The Hunting of Malin

by Sean Thomas Fisher

  “We should bail,” Roscoe said, watching her pass him by. “Get some help.”

  “It’s too late for that,” she replied, surprised by the calmness in her voice.

  “Goddamn,” he murmured behind her. “This guy is one sick prick.”

  A few yards further, Malin stopped and pushed some dead leaves around with the toe of a boot. Her pupils contracted and panic rose like bile in her throat. Paralysis was quick to follow. It couldn’t be. Forcing her head a quarter turn, she glanced over her shoulder, heart beating in her ears.

  “Jesus Christ,” Roscoe whispered, kneeling in front of the body with his gun hanging limply in one hand.

  In slow motion, Malin turned back to the matte black Zippo lying by her boot, mind jumping to conclusions that didn’t add up. She looked back at Roscoe, who was now digging in the pockets of the dead girl’s running shorts.

  It was impossible.

  “Hang on, I found her phone,” he said, sounding so far away.

  Malin watched him pull the girl’s phone out and swipe at the screen, dizzy in the head with disbelief because this couldn’t be.

  “According to Facebook, her name is Amber Rowe,” he said, tapping at the screen. “And she’s from here.”

  Demanding her body obey her mind’s commands, Malin bent down and grabbed the lighter, clutching it in the palm of her hand. It was clean and well taken care of, just like Roscoe’s matte black Zippo his father gave him for his twenty-fifth birthday. Like it recently fell from someone’s pocket. Her fingers wrapped around the cool metal and her eyes fell shut. Crouched on her haunches, Malin concentrated, trying to get something from it. Like her mom did with that missing boy’s Han Solo action figure.

  Tucked away at a desk in the corner of a dimly lit shop, Malin could still remember pretending to focus on a math assignment while Luna tried calming the hysterical mother of a missing eight-year-old boy named Toby. Setting Han on the red velvet stretched across a round table – always a round table – Luna wrapped the figure in her fist, shut her eyes and, in the end, the only thing the toy told her was that the boy stole it from a Kmart with his friend two weeks before. Upon that painful revelation, the mother snatched it up and stormed from the shop in tears. Glassy-eyed, Luna closed early that day and took Malin out for ice cream.

  A rare treat.

  Other times, however, Luna got more from an object. Much more. Sometimes, she could locate a cheating husband from just a silver Rolex, or find a stolen car from a set of keys, and Malin wanted to try it now. Wanted to help. Never in her wildest dreams did she think she would ever want to attempt something so silly but here she was, receptive to the fact that maybe there was no escaping the very thing she wrote off as foolish all these years.

  Squeezing her eyes together until she saw stars, Malin tightened her fist around the lighter. She could do this. She just needed to focus for a minute and maybe… Wait. Hang on. It was coming to her now. She could see something. Something shifting in the darkness surrounding…

  A heavy hand landed on her shoulder and Malin screamed awake. Eyelids springing back like roller blinds, she smacked the hand away.

  “It’s just me; take it easy. Damn!” Leaning closer, his face lengthened with the pull of a frown. “What’re you doing?”

  “Looking for clues,” she panted, getting up and discreetly slipping the lighter into a back pocket.

  “Find anything?

  She looked away to hide the fear swimming in her eyes because the only thing she got from the lighter was that it definitely belonged to Roscoe. But she refused to believe it, even as everything clicked into place like tumblers on a lock: Both victims were blond and eerily similar looking to Roscoe’s ex-girlfriend. The German Sheppard at Mortimer Woods wasn’t barking at the cigarette smoke – she was barking at Roscoe after sensing the darkness within. The cuts on his knuckles weren’t from changing a keg – they were from punching Amber Rowe in the mouth. And now this – his lighter discovered at the scene of the crime. But was it really his? Did she really get anything from it? Or was her mind just connecting dots that didn’t exist? She’d never done this before and there had to be thousands of similar Zippos out there but, somehow, she knew this one belonged to him. Knew beyond a shadow of doubt. Gaze drifting out over Clearwater Lake, its gray waters much too serene in wake of witnessing such a sinister crime, she exhaled a melancholy breath. If the lighter was his, one thing was evident: Roscoe was taking his heartache out on girls who reminded him of Lisa. The motive was as clear as the ski boat zipping a wakeboarder across the heart of the lake.

  Her eyes lowered to some bloody leaves ten feet away. “It happened over there, but I woke up before he dragged her to the tree.” She looked back to the dead girl, voice sounding automated inside her head. “Why did you touch her phone?”

  Roscoe studied the napping corpse. “Don’t worry, I wiped my prints off it.” He used the end of his t-shirt to clear his forehead. “So how do we handle this?”

  “We find a signal and call it in.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then,” she breathed out, “after we talk to the cops, we do what you said and go to my mom for help.”

  “If anyone will know what to do, it’s her. This is way beyond police procedure.” He looked up. “You’re the only one who can stop this asshole.”

  “Don’t you say that.”

  “It’s true, May! I mean, shit…” His eyes returned to the battered body, hand running through his hair. “You were right. Again.”

  Malin freed her ponytail and itched at the sweat trickling down her scalp. It felt like bugs were crawling on her head and it was time to take off the kid gloves. If the German Shepard and mama bear sensed something threatening in Roscoe, then Luna would as well. Malin was certain of it. “I could use a drink first.”

  Roscoe grunted. “Make that a few drinks.”

  “I’d settle for a cigarette in the meantime.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “Since when?”

  “Since I just found my second dead body.”

  The hint of a grin pulled into the corners of his mouth, turning him into the serial killer her mind refused to accept. No. Malin was overthinking this; she was tired and in shock and people don’t just flip from good to bad in the snap of two fingers. Or do they? How many shooters in the United States alone had zero priors and still walked into that school or mall? Roscoe shook two cigarettes from the pack and lit hers before lighting the one pinched between his lips. Pulling in a small drag, she watched him stuff a red Bic lighter back into his jeans. “No Zippo?”

  He turned back to the blond, unable to look away for very long. “I lost it,” he absentmindedly mumbled, smoke trailing from his nose.

  Malin coughed out some white clouds and took another small drag. He got that right. Lisa dumped him and he fucking lost it. Big time. No, there had to be a mistake. He didn’t have the only matte black Zippo in the world, but what were the odds the killer had one as well? Listening to the Devil on one shoulder before turning to the angel on the other, she coughed out more smoke. “What’re you doing!”

  Kneeling in front of the dead girl, Roscoe pulled a heart-shaped locket over her neck, getting the silver chain caught in the noose and taking a few strands of hair with it. Standing, he let the blood-stained necklace dangle from his fingertips. “We need something for your mom to touch.”

  She tried to control the anxiety throttling her vocal cords because they were all alone out here and if, by whatever remote chance, Roscoe was the killer and he suspected she knew, this could be the end of Malin Waterhouse. He had a gun for Christ’s sake! She had to play it cool. But the fact that he just tampered with a crime scene by removing evidence made her skin crawl and it was difficult to hide because only the killer would do something stupid like that. “Let’s get going,” she said, bringing the cigarette to her lips and turning for the trail.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered from behind, the sternness to his voice making Malin’s legs
buckle.

  Without turning, her heart skipped a series of beats as reality crashed down with a bone jarring crunch. Roscoe saw her pick up the Zippo. He knew she was on to his wicked ways and had the gun pointed at her back right now. She didn’t need a vision to see it. Her body tensed, bracing for a bullet to puncture a lung and knock her off her feet, leaving her to drown in her own blood.

  He brushed her shoulder from behind and she screamed bloody murder, startling some crows from a nearby pine. Recoiling, he tripped over his own feet, arms cartwheeling through the air and narrowly falling. “Goddamn!”

  Clapping a hand over her chest to stop her heart from smashing through its breastplate, she hit him with an icy glower. “What’s your problem!”

  “You had a giant spider on you. Relax!”

  She followed his eyes to the ground where a hairy arachnid scurried across the leaves and vanished into a tall patch of weeds. Exhaling, Malin turned back to the trail with Roscoe in tow. The walk back to the car was a quiet one, uphill and hot, and Malin felt like spiders were crawling all over her entire body. Her legs whined, throat itched, and even though she was unconvinced Roscoe had ANYTHING to do with these murders, she didn’t like being alone with him out here like this. The feeling was impossible to shake, leaving her cold and quiet. Too quiet. He said something about the girl’s mutilated throat and then something about the black bear but Malin could only wonder if her best friend was a serial killer. He fit the killer’s build in her visions; and why would his Zippo be out here unless he lost it in the scuffle with Amber Rowe? Malin trudged on, knowing that if he didn’t murder her on the way back to the car, she was about to find out.

  Chapter12

  Detective Brolin was young and handsome and Malin could tell he was also annoyed at finding another body on his turf. Or maybe he was just a dick on a fulltime basis. Studying the notepad on the table between them, he pulled a hand through the dark peach fuzz blanketing his scalp. Sleeves of colorful tattoos poured from a navy-blue t-shirt, making him look more like the bad guy than the other way around. Malin bet he worked undercover drug busts and gritty stuff like that as he would fit right in with the wrong crowd.

  “Do you always go for a hike at this time of the morning?”

  Her gaze climbed the silver badge hanging from his neck. “Not always, but – with this heat – it’s the coolest time of the day to go.”

  Nodding faintly, he scribbled something on the notepad – probably something stupid like his grocery list just to make Malin squirm. “Okay, and so what? You just called your buddy, Roscoe, here at seven in the morning to go for a walk?”

  Following the detective’s nod to Roscoe in the seat next to her, she searched her friend for signs of anxiety. A sweaty brow or bouncy knee, something a killer would be trying to hide. But, for the most part, he appeared fairly steady. As steady as anyone could be given the circumstance, as even the innocent would find it uneasy inside this claustrophobic room. “Sometimes,” she replied, turning back to Brolin. “I wouldn’t walk alone after…”

  Stopping the pen, the detective looked up.

  “The Holly Banner murder,” Roscoe finished for her, clearing his throat and shifting in the hard, plastic chair.

  “Is this your normal trail?”

  Malin gave him a loose shrug, eyes drawing to the mirrored wall in the room, where she could feel eyes watching from the other side. “Sometimes.”

  Brolin cracked a white-toothed smile and gestured with the pen. “And so what, you just happened to veer off the path and find a dead body in the trees?”

  “I stopped walking when the smell hit me. It was bad,” she said, mentally forcing herself into the shoes of her own lie. This wouldn’t work if she didn’t trick herself into believing their own made up story. It was either that or tell him about the two visions and that wasn’t an option. “We went in a little closer and that’s when I noticed her leaning against the tree. At first, we thought she was taking a nap.”

  Brolin stared at her for a few seconds that seemed to last for several minutes, tapping the pen against the notepad. His eyes jumped to Roscoe, who sat up a little straighter and tried not to fidget. The police department’s air-conditioning clicked on, laying down a cold blanket over the room. Brolin pointed the pen at him. “Where do you work?”

  “I own a bar and grill called The Office.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “The Office?”

  Roscoe nodded.

  Snorting in amusement, he wrote something down and looked up to Malin, turning her stomach.

  “I-I’m unemployed.” She rubbed her bare arms, suddenly feeling less than everyone else, less than zero. Staring at her reflection in this cold interrogation room, answering one invasive question after another, the severity of her fall from grace was now painfully clear. This was the bottom of the proverbial barrel and this is where most would begin to crack around the edges. But not Malin Waterhouse. Her reflection lifted her shoulders and Malin had to remind herself, right here and now, amidst this storm of bodies and cops and unemployment, that she would rise again. “For now.”

  Detective Brolin sharpened his gaze and tipped back a paper cup of coffee, swallowing loudly. “How long’ve you two known each other?”

  Roscoe traded a blank look with Malin, lips pulling down at the corners. “Since grade school.”

  “Dating?”

  “No,” they answered as one.

  His striking eyes bounced between them. He looked good in a t-shirt and jeans and Malin wondered if this was how he dressed all of the time or only because he’d been pulled from the house in a hurry. She had a hard time imagining him in a shirt and tie. Eyes hooking on the silver wedding ring around his finger, Malin bet his wife was naturally pretty.

  “Never dated?”

  She looked up to meet his awaiting gaze. “Never.”

  Roscoe folded his arms across his wrinkled t-shirt. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “It may have plenty, Roscoe. Who’s the detective here? You or me?”

  Malin didn’t like the way he said Roscoe, like a playground bully making fun of his name with a southern drawl.

  “You are but…”

  “Then sit back and let me do my job. Okay?”

  “So, who is she?” Malin asked, changing the subject. “The girl.”

  Gaze falling to the notepad, Brolin ran a palm over his scalp. “Twenty-four-year-old realtor, last seen leaving her apartment to go for a hike out at the lake. Alone,” he said, pulling a hand down his face. “No reports of stalkers or bad history with anyone.” He paused to tap the pen against the legal pad. “Yet.”

  “So…this is, obviously, connected to the Holly Banner murder then, right?” Roscoe said, swapping a look with Malin. “I mean, the noose and everything.”

  Brolin tapped the pen faster, eyeing him over. Tap, tap, tap. “Sure looks like it,” he finally answered. “Or maybe that’s what someone wants us to think.”

  Malin leaned forward. “Aren’t there any cameras in the area that could’ve caught something on video?”

  “There were two,” Brolin replied, sipping some more coffee. “A traffic cam near the lake turnoff and one at the trailhead but neither is operational, which isn’t surprising. Half the time, the surveillance cameras we check aren’t working. The other half, the video is so grainy it’s virtually useless.”

  “So, we’ve got a serial killer on our hands.” Roscoe crossed his legs and wagged a sneaker across his knee. “That’s what you’re saying.”

  “I said no such thing.” Leaning back, Brolin interlocked his fingers behind his head, popping his biceps. “And I’d appreciate you not talking to the press until we can get ahead of this.”

  Malin bunched her face up. “Press?”

  “We won’t give them your name but they have their ways of finding things out. Sit on this. Don’t tell anyone.” Leaning forward, he rested his elbows on the small table between them and rubbed his hands together as if he were about t
o share some scandalous secret with them. “Why do I get the feeling you two aren’t telling me everything?”

  Roscoe frowned. “Like what? There’s nothing more to tell.”

  “There’s always more to tell, Roscoe.”

  There, he did it again, mocking Roscoe’s name and stepping on Malin’s last nerve. “We told you everything, Brolin,” she spit back, getting to her feet. “If we think of anything else we will call you.”

  Leaning back in the chair, he rested a hand on the gun clipped to his hip, like he might pull it and shoot her at any second. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, pushing two business cards across the table and rising from the chair. He was taller than Malin expected and didn’t bother shaking their hands or thanking them for coming in and it rubbed her the wrong way.

  Roscoe took a card and slid his chair back with a painful screech, following Malin out into the hallway where she couldn’t help but notice the conversations stop and the eyes draw their way. Face flushing, she filed past a breakroom and some small offices before weaving through a sparsely populated cubicle farm, urging her legs to work faster. Shooting out from behind the front desk, she hit a glass door with both hands and poured outside. Fresh cut grass mixed with the hint of lavender, sunshine warm on her skin, and Malin wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world.

  “Well, that was fun.” Opening his car door, he turned back to the police station. “For a second there, I thought he was going to shoot us.”

  “Me too!” Malin opened her door and let the heat spill out. “What a total dick.”