The Darkness of Ivy

by Jessica King

  “I didn’t do it,” Jeremiah said, leaning forward until Ivy could smell him. Marinara and cologne. The combination of it made her sick. She stood and walked to the door.

  “I’m taking you down,” Ivy said, walking toward the door.

  “You’re threatening an innocent citizen of your country!” Jeremiah called after her.

  Ivy turned to him one last time. “You are not innocent,” she said and let the door slam behind her.

  The hallway was cold, and Ivy pressed her forehead against the cement blocks. She heard Vince’s footsteps.

  “That went…well, not great.”

  “He just deleted the messages, I know it. He watched her through the kitchen’s camera to confirm the kill, and he marked it on the website.”

  “I’ll call Ivan. He’ll know if there’s a way to recover deleted messages like that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Vince walked away, and Ivy pressed her forehead back into the cold, unyielding wall. Eventually, she sat. The air conditioning was loud, and she listened to its subtle changes while she waited and replayed her conversation with Jeremiah. It had been less than an hour when Vince returned. He slid down the wall to sit on the floor next to her, where she had curled her legs into her chest. “They recovered the messages of the past month—nothing. He didn’t do it, at least not with any phone they found with him.”

  Ivy shook her head. “Can I arrest him out of spite?” she asked quietly, and Vince nudged her.

  “Not gonna lie, I wanted to rough him up a bit when I went in there. I played bad cop.” He leaned his head back against the wall, looking every bit as exhausted as Ivy felt.

  “I played bad cop,” Ivy whispered.

  “He doesn’t deserve good cop,” Vince said. “Just because we can’t pin anything arrest-worthy on him yet, doesn’t mean he’s innocent. We’ll get his contact, and then we’ll get something on him. But I think we have to catch the bird before the worm on this one.”

  Ivy agreed. It was the normal way—grasping at straws never led to taking down a whole operation. But if they could get the heart of it, then the connections would be easily uprooted. “We have to let him go,” Ivy said.

  Vince made a retaliatory noise. “We’ll get him at the Academy Awards,” he said.

  “Don’t we sound posh?” Ivy asked.

  The sound of rushing footsteps echoed down the hallway, an officer holding their phone with wide eyes. He stopped in front of them, his mouth partly open.

  “Yes, officer?” Vince asked, raising his eyebrows in question.

  “Jennings Ford,” he said, holding out the phone.”

  Saturday, February 18, 2017, 9:40 a.m.

  The motel was run down—a collection of three buildings sitting behind a gnarled fence chipping with old black paint. The accent of the space was a small, drained pool with dead leaves and petals piled up in the corners. The wooden stairs weren’t painted, and when Ivy’s gaze fell on a window, dark eyes widened before small hands flung swathes of thick curtain cloth together.

  Ivy suddenly wished she weren’t still in uniform. That was something she’d always hated about her job—the scared look that innocent people would get. Children with one wrong image in their minds. People who were trying to right their paths but weren’t all the way there. She used to be scared of cops, too. Every time she saw a cop, she felt hands pulling her away from her mother, telling her that it was over. She couldn’t help.

  But they had been wrong. She could still help.

  She walked up the steps, which creaked beneath the combined weight of her and Vince. Most of the doors had some sort of indicator of life: a wreath or well-worn doormat. A flowerpot or bag of recycling. But there was nothing in front of the door the voice of Jennings Ford had told Ivy she would be behind.

  Ivy knocked. Three times. Then three again. Then once. The knock Jennings had requested.

  The door opened a few inches, and a pair of eyes hid behind the chain of the door’s second lock. “I’m Detective Hart, this is my partner, Detective Benton.” The woman behind the door looked between the two of them several times before closing the door to unlock the chain. When she invited them inside, her eyes made a quick sweep of the parking lot before shutting the door once again. The room was dark inside, only one lamp on the side table and a few candles Ivy imagined were against code in such a small space.

  “I’m Jennings,” the woman said, stretching out a hand to each of them in turn. “And I can explain.”

  “That would be helpful,” Ivy said, narrowing her eyes. Her hands stayed close to her hips, ready to draw her gun. The department had been worried this might be some sort of trap, and Ivy had been worried about it herself. But if the woman was telling the truth…

  “The woman who died in my house,” the woman said, her voice wobbling, “was Andrea Jones.”

  “Do you know how that woman died?” Ivy asked, and the new Jennings shook her head. “She killed herself after receiving a video message, showing a man outside the house where two children were playing. He sent a message threatening to kill them if she didn’t take her own life.” Ivy pulled out the phone that the dead woman had tucked into her shirt collar and showed the video of the killer waving behind the two children.

  Tears streamed down her face, which was already red and puffy from crying. “Those are my children.”

  “They are your children?” Ivy asked, and the woman nodded.

  “Are they okay?” Jennings asked. She stared at the video of her children, jabbering and playing. Her lips wavered when the man peeked out, a gun in hand.

  “They’re fine,” Ivy said. We sent an extra set of eyes to your ex-husband’s home to keep an eye out, there’s a patrol around the area. A sob burst from Jennings.

  “Thank you, Andrea,” she whispered, her eyes closed.

  “Who is Andrea?” Vince asked, his voice less understanding than Ivy’s.

  “She’s my best friend,” Jennings said, wiping tears away. “Was my best friend.” She pressed her lips together, making the skin around them white. “We are about the same height, and she had the wig of my hair,” she said, pulling at a strand of dark hair. “We thought that might be enough to fool a killer, especially from afar, if there were cops in the house…”

  “So, you used us to keep the killer far enough away from the house so that they couldn’t officially confirm your identity?” Ivy said.

  Jennings dropped her chin to her chest, ashamed. “So that she could pass for me.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  Jennings dropped to a whisper, her voice failing her. “Andrea got diagnosed with stage four cancer last year. Inoperable, untreatable, five-months-to-live cancer. She had the wig from when they were still trying to treat her,” she said. When I went to her house to tell her I might—would probably—die, sh-she convinced me to let her…” She shook her head. “To let her pretend to be me b-because—” Jennings sat on the perfectly made bed.

  “Because she was going to die anyway,” Vince said, finishing her sentence, and Jennings’s head bobbed.

  “It was a coward’s move, but I have two young kids,” she motioned to the phone, which now sat in her lap. “She never had any, but she loves them like her own, and she said I had to be there for them.”

  Ivy pulled up the website labeling Martha Eaton’s reincarnations. The Jennings Ford she’d met yesterday could have passed for having similar coloring and hair color, but the real copy of Martha Eaton was sitting before them now, tears streaming down her face because she was still alive and her best friend was dead.

  Jennings pinched the bridge of her nose, sniffling. “I don’t know if her husband will ever forgive me when he finds out.”

  “When?” Ivy asked.

  Jennings looked up through watery eyes. “My husband and kids think I’m the one who’s dead. Andrea left her husband a note, saying it was an emergency, and she had to go see her sister.”

  “That won’t last long,” Vince said.
“They’re going to call out a missing person.” He moved to sit in the only chair in the room. It had a TV dinner folding tray in front of it and a tower of takeout boxes next to it.

  “On Andrea Jones. Not me,” Jennings said.

  “Once the cops release the body, your ex-husband is likely going to see the face of the corpse,” Ivy said.

  Jennings nodded. “It’s not an airtight plan, not at all. But it’s at least a day or two, some time for you to catch the killer. There’s a chance he’ll never know it wasn’t me.”

  “How long do you plan to hide out here?” Vince asked. “They’ll put out a missing person’s report once they figure out it’s not you. Your kids are the whole point of the plan, right?”

  Jennings twisted her hands together. “It’s not a perfect plan. Part of me wants to make this public as possible, just to stick it to this guy. That they finally missed one. And then I could get plastic surgery or something. I don’t know. He’s just never failed before, you know? I may not be magical like he thinks, but the fact that I just outwitted him… I feel like someone who hunts witches wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

  Ivy cast a glance at Vince.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to say with your eyes right now,” Vince said. He looked at Jennings. “We’re usually pretty good at it.” He looked back to Ivy. “Nope, nothing.”

  Ivy rolled her eyes. “Look. There’s a way we can help you do that and help thwart another murder at the same time.”

  “I’ll do it,” Jennings said without hesitation.

  “We can’t guarantee your safety,” Ivy said quietly. She tried not to get her hopes up. “It’d be dangerous, and I understand if you don’t want to do it.”

  Jennings’s eyes narrowed, her hands clutching the phone that glowed with a picture of her two children. She handed the phone back. “I probably shouldn’t have it. He might be able to track it.” Her eyes took one last greedy look at the picture before the screen went dark. “What are you thinking? Then I’ll decide.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Saturday, February 18, 2017, 10:22 a.m.

  Miss Ivy Hart,

  It has come to our attention that you are on the case regarding the killing of our sisters Atlas Hale and Jennings Ford, as well as several other women. We had reached out to Amber Woodward shortly before her death, and she mailed in a series of threats she had received. Several of our members have retained records of the threats they were sent via mail and email.

  I was wondering if perhaps you would like to take a look. We are based about thirty minutes away from the LAPD office. Because I feel that divulging our location over an easily hacked email would not be wise for our sisterhood, I would ask that you call the number below for our address.

  Protection,

  Cassiopeia Granger

  President | The Protection of the Female Goddess

  Ivy stared at the email for a long time.

  The name was clearly a combination crafted from a constellation and Harry Potter, which made Ivy question the sanity of the email before she even thought about the fact that there was a group in Los Angeles that called themselves The Protection of the Female Goddess.

  She showed the email to Vince as Jennings gathered the few belongings she’d brought with her to the shoddy motel. Dust motes floated around him as he came to sit next to her atop the comforter.

  “The Protection of the Female Goddess,” Vince said, his voice slow.

  “Bit of a mouthful,” Ivy said, and Vince chuckled.

  “Do you think it’s for real?” he asked, taking her phone to reread the email.

  Ivy shook her head. She kept her voice low enough that her words would be hidden beneath the fan noises of the bathroom. “Dunno, but I feel like we kind of have to go see. They knew Atlas personally, and she mentions Jennings. And if Amber reached out to them, then…”

  Vince used his eyes to point to Jennings, who had now walked out into the bedroom area, standing in the only shaft of light that managed to break through a broken piece of dust-frosted blinds.

  “Jennings?” Ivy asked.

  The woman slung a bookbag over her shoulder, and Vince took the other duffel on the floor. Jennings looked at Ivy with raised brows.

  “Have you ever heard of The Protection of the Female Goddess?”

  “I’m a member,” Jennings said. “Only online, though. But I did once go to the Atlanta extension when I first found out that my name was on the website.” Jennings picked up her wallet from the TV stand. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “What is it?” Ivy asked. “Like an organization of witches?” she headed toward the door.

  “Oh,” Jennings said, the tops of her cheeks turning red. “I should probably—” She hurried over to the bed and reached beneath the pillow. A rather sinister-looking kitchen knife emerged from beneath. She tried to hold it about as casually as anyone could hold a kitchen knife meant for self-defense. Ivy, still caught on the fact that there was some national society for fake witches, didn’t process the idea that Jennings was preparing to stash the knife into her too-small pocket because she too didn’t know what to do.

  “How about I take it,” Vince said, holding out his hand.

  “It’s part of a set,” Jennings said when she handed him the knife.

  Vince promised to hold onto it, slid the blade into the knife pouch of his duty belt, jostling his own knife to make room.

  “The Protection?” Ivy asked.

  “Can I explain in the car?” Jennings asked. “I don’t want anyone outside to hear.”

  Ivy agreed, and Jennings nearly sprinted to the cop car. “She gonna be okay in an airport back to L.A.?” Vince muttered.

  Ivy sure hoped so, but people that were as jumpy as Jennings were all but considered threats to public safety. “We’ll get stopped at every security checkpoint, but I think we’ll be fine.”

  When the car doors closed, Jennings spilled.

  “The Protection of the Female Goddess is a group of women who sort of just, well, there are some guys in the covens, I think. But they, I don’t know, support each other, I guess? Some of them actually believe they have some sort of magical powers and want to find other people like that. And then there are some people like me, who are targeted by people who believe we’re witches.”

  Ivy watched her fidget in the rearview mirror.

  “I found them after my third threat. It was just nice to have someone who got it. That’s how it got started, I think. Some women who were being targeted by the Kingsmen found each other.” Jennings cleared her throat. “It’s mostly online now since everybody’s so spread out, and then there’ll be meetings sometimes in bigger cities. But, I mean, considering the fact that several of us are being targeted for murder, we try to be really secretive or just keep our distance.” A pause. “No use in giving them the chance to take a bunch of us out at once.”

  Ivy bit her lip as she drove. She’d learned over time that it was unprofessional to offer much sympathy to citizens. It made her seem like less of a cop, less able to protect her if she curled up next to a civilian and talked about their problems, their fears. But she couldn’t help the wave of emotion she felt. “Must be horrible to make friends on the common grounds of being hunted,” Ivy said.

  “Hmm,” Jennings said, her eyes drooping as she looked out the window. Ivy remembered Emily saying Aline had locked herself away in her “sanctuary” for nearly two hours after the talk show. Jennings couldn’t possibly have been thinking of the same instance, but her ideas must have wandered to the same place. “Some people don’t even have that opportunity. They have to wait it out alone. That’s much worse than having a friendship based on your possibility of being murdered.”

  Jennings fell asleep on the plane, her head against the window, almost instantly after whispering something about the fact that she really hoped the person trying to kill her wasn’t on this flight. She confided that she hadn’t slept for several days. It was probably difficult to sleep
if she was scared enough to keep a kitchen knife in her bed.

  Ivy understood her paranoia, but she’d kept a close watch on their fellow passengers and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Vince sat a few rows behind them so he could see anyone approaching them, just in case.

  Ivy opened her laptop, pulling up a PDF of what little was left of the police report from the Barbra Harris file. The report had been filled out by hand, the writing a combination of bad cursive and dedicated chicken scratch. No one had gotten a good look at the killer; the fact that he was male and had escaped seemed to be the only two clear details. The only thing that stuck out in her mind was that Marshall had heard the man yell out the name Felicia Drews before yelling Barb’s name.

  It made sense, Felicia Drews was on the list before Barb’s on the website, though Ivy still thought it was odd.

  It was physically impossible for the killer to have been Jeremiah Ethan. He hadn’t even been born for another few years. Perhaps Barb’s killer was the one who was hiring Jeremiah to keep up the site. An experienced killer who wasn’t tech-savvy enough to report his own killings made Ivy chuckle, but it was a dark noise.

  Because the man who killed Barb might very well have killed her mother.

  And she was going to find him.

  Monday, February 20, 2017, 12:03 p.m.

  “He might be dead,” Vince searching the address Cassiopeia had told them only over the phone—she’d even begged them not to write the address down. “If he killed Barb in his twenties, even, he’s at least sixty by now. Life of crime and killing? Someone might’ve taken him out.” He flipped on the turn signal, which flickered happily, unaware of the heavy conversation of the car’s cabin.

  “Just for someone else to pick up the torch and keep going,” Ivy said, twisting her lips into a frown.

  Vince shrugged. “Jeremiah Ethan might have.” Another turn signal. Another tiny metronome to the symphony of clues Ivy was currently rubbing her temples from. “He’s our strongest current suspect.”

  “Unless there’s more than one killer,” Ivy said. “The website’s public, so maybe it’s a way of communication, too.”