“How would he get in there to write?” Morrison said. “The space is too small to even see what you’re doing.”
Petrosky shoved his knife into the space between the bricks and pried, heart hammering in his ears. It shifted, but nowhere near enough to free it. Shit. They were so fucking close. If only he had a sledgehammer.
Morrison stood and positioned one bull shoulder against the table and gripped the top with the other hand.
“What are you—” Petrosky began, but Morrison’s face was already reddening, his fingers white against the structure as he heaved his weight against the top row of bricks. Petrosky followed suit, shoving the side with his shoulder until the mass lifted, just enough for Petrosky to get his fingers around the brick and slide it out with a grating sound like an angry rattlesnake.
Morrison grunted and lowered the table.
“Looks like all those gym visits were good for something, Surfer Boy. We didn’t even need the dolly.”
Morrison sat beside Petrosky and pulled his phone from his pocket, wiping his brow on his sleeve.
“Who you calling now?”
“Flashlight, Boss.” He tapped a few buttons and handed Petrosky the phone, which now glowed from the top with a single beam of LED light.
Petrosky set it next to the opening to illuminate the inside and lay on the floor, his belly fat crushing his organs. The concrete dug into his cheek and cooled his fiery forehead. He scooted closer and pressed his face into the opening, the sound of his labored breath raspy in the tiny, hollow space. Above him, the metal rods Morrison described held up the tabletop bricks. Their guy had built himself a structure after all. And he’d left his card behind: a single sheet of paper, reflecting the brilliant white light.
Petrosky jerked a glove from his back pocket, lifted himself onto his elbow and pulled the paper out, disgusted by how much his hand was shaking. The poem was printed in the same block script as the others, the words the deep carmine color of dried blood.
Long has paled the sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Sweat dampened his neck. He handed the note to Morrison and pushed himself to his feet. “Call Graves and get some techs over here. There’s a reason this one was special. We need to figure out why.”
Saturday, November 21st
I love you Daddy, please …
You’ll like it. It won’t hurt if you just lie still.
I struggled against him, but he held my wrists tight, his face contorted in a grimace. He pushed closer. I cried out, yanking at my hands, throwing my knees up, gnashing my teeth when he lowered his head.
No, not again, no, no, no …
“Hannah, stop.”
The voice was not his. Daddy? No …
My eyes flew open. Someone was on top of me, pinning my wrists to the mattress. My breath came in ragged gasps.
“Stop.” His face swam into focus, nose inches from mine. Dominic.
He’ll help me get away. I was still trying to hit him. I stilled.
Dominic released my arms and climbed off the bed. His skin glistened under the waning moon that shone through the skylights as he headed for the bathroom.
Daddy.
Dominic.
I touched my face. It was wet, but my heart was slowing.
Stop. It didn’t work when Tammy said it, or when I tried to tell myself to knock it off. But somehow, it was different coming from Dominic.
He returned, stretching an arm out to me. “Come on.”
“What?” I took his offered hand and let him lead me across the room, around the stairs and into the weight room. A chill brushed my damp shoulders and I shivered. “What time is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. Put your shoes on.”
“I think they’re downstairs.”
“I put them here, where they go.” He gestured under the bench.
What the hell? I tied them quickly.
“Treadmill.”
I gaped at him.
“Trust me.”
I got on, sleepy muscles protesting.
He stood at the head of the machine and pushed the button. It hummed to life. “Start slow and tell me when you feel warmed up.”
I walked, faster, faster, shrugging and rolling the tension from my shoulders as the stiffness in my leg muscles eased.
“Ready?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
He punched the button. I ran, breasts flopping all over the place under my tank top. Thank goodness I didn’t have torpedo tits or I’d give myself a black eye. Maybe he liked torpedo tits. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want to touch me. But I couldn’t think about it because the track was flying beneath me.
Sweat poured down my back. I gasped for breath.
“Dom … I … maybe—”
“You can do it. Keep going.”
I can’t.
He stared hard at me. I stared back and ran until there was nothing else, nothing but the treadmill and his eyes.
The machine beeped twice and skidded to a halt. My heart thudded in my temples.
“Weights.”
“I’ve … never done … weights before,” I panted.
“Good time to learn.”
“In the … middle … of the night?”
He shrugged and held out a barbell. “You’re stronger than you think.”
Am I? He kept saying it, so maybe it was true. I took the weight and let him lead me through a set of curls. And another. My muscles shrieked and burned.
“Last ten.”
I pushed harder.
“Now squats.”
“Dominic, I can’t.”
“Stop saying that and do it.”
I did. One. Another. Ten. Twenty. My jelly legs threatened to buckle.
“Stop,” he said, and my muscles seemed to skid to a halt in response to his voice.
“How do you feel?”
“Like a bowl of pudding. And now I want pudding.” I rested my face on the glass and saw his eye twitch in the mirror. Saw the smear on the glass from my sweaty face. I peeled my forehead from the mirror and stood. “Sorry, I’ll get that later.”
He nodded and held out his hand.
What now? Much more and I’d pass out.
“Shower. Then bed. I doubt you’ll have more dreams.”
My dream. I had forgotten all about it.
Under the shower’s hot spray, my muscles melted. He stood behind me and soaped my hair. I leaned back against him.
“Turn around.” His hand slid over my breasts, down my rib cage, between my legs. Another hand teased my nipple, flicking until it was hard. A fire rose in me, an intense liquid heat that spread through my belly and settled between my legs, pulsing and wanting. So this was passion. Real passion, something I had never experienced, something I had been so worried was just a onetime fluke in Dominic’s office. Somewhere inside me, a dam was breaking. His fingers slid into me.
I moaned and turned to him. He lifted me by my thighs and pressed me against the shower wall. The spray from the dual showerheads caressed my hair and sent rivulets of water down my body, awakening the nerves beneath my skin. And then he was inside me, hard but so gentle, so warm, massaging me from the inside. He captured my mouth with his.
I felt. I felt him. I felt everything, every wave crashing over me, every beat of our hearts throbbing in time to my lower body. My insides convulsed, shuddered, released. I screamed his name, over and over again, unable to close my mouth, unable to think.
I didn’t feel the shower turn off. I only vaguely felt his hands wrapping a towel around my back, carrying me to the bedroom, laying me on the bed. The cotton felt like silk against my back as he climbed in next to me and stroked the tender nub between my legs. Even in the dark, the colors of the world seemed brighter, each muted shade of gray more vibrant than I remembered. Through the skylight, stars glimmered, dazzling but nearly unrecognizable as if every star I had seen before tonight was a different
, duller breed. My eyes prickled in spite of myself.
Dominic stopped touching me and shifted his weight to the side, moving his hand near my shoulder. “Are you crying?”
I wiped my eyes. “I worried that it was just luck or something. At the office.”
“Luck?”
“No one has ever made me … well, you know.”
He touched my cheek, trailed his fingers down over my neck to my chest and circled my nipple with his thumb. “They’ve been doing it wrong.” He climbed between my legs and slid into me. My hips rose automatically, seeking him.
He put his mouth to my ear and rotated his hips, slowly, sensuously. “Had I known you had this concern, I would have proven it to you before now. I assumed you wanted to get acclimated to your surroundings.” His breath was feathery against my earlobe.
He had been waiting for me to be ready. He cared. My feelings mattered. “And today? Now?”
He rose above me and smiled. “I thought it might help.”
“Oh, it did.” I really did feel okay with him. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it had to mean something.
“I’m glad the shower helped you feel better,” he said. “It didn’t do anything bad for me, either.”
“Well thank goodness for that.”
He thrust slowly, deeply, every inch of him exquisite, then faster, more urgently. I flung my legs wide and let him take me, clinging to him, pleasure surging through me until I was sure I would burst. When I could take no more, we fell asleep side by side, my leg hooked over his hip.
When Dominic awoke, he was alone in the bed. He sat, listening. Not a sound save for the gentle tapping of rain or sleet against the skylight, a wake-up call far preferable to the muffled crying and swift kick to the groin that had woken him last night. The skirt and blouse he had laid over the chair last night were gone. He climbed from the bed and padded into the weight room. Her face print had been wiped clean.
Curious.
A clatter arose downstairs. He followed the noise to the kitchen.
She was standing at the stove with her back to him wearing a pair of flannel pajamas and fluffy yellow socks. The dishwasher stood open, but empty.
Hannah turned as he approached, her cheeks flushed with the heat from the pan, a spiral notebook clutched against her chest. She slid the book onto the counter behind her back, eyes locked on his. “I was making a spinach and mushroom omelet for you. Looks like you’re up too early for breakfast in bed.”
“Looks like I’m awake too early to pick up the clothing from last night as well.”
Alarm flashed across her features. “Sorry I—I like things clean.” She looked down as if that were something to be ashamed of—as if the world wouldn’t be a better place if everyone picked up their shit.
More curious.
“I do too,” he said simply.
She grabbed a spatula, cut the omelet in the pan and slid two almost symmetrical halves onto a pair of plates, then put the pan in the sink.
In the dining room the table was already set with orange juice, coffee and sliced melon.
Yes, he could get used to this. Perhaps he’d let her stay forever.
Monday, November 23rd
It’s quiet here.
An hour from Petrosky’s usual domain, far from the brick and mortar of the city, the howling wind lashed against fields of dead grass and grain. While nearby areas were covered with higher-end condos and lakefront housing developments, this town just outside Lapeer had peaked and declined well before his killer had made the trek out here.
The run-down barn was tucked in the back corner of an abandoned wheat field, at the end of a gravel drive. To his right he could make out a trailer park in the distance, though it was too far for anyone to have heard much.
I’ll question them anyway.
In the middle of a pasture on his other side, an enormous metal chicken loomed, the only thing around that appeared to be in good repair, despite deposits of graying snow on its beak. Fucking country folk. Maybe his killer had a sense of humor.
The barn itself was missing boards, like many of the other barns in the area. Through holes in the ceiling, frosty sunlight speckled the straw-covered floor. The air was redolent with damp hay and the iron scent of freshly spilled blood.
The girl was laid out on a wooden table at the back of the barn. Like the other girls, her wrists and ankles were secured by leather restraints which had been fastened to the table legs. Her stomach had been sliced neatly in half, like two sections of a broken heart. The pieces lay on top of her chest, the remnants of her last meal teeming with ants. Jumbled corkscrews of intestine dangled from her belly down onto the sawdust and what might have been the top of an ant’s nest below the table—they’d probably been hibernating when they were disturbed by the dripping of warm bodily fluids. The techs bustled around the perimeter of the room, either done with the table or simply avoiding the mess.
“The location is different,” Petrosky said finally. “This rural thing isn’t his style.”
Morrison’s face was green. Rookies. You never knew when they were going to lose their cool, or their lunch. Here it was probably the bugs, the way Morrison was staring at them.
“Well … yeah, Boss, the location is different, but the building is just as dilapidated. And the place itself probably has the same number of people within a two mile radius as those old housing projects. The modus operandi is consistent with the first two as well.”
“Modus what?”
“It’s Latin. It means—”
“I don’t give a fuck what it means, Surfer Boy. And breathe through your mouth before you throw up.”
A winter bird, blue and orange, squalled and fluttered out through a gap in the ceiling above. Petrosky watched the bird disappear into the frigid sky.
“Maybe our killer ran out of places in the city,” Morrison said.
Or he’s escalating, broadening his territory. “They know who the girl is?”
Morrison looked at his notes. “Working girl, same deal. Bianca Everette. Her driver’s license was under the table. Not bothering to hide their identities, is he?”
It was a dare, a tease. “This guy’s fucking with us,” Petrosky said.
“We’ve got something over here.” A tiny wisp of a woman with a tattoo behind her ear and short-cropped platinum blond hair waved a flashlight from the front corner of the barn.
Petrosky headed her way, leaving Morrison by the body.
“What’ve you got?”
She pointed near the corner where a splintered piece of plywood leaned against the wall. “Behind it. I was dusting above the board and touched it to secure my tape, and—”
Petrosky squinted in the dim light. “Show me.”
She pinched a corner of the board and lifted it away from the wall. He peered into the space, past threads of cobweb strung with sawdust. There were marks there, uniform, deliberate.
“Need a bigger light over here!”
The crime tech slid the plywood out of the way.
Morrison shone a thick flashlight beam onto the words, dark brown now, hard to read against the grime. With a blood tracking LED, they’d light up like Christmas.
Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.
A tech behind him snapped a picture.
“What do you have?” Graves ducked into the barn, boards squeaking under his shoes.
“Poem, in blood, like the others. He’s trying to tell us something, but I just can’t—”
“ID?”
“Bianca Everette.”
“Where’s she from?”
“Close to here according to her license.”
Graves whipped out his phone, tapped the screen and put it to his ear. “Hernandez? I need you to do a background on a Bianca Everette. Look at newspaper ads in the Lapeer area and anywhere nearby. And I need someone to pull all escort services in a fifty mile radius. Have so
mething for me when I get back.” He slid his phone back into his pocket.
Petrosky’s muscles vibrated with tension. “What the hell was that about?”
“They’re already in front of a computer, Petrosky. Tricky guys. Can crack into anything to get what we need in ten minutes.”
“So can my guy, Graves.” He gestured to Morrison. Morrison straightened, jaw set.
“It’s under control, Petrosky.”
Rage burned in Petrosky’s chest. “This is bullshit.”
Graves glowered at him. “If you’re so anxious to make yourself useful, go to her house. Find her next of kin. Go talk to her mother. Get us something we can use this time.”
Petrosky sucked down three cigarettes in the six miles to the Everette house. He tossed the last butt into a swath of pine trees in the front yard. The house was tiny, maybe eight hundred square feet, with two windows—the one on the left probably for the living room, and the one on the right belonging to a single bedroom, as evidenced by a pillow and a stuffed bear smashed against the inner screen. From the front porch, Petrosky could have reached out and touched either one.
Morrison stood behind him, as irritatingly calm as he’d been on the drive over. Apparently, year-round sunshine made you care less about FBI shitheads. Petrosky breathed through his nose like a bull and fantasized about goring Graves, or at least breaking his jaw. It almost made him forget that he was there to give a mother news that would fuck up her life irreparably. Fast and direct. That was the best way to do it. Coddling wouldn’t make a kid any less dead. Still, he felt like a truck was sitting on his chest. Dammit.
He knocked.
The front door opened to reveal a woman with papery thin eyelids and a strawberry bun streaked with white. A boy of about four sat on her hip, his thumb in his mouth, his shirt dirty with the remains of breakfast. The wind huffed freezing air at them through the open doorway and the kid buried his face in her neck.
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