Beautiful Maids All in a Row

by Jennifer Harlow

  “I see something.”

  I placed my middle and index fingers on her lower lip and pressed down. The jaw moved only a centimeter. Rigor started in the jaw and head at five hours, then everything else followed after that. I was lucky I could move it at all; the old cliché about the dead being as stiff as a board was true. I tried to open the mouth farther, but it wouldn’t budge. There was that flicker again. I moved my face in closer, trying to get a peek.

  Out of nowhere a black snake sprung out at me, mouth wide and hissing like a broken radiator. I leapt back in time, falling on all fours into the frigid river. “Jesus fucking Christ!” I shrieked.

  The brave men managed to leap a few feet back as well. What babies. We watched as the small—it looked three times its size when it pounced at me—black snake slithered out of Audrey’s mouth like a slick black tongue. I felt bile rise in my throat, and I had to swallow it back down. The snake made its way down her prostrate body, black scales moving in perfect rhythm, toward me. I leapt up from my crab position in the river onto my feet. It might have been coming to finish what it started, for all I knew. The snake glided like ribbon into the water, ignoring me completely. I breathed a sigh of relief when it disappeared under the water.

  Luke took a few steps toward me when the snake had vanished. “You okay?”

  “I fucking hate the woods!” I shouted so loud the birds flew from their perches above. “God!” I shuddered, shaking the willies away.

  I padded out of the river and looked down at myself. I was entirely drenched from head to toe and covered with tan river sand. Goose bumps covered my whole body, but not the good, lusty ones I’d had before. I started shivering before I even reached the shore. It was over 70 degrees, but the water had to be in the 50s.

  Luke removed his jacket, wrapping it around my wet shoulders when I reached the bank. The warmth from his body felt welcoming against my chilled one. Lord, even his coat smelled like Ivory soap. He took my shaky hands and pressed them together, rubbing them up and down in an attempt to warm them. He looked into my eyes and smiled. “That better?” he asked, still rubbing.

  I nodded. “I fucking hate snakes.”

  “They seem to love you.” He smiled that good-natured, drop-dead gorgeous smile of his, and I immediately felt the goose bumps turn back to the good ones. I was such a sucker for a smile. My cheeks turned warm despite the chills. Damn it, I was blushing again. I pulled my hands out of his too quickly and the confusion and embarrassment showed on his face.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “Go back to the scene,” Luke instructed. “Someone’s bound to have a spare set of clothes.”

  “Okay.”

  I walked past the smirking men, my ruined shoes squishing with every step. I pulled the heavy wool jacket off my shoulders and put it on. I could still feel Luke’s warmth inside it. I pulled the jacket closed around me. The chills all but disappeared. The lower half of me was another story. Too bad he couldn’t have given me his pants, too…Okay, I knew how that sounded. My legs felt like frozen fish sticks, and I couldn’t feel my toes—that was all.

  By the time I got back to the original scene, the number of cars parked in the lot had tripled in just a half hour. Federal sedans, a criminalistics van, cop cars, a coroner’s van, and an ambulance filled the large lot. I saw people in white plastic space suits sans fishbowl helmets hunched over like old men walking the perimeter of the lot, picking up every piece of litter along the way. By the afternoon we’d have the most extensive cigarette butt collection in the state. Each one would have to be dusted for prints just in case our guy decided to light up before he was due for surgery. Such a waste of manpower, but cases had been cracked that way. You just never knew.

  The only female I noticed—those space suits left everything to the imagination—was the female photographer, who was in the process of changing film in her camera by her sedan. I worked my way through the crowd toward her car. She heard the squishing and turned around. Her eyes narrowed in intrigue. God knew what I looked like.

  “Do you have any spare clothes I can borrow?” I asked, trying to keep the chattering to a minimum. “I fell in the river.”

  She assessed my soaked body and shook her head at my stupidity. “Sure.” The trunk popped open and she pulled out a white tank top and pale blue jeans. “No shoes, though. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Thank you.” I scuttled away to find somewhere private to change. Since there were about twenty-five people scattered around, I didn’t think I’d be able to find one. I scanned the lot and noticed a bit of forest nobody was picking through. I walked into the bushes and prayed there wasn’t any poison ivy around. I seemed to attract it as much as I did mosquitoes. When trees and leaves safely camouflaged me, I took off Luke’s jacket and hung it on a branch. It could be saved if he could get the river smell out of it. I hoped he could; the jacket was worth more than I made in a month, though that wasn’t saying much. I peeled off my wet clothes, dropping them on the ground. One of my best outfits ruined. Stupid snake.

  The jeans were a tad baggy on me, but I didn’t think they’d fall down. That would be just what I needed. The tank top fit perfectly, showing off my flat stomach, adequate bosom, and nonexistent curves. I needed to gain some weight. The whole crack-whore look was so nineties. I gathered up my clothes and Luke’s jacket. As I grabbed it from the branch, his black leather wallet fell out open. I bent down to pick it up, but not before I noticed something in the plastic slits. It was a picture, a little worn and torn from age and handling, but very familiar. I pulled it out.

  It was from the night we were awarded the Bronze Cluster for Distinguished Service after we tracked and talked down Bob Wallace by ourselves. I remembered the Wallace case very well. He kidnapped a small boy that he had been sexually molesting and brought him from Newark to Baltimore, where I was assigned at the time. Luke was working in the Newark office and was one of several agents involved in the case. We had suffered through the Academy together and the powers that be decided to team us up, one of the FBI’s better decisions. As two of the junior-most agents on the team we were just supposed to cruise the area and look for the perp’s car, but through some deductive logic and a lot of luck we tracked good old Bob down to an Amtrak station just outside BWI airport.

  We spotted him on the platform and called it in. Unfortunately, the approaching sirens spooked Bob, and he pulled his gun, pointing it at the five-year-old boy’s head. I talked to Bob, using every psychological trick I could think of, while Luke flanked around the back and managed to tackle him just before he pulled the trigger. The press ate us up thanks to a tourist’s video of the takedown, and we got into Violent Crimes in Washington. It was the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

  In the photo Luke and I are standing together, holding up our medals and grinning like idiots in front of the FBI seal. I looked so much younger there, even though it was only six years before. No dark circles or premature wrinkles, just a kid, full of promise and hope. This was the girl who died that night; I was just her carcass. I shut the wallet and stuck it back in his jacket pocket.

  I walked out of my hiding spot through the parking lot and back down the path toward the riverbank where all the action was. I noticed a few space suits turning their heads to eye me up and down, stopping at my chest as I hurried across the lot. I dropped my eyes to the ground like the shy girl I was. I was not used to being looked at by the opposite sex. The only looks I got lately were ones like that of a zoologist examining a tiger to gauge if it was dangerous. I ignored the men as I walked to the clearing. When I reached it, I noticed someone new hunched over the ranger. The medical examiner, an old man with a ring of white hair from temple to temple and a face like a prune, was putting bags on the corpse’s hands to preserve fibers, gunpowder, or anything McIntyre might have scratched off. I knelt next to the ME, whose eyes immediately went to my cleavage. “Any idea what time he died yet?”

  “Judging from lividity, rigor
, and body temp, I’d say between midnight and two this morning,” he said with a slow Southern drawl.

  “Did he die instantly?” I asked, praying the answer was yes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. Some prayers did get answered. “From the placement of the bullets, I’d say the aorta was hit with the first round. He lived for maybe five seconds.”

  “What caliber?”

  “Best guess is a nine-millimeter, but from the tearing around the wounds I’d say the bullets were dug out.” He pointed to the holes, which to me looked like perfect circles inside the ranger’s broad chest. I didn’t see any tearing, but then I was not an ME.

  “If you’re done here, there’s another body about half a mile downriver,” I said as we both stood.

  “I’ll get down there,” he said with a nod. He picked up his black plastic suitcase with a groan and started up the path. I turned back to the body. Ranger Bruce lay there in the dirt, staring up at me. Poor guy—just doing his job and look where it got him. He must have been doing the rounds, keeping horny teenagers from necking in the woods and overzealous fishermen from sneaking in to get a head start.

  The Woodsman must have heard the Jeep coming right after he finished his open-heart surgery. The crackling of the gravel underneath the tires could have been heard from a quarter mile away. It would have given the Woodsman plenty of time to prepare for the impending invasion, grabbing the gun he brought for just such contingencies. Ranger Bruce was just driving along, listening to the owls hoot and the crickets chirp, when he caught sight of a naked man covered in blood in his headlights. Bruce jumped from the Jeep ready to draw the gun he’d probably only used on a firing range, but the Woodsman was too fast for him. Plugged him twice in the chest. Such a shame.

  Some days it paid to just stay in bed.

  Chapter 14

  My day in the sun gave my pasty skin a nice bronze hue, so I no longer resembled Casper the Not-So-Friendly Ghost. The sun decided to come out in full force around noon, shining down like a great, big hot orange spotlight. The temperature went up from 72 to 90 in under two hours. I’d run out of things to do an hour and a half earlier, besides swatting mosquitoes every other second, so I sat in the backseat of a police cruiser with the door open and my body half in and half out, chomping on a disgusting bean burrito I bought from the food van that miraculously showed up around one o’clock. I felt like a displaced child watching my older siblings getting ready for a night out while I had to stay home and watch cartoons. They got to have all the fun while I sat around, one of my least favorite things to do.

  I hadn’t seen Luke since the river incident, and the rest of the team disappeared around one, with the massive horde of techs and other law enforcement members thinning out considerably around two. We went from close to twenty down to only five. I was the last of my group there. Forgotten and abandoned. The only familiar face was that of Linda, my good clothes fairy, loading up her car with equipment. I tossed the burrito on the ground, grabbed my semi-dry clothes and Luke’s jacket, and climbed out of the car. I had always depended on the kindness of strangers. She drove me back to Richmond.

  When I got inside the hotel lobby an hour later, a carbon copy of the attendant from earlier called to me. “Are you Iris Ballard?” he asked.

  I walked over to the desk. “Yes, I am.”

  He pulled out a few “While You Were Out” slips with various names written on them. One was from Carol, another from my mother marked urgent, and the rest from various reporters. The bloodhounds had tracked down my scent. Bastards.

  “Another guy called,” the man told me. “He wouldn’t leave a message, but said he’d call back tonight.”

  I thanked him with a smile and went up to my room. I kicked off my heels and wiggled my feet in an attempt to work the aches out. Heels, like wool suits, were never a good idea when one was traipsing around the woods. The rest of my borrowed clothes came off, replaced by pink pajama bottoms and a faded gray University of Pennsylvania t-shirt. I gathered up the dirty clothes and limped to the laundry room down the hall. Even when tracking a killer, certain household duties couldn’t be overlooked. I read the new Barbara Kingsolver book while the woods and river were washed off my clothes.

  It was nice to have alone time for a few hours, just lounging back with a good book. I used to be a voracious reader, reading on all my plane trips and during the few hours I was actually at home. Time was when I wasn’t so drugged or drunk I couldn’t concentrate. One of Hayden and my favorite things to do on days off was to just lie together on our couch, reading and listening to jazz. His arm would be around my back with his hand resting on my waist, tracing circles in my flesh with his finger. I’d rest my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat in time to the music. Heaven.

  When I returned to my hotel room, I vegged in front of the television for an hour watching the news. We’d made every station. “Bodies found…no known suspect…Woodsman, blah, blah, blah.” At least my name wasn’t mentioned again. It even made nationwide news. Since my mother called, I knew it had gotten to Grey Mills. I really should have called her back since she went to all the trouble of tracking me down—thank you, Carol—but I didn’t. I wasn’t in the mood to hear about how dangerous, how bizarre, how crazy my being there was. I knew she was my mom and it was her job to worry, but it would just end with her crying and babbling on about my safety. I just didn’t want to make my mommy cry.

  The telephone interrupted my train of thought. I climbed out of bed and went over to the desk to answer, limping the whole way. “Hello?”

  “Good, you got back okay,” Luke said on the other end.

  I pulled out the chair and took a seat. “No thanks to you. You abandoned me in the woods.”

  “We left you a trail of bread crumbs.”

  I scowled into the telephone. “Not funny. Where did you go?”

  “The ME’s. We’re here now.”

  “And?”

  “And the time of death was between one thirty and two thirty last night,” he reported. “There were no fingerprints, no fibers, no hairs, and no fluids on either victim. Audrey was manually strangled by a right-handed man with her heart cut out postmortem. He dug the bullets out of the ranger with the scalpel. They found two blood types in his wounds, one matching Audrey’s. Her tox screen came back positive for the barbiturate thiopental sodium and there was evidence of repeated sexual trauma. Extensive tearing and bruising to the vagina.”

  “You can stop there,” I interjected quickly. “I get the idea. So when are you coming back?”

  “We’re waiting on the final report, but it shouldn’t be too long. At the most, two hours.”

  “Well, I’ll leave the home lights a-burnin’,” I said in a mock Southern accent.

  “Cute,” he said. “ ’Bye.” The line went dead.

  Cute? He thought I was cute? I may have been many things, but cute was not one of them.

  Before I hung up, a yawn began and soon wracked my whole body. I figured I had better get into the shower before I passed out in the chair. The cool water soothed my hot skin and at the same time stung it. That happened when a person was sunburnt and covered in mosquito bites. I quickly washed the sweat and grime of Mother Nature off my body and stepped out. The sun really must have really taken it out of me, because I was asleep in bed ten minutes later.

  I woke what felt like five minutes later to the sound of bells ringing across the room. The ringing happened twice before I fully comprehended that it was the phone making the noise. I checked the digital clock next to me. It read nine forty-three P.M. The phone rang for the fourth time as I threw back the covers and climbed out of bed. I stumbled through the pitch-black room toward the ringing near the desk. I switched on the desk lamp and picked up the phone. “Hello?” I asked, still half asleep.

  “Oh, did I wake you? I’m sorry,” a deep, unfamiliar voice said, sounding truly sorry.

  “It’s okay,” I yawned. “Who is this?”

  “It depend
s on whom you speak to. I have many names,” he replied.

  “Well, give me one of them,” I insisted, growing angry.

  “I suppose you know me best as the Woodsman,” he said. “It’s such a ridiculous moniker, don’t you agree?”

  Great, a crank. Just what I needed. “Look, why don’t you go order a dozen pizzas and send them to your ex-girlfriend’s house or something?”

  “You think I’m a crank caller,” he said, sounding amused. “How interesting.”

  “Look, buddy, go check your medication levels,” I snapped, “and leave me alone.”

  I was about to pull the phone away from my ear when he said, “Do you want to know what I do with the hearts after I cut them out?” He asked the question with no emotion.

  “What did you say?” I asked, my body tensing up.

  “That tidbit was never released to the press, correct? For just this situation, I assume. I suppose if it was,” he chuckled, “I’d be called the Heartbreaker or something equally idiotic. Have your attention now?”

  Hell yes. “You could have easily found that out,” I said. “Leaks happen.”

  “Then ask me something.”

  I thought for a second. “Tell me the drug used.”

  “It’s called thiopental sodium,” he answered immediately. “It’s an ultra-short-acting barbiturate used in brief surgeries, narcoanalysis, and narcosynthesis in psychiatric disorders. Care to know how many times I had to inject Audrey Burke and where? I can tell you.”

  I pulled out the chair under the desk and sat down, unsure my legs could hold out. “How did you get this number?” I asked, trying to remain calm.

  “I have my ways. I can be quite resourceful and tenacious when I put my mind to it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To talk, of course. Why else do people call each other, Iris?” He chuckled again. “You would like to talk to me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.