She took a breath of relief. “You are?”
“I am. It’s good to see you happy.”
She nodded and teared up. A few tears slipped down her cheeks. “There’s been so much between us, Luce. I don’t know what happened, you know? Sometimes I think it was the intensity. All that pressure of the past. Have you let those ghosts go, Luce?”
I watched the tears fall from Rowan’s eyes. I wanted to be able to tell her I’d found peace with my past, and that I’d finally laid all those ghosts to rest. I wanted to, but couldn’t. “It’s not that easy, Rowan.”
I recognized the look in her eyes—I’d seen it far too many times. It was the look Rowan always gave me when she found herself face to face with that enormous wall inside me, that impenetrable wall that kept her out.
After a few minutes, Rowan wiped her eyes. “You were always my friend above all else. Can’t we get back to how we started? With friendship?”
I rolled my eyes and handed her a fresh napkin for her tears. “So you want to be the stereotypical lesbian exes who are still BFFs, huh?”
Rowan laughed and dried her eyes. “I do. Not BFFs, per se, but FFs. We were always better at that, anyway.”
I had to agree with that statement.
When the bill arrived, Rowan grabbed it. “You can get it next time, Forever Friend.”
We chatted a little longer about her latest painting project and how she’d recently painted the barn in bold chartreuse. I told her about my shithole apartment and the girls next door who regularly stole all the hot water from our shared tank.
“I also wanted to talk to you about something else.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, “sounds serious. Do I need another beer for this?”
Rowan nodded. “Don’t worry, I’m not pregnant.”
I chuckled at the old joke between us, our staple line whenever the other said they had something important to say. We always fell back on the pregnancy joke and blamed the other for forgetting to use a condom.
I uncapped my beer. “What is it, Rowan?”
“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since we split. I decided to make a change and try something new.”
“Not men, I hope.”
“Funny.” She shook her head at me and smiled. Then she pulled out a rolled-up paper from her oversized bag, unbanded it, and laid out the plans lengthwise before me.
“This is Pranam, a yoga and meditation retreat I’m designing for the house and land that surrounds it.”
The sketches across the table were of the land and the home we’d selected and lived in together. We both had wanted country, and Rowan had purchased it in the nick of time. Columbus grew and continued to grow rapidly, so there weren’t many places with that much land available any longer. I didn’t have a lot of money, and Rowan had received an inheritance from a recent death in her extended family. She put up the funds while I put in the labor and sweat of restoring the house and barn. The old property needed a lot of attention. By the time I moved out, the house was well on its way to becoming my work of art. Technically and legally, though, it all belonged to Rowan.
“It will be a business, one I run between my art projects, or possibly in tandem with them. I recently earned my license to teach yoga, so I’m thinking of offering three-day retreats. Yoga will be a strong part of it, but I also want to focus on meditation. I’ll use all the skills I learned from my studies in India. In the beginning, I’m sure I can fill the retreats with artists, and hopefully the word will spread. What do you think?”
“I think it’s interesting.”
“Good,” Rowan grinned, “because I want you to join me in a business venture. I’d like you to be one of the partners.”
I stared at her incredulously. “What are you talking about? I don’t know anything about business or yoga or meditation.”
“No, but you do know this house and this land better than anyone else. I need someone who can handle repairs and someone I can be certain won’t take advantage of me. I can trust you, Luce.”
“Rowan…”
“Shh, don’t say anything. Just think about it.”
I looked at the plans before me once again. The penciled designs were highly detailed and Rowan had placed a photograph on the table of the new sign for the business. She’d been carving the sign from wood. She’d hollowed out the letters on the nameplate and filled them in with a golden paint that shone against the deep blue background. Stars glittered around the business name. “What does Pranam mean?”
“Roughly, it means to honor and respect another so much that you bow to her feet. Some translations show it as a divine reverence to God.”
I nodded, but the truth was Rowan’s experiences and practices with yoga and meditation from her time in India were far beyond me. Just give me some water—a pool, a lake, a river, an ocean—that’s where I found my God.
“You’re saying you want me to help caretake the land and home. How would we share the business, and who else would be involved? You know how consuming my work can be.”
“We can get to the business details later. I found a lawyer to work with who deals with businesses like this. He can walk us through it.”
I stared at her, not at all sure what to say. I’d expected Rowan to say quite a bit at our dinner, but nothing like this.
“Look, Luce, I know it’s a lot. All I’m asking is that you think about it.” She looked down at her hands as she balled the paper napkin between her fingers. “It’s just that we picked this place out together and I know you put your heart into it. It feels like even though we’re no longer a couple, we should still be together on that land.”
“And what about the new woman? Sydney? Will she be cool with all this togetherness on the land?”
“It’s a business, Luce, and a friendship. Whoever we are with will have to live with it. Period.”
I thought about how much I loved that old house and the land that surrounded it. Spending time there again meant that I could be with the dogs I missed so much. I finished my beer. “I’ll think about it.”
She put her hands in prayer position and bowed her head to me. “Namaste, Luce. Namaste.”
“Please.” I laughed.
Rowan giggled with me as she collected her things. “Would you like to see the dogs?”
“What, now?”
Rowan nodded. “Toto and Daisy miss you.”
She didn’t have to say another word.
Chapter Seventeen
Day Eleven: 6:00 a.m.
The country road wound its way around the edges of Wallace Lake. It was a single lane used regularly in the summer by hikers and the lake enthusiasts. This time of year, though, only locals like Albert Finley and his three-year-old mutt, Gus, regularly walked the three-mile path. They’d walked the long stretch every day, rain or shine, since Gus was a pup. Today the two walked at a slow and steady gait side by side, Gus sometimes falling behind if he caught a whiff of a good smell, Albert sometimes falling behind if he needed to stretch his ever-tightening calf muscles. Both of them needed the daily routine of their walk, and it kept Albert’s joints moving and lubricated even if he required a midmorning nap afterward.
The sun was up, and the crisp air felt good against Albert’s face. Winter was edging closer, but he still had at least a month of fall weather before he’d have to worry about ice and snow. Albert spotted a collection of leaves ahead. With a little bounce in his step, he kicked the pile, letting the leaves rain down on Gus who snorted and tossed his head back and forth against the leaf attack. Albert chuckled; he knew Gus was all show. The dog loved the way the colorful leaves crumpled beneath his feet as much as Albert did.
As they neared the farthest point in the path from home, the fenced-off location along the road beside the Davidsons’ cornfields, Gus suddenly got a burst of energy. He ran ahead, sniffing his big wet nose along the fence line. The dog slipped out of Albert’s sight, rounding the bend. Soon Albert heard Gus’s frantic bark—a series of three shr
ill screams that the dog only used to get his owner’s attention.
“Gus?” Albert picked up his gait to follow.
Albert struggled to see what Gus had found. The dog stood along the edge of the path looking up at a large object that had been tossed across the top of the six-foot fence. It looked like a mannequin. Was it a scarecrow or something from the field meant to keep animals out of the corn?
He moved closer to the fence and called for Gus. The dog slowly backed toward Albert. The object looked like a person draped over the top of the fence at the waist. Could it be a Halloween trick? Some sort of doll meant to give everyone a start? He’d never known the Davidsons to take part in decorating for Halloween. Some of the kids in this area had a rough sense of humor, and Halloween was just around the corner. Still, who would do such a thing? Albert moved even closer, his heels leaving the berm of the single-lane road. He stared at the figure resting facedown with its arms stretched long and the fingertips reaching for the ground below.
Albert stood inches from the fence while Gus sniffed the ground all around Albert’s heels. Albert saw the tangled hair falling for the ground in much the same way as the fingertips. He moved to his right to get a better look. Underneath all the hair, the woman’s face was turned to the side, a face that had been beaten black and blue. But it was the open eye that told him what he needed to know, that wide open glazed stare. He stepped back and took a deep breath, all at once smelling the odor of decomposing flesh.
It was real: a dead female body.
Albert’s stomach turned, and the vomit came on hard and fast. Once everything was out of his stomach, he could breathe again. But something Albert couldn’t quite explain held him in his position. He could have stood there all day staring at the dead woman if it hadn’t been for the dog that came to his side and rubbed his wet nose against the old man’s hand.
When Albert emerged from his initial shock, his mind crackled with sudden thoughts and memories. He thought about how much he loved his home, so much that he’d never left the small town. He thought about his mother and how she’d loved to hike the forested land around Wallace Lake and her words to him: Take care of your homeland, and it will take care of you. He thought about how much Wallace Lake had changed in the last fifteen years, how drugs had infested everything associated with Wallace Lake and how his own police station hadn’t been able to stop it. Crime had set in and taken root. All destruction, Albert knew, had a main source. For Wallace Lake, it wasn’t heroin or any other drug, as most believed. Albert’s eyes stung with sudden tears as he looked at the dead woman again. He knew why she died, and he knew what caused it. Albert also knew that if he wanted to take back the town he’d loved all his life, he’d have to make a stand. He’d have to go against the unspoken rules of Wallace Lake.
Albert searched through his wallet until he found the card the female investigator had given him at Gary’s. He tapped the edge of the card over and over again, and then ran his fingertips across the embossed card with the official looking seals. He wondered about the thin woman with her long dark braid down her back. She didn’t fit Albert’s idea of a cop. He knew he should call someone, but the woman he’d met seemed so small to take on something so large and destructive. He thought again about her bright eyes, her wit, and her pressing questions at the bar. Whoever the woman was, she wasn’t afraid of the truth.
But what could a small female investigator from the state actually do? After all, she was from the outside.
Strength, Albert finally decided, sometimes came from the most unexpected places. And, he reasoned, it was time for the destruction to end in Wallace Lake, Ohio. He couldn’t end it alone—he needed help. And Special Agent Luce Hansen.
Chapter Eighteen
Day Eleven: 10:00 a.m.
Bennett and I stood a few yards from the fence taking in its gruesome display. Gus, Albert’s dog, sat quietly at my side. I held on to his leash even though he didn’t need it, occasionally resting my hand on the dog’s warm head and petting his soft ears. A neighbor would be arriving to look after Gus, and until then, his leash rotated through officers. Bennett and I both arrived on the scene after word spread throughout town about another dead woman. Wallace Lake PD had set up multiple roadblocks on the single-lane country road by the time I arrived, and everything was cordoned off within a quarter mile of the body. Captain Riley engaged most of his force at the scene in an attempt to keep out the press and the curious—the last thing any of us wanted was a photograph gone viral of the dead body slung over a six-foot fence. The surrounding cornfields swam red and blue with the churning lights as emergency workers combed the scene. Two officers had been sent to speak to the Davidsons, the owners of the property. Others searched through the corn rows with cadaver dogs as the tall end-of-season stalks swished around them.
Clad from head to toe in Tyvek suits, every movement of our bodies sounded like crunching paper. Bennett crossed her arms across her chest. “When I asked you to spend Sunday with me, Hansen, I didn’t have a dead body in mind. Or this sexy onesie paper suit.”
I laughed. “Who says Tyvek isn’t sexy? Dead bodies, though”—I grimaced—“don’t make for a good date.”
We stood shoulder to shoulder, mine much shorter than hers, observing the different angles of the crime scene. A cadaver recovery dog barked somewhere out in the cornfield. I reached down and gave Gus a good rub behind his tall ears, and I suddenly missed having a dog at my side. It felt like eternity since I’d lived with Daisy and Toto, the dogs who now roamed wild at Rowan’s. Gus’s smile told me he still had some pup left in him and that his extra-sensitive nose had probably gotten him into trouble more than once.
“God, Hansen. This is…” Bennett shook her head, unable to finish the sentence.
I helped her. “This is a fucking horror show. That’s exactly what the killer intended it to be.”
She looked over at me, the dark frames of her glasses highlighting her inquisitiveness. The Tyvek hood held back all of her hair, and I was struck by how she managed to look fantastic even in that getup.
“What do you mean?”
“This entire setup is meant to scare everyone, Bennett. It’s some kind of message. Look where we are—in the middle of nowhere at the edge of a cornfield. How many horror films use this same backdrop? And the positioning of the body? You can’t tell me the killer didn’t plan its placement down to the exact direction the fingertips are pointed. It’s a horror show meant to scare the shit out of everyone.”
“Okay, so the goal is to incite fear. What’s the message?”
I stepped closer to the body. The paper booties over my own boots gave me the sense that my steps were unsteady. “I don’t know yet. Are they done with the initial crime scene photos? Let’s get a closer look.”
Once I handed Gus’s leash off to a nearby officer, Bennett and I moved toward opposite sides of the body. “Where is Harvey?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” My body stiffened at the mention of her name. The last person I wanted to see was Harvey. “Has anyone IDed the body?”
“Not yet. Albert’s pretty torn up, and he didn’t recognize her.”
Only a few hours ago, Albert’s shaky voice hitched with sobs had come across my cell. He had to repeat himself a few times for me to understand. A woman, he’d said, naked and thrown across a fence. She’s beaten so bad, Agent, I don’t know if anyone can recognize her. I told Albert to wait on the scene until I could get some officers and an EMT out to him. By the time they arrived, Albert was in shock and needed medical attention. He’d been taken to the ER before I arrived on the scene so that doctors could regulate his heartbeat and breathing. The poor guy had quite a start to his day.
The crime scene techs moved away so that we could examine the body. There were ladders set up on both sides of the victim—the six-foot fence didn’t make it easy for us. With gloved hands, I gently pushed the blood-clumped hair away from the victim’s face. Albert’s description had been accurate—the woman
had suffered severe trauma and her face was even more distorted from hanging upside down for hours. She had multiple blows to the head and the swelling was so severe, I could only make out the shape of her lips and the white of her teeth. One eyelid had peeled up over its glassy iris revealing the lifeless eye. I couldn’t pull my gaze away from that eye—something about her was familiar.
“We’re going to need extra help getting her down,” Bennett said. “The metal spikes of the fence tore into her body under the weight. She’s already developed a significant amount of rigor mortis.”
I weaved my hands through the woman’s long hair until I found what might have been the worst wound—a hard blow to the crown that cracked the skull.
“There’s an old scar,” Bennett called from the other side of the body, “along the neck.”
My breath caught with a vague recognition. “How old?”
“Many years. The skin has puckered and lost the white crosshatchings we usually see with newer scars.”
I moved my ladder closer to see. I followed the scar on the victim from her neck and down to her shoulder. It’s from a fire, when I was a kid.
I looked down at her wrists. There was the double-hearted tattoo on the left inner wrist.
“Shit, Bennett. I know this woman.” I jumped down from the ladder and paced until I caught my breath.
“How do you know her?”
“She works at Gary’s Girls. Rhonda—the bartender who was afraid to talk to me.”
Recognition crossed Bennett’s face. “Oh, God. I remember her, too.”
Bennett examined Rhonda’s extended arms and hands while I called the captain. The team needed to get more photographs of her scar, but at least we had a first name and a place of employment. It wouldn’t be long before we had an official ID.
We waited for additional techs to finish recording the scene and help us remove the body. It would be tricky to get the body down without disturbing evidence, but there was no way for Bennett to do her preliminary exam with Rhonda folded facedown over a six-foot fence.
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