LUCY: The Complete Lucy Kendall Series with Bonus Content (The Lucy Kendall Series Book 5)

by Stacy Green

Todd’s rap on the glass yanked me out of my dazed nap. I rolled down the window.

  “They want you on the scene.”

  With my gloved hands jammed into my pockets, I walked beside Todd as we followed Deputy Roberts into the woods. The darkness felt thicker, as if it had physical mass and might wrap itself around my throat at any moment. The bobbing flashlights and white snow did nothing to ease the sensation of walking into a black void.

  The sleeping, bare trees provided a minimal windbreak, but my system was too desensitized to feel much of anything. According to Roberts, the hunting cabin was a two room, sparse shelter for the serious deer hunters who wanted to be out from sunup to sundown.

  “With the land for sale and the owner out of state, the cabin hadn’t been checked on in a while.” The wind carried Roberts’s voice back to me, making it sound like a recorded version of itself. “I suppose she saw the listing and figured it was the perfect place.”

  “She did more than that,” I said. “She knew the owner wasn’t around. She probably knew the realtor didn’t check up on the place. And I guarantee she knows everything about the area.”

  “How do you know that?” Roberts asked.

  Because it’s what I would do.

  “Intuition.”

  “Has the girl’s body been removed?” Todd asked.

  “No.” Robert’s windswept voice took on a chilled edge. “The FBI agent called and asked the medical examiner to wait to move it until he arrived.”

  Todd grunted, glancing at me. So the fight had already begun.

  A parting in the trees diverted my attention. Crime scene lights shined like some kind of bizarre beacon, turning the snow almost iridescent. The yellow tape surrounding the cabin looked woefully out of place, as if the artist’s color palette had been tampered with. The cabin itself looked as I’d assumed any hunting cabin did. Heavy logs mucked together, with a single window facing east. I wondered if that was intentional, to make sure the hunters didn’t sleep in.

  “How did the medical examiner get here?” I pointed to the black SUV with its rear door open to reveal the waiting gurney. “Did she come in while I fell asleep?”

  “There’s another access road,” Todd said. “To the south, and it’s less than a quarter mile off the main highway.”

  “Doesn’t that mean this place isn’t very well hidden?” That couldn’t be right. Mary wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.

  “Not if no one is checking the place,” Roberts said. “It’s got a generator, so there’s electricity. Looks like she used a space heater.”

  Chief Deputy Frost exited the narrow, crudely hewn doorway. The last time I saw her, her cheeks were still bright with the prospect of the hunt. She’d been in control of the search and believed she’d find Chris in the woods.

  She looked like a pale shell of that woman now. I stamped out the smile that begged at my lips.

  “Detective Beckett,” she said. “Miss Kendall–”

  “Lucy. Please.”

  A jerk of her chin was the only acknowledgment. “Here’s what we have: the medical examiner puts the girl at around sixteen. She doesn’t have any identification on her, but Trooper Evans recognized her. She’s been missing from the southern part of the state for more than two weeks.”

  I tried to hide my surprise at her sharing the information with me. I guess Todd’s presence and my private investigator’s license counted for something. “And Chris?”

  “The girl is in the bedroom. She’s been…” Frost faltered for the first time, no longer the big woman in charge but realizing how blessed she’d been to work in a small town with normal problems. I could have taunted her, asked her what she thought of her shot at the big time now, and I almost did. Todd’s presence by my side stopped me.

  Frost kept shaking her head like the images would somehow disappear. Eventually she’d realized that whatever she’d seen in that cabin was tattooed in her memory. She’d probably still remember the girl’s mutilated body when she was ninety and on her own deathbed. “Sexually tortured and subjected to various physical attacks. Bruises show signs of healing, so we’re assuming she’s been here a while. As for your friend, we found something in the bathroom.”

  She held out an evidence bag. For a moment, my stinging and tired eyes couldn’t see past the plastic. And then I saw the gray fabric, the intricately woven pattern of black and white. “That’s Chris’s scarf.”

  “It’s stained with blood,” Frost said. “And the bathroom has several areas that glowed with the Luminol. Since this is a hunting cabin, some of it may well be animal blood. But I think your friend made it this far. I think he–or someone–staunched his bleeding with the scarf. And then he left.”

  Just like I’d told her hours ago. If only she’d listened. But so what? What exactly would have turned out differently? I didn’t know, but that didn’t stop me from blaming her.

  “He didn’t leave,” I said. “She took him. Or they took him.”

  “I agree,” Todd said. “If he’s shot and left to die, he’s not walking into the woods. He’s going back to his car to call for help. I checked with OnStar. No calls made, and no sign of blood anywhere on or near the Audi.”

  “I’m not arguing that fact,” Frost said. “I’m telling you what I know. I needed you to identify the evidence.”

  “Why didn’t you bring it to the car?” I asked. I looked at the cabin, knowing the slain girl was still inside. “Do you think Chris was here when Mary killed her?”

  “We don’t know.” Trooper Evans appeared behind Frost, stepping around her. What he lacked in height he made up for in girth, and I guessed the majority of his mass was solid muscle. His bald head shined almost as bright as the snow, and the bulletproof vest added extra bulge beneath this jacket. “The ME’s preliminary exam puts death sometime in the last 24 hours. The cold slowed down the decomposition process, and she’s going to have to run tests to get us more answers. I spoke with the sheriff’s Major Case detective,” he shot a cold glance at Frost, who seemed to shrink into her jacket, “and he’s on his way.”

  His glittering, sharp eyes honed in on me. “As for why you’re here, the FBI requested you view the scene, if you’re willing.”

  I could do nothing but stare dumbly back at him. “Why?”

  “Ask Beckett.”

  I turned to the man standing beside me. Todd sighed, his breath wisping out in cold crystals. His composure remained, but the edge in his voice told me he’d been dreading this moment. “When I called ADA Hale earlier, he put me on with Agent Lennox of the Pennsylvania office. He knows who you are and what you did for Kailey Richardson as well as the recent trafficking ring. He also knows you and Chris are close. I told him,” he glanced at me, a shadow in his eyes, “that you were as familiar with Mary as anyone else at this point.”

  “Why would you say that?” My voice pitched high, a child caught in the act of lying. Did Todd hear it too? Did he see the big black shadow creeping up on me? The horrendous similarities between Mary and me I could barely deny?

  “You already told me you were looking for her.” The words practically sang with deeper implications. “And I know you.”

  We stared at one another, the unspoken accusation feeling like a shouting match. I had to say something before my nerves got the better of me.

  “So what does the FBI agent want me to do?”

  “He wants you to walk the scene,” Trooper Evans said. “He’d like your opinion on whether this is really Mary West or someone else altogether.”

  “Like a copycat who suckered Chris?”

  Evans shrugged. “I’m just relaying the information. Normally, the state police handle murders. But this is apparently… different.”

  I realized I was supposed to feel discomfort at the jurisdictional jockeying, that I should do an internal curtsey and soothe Evans’ feelings.

  But soothing required precious energy, and I wasn’t sure I had enough to make it through the night as it was. “Show me the sce
ne.”

  9

  The cabin should have smelled musty. I expected something similar to my grandparent’s basement–a foreign, dark place I’d feared as a child—closed up, with droplets of moisture seeping through the rudimentary caulking and around the window. The nights I stayed with them, I’d walk by the basement doorway–always open for the cat–and catch a whiff of that sad, moldy smell and see the bulging darkness. Then I’d race to my bedroom and lock the door.

  Instead, a faded, but still cloying odor of incense remained.

  Mary’s house in Philadelphia flashed before me, Justin’s voice in my head whispering about how much his mother loved to burn the stinking things.

  “Mary is known to use incense.” I glanced at Todd, who jerked a single nod.

  Beyond the smell, the tiny building was nothing special. A roughly twelve-by-fifteen box served as the main room and kitchen, with a sink that drained into a bucket underneath. A cobbled together antique cook stove vented into a small pipe I’d noticed sticking out of the roof. Pushed up against the wall, a table and chairs looked like they’d been dug out of Grandma’s basement. Lying innocently on a ceramic plate were the remains of the incense sticks, charred to their pointed tips.

  A bag of paper plates and other throwaway kitchenware sat on the table. A small couch flush against the other wall, its worn edge butting up against an interior doorframe.

  “Bedroom?”

  “Bathroom.” Evans pointed to the closed door on the other side of the tiny room, just past the kitchen table. “That’s the bedroom.” He cleared his throat and looked at Todd.

  “Lucy.” Todd’s cold fingers closed around my wrist. “You can handle this, right? It’s pretty brutal.”

  The retort “I thought you knew me” brewed on my lips, but Todd’s quick look at the trooper told me the question was more for his benefit.

  “I can.”

  I didn’t know if my steady voice or something about the hardness of my gaze did the trick, but Evans took four short steps and opened the bedroom door.

  Without moving, I saw her bare, dirty feet dangling off a cot with frayed edges. I followed Evans, waiting to feel a rush of some sort of emotion. Praying for it.

  If I feel nothing at the sight of this girl, then I am truly a monster.

  Bedroom was a generous term. Barely big enough to fit the cot and the woman I assumed was the medical examiner, the room steamed from the bright lights aimed at the dead girl.

  “What’s her name?” I asked, uncertain of why I cared.

  “Amy.” Trooper Evans’s simple answer smacked me hard in the chest, as if he’d taken electric paddles to my heart. In the span of a second, my pulse pounded in my ears until I thought it would burst, my palms broke out in a sweat, my stomach roiled. My hand instinctively reached for the weapon I didn’t have.

  My eyes welled up. My vision clouded. I smelled the girl’s blood and decay, and the urge to scream, to punch the wall, to hurt someone, ripped through me like a wild beast.

  I blinked. The room and the people and the circumstances suddenly came into sharp focus, as if I’d switched from analog television to high definition. My ears unclogged.

  I’d breached the surface of the black hole I’d been living in.

  “You all right?” The presumed medical examiner looked at me with concern.

  “Fine.” Even my voice sounded stronger.

  I looked at the girl.

  At Amy.

  Anger tasted metallic on my tongue. Energy flowed through me, my system suddenly plugged in to whatever electric current it craved in order to operate at full capacity. And I vowed I’d kill Mary Weston by whatever means necessary.

  Amy lay flat on her back, her bound hands over her head and zip-tied to the metal edge of the cot. Her slack mouth looked stuck in a silent wail. Her vacant eyes followed me like the eyes of a painting. Bruises of various sizes and color dotted her face. Hand marks around her neck.

  “Strangled?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the medical examiner said. She was a tall African American woman with skin like silk and solemn eyes. Her cropped hair suited her sculpted face, her soft voice coloring the room like an emotional aura. “It’s impossible to tell for certain, but judging by the different stages of bruising, I think she was strangled more than once over the past week.”

  “Sick.” Frost’s voice came from somewhere behind me, the Chief Deputy stuck in line behind people now deemed more essential to the case than she was. I felt no pity.

  “It’s one of her favorite things,” I said. “All of her known victims had different stages of bruising in the same spots.” I studied Amy’s emaciated, naked body. Random cuts, probably from a dulled knife, covered her small breasts. More than one appeared to be in the early stages of infection. “Will the infected cuts help with time of death or figuring out how long she’s been here?”

  “Probably not,” the medical examiner said. “Depending on how dirty the knife was, infection can set in quickly. But this one,” her gloved hand touched a particularly dark slash across Amy’s left breast, “is fairly healed. Once I get her into better lighting, I might be able to get a more exact time frame. Going by the time of her disappearance, I think it’s safe to say she was brought here early on.”

  “Mary sat on her when she strangled her.” I said.

  The doctor’s keen eyes met mine. Todd shifted behind me. “How do you know that?”

  “Because Jenna Richardson remembers someone sitting on her when she was strangled, and because this girl is bruised on both sides of her hips. Probably from Mary’s knees.”

  “She’s got at least two broken ribs.” The medical examiner looked down at the sad body. “And possibly a fractured pelvis. I figured that was from the repeated sexual assaults, but is Mary a heavy woman?”

  “Sturdy,” Todd said. “Built like a Mack truck. Damn near twice the size of this girl.”

  My eyes drifted to Amy’s genitals. Dried blood pooled beneath her and painted her muscular thighs. “Foreign object was probably used. If she has a partner, then he might have joined in too, but Mary likes to physically get in on the action. Look for wooden spoons.”

  Somewhere behind me, a woman gagged. I turned to see Frost, her face a sickly green. “I saw a wooden one in the trash. It had something red on it–I figured it was food.”

  “Go bag it,” Trooper Evans snapped. Frost slunk away, and I felt a tiny moment of pity for her. It wasn’t her fault she lived in a peaceful area and didn’t have the experience needed to deal with Mary.

  The medical examiner returned her focus to the body. “I’ll keep an eye out for any slivers of wood in her genital area.”

  Oval shaped burn marks covered the girl’s left thigh. “She used a heated tablespoon on one of the Lancaster victims. Or John Weston did. No one knows for sure, but detectives back then matched the shape up to a blackened spoon found in the barn. I’d say that’s the same thing that’s happened here.”

  “You mentioned an accomplice.” The doctor again leaned over the body. This time, she touched Amy’s pubis. “Judging by the blood in this area, she was assaulted shortly before death. I can’t say by looking if it was by an object or a man, but the discarded condom wrapper found near her body makes me think it may have been a man.”

  “That adds up,” Todd said. “Mary might be strong, but she couldn’t have handled Chris–especially since he was likely injured–without help.”

  My head roared like a swollen river. A muscle in my leg twitched and throbbed, urging me to take action. My brain raced. So many things to do. Find Chris. Save Chris. Kill Mary. After I made her suffer for a while. “Broken toes.”

  The medical examiner smiled grimly. “I wondered if you’d notice that.”

  “All of the Lancaster victims had broken big toes, including Jenna Richardson. She had to have surgery to have hers reset.” I turned around. Todd leaned against the door, close enough to touch. Behind the entry stood Evans and then Frost. “Like I said se
veral hours ago, this is Mary Weston’s work.”

  “I’ll call Agent Lennox,” Todd said.

  “I want to see the bathroom.” I expected an argument from one of the officers, but Evans nodded.

  “Stay in the doorway and don’t touch anything.”

  I did as directed, crossing the living area with the adrenaline rush usually reserved for finding a new target. The back of my neck felt clammy. I dabbed the moisture off my forehead with the sleeve of my now heavy coat. The bathroom door creaked when I opened it. As described, fresh blood stained the sink. A bunched up, dirty towel sat on the back of the toilet. Older droplets of blood stained the peel-and-stick vinyl, but my eyes trained on the red in the sink.

  Chris.

  How badly was he injured? Had he walked out of this place, or had Mary and her partner taken him somewhere and dumped him?

  What would I do if he were dead?

  I didn’t have time to craft an answer. Trooper Evans appeared at my shoulder. “We’re setting up road blocks and checking all vehicles. The snow makes it impossible to match tire tracks, so we’re checking everyone. We’re circulating Mary and Chris’s pictures on every TV station and at every gas station and grocery store in the state. The M.E.’s best guess right now is that the girl died sometime after noon today, and we found the cabin around six P.M. So Mary’s got at least a six-hour head start.”

  “What about bordering states?” I asked. “She could easily be in Pennsylvania by now. And why weren’t road blocks set up earlier?” I turned to glare at Frost, who still looked ghostlike. My pity had quickly evaporated. “I told you they’d get farther than you thought. You should have listened to me and notified the sheriff and the Major Case detective immediately. The only reason Trooper Evans showed up is because Todd called him. If he hadn’t been here and made the call to Major Case for you, how long would it have taken you to hand over the case to someone with more experience?”

  She jerked and then straightened. Color flashed into her cheeks, but I didn’t flinch. As far as I was concerned, she was another obstacle that needed to be moved. My usual methods had failed earlier–my heart hadn’t caught up to the task yet. But it pumped ferociously now, shooting an intoxicating medley of adrenaline and anger into my veins. From the way Frost’s eyes widened and she took a step back, I knew she’d seen exactly what I wanted her to. She should fear me.