The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  He pocketed his handkerchief, turned to face me. “He was basically skewered by an arrow…right in the middle of the hexagram.”

  “As in a bow and arrow?”

  He nodded, his chin quivering just a bit. “That’s not the worst of it,” he said.

  I wanted to reach out for a handrail, but there was none. “I’m ready.”

  “This…monster.” He paused, wiped a hand across his face. He was definitely rattled by this crime scene. “This monster cut off his, his…junk and his testicles and stuffed them in his mouth.”

  My chin practically bounced off my chest. Then the church door opened, and I heard a shrill coming from inside.

  “Who is that?”

  “The twin sister of the lady who was killed. They both went to the church. The victim was the office manager.”

  I could only shake my head. “How was she killed?”

  “Bludgeoned to death,” he said with a heavy exhale. “I don’t know what or who we’re dealing with. This sick, twisted pervert just—” He stopped short, as if he had to cease talking before his emotions bubbled over the edge. A moment passed, and he was calmer, but not by much. “This guy, and yes, I’m saying a guy did this…the violence he’s shown from the first homicide two nights ago to this one. If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d say it’s inconceivable.”

  “Could we be looking at two different killers?”

  He scratched the side of his nose. “I can’t think straight right now, but I suppose it’s possible. I just know that with Satanic symbols now part of two murder scenes, it won’t take long for this to go public. And when it happens, parents at Lee High School will go shit crazy, connecting the murders to the animal sacrifice. And standing here right now, I can’t blame them.”

  “But your team will have some evidence to work from, right? The arrow. You can find the manufacturer and try to figure out who purchased it. And somewhere in that church, there has to be some type of blood or hair from the killer. He can’t be that perfect.” Suddenly a realization hit me square in the head. “Unless the killer is a priest or another worker of the church.”

  He tilted his head, a look of disbelief on his face. “What did you just suggest?”

  I wasn’t fond of his tone, but I didn’t back away from my theory. “You’re probably thinking my instincts are off because of the situation with Emmitt. But that’s behind me,” I said, swatting a hand. I realized I was in the way of two law enforcement officials carrying toolboxes toward the church, and I scooted into the grass and faced Stan. “It makes too much sense. There are countless pedophile stories in the ranks of the priesthood, and—”

  “Ivy.” His voice had a snap to it, which caught me off guard. He never used that tone with me. Maybe he was at his breaking point.

  Another bluster of wind blew across my face. I pushed aside a wayward lock of hair, then Stan continued, his voice subdued. “Look, I don’t want to completely dismiss your theory. Anything is possible. And we’ll follow all the leads and see where they take us—even if they take us to the Pope’s front door, I have no problem busting it down. But the priest in that church is grieving more than anyone right now. I can see it in his eyes. And, oh, by the way, he’s eighty-four and moves like someone who’s a hundred and four.”

  I wanted to dig further into the idea of someone connected to the church—any church—as being the killer. Stan was already working through the same angle apparently, but he seemed truly shaken to the core, so I let it go.

  Brook stopped by the crime scene and had only been on site for a few minutes when Stan got the call: the tech guys had the location of Mia’s phone. That was when she’d jumped into her car, and in no uncertain terms, told me to follow her.

  It was one of the strangest sensations I’d experienced as an adult. The late-afternoon traffic parted like a zipper being pulled open. Even stranger, I was in Black Beauty, cruising at fifteen miles an hour above the speed limit while following a cop.

  We made our way to Lee High School in record time to meet with the SAPD tech team. They believed they had figured out the general location of Mia’s phone, somewhere at the high school. For the first time since Mia’s parents sat in my ECHO office and unloaded all their grief, past and present, there was some positive news coming our way. Or at least a piece of solid evidence. I pulled into the high school parking lot behind Brook. The flashing red light on her unmarked car drew the attention of students. I saw a lot of open jaws and kids breaking out their phones. We met two SAPD techs at the front door. One was holding what looked like a tablet. He was tapping the screen as we dodged students on our way to the front of the school. Principal Peterson walked out of his office and put up a hand. “Where do you think you’re going in my school?”

  I saw Brook set her jaw. This was going to be good.

  28

  Brook slammed him hard with a barrage of harsh words before Peterson could even take a breath.

  And then he did a deep inhale and exhale. “Do you have a warrant?” He folded his arms across his chest, stretching his coat to the point where I thought it might rip at the shoulders. He was actually trying to pull off a smug look, but it didn’t work. In fact, if anything, he looked fearful. As Brook proceeded with gouging out his eyes—metaphorically speaking, of course—I wondered what the hell his problem was.

  “Do I need a fucking warrant when we’re searching for the whereabouts of a missing girl?” Brook’s skin was as smooth as butter, but at this moment, the butter had red dye in it. She was fuming. I thought about stepping in, but she was doing a fine job of cutting Peterson off at the knees.

  “I thought she wasn’t officially missing,” he said, now jabbing a finger. “On top of that, I do believe a little birdie told me she was now a suspect in the field house crime.”

  How the hell did he know that? Did he actually have a contact on the inside of the SAPD? But more importantly, I still couldn’t get past the fact that this tool was trying to obstruct us from a piece of evidence that could help us find Mia. Why would he do that? Did he have something against her? I could feel heat moving up my neck, and I knew if Brook didn’t put this asshat in his place, then I would.

  Brook got right up under his chin. “If you believe that I’m doing something wrong, then you can file a complaint. But for now, you need to move out of the way and allow us free access to the school. Understood?”

  A short woman with a beehive hairstyle shuffled closer, clearing her throat. “Mr. Peterson, I hate to bother you at this time.”

  He turned in her direction while rolling his eyes. “Yes?”

  “Assistant Superintendent Meg Burton is on the line. Says it’s urgent.”

  He took in a breath as if it might be his last, then he looked at Brook. “Be quick about it. School just ended and kids are milling about. I don’t need you to cause me more of a PR headache.”

  He walked off with the short woman.

  “Come on,” Brook said, waving us forward.

  The tech guys took the lead; Brook and I were two steps behind them.

  “Can you believe that guy?” I said to her.

  She was still seething. “No wonder people are upset with public education. That man doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the kids. He’s only concerned about the PR hit.” She groaned.

  “Call me a cynic, but I’m wondering if there’s something more to it.”

  She flipped her head in my direction. “Like?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  The tech guy holding the tablet motioned his arm to take a right. Kids and teachers were all watching us like we were in a parade. I felt tension in the air as we turned left and our pace slowed down. There were just a few kids down this hall. Lots of lockers, a couple of classrooms. Then I saw a sign that said Band Hall.

  I looked straight ahead, and it all came back to me. I nudged Brook’s arm. “I think this is the hallway and exit from the video clip.”

  Her eyes shifted. “I thi
nk you’re right.”

  A moment later, the techie with the tablet stopped in his tracks. “It’s right in here.” He waved his arm in a circle, facing a bank of lockers, two rows.

  “How big of a radius are we looking at?” Brook asked.

  The guy shrugged.

  “I need to know how many we need to get access to.”

  “Crap,” I said. “Now we have to rely on Peterson to open the lockers? He could drag this on forever, and even then he might claim it’s not our right to search all of these lockers.”

  Brook turned to the tech who didn’t have the tablet and asked if they had bolt cutters in their van. He nodded somewhat nervously. “Get those here in two minutes. Can you make it that fast?”

  He nodded, then ran off. I looked up and located the camera that must have been the one that captured Mia’s last moments in the school. Then I glanced at the wall of lockers. “One of these lockers could be hers.”

  “Or it could be a friend’s locker,” Brook said. “Or it could be the locker of someone who had it out for her. We’ll soon find out.”

  It took less than two minutes when we heard the squeak of the tech’s shoes as he cut down the hallway toward us, bolt cutters in hand. Peterson and his squatty assistant were close behind him.

  “Do not under any circumstance deface school property. That would come out of my budget, and I don’t have room for it,” Peterson said, pulling up next to us, out of breath.

  Brook ignored him, taking the bolt cutters from the tech guy.

  “Did you hear me?” Peterson moved in front of the lockers and held up his arms, as if he were a protester.

  She snapped the bolt cutters at him, just below his belt. He quickly moved his knees together. “Are you threatening to…?”

  “If I could find it, I might.”

  I tried not to laugh. But damn, that was a good one.

  “Get the hell out of my way before I cuff you.”

  He removed a set of keys from his pocket. “Just let me unlock the lockers, okay?”

  “Sure. Thanks for being so helpful,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster.

  The tech guy gave Peterson the parameters of which lockers to open. It appeared to be about forty, twenty on both the top and bottom rows. He opened the first, and Brook searched through it. After a couple of minutes, she shook her head. She asked the other tech guy to make a notation of the locker number and the primary contents and waved at Peterson to move on to the next locker. I wanted to jump in, to ask Peterson and his assistant if Mia’s locker was in this group, but something told me to keep my mouth shut. Brook was a seasoned detective and surely had a reason for not asking that same question.

  As more lockers were opened, I watched Peterson more closely, looking for signs of stress or apprehension. Part of me wanted to see it. But I didn’t. He seemed impatient and annoyed, rolling his eyes every time he opened a new locker, but, strangely, he didn’t say another word of protest.

  My gaze shifted to the floor. Why did I feel like Peterson was hiding something? And what would that be? Was he a pervert and had somehow convinced Mia to leave school on her own, meet up with him later, and then he killed her or was holding her captive somewhere? Possibly. It had been done before by men whom no one had suspected. Then, after the horrors were revealed—a woman held in captivity acting as his sex slave for years—neighbors would say, “He was a simple man, quiet but cordial. The last person I would think could do something like this.”

  Quiet and cordial? That wasn’t Peterson on his best day.

  Playing it out in my head, that right there made me think Peterson wasn’t the perpetrator. But why had he, at least up to now, acted so paranoid? Why had he been so callous, so uncooperative, when he learned about a missing student, one who, despite all of her Big Rules and such, still appeared to be one of the good kids? Could there be some secret in Mia’s life that Peterson knew about?

  “Bingo.”

  I looked up and saw Brook holding a phone in her rubber-gloved hand.

  “Oh my, it’s like a ghost speaking to us.”

  All eyes went to Peterson’s assistant.

  Peterson wiped a hand across his rubbery face, then said, “Really, Marilyn? You think that was appropriate?”

  She cowered a bit, and I moved closer to Brook. “Whose locker is this?”

  She opened the door wider, and I saw Mia’s name in pink cut-out letters. I also noticed a lot of pictures and quotes about motivation, hitting your goals, keeping your focus.

  Brook placed the phone in a baggie and handed it to one of the techs. “That’s the first step. Now, we’ll see if there’s anything relevant on it.”

  “You can check her phone records, too, with her wireless company, right? Oh, also, I was thinking if we can figure out her handles, we should be able to dig into all her social media channels.”

  She peered over her shoulder. Peterson had stepped down the hall and was speaking with Marilyn, perhaps giving her a teaching moment…coming from a guy who was a walking, talking example of teaching moments. Oh, the irony.

  Brook turned to me, kept her voice down. “I’ll do some more digging in her locker, but unless I find a note or something, we still have no evidence that a crime has been committed. Searching through her phone is still probably a stretch, according to the rule of law, but I’ll sanction it. Let’s hope we find a trail.”

  I moaned softly, then said, “To state the obvious, since the Romeros still haven’t filed the report, there’s only so much you can do legally.”

  “That, and Principal Asshat apparently knows someone in the department, so I can’t push this too far.”

  I made a few mental notes on things to get from the Romeros, starting with Mia’s social media handles, if they even knew them.

  “You’re going to start digging more into her online life, aren’t you?” Brook asked. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  I thought I was showing nothing more than a straight poker face. “No offense, but someone has to.”

  “Good. Let me and Stan know what you find out.”

  I just hoped we wouldn’t be too late.

  29

  Texting and walking was apparently one of the great new dangers of the modern world. At least for me.

  I’d just walked out of the ECHO office and was heading up the street to visit Saul before meeting the Romeros at Crockett Park. Cristina and I were in a rapid-fire text conversation about the social media information we’d just received from the Romeros through our group text. My head was buried in my phone as I tried to match Cristina’s response time with quick texts of my own…all while walking on the city sidewalk.

  I heard the whine of a little boy too late, yet it still seemed like it all happened in slow motion. My swinging thigh ran into the toddler—at under three feet tall and holding a sippy cup, I guessed he was around two years old or so—and he fell backward. I instantly pulled back my leg to reduce the force of the blow while trying to avoid stepping on him. I was no ballerina, so my balance was thrown off by my twisting body. I actually tripped over my own feet—amazingly, I was still able to avoid stomping the little guy—and plunged face first into a street sign, then toppled backward to the concrete.

  I found myself lying right next to the kid, who was now crying. I looked up to see his mom acting as if he’d been drawn and quartered. It took a good five minutes to calm her down. He stopped crying the instant she replaced the sippy cup in his hand with a handful of Goldfish. I apologized a dozen times and watched them walk off with the mom shaking her head in disgust. I couldn’t blame her really. I wasn’t happy with myself for being so self-absorbed in my own world.

  Then I realized two things. I had an egg-sized bump on my cheekbone, and I’d dropped my phone during my graceful performance.

  “Great,” I said, picking up my phone to see cracks splintered across the screen.

  As I gently opened and closed my mouth, I could really feel the extent of my injury. It hurt n
o matter which way I moved my facial muscles. Before I took another step, I read Cristina’s last text.

  Parents usually don’t know squat about their kid, especially on social media. Lots of kids have alter egos, sometimes many of them, just to play out some fantasy. It’s crazy. I’ll take what they gave us and start digging. Later.

  Cristina’s raw insight into how the teenage mind worked never ceased to surprise me. She had the maturity to view her own age group from a higher level and make valid assessments. It was impressive, especially since she was in the very midst of those age-related issues herself. Of course, her maturity ebbed and flowed, so I was happy when it appeared. I typed in a quick response.

  Thanks. Heading to park to share video footage with Romeros.

  I made sure to pocket my phone before walking, and then plodded down to Saul’s office, now looking for a little sympathy for the bump on my face in addition to wanting to share everything I’d learned today about Mia, the latest Satanic murder, and my thoughts about that shithead, Principal Peterson.

  The glare of the low western sun made me question what I was seeing. That and the foggy, dirty glass on the front door of Saul’s office. Or maybe I’d suffered a concussion and my vision was off.

  I leaned closer to the glass, rubbed my eyes. All I saw was cleavage. A woman wearing a leather, thigh-high skirt and a tight V-neck sweater that amplified her chest tenfold, was leaning over the lower drawer of a filing cabinet, organizing papers and folders. Had someone broken into Saul’s new office? Maybe she was his client, and he’d stepped to the back and she decided to be nosy. I put my hand on the door.

  “Boo!”

  I knew instantly that Saul had walked up behind me. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t help but gasp and jump into the air. And to top it off, I inadvertently slapped myself in the face—right on my bruise.

  “Ahhh,” I said, turning around, holding a gentle hand against my growing cheek.

  “I’m so sorry.” His eyes bulged open. “Wait, did you just give yourself that bruise?”