Twisted

by Laura K. Curtis

  “You’re a gem, Marge. Tell Keith and TJ I’m in route.”

  “Can I help?” The soft voice and the tentative hand on his shoulder startled him, yanked his mind from the gruesome duties ahead.

  “No. I have to go. I’m sorry. I should drop you at home, but . . .”

  “But it’s not on your way and you need to go. It’s okay, Ethan. Really.” The acceptance in her eyes proved an unexpected relief. “I’ll tell Tim to count you out for dinner.”

  “Don’t do that. It’s only three, and I don’t have any idea what I’m walking into. If it looks like I won’t be able to make it, I’ll call you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.” He couldn’t afford to take the time to figure out why.

  • • •

  ONLY A QUARTER of the property at the edge of Miller’s Lake belonged to Dobbs Hollow proper; the rest was Adams County jurisdiction. Ethan had hiked the whole perimeter, some eighteen miles, when he’d first been hired. His bad knee had been crippled for two days thereafter, barely able to make it up the stairs to his second-floor apartment, but he considered the experience worth the pain. He’d learned as a beat cop that there was no better way to know your territory than to walk it.

  A thick stand of oaks on the Hollow side of the lake provided shade, enticing swimmers and fishermen alike. Although the murky water hid an uneven bottom and the occasional poisonous snake, every sunny day found children of all ages diving from the taller rocks at the lake’s edge or splashing in its shallows. Today, however, no laughter or high-pitched voices drifted toward him as he maneuvered his truck down the narrow path to the shore. Only hushed adult conversation broke the silence.

  The woman lay atop an outcropping of limestone like a sacrifice posed on an altar. Her blonde hair flowed down the rock, the tips drifting over the water, the constant sway almost mesmerizing. For a time, Ethan stared at those strands of gold, glinting in the dappling sun. It was hard, so hard, to follow them back to their source when he knew what he would see.

  Her throat had been slashed, but the blood had slid down the side of her neck rather than spraying her face and body. Her heart had stopped pumping before the knife had severed her trachea. She was naked. Flies congregated around her head, a mobile black mask, and across her belly where the killer had scrawled WHORES DIE in what Ethan assumed to be her own blood.

  Both Keith and TJ were pale but composed. Ethan send up a brief thanks to whatever powers had ensured they had been the ones to find the body. Any of the others on the force would have panicked. And would have, more than likely, thrown up, further contaminating the crime scene. In a bigger department, the two wouldn’t have been out together at all, given that, Ethan aside, Keith was Dobbs Hollow’s only detective.

  “I know we have to wait for Bobby to confirm,” Keith said as Ethan circled the body, “but look close at her neck. I think she was strangled before she was cut.”

  Ethan squatted, waving his hand slowly to dispel the swarm of flies without disturbing the body itself, and peered at the abrasions.

  “Either of you recognize her?”

  Neither did.

  “We picked up a load of trash.” TJ indicated the cruiser sitting off to the side, its open trunk filled with evidence bags. “But you know how this place is. Since school let out, it’s been packed every day. And if you check out the general area, it’s been fairly well trampled. It’s possible he chased her out here. Keith stayed with the body and I followed a couple of trails where it looked as if someone had come through. About a half a mile down one of them I found this.” TJ held up a plastic evidence bag with a wet sheet of paper inside. At the top it read Martin and Sons Autoplex, and appeared to be a checklist of cleaning chores.

  “You think she worked there?”

  “Could be. That’s Jed Martin’s place. You know him?”

  “Heard of him. Know his ex,” Ethan replied, remembering Eulie’s adamant rejection of Lucy. “Does that count?”

  “Hell no,” Keith replied. “Everyone knows Eulie.”

  “No kidding.” Ethan rubbed a hand across his face. “Okay, so we have a piece of paper from Jed Martin’s business. He’s what, forty-five minutes or so from here?”

  “’Bout that.”

  “So it’s a bit odd that we’d find this here, but not unheard of. Our victim might have dropped it. Our killer might have dropped it. Or it might be unrelated to our case. No point in jumping to conclusions.”

  “So let’s think this out. If you were going to kill someone, why would you leave the body where it would be found so quickly?”

  “And by kids.” TJ’s expression held both disgust and sorrow. “They’ll be traumatized for ages.”

  “Shock value,” Keith suggested. “The whole town will be up in arms.”

  Ethan considered the golden drape of the woman’s hair, so like Lucy’s. Something inside him popped with a snap like the sudden tear of a ligament shattered by a shard of bone, and the tingle at the top of his spine increased. He cracked his neck, but found no relief.

  “A lot of unusual things happening around here these days.” He kept his tone carefully neutral. He could be imagining the similarity.

  “Shit,” said TJ. “She looks like Lucy.”

  Nope. Not imagining. “The thought had occurred to me.”

  “The Sadler woman? How does she fit in?”

  “Possibly she doesn’t. Just like the paper. But I can’t say, as I like the fact that we get our first murder since Cecile Sadler’s only days after her daughter arrives. And that the victim happens to have her build and hair color.”

  “And Cecile’s throat was cut,” TJ reminded him. “You don’t think Lucy’s in danger, do you?”

  “Too soon to say. Nothing’s going to happen here till Bobby’s done with the body. Why don’t you pack up the evidence you guys collected and have Marge ship it out to the state labs. Then take a run out to the Sadler place and have a chat with Lucy and Tim. Print out a picture of the victim and take it with you. We’ll send whatever we get off the body separately.”

  “County lab’s pretty good,” Keith objected. “Why involve the state?”

  “When it comes to murder, ‘pretty good’ doesn’t cut it.” And if the killing turned out to be connected to Lucy, Ethan didn’t want Sheriff Pike within a mile of the evidence. He couldn’t say he trusted Lucy completely, but nothing about her set off the alarms the scene with Pike in his office had. “Once Bobby and his boys get here, I’ll call for someone else to take over and come down to the station to talk to the kids. Give them food, whatever they want before then, but they don’t get to talk to each other and they don’t get to go home. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir.” Gratitude shone in TJ’s eyes. Ethan refused to let recognition of it show, refused to admit even to himself that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the murder unless he knew Lucy was safe.

  • • •

  LUCY WAS RESEARCHING her mother’s hometown when the doorbell rang. Tim poked his head out of the kitchen, but she glanced at the security monitor he’d installed and waved him off. Tara Jean stood on the doorstep, shifting from foot to foot. Lucy shut off the computer and ran over to open the door.

  “Tara Jean! What are you doing here? I’d think Ethan would have you running all over town, dealing with whatever emergency called him away.” Her heart dropped suddenly. “He’s okay, isn’t he? Nothing’s happened to him?”

  “No, no. Ethan’s fine. Actually, I’m here on official business. Sort of. The boss sent me to check on you. Plus, he wanted me to ask you a couple questions. Can I come in?”

  “Oh God, of course. Where are my manners?” She ushered TJ into the house, and Tim popped out of the kitchen. “You remember Tim?”

  “Wow. Not this Tim. Sheesh, last time I saw you, you were a toddler!”

  Tim sighed dramatically. �
�And my sister still thinks I am.” He punched Lucy lightly in the shoulder. “Do me a favor and remind her frequently of the fact that you can see the difference, ’kay? Can I get you a drink? Tea? Water? Soda?”

  “Water would be great.”

  Tim disappeared into the kitchen, and Lucy and Tara Jean settled onto the couch.

  “So what happened?”

  “We found a young woman murdered in the woods.”

  “Oh no! Oh, Tara Jean, that’s terrible. Did you know her?” Lucy reached over and touched Tara’s hand.

  “No, no. She’s not from town.”

  “Well, that makes it a little easier, I guess. What do I have to do with this murder?”

  “As the chief said, probably nothing at all. But we haven’t had a real murder since your mother was killed. A couple domestic disputes turned deadly, a convenience-store shooting, and a few drunk-driving fatalities, but not premeditated murder. From what we can tell so far, the woman died late last night or early this morning, so she’d have been killed less than two days after you came back to Dobbs Hollow.”

  “He doesn’t think I killed her, does he? For God’s sake, he had a patrol car coming by on a regular basis last night, so he knows I didn’t leave.”

  TJ blanched, and Lucy felt her own blood freeze. She knew what her friend was about to say. “Luce, Cal Wilkes and Aaron Barrett were on last night, and I saw their report this morning. They spent most of their shift chasing down a Peeping Tom at the Archer apartment complex on the other side of town. They weren’t anywhere near here. I’m calling Ethan.” TJ pulled her cell phone from its belt clip.

  “No.” Lucy laid a hand over TJ’s, struggling to keep her composure. “He’s got a murder to contend with. Whoever drove by here didn’t hurt us. He was probably just looking for another window to break.”

  “He’ll want to know.” Tara’s chin set, and Lucy knew she would tell Ethan anyway.

  “Please, Tara Jean, leave it lie.”

  “And would you stop calling me that? How am I supposed to present myself as a tough, no-nonsense cop with a name like Tara?”

  “Hey,” said Tim, handing her a bottle of Ozarka. “I think Tara’s a pretty name.”

  “You keep out of this, toddler boy. ‘Pretty’ doesn’t exactly scream ‘competent police officer.’”

  Lucy laughed. “Yes, ma’am, Officer Dobbs.”

  “Better. But TJ will do fine.”

  “I guess I can get used to that. So what did Ethan want you to ask me?”

  “Hang on a sec.” TJ leaned over to open the bag at her feet. From its depths, she removed a file containing the four photographs she’d printed at the station. Without speaking, she laid them on the coffee table in front of Lucy.

  “Oh.” Lucy picked up the headshot and ran the tips of her fingers over the woman’s face. “You poor, poor thing.”

  “You don’t know her? Either of you?”

  Tim examined the photograph over Lucy’s shoulder, and both brother and sister shook their heads.

  “Do you have a close-up of her throat?”

  “Let it be!” Tim’s voice was filled with a sharp warning, but the girl in the photo had already captured Lucy’s mind and heart. “She’s not one of yours.”

  “She could be.”

  “Jesus, Luce, do you think for once you could choose to live with the living rather than with the dead?” With a curt nod at TJ, he swung out the front door, slamming it behind him. Lucy stared at the spot for a long moment, loss flooding through her. He was growing further from her every day. Closing the pain away with the ease of long practice, she returned her attention to TJ.

  “Do you? Have a close-up?”

  “Not with me. Why?”

  “I wanted to see the abrasions around her neck. She was strangled?”

  TJ nodded. “We think so.”

  “He crushed her windpipe.” Lucy ran her forefinger back and forth across the photo. “And then he took a knife to her throat. The strangulation, that could be rage, if he’d used his hands. But the marks here don’t look right for manual strangulation.”

  “You can tell that from a printout? The quality’s crap.”

  “Which is why I want a closer look. Here’s the thing: hands leave bruises, not scrapes. So I’d guess rope. Probably hemp or the like, to cause abrasions like these. Definitely not nylon. But to cut her when he’d already taken her life. . . . What was he trying to say?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t saying anything. Maybe he’s just nuts.”

  “The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I interviewed a pathological liar for Finding Sarah. You couldn’t trust a word out of his mouth. Still, he passed three lie-detector tests, fooled numerous experienced police officers and a couple of psychiatrists, because he believed his own lies. You probably would have called him nuts—in fact, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital—but there was a certain logic to his fabrications. In the end, that logic was what trapped him.”

  “I remember.”

  “Ah, right.” Lucy forced a grin. “My biggest fan. Your guy here considered slitting his victim’s throat once she was dead rational. As was stripping her, writing on her, and leaving her in a public place.” She ran her fingers over the picture once more. “She’s a billboard.”

  “A billboard? Cripes, Lucy.”

  “To him, that’s her purpose. An advertisement. A medium for getting his message across.”

  “Did you miss the fact that she looks like you?”

  “Does she?” Lucy flipped the pages to examine the headshot. “I can’t see it.”

  “Well, I can. And so can Ethan. He’s worried about you.”

  Lucy blinked. Focused. “He shouldn’t be. I can take care of myself. He needs to concentrate on her. If he can’t determine what her killer meant, the guy may feel the need to make a . . .more pointed statement.”

  “You think he’s a serial, like Amicone or Paxton?” The subjects of Lucy’s last two books, Craig Paxton and Nico Amicone, had each taken more than eight lives before being captured.

  “I don’t like the term ‘serial killer.’ Most of these guys don’t see themselves that way, and dehumanizing them through labels is a surefire way to miss out on understanding who they are as people.”

  “But you rarely go into depth on their humanity. You concentrate more on the victims.”

  “I have to.” Lucy scrubbed a hand over her face. “If you read Paxton’s story, you’ll remember Jacob Nolan.”

  “Of course.”

  “He lived in Paxton’s head, and it destroyed him. Two weeks after the trial ended, he dropped off the grid. He hasn’t worked since. That kind of burnout isn’t uncommon, and it’s why I focus on victims. Or, as Tim so eloquently put it, I live with the dead. I’m not strong enough to drink with the devil.

  “But that’s not what you asked. You wanted to know whether I thought the man who strangled this woman, sliced open her throat, and used her body as a banner would do the same again.”

  TJ nodded.

  “Then, yes. In my opinion, if no one can interpret the message he’s left, he’ll leave another.”

  “What do you think he’s saying?”

  “I have no idea. I’m not a detective. I come in at the end. Or, if I’m lucky, I document the investigation as it progresses, the way I did with the Paxton case. People like you, like Ethan, like Jake Nolan, you do the interpreting.”

  Chapter Six

  The average human body holds only about a gallon and a half of blood. It doesn’t sound like much until you see it spread in prints and smears and pools on the floor you play jacks on every day after school.

  from A Bad Day to Die by Lucy Sadler Caldwell [DRAFT]

  “IT’S TEN O’CLOCK,” the radio announcer informed him. “Do you know where your children are?” Ethan swore. He’d forgotten to call and tell Lu
cy he wouldn’t be able to make dinner. As soon as O’Reilly had arrived to take charge of the body, Ethan had returned to the station to question the twelve-year-old boys who’d found her. They could tell him nothing, and had seemed more interested in her nudity than the fact that she was dead.

  Then Ethan and Keith had driven out to Palestine with a couple of pictures of the dead woman’s face, along with a copy of the cleaning checklist found in the woods. No one at Jed Martin’s dealership recognized the woman, so Ethan hadn’t expected much of a reaction when he showed Martin the chore list.

  But Martin’s eyes widened at the sight of the list in a way they hadn’t when he was shown the picture. He placed the photocopy of the list back on his desk as if it might bite him, then kicked back in his chair, elaborately calm.

  “I have no idea where that came from,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “We have an outside service that comes in once a month—Carmine’s Commercial Cleaning—but other than that we handle everything ourselves, and we don’t use a checklist. Maybe they do.”

  “Are these the things they’re responsible for?”

  “Well, some of them, yes. They scrub the bathrooms, of course, and they disinfect all the surfaces and mop the floors, but they also shampoo the carpet on the showroom floor and clean the windows, and those aren’t on here.”

  “You only clean your bathrooms once a month?”

  “No, no, of course not.” His genial smile set Ethan’s teeth on edge. Of course, the guy was a car salesman, so he probably didn’t know how to smile naturally. Still, his movements were too jerky, too abrupt for Ethan’s comfort. “But we only have Carmine’s do it once a month. We handle it ourselves the rest of the time. When the economy was better, we used to have Carmine’s crew come in every week, but we don’t get enough traffic these days to warrant it. Frankly, I’d let them go entirely if I could, but inevitably people want to car shop when it’s raining and muddy, so the carpets get bad. Plus, my employees aren’t janitors. By the time the month is over, the place needs a professional cleaning.