by Ragan, T. R.
David stood and buttoned his suit jacket.
“Before any of you go,” Palmer said, “you should know that Donovan was offered a job in New York City and will not be returning to the Sacramento Independent.”
“He will be missed,” Cindy said without any emotion.
“What about the leads he was working on?” David asked.
Palmer lifted a hand. “The Brad Vicente follow-up will go to Sawyer. Cindy will take care of the rest.”
Nobody protested. Not a surprise since none of them wanted to deal with Brad Vicente, the rapist whose dick was cut off by a group of vigilantes. From everything she’d read about the guy, he deserved what he’d gotten. A month ago, the media had eaten the guy whole. But recently the trolls had come forward and were doing a good job causing discord by posting inflammatory messages about the group of women taking the law into their own hands.
Palmer’s cell beeped. He picked up the call.
David was gone in a flash, followed by Cindy and Lexi.
Palmer ended the call and then slid his cell back into an old-school holster attached to his waistband. “Come on,” he said. “Grab your things and let’s go!”
Startled, Sawyer looked at Palmer as she gathered her things. “Me?”
“Yes. You. Come on!”
She’d been working with Palmer for a month now, but this was the first time he’d invited her—make that demanded—that she go somewhere with him. It took her a second to realize he was serious. She came to her feet and slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder. She had to jog across the carpeted hallway to catch up to him. “What’s going on?”
“Bones.”
“Bones?”
“A skeleton believed to have belonged to a child was found.”
“Where?”
“Land Park. East Sac, across the lake from the amphitheater.”
“Should I grab my camera?”
“No need. Geezer is already on the scene.”
He pushed through the double doors leading out of the building and continued on at a clipped pace to his blue Jeep Wrangler Sport parked in the front row. The vehicle had two doors, a soft top, and was covered with dried mud. Palmer didn’t strike her as the four-wheeling type of guy.
Once they were on the road, Palmer said, “Don’t let them push you around.”
“Who?”
“David . . . Cindy . . . they’re testing you. Every time you throw out a story idea, someone takes it as their own, and you allow it to happen.”
“I’m the rookie on the team,” she said. “It seems disrespectful to question their authority.”
He shook his head. “They have no power. I’m the boss.”
“You didn’t jump in and say anything, so I assumed I was the low guy on the totem pole and that was how things worked in the editorial meetings.”
“Never assume.”
During the editorial meeting, she’d thought she was being polite by stepping aside, but all she was doing was teaching her coworkers that she could be pushed around.
As silence settled around them, she attempted to keep her gaze straight ahead, but a one-by-one-inch picture of a little girl taped to the console caught her attention.
Palmer glanced her way. “My granddaughter. She’ll be turning thirteen soon.”
“Do you see her often?”
Gaze on the road ahead, he said, “No.”
“She looks nine or ten in the photo.”
“Nine. I haven’t seen her since that picture was taken.”
“How come?” The question was out of her mouth before she realized she might be overstepping.
“My son and I don’t get along.” The chuckle that followed was low and throaty. “Actually, that’s an understatement. When I saw him, he made it clear that it would be the last time.”
Sawyer said nothing.
“My son said most of the problems he wrestles with are because I never opened up to him about my own struggles in life. He said I’ve always expected too much from him and that I’m a judgmental son of a bitch.”
She smirked. “I can’t imagine why he would think that about you.”
“Touché,” he said with a chuckle. “Enough about me. How are you doing, Sawyer? That’s what I want to know.”
“I’m fine.”
“You lost both your parents in one fell swoop. That can’t be easy.”
“One fell swoop” was putting it mildly, Sawyer thought. Against both her older sisters’ better judgment, one month ago, Sawyer had returned to her hometown of River Rock for her grandmother’s funeral, only to discover that her father was a pedophile and her mom was his protector, willing to do anything, including kill, to keep their secret safe. When Sawyer had confronted her dad, he’d admitted to his wrongdoings and even offered to turn himself over to authorities. But blind rage at the notion of giving up all they had worked so hard for prompted Sawyer’s mom to swing a fireplace poker at her father’s head, killing him.
She would have killed Sawyer too, if her sisters hadn’t shown up. It was Sawyer’s sister Aria who had been forced to shoot their mother in self-defense.
In the end, her parents’ deaths had given Sawyer a sense of relief, but she kept that little tidbit to herself. “I imagine most people who lose a loving parent grieve for all the happy memories they shared,” she told Palmer. “But I grieve for what my sisters and I never had.”
He nodded. “Makes sense. My mom died when I was five. Cancer. I also spent more than a few years grieving for what I never had.”
Although Palmer was known for being gruff and blunt, he seemed unusually melancholy this morning. Being that she was a curious cat, she couldn’t help but wonder about his personal life. Was he happily married? Did he have more than the one son? Did he like to cook? Random questions rolled through her mind.
“What is it you want to know?” he asked.
“Me?”
“Is there anyone else in the car?”
His question had caught her off guard, but it shouldn’t have. One of the things she’d always known about Palmer was that he was abnormally intuitive. “I like to know about the people I work with,” she said. “That’s all.”
He made a left on Twelfth Street. “We’re here.” He found a parking spot, shut off the engine, climbed out, then stuck his head back in the car and said, “I’m divorced. Boy and a girl. Daughter lives in Los Angeles. In my spare time I like to crochet.”
“Really?”
He was looking right at her, his eyes like lasers. “I don’t crochet,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m just fucking with you. Are you coming or not?”
Sawyer felt a pang of sympathy for his son. Again, she was left to grab her things and chase after him.
She jogged across the pavement, slid between two cars parked close together, then hopped over a cement curb, following Palmer off the well-traveled sidewalk and up a grassy hill. At the top of the hill, past picnic benches and barbecue pits, she could see yellow crime tape encircling an area beneath a grove of trees. Walking at a good clip, she and Palmer approached Detective Perez.
Judging by the look Perez shot her way, he hadn’t forgotten her. A month ago she had taken advantage of a security guard who’d left his post, and she’d walked into a crime scene, where she took pictures. Never mind that she’d helped solve a young woman’s murder. Perez was like a crow. He remembered a face and held a grudge.
Palmer turned his back to Perez and said, “Why don’t you check out the area, see what you can find out?”
Fine. She headed off to the opposite side where yellow crime scene tape had been strategically tied around the trunk of three trees, making a triangular area for investigators to work. Two technicians were kneeling and gathering evidence from within a three-foot-wide hole. Mounds of dirt, a shovel, and work gloves lay near a mostly dead tree, five feet in length, with odd-shaped leaves dangling from thin, gangly branches.
The tree was out of place among the oaks, redwoods, and ev
en a few palm trees that dotted the neatly mowed green grass throughout the park.
With gloved hands, a technician photographed and then bagged a piece of fabric weathered by tragedy and time. The plastic bag was sealed and put inside a storage bin.
“It was a little girl,” a young man standing outside the perimeter told her.
Sawyer looked at him. His long, molasses-colored hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She guessed him to be in his forties. Tall and lanky with bony arms and pointy elbows, he wore a T-shirt and jeans streaked with mud and grass.
“How do you know?” Sawyer asked.
“I was the one who found her.”
“That hole looks pretty deep. How did you find her?”
“I’m a groundskeeper. One of my jobs is to replace trees hit hard by drought and winter storms. I’ve been meaning to replace this particular tree for a while now.” He looked around. “There’s a lot to do around here, so I didn’t get to it until today.”
She nodded. “Makes sense. How do you know the bones belong to a girl, though?”
He shrugged. “The clothes mostly. Looked to me like the shirt had little red hearts on it, and there were pink shoes. Leather must take a while to decay.”
“I wonder how old she was?”
“Hard to tell since she was in a fetal position and there wasn’t much left except for bones. If I had to guess, judging by the size of the skull, I’d say she was somewhere between seven and ten years of age.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Watch a lot of CSI?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I have nieces, though. Three of them.” He used a forearm to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Before the police asked me to move out of the way, I heard one of the forensic team speculate that the girl was buried four to five years ago at the same time the tree was planted. Whatever she was wrapped in had helped preserve what little bit there is left of hair and skin.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Without a coffin, I guess it doesn’t take as long for a skeleton to decompose.”
“Any idea how old that tree was?”
He shook his head.
“Does Parks and Recreation keep track of when trees are planted?”
He scratched his chin. “No idea.”
“Hey, Billy!” someone called. “The boss said it’s time to get back to work.”
“Gotta go,” Billy told Sawyer.
After he left, Sawyer made notes on her cell of everything he’d told her.
She looked around, spotted Geezer taking a smoke break and flirting with the news reporter from Channel 10. Perez was talking to a police officer. Palmer was nowhere to be seen.
A quick search on her phone revealed names and ages of young girls who had gone missing in the area in the past four to ten years. Besides a string of possible runaways, she found a slideshow of missing children, boys and girls. Nineteen photos in all. Nine females, aged seven to twelve. She saved the link. When she got back to the office, she planned to do some digging and make a few inquiries.
A breeze sent a chill crawling up the back of her neck as she envisioned someone carrying a young child up the hill from the parking lot.
She turned back to view the scene of the crime. How could someone possibly carry a body, let alone a tree and a shovel, such a long way without being seen? The question niggled as she walked past the yellow tape in the direction Billy had gone after he was called off to work.
More trees dotted the grassy land that stretched on acre after acre. Across the way, the grass looked greener, the trees younger, but between where she stood and the greener areas was a long stretch of dirt and gravel where nothing grew. The gravelly path stretched on for at least fifty feet before disappearing beneath new growth.
Billy had returned for his gloves, and before he could get away, she pointed at the small strip of gravel and asked, “Any idea what happened here?”
“It’s part of an old back road that the staff used to get to the building where we keep our equipment.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Three or four years ago, they paved an easier route on the other side of the park and let this unpaved road grow over.”
“Before the new one was constructed, could anyone get access to this?” she asked.
He pointed down the way at some unknown marker. “There used to be a chain about a mile down and a sign letting the public know that it was a private road, but yeah, sure, anyone could easily unlatch the chain and use the road if they wanted to.”
“Thanks again,” she said before he trudged off.
Assuming the tree was planted at the same time the bones were buried, Sawyer wondered how difficult it might be for someone to drag a young girl’s body that she estimated to be between fifty and sixty pounds from the gravel road to the crime scene. She looked from the patch of gravel back to where she could see technicians still working the grounds. Between the body and the tree, it would take someone at least two trips to carry it all from point A to point B. But it was much more doable from the gravel road. Unlike the parking lot below where Palmer had left his car, there were no cameras or light fixtures in the vicinity where she now stood. Yes. Whoever buried the girl most likely drove up this road under the cloak of darkness and worked unseen.
As she walked back toward the crime scene, more questions arose. Why bury the girl here in the first place? Why take the time to plant a tree? Behind the yellow tape she saw a small stuffed animal that had been bagged, labeled, and placed in a bin. It could be a bear, but with its matted faux fur and missing nose and eyes, it was hard to tell.
A bell went off inside her head. She had her answer: This was no slash-and-dash killer. Someone had cared about the girl and wanted her to be put to rest in a happy place.
A killer with a heart?
Sawyer thought about her parents.
No. Killers didn’t have hearts. They had no souls either.
With her gaze fixated on the young girl’s bones laid out on a black tarp, Sawyer vowed to do all she could to help find this little girl’s killer, so she could get the justice she deserved.
But first, Sawyer needed a name.
CHAPTER THREE
Harper Pohler got situated at a table in the Sacramento Public Library and opened her laptop. She hadn’t checked in with The Crew in weeks, but it was time. D-Day was approaching fast.
The Crew consisted of five women who had been abused at some point in their lives. They used nicknames: Psycho, Cleo, Lily, and Bug. Harper was known in the group as Malice.
Her insides turned, agitated, like too many clothes stuffed inside a washing machine, and not because she was close to three months pregnant, but because her association with The Crew reminded her that she—Malice, not Harper—was a murderer. The distinction was an important one. Harper was a wife and mother of two. She was a good person, a compassionate being. Malice, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still for too long. She only saw black and white. She had a thirst for revenge. And as of a month ago, she was a killer.
Harper drew in a breath as she straightened in her chair.
Some might call The Crew “survivors,” but that didn’t make much sense to Harper since all five women had met out of their desire for vengeance. If being a survivor meant being alive, then, Yay, cool. But to her way of thinking, a true survivor was someone who found a way to move forward and live a whole and satisfying life, free from night terrors and symptoms of PTSD.
Although The Crew had known one another for a while now, they had not begun to dish out their punishments until recently. Their plan had been to scare their tormentors in some way, let the assholes know they were being watched and they would pay for what they had done. The Crew wanted their abusers to know humiliation and experience what it was like to feel trapped and have no control.
That was their goal.
But so far, things hadn’t worked out as planned.
Lily’s abuser, Brad Vicente, their first target of revenge, had made the mistake
of pissing off Psycho, a woman who had chosen her nickname for a reason. They all agreed that Brad was a dick. When he refused to shut his mouth, Psycho cut off said appendage, and now Brad was a dickless dick. Surgeons had been unable to reattach his penis. Poor Brad.
Once Brad was taken care of, The Crew had moved on to the next abuser on their list: Otto Radley. Again things didn’t turn out quite as planned. After Otto was released from prison, The Crew used Cleo as bait and abducted the brawny man. Like taking candy from a baby. At least it started out well. Unfortunately Otto freed himself from his bindings and was about to attack Psycho when Malice shot him dead.
A third abuser, Dennis Brooks, Malice’s rapist father, and Joyce Brooks, her mother, were now dead.
In a short time, three out of five of The Crew members had experienced a reckoning of sorts. Not bad for a band of fucked-up misfits with absolutely no skills whatsoever.
Did Harper feel bad about her parents’ deaths?
Not exactly.
After hearing about the deaths of her parents, a neighbor had brought Harper a pie—“comfort food,” the woman had explained. Harper had said nothing, merely kept her gaze fixated on the hardwood floor beneath her feet. Taking her silence as grief, the neighbor had left. But sorrow wasn’t the emotion Harper had been experiencing at the time. She’d been struggling not to smile. Harper’s dad was dead, and he would never be a threat to her younger sisters, Aria and Sawyer, or to her daughter, Ella.
Amen.
The screen lit up. From the looks of things, Malice had missed one lengthy conversation. She said hello and then quickly skimmed through the earlier text, which was mostly about Brad Vicente. The rapist was in jail, trying to get enough people to sign a petition so he could appeal his sentence. His story was trending on social media. Thousands of people were taking sides. Team Vicente had 60 percent of the commenters, and Team Black Wigs had 40 percent, down 25 percent from the week of his arrest.
Lily was not happy about Brad having a voice after causing so many young women to suffer. They had videos as proof, but Brad Vicente had managed to convince his followers that someone had used high-tech equipment to put his image in the disgusting films on all those social media outlets. “Anyone can download deepfake software and create phony videos,” he was fond of saying.