A Bustle in the Hedgerow (CASMIRC Book 1)

by Ben Miller

  He raised his left arm up at the elbow and regarded his wedding band. “I’m… I’m married,” he said. He turned his head to the right to look at Melissa as he opened his palm to her, displaying his ring.

  She looked over at him, at the ring, then back at the ceiling. “I know,” she replied, revealing little emotion. “So am I, technically,” she shrugged. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone about this. This looks just as bad for me as it does for you.”

  Thus Jack felt comforted. It wasn’t until after they had sex a second time, four nights later, that Jack possessed the insight to recognize that what he considered a natural consequence of undeniable mutual attraction was really just rationalization of abhorrent behavior. With this epiphany, this time looking up at the ceiling of Melissa’s bedroom, guilt hit Jack like the proverbial ton of bricks. He felt nauseated. He didn’t provide a reason for his hasty exit from Melissa’s apartment that night, but the look of despair on his ashen, sullen face revealed to her his feeling of shame. Instantaneously, she felt guilty too. Since that moment, neither spoke of their brief relationship. They continued to interact during the investigation, but never alone, never again at her apartment.

  Due to Lamond Hollows’ fame and the ghoulishness of his daughter’s murder, the case had become national news. As Jack descended the steps of her Brownstone that second night, a photographer from a national tabloid magazine snapped his photo. Luckily, he had taken the time to put his entire suit back on— tie and all—prior to his departure. This did not stop the tabloid from running the photo with an incendiary headline suggesting an affair between the FBI man and the estranged wife and mother. Both Jack and Melissa publicly and privately denied any relationship.

  Vicki never saw the tabloid piece, but the rumor made its way back to her a few days later through one of her co-workers. Ever the trusting wife, she never even asked Jack about it. When Jack crawled into bed after another 16-hour day, she rolled over to give him a hug. “I’m glad you don’t have to defend your work to me,” she said softly.

  Jack stiffened slightly, a shockwave of shame jolting through his body. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You spend tireless hours trying to solve these awful crimes. I know you sometimes have to spend late hours, and sometimes even in the home of a former supermodel. I just want you to know that I’m proud of you, and that you don’t have to defend any of your work to me.”

  Jack silently took a deep breath and held it, hoping this would stifle the wave of self-hatred that began to overtake him. “Thank you, baby,” he said as he finally exhaled, kissing her on the top of her head. He also felt thankful that the lights in the room were turned out, or else his wife may have seen the tension in his face: his clenched jaw, furrowed brow, and intensely widened eyes. He rolled over and stared at the wall ahead of him.

  He lay awake for over an hour, wondering how he could have been so weak, so gullible, to fall for the advances of another woman. Then he cursed himself for thinking of himself as weak, as if he were a victim. He actively and willingly participated, and he needed to take responsibility for his actions. He nearly rolled over to wake up Vicki and come clean. As he began to spin under the sheets, he halted. He needed to evaluate the potential consequences first. What if Vicki left me? An image of Jonah sprang into his mind. What if Jonah found out? How would he react?

  He leaned back to his original position, away from Vicki. He forced himself to run through the events of those two nights. Those memories sifted through his mind like red-hot coals; he supposed that the painful shame of remembering his adultery could serve as part of his penance for committing such a reprehensible act.

  He thought back to the beginning, to that first tear-soaked kiss. As Melissa had begun to cry, Jack tried a simple maneuver to distract her.

  “You want a piece of gum?” he had asked. When he reflected on it, it seemed such a stupid thing to say, but it had worked once before with a distraught mother to make her stop crying. But it only made Melissa Hollows cry even harder, leading to their first embrace.

  Later that night, as they got dressed, Jack tried to lighten the mood. “I had no idea that asking you to have a piece of gum could have such a dramatic effect.”

  Melissa looked at him sadly, but she did not cry again. “Sorry. Lamaya loved chewing gum. She always had a piece in her mouth. When you said that… it just made me sad, that’s all.”

  Jack nodded understandingly, and he never brought it up again.

  Lying in bed beside his wife several days later, he considered what might have happened had he never mentioned gum. Melissa wouldn’t have cried harder, seeking comfort, and he wouldn’t have felt obligated to provide it.

  Gum.

  Suddenly his eyes resembled saucers, his pupils dilated to within millimeters of the edge of his irises. He nearly leapt out of bed, startling Vicki, who quickly drifted back off to sleep. Jack went down the hall to his office, booted up the computer—which seemed to take an unbearably long time—and opened up his file on the Hollows murder. He pulled up the autopsy report, scanning it to about two-thirds of the way through: her stomach contents.

  Gum.

  The autopsy report had detailed injuries to Lamaya’s mouth and throat, likely secondary to pre-mortem sodomy. Her post-mortem bleach bath had penetrated into her mouth and esophagus, so no sperm or other foreign DNA had been recovered. The natural acidity of the stomach always prevented recovery of DNA from any stomach contents… unless that DNA had been protected somehow. Such as by residing within a piece of chewing gum.

  In numerous cases, DNA has been recovered from chewing gum. This usually occurs when investigators find gum left behind at a crime scene, and the forensics team can use the DNA held within to identify the perpetrator. However, if someone had gum in her mouth while exchanging saliva with another person, or, while gruesomely sodomized, the other person’s DNA might also be preserved in the gum.

  Jack looked at the clock on the lower corner of the computer screen: 2:25 am. Though he could hardly contain his excitement, he knew it was too early to call the medical examiner for a non-emergent matter. It could wait until the morning, though Jack knew he would get very little sleep between now and then.

  39

  As per usual in the late afternoon, traffic on I-95 North began to slow to a meander and then to a crawl as Jack approached the Beltway. As he stared at the red taillights ahead of him and his right foot reflexively alternated between the accelerator and the brake, his mind continued to race through possible scenarios that would have resulted in the phone call he had received from Melissa. He couldn’t make sense of it. He also began to wonder if he had overreacted. What exactly had convinced him that something bad had happened? He could not deny the weirdness of the message, but this did not necessarily imply impending doom. Sometimes his experiencing extreme circumstances in his professional life— and subsequently reacting to them— would get the better of him when it came to dealing with the relatively mundane in his personal life.

  He envisioned knocking on Melissa’s townhouse door. What would she look like when opening it? Would she still be crying? How would he deal with that? He then considered an alternate scenario: What if she no longer lived at the same townhouse? She could have gotten back together with Lamond, or with someone else, or simply moved to another location. He had no way of knowing.

  As he pondered these possibilities, his certainty about this current mission deteriorated. He snapped out of his semi-trance to look down at his watch: 5:38 pm. At this rate he wouldn’t make it to Georgetown until close to 6:30. It would likely be nearly 8:00 by the time he got home, depending on how long he spent dealing with Melissa.

  He glanced at his phone and decided to try calling Melissa again, and again it went straight to voice mail. A follow-up phone call tomorrow would surely suffice for someone he hadn’t seen for the better part of a year.

  He got off at the Springfield exit on Franconia Road, drove under the I-95 overpass, and t
urned onto the on-ramp for I-95 south. The heavy traffic moved even slower in that direction, but he still arrived home in Lake Ridge by 6:15.

  DAY SIX:

  SATURDAY

  40

  Randall stood squinting into the early afternoon sun. He wore a Virginia Tech baseball hat, but even this couldn’t keep the bright day from affecting his eyes. He had forced himself to lie down for two hours last night, though he hadn’t really slept. All day his apparently fatigued eyes belied his intense mental energy.

  Despite the growing excitement of coming events, he remained calm. He always remained calm. His sangfroid was essential to completing his Work.

  Since first encountering the word “sangfroid” in high school, it had become one of his favorite words. Whenever he used the word, he delightfully recalled an episode in college in which an especially pretentious classmate in a literature class tried to use the word in an effort to impress the rest of the class. During a discussion of Joseph Heller’s post-modern masterpiece Catch-22, the classmate averred that the character Yossarian “demonstrated sangfroid in his response to the chaos around him.” Though he expressed an arguably valid point, he made himself a fool by pronouncing the word phonetically—“sang-froyed”—rather than the correct French pronunciation—“sahn-frwa.” While everyone else in the class let it slide, or perhaps didn’t even recognize the gross mistake, Randall laughed out loud. He suggested that the classmate have a chicken salad “cross saint” for lunch, then proceeded to laugh even harder. Not only did his classmates fail to join him in his raucousness, but some of them also gave him dirty looks.

  The memory of making fun of that douche bag brought a smile to his face. Quickly, though, the din of the cheering crowds and the excited voices of dozens of children brought him back to the present moment.

  He looked out across the half-dozen or so soccer fields in front of him. As he compiled the research for his Work, he read about the soccer tournament taking place here this weekend. He had been here to Front Royal, Virginia, once before, almost two months ago, performing reconnaissance for his Work. He knew the terrain well, and his vision at that time of what the area would look like during a soccer tournament turned out to be quite accurate.

  In the field in front of him, a preteen girl in a bright yellow T-shirt squeezed a shot just to the right of a diving goal keeper, scoring the first goal of the game. Randall pumped his fist in the air, feigning excitement for the Gold Team, or whatever they might be called. Their T-shirts only had numbers on them along with the name of their local sponsors, like “Bill’s Meats” on the back of Number 2’s shirt, and “Dunmire Lumber” on Number 8’s.

  As Randall had predicted, at any given time, there were nearly as many players not playing in games as there were playing. This left several dozen nine-to-twelve year-old girls wandering around with nothing to do but wait for their next game. Most of them sat with their teammates, gabbing about this or that. Some less fortunate children seemed forced to sit with their parents or coaches awaiting their turn on the playing field.

  However, some other children stayed to themselves.

  A smaller subset of these, amounting to only an unlucky few, ventured out away from the fields, away from the parking lots, apparently going for walks, exploring the surrounding trails.

  Signage indicated that a pond existed a half a mile west of the soccer fields. From the corner of his eye, Randall spotted a young girl about ten years old wearing a hot pink and black striped shirt wander off in that direction. He casually turned and started back a nearby trail, one that he knew from his previous visit would intersect with the girl’s trail prior to reaching the pond, while still covered in mostly dense coniferous foliage.

  After he entered the trail, Randall looked over his shoulder to ensure that no one followed him. Satisfied that no one had, he reached into his pockets to pull out his leather gloves, which he then stretched onto his hands. He quickened his pace to a very brisk walk, just short of a jog. He would have to make up quite a bit of distance to meet the young girl before she got to the pond, where the trail opened up considerably, providing a view much too broad for him to perform any part of his Work. He surmised that she would keep the same meandering pace, which should allow him enough time to beat her to the spot .

  As he neared the intersection, about ten yards from the mouth of the trail, he could see ahead down her trail as it opened up to the pond. He did not see the girl; either she had turned around or she had not yet reached this spot.

  Randall slowed his pace to a more comfortable walk, and called out, “Chelsea!” in a sing-song manner. He looked around, swinging his head from left to right. As he reached the intersection, he sang again, “Chel-sea!” He turned right, toward the direction of the soccer fields.

  The girl in the pink and black T walked down the middle of the trail about 15 yards ahead of him, looking down at a small fern she had picked along her stroll. She looked up at him quizzically.

  Addressing the unsuspecting girl, Randall put his hands on his thighs, crouching down a little bit to make himself seem less imposing. “Hi. Do you know Chelsea Martin?”

  The girl looked at him, unsure how to respond. She seemed frightened without knowing why, as if some part of her could sense an as-yet unrevealed danger. “No,” she said, more like a question than an answer.

  Randall shook his head lightly. “Darn. That’s my daughter. She went for a walk out here and I’m not sure where she is. Her game starts in less than ten minutes!”

  With this phrase the girl seemed to relax, her shoulders settling down from their tensed position near her ears.

  Randall turned toward the pond, beginning to walk in that direction. “Chelsea!”

  The girl jogged up to him, stopping about five feet away. He turned to face her.

  “I can help you, sir,” she offered.

  Randall glanced over her shoulder, back down her trail, as well as down the trail from which he had come.

  No one.

  He looked at her cherubic face, her innocence on full display. Her eyes stared wide, eager to help a fellow human in need.

  An image of Lily flashed in Randall’s mind. Lily. His muse. For whom, of whom, and with whom he had created his Masterpiece.

  “Yes,” he said calmly to the girl. “I believe you can help me.”

  He quickly lunged at the girl, bringing both hands to her throat. He lifted her slightly off the ground by squeezing and using her lower jaw for leverage, and then he slammed her to the ground on her back, a few feet into the thick brush. This jolt essentially knocked the wind out of her, doubling the intensity, and also the futility, of trying to catch her breath. It happened so abruptly that she never had a chance to scream.

  Randall ended up on one knee beside her, continuing to apply pressure to the front of her windpipe. She began to reach for his hands, but he brought his surprisingly powerful elbows down across the tops of her arms. Moving as agilely as a dancer, he swung one leg around her body and then brought both knees down on her elbows, trapping her arms and rendering them useless. Her legs thrashed about, but she could not move.

  Though he hated doing it, Randall forced himself to look into her eyes. He knew it was the only way to really know when he had finished. Terror and shock filled those eyes for the next fifteen seconds, until the intensity of those emotions began to fade. He had cut off the blood supply to the brain through her carotid arteries. Within another twenty seconds her eyes slowly closed, as she passed out.

  Amateurs might stop at this, thinking that they had completed the act. Randall knew better.

  He continued to squeeze with as much force as he could muster for the next sixty seconds. She remained completely limp.

  By this time Randall had grown accustomed to the brief period of sadness that accompanied this portion of his Work. The sensation shocked him a little with his first murder, as he had felt mostly numb through the entire planning process. Early on he quickly realized that his sadness had nothing to d
o with the victim. These deaths comprised the most vital part of his Work, making them both utterly necessary and unavoidable.

  His sadness had everything to do with his Lily.

  During his first murder, he was almost immobilized by the sadness. Luckily he had chosen a much more secluded spot for that act, or else someone might have spotted him. He stood over the first girl’s body for what must have been nearly two minutes. He then fell to his knees hurriedly and tried to resuscitate the body with chest compressions, just like he had with his Lily. This went on for only about thirty seconds before he regained his composure and snapped back into the moment, back to focusing on his true Work.

  He never allowed himself to feel shame for that previous lapse in dedication to his Work. He deemed it an understandable reaction to the situation. Each successive act, each piece in his Work, however, made him more resolute, more steadfast. Never again did he waver. In this he took pride.

  He did perform chest compressions in his second act as well, but only to create as many similarities as possible to the first act. He did it not as an act of contrition or second-guessing, but rather as a purposeful gesture to link the second act to the first.

  A successful plan, he reminded himself.

  At this point he had learned to allow the sadness to come over him, but for no more than ten seconds. It felt like an appropriate length of time. Therefore he incorporated it into the ritual.

  After those ten seconds elapsed, he looked back down both trails. Still no one approached, but he knew he did not have much time. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans to remove a plastic sandwich bag containing the strip of the paper he had pulled off his printer the night before. He carefully opened the bag and removed the note with his gloved fingers. He could not find any pockets in the girl’s soccer shorts, so he decided to stuff the note into the top of her rolled-down socks. He put the plastic bag back into his back pocket as he stood and began walking, this time away from the fields towards the pond. He had left his car on a side street less than a quarter of a mile from here. He hoped to be well on his way out of town before someone discovered the little girl’s body.