Blood Trails

by Sharon Sala

  “I’ll make some calls,” Whit said. “In the meantime, I’ll get you back to the hotel.”

  “I want to be here,” Holly said. “When you bring the dog, I need to be here. My mother might be, too.”

  Whit nodded. “I’ll let you know.”

  A short while later he dropped her off and drove away. But the closer he got to the precinct, the more certain he was that she might have given them the answer after all.

  Fifteen

  They moved Harold to a holding cell to await his arraignment. He was a pretty sight when they booked him into jail sporting two black eyes and his broken nose bandaged.

  He also had a bandage around his head and a couple of stitches in his scalp, with a continuing headache that the doctors had promised would fade with time. The fact that his skull was still in one piece after being hit with a pipe wrench was a miracle in itself, and there was nothing wrong with him that a doctor within the penal system couldn’t handle. His days as a free man had just officially come to an end.

  He accepted that he was there because of poor judgment. He should have made a run for it. He had no one to blame but himself, but there was one thing that kept bugging him. He was missing his hair. His ponytail was gone.

  At first he’d thought they’d cut it off while tending to his head wound, but they’d told him it had already been gone when he’d been brought in. He still didn’t know what had happened to it, and no one he asked had an answer.

  Inside the cell, he stretched out on his bunk, then grunted when his feet slid off the end to dangle in midair.

  He was too fucking tall for the bed.

  He had a court-appointed lawyer coming for a visit, but Harold considered that a waste of time. They had him dead to rights. He had tried to kill his daughter and, for all he knew, had killed her man. No one had mentioned the cowboy’s condition.

  It wasn’t as if he could plead insanity. Stupidity was more like it. Disgusted with the situation he was in, he rolled over onto his side and pulled his knees up toward his chin. When he did, half his backside was hanging off the cot.

  A miserable fix.

  Holly leaned against the wall as she waited for the hotel elevator. It was unusually slow, but there was an obvious reason. From what she could tell, a convention of Mary Kay representatives had checked in. She’d never seen so many women in pink in her life.

  While she’d been at the hospital with Bud, she’d learned that the hotel manager had packed up their stuff and moved them to a suite. It was luxurious compared to the room they’d been in—a room that had suited her just fine until Harold Mackey had invaded it.

  By the time she got out on her floor, she felt drained. She felt filthy after being in Mackey’s house, and not because of the layer of dust. That was a house where evil abided, and the sooner he was locked up, the better for all concerned.

  She locked herself in her new suite and flipped the safety catch, as well. No one was getting into this room without a battering ram. She tossed her purse on the sofa, draped her jacket over the back of a chair and kicked off her shoes, but her steps were dragging as she crawled up on her bed.

  She stretched out, exhausted and frustrated and worried about Bud. She fingered her engagement ring, wondering how everything could have gone wrong so fast. Her eyes closed as she rolled over onto her side. She needed to call Bud’s uncle Delbert and give him an update on Bud’s condition, and she told herself that she would do that in a few minutes.

  Delbert Walker had brought her to tears when she’d called him earlier to tell him what had happened, admitting that she felt guilty beyond words that it had happened because of her.

  But the old man had been adamant, claiming Bud would be just fine and for her not to fuss. He told her that Bud had done exactly what he’d gone there to do, which was take care of her, and if she was all right, then Bud would agree that the rest of what happened had been worth it. He said that was what men did: take care of the women they loved.

  Holly exhaled on a sigh. Bud’s face flashed before her eyes, and he was laughing. It was the last thing she remembered as sleep pulled her under.

  A phone was ringing. Holly woke with a gasp and then reached for her cell phone, only to realize it was the room phone. She rolled over and reached for the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Slade, Whit Carver. Did I wake you?”

  “Yes, but it’s all right. What’s happening?”

  “I found us a cadaver dog. We’re going back to Mackey’s house this morning. Still want to go?”

  “Yes, yes, I’ll be ready.”

  “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll be outside waiting,” Holly said, and flew out of bed.

  With no time for a shower, she stripped out of the clothes she’d slept in, then washed her face and brushed her teeth. Style was the last thing on her mind when she dressed. She brushed her hair, swiped some lipstick across her lips and reached for her shoes. Seconds later she was out the door and on her way to the elevator. With only minutes to spare, she bought two coffees and a sack of doughnuts in the lobby coffee shop and headed for the door, eating her first doughnut as she went.

  Five minutes later Whit Carver pulled up. She brushed the sugar off her fingers, then got in.

  “Morning, Miss Slade.”

  “Holly.”

  He smiled. “Holly.”

  “That’s better,” she said, and handed him a coffee and the doughnuts. “Help yourself. I’ve had all I want.”

  Whit’s smile widened. “Thanks.” He set the coffee in the cup holder, dug out a doughnut and took a big bite before driving away.

  “So how are you feeling about this?” Holly asked.

  “What? You mean bringing in the dog?” He shrugged. “I’m all for anything that will give me answers. How do you feel about it?”

  Holly leaned back against the seat, absently rubbing her engagement ring.

  “To be truthful, I can’t put into words what I’ve been feeling. Ever since my dad died—and I mean Andrew, the man who raised me—I’ve felt like I lost myself. I found out who I really am, and I wish I hadn’t. Harold Mackey is an animal. I want him gone. I’ll do anything I can to make that happen. But I need to talk to him before I leave St. Louis. If there is a God, He will help me find out what Mackey did with my mother’s body.”

  Whit nodded. “I’ll make that happen. And I hope you’re right about today. Once we’ve got enough evidence to convict Mackey as the Hunter, the entire city of St. Louis will be grateful to you for coming back and telling your story. And the families of all his victims will be able to see justice done.”

  They were silent the rest of the way to Mackey’s house, but when they pulled into the driveway, Holly’s anticipation rose.

  The handler and his dog were waiting on the porch. They turned as Whit and Holly came up the steps.

  “Detective Carver, I presume. I’m Ray Birch, and this is T-Bone.”

  The German shepherd heard his name and looked up. With his mouth open and his tongue hanging out, he looked as if he were smiling.

  Whit nodded. “This is Holly Slade. It was her idea to bring in your dog, and we’re hoping it pays off. Miss Slade believes that her father wouldn’t get rid of his trophies, which in this case happen to be scalps from his victims. They’re twenty years old. I can’t vouch for what condition they’ll be in even if they’re in there. Can your dog work with that?”

  The handler patted his dog. “If there’s anything here, T-Bone will find it.”

  “Then let’s get started,” Whit said, and unlocked the door.

  Holly stayed back, watching the handler and his dog sweep through the house.

  Ray gave the command that set the dog to working, then he followed, urging the animal on every now and then with a pat or a command. They went through the living room, then the kitchen and utility room. The only thing the dog spotted was a dead mouse in a trap, but he didn’t alert on it. Holly thought it was
amazing that a dog could be trained to find dead bodies, and differentiate between people and animals.

  After the front part of the house, Ray and T-Bone headed down the hall. They went into Mackey’s bedroom, going through the closet and exploring every corner before they crossed the hall and went into the second bedroom, which contained nothing but boxes.

  Within seconds of entering the room, T-Bone whined. Holly tensed. It was the first sound she’d heard him make. Was that a good sign?

  The dog headed for the boxes, and began circling them and climbing up on them, then behind them, over and over.

  “We’re getting a hit,” Ray said.

  Whit frowned. “We’ve already been all through those boxes.”

  Holly knew her instincts about her father were right. “Move the boxes,” she said. “We need to move all of them.”

  The three of them began shoving and scooting the boxes to the other side of the room, and the more floor space that was revealed, the more T-Bone began to react. He scratched on the floor, as if he were trying to dig.

  Ray pointed. “There’s something under the floor,” he said, then called the dog off the hunt, praising him for his work and giving him a treat as he fastened the dog’s leash to a doorknob to keep him out of the way.

  Holly was down on her hands and knees, pounding the floor with her fist to see if it sounded hollow, looking for anything that would tell her she’d been right. But the ambient light inside the room was dim, and there was no bulb in the overhead fixture.

  She ran to the window and tore down the old shade with her hands. It raised a cloud of dust as she flung it aside, but it also let a bright stream of light come pouring into the room. She turned to look down the length of the room to where the boxes had been stacked, and as the sunlight bathed the floor, she caught a glimpse of something shiny. She moved closer for a better look, then suddenly stopped and pointed.

  “Come look! Look at this!”

  Whit moved closer. At first it just looked like a nail that hadn’t been driven far enough into the hardwood flooring, and then it hit him. Hardwood flooring wasn’t nailed down. It was tongue and groove. There shouldn’t be nails in the floor.

  Holly got a nail file out of her purse and ran it down the same groove, then frowned at what came up with the dust.

  “This looks like putty,” she muttered, rubbing it between her fingers. She did it again. “There’s more. Here and here and here.”

  Whit frowned.

  “We stop now! I’m calling in the crime scene investigators.”

  As he stepped out of the room to make the call, Holly got up off her knees and walked outside to the front porch, then sat down on the step. The sun was hot on the top of her head as she waited, but it felt good to be out of that place. At least out here she could breathe easy.

  There was a huge knot in the pit of her stomach. Her heart kept fluttering, as if it had forgotten how to keep rhythm. She gazed across the street, eyeing the small frame houses, all of them about as dilapidated as this one, and wondered what went on behind their walls.

  The door opened behind her. Whit came out and sat down.

  “They’re on the way.”

  She pinched the bridge of her nose to keep from crying.

  Whit felt her pain. He couldn’t imagine what kind of hell she carried in her head, not to mention the courage it had taken to reveal it.

  They sat without speaking as time passed, watching Ray Birch playing catch with his dog in the front yard.

  Suddenly Whit pointed.

  “Here they come.”

  Holly stood up as he went to meet the crime scene team, then led the way through the house. They began to take pictures. She followed, watching when one of them began tapping on the spare room floor with a big crowbar.

  “It sounds hollow here,” he said.

  It was the same place T-Bone had hit on, and the place where she had spotted the new nail.

  Someone began prying up a board. Then another and another, until it became obvious there was a large space beneath the floor.

  The knot in her stomach grew tighter as Whit got down on his knees and peered into the opening.

  “Son of a bitch,” Whit said. “I see stairs.”

  Holly felt sick. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes as they removed more flooring until the stairs were completely revealed.

  “Give me a flashlight,” Whit said, then turned around and looked inquiringly at Holly.

  “I need to see,” she said, straightening.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I need to know if he…if my mother…” She shuddered. “Please.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got the right,” he said. “Follow me down.”

  Holly moved past the others without meeting their gazes. She didn’t want to see the expressions of disgust and pity on their faces. It was more than she could handle. She braced herself as she started down, focusing on the faint glow from Whit’s flashlight, and then halfway down he found the switch and the room was suddenly flooded with brightness.

  They stood speechless in the face of what confronted them.

  They had been lined up like soldiers—blondes, brunettes, redheads, their scalps all hanging from the walls, silent reminders of her father’s insidious deeds.

  And suddenly Holly was five years old again, innocently blundering into her father’s secret world. She moaned and would have fallen, had Whit not grabbed her arm and steadied her as she descended the last few steps.

  Techs from the crime lab quickly followed. Except for a brief gasp of shock or a softly muffled curse, they were silent. The trophy aspect of the macabre scene was obvious. Each scalp dangled from the wooden plaque to which it had been affixed, with an engraved nameplate below it.

  Whit was stunned as he counted. Thirteen. They’d only known about nine. Where in hell were the other bodies?

  Holly pushed past him and began scanning each name with growing panic. When she got to the last one and realized her mother’s name was absent, she groaned, then grabbed her knees and bent over to keep from fainting.

  Whit grabbed her arm. “Holly?”

  “She isn’t here,” Holly mumbled, then stumbled toward the stairs, going up on her hands as if she were climbing a ladder, and then crawling out onto the floor on her hands and knees.

  “Ma’am?”

  Holly looked up. A uniformed officer had knelt beside her.

  “Help me,” she whispered. “I need to get outside. Get me outside.”

  He yanked her to her feet, and when she would have walked, he scooped her up into his arms.

  Startled, Holly protested, “I can walk.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, and carried her out onto the porch, then put her down. A muscle jerked near his right eye as he met her gaze. “My mother was one of his victims. I was ten when she disappeared. I became a policeman because I wanted to find the man who killed her. Thanks to you, we’ve done it.”

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she kept saying, then put her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming.

  “You have nothing to apologize for any more than I do. We were children.”

  He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, then walked away, back into the house.

  Holly sank weakly onto the steps.

  “They found what they were looking for?” Ray asked, walking over.

  She nodded, then covered her face and started to sob.

  Whit stayed on-site with the crime scene investigators while one of the officers took Holly back to the hotel.

  Instead of going inside, she went straight to valet parking to get her car. She needed to see Bud. Even if he wasn’t awake, she wanted to be in his presence.

  Bud woke up with Holly’s hand on his arm. She was staring off into space, and even as groggy as he was, he could tell she’d been crying.

  “Hey, honey…”

  She turned and quickly swiped her hands across her face. “Hey yourself, Mr. Man, how do y
ou feel?”

  “Alive, which at this point suits me just fine.” He touched her face. “You missed one.”

  She sighed. So what if he knew she’d been crying? “They found the scalps today. They were beneath the floor of Mackey’s house.”

  Bud gritted his teeth as he shifted to a more comfortable position. “Isn’t that good news?” She nodded.

  “And still you cry.”

  “You didn’t see their faces. I’m his child. They’re wondering if I carry the taint that made him what he is.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You know they’re thinking it. I know they’re thinking it. If we have a child, you’ll be thinking it, too.”

  “Unless you’ve suddenly turned into a psychic, you don’t know what the hell anyone is thinking,” he said. “As for us having a child, it’s not if, it’s when.”

  Holly’s chin quivered. She crossed her arms on the bed beside him and hid her face.

  It seemed to Bud that no matter what he said, she was ready to shoot it down. It was apparent that the last person who was able to deal with her past was Holly herself.

  “All I can tell you is to lean on me, because my love is strong enough for both of us.”

  Holly lifted her head and saw the truth in his eyes. She threaded her fingers through his and held on, but the pain was too deep to cry.

  Mackey was in handcuffs and shackles, and had been waiting for his lawyer to appear for a good ten minutes, when the door suddenly opened. A middle-aged woman wearing a rumpled brown suit and sensible black shoes walked into the interrogation room carrying a briefcase.

  Harold gaped. “Who the hell are you?”

  She slapped the briefcase onto the table between them and sat. “Myra Finch, your court-appointed lawyer.”

  “You’re a woman.”

  Myra stifled a snort. “You’re more observant than some of my clients. You need to know your situation has changed considerably since your arrest. The police have recovered thirteen women’s scalps from beneath a bedroom floor in your house. There have now been thirteen counts of murder and two attempted murder counts filed against you. The police want to talk to you. They said they’re short four bodies and wonder if you’d like to explain what you did with them. Also…”