Wren Delacroix Series Box Set

by V. J. Chambers

  It was confirmed that this corpse had been raped with an object. Maybe not the same shovel handle that had been used for the other murders, however. It seemed like a smaller object had been used in this case.

  The girl was very thin. She had obviously dyed hair. It was white blond and the edges looked frayed. The blood that was matted in her hair looked bright red. Her roots were coming in, and they were dark. She was older than the other victims. She didn’t go to Lingandale High School.

  Wren knelt down next to her, examining her arms with gloved hands. “Tracks.”

  “What’s that?” said Reilly.

  “She was an intravenous drug user,” said Wren.

  “Huh,” said Reilly.

  They both looked up at Ford, who was staring down on them.

  “Has the body been identified?” said Wren to Ford.

  “Yes,” said Ford. “We know her pretty well. Her name’s Tammi Mancks. She’s been in and out of jail for the past ten years. Prostitution. Drugs. Petty theft. She was pretty mouthy. Everyone on the department has picked her up for one thing or the other. I’m actually kind of sad to see her go.”

  That was the most that ever came out of Ford’s mouth the entire time they were out there.

  Wren stood up immediately. “She’s a prostitute?”

  Ford only nodded.

  Wren threw her hands into the air. “I give up.”

  “What?” said Reilly.

  Wren stalked off from the scene, out into the woods, away from both of them.

  “Wren?” called Reilly.

  “Leave me alone!” Wren snapped.

  * * *

  Later, as they were driving back home, Wren leaned her head against the window of Reilly’s car. She had a headache. “It’s a devolution. It makes entirely no sense at all.”

  “Well, we know why the video went up,” said Reilly. “He killed her five days ago. She was lying out there for all that time. So, that still fits with the pattern.”

  “There is no damned pattern, Reilly,” Wren exploded.

  “Okay, calm down,” said Reilly.

  “I can’t.” She clenched her hands into fists. “Listen, if you’re a serial killer, you might start by killing animals. And then you might work up to people that you don’t think anyone will notice, like prostitutes. And then, maybe, maybe, you’d work your way up to high school students. But you definitely don’t start with high school students and work your way down to prostitutes.”

  “Well, but that’s what happened,” said Reilly. “I mean, I recognize that you had all kinds of training at the Academy and that they gave you textbooks and they told you how serial killers acted, but sometimes there are people who break the mold.”

  “Right,” said Wren. “And in that case, I am useless.”

  “Look, forget the Academy,” he said. “Forget the textbooks. When you look at the scenes, at the victims, what’s your gut on this guy?”

  She sighed. “I…”

  “Do you get anything at all?”

  “I think he’s… disgusted with the bodies,” she said. “Because of the way they’re tossed out.”

  “Even though one was laid out in the library?”

  “Well, he didn’t clean her up or anything,” she said. “He arranged her on the table, but he didn’t show the body any respect. He dumped her there, made the video, and left.”

  “Okay,” said Reilly.

  “But if he’s disgusted, why rape them?”

  “Well…” said Reilly. “He doesn’t actually rape them, he uses an object.”

  “Why do that?”

  “I don’t know, maybe he hates the people he’s killing.”

  “Or what they represent?” She bit down on her bottom lip. “That could be, I guess. Maybe it’s some kind of symbolic thing, some kind of hatred acted out…”

  “Age?” said Reilly.

  She shook her head. “I got nothing on age. I would have said young, just because the other bodies were at the high school, but then this…” She rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know, Reilly.”

  “Well, you think he’s really going to go on hiatus?”

  “If he does, we’ll probably never catch him,” said Wren. “We have nothing to go on.”

  “Maybe we catch a break and get some DNA this time,” said Reilly.

  “There’s been nothing thus far. I doubt it.”

  They were quiet.

  “When are you leaving for your dad’s wedding again?”

  “Oh, um, Friday evening.”

  “You know, maybe time off is going to shake something loose,” said Reilly. “Maybe it’s what you need. You go off and relax a little, get your mind off this case. See what that does for you.”

  “Honestly, Reilly, I don’t think I’m going to be thinking about serial murder while I’m at my father’s wedding,” she said.

  “No, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “Don’t think about it. Get your mind off it, and then when you come back to it, you know, see if you have any insights.”

  She leaned back against the seat, resting her head against the head rest. “I don’t know that there are even insights to have,” she said. “I’ve been saying it for a while. Something about this case is wrong.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  “I don’t know either. But something… we need to go back to the beginning and examine all the assumptions we’ve made about this case, especially the ones we did without thinking about it at all.”

  “What assumptions are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s helpful.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “You mean, like, assuming the killer’s a man?”

  She sat up straight furrowing her brow. “Like that, yeah, but not that.”

  “You sure? Maybe it is a woman.”

  “Women don’t kill like this,” she said.

  “What if it’s some kind of revenge thing?” said Reilly. “Like… I don’t know, some woman finds out her husband is a cheating bastard and she kills all the women he’s had sex with. That’s why the prostitute was in there.”

  “You watch too much TV,” said Wren. “Besides, what about the videos?”

  “Yeah, that’s a guy in the videos,” muttered Reilly. “Someone’s helping her?”

  “No, this is ridiculous. Women do not kill the women their husbands have slept with.”

  “They might,” said Reilly.

  “Sure, they might, but not like this.”

  He shot her a grin across the car. “You, uh, you want to stop by the Daily Bean for coffee?”

  “I would love that,” she said. “Coffee sounds amazing right now.”

  * * *

  Hawk gripped the armrests of the chair on the plane.

  Wren arched an eyebrow at him. “You nervous?”

  “No,” said Hawk immediately. “It’s only that I’m wondering about climbing over you to get out of this seat, if I have to get up.”

  “You can have the aisle seat if you want,” she said. “I assumed you’d want to look out the window when the plane takes off.” It was his first time on a plane, after all. “And then once we’re up in the air, it’s pretty great. You can see all the clouds. It’s kind of beautiful.”

  Hawk licked his lips. “Well, if you think I should be by the window—”

  “I do,” she said, grinning at him.

  “Okay.” He looked out the window and then he looked back at her. “How long are we going to sit here?”

  “Who knows?” she said. “Hopefully not for too long, but sometimes you get stuck on the plane for a good bit of time before takeoff.”

  “We talking hours here or twenty minutes or what?”

  “I really depends,” she said. “When I went to Europe during college, we taxied around the airport for an hour and a half before taking off, and we had an eight-hour flight.”

  “Well, I hope it’s not that long.�
��

  “Me too.” Just as she said it, the plane started to move.

  Hawk’s eyes widened, and he tightened his grip on the armrests.

  Wren chuckled to herself. “You okay there?”

  He glared at her. “I’m fine. Stop it.”

  The captain came on over the intercom, telling everyone that they would be taking off soon and giving their estimated time of arrival at their destination. The flight attendants launched into their safety spiel about the life jackets and the oxygen masks, and Hawk didn’t seem to find that very reassuring.

  Wren couldn’t help but grin at him. He had been excited in the airport, looking all over at everything, exclaiming at all the things they saw. He was surprised by the number of stores in the airport, and he seemed amazed by the number of people. He wasn’t used to seeing so many people together all at one time.

  She found herself oddly charmed by him, and she couldn’t say why. He was just… adorable.

  Also, it was a little sad. There was so much he hadn’t experienced in his life.

  It made her realize how lucky she was to have her father. If it hadn’t been for him, she would have lived out her life on the compound, and she never would have traveled by plane either. She probably wouldn’t have gone much of anywhere besides in the area around Cardinal Falls.

  They taxied to the runway, and the plane began to speed up.

  Hawk turned to her, maybe for reassurance.

  She smiled at him.

  He turned back to the window and watched as the plane began to gather speed. When the wheels left the ground, and the plane began to climb into the air, Hawk turned back to her, a huge smile on his face.

  She couldn’t help but smile that widely as well.

  “We’re flying,” he said, turning back to the window.

  “Yeah,” she said. “We are.”

  He continued to face the window. “Thanks for giving me the window seat.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Could this thing with Hawk be something more than what it was? Was that why she’d brought him along?

  Sadly, she was afraid she’d done it because she felt sorry for him. She cared about Hawk. She did. But there was something about the two of them, an imbalance. She wasn’t sure if that could be bridged enough for anything like a real relationship to occur.

  Anyway, she wasn’t sure she wanted a real relationship.

  What would that look like?

  She worked a lot. She spent most of her time when she wasn’t working thinking about cases. She didn’t really have space in her life for a relationship. She liked what she had with Hawk. It wasn’t time consuming and it didn’t put demands on her. It was exactly what she needed.

  She had decided that she would be staying in Cardinal Falls and working with the task force for as long as she could. When Reilly had come by with the news of the first body in this case, she’d only promised to stick around for one more case.

  But she didn’t really have anything going for her in other areas of her life. Her degree was basically worthless. No one hired English majors. She could go back to working police dispatch, but she didn’t want to do that, not now that she’d had a taste of investigating cases. So, there was really nothing else for her to do.

  Of course, she didn’t know what would happen to the task force after they caught this killer.

  At the rate they were going, though, it was probably going to take years.

  Ugh. She didn’t want to think about that. Hadn’t she told Reilly she didn’t want to be tied down by thoughts about the case? And hadn’t Reilly told her to relax and get her mind off it?

  Okay, she wasn’t going to think about it anymore.

  Above her, the fasten seatbelt light went out.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They arrived at the airport and were greeted by her father Hayes and his fiance Paul. She’d told her father that she was bringing Hawk along. In fact, her father had insisted on paying for the plane tickets.

  She’d expected a bit of a reaction from her dad, and not a positive one, but her father hadn’t seemed fazed by it.

  When he greeted Hawk now, he gave him a big hug, which Hawk returned, and then he hugged Paul. Men in the FCL tended to be huggers, though. It was a hippie thing, even if they did raise people to be super homophobic.

  She hadn’t given any thought to the idea that gayness might make Hawk uncomfortable, and she was glad to see that there was no trace of that within him. If there had been, she might had bundled him onto a plane home right then and there. There were some things she didn’t have the energy to deal with.

  They went home and had Italian food delivered. The place made pizza, but they all ordered pasta and garlic bread, and they ate at the dining room table in her father’s house, and she asked Paul if he was moving in here or what?

  “Already have,” Paul said, winking at her.

  “Yup, we moved him in two days ago,” said Hayes, grinning at Paul. “I had a yard sale to get rid of junk to make room for him.”

  “Your father is a borderline hoarder,” said Paul, twirling pasta on his fork. “He needs me, really. Otherwise he’d be buried under the weight of his junk.”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad,” said her father, waving this away.

  Paul looked at Wren. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  Wren laughed. “Dad’s a collector, not a hoarder.”

  “Thank you,” said her father. “I’m vindicated.”

  “I love you and your junk,” said Paul, picking up her father’s hand and kissing the back of it. The two men beamed at each other, and Wren felt a little teary eyed. She was so happy for the two of them. Her father had met Paul when she was still in high school, and during her senior year, Paul had to move down here to Florida for work. Her dad had stayed with her in Frederick, not wanting to uproot her again before graduation. But after she saw how sad he was, missing Paul, she urged her dad to move as well.

  So, while she’d been moving into her dorm at college, her dad had been moving to Florida. She probably didn’t see her father as much as she could have, because he didn’t live close by, but he was happy, and that was what was most important.

  Paul was refilling everyone’s wine glass.

  “Paul, you’re going to make us hungover for own wedding!” protested her father.

  “Isn’t that the way it’s meant to be?” said Paul, laughing. He filled Hawk’s glass. “How did you and Wren meet?”

  Hawk looked at her, startled, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Oh, they grew up together,” said her father, saving her from any awkwardness. “I’ve known Hawk since he was this high.” He gestured. “How are you, Hawk?”

  “Good,” said Hawk. “Fine.” He had been quiet during dinner, taking everything in.

  “You’re still living on the compound, huh?” said Hayes.

  “Sure,” said Hawk, “but I guess because it’s home, not because of any real interest in the Fellowship.”

  “So, you’re not a card-carrying member?” said Hayes.

  “Well, I never agreed with them making you leave after you came out,” said Hawk. “And there are other things they believe that I can’t get behind. Plus, the whole Horned Lord thing, well… I don’t know, kind of creepy. Not really what you want out of a god.”

  Her father laughed, raising his wine glass. “Oh, ain’t that the truth, though.” He took a long drink of wine. “Well, listen, I’m not going to make any secret about the fact that I don’t think you need to be there, Wren.”

  “Dad,” she protested. “I have a case. I’ve got to solve it.”

  “So, solve it and get the heck out of there,” said Hayes. “Hawk just said he’s got no preference for the place. You can move away somewhere together.”

  “Come on, Dad.” Wren and Hawk weren’t moving together anywhere. But maybe there was no point in getting into that.

  “I know,” Hayes said. “You don’t want to leave. So, I’ll drop it. But I couldn�
��t in good conscience let the night go by without saying something about it.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I don’t, you know, like it there or anything. It’s just, the case, you know.” She stuck a forkful of baked ziti in her mouth and chewed.

  “That’s why you stay,” said Hawk, eyeing her. “The case.”

  She chewed and swallowed. “Why are we talking about this? You guys are getting married tomorrow. We should be celebrating. Paul, tell your husband-to-be to stop worrying about me.”

  Paul took a sip of wine and smiled at her over the glass. “Oh, you can’t make a father stop worrying about his little girl.”

  * * *

  Later, she found it strange and awkward trying to fall asleep in this house with Hawk. When her father had gotten this house, he’d made sure it had a bedroom for her, even though she was already off at college at the time. Hayes had painstakingly decorated it with all the things that she’d left behind, so it still looked like a snapshot from her high school days, down to the poster of The Black Keys that was hanging on the back of her door.

  There was a queen bed in the room, so it wasn’t that there wasn’t enough space for her and Hawk to sleep together. And because of the way she’d been raised, there was very little of the dissonance that might come between a father and grown daughter having a man with her. Her father had been very adamant when she was in high school that sex was natural and that he was much more concerned about her putting herself in dangerous situations than in her expressing her natural desires.

  She’d brought boys home back then, and they would go and “watch movies” in her room and there was never any push back from Hayes. There was a big box of condoms in the closet next to the bathroom that Hayes explicitly showed her. Otherwise, it was no big deal.

  The Fellowship was pretty heavily free love. Hayes’s own beliefs on the subject dovetailed with the cult’s. Sex was a physical function of being human and nothing to get bent out of shape about.

  So, it really shouldn’t have been awkward for Hawk to be there, but it was.

  And it was probably simply because it denoted something more binding between them than Wren wanted. But then, she wasn’t sure what she wanted from Hawk. Maybe she’d be happier if she cut things off between them, but she didn’t seem to be able to do that. She was weak.