So did she. “He killed his uncle.”
“He was hysterical.” The man nodded his head. “Rambling on and on about that night—”
“When?” The word slipped between them, as thin and sharp as a blade. “When did he kill his uncle?”
One of his hands fell away to rest on the bench he was sitting on. The bench Wade had left her on. “When …” he said, shaking his head. “It was spring 2001.” The hand on the bench curled into a fist. “He’d just turned eighteen.”
“You didn’t call the police, did you?” she said, even though she already knew the answer.
“Do you know what that man did to Nulo?” The priest shook his head like he was disappointed in her. “I do. Horrible things, from the time he was barely old enough to walk. He would have been arrested. Surely convicted. At eighteen he would’ve been sentenced to life in prison, and that was the best-case scenario. No, Agent Vance, I didn’t call the police. I cleaned him up and gave him clean clothes. Then I took every last dime out of my collection box and gave it to him,” he said, his jaw set at a self-righteous angle. “Afterward, I drove him to the bus station and I never saw him again.”
Forty
Sabrina sat in the back pew, watching people file in for confession while she waited for Ellie to show up. Nothing Father Francisco had told her made any sense—and none of it connected to Paul Vega or what’d happened to Rachel Meeks.
Pulling her phone from her pocket, she checked it for what felt like the hundredth time. No messages, which meant either Church and Croft hadn’t turned up anything or her new partner had decided to let her sweat. Checking the time, she noted that Ellie was nearly twenty minutes late. Dropping her phone into her lap, she settled in to wait.
She’d managed to get one more question in before Father Francisco cut her off completely. “Who was his uncle?” she’d said, blocking the door with her hand so he couldn’t open it. “What was his name?”
The priest’s grip tightened around the handle of the door she was barring him from using. “What does it matter?” he said, stubbornly yanking on the handle. “He is dead and Nulo is gone.”
“You do know why I’m here, don’t you?” She slammed the door shut and glared at him. “That people are being murdered, violently tortured. Raped and—”
“Enough.” He barked the word at her, no longer the soft-spoken priest. “And you think that Nulo did it?” he said, shaking his head at her. “Did you not hear me when I told you that he left? That he hasn’t been back?”
“Why? Because you haven’t seen him?” she said, eyes locked on his face. Instinct told her he was telling her the truth—that he hadn’t seen Nulo since the night he’d dropped him off at the bus station—but she’d been fooled before. “Yuma holds over one hundred thousand people, Father. Do you know every single one of them?”
His hand fell away from the handle, his arm suddenly slack at his side. He opened his mouth but nothing came out so he closed it again, averting his gaze to stare at her shoulder. “I don’t remember.” He shifted his gaze again, looking her in the eye. “I’m an old man and it was a long time ago” he said, reaching for the handle again. This time when he pulled the door open, she let him go.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Sabrina looked up to see Ellie standing in the row in front of her. She sat, turning on the bench to drape her arm over the back of it so that they were face to face. She looked nervous. Like she didn’t want to be there. “It’s okay,” Sabrina said, offering her a small smile, trying to put her at ease. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s okay,” Ellie said, wincing a bit. “I wanted to apologize and thank you for being such a good sport last night.”
“There’s no need to do either,” she said. “Your mother is a lovely woman.”
Ellie nodded, looking at her lap for a moment before raising her gaze again. “I don’t think you wanted me to meet you here to ask about my mom, Agent Vance,” she said quietly, worrying something flat and silver between her fingers. “Mark called me. He told me you asked him about the corrupted sample I took off Stephanie Adams.”
Sabrina didn’t know which surprised her more—that Alvarez would call Ellie to warn her that the big, bad FBI agent was sniffing around her mistake or that he and Ellie were on a first-name basis. “I’m not here to drag you through the mud,” she said, shaking her head. “I just want to know what happened, Ellie.”
Ellie sighed. “I noticed particulates under Stephanie Adams’s fingernails so I bagged her hands at the scene, according to department procedure. Back at the lab, I processed the sample and ran it through CODIS against possible matches … and I got two hits.”
“Stephanie Adams and Melissa Walker,” Sabrina said, carefully gauging Ellie’s reaction to the name. She flinched slightly, like the name carried a current of electricity that shocked and stung every time it was uttered.
“Yes. I thought it must’ve been some sort of mistake so I … I ran it again.” Ellie nodded, finally looking up at her, fingers still working and worrying. “The whole procedure—from start to finish—with a new sample. I even changed my gloves … and I got the same results,” she said firmly.
Separate samples meant that the department’s official story of contamination was unlikely but, for a small department with limited resources, not impossible. “Then what’s your explanation for your results?”
“I don’t know.” Ellie dropped her gaze again. “All I know is I didn’t mess up.”
“I believe you.”
Her words jerked Ellie’s head up on her neck, and she pinned her with a look that was half hopeful, half wary. “You believe me,” she said, shaking her head. “Just like that, you believe me.”
“Yes, just like that,” she said, giving the woman in front of her a small smile.
Ellie let out the breath she’d been holding in a relieved gust. “Now what?”
The smile on her face went sharp, stinging the corners of her mouth. “Now we figure out what DNA from a twenty-year-old murder case was doing under Stephanie Adams’s fingernails.”
“I think I might already know,” Ellie said quietly. “I tried to explain it, to tell them it wasn’t a mistake, but no one would listen to me.”
“Explain what?” she said, leaning forward to close the gap between them.
“After the second round of tests came back with the same results, I ran a full composite analysis on the scraping I took from Stephanie Adams.” Ellie lowered her voice even more, looking around the chapel before continuing. “The particulates were comprised of dirt, calcium, aluminum, and limestone.”
Sabrina thought about it for a moment. “What is that? Concrete?”
Ellie nodded. “Melissa Walker’s blood was adhered to what turned out to be pieces of cement block,” she said, her tone carrying the words carefully, like they meant something. “The kind used in buildings.”
Sabrina could feel them. The stinging scrape of them against her shoulder as she walked. Pushing herself forward, propped against the wall, moving as fast as her drug-tangled legs would carry her.
She thought of Nulo again. Wade’s student. His progeny. The one he passed it all down to. The sickness. The rage. Wade would tell him where he’d kept her. A safe place that would never be found. A place where a person could scream and never be heard.
You got it, darlin’. Our boy’s been keepin’ the home fires burnin’.
“The same place,” she said slowly, like she was trying to shake herself from the nightmare she was suddenly convinced she’d been plunged into. “He’s keeping them in the same place.”
Forty-one
Ellie stared at her for a few moments, waiting for her to elaborate. Sabrina leaned forward, adopting the same hushed tone Ellie had used earlier. “That’s why Melissa Walker’s blood was stuck to those cement particles under Stephanie Adams’s nails.” The words were
coming fast now, carried on the wave of excitement that coursed through her. “He’s keeping his victims in the same place Wade Bauer kept Melissa. Stephanie Adams must’ve dug her nails into—”
Ellie shook her head, stopping her cold. “No,” she said firmly. “That’s the thing—there was no digging. No ripped nailbeds. No torn cuticles. No signs she fought back or tried to escape.”
She imagined Stephanie Adams, crouched in the dark, totally accepting of what was happening to her. Resigned to her own death. Patiently waiting for it like someone waits for a bus. “That can’t be. How else could particulates get under her nails? It’s not like he put it there.”
“That’s exactly what he did. You might be right about where it came from but that blood evidence was placed under Stephanie Adams’s fingernails on purpose,” Ellie said, her tone hard and determined. “All victims were meticulously bound and posed. Intricately positioned … and washed with bleach.”
I taught our boy well, darlin’. He don’t make mistakes.
The hand in her lap curled into a fist so tight her knuckles nearly punched through her skin. Ellie was talking. She dug her nails into the palm of her hand to clear the fog that floated around her brain.
“… she’d been scrubbed clean just like the others, inside and out. No way someone who pays that much attention to detail forgets the nails. No way.” Ellie shook her head again. “The only thing I can’t explain is why. Why would he purposely place Melissa Walker’s blood under one of his victim’s nails?”
The way she said it cleared the rest of Sabrina’s cobwebs. Like she knew why but was afraid to say it. “Well, what’s your theory?” Sabrina said, forcing her hand flat against her thigh. “You must have one.”
Ellie hesitated, looking away again, her eyes trailing over the wooden confession booths against the far wall of the church. “I knew Melissa Walker,” she said, her gaze trained elsewhere. “She and my sister worked together at a restaurant. She lived in our apartment complex …” Her voice grew as thin and brittle as blown glass. “I babysat for her. Loved her like a sister.”
Sabrina pretended to be thinking in order to buy some time. So she could force the hurricane of emotion that swirled and raged within her into a chokehold. “You’re Valerie Hernandez’s sister,” she said, like she’d just put the pieces together. “You think the killer was reaching out to you somehow?”
“I don’t know,” Ellie said, her voice losing that confident edge. “It sounds crazy, right? I mean, why would he reach out to me?”
Sabrina didn’t have an answer for that. But this Nulo guy obviously didn’t know Sabrina had actually survived after being brought to the hospital, or he would have told Wade. So he can’t have been trying to reach her. “I don’t know,” she said, tilting her head slightly. “Maybe Melissa Walker is just a piece of the puzzle. Can I ask you something else?”
Ellie’s hands went still for a moment. “Sure,” she finally said, giving her a curt nod.
“What was your relationship with Rachel Meeks?” she said quickly, watching Ellie stiffen up the second the words left her mouth. “And please don’t tell me that the two of you just went to high school together.”
“Rachel was my best friend for a while.” Ellie gave her a sad smile. “We were inseparable. Where one was, the other was right beside her.” She laughed, shaking her head. “It used to drive my mother crazy. She thought Rachel was a bad influence.”
She remembered what Amelia had told her last night—that she’d never liked Rachel Meeks. That she felt bad about it now that she was dead. “I’ve had a few friends like that. Usually that’s what makes them so great.”
“She was fearless. Exciting …” Ellie’s smile widened, even as tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “Talked me into some pretty crazy stuff when we were kids.”
“When did the two of you stop being friends?” She could hear it in Ellie’s tone, a wistful sort of sadness that told her that whatever they’d been to each other as kids, it’d changed a long time ago. “Was it after she was raped?”
“How …” Ellie’s eyes widened for a moment before she slumped in her seat. “Oh, right … FBI.” She let her gaze rest on the badge around Sabrina’s neck for a moment before she forced it up to her face. “Yeah. Afterward, she acted like nothing was wrong. Like those four days never happened. I tried,” she said, the tears in her eyes finally falling. “I stayed. I tried to help her. I tried.”
“It wasn’t you.” She let the words slip out before she could catch them. Sabrina fought to remember that this was Ellie talking about Rachel, not Val talking about her. Guilt pressed in anyway. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“If I’d just kept my mouth shut and played along …” Ellie shook her head. “She didn’t want to press charges. She wouldn’t even say his name to the police. He chained her up like an animal and let his friend do whatever he wanted to her for four days.”
“He.” Sabrina sat forward, her hands wrapping around the back of Ellie’s pew. “She knew the man who raped her?”
“She knew and so did I.” Ellie’s tone went flat, her wide, dark eyes suddenly dry. “It was Paul Vega.”
Something cool brushed against her nape before tumbling down her spine. The irrigation shed Rachel Meeks had been found in was on Vega Farms property. Still … “I read the report, Ellie. Nothing in it points—”
“You don’t understand,” Ellie said, the words a sharp bark of frustration. “I know it was Paul Vega. Because I was there.”
Forty-two
His hands reeked of gasoline. It wasn’t wholly unpleasant, the smell of it. The scent drifted up to him, sharp and heavy, from where his fingers gripped the steering wheel, and every breath he took reminded him of his Margaret and what he’d done to her.
You mean what we did to her, don’t you, boy?
The voice inside his head sounded petulant, like a complaining child who’d been told he couldn’t go outside to play. It annoyed him. Still, he owed Wade Bauer his freedom. Without him, the night he’d watched him drape a very dead Melissa Walker across that bench, he never would’ve understood the urgent need that had gripped him since he was a young boy. Never would’ve had the guts to act on it.
He would have been alone.
His father long gone. His mother dead. There’d been no one else to guide him, to tell him it was okay. To show him how to be who and what he was.
A killer.
“Of course I mean we,” he murmured out loud, the ghost of a grin sliding across his face. He’d been sitting in his car for a while now, watching the steady trickle of people flow in and out of Saint Rose for confession. Thinking about all those sins, confessed in hushed, shame-filled tones. All the bad things people did that needed forgiving. Aside from the killing, it was his favorite part of what he did. Saying it out loud. Listening to the soft, labored breathing of the old priest behind the screen while he shared his sins. The difference was, he never asked for forgiveness. He didn’t want it. Didn’t need it.
She was inside. Nosing around. Asking questions about him. It was only a matter of time before the priest told her everything.
You’re gonna have to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“I know,” he muttered, distracted by the slam of a car door. He watched Elena Hernandez cross the lot, heading into the sanctuary.
What’s little sister doing here?
He knew she was an observing Catholic but he suspected that her attending mass and giving regular confession was more for her mother’s benefit than because she actually believed. He could see it, her doubt. Her loss of faith. She knelt and prayed. Accepted communion and the blessings of the old priest, but it was all for show.
Elena stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.
He wondered if she’d change her mind if she knew the truth. That she was a miracle. That every breath she’d taken since that night
had been a gift from God.
God don’t want no part of what we’re doing here, boy.
For some reason, knowing that made him smile.
Forty-three
The admission hung between them while Ellie watched her, as if she were waiting for her to call her a liar. Her claim was unfounded. Nowhere in the case file did it mention Ellie Hernandez or the fact she’d been there with Rachel the night she was taken. But looking at her, Sabrina believed her.
I was there.
“Who else knows you were there?” she said, purposely softening her tone. She knew a secret when she heard one. She’d be willing to bet that the answer to her question amounted to less than a handful of people.
“Now that Rachel’s dead?” Ellie said, bitterness clinging to every word. “Me, Paul, a few of his friends.”
A handful of people.
“Take me through it,” she said, resorting back to what she did best: investigating and finding answers. “Tell me what happened that night, starting from the beginning.”
“Okay.” Ellie nodded, tucking whatever it was she’d had in her hand into her pocket. “Rachel and Paul were off and on. They’d date for a few weeks, one of them would get jealous or pissed off at the other and break it off. Then a few days later, they’d be back at it.”
“Who knew about their relationship?”
“No one, really. They kept it pretty quiet …” Ellie shook her head, rubbing the palms of her hands on the legs of her pants. “Not her parents, that’s for sure,” she said. “As far as they were concerned, Rachel was perfect. Paul was way older—they wouldn’t have approved.”
“So that night, the two of you agreed to meet up with Paul and a few of his friends?” she said, filling in the blanks.
“Yeah.” Ellie nodded while chewing on her bottom lip. “We waited for her parents to fall asleep and snuck out through her bedroom window. They were waiting for us at the end of her block in Paul’s truck. It wasn’t the first time we’d done it.”
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