Bitter Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 4)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  There are people in the corridor. A doctor and a nurse, standing in front of the open door of the skeleton girl’s room. Their voices are soft and urgent. Something is going on inside the room.

  Cara tenses, worried, wondering . . .

  The nurse breaks away, hurrying down the corridor, and the doctor steps back through the door.

  Cara backs up noiselessly, and bolts down the hall for the back door.

  She leaves the garden, but she can’t bring herself to leave the Mission. Instead she sits outside, on a bench beside the wall, as the valley below turns blue with twilight.

  There is a stone cottage in the grove of oak trees, but it is dark and silent, no sign of anyone in it. She is alone.

  She has not eaten all day and without the medication her senses are roiling inside her. The whole night is glistening now. The moon begins to rise through the bare branches of trees. The clouds around it are golden, gossamer, silver. The light pours down from the sky and shimmers like water on the sandy ground . . .

  Thoughts are rising inside her, too, overflowing like the light from the moon.

  Is she dying, the skeleton girl? Is that one connection going to be taken from her, too?

  She pushes the fear deep down inside her, but it rises again, threatening to overwhelm her.

  It is not done.

  There is not just the horror of what happened to the skeleton girl, the thing that will surely happen again. Even if Laura killed herself, that was only because of It. It is It that should be killed, and no one sees. No one sees, only her.

  And there are so many of It.

  The counselor is dead. One down. But there are all the others.

  She thinks of the clump of men in suits at the funeral. The vice-principal, maybe. Ortiz definitely. And the man in the van, whoever he is, who savaged the skeleton girl, and who is waiting out there in the dark.

  One of them, some of them, maybe all of them—are It. It is out there, in all Its many forms. Out there, making Itself known to amuse itself. Playing with her before It strikes.

  So what do I do?

  The moon bends closer, so close she can feel its icy heat.

  You know, it whispers.

  The command is so clear, she freezes where she sits.

  But she does know.

  It is remorseless, relentless, terrifying. But It can only do Its work within these weak vessels. They are as vulnerable as any human is; the neck the most vulnerable of all.

  And she has camouflage herself. They see her as weak. But she is not weak. She is the wolf.

  She holds her hands out and looks down at her palms. In the moonlight, she sees the red, feels the warmth of the counselor’s blood spilling over her hands as his heart pumped the last of it from his body.

  You know, says the moon.

  She knows. She was not wrong about him. She feels no remorse. The world is a better place without him in it.

  Can she do it again? Of course.

  She knows what. But she doesn’t know who.

  She looks back toward the Mission, in the direction of the skeleton girl’s room. Then she stoops to the ground, picks up a sharp-edged stone, and carves into the stone wall.

  She drops the stone, steps back, looks up at the moon.

  “Which?” she whispers. The night trembles around her . . .

  Then the darkness in front of her moves, and she gasps out.

  Standing in front of her is a huge bird, or an angel . . . a shadowy winged apparition. Her heart starts to pound. She swallows and concentrates through the roiling inside her, focuses through the shimmering . . . to see a robed figure. The older nun, the smoker.

  “Hello,” the nun says.

  Cara moves to bolt. The nun says quickly, “It’s all right. You’re not in trouble. You’ve come to visit Ivy, haven’t you? I’m glad.”

  Cara stays still, ready to flee, but curious, compelled.

  Ivy, she thinks. Her name is Ivy.

  “Are you a friend of hers?” the nun asks.

  After a moment, Cara nods, warily.

  “Well, today wasn’t a good day. She’s resting now. But I want you to know, you can come any time you like.” She pauses, then asks, “You’re from Social Services, aren’t you?”

  Cara tenses. The nun sees.

  “I’m sorry. That’s a personal question, and we don’t know each other. I only wondered if that’s how you know Ivy.”

  Cara thinks on this. So the skeleton girl is in the system, too. But she is not surprised. The men in vans, they find the homes.

  She nods, and the nun sighs. She sits on the bench, but at the far end, carefully, as if asking permission. “All this . . . It must be hard for you to understand.”

  “I understand,” Cara says flatly.

  The nun looks at her, intrigued. “Do you? I’d like to hear.”

  She thinks the nun really does want to hear. But what is there to say? There are monsters. It’s everyone else who doesn’t understand. And how can she tell her anything, this nun, after what she has done?

  They sit for some time in the silence of twilight. Finally, the nun speaks. “Maybe next time, then. You can come any time you like. Just—use the front door.” She hesitates, and then says, “You know . . . I don’t believe in accidents.”

  Cara glances at her, a quick, startled look.

  The nun holds her gaze, compels her not to look away. “Maybe you found this place because you were meant to find it.”

  She hears herself saying, “I know I did.”

  For one second, she feels utter longing, to confide in this kind authority, to give this burden to someone else, to be nurtured . . .

  “You are not alone,” the nun says suddenly, fiercely. “And you are loved.”

  Cara looks down at her hands. The blood is there again, red even in the darkness, dripping. She shakes her head, and backs up, turns and heads down the hill, into the dark.

  ROARKE

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Roarke woke in the Mission gatehouse and lay in the narrow single bed, feeling the dark around him.

  He’d returned from Franzen’s house, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, he’d fallen into a black and dreamless sleep.

  But now his skin was crawling, his senses on alert. He’d felt something, heard something . . .

  He stood and reached for his jeans, stepped into them, and moved out of the bedroom. He glanced at his calendar on the wall, with the three names clear on the sheet of paper he’d tacked up before he’d slept: Franzen. Lethbridge. Ortiz.

  He moved to the front door, and opened it to look out.

  The moon was high about the olive grove.

  Three pale figures stood in the midst of the trees: three slim, feminine shapes. One with a bloody gash in her throat. One whose wrists dripped blood. And one a living skeleton.

  Roarke opened his eyes, awake for real this time. His heart was racing; his arms covered in gooseflesh, his fists gripping the bedsheets.

  He pulled on clothes, went to the front door, opened it to the cold night air, and looked into the dark toward the trees. There were no ghost girls. Of course not.

  He closed the door, locked it. And then it occurred to him what had awakened him. He stepped to the table and checked his phone, finding a text message from Singh, time-stamped just ten minutes ago.

  He sat at the table and called her back. She picked up immediately.

  “I was just about to call again. I was not sure you would want to wait for morning.”

  He could hear the urgency in her voice. “Go ahead, Singh.”

  “I have been unable to trace the first of the survivors threatened with burning, Tricia Andress, who was attacked in 1997. She was in the Social Services system, a group home girl. Since the assault she has been in and out of shelters, and frequently homeless. Her whereabouts are currently unknown.”

  Another group home girl, Roarke thought, uneasily. This guy knows how to find vulnerable targets. Those girls would have no adv
ocates pushing for investigation and prosecution, either.

  “But I have a current address and phone for Marlena Sanchez, who was attacked in Phoenix in January of 1999, five months before Ivy. She now lives in Flagstaff.”

  Roarke remembered the name, and the details. Sanchez had been fifteen, walking to school in the morning. The abductor pulled her into a windowless white van, bound her, and drove her somewhere undisclosed to assault her. She reported that he had a can of gasoline with him, that he held it in front of her face and threatened to “cook her.” But the attack was interrupted in some way that wasn’t clear in the witness statement. The assailant drove off with her, and turned her out of the van in a different location. There were several other points in common with Ivy’s report of her attack, too. The rapist cuffed her to a pipe in the van. She was hooded the whole time.

  He felt his skin prickling.

  “Do you think she’ll talk to me?”

  “I believe there is a possibility. DNA evidence was collected at the time of the attack but the rape kit was never tested. However, Sanchez recently submitted a request for a test. Which has still not yet been conducted.” She paused, and said dryly, “The City of Phoenix Police Department has 1,783 untested rape kits as of this year.”

  Roarke saw the way Singh was thinking. If Sanchez was pressing for a test, then she was looking for justice. Meaning she might very well talk to him.

  “Do you wish me to place that call for you?” Singh asked.

  “Yes. Please. Thank you, Singh.”

  “Also, I have been doing some checking into Detective Ortiz. As far as I have been able to determine, he has never been associated with the Wayfarers Club.”

  Roarke already knew that, but again felt that surge of frustration that he’d been wrong.

  “However . . .” Singh said. “I have been monitoring his internet habits. It has been enlightening.”

  “You hacked him?”

  “Hack is a strong word,” she said. “I followed him. Not on Bureau time or systems,” she added, unnecessarily. Roarke was sure that whatever she’d done, she had been more than discreet.

  “He spends quite a lot of time on Reddit, in the men’s rights forums. I will send through some of the comments he has posted. I believe it is information you need to have. I . . .” There was a pause on the line, and then she finished. “It is not pleasant reading.”

  He’d always thought of Singh as fearless, but the tone of her voice chilled him.

  “I’ll look at it right now,” he told her.

  “I will try to reach Sanchez, first thing in the morning,” she said.

  Roarke lowered the phone, frowning.

  His phone pinged and he looked down to see an email from Singh, with a file attached.

  The email said: Ortiz has been posting under several aliases. All of the posts I have highlighted are his.

  Roarke opened the file to find a Reddit sub-forum page. He didn’t have to click through into individual threads to get the picture; the opening comments under each link were the same kind of misogynistic ranting that he’d heard on the radio.

  Singh had highlighted several forums. Roarke’s stomach lurched as he saw the titles:

  Gang Rape Cara Lindstrom

  Tracking Cara Lindstrom

  Kill that Lindstrom Bitch

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Singh stood in her office cubbyhole, looking down at the document that she had just sent to Roarke. She felt something welling up inside her she could not name, something that caught in her throat and made her chest tight.

  She went to the doorway of the living room and stood, looking in at Epps, who sat at the table with his laptop, a glass of wine in front of him.

  He looked up at her, saw her face. And instantly, he was on his feet. “What is it?”

  She brought the tablet to him, open to the Reddit site. He looked down, took it. His face turned very still.

  Singh sat on the sofa as he read. After a moment she curled her legs up under her, and tried to let the feelings come. “I feel . . . violated,” she said. “I feel . . .” She was struggling, unable to contain the pressure of her grief.

  Epps put the iPad aside, a motion like hurling it away. “I hate this.” There was outrage in his voice, and loathing.

  “I know,” she said.

  He crossed to the sofa, crouched in front of her, urgently. “Those are not men. That’s not what it is.”

  She took his face between her hands. “I know.”

  “They’re predators. They’re not human.”

  “I know. I know.”

  He put his arms around her, and they held each other.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  It was a moment before Roarke could make himself click into the first forum. Again, Singh had highlighted posts by several commenters, apparently Ortiz’s aliases. But there were hundreds of similar comments, not just those from Ortiz.

  FUCKING CUNT WHORE

  Stupid ass bitch needs a good raping

  Imona bust dem sugar walls an leave an AIDS load in there

  Hope That Slut Cunt Gets Raped By 10 Men With 9 Inch Cocks

  The only question left is will Lindstrom be raped first or killed first or both?

  If she ever comes near Fresno I will rape her into oblivion

  Need to fuck that bitch in the ass so hard we break the Richter scale

  DEATH TO FEMCUNTS

  I’m gonna cut her throat and fuck the slit until she chokes on cum

  The threads and comments went on and on, a maelstrom of hate. In between the vitriolic comments, there were Photoshopped photos and videos: Cara’s face superimposed onto naked, bound women. Homemade torture porn.

  And possibly the most chilling of all, by another of Ortiz’s aliases:

  Will pay $ for any verified Lindstrom sightings.

  Roarke put his iPad down, and had to force himself to breathe. He paced the small floor of the cottage, sickened. Then he grabbed his coat and walked out through the back door of the cottage.

  The moon was high above the oak trees.

  He sat on the bench beside the wall, and leaned his head back against the cold stone, fear and rage roiling inside him.

  What is this world we live in?

  It was his worst fears, confirmed. The backlash against Cara manifesting in the worst kind of depravity.

  And for Ortiz, this obsession had started when she was fourteen years old.

  He’s a predator. Dangerous. Monstrosity masquerading as law.

  And obsessed with rape.

  Can you write things like that and not be a rapist?

  But is he this rapist? Or one of the two?

  Ortiz? Franzen? Lethbridge?

  Who?

  He turned and saw a column of writing, three words scratched into the wall beside him. Faded scratches, barely legible. And then he froze, and looked closer. They were names. Names he knew.

  Lethbridge

  Franzen

  Ortiz

  Roarke stared at the list and thought, I’m losing my mind.

  He touched Lethbridge’s name, felt the roughness of the scratches in the cold of the stone. Real.

  Did I do this? Did I sleepwalk out here and do it?

  He had no recollection of sitting here, no recollection of carving the names into the wall.

  He knew it was not his handwriting, if handwriting was the word for lines in stone. But it was still more plausible than the other explanation.

  That Cara had sat here, on this same bench, and carved these same names into the wall, sixteen years in the past.

  He stood from the bench, circled around the wall to the front of the building, moving under the ghostly shadows of olive and pepper trees. It was a feeling like sleepwalking.

  There was a light on in the long wing of the Mission, shining through the last window, the room at the very end of the building. Mother Doctor’s office.

  Of course. The coffee, the cigarettes . . . the revving engine of that mind.
Of course she’s an insomniac, too.

  He searched the ground at his feet for pebbles, tossed them at her window as if he were a teenager, courting her.

  Her face appeared at the window and she looked down, spotted him. Her eyebrows arched, and she lifted a hand to point, indicating the back door.

  He met her there, and brought her around the building, through the misty dark to the bench beside the wall, where he pointed to the names in the stone. She stared, much as he had, in bewilderment, and then wonder.

  “It’s my list. But this was Cara,” he said. “It must have been Cara. You said she visited Ivy here.”

  “Yes, and I found her out here, late one afternoon.” Her eyes widened slightly. “Sitting here.”

  It was a lot to hope for, but he had to ask. “Do you remember anything about what she said?”

  The nun stared off into the dark, where mist curled through the olive trees. “She had come to see Ivy, and I tried to get her to talk—”

  “Did she mention any of these men?” He gestured to the list.

  “No. She didn’t say much, really. I didn’t press her. I felt that she would come back, and I didn’t want to scare her away . . .”

  “What day was that, that you saw her? Was it before Laura Huell died, or after?”

  The nun sat on the bench, her eyes sharpening as she remembered. “It was the day of the funeral. I’d seen the notice in the paper that morning.”

  So . . . it was just after she killed Pierson. She wouldn’t have been likely to talk to any authority figure honestly after that.

  He looked at the scratched list of men on the wall, and realized he had needed the nun there just to corroborate that the writing was actually there, that he was not dreaming or hallucinating. It was surreal, but Cara had been here, had been thinking the same thoughts . . . and planning the same thing.

  He turned to Mother Doctor. “Those things you gave me, from Ivy’s room . . . I’m pretty sure what they mean, and what this means—” he gestured to the list on the wall “—is that Cara went after Ivy’s attacker.”