Dana and Hamill searched the woods beyond the tracks. Hamill had called Plattsburgh’s local police, then gotten the car and brought it around. The detectives swept their lights back and forth until they emerged on the other side. A boggy field led to the banks of Lake Champlain. The tracks were elevated here by a graffiti-tagged concrete bridge. Dana passed her light over them. She got out her phone and took a picture.
Hamill’s eyes were wide and dark. “Hey, Gates?”
“Yeah?”
“See any smiley faces?” He was joking about a famous case where smiling, graffiti faces had been found at the sites of several murders.
Dana was still catching her breath. Further north, Route 9 curved closer to the water’s edge, where there was a motel. South, and the train tracks followed along the lake. The subject could’ve taken either direction. He was long gone by now, but Dana was reluctant to give up. She continued to play the light beam over the graffiti. “No smiley faces.”
“He’s gone, man.”
“Why’d he run?” Dana snapped off the light.
“I don’t know. Because he’s a frigging murderer? Did you get any sort of look at him?” Hamill hacked and spat to the side.
“White male,” Dana reported. “About six feet, hundred and sixty pounds. Early twenties. That’s what you told Plattsburgh?”
“Yeah, that’s what I told them. Sounds like a student. Let’s regroup, huh?”
Dana put her hands on her knees, holding the flashlight against her leg. “I’m out of shape,” she said.
Hamill patted her on the back. “Fuck this guy. We’ll TOT the locals. Let them run it out. And we’ll see what Plattsburgh has to say and keep on our own path; where Sonia Taylor lived, who her friends were. One of those students, more than one of them, knows her, knows why she was down in Hazleton, and is going to give us everything we need.”
Dana looked at her partner. “One sip of draft beer and you’re an optimist, huh?”
“That dude was gay,” Hamill said.
“Who? Wayland?”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“His hair. Did you see his hair? Lumbersexual, whatever you call it.”
Dana stared at her partner. Hamill cracked a smile, his teeth shining in the night. Dana shook her head and started walking back in the direction they’d come. She tossed a last glance back down the tracks. She could hear the water of Lake Champlain lapping against the shoreline where it fed into a marsh. Ambiguous shapes moved in the gloom.
* * *
Plattsburgh PD had the description of the runner and were patrolling up and down the shore of Lake Champlain and in and around the small city. It was now going on eight in the evening. As Dana and Hamill drove back along the main street through town and past O’Sullivan’s, the place looked quieter. The happy hour crowd had petered out. The bar would likely refresh in an hour or so as new students came in for some late drinking. She wondered how many of them drank underage. It wasn’t her area, but she was sure she remembered the place getting busted some years prior. She wondered if the runner had slipped away when she and Hamill had first entered the bar and had been biding his time on the street to sneak back in, because he was under twenty-one. But, she doubted that was it. It felt like something more.
They left Main Street behind and were soon back at the college campus. They now had an address for Sonia Taylor. While Hamill had taken over interviewing Wayland, Dana had gone back to the bartender and asked for the bookkeeping. The man with the odd-colored eyes, who said his name was Sven, had grudgingly brought the detective into a cramped office space and pointed out the file cabinet in the corner. While he filled out his personal information on a statement sheet, Dana went through the records of Sonia’s brief employment.
Sonia Taylor had worked at O’Sullivan’s for three months the previous summer. Dana had jotted a few notes and committed the address to memory. 3353 Fox Road. Just a few blocks from campus. Sonia hadn’t lived in a dormitory, after all.
As Dana and Hamill pulled along the curb in front of a white colonial with peeling paint and a sagging porch, they could see lights on inside, and hear music and laughter. A party.
It felt crazy to have left the scene where the runner had disappeared, but there had been nothing more to do there. Still, switching gears wasn’t so easy. She could feel the adrenaline simmering.
Hamill killed the engine. “Should we have brought something? Boxed wine? Rum and coke?” He smirked and ducked his head to look up at the building. Dana was watching the porch where two people sat on a bench swing. It didn’t take long before those two figures, smoke pirouetting up between them, realized they were being watched and went inside. One of them tossed something off the porch into the dark.
“That’s not very nice of them,” Dana said, picking up on Hamill’s humor, trying to relax.
“Yeah,” said Hamill, playing along, “Sharing is caring.”
The levity didn’t work. More than just feeling the heat of the chase and beating herself up for not being fast enough to catch the runner, the sudden and unexpected event had cracked the vault in Dana’s mind. She was now vulnerable to a whole nasty bundle of memories. Not being fast enough was unacceptable. Not being fast enough could result in someone’s death.
The two detectives got out of the car and went towards the house. The slabs of the walkway were uneven, the yard was covered with unraked leaves from two stately maples. The kids on the porch had gone inside. The aroma of marijuana hung in the air. The detectives mounted the stairs and Dana saw a face in the window behind the porch. It quickly blurred away. Someone had been looking out. Like the boy, Scott.
She rapped on the door. She could feel the vibration of the music beneath her feet, shaking the warped porch floorboards. The knock was perfunctory; the students knew the cops were there. The door opened a second later and a young woman stood at the threshold.
“Hello?”
Students crowded around the hallway behind her, jostling for a look, red cups in their hands. Dana smiled. “Sonia Taylor live here?”
“She does. She’s not here,” the young woman replied.
“Know where she is?”
She looked from one detective to the other. She had a stocky build, maybe an athlete, could be a hockey player. Short, auburn hair, hard eyes. Probably tougher than half the guys on campus. She didn’t seem intimidated by the detectives, not like the pot-smokers, or the oglers behind her, now hiding their drinks and acting casual as they drifted away.
“She’s gone for the weekend,” the girl at the door answered.
“She say where?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, body language suggesting she was bored. “I don’t live here. Maybe Lori knows. You want to talk to Lori?”
“Thank you. That would be helpful.”
“Hang on.” She stopped and looked at the detectives. “Er, you want to come in or something?”
“Sure, great.”
The girl pushed open the door and Dana and Hamill stepped through. Hamill shut the door behind him. They were in a hallway, with a stairway going up, bracketed by a white balustrade. The hardwood floor at their feet was scratched and old. The walls were stained yellow from cigarette smoke. The music continued to thump. By now most of the partygoers had cleared away to steal looks from a safe distance and resume drinking from their cups.
The girl who’d answered the door stood at the base of the stairs, and shouted up, “Lori! Someone here to see you.”
She flashed a humorless grin at the detectives. “She’ll be right down.”
Dana opened her mouth to say something, to offer to go upstairs, but thought better of it. She looked at Hamill. It was a good time for them to split up. Hamill could nose around the place, mingle. The detective nodded and walked into the front room, spreading his arms in a magnanimous gesture. “Hey,” Dana heard him call. “What’s happening, people?”
Dana pulled out her phone. She’d missed a couple o
f calls in the past few minutes. One was from Plattsburgh PD. She was tempted to listen to the message, but it would be hard to hear over the blaring music. So she waited until a young woman showed up on the stairs.
She had long black hair and large dark eyes. She was rail-thin, her pants hanging from her bones. Her hair was cut so that it hung in front of her face. She wore a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of tennis sneakers. She came down the stairs, staring at Dana.
Dana was used to the looks she got, the ones she’d been fielding all night. Guilt, resentment, or deference. This was different. For a moment, it chilled her. But then the unease passed. The young woman stopped a few stairs up from Dana.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” Dana found she’d momentarily forgotten what she was there for, or what to say. Then it came back. “Dana Gates,” she announced. “You a friend of Sonia Taylor’s?”
“I am. Is she okay?”
They had to both raise their voices over the music. “Can we step out?”
“Sure. Let me just get a jacket.”
Dana nodded. She spied Hamill in one of the back rooms, taller than the students, grinning. Her partner was so much better with people.
CHAPTER SIX / Bad News
The thin girl had plunged into a dark parka with a fur-lined hood. They sat down on some wicker chairs on the porch.
“How well did you know Sonia?” Dana asked.
“What happened?”
Two partygoers were coming up the walkway. They stared at Dana and the girl. Dana waited until the door swung shut before turning to her again.
“Your name is Lori?”
She nodded.
“Lori what?”
“Stender.”
“Okay, Lori Stender,” Dana said, writing down the name. Then she looked into her dark brown eyes. “Sonia is dead.”
Lori became stone-faced, silent for so long Dana wondered if the student had registered what she’d said. She opened her mouth to repeat the information but Lori’s expression changed. There was a quality to her gaze Dana found uncomfortable and refreshing at the same time, like stepping into a cold river.
Then the look in her eyes was gone. “Oh God,” she said. She dropped her chin to her chest and cried.
Dana jotted down a quick note. She felt her hand shaking a little. She watched Lori’s shoulders rise and fall with her sobs. Dana let her be, not saying anything for almost a full minute.
“Lori, what can you tell me about Sonia?”
The tears were faint streaks down the otherwise unblemished skin. She had porcelain skin, delicate features, but there was something strong about her.
Lori sniffed and seemed to rally. “She was my friend.”
“When did you meet?”
“This summer.”
“In what context?”
Lori dipped her head towards the house. “Here. We both moved in this summer.”
“At the same time?”
She nodded. “We both answered an ad for roommates wanted. In June. College kids move out at the end of semester, go back home, maybe they graduate, and the rooms open up, and it’s a mad dash to get into a place. Like musical chairs.”
Dana smiled politely and nodded, noting Lori’s phrase, college kids. It just struck her as peculiar. Like Lori wasn’t one herself.
“You’re enrolled here?”
“Yes. Psych major.”
“Psych,” Dana repeated. Interesting. “And who owns the house?”
“Um, her name is Maybelle? I forget her last name. Her husband passed a couple years ago, I know that. This place is her retirement, pretty much. She’s a good landlord. She has someone come around to deal with the plumbing and the electrical, check on us, stuff like that.” Lori sniffled. Her eyes were puffy, the corners of her mouth turned down. She put the back of her hand to her lips, possibly to stifle more tears. Dana waited, and it passed.
“And who is that? Who comes and does the maintenance?”
“His name is George. We call him Puffy.”
Dana wrote George and circled it and then looked up. “Why ‘Puffy?’”
Lori smiled. The transformation was remarkable. It dawned on Dana what an attractive young woman she was. More than that; she was stunning.
“He’s a little overweight, you know? And when he’s walking up the stairs, he breathes heavy.” The smile faded. Dana had the slight feeling that she was hiding something.
“Know his last name?”
“Um, I think it’s Langdon? Or maybe Lambert.”
“George Lambert?”
“Uh-huh.” She looked at the yard. “He was supposed to rake the leaves. I guess he hasn’t gotten to it.” She was quiet, then added, “I like them on the ground, anyway.”
Dana finished the note — Puffy, Lambert — half-listening to the young woman’s comment. “Lori, when was the last time you saw Sonia?”
Lori started to respond and Dana’s phone buzzed against her ribs. “I’m sorry,” she said. She reached into her coat. Plattsburgh PD again. They had something on the runner, found him. Had to be. “Let me just take this, okay?”
Lori nodded and fixed her with those dark eyes. Dana went to the other end of the porch.
“Gates,” she said into the phone.
“Detective Gates?”
“Yes. Is this Chief Oreck?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Okay, sorry, I’ve been interviewing some st—”
“We’ve got a body.”
Dana closed her mouth. She said nothing. Oreck continued hastily on.
“In the marsh. The train depot inlet.”
“In the marsh?” A chill curled around her, pulling at her legs, as if she was wading into a cold current.
“By Lake Champlain, yes.” Oreck sounded impatient, irritated. Dana thought maybe he was scared a little. She felt the grip of fear, too, and tried to quash it. She wondered how many dead bodies turned up along the shore of Lake Champlain. Plattsburgh was a small city, population around thirty thousand, and a good chunk of that was students. It was a shopping and tourist destination. But very few of them wound up dead and floating.
The cold sensation persisted.
“We were searching for your runner,” Oreck explained with that perturbed quality, as if Dana and the state police had brought this folly with them, “and one of my officers saw her.”
“Her?” The word sounded strange.
“Yes. Ten minutes ago. Like I said, I’ve been calling you.”
Dana glanced over her shoulder at Lori, still on the porch. She stepped away, both for privacy and to escape the cloying, drowning feeling. “You’ve got the medical examiner there?”
“En route. You could tell it was a girl.”
Dana closed her eyes. She probably should have, but she didn’t ask how. “Anything else, Chief?”
Oreck was breathing heavily on the other end. “Anything else? Yeah. My officer says she looks, like, student-aged. And there was a backpack found in the reeds. More than soaked; going to rot.”
“He didn’t touch it, did he?”
“That’s why I’m calling you, Detective. I could’ve called your captain . . .”
“No. I appreciate it. I’ll get a forensic team down there right now. And I’m on my way.”
“Okay,” Oreck said, sounding only slightly relieved. “Thank you,” he said flatly.
Dana hung up.
Oreck could’ve pulled in a CSI team himself, but he’d made a judgment call. This second body was extremely similar in nature to the girl found that afternoon in Hazleton, and he knew it. Prima facie, the cases were linked.
She walked back to Lori, feeling a little unsteady on her feet. “Lori, can I get a number to call you at? I have to go right now, but I want to keep talking.”
“Sure,” she said. “Want to just hand me your phone?” The girl searched her with those sable eyes.
Dana imagined this second victim in the marsh. Oreck said the backpack wa
s falling apart. That meant she had been there for a while. At the moment of death, the heart stopped. The skin tightened, and turned gray. All of the muscles relaxed; the bladder and bowels emptied.
“Sure,” Dana said, her voice distant to her ears. She handed the girl the phone.
Body temperature then dropped about one degree every half an hour. After thirty minutes the skin became purple and waxen, the lips, finger and toenails faded white as the blood left the extremities. The blood pooled at the lowest parts of the body, creating a purple-black stain. The hands and feet turned blue. The eyes began to sink into the skull.
Lori’s thumbs tapped away. This beautiful young woman was breathing, her heart beating. She handed the phone back to Dana. “There,” she said. “I’m in your contacts.” Her eyes caught Dana, reading, somehow knowing.
“Perfect,” Dana said. Another body. Another college student, likely female. The state police would be equipped to handle it, but cases like this often enlisted federal support. The FBI could end up involved.
After twenty-four hours dead, rigor mortis came and went, and the body became limp. It acclimated to the temperature of the environment. The head and neck were now greenish-blue, the color spreading throughout the rest of the body. At this point, the face of the person was essentially unrecognizable.
She found Hamill in the living room, standing with a group of students playing some sort of board game, red cups everywhere. Hamill was laughing, the students were laughing. Hamill’s expression tightened when he saw Dana coming.
“Party over?”
Dana stopped in the center of the room, said nothing. Hamill got it. He picked up his coat off a chair, said goodbye to some of the partiers and the two detectives made a hasty exit.
* * *
“Did you get any statements while you were hanging out with your friends?” Dana asked. She was driving this time, and had the pedal down, surging through the intersections, daring the yellows. Her fear had turned to frustration.
“Jesus. Just because you didn’t get laid tonight.”
Dana gave Hamill a searing look and he stuck his hands up. “Hey, I talked to just about everyone. Only a few of them knew Sonia. Consensus is, good student, little kooky, real sweetheart.”
DARK KILLS a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 4