Innocent Prey (A Brown and de Luca Novel)

by Maggie Shayne

  Except for the body that had apparently run aground in the shallows. Water rushed around and over the girl. Her hair was dark because it was wet. Impossible to tell the color from here.

  I stayed under the apple tree, and tried to tell my brain to think about the aroma and the petals and the bumblebees, and not that a girl was lying dead in the water right now. Or about Stephanie’s already broken mother getting the news that her daughter...

  Yeah, I wasn’t having much luck not going there, was I?

  Mason was pulling on a borrowed pair of waders from one of the first responders, a paramedic. Another man, one I presumed to be Joe Kramer because of the camera in his hand, already had a pair on.

  The jogger who’d probably called this in sat in the grass near the water’s edge, staring and rubbing the goose bumps off her arms, though it wasn’t cold outside. She looked like a nice woman. Thirty, maybe. Wedding ring, probably had a couple of kids. Short blond hair with long sideswept bangs. I could feel her from here. Her heart was all tied up in knots over the dead girl.

  Mason and Joe Kramer waded into the water and out to the body. Kramer took a few shots, then moved to another position and took a few more from the new angle. He did this until he’d taken shots from all sides of her, and then Mason took the girl by her shoulders. I knew he was being as gentle as he could when he pulled her off the snag and into the deeper water. Her body floated, and he just steered her all the way to shore. The medics met him there, with a gurney collapsed to its lowest height. They’d stretched an unzipped black body bag over it. Joe Kramer handed his camera to one of them; then he and Mason lifted the girl onto the gurney, water running from her in streams, and the medics carried it back to the trail, set it down and raised it to its normal height.

  My eyes were glued to that girl, my brain pulling up pictures of Stephanie Mattheson and telling myself to look at this girl’s face and compare, but nothing was computing. Probably because I kept getting stuck on the big bloody patch on the front of her blouse. I assumed that was what had killed her. Even when I forced myself not to look at that anymore, I still couldn’t bring myself to look at her face. I didn’t want to see the judge’s daughter. Like it mattered, right? She was somebody’s daughter, either way.

  One slender arm dropped over the side of the gurney, and I found myself staring at her hand. It was a young hand. Small and feminine. Long but ragged nails with old pink nail polish all chipped and fading. And on her forearm, a series of scars. Recent ones. Like hash marks, five of them, each a couple of inches long.

  I frowned and moved closer. “Mason, her arm...”

  “I see it.” He nodded at the photographer, who snapped a few close-ups.

  Mason was wearing gloves. They reminded me of the kind women are supposed to wear while washing dishes. You know, because we’re pure and made of sugar and will melt in dirty water.

  He pushed the sleeve of her blouse up higher on her arm, then checked the other one, which was not within my range of vision, but apparently there were similar marks there, because more photos got taken.

  The chief stood beside the stretcher with his head down and one hand on his forehead. “I knew Stephanie, and even I can’t tell if it’s her,” he said.

  My eyes disobeyed me then. I looked at her face. It was all puffy from being in the water, and tinted blue.

  “Did Stephanie have any scars, Chief?” Mason asked. “What about that accident that blinded her, was she—”

  “Yes, of course. There’s a scar on her head, right about here.” As he spoke, he leaned over the girl, holding out a hand and snapping his fingers rapidly.

  The photog handed him a pair of gloves, and the chief pulled them on hurriedly, then squinted and leaned closer, moving the hair on the back of her head. “It’s hard to see, with all this hair.”

  “There was another surgery,” Rosie called. We all turned to see him hobbling along the trail with a crutch under one arm. “Her spleen was ruptured, wasn’t it, Chief?”

  I was still under that apple tree, between the body and Rosie on the trail. I turned to see the chief’s response to Rosie and noticed Mason hadn’t. He was looking at me. I met his eyes briefly, knew he was checking to see if I was okay. Well, I wasn’t, but I was a helluva lot better off than the girl on the gurney was. I gave him a very slight nod, and he nodded in response. Then he turned back to the girl and carefully lifted her blouse. And then he got the oddest look on his face.

  “Chief?”

  The chief lowered the hand that was shielding his eyes from what he feared was the body of his friend’s child. I couldn’t help myself. I walked across the tender spring grass and, standing opposite Mason, I looked at the girl’s exposed torso.

  There was no surgical scar. There were names carved into the skin of her belly. Lexus Carmichael, Stephanie Mattheson, & me, Venora LaMere

  Something happened to my head for a second. I swayed forward and automatically shot my hand out to catch myself. I touched the dead girl’s hand instead, and there was this flash. I saw her lying on her back on a bunk bed, looking down at her belly and scratching her skin with a metal rod that looked like it was slightly heavier than coat hanger wire.

  It was there and gone, just that fast.

  What the fuck was that?

  “You okay, Rache?” Mason asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. You see the names?” Venora, I was thinking. Venora, the same name Amy said her kidnapper had called her.

  “I see them.”

  The chief was staring at the names, too. Mason said, “Venora was the name Rachel’s assistant said her kidnapper called her during that episode last November.”

  Chief Sub frowned. “Can’t be coincidence. And Stephanie’s name is there, too. She was with her.”

  “It’s all connected,” I said softly.

  “Good God.” The chief shook his head. “So have we got one killer abducting young women one after another? Or some kind of ring?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “But there’s no question now that the judge’s daughter is in trouble. We have to make this case official.”

  Chief Sub nodded. “Oh, it’s official all right. I told him last night that was happening today no matter what.” Then he looked at the dead girl again, reached out and pulled the body bag closed over her. “Get her to the morgue,” he told the EMT. “Tell the ME not to touch anything. We need a forensic pathologist on this.”

  “Got it, Chief.” The medic zipped the body bag closed.

  “Mason, we need to find the connection between these girls. And include Rachel’s Amy Montrose in that. There’s got to be something.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I felt the judge’s approach before I heard his wheezing, and I heard his wheezing before anyone else. Judge Howie came hurrying down the path toward us. He was deathly white. Almost gray.

  “Where is she?” Then he focused on the body bag on the gurney. “Is it her? Tell me it’s not her!”

  He was breathing like a lifelong smoker walking up a hill, looking nothing like the controlled, contained man I’d seen at the party the night before. He staggered to a stop, his hands on his knees, eyes fixed on that body bag, and Chief Sub hurried over to him and put his hands on the older man’s shoulders like he was steadying him. “It’s not her, Howard. It’s not Stephanie.”

  The old man—and that was what he looked like, just then, an old, old man—kept his eyes glued to the black bag. “I have to see for myself.” He moved past the chief, who gave a nod to the EMTs. One of them unzipped the bag and folded it open as the judge approached. I stepped away from them. I didn’t want to risk touching her again, not yet.

  I was still shaking like a leaf from whatever the hell had just hit me.

  Okay, I’d had some weird shit happen before. I got donated corneas and wound up with some kind of mental link to the people who’d gotten other organs from the same donor. I’d had dreams and visions and premonitions. But it all had a physical reason that the believers o
f the world called cellular memory and the scientists of the world called bullshit.

  It was the only answer I had, so I decided science would catch up later.

  This, however, was different. I had no connection to this girl. I didn’t have any of her organs in my body. So why that flash?

  A little buzz in my brain told me to get out of my own head and pay attention. Judge Howie, who’d told Mason he’d never heard the name Venora before, was looking at the dead girl’s face. He frowned hard, then looked closer. Something was going on. I closed my eyes so I could feel him. Mason had thought he was lying when he said he didn’t know the name.

  “Who is she?” he asked. Not because he wanted to know the name, I thought. Because he wanted to verify or nullify something his brain was telling him.

  “We think her name is Venora LaMere,” Mason said.

  And a jolt went through the judge. I felt it.

  “You think?” the judge asked. “What do you mean, you think?”

  I need to know for sure, my whatchamacallit translated. (I’m working on a name for it, I swear.)

  “Show him,” I said, because I wanted to feel his reaction.

  I felt Mason’s eyes on me after I said it, and I knew the chief and the judge were staring at me, too, with “who the hell are you to even be here?” looks on their faces. I didn’t need to see them to know. “What do you gain by not showing him?” I asked.

  “Whatever it is, show me.” The judge made it an order.

  I heard the zipper move lower, so I knew they were complying. Someone must have lifted the blouse, because I heard the sharp breath the judge sucked in. “What the hell does this mean?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet, Howard,” Chief Sub told him.

  “Bullshit. You, Brown, what do you think it means?”

  I sharpened my senses. I can’t tell you how I do that, but it’s like aiming your satellite dish in the right direction. I was completely attuned to the judge’s frequency, whatever the hell that means.

  Mason said, “I think it means that this girl was held somewhere with your daughter and the other girl. Lexus Carmichael. The wounds are recent.”

  “Jesus.” And my brain whispered, Something big is coming for him. Something bad. Freight train.

  “Judge, have you ever heard of these other girls before? Venora LaMere? Lexus Carmichael?”

  “No. Never.” I felt the lie right to my toes. Then he added, “Not to my recollection, at least. Do you know how many girls like them come through my courtroom?”

  “Girls like them?” I said it without breaking my concentration or changing position at all. Mason knew what I was doing. He knew and appreciated it. I felt that, too.

  “How did she die?” The judge had apparently decided to ignore my question.

  “She was shot—at very close range, I think,” Mason said.

  The freight train hit. It felt like a baseball bat to the skull. I opened my eyes, brought my head up fast.

  Judge Howie was looking even grayer than before.

  “You need to sit down,” I said, but the chief was talking over me.

  “The case is official now, Howard,” he said. He put a hand on the judge’s shoulder, and urged him to turn and start walking away. “Stephanie’s in trouble. We need to bring every possible resource to bear on this so we can get her home safely.”

  The judge nodded.

  “Mason, something’s happening,” I said. I didn’t even say it quietly. The EMTs heard me. So did the chief and the judge, and even Rosie, who had finished up with a pad and a pen and the jogger, and was crutching toward us.

  Mason pulled me into step behind the two older men. “If there’s anything you haven’t told us, Judge,” he said, “now would be the time.”

  The two men stopped walking and turned to look at him, the chief with a kind of furious “how dare you?” expression, and the judge with one that might as well have been a neon sign flashing the word guilty.

  “Dammit, Mason, that’s not what I meant. Something’s happening to him.” I looked at the judge. “Shit, it’s a stroke. You’re having a stroke.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, and then he just dropped. You know how it looks when they demo a building, the way it collapses straight down, dropping its rubble into its own basement? That’s how he fell. Like his legs had dematerialized underneath him. And it happened the instant I was reaching for him. If I’d lived in the Dark Ages they’d have burned me as a witch.

  The chief crouched beside him, hands on his shoulders, rolling him onto his back. Mason shouted, and waved at the ambulance that had just finished turning itself around behind us.

  It sped over to us, and the EMTs jumped out and took over.

  “It’s a stroke.”

  “How do you know that, ma’am?”

  “If she says it’s a stroke, it’s a stroke,” Mason barked. Then he encircled my shoulder with one arm and moved us out of the way, to where Rosie stood on the trail.

  The chief was pushing a hand through his hair as he walked over to join us. “Why the hell would you accuse him like that?”

  Mason started to defend himself. “Chief, I—”

  “Because he was lying when he said he’d never heard of Venora and Lexus.”

  Then one of the EMTs shouted at the other, “She’s right, he’s stroking out. We’ve gotta transport STAT.”

  Chief Sub’s anger changed to fear. I felt it. He looked at me, then at Mason. “She psychic or something?”

  “Or something,” he said.

  “I am not fucking psychic.” And just like that I knew what to call my extra-sharp intuition. NFP. Not Fucking Psychic...ism. Hey, I didn’t say it was perfect.

  My attention shifted back to the EMTs as they moved the body bag onto the floor of the ambulance and dragged the gurney over for the judge.

  * * *

  Stevie sat on her bunk, reliving what had happened, trying to figure out what the hell she’d done wrong. Everything, she guessed. Who the hell was she to make escape plans and lead attacks? Who was she to lead anything or anyone? She couldn’t even see!

  Over and over the whole thing played out in her mind, and in her mind she could see it. Her and Venora and Lexi, jabbing and stabbing at their captor. The way he’d shoved her away, and then that punch to the face. She’d hit the floor but scrambled up again and flung herself back into the tangle of people, and the gun went off, and she thought her ears would bleed from the sharp crack of it.

  She’d hit the floor and then searched her own body with her hands, sure she was shot. Until she felt the warm blood on the floor, flowing toward her, not away. Lifting her head she said, “Lexi?”

  “It’s Venora. Bastard shot Venora!” Lexi screamed, then she yelled again, but facing away from her this time, probably shouting through the bars. “You fucking asshole! You shot her, you bastard! You come back in here again I’m gonna eat your liver, you spineless son of a—”

  “Venora.” Stevie said her name softly as she crawled to where the girl lay and put her hands on her shoulders, and then tried to put her hand on her heart to feel for its beat. But she felt a small hole instead, and the steady pulsing way the blood rushed from it with every heartbeat. “It’s okay, Venora. It’s okay.”

  “Yeah,” Venora whispered. “It is.”

  “Lexus, get the new girl untied before she hyperventilates and passes out!”

  Lexus pounded on the bars one more time, but then Stevie heard her working on freeing up the new girl, who apparently got a look at Venora as soon as her blindfold came off, because she said, “Oh God oh God oh God.”

  Stevie got Venora’s head up into her lap. She had her hand pressed to the wound, but she didn’t expect it to do any good. That beating pulse. The spot where the bullet was. It had to have gone into her heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Stevie told her. “We shouldn’t have tried that. It’s my fault.”

  “I...was going out either way, Stevie. I told you, I knew I was.
I’m glad I died fighting.”

  “You’re not gonna die.” The pulsing stopped. Just like that.

  Stevie frowned and bent closer to listen for Venora’s breath.

  She exhaled the words “I’ll save you,” warm and soft on Stevie’s cheek, and then...nothing.

  She didn’t breathe again.

  The door opened down the hall. Stevie heard more than one set of footsteps outside the cell. Lexi roared, “You come on in here, you sons of bitches! You come on in he—”

  There were three quick soft sounds. Something stabbed into Stevie’s arm, and she heard Lexi fall to the floor and the new girl gasp, all at once. And then she passed out as a voice that was distorted and came from very far away said, “Get rid of the body and clean this mess up. Make it fast. We gotta move them. Someone might’ve heard the fucking shot.”

  7

  Chief Sub tossed his keys to Rosie after we walked across the weed lot to where we’d all parked. The ambulance had trundled on ahead of us and was out of sight on the highway now, heading for Binghamton General. I felt bad for Rosie. He’d managed to keep up with us, his sense of urgency and commitment to his job bigger than his common sense, if you asked me. He was walking on that sprain and hurting like a bitch. And no, I didn’t need NFP to know it.

  “Take my wheels, Jones,” the chief said. “Get back to headquarters and start looking for a connection between these girls. Including Rachel’s assistant, Amy Montrose.”

  With a nod, Rosie headed for the big SUV.

  “Keep your weight off that ankle,” I called after him. “And when you get to your office, for crying out loud, put it up and ice it, okay?”

  Mason frowned at me.

  “Nieces. Varsity basketball. Real familiar with ankle sprains,” I explained.