The First Time I Hunted

by Jo Macgregor

  I started telling Ryan all about the round barns of New England, but I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t seem to be paying much attention. His eyes kept dipping to my lips, and I couldn’t stop mine from checking out his or sliding sideways to his dimple when he grinned. A heat was building between us; I could all but see it shimmering in the air. My stomach fizzed with anticipation. And nerves. If we slept together — and it was beginning to feel more like when than if — I’d be opening myself up to the kind of vulnerability and intimacy I hadn’t felt since Colby. I’d walled myself off from my feelings, especially the romantic ones, for so long that the thought of that kind of exposure scared me.

  “The round ones were pretty rare,” I said, my voice sounding breathy.

  Ryan claimed one of my hands. With one finger, he lightly traced the lines of my palms and the old, faded crescent of scar. Desire rose, fear ebbed, and chocolate melted between my thumb and forefinger.

  “… and some of them are really polygonal or octagonal … rather than …” My voice petered out entirely when he licked the chocolate from my fingertips.

  “Garnet?” He looked me in the eye. His were a deeper gray than usual.

  “Yes?”

  “Come closer.”

  I moved closer, all the way closer, sitting right beside him so that our bodies touched all down their lengths — shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. I liked the feel of that contact, but now I couldn’t see his eyes. Or his lips.

  “Like this?” I asked.

  In answer, he moved my hand up to his mouth and began sucking the chocolate off my fingers, his tongue licking and swirling, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin. Now I was the one melting. A mewl of desire rose within me. Before it could escape, I swung around, straddled his lap, and slanted my mouth across his, and then we were kissing. My head buzzed, my fingers tingled, my heart thumped, and my head emptied of any thought. Ryan’s hands cupped my face, my head, my breasts. He unbuttoned my shirt, placing a hot kiss on each inch of revealed skin. My head fell back, but just as I reached for him, a loud bang and clatter startled both of us.

  We pulled apart to see that the painting I’d brought from my parents’ house and hung on the opposite wall was now lying on the floor. The scent of cola lip balm — Colby’s favorite flavor — was strong in the air. Dammit! I’d been enjoying Ryan, which was no doubt why Colby had made his presence felt. The moment was pretty much ruined for me.

  I clambered off Ryan and went to pick up the painting. One corner was damaged; I’d need to get it reframed. Ryan, meanwhile, investigated the wall.

  “The nail’s still here, so how did it fall off?” he asked, baffled.

  “I couldn’t have hung it securely,” I said.

  I didn’t like lying to him, but what was I supposed to say? My dead boyfriend is jealous and determined to keep us from getting too hot and heavy? Colby had been interfering in this relationship since he first knocked Ryan’s gift of a blue teddy bear off my bed in the hospital back when I’d nearly died. It was an issue that I’d have to address soon, and I had no idea how.

  “Maybe we could continue this another time?” I suggested.

  Ryan looked disappointed, but he didn’t try to persuade me otherwise. Perhaps he, too, could feel that the vibe wasn’t the same after the interruption.

  At the door, he gave me a final kiss and said, “I wish I could come barn hunting with you instead of doing duty at the station. Be careful, will you?”

  “Sure, sure,” I told him. “You know me.”

  “I do,” he said. “That’s why I worry.”

  – 18 –

  Sunday, April 15

  Early the next morning, while I was tucking into a breakfast of leftover chili topped with sliced avocado, sour cream, and pickled jalapenos, my mother called to ask if I’d like to come over for Sunday lunch with her and Dad. “I know you’re not fond of chickpeas and tofu, dear, so I’ll roast a chicken or a ham,” she offered.

  “Can I get a rain check? I’m going barn spotting today,” I said.

  Of course, I had to explain what that was and why I wanted to do it, and when she heard I was trying to find something I’d seen in a vision, my mother got way too enthusiastic.

  “I’ll come with you!” she insisted. “I’d love to hunt a vision barn. It’ll be fun.”

  I groaned internally. A day on the road stuck in a car with my mother sounded like the opposite of fun. I’d rather eat chickpeas and tofu.

  “I thought I’d just go alone. It’s going to be super boring,” I warned.

  “Don’t be silly! Your father will want to come too. I’ll bring snacks, and we can stop at a restaurant for lunch — your father’s treat.”

  No amount of trying could convince her that it was more likely to be a boring trek across the length and breadth of rural Vermont than a grand family adventure, so at nine o’clock that morning, I collected her and my father from their house in Abenaki Street, and we headed south. I regretted bringing them even before we reached the first barn in Andover.

  My mother, sitting in the back seat, spent the hour-and-a-half drive bending my ear with town gossip. “Poor old Frank Turner passed away last week. Remember him, Garnet? He was the chief of police before Ryan Jackson. But as one goes out, another comes in an open window because guess what? Jessica Armstrong’s pregnant!”

  I moved into the left lane and increased my speed.

  “You don’t seem very surprised, dear.”

  “I already knew she was expecting,” I said.

  “You didn’t tell me. And Judy Dillon was in the store last week for a tarot reading. She was particularly interested in what the cards said about money, which makes me wonder if the café is struggling financially. I sent her off with an abundance crystal bag, just in case. Ooh, that reminds me! I spent some time last night assembling a collection to help with searching and to boost our chances of finding.”

  I checked my father’s reaction to this; he was rolling his eyes. I was already feeling an urge to bite or pick or tear at something.

  “It wasn’t the easiest set to put together,” my mother continued. “I know which crystals help you find love and your path in life or lost belongings, but it was difficult trying to find stones to help search for a lost place. And this barn we’re searching for isn’t really lost, is it? I’m sure it must be where it always was. We just don’t know where that is. I considered moldavite, but that works more for lost people. Anyway, I wore my amazonite pendant just in case.” She held the blue-green stone to her throat and chanted some incoherent mantra.

  “What are you doing, Crystal?” my father demanded. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one growing irritated with her prattle.

  “Awakening the powers of my throat chakra. I researched it,” she said proudly. “Now I’ll say the name of the place we’re searching for and close my eyes, and in a few seconds, I’ll get a vision of where it’s at. What’s the place called, dear?”

  I huffed in annoyance. “We don’t know, Mom. That’s the reason we’re in this car driving around the godforsaken backwoods of Vermont with a Dunkin Donuts box lid in the first place!”

  “Oh yes, of course. Well I’ll just … Barn, round barn, roundbarnround barnroundbarn,” she intoned.

  My father rummaged in the glovebox.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked him.

  “Headphones. Ear plugs. Cotton wool, in a pinch.”

  My mother stopped making the awful noise, and for a few seconds, there was blessed silence in the car. Then she said, “Oh dear.”

  “You saw something?” I asked, astonished.

  “No, but I remembered that I forgot to take the chicken for tonight’s dinner out of the freezer. I wonder … Maybe it’s not working because I’m not the searcher. It might work better if you hold it and do the chanting.”

  “I will not,” I said flatly.

  “For goodness’ sake, Crystal, she’s driving!” my father said through gritted teeth. “
She needs her hands on the wheel and her full attention on the road.”

  “Well, at least hang onto these.” My mother stretched forward and tossed a silver gauze bag filled with blue gemstones onto the dashboard. “I’m not sure whether it’ll help with searching, but it will boost enlightenment, and I think we can all agree that you need as much of that as you can get.”

  I turned on the car radio and began scratching at a rough patch of skin on my left hand.

  “I included angelite to enhance communication with the divine, blue calcite for inner vision and heightened awareness, charoite to stimulate your intuitive abilities—”

  “Anything there to calm a temper?” I muttered, digging hard enough into the back of my hand to break the skin.

  “And merlinite to strengthen your connection to elemental energies,” my mother continued, speaking louder when my father turned up the volume on the radio. “And— Oh dear. Now I’m wondering if I should’ve included purple obsidian too. What do you think, Garnet?”

  “I think it doesn’t make any difference because these bits of rock will have zero effect on anything.” I wiped the back of my hand on my jeans before either of my parents spotted the line of blood.

  “How can you say that,” my mother said, sounding scandalized at my indifference, “when you know how much that purple amethyst quartz you found helped you to get visions? Turn that noise down, Bob. I can’t hear myself think. Do you still have that crystal, Garnet? And the lepidolite I gave you?”

  “No. I tossed them.”

  I hadn’t. The two crystals were currently nesting in the lint at the bottom of my handbag.

  “Garnet!” My mother sounded genuinely distressed. “And the seer kit I made for you?”

  “I think I lost it.”

  The little gauze bag of crystals was also lurking down there between tissues, loose change, and crumpled receipts. Somehow, I hadn’t been able to let the stones go, but I felt like a superstitious idiot for keeping them and wouldn’t admit I had for fear of encouraging my mother. If I wasn’t careful, she’d soon have me lugging around a sack full of rocks.

  I had gotten a bunch of visions while keeping the crystals with me or while holding them, and although there was no evidence that what I’d seen and heard was in any way related to their presence, I reckoned they couldn’t hurt. Plus if I ever needed to wander into the woods, I could leave a trail of colored stones to find my way back out.

  “Bob, put those in her purse, will you, before she loses them too. Oh, look. A windmill. Did you know that windmills are symbols of—”

  “Garnet,” my father said, cutting her off, “how exactly does the barn you … saw … relate to the serial killer?”

  “I don’t know for sure.” What I didn’t know for sure could fill all the round barns in New England, plus a few grain silos. “Maybe he lived there once, maybe he killed there once, or maybe it’s where he’s going to kill.”

  “Hmmm. It seems like so little to be going on.”

  “Tell me about it.” If the TV program was correct, the killer was due to strike in exactly three weeks. My fingers found an old scab on my other hand and began scratching. We arrived at the Andover barn half an hour later, but it was a bust, in no way resembling the barn I’d seen in my vision. The next couple of barns near Weatherfield either didn’t have houses nearby or were near houses that didn’t match the one I was looking for. We struck out for another site off Route 91 before spotting a promising round roof outside of Hartland. The reason it hadn’t been on my list of barns, however, soon became clear.

  “False alarm,” I said, reading the sign outside the building as we drove past. “It’s a Buddhist temple.”

  “Such an extraordinary belief system,” my mother said.

  “You’re one to talk!” I said.

  “Did you know that Buddhism is all about suffering?”

  Before she could set off down another rabbit hole, I asked my father to program our next destination into Google Maps on my phone.

  “What does the FBI know about this killer?” he asked me when we were on course for the next site, a farm outside Hucknall,

  “If I had a dollar for every time they told me something about this case, then I’d have fifteen cents,” I grumbled.

  “I don’t understand what that means, dear,” my mother said.

  “It means that whatever they may or may not know, they’re not telling me. I’m the one passing them information. Or at least, what I’ve seen in my visions.”

  Had Agent Washington given Singh a rundown of what I’d seen? If so, how had Singh reacted? I would freaking love to tell him something that could be proved true. And I’d really like to help out Washington in some way. It had been nice to be treated with politeness and respect by an FBI agent, for a change. When I got back home, I would send Washington a text describing what I’d seen when I’d held all those items together. Maybe he could use it in some way.

  My father was saying something.

  “Sorry, what?” I asked.

  “What all did you see?”

  “Tomatoes growing on a vine and rotting on the ground. A house with a round-roofed barn behind it. A hitchhiker — I think he was one of the victims — being picked up by someone in a car.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “An old sedan, dark blue or green. Probably a Ford.”

  “You used to drive a Ford, remember, Bob? Oh, the good times we had driving around in that!”

  “David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, used to drive a Ford, a 1963 Galaxie, unless I’m mistaken,” my father said. “And Ed Gein drove a Ford Fodor.”

  “I remember once—” my mother began.

  “But the vehicle of choice for modern serial killers is a van,” he said, “especially one of those with the sliding doors on the side because that makes abduction real easy, particularly if there are two perpetrators. One steers the van alongside the victim, the other slides open the door and just drags him or her inside. That’s what the Toolbox Killers did.”

  “I don’t even want to know why they were called that.” Following Google’s instructions, I took the turnoff to Route 80.

  “A van provides storage for kill kits. It can be soundproofed, so it’s a good place to do the deed — a mobile kill spot, as it were — not just a method of transporting the victim. No one can see the victim once she’s inside if you get a windowless one. And once you’ve disposed of the body, it’s easy to clean and rinse out with bleach to destroy any DNA evidence.”

  I glanced at my father, kind of disturbed that he knew all this, but he must’ve interpreted my look as interest in murder-mobiles because he continued. “Some of the worst serial murderers in history — Jeffrey Dahmer, Robert Lee Yates, Ian Brady, and Myra Hindley — used vans. There was a petition recently to ban them, but I don’t think it got much support.”

  “Does it ever worry you that this stuff is stored in your head, Pops?” I asked.

  Before he could respond, the app told me that we’d arrived at our destination. A row of fir trees screened the property, preventing us from seeing any house or barn.

  “Here goes nothing.” I turned into the drive marked by an old-fashioned mailbox and studied the homestead that stood about fifty yards down the way. “Now, this is more like it.”

  – 19 –

  The house was white, with a porch and the winter-tattered remains of a rose garden out front. Clearly visible behind the house was the roof of a barn topped with a ventilator shaft. No weathervane, though. I checked the left of the house — lots of deep shadow but no tree and no sense of death or darkness. It didn’t look identical to what I’d seen in my vision. This house was neater, well-maintained with fresh paint and gutters that didn’t sag, but that was all cosmetic. The basic structure wasn’t too dissimilar.

  My mother leaned forward between the front seats of the car. “Is this it, Garnet? Is this the one?”

  “It’s … it’s a definite possible maybe.”

  My father
compared the structures in front of us to my sketch on the doughnut box lid. “I don’t think so. The barn looks too close to the house and too far to the right.”

  “But do you have a feeling about it?” my mother asked me.

  I hadn’t checked my “feelings.” I’d been comparing points of visual similarity between this place and my vision. Now I tuned in to my gut. There was some vague disquiet there, though it could’ve been hunger; it had been a good while since breakfast.

  I pulled to the side of the drive and killed the engine. “I’d like to take a closer look.”

  At once, my mother climbed out of the car, but my father stayed put.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked me.

  “What are you so worried about?” I asked.

  “This is someone’s house. It’s private property, and we’re trespassing.”

  “I’m not planning on stealing the family silver, Dad.”

  “If you go looking for trouble, sooner or later, you’ll find it,” he said, but I was already getting out of the car.

  My mother tugged an orange backpack out of the back seat and hoisted it onto her shoulder.

  “What is that?” I asked her. “More crystals?”

  “A ghost-hunting kit! I’ve been watching those young men on TV, the ones that yell at spirits — and let me just say I consider that to be downright impolite — and although I don’t have their hi-technical stuff, I put together my own collection.” She clicked the strap of the backpack around her waist. “I’ve got a crucifix in case of demons, sage for smudging, a digital thermometer from the first aid kit to measure cold zones, a flashlight in case we have to go into a dark room, and a bottle of holy water. Well, it’s not precisely holy per se, but it is boiled, and I did say a blessing over it, so I’m sure it’ll do. A sunhat, in case we have to do field work and, of course, a voice recorder for EVPs.”