She frowned. “I almost forgot.” She took out her phone and swiped through the images. “Today at the cemetery, I found something rather disturbing. I took pictures before the rain washed it away.”
He studied the screen, all his worries congregating into a bunched square of real estate between his eyebrows. “Teresa McCarthy’s headstone?”
“You can barely decipher the handwriting, but whoever did this is clearly fucked up.”
He rubbed his chin. “I’ve seen something like this before.”
“Really?”
Luke nodded solemnly. “Do you remember the seventeen-year-old who got raped in Haymarket Field two years ago?”
“Hannah something,” Natalie responded. “Her ex-boyfriend’s doing time.”
“Right. While we were investigating, we did a grid search of the area and came across some similar-looking graffiti written on one of the old stones in the foundation of the Shell station.”
“How similar?”
“Just like that,” he said emphatically. “And the weird thing was, that corner of the foundation was the exact location where Minnie Walker was last seen alive.”
“Minnie Walker? One of the Missing Nine?”
He nodded thoughtfully.
Prickles crept across Natalie’s scalp. Minnie Walker was a thirty-eight-year-old alcoholic, last seen four years ago giving a blow job to an unknown male, possibly identified as a long-haul trucker, in the foundation of the old Shell station at Haymarket Field. Minnie was one of the nine cold-case files sitting on Natalie’s desk back at the office. One of her back-burner cases. Minnie had an anemic face and veiny eyes that mistrusted everyone. She was a paradox—a beggar with expensive shoes and Ray-Bans. She begged on the street corners every day. She was hostile to the working women who refused to give her any more of their hard-earned cash. She lied and said she had children to support. She had no children. She disappeared one autumn afternoon when the fog pooled in the valley and the lake rose ten feet from the weekend rains.
“But you said this happened two years ago,” Natalie told him, “whereas Minnie disappeared four years ago. And there’s nothing in her case file about this type of graffiti … investigators went over the scene of her disappearance with a fine-tooth comb, interviewing dozens of witnesses … nothing ever came of it. Dead ends all the way.”
“That’s because it’s not in Minnie’s file,” he told her. “The graffiti showed up two years later. Written in chalk. Just like that. Practically illegible, but some of the obscenities were crystal clear. Just like that.”
“Did you take pictures?”
“Yeah, they’re in Hannah Daugherty’s file.”
“Great. Let’s go.” She stood up and grabbed her jacket.
“Whoa. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“It could be packed with meaning, or it could be nothing. A prank.”
“But it’s worth investigating, either way.”
“I agree.” He handed Natalie her phone back. “But Daisy’s case takes priority. The cold cases can wait. I’m not telling you to stop or even slow down on the Missing Nine. This is a significant lead, Natalie. We’ll follow up, for sure, but it’s a matter of priorities. Simple, really.”
“Simple for you, maybe.”
Silence surrounded them. She realized Luke had sent the guys home already. They were alone in the house, where Daisy’s ghost drifted, lost and confused, all her hopes and dreams having been crushed in an instant. Natalie felt an unpleasant throbbing in her chest, an upside-down ache.
“Good job today, Natalie.”
She studied his sincere, etched face. “Don’t you think it’s strange? Daisy’s homicide took place on Willow’s deathiversary—same day, twenty years later.”
“Our brains operate that way,” Luke said. “We see patterns and try to fit all the pieces together. Random facts. Coincidences. Unrelated incidents. Which is why we have to go where the evidence leads us.”
So much history had passed between them. He’d witnessed her first bike ride. He was there when she’d switched from cartoons to MTV, from dolls to makeup. He’d seen her laugh and cry and throw up and do cartwheels.
She sighed and said, “Remember the first time we met?”
“Met?” He grinned crookedly and said, “You mean, the day I crawled through the fence in your backyard and introduced myself, and you threw a rock at my head?”
“A pebble.”
“You were—what? Five? Six?”
She laughed. “A little brat.”
“Willow came over and said, ‘Welcome to Hell.’ I thought that was cool.”
Luke had moved into a run-down ranch house with his hippie mom. He was an only child with no father, and he came over to play with Natalie and her sisters in their big backyard, climbing trees, instigating snowball fights, building leaf forts. He had spiky hair and super-calm eyes, a steadying way about him. He used to call Natalie “pipsqueak” because of their age difference—eight years.
It had taken thin-skinned Luke a long time to fully mature. At some point, Joey noticed the scrawny, fatherless boy hanging around the neighborhood and took him under his wing. Joey taught him how to fight, how to build a six-pack, how to spot a bully and lay him out. In a funny way, Joey finally found his son, and Luke found his missing dad.
Years later, Luke went away to college and got married. It was a rebound relationship. He admitted this to Natalie during one of the department Christmas parties. His smarty-pants, Ph.D. girlfriend of two years had just broken up with him, and he’d never felt so bitter about anything in his life. But then, along came Audrey Peeley, so petite and flirtatious she made him feel manly. She’d seduced him. She came on strong. She was sensual in the beginning, before the baby. But then, after the physical attraction faded away, he realized they didn’t have much in common, except for their daughter.
Luke got a divorce, joined the United States Army, did a couple of tours of the Middle East, and came home prison hard. Soon he’d joined the ranks of the Burning Lake PD, where he eventually became lieutenant detective of the fucking unit. Nobody messed with him now. At six foot one, Lieutenant Pittman had zero timidity.
Except around Natalie, when it came to their shared history. When they were kids, they used to sit in the hot summer sun or on a snow-dusted porch, and he would confess his deepest fears and biggest dreams to her—how badly he’d been bullied at school, how he was going to avenge himself someday, how deeply humiliating his family’s poverty was for him, to have a single mom and no dad, what an indelible scar that had left on his heart. He’d confided all his deepest secrets, never once suspecting that she’d grow up to become a rookie detective under his wing.
“Let’s pick this up in the morning,” he said, heading for the door. “Don’t forget to lock up.”
7
Back home, Natalie’s sister had left several distraught messages on her answering machine. Earlier that evening, Natalie had delivered the bad news to Grace and promised to call her back, but in all the chaos, she’d forgotten to check in on her again.
Now Natalie turned on the house lights, dropped her bag on the living-room sofa, dug out her phone, and dialed Grace’s number. “Hey, it’s me,” she said. “I just got home. Did I wake you?”
“No. Can’t sleep,” Grace said hoarsely.
“How are you feeling?”
“Jesus, it hurts … she was my best friend in the world. I’m still in shock. I can’t stop shaking.”
“How’s Ellie?” Natalie asked.
“Hysterical earlier, until I gave her one of my Valiums. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.”
“Just take care of yourselves, okay?”
There was a pause. “It said on the news that Riley Skinner’s a suspect … and I know Daisy was having problems with him.”
“Listen,” Natalie said, taking a deep breath, “what can you tell me about it?”
“He was flunking her sociology class, but what cou
ld she do? Her hands were tied. All he had to do was write a few essays, but he never completed the assignments. She was under an enormous amount of pressure from the administration to hold him back a grade, otherwise it could’ve effected JFK’s overall performance,” Grace explained. “You can’t have too many students flunking the statewide tests, or else it’ll reduce the funding levels. Nobody wants to hold back a student, least of all Daisy. She took it as a personal challenge. And for these kids, it’s humiliating. Most of the holdbacks never get over it.”
“Did you witness any altercations between them?”
“No, but he called her a cunt once. Daisy told me about it afterwards.”
“A cunt?” Natalie said, alarmed. “When was this?”
“Three or four weeks ago.”
“What were the circumstances? Did he use any other abusive language? Did he threaten to hurt her physically?”
“All I know is, they were alone after school one day, and he was upset about his situation, and in typical Daisy fashion, she tried coming up with a last-ditch effort to save him. He reacted by blaming her instead. He said some pretty nasty things, but then he apologized—profusely, she said. He was ashamed of himself for lashing out like that. After all, she was the only adult in his life who seemed to care. She didn’t report him, not officially. She’s very forgiving that way.”
“But she talked to the principal about it, correct?”
“She told me she withheld the worst of it, though. Because that would’ve been the end of it. Ironic, isn’t it? She protected Riley from himself.”
“What kind of last-ditch effort?” Natalie asked.
“Gee, I don’t know. She was running out of options. She’d already given him plenty of opportunities to retake the tests, but he never followed through.”
Natalie frowned. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. Probably wishful thinking. Some of these kids imagine they’re destined for greatness—you know, they’re going to be famous rock stars or rich athletes or whatever. Their heads are full of garbage. Grades aren’t important until the threat of being held back looms on the horizon. But Daisy wasn’t afraid of unruly boys. She used to tell me, no matter how rotten some of these kids are, they’re still kids.” She paused. “Oh God. Do you think he killed her, Natalie?”
“We don’t know anything for sure yet. The investigation’s ongoing.”
Grace took a steadying breath. “It’s so fucking unfair. Daisy and I were best friends for as long as I can remember. We got our teacher’s certifications at the same time. We used to finish each other’s thoughts.…”
Natalie paused to let her have a moment. She checked her watch. Half past three in the morning. “Listen, I’ll be dropping by the school tomorrow. Can I get a statement from you then?”
“A statement?”
“We’ll be interviewing everyone who knew Daisy—students, faculty, staff. We’re looking for any information that might be pertinent to the case.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course. You sound tired, Natalie.”
“There’s nothing more we can do right now. Get some sleep, okay?”
“You, too, sweetie.”
“G’night, Grace.”
“Night.” She hung up.
Natalie went upstairs, where she peeled out of her clothes, put on the extra-large BLPD T-shirt she used as a nightgown, and collapsed on top of her bed, too exhausted to turn back the covers. Never take it home with you, Joey used to say. Some of these cases will haunt you if you let them. Fucking ghosts.
Her nerves were frayed beyond belief. Tonight, she would have to keep a distance between herself and reality if she hoped to get any sleep at all. When you dealt with mangled bodies at the scene of an accident, grisly suicides or domestics where the woman’s jaw was broken or the child’s eye socket was fractured—the best way to cope was to pretend it never happened. Face it in the morning.
She sighed and closed her eyes, on the verge of floating away.
The boy in the woods. The raccoon. The stick.
She opened her eyes and lay there, struggling with the old horrors.
A long time ago, when Natalie was nine years old, a teenage boy attacked her in the woods. She’d managed to escape, but not before catching sight of the telltale birthmark on his left arm—at the crux of the elbow, on the fleshy inner part of the arm where the skin was most tender and vulnerable. A striking purple birthmark the size of a quarter. It looked like a startled butterfly. She knew that didn’t make any sense, but it was the best way to describe it—a startled butterfly, freaking out in midflight, flapping its wings and shaking its antennae. As if a Disney cartoon and a Rorschach blot had a baby. Natalie managed to escape that day, but they never found the boy who attacked her, despite months of searching, and this traumatic incident had left an enduring scar on her psyche.
The dead raccoon, swollen with rot. The strange boy poking it with a stick.
Now she tossed and turned, growing alternately feverish and freezing cold.
* * *
It was early autumn, and nine-year-old Natalie had taken a shortcut through the woods. The hawks were circling overhead, trying to flush the field mice out into the open. She got lost on the crisscrossing deer paths. The giant oaks were like haunted house trees, their crooked branches pawing at the sky. The wind made the slowly turning leaves flutter. It sounded like rain.
Eventually, she came to a clearing, where she spotted a boy about Willow’s age kneeling on the muddy bank of a stream. He wore jeans and no shoes. He’d taken off his T-shirt and wrapped it around his head like a voodoo mask, with a slit for the eyes, two glints inside a smeary darkness. His naked torso was painted with mud. He held a stick in his hand—a sturdy branch with a pointed tip—and he kept poking the dead raccoon with it, lancing its bloated belly and stabbing deeper and deeper until the intestines gushed out.
“Fuck,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck.”
Natalie trembled with terror on the edge of the clearing, while the bogeyman stabbed and stabbed. She couldn’t rip her eyes away. Couldn’t escape her growing nausea. All of a sudden, she screamed.
He turned and spotted her, then slowly stood up. His eyes seemed to smile behind the mask. Natalie froze, trying to make herself invisible, but the bogeyman came charging after her. He chased her through the woods—silently, never calling for her to stop, never speaking. They zigzagged through the trees, and whenever she stumbled he gained speed. She took one path after another, until she no longer recognized where she was.
Finally he caught up with her and threw her down on the ground. She couldn’t breathe. He tightened his grip, and the pain was astonishing. He sat on top of her. He was going to kill her. He would rip her apart like a coyote. He would split her open like a piñata and spew her guts all over the place like stale candy.
Natalie kicked and clawed at the air, trying to scratch his face, but the boy was too strong. In thrashing glimpses, she saw pieces of him—his sweaty bare chest, the strained tendons in his neck, the butterfly birthmark on the inner part of his elbow. Like a startled butterfly, it trembled all over, trying to escape, just like Natalie.
She swung her fists wildly, fending him off every step of the way. When he swiped at her again, she caught his arm between her teeth and bit down hard enough to draw blood, a warm liquid pooling inside her mouth.
He cried out in pain and released her.
Natalie leapt to her feet, then looked around for something to defend herself with. She picked up a rock and flung it at his head, and he dropped like a sack.
Natalie ran for her life, tripping and stumbling through the woods, a crazy pattern to her breathing. She veered off the trail and crawled through the underbrush, scratching her arms and face on the thorny bushes. Ten minutes later, she pitched herself out of the woods and crossed a field full of bluebells, finally recognizing where she was—behind Luke’s house. She entered the Pittmans’ backyard, where Luke’s mom allowed the grass to grow wild and the sagging bamb
oo chairs looked like a herd of cows. Natalie hammered on the back door, calling for help. Mrs. Pittman was at work, but Luke was home, and he took her inside and comforted her, then drove her to the police station, where her father asked her what exactly had happened in those woods?
The dead raccoon. The slit for his eyes.
The police never found the boy with the stick. It was as if she’d made it all up. There was no dead raccoon, no bogeyman, no evidence of rape or sexual assault; just scrapes and scratches from where she’d clawed her way through the brambles.
She never saw the bogeyman again, even though he haunted her dreams and poked holes in her memories. It made her furious to have him lodged inside her head like a land mine, ready to explode. Like a cold spot on her brain.
A wise man once said, when you close your eyes, you die for just a bit. For a split second, you cross a barrier, and there it is, in the viscous membrane between waking and dreaming—your true self.
8
Seconds later it seemed, the alarm clock was blaring in Natalie’s ears—that cheap, tinny, big-box-store blare. She rolled over and smacked it off. Her eyes felt glued shut. Her head was throbbing. Her father had a name for this—a crime-scene hangover. Joey would’ve been proud.
She crawled out of bed and staggered into the bathroom, where she swallowed two Aleves with a glass of tap water and took the hottest shower in the world. She tried to squeeze all the grief and confusion out of her heart. She scrubbed herself vigorously with a soapy washcloth, rubbing out the stench of death until her skin was velvety pink.
She left the bathroom ventilation fan running and opened a window. The lacy trees were budding out. A gorgeous perfume filled the air. Her stomach clenched. Fresh from her shower, Natalie grew clammy all over. This was no ordinary day. Something ugly had happened last night. Daisy had lost her life—Grace’s best friend, Brandon’s pregnant wife, the students’ beloved Ms. Buckner. Something inside Natalie stirred—a fresh awareness that the world wasn’t as safe as it seemed. Forces greater than yourself could carry you into a realm where all color was sucked out of the landscape—a realm where butterflies became symbols of evil. How could that be?
Trace of Evil Page 6