so forcefully her teeth left deep bite marks around her finger.
Heather stayed dissociated and silent throughout the entire ordeal, her mouth refusing to articulate a single word, her eyes out of focus, lost in a distance that made her trauma bearable. When she was finally done, she let herself be guided into the nap room and sat on the side of the double bunk Kay had improvised, and waited, silent and lost, probably not even aware of her surroundings or the passing of time.
Double servings of syrup-drenched pancakes that filled the sheriff’s office with the smell of Sunday mornings got rushed over from the Waffle House, but the girls barely touched them, nor the chamomile tea someone had made using the microwave oven.
A little later, they were finally asleep, dressed in clean but ill-fitting clothes that Deputy Farrell had borrowed from her daughter’s closet. Erin continued to suck her thumb but slept soundly, her breathing regular, silent. Heather breathed heavily, her sleep restless, agitated, probably invaded by unspeakable nightmares. Kay stood and looked at them for a moment, then left the room quietly, closing the door after her, while in her mind she saw herself shooting the man responsible, over and over again.
In the hallway, she ran into Sheriff Logan, who must have been watching over the girls for a while through the small window built into the nap room’s door.
“Anything yet?” he asked, his brow tense, furrowed. He chewed his usual minty gum impatiently, muscles dancing in knots on his jawline, the rhythm of his chomping a loud and rapid one, far from casual.
“Nothing,” she had to admit. “I didn’t expect anything this early,” she added quickly, knowing Logan could easily change his mind and put that dreaded call into social services. “They need some rest, then I’ll talk to them. Anything on the search?”
He ran his hand quickly across his forehead, then through the bristles of his hair. “Nothing. The K9 unit came back empty, but we were expecting that. Dogs can’t do much when vics are taken in vehicles. The AMBER Alert went out a couple of hours ago.”
“Any calls?”
He scoffed. “Just the usual schmucks who don’t know what they’re doing. Wasted a bunch of hours chasing false reports.” He looked at the girls for a brief moment, then back at Kay. “Do you think the missing sister is still local? Roadblocks didn’t get us anything.”
She wanted to tell him there wasn’t enough data to formulate a profile, not nearly enough to grasp what the unsub’s intentions might’ve been. “There’s no way of knowing,” she replied instead. “I’m hoping I’ll be able to figure that out once the girls start talking. Have you noticed the glasses of wine on the table? That tells me the killer wasn’t a stranger. There was no forced entry either. Cheryl knew the unsub.”
“Maybe the girls knew him too,” the sheriff said, his hand kneading his chin, something visibly bothering him. “Romance gone wrong?”
She shrugged. Out of all things that could jeopardize the outcome of an investigation, one stood out as the single, most significant reason for unsolved cases, and that was jumping to baseless conclusions too early, then sticking to them. “We don’t know that.”
“That’s usually what happens,” Logan insisted with a quick grin that briefly exposed the gum held between his left molars. “Someone cheats, or someone leaves someone. A woman scorned, her lover’s wife, that kind of stuff. All my years in law enforcement, and I can tell you it’s either women, drugs, or money—nothing else driving people to kill here, in our neck of the woods.”
“Yes, it could be a woman,” Kay admitted, although in her gut, it felt wrong. A woman would’ve probably left lipstick marks on the wine glass. And the kidnapping of a teenage girl made much more sense for a male assailant, for all the wrong, sickening reasons. “Doc Whitmore will clarify that as soon as he processes the wine glass. Chances are there’s enough saliva on it to pull DNA.”
The sheriff’s lopsided grin fluttered on his lips again, then vanished. “But you’re the profiler. What do you think?”
“I think it’s too soon to tell,” she replied cautiously. “The opportunistic murder weapon, a knife from Cheryl’s block, speaks to a lack of premeditation, to a crime of passion. But the kidnapping speaks of something completely different, something that doesn’t fit. I don’t believe we have all the pieces of this puzzle yet.” She checked the time, feeling a pang of angst rushing through her gut. “Julie’s been gone for sixteen hours already, and we’re nowhere. No ransom call, and I didn’t expect one, for that matter. No idea what had happened. All we know is last night, what started as a casual visit ended up in a bloodbath and a girl being taken.”
The sheriff looked through the window at the two sleeping children, watched closely by Deputy Farrell. Kay followed his gaze and repressed a sigh. She felt the urge to rush in there and wake them up; maybe they could give her something, anything she could use to find Julie. But they’d be more likely to communicate with her and remember critical details after they’d caught an hour of sleep. That’s when the traumatized brain heals.
“The answers are with these two girls,” she said, checking the time again, tension seeping in her voice. “Only they can give us the information we need to find Julie. And every moment counts.”
8
Second Crime Scene
It was a toad strangler of a weather.
Remnants of a Pacific hurricane battered the West Coast with a vengeance, dumping more rain than the area had seen in a year.
Elliot lifted the collar of his jacket and pressed firmly on the top of his hat, making sure it remained where it belonged once he got out of the car. Angry gusts of wind sent rain swirling in circular patterns on the asphalt, drops so heavy they formed large bubbles when they hit the ground. Rainwater washed the interstate then drained toward the shoulder, passing each vehicle on the northbound lane sending splashes of it over the median, even as the drivers slowed down to gawk at the large number of law enforcement vehicles present at the scene. After clearing the narrow shoulder, water flowed onto the side of the road, where gravel met grass under a couple of inches of accumulation.
Where the victim lay.
Rain washing away any trace of evidence he might’ve had on his body.
Several deputies had already erected a few canopies. One had succumbed to the wind, one leg bent, the roof tilted sideways, threatening to collapse.
“You two,” Elliot called, shouting at a couple of officers to be heard against the storm. “Grab a tarp and hold it over the body until the ME gets here. Run straighter than a fast trip to the outhouse.”
The victim, a man in his fifties, had been rolled into the ditch. He lay face down, his body aligned with the side of the road, his legs crossed at the ankles from the spin, his pant legs twisted around his ankles in the same direction. What was visible of his face was bluish pale and blotchy, his salt-and-pepper, neatly trimmed beard studded with raindrops and mud.
He wore a navy blue, water-repelling jacket that must’ve been pricey, seeing how after all that time spent under the rage of the elements it had not crinkled one bit. Because the man had been dumped there a while ago, any visible trace of blood was long gone. Elliot thought he might’ve been shot by the side of
the road or brought here from a primary crime scene. But who stops their car on the side of the interstate, where vehicles zoom by incredibly fast, and shoots someone?
He crouched by the body and examined the hole in the man’s jacket, visible right between the shoulder blades. Touching the edges of the hole with the tip of his pen, he squinted in the dim light. The edges had been burned off, the polyester fabric hardened by the heat; the bullet had been fired close range, the muzzle of the gun in direct contact with the man’s body or under six inches away.
The two deputies rushed over with a stretch of blue tarp and extended it over the man’s body, holding on to its corners about four feet above the ground. “That okay, Detective?” one of the men asked, squinting under the rain slamming him straight in the face.
“Tilt it sideways, so it doesn’t pool,” Elliot instructed him. The wheel was turning with that cop, but the hamster was dead.
“And set it on the ground?”
“No. Hold it like that until the ME gets here.” It was as if they’d never worked a crime scene in the rain before.
The man’s lips tensed and moved soundlessly. He was probably mumbling a curse. Just as he was about to say something after all, the medical examiner’s van pulled up by the guardrail, and Dr. Whitmore rushed to the body.
“You’re keeping me busy these days,” he said, instead of a greeting. “Looks less and less like retirement to me.”
“Don’t pin this on me, Doc,” Elliot replied, holding his hat on top of his head as the wind turned worse. “If I had my way, you’d only come to see us when you were really bored with your wife’s social schedule, and we’d shoot pool and down some brews instead of hanging out in this turd floater.”
Dr. Whitmore crouched by the victim’s side, under the tarp. “You have a way with words, I’ll give you that,” he said, frowning as he examined the body quickly, then he flipped it to a supine position. “Single gunshot wound to the upper body,” he announced. “Point of entry through the back. I’ll know more when I have him on my table.” He lifted the man’s arm and examined the skin closely, peeling his sleeve up a couple of inches. He flexed it at the wrist and the elbow, then he lifted the man’s shirt and jacket a little, looking at a section of his abdomen.
“Time of death?” Elliot asked.
“He’s been here a while,” the doc replied. “Based on rigor and discoloration, I’d say a couple of days.” Doc Whitmore stood, walking backward and emerging from the blue tarp. “Let’s load him up,” he told his assistant, a young woman who looked miserable under the pouring rain. “Body bag,” he further instructed, seeing her grab the stretcher. “No point trying to roll that in this mess.”
“Can I?” Elliot asked, gesturing vaguely toward the body.
“Have at it,” Doc Whitmore replied.
Crouching by the man’s side once more, Elliot scoured his pockets, looking for a wallet or something to help identify him. There was nothing, no wallet, no keys or phone. The killer had done a good, thorough job before dumping him there.
Doc Whitmore waited until the body bag was laid on the ground by the man’s body and unzipped. Then he grabbed the victim’s shoulders while his assistant grabbed his legs. In perfect sync forged by practice, they lifted the body then set it down in the body bag. A few moments later, zipped and secured with straps, it was loaded into the van, ready to be taken in for the autopsy.
Elliot started searching for the murder weapon, the two deputies joining him as soon as the blue tarp was no longer needed. The two were the only resources he had; the rest of the sheriff’s team were deployed in the search for Julie Montgomery. They walked the area in a grid pattern, carefully looking behind every shrub and into every ditch. Doc Whitmore lent them a magnet roller that made their job easier, not having to bend down and sink their hands into water-filled trenches where the gun might’ve been discarded.
About two frustrating hours later, they gave up. There was no murder weapon to be found.
9
Window
The tall windows let all the gloom inside, barely lightened by its passing through white, ethereal voile sheers falling in perfectly aligned waves from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. He’d turned off the two chandeliers, inviting in all of Mother’s dismay. He’d never avoided her anger; out of all her children, he was the one who understood her, who knew how to heal her wounds and dry her tears.
He’d been chosen a long time ago.
He ran his fingers through his slicked-back hair, down to the upward curls where it touched his shoulders with uneven ends, untrimmed in a while. Rubbing his hands to warm them, he stood a few feet away from the window, his beige cardigan unbuttoned over a white silk shirt and black slacks. A shiver ran down his spine, and he sunk his hands into the small pockets, tightening them into fists. He didn’t draw closer to the fire burning lively in the fireplace. His eyes stayed riveted to the dreary landscape outside, where Mother wept.
Where she bled. Right by the concrete slabs of his pathway, a deepening crevice that was a mere reminder of the abyssal one opened in the side of Ash Brook Hill, at least a hundred feet deep. Oh, how that must hurt Mother!
He clenched his hands tightly together, his skin cold and damp to the touch even after the relative comfort of the knitted pockets, as if his own blood refused to nourish his body.
“Mother Earth, hear your child,” he whispered. “I stand before you, begging your mercy and forgiveness. Show me the path to follow, and I will stop your bleeding and dry your tears.” He breathed and lowered his eyelids, welcoming the darkness where Mother spoke to him. “I have found her, Mother, the one who will soothe your suffering. She’s ready for you.”
He breathed deeply, slowly, feeling Mother’s hand touching him, easing his fears, filling him with peace. He opened his eyes and searched the sky, but clouds were packed thick in a dreaded layer of gloom, and rain was falling even harder than before.
Moving slowly, he ambled toward the bookcase and stopped in front of the third section. He touched a button hidden behind one of his most cherished books, The Symbol of Glory by George Oliver, and the bookcase slid to the right, opening up a section of bare wall with a window in the middle of it. He approached it slowly, tentatively, as if afraid of what he was going to see.
That window didn’t lead outside. Through a number of paired mirrors installed at forty-five-degree angles in descending tunnels, it captured a glimpse of what was going on in the basement, two levels below him, where the girl was sleeping. At her end, she could only see a mirror, nothing else, while he could watch her endlessly, seeing her every move and hearing her every word in the tiny speakers mounted in the window frame.
He looked at her, mesmerized. He couldn’t believe his eyes at how breathtakingly beautiful she was, the kind of beauty only the young and pure exude through every pore of their skin. His eyes fixed on the girl’s image, he let his frozen fingers touch the glass where her lips were parted as she cried quietly, curled up on her side, where her hair reached the gray concrete, where her chest swelled with every shattered breath.
“I’m so sorry, Mom,” the girl whimpered, startling him.
It wasn’t the first time she’d disturbed his thoughts with this nonsense. Irritated, he turned off the speakers with one quick, angry twist of a knob. If she’d only stopped crying, maybe he could hold on to her a little longer. What beautiful things they could do together if they only had the time!
His imagination weaving endless plans and visions of blissful days with the girl in his arms, his dedication to Mother faltered for a quick moment before he shrugged the temptation off. And still, perhaps he’d keep her for a while.
Only if Mother would allow it.
10
Travel Plans
After tying her long blonde hair to capture the strands that had escaped, Kay muttered a curse and clenched her fist, wishing there was something she could break. There was no good option she could take, the choices she had equally bad. On
e was to force the girls to wake up, when it was obvious they needed to get some rest before they could be yanked back into the midst of a horrifying reality. The other was to let them sleep, while at the same time Julie, who’d already been gone for eighteen hours, desperately needed their help. Any information she could extract from the two girls would’ve been a treasure trove, the start of a breadcrumb trail they could follow to find their missing sister.
She’d tried to wake Heather up, but the girl was in no shape to have a conversation. Barely standing and pale as a sheet, she wobbled to the restroom then returned with the same vacant stare in her eyes. Then she sat on the side of her bed, motionless and silent until Kay gave up and eased the child onto her side, covering her with the blanket. Before Kay could reach the door, she was fast asleep yet restless, battling the demons that haunted her nightmares.
It just couldn’t be done. Not now, not before they’d had a chance to start healing, the trauma too severe to allow them to function without sleep’s healing repose. Spending a long moment weighing right versus wrong and asking Hippocrates for advice in her mind, she left, closing the door silently behind her. Only the father of medicine would know the answer to her dilemma. She’d already denied them the soothing help of sleep medication, concerned with the short-term memory loss they could incur as a side effect. Still, she walked away with a rushed gait and a scowl, torn inside, knowing Julie was still out there.
But she wasn’t going to sit idle and do nothing, while hours flew by like minutes and Julie was missing. She could still do her job, look at evidence, examine the crime scene one more time, search through records for any indication of similar crimes happening in Northern California. But was that, really, a possibility? That morning, seeing the murder weapon abandoned at the scene, she’d inferred that Cheryl might’ve been the unsub’s first kill.