That was when the door to the other room, the one James Nua had been in, started to open. Violet’s eyes bulged as she jumped out of the way, realizing belatedly what was happening.
James Nua was still in there.
And she was out here.
Rafe reacted before she did, and she felt her heart slam against the walls of her chest as his hand closed around hers, pulling her roughly behind him.
But it was too late. Nua was being escorted out, and he’d already seen her.
He carried himself as if it were a normal affair for him to be restrained and accompanied in that way, strolling with handcuffs and armed guards. And even when Violet saw the light of recognition flicker in his eyes, his step barely faltered.
Barely.
And then a knowing grin parted his lips while the black ink coiled and curled and crawled along his skin. “Hey, White River.” His voice sent a spiderweb of fear shooting from Violet’s core, radiating outward, firing tenuous threads that made her arms and her legs quiver. Its sticky webs reached into every crevice of her being. Somehow he not only recognized her, but he’d just mentioned the name of her school.
His smile grew exponentially, but there was something in the way he looked at her, something in his eyes as he watched her—a suspicion almost—that made Violet’s breath catch.
He was shoved from behind then, forced to keep moving. He somehow managed to maintain pace with the men who escorted him, even though his neck craned to keep Violet in his sights for as long as possible. Violet didn’t breathe again until he was no longer near her.
Until his imprints were no longer visible or audible to her.
Then she struggled to unravel the cobwebs that infiltrated her mind, making it hard for her to think . . . to find the missing puzzle piece. How did he know anything at all about her?
“Violet,” Sara said, standing at the other end of the hallway, her startled expression making it clear she’d overheard what James Nua had said to her. “What were you wearing yesterday?”
Violet frowned. What did it matter what she’d been wearing? How could her wardrobe choice possibly be relevant? “Jeans and a hoodie,” Violet answered. And then it came to her . . . painfully, brutally clear. Her throat went dry as she looked down at the simple black zip-front jacket she wore today. When she spoke again, her voice was just the ghost of a breath. “I was wearing my White River High School hoodie.”
Violet glanced up at Rafe, who was waiting for her while Sara filled out some paperwork and chatted with the medical examiner. They’d all three arrived together in Sara’s black SUV within half an hour of leaving the jail.
Now that she was here, Violet could feel her skin itching. Already—even from out here in the lobby—the echoes of the dead were calling to her . . . reaching out to her . . . drawing her to them.
She had yet to determine whether any of those echoes matched the imprints carried by James Nua.
“This is the autopsy suite,” the technician assigned to escort them explained as they stopped in front of the large window. From her side of the plate glass, Violet looked at the stainless steel tables, sinks, and cabinets. Glaring overhead lights reflected off the polished silver surfaces, and she could practically taste the metallic tang from all that steel in one place. The oversized room was empty now, but she imagined that this was where bodies were brought to be examined for signs of foul play, to be scoured for clues and evidence. Calling it a suite—of any kind—felt odd, considering it was cold and sterile, outfitted with scales, hoses, lights, and state-of-the-art camera equipment. It was exactly as Violet thought it would look. Only the name seemed not to fit.
Barely acknowledging Violet or Rafe, the tech focused his attention solely on Sara as he gave her “the grand tour,” leading them to where the bodies were stored. Violet was too distracted trying to extricate one echo from the next to notice the slight, and Rafe didn’t seem to care.
He had fallen quiet on the ride over, and Violet was certain it had something to do with the object in his pocket. Rafe hadn’t let it go since Sara had given it to him back at the jail.
“So, what is that?” Violet finally whispered, curiosity getting the best of her.
Rafe’s gaze met hers, his eyebrows low, scrunched together.
“That thing . . . that Sara gave you. What is it?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he answered, teasing her like a little boy with a secret.
Violet hated secrets.
She wanted to pretend she didn’t care, to tell him it didn’t matter what it was. But she’d be lying. She did want to know . . . more than she cared to admit. “Just show me,” she demanded, trying not to appear too eager.
Rafe stopped walking, and Sara and the tech increased their distance by several steps. “You really wanna see it?”
Violet nodded, and this time she couldn’t keep the interest from her face.
“I could really torture you, you know?” He started to pull his hand from his pocket, his expression playful, and Violet caught a glimpse of something shiny—something gold. She leaned closer. And then he shoved his hand back inside again, hiding whatever it was from sight.
“Cut it out,” she complained, crossing her arms. “If you’re not gonna show me, just say so. You don’t have to be a jerk about it.” Instead of waiting for a response, Violet turned on her heel and hurried after Sara, leaving Rafe standing there.
When he reached her, he tugged at her arm. “Come on, I was just messing with you.”
But they were already there. And Violet barely heard his words as she stood rigidly outside the door that led to the storage lockers, the place where the bodies were kept.
Even from here, the echoes were strong, reverberating deeply and making her skin burn. She strained forward, not wanting to go closer but virtually unable to resist.
As the tech explained what they could expect to see, his gaze moved anxiously from Rafe to Violet . . . as if neither of them had ever seen a dead body before. He looked worried that one of them might be sick, that this was too much for kids so young. And it might have been for any other kids; maybe it was, even, for Rafe. She had no idea if he’d ever seen a body before. But it definitely wasn’t for Violet.
At last he opened the door and let them inside. The bodies were still safely entombed within the stainless steel refrigeration units, and Violet faced a wall of small, rectangular doors, three high and six wide. Eighteen spaces. Eighteen units where bodies could be held. She had no idea how many of the spaces were occupied. From inside several of them, she could already sense the murdered dead.
Unable to stop herself, Violet stepped forward, ignoring the surprised look on the tech’s face as she brushed past him, disregarding the warnings he’d given them about staying back. She tentatively pressed her hands flat against one of the closed doors. From where she stood, Violet could feel the heat trying to find its way out, as if there were a fire trapped within the steel vault. Impossible, she knew, since the unit was refrigerated, but even from out here, that door—and only that door—shimmered and rippled, the way heat did when it rose from the asphalt of a desert highway.
Heat was this person’s echo.
“That’s not the right one,” the tech explained, his voice thick with criticism.
For an endless moment there was silence, and then Violet answered, “I know. But I hope you’re looking into this person’s death too.” She stood back. She didn’t have to be told that the body of James Nua’s girlfriend wasn’t behind that particular door, or that it didn’t belong to one of his children. She knew because she’d already sensed their echoes . . . the moment she’d stepped into the room.
They were here. And Nua had killed them.
She stepped to her left and pressed her hand against another of the doors. “This is one of them,” she said as the strange choral whispers filled her ears, echoing within her own head. Then she moved again, brushing her fingertips over the silver door just to the right of it. The distinct tast
e of candied apples was there too. “And this one.”
And then she found the last one, that strange chill that she hadn’t been able to distinguish as real or imprint when she’d been in James’s presence. It was here too, clinging to the life he’d extinguished. She held her hand over yet another steel door and nodded, looking at Sara, and only Sara.
She had no idea who the slithering tattoos had belonged to. She had no doubt that killing came easily to a boy like James Nua.
Violet stepped back, this time reaching for Sara and finding the sleeve of her jacket. “I’m ready to go,” she said softly, reverently.
She could see Rafe too, a gold chain wrapped around his hand as his thumb feverishly stroked a simple cross. James Nua’s cross, Violet was certain of it. Sara had given Rafe one of Nua’s personal effects, hoping that he might be able to pick up on something about the young killer.
Once they were in the parking garage again, away from the cloying overload of echoes from the dead, Violet sighed, trying to find her way from beneath the suffocating burden of those who were unsettled. She climbed into the SUV and strapped her seat belt around her. She barely realized when Rafe climbed in beside her instead of sitting in the front seat with Sara. She felt robotic, like she was just going through the motions of everyday life.
At last she said the words that struggled to find their way to the surface. “I’m just so tired.” She let her head fall against Rafe’s shoulder, and his arm slipped around her. The musky scent of his skin was mingled with deodorant and leather. “I need to go home now.”
Intimacy
SHE WAS SLEEPING. HE FELT BAD WAKING HER, and he hoped not to, but sometimes it couldn’t be avoided. It was dark and he couldn’t bear to be alone.
Instead of the candle, he used a small penlight. The bulb was nearly microscopic and the light was dimmer than a candle’s flame, yet he found his way to her bedside without stumbling, even over his heavy clodhopper feet.
His face dropped, and his eyes moved downward as his cheeks burned with humiliation. Clodhopper. What a terrible word. What an awful thing to tell a child. He flashed the penlight’s glow over the top of his shoes, not wanting to look, but unable to do anything else. They weren’t so big, he thought. They weren’t awkward or unwieldy. They were just normal feet, he assured himself. Just average, ordinary feet. There was nothing special about them.
Yet, he was angry for the shame he felt . . . that he could still be embarrassed in that way, even in the privacy of his own grown-up thoughts. His mother wasn’t here, he reminded himself. She couldn’t hurt him . . . she could no longer humiliate him.
He pursed his lips, bitter now instead of afraid, and wondered if this was really the best time to see his girl again. None of this was her fault, after all, and facing her when he was in one of his moods wouldn’t do either of them any good. It never did.
But the idea of going back to bed, upstairs all by himself, made the acids in his stomach churn violently. He closed his eyes, trying to think clearly.
At last, he lifted the penlight and flicked it across the peaceful plains of her face, checking to see if she was still asleep. Her eyes were closed, her lids still, motionless. A dreamless sleep.
That’s usually how it was after they’d eaten one of his “special” meals. He felt better knowing they would sleep peacefully, that waking wasn’t an option.
He lifted a finger to his mouth to chew on the ragged edge of his fingernail, and then he remembered what a disgusting habit that was and dropped his hand away guiltily. He let the glow of the penlight move down over the blanket, finding the girl’s limp hand in the darkness, as he studied her long, lovely fingers.
He felt himself relax when he saw the color, the shimmering lilac he’d painted on her fingernails.
She had beautiful hands. Clean and pretty and soft.
He wanted to be near her. He didn’t want to be alone, not tonight.
He crept closer, hesitating as he reached the side of her bed, and he listened to the long, stretched out sounds of her sleep. Such a peaceful sound. Such a soothing sound.
The bedsprings creaked as the weight of the bed shifted. There was plenty of room for him, and he slid beneath the covers easily. He curled himself around her, finding her warmth and letting it surround him, lull him. Yet she never flinched, never moved.
She was ready for him, waiting for him.
Chapter 9
VIOLET STARED OUT HER BEDROOM WINDOW AT a black sky punctuated by a million effervescent white lights. She was trying to decide if it was too late to go to sleep or too early to be up. From where she stood, looking out, everything was so peaceful. Calm. Yet inside of her, a war waged, and sleep was overruled by torment.
She listened to the darkness, to the nighttime sounds that surrounded her: the furnace blowing air through the vents, the occasional creak of her house, a dog barking in the distance . . . too far away to be bothersome to anyone but those who were already awake. She knew it wasn’t any of those things that troubled her. She knew it was James Nua’s family—his girlfriend and their children, lying dead in the morgue, miles away—who kept her awake.
She’d tried to slow her breathing, to concentrate on finding that inner calm Dr. Lee had taught her to draw upon. But tonight, for some reason, inner calm was hard to come by, and Violet found herself struggling with the weight of the echoes cloaking her in a mantle of sorrow and despair. She hoped the bodies would be buried soon, hoped they would find peace at last.
Frustrated, Violet sighed and shoved away from the windowsill. She felt sluggish, as though she were wading through gelatin, gummy and sticky, while it sucked at her, dragging her down. Every movement felt slow and strained.
She wandered to her chest of drawers and pulled the top one open, peeling back a layer of clothing she’d used to conceal the pill bottle Dr. Lee had given her. She picked it up and jiggled it, letting the white capsules rattle together, like tiny graveyard bones picked bare.
Violet smiled; death was definitely on her mind tonight.
Everything would be so much easier if she’d just take one of the chalky pills. Maybe she’d sleep then. Maybe she’d feel some peace at last, even if it was only temporary.
The idea had definite merit.
But she sighed once more as she closed her eyes and let the bottle fall from her fingers. She just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t bring herself to even open the stupid bottle.
Yet here she was, sapped, a bone-deep kind of exhaustion that made her legs feel like rubber as she listlessly closed the drawer again.
She blinked, her eyes feeling gritty, abraded by her own eyelids as she shuffled back to her bed. She would keep trying. She refused to let the echoes consume her.
She collapsed heavily onto her bed and punched her pillow before rolling over. When the phone on her nightstand rang, she was reaching for it, checking the caller ID, and pressing Talk before the first ring had ended. It was one thing to have the home phone in her bedroom, a poor substitute for the cell phone that had been taken away from her; it was another to have it wake her parents in the middle of the night.
Violet glanced at the clock on her nightstand. 1:57. “What are you doing, calling so late?” She glared into the darkness, hating how easily her curiosity was pricked.
Rafe’s voice was low and gravelly on the other end. “How come you can’t just say hello? You give off kind of a hostile vibe, you know that?”
She curled her hand around her mouth, not wanting to wake her parents as she whispered frustratedly. “I wouldn’t if you’d call at a decent hour. You could have woken me.”
“Could have?” She could practically see the smug look on his face as he pointed out her poor word choice.
“Well . . . you know . . . I was just . . .” She faltered, and then shrugged as she gave up, sitting up and crossing her legs in front of her. She balanced her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her palm. “I was having a hard time sleeping, that’s all. But you didn’t know that
. I should have been asleep.”
The silence dragged between them as Violet leaned forward, waiting for him to get to the point. And when he did, his tone was somber. “Another girl’s been taken, V.” He paused, and his voice grew thick. “Sara thinks it was the collector.”
Violet’s head cleared instantaneously, her mind reeling with a hundred unanswered questions. “When? How? What makes her think it was him—”
Rafe seemed to know what she was going to ask even before she’d finished asking. “Nothing in particular. The girl was reported missing by her roommate, said she didn’t come home after work.”
“And that was strange?”
“Cops didn’t think so. They assumed she went out with friends. Figured she was a big girl and didn’t need to check in with her roommate. No one took it seriously at first.”
“So why does Sara—”
“Krystal,” Rafe stated flatly, cutting Violet off again.
Violet thought about that, and wondered what Krystal had told Sara exactly. “She knew?” was all she asked.
Rafe didn’t answer the question directly. “Sara made a call and told the detectives what she suspected. She talked them into checking out the lead, and apparently, when they went to the girl’s house, they found what Krystal said would be there. He’d dropped something . . . it was under her bed.”
Violet’s eyes widened, her heart pounding. “What was it?”
“It was a piece of jewelry. A ring. It was Antonia Cornett’s. It was reported missing from her belongings.”
Violet gasped, covering her mouth, not wanting to wake her parents. “Did Krystal say how she knew it would be there?”
There was another pause, and then Rafe answered her. “A girl spoke to her in her sleep. She thinks it might have been Antonia, but since it was just a voice, she can’t be sure.”
Violet’s blood turned to ice at the mention of the girl’s name, a ghost now, and she reached for her blanket, pulling it up to her chin. “She . . . she spoke to Krystal?” But Violet already knew the answer. Isn’t that what Krystal said, that the dead talked to her? “What’s her name, the missing girl? Do you know who she is?”
The Last Echo Page 10