Watch Her Vanish: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller (Rockwell and Decker Book 1)

by Ellery A Kane

  “Looks that way. She’s well past rigor mortis. I’d say she was probably asphyxiated shortly after she went missing. But I’d expect a few more critters would’ve got to her if she’d been down here since early Thursday morning. Also, the skin back here…” He gently lifted the exposed right shoulder, where the shirt had been pulled away. “It’s intact. Not much maceration or softening like you’d see with a long period of immersion in water. I’d venture a guess she was moved here today.”

  “Sexual assault?”

  “It’s possible. But the undergarments appear intact. Maybe he started to and was interrupted. Killed her in a panic. We’ll have to wait for the autopsy and the labs to be sure. I’ve gotta warn you, though, a lot of the evidence is probably a wash. Literally.”

  Will pointed his flashlight down the pipe. Past the first twenty or so feet, the leaves and graffiti and cigarette butts ended. Beyond that, the darkness consumed everything, even the shadows.

  “I didn’t see any drag marks or tracks,” Will told Chet. “Except for Maryann Murdock’s—she found the body. And your ‘big deal’ doctor. Why is she such a big deal anyway?”

  Chet shrugged, moving back toward Bonnie’s head. “I’ll let her tell you.”

  “What makes you think I plan on speaking to her again?” He asked himself another question. Why do I want to?

  “Have a look at this, will ya?” Chet shined his penlight onto the victim’s neck. The ligature, denim blue. Near the back, underneath the clumps of her matted hair, the color changed to a sunshine yellow that seemed all wrong down here.

  “What is it made of?”

  “Can’t say for absolute sure, but it seems to be fabric. This yellow could be a stamp of some sort. To me, it looks a helluva lot like prison blues.”

  The drainpipe glowed from within, lit by a fleet of high-powered utility lamps, as the officers combed the length of it for evidence. Will looked on from the top of the embankment while they bagged Bonnie’s hands and carted her off in a bag of her own. Chief Flack had insisted on delivering the official news to James and Bonnie’s mother herself, which saved Will from his least favorite part of dealing with dead bodies.

  “Want to start with the husband in the morning?” Will asked, while JB glowered and lit another cigarette. That man’s chest was empty as a steel drum, and he had the four ex-wives to prove it. “We can get more background on the vic while we wait for the autopsy. What do you say?”

  JB took a long drag and exhaled in his direction. Will would’ve rather passed out than give him the satisfaction of a single cough. He wished the rain would start up again and extinguish that cigarette with a single fat drop.

  “I’d say you should’ve waited for your partner to do the walk-through with Chet. I’d also say you don’t call the shots around here, City Boy.”

  City Boy. Will liked it better than what they’d called him in San Francisco. Rat. Traitor. Snitch.

  “Alright, JB. Whatever you want. You tell me where you’d like to start.”

  “Now you’re talking. How ’bout we start with the husband?”

  Will had gritted his teeth and nodded. Nothing that a few hard right hooks couldn’t fix. And now that he’d made it home, to the cabin he’d rented outside of town, he planned to make good on his promise to take it out on the heavy bag.

  He changed quickly, stripping off his mud-spattered vigil-wear and tossing on an SFPD T-shirt and shorts—working out was the only thing they were good for these days—and headed into the one-car garage he called a gym. Or his salvation. Depending on the day.

  Will waved at a darting shadow in the corner. “Hey, get outta here!”

  That damn one-eyed cat had been weaseling its way into the garage every rainstorm for the last few weeks. Probably because he’d broken once and left out a can of tuna. The cat slipped out the way it came through a feline-sized hole in the garage door siding. The whole cabin was a fixer-upper he didn’t have the time or energy to fix up. So, he couldn’t hold it against the poor fella. Truth be told, he felt a kinship with that orange tabby; permanently damaged with nobody to claim him.

  Outside, the rain sounded indignant. Beating against the roof like it channeled his outrage.

  Will didn’t bother with boxing gloves. Just wrapped his hands like he’d learned at King’s in Oakland. He cranked the music he always played for these sessions. His 1980s hard rock mix that started with Bon Jovi and ended with Guns N’ Roses.

  First, a left jab to the face. That’s for JB. The bag swayed right to left and back again. Not bad for a guy on the wrong side of forty.

  Followed up with a heavy right cross. That’s for whatever sicko had ended Bonnie and dumped her body like a sack of trash in a sewer drainpipe.

  Then, a couple right hooks to the body. For the old bones of his past. The whole goddamned skeleton.

  Last, he delivered the knockout. A fierce uppercut that juddered his whole arm but still wasn’t hard enough. One more. And another. His knuckles stung as he pictured his brother’s face.

  Chapter Four

  Olivia rubbed her aching temples and took another scalding sip of coffee, wincing as it hit the back of her throat. Across from her, Emily pushed her eggs from one side of her plate to the other. Her fork made the music of Olivia’s soul, a vicious, rhythmic scraping against the bone china. The plates had been a wedding gift from Erik’s mother, and Olivia had thought of smashing them more than once. But here they were, the last artifacts of her ruined marriage.

  “Want a coffee for the road?” Olivia tried to sound normal. To pretend the thought of it—leaving the house, driving to the prison, going through the day—didn’t exhaust her. Didn’t worsen the dull throb at the base of her skull.

  Emily gave no answer. The rain-soaked newspaper sat between them like an uninvited guest, stoic despite its gut-punch headline. Fog Harbor Mother Found Dead.

  Olivia didn’t bother to unfold it. It had landed in a puddle on their front porch, the pages melded together. What more could it tell them anyway? She’d already spent the entire night staring at the ceiling, replaying the whole garish scene. The scream. The boots, the ligature, the anguish on James’ face. Finally, she’d surrendered and laced up her running shoes to hit the dirt trail behind the house, eager to outpace yesterday. Even if it meant her best sneakers were squishy and caked with mud. She’d left them on the front step to dry in the sun. If it ever showed its face again.

  “Em? Coffee?”

  Emily lifted her eyes. Mossy green, those eyes belonged first to their mother, then to Olivia. And ten years later, to Emily as well. Green as the grass in the Yankee Stadium, their father had teased, pinching baby Emily’s chubby cheek. But you’ve never been to Yankee Stadium, Olivia would remind him, the bench in the Crescent Bay visiting room cold and hard beneath her legs. By then, she’d feared he would never see anything beyond those barbed wire fences.

  Emily sniffled and pushed her plate away, finally laying the fork to rest. “I still can’t believe she’s really gone. I keep thinking about the boys, you know?”

  “Me too.” Olivia wondered what James had told Nathan and Noah about their mother. How he’d managed to get words out at all.

  “They’re so young. Those poor kids going through something like that. They’re gonna be royally screwed up.”

  Olivia stood abruptly, bumping the table with her hip. Her coffee sloshed over the lip of the cup, leaving a mud-colored puddle on the checkered tablecloth. “Shit.”

  “I’m sorry, Liv. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Olivia waved off her sister’s apology and soaked up the stain, tossing the dishrag in the sink. Em didn’t know any better. She hadn’t even been born yet. A prison baby, conceived back when lifers still had conjugal visits, she’d gotten to know their father in small doses. Twice-a-week, hour-long doses. “It’s okay. At least Dad’s still alive. Come to think of it, that’s probably the only reason why I’m not royally screwed up.”

  Typically Em would’ve jumpe
d on that one, cracking a joke and making them both laugh. In fact, that’s exactly why Olivia had said it. Instead, Emily joined Olivia at the sink, wrapping an arm around her. Olivia let her pretend to be the big sister, leaning into her shoulder and laying her head against the fleece sweatshirt that covered Emily’s dental scrubs.

  When they broke apart, Emily’s gray face brightened. Maybe the sun would peek through the fog today. Even in the middle of December. “Not royally screwed up, huh? Are you sure about that?”

  Olivia sidestepped a brown pool of standing water as she showed her ID at the prison entrance. Every winter, like clockwork, the older lower buildings flooded, leaving the whole place slick with mildew and smelling like laundry left too long in the washer.

  Olivia and Emily parted ways at the control booth, Olivia heading east to the Mental Health Unit and her sister heading west to the combined Education Department and Dental Services. Usually, Olivia watched Em until she reached the door, but today she waited until her sister had pressed the buzzer—twice for staff—and disappeared inside.

  Then, she began the runway walk. She’d heard Melody Murdock call it that once, snickering, and that’s how she’d thought of it ever since. Down the long concrete corridor marked with lines of red paint. If the inmates stepped inside those lines, they’d be out of bounds, so they lingered on the outskirts, leaning up against the walls, watching and occasionally calling out. Olivia would’ve rather they simply crossed the red lines. Because their eyes did just that, following her as if they’d never seen a woman before.

  Today, as she passed the first group of inmates, she realized the runway walk felt more like a funeral procession. The inmates appeared somber, averting their eyes and talking quietly, if at all. Somehow, stupidly, she hadn’t considered it. The way the news of Bonnie’s murder would reach them, through the dense forest that surrounded the prison on three sides. Through the walls and bars and regrets. That it would hit them just as hard, maybe harder. Because Bonnie had been one of the few who really saw them. Who, like Drake had written in his poem, treated them as men.

  “Hey, Doctor Rockwell, can I have a minute?”

  Olivia’s stomach flipped when she spotted Melody outside the door to the chapel, her eyes as tired as Olivia’s.

  “Of course. How’s your sister?”

  Melody sighed. “She’s holding up alright. Luckily, she had the day off. She was snuggled up with Luna when I left her. Anyway, she told me you were there too. By the river. Where they found the body. Maryann said to thank you. That you made her feel a little better.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. She had quite a shock. We both did. The whole prison seems to be reeling.”

  When Melody spoke again, Olivia strained to hear her. “So is what they’re saying true?”

  “What are they saying?”

  Melody scanned the corridor, her pale eyes darting. “Not out here.”

  Olivia stifled a gasp as Melody opened the chapel door—one of the few in the prison that didn’t require a key—and tried to pull her inside. She felt the cold first. Inhaled a gulp of the stale air. Finally, when her head stopped swimming, she turned to look out at the sea of gray plastic chairs that faced a simple wooden altar with a door on either side. One, where the chaplain kept his office. The other, the confessional.

  “I—I can’t go in there,” Olivia told her, freeing her arm from Melody’s grip. She floundered, searching for a reasonable explanation, but she couldn’t think straight. Not through the white noise of panic in her brain.

  With a quick glance over her shoulder, Melody moved in so close Olivia could smell her peppermint toothpaste. Her breath warm against Olivia’s ear, her words startling and bright as a spot of blood. Still, as Olivia walked away she’d replay them again and again, certain she’d misheard.

  “They’re saying that Bonnie was strangled by an inmate.”

  Olivia kept her head down until she reached the Mental Health Unit at the end of the runway. After an inmate had jumped from the tier a few years back and his family had sued Crescent Bay for negligence, the MHU had undergone a complete facelift. The unfinished concrete floors had been replaced by tile that the inmate porters buffed once a week. It shined so bright beneath the fluorescent light panels she could almost see her own reflection. On the far wall, the patients had hung the holiday mural they’d created in their art therapy group. The bright red acrylic of Santa’s suit drew Olivia’s eyes, quickening her breath, until she realized: just paint.

  Through the small rectangular window at the center of the door, Olivia spotted Leah at the officers’ station squirming away from Sergeant Hank Wickersham. Even through the metal door, she heard him cackling. His bald head thrown back. His mouth, a gash.

  Olivia removed the oversized key from her pocket, the one she’d exchanged for a chit at the control booth, and turned the heavy lock. She stepped inside, immediately shedding her coat. Unlike most of the prison, the MHU had central heating and air conditioning, but it never seemed to work quite right, leaving her sweating or shivering most days.

  “Mornin,’ Doctor Rockwell.” Hank’s face lit up when he saw her. He left Leah alone at the desk, her hands resting on her pregnant belly. But she didn’t wait long, widening her eyes at Olivia and escaping to her office before he noticed. “Maybe you’ll like my joke. Not like Doctor Party-Pooper Chapman over here.”

  Hank gestured with his thumb to where Leah had been standing. “Hey, where’d she go?”

  Leave it to Handsy Hank to tell jokes the day after a vigil. The day after they’d found Bonnie dead. He never could keep his jokes—or his hands—to himself. Rumor had it, he’d been transferred from the Los Angeles Women’s Institution a few months back after they’d caught him in a compromising position with an inmate. Yet somehow, he’d ended up here. The benefits of being a state employee. Never fired, just relocated. Exiled to gloomy Crescent Bay, the prison nobody volunteered for, and to the MHU no less.

  “Alright, let’s hear it, Hank.”

  He rubbed his hands together and grinned, showing Olivia the chipped front tooth where he’d taken a lick from a delusional inmate armed with a chair and a bad temper. “What do prisoners use to call each other?”

  Olivia had heard Hank tell this one before, but she played along, shrugging at him as she chose a clip-on alarm from the box on the desk. She affixed it to the waistband of her slacks like she did every morning, trying not to focus on that cheap red push button. It looked like a child’s toy. A child’s toy that was supposed to keep her alive.

  Anticipating his punchline delivery, Hank drummed his hands on the desk. Afterward, he’d punctuate it with his own cymbal crash too. He always did. But, before Hank could speak, someone beat him to it. A voice, deep and smooth as honey. Olivia knew it well.

  “Cell phones. Good one, Handsy. Only problem, you told that joke last week. And it wasn’t that funny the first time.”

  Hank glowered as if a dark cloud had passed over him.

  “Where’d you come from, Devere? Unlock ain’t till nine. You’re supposed to be outside that door, waiting like a good little boy.”

  Drake sat on the bench nearest Olivia’s office, running a casual hand through his slick black hair, before he covered his ears with a set of headphones. He fixed his eager eyes on Hank. The way a vulture would sight its next meal. “Door was open.”

  Olivia’s stomach clenched, and she squeezed the key in her palm. How could I be so stupid? “It’s my fault, Hank. I must’ve forgotten to lock it behind me.”

  Hank shook his head at her and sighed, and Olivia wriggled out from beneath the arm he’d set around her shoulders. “Don’t beat yourself up, Doc. You’ve got a lot on your mind. We all do. I’m sure you were distracted.”

  Then he approached Drake. He stood over him, jabbing a finger down into the center of his denim blue prison jumpsuit. Drake didn’t flinch when Hank yanked off his headphones. Just smirked like he enjoyed it. “And you. Next time, I’m writing you up for being ou
t of bounds.”

  “Suit yourself, Handsy.”

  Hank’s whole head turned splotchy, and he fled back to the desk, retrieving his keys, while Drake preened. Olivia looked on with guilt as Hank waved the other inmate patients through and locked the door with an authoritative click.

  “Hey,” Drake said, once all the benches had filled with a warm audience of men in blue like himself. “What d’ya call chow hall duty at a women’s prison?”

  Leah’s nine o’clock—Greg Petowski, schizophrenic—guffawed. Even the quiet inmates twittered in anticipation. Drake never disappointed his fans.

  “Handsy Hank’s last date.”

  Olivia had just turned eight years old the first time she’d sat face to face with a murderer. The man had towered over her like a mythical giant, his hands the size of bear paws. Though she’d grown a full two inches since they’d taken him away, he’d easily lifted her above his head, and she’d squealed with delight. When he’d laughed along with her—a deep chortle that shook his belly—she’d felt both scared and electrified. He’d told her he couldn’t leave with her and her mother that day. He had to stay there, in the middle of the redwood forest, in the old stone building that looked like a castle, until he’d finished his work. More than anything, Olivia had wanted to believe him. Because her mother told her to. Because she still thought grownups told the truth. But above all else, because he was her father.

  “Look at me.” Drake wiped at his eyes, cast down on his lap. A lucky break for Olivia, because he didn’t seem to notice her jump at the sound of his voice just then. “Crying like a little girl.”

  “Take your time, Drake. It’s okay to be vulnerable in here.” Olivia studied his cheeks for tear tracks. Dry as a bone.

  “I’m devastated, Doc. Devastated. Nobody’s ever believed in me the way Ms. McMillan did. She recognized my talent. Everybody else just sees the Vulture. Not Ms. McMillan. She saw me as a writer, a poet, an artist. A man.”