Her Final Words

by Brianna Labuskes

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  LUCY THORNE

  Saturday, 5:45 p.m.

  The dogs were quiet. The people, too. This was a task none of them wanted.

  They marched, silent soldiers, through the woods, boots crushing twigs and leaves beneath their feet. The air had turned sharply cold and damp, the sun from that morning just a memory, the wind slipping through the trees made all the more vicious with annoyance at the obstacles in its way.

  Lucy huddled deeper into her thick jacket, as brambles caught at the sleeves. A dog’s bark cut through the stillness of the forest and then was swallowed up almost immediately. She paused, but nothing followed. She kept walking, eyes on the ground.

  She wasn’t sure how much she could do without a hound or the technology carried by the agents Vaughn had sent. But there was something about walking the earth, understanding the way it curved and sloped, getting a feel for its natural patterns, and giving in to the pull of one direction over the other.

  If she’d been carrying a body through these woods, where would the earth take her? Down toward the stream? Where Noah had been found. Or up, away from the path, as the ground started climbing toward an eventual summit?

  The bigger question, the one that she could read on some of the men’s faces, was, Were there any bodies actually to be found?

  Lucy didn’t know the answer to that. But she did know that her boots carried her toward the water, always toward the water.

  The babble of it was mockingly gentle, no longer swollen from the storm the morning before. They had passed the spot where Noah’s body had been stashed away between the rocks, had continued on, deeper, farther away from civilization. Where would it be safe?

  Nothing had pinged on the radars yet; the dogs hadn’t picked up any leads, either. It had been two hours since they’d crossed the tree line.

  On the drive out, they’d passed Hicks’s truck parked on the side of the highway, far enough away that Lucy couldn’t say anything about it, close enough that it couldn’t be coincidence that he was there. He’d been in the driver’s seat, slouched down a bit, but not trying to hide, his cowboy hat tipped low so that she got just an impression of him rather than actually seeing his face.

  Zoey had made a small sound, distress or something close to it, as they’d passed him. Neither of them had mentioned it, though.

  Lucy would have to talk to him. She should have, really, before she’d called in the search team, should have confirmed her suspicions that there might be more victims. It hadn’t felt necessary, though, when she’d replayed each interaction with Hicks. The curled fists, the bee in your bonnet comment, the crusade.

  He suspected there were others, as well.

  Her foot caught on a root and she stumbled, almost going down to her knee, but catching herself in time. The slick mud of the riverbed gave beneath her weight, anyway. She lost all traction and just managed to keep upright as her boots landed heavy in the shallow edges of the water.

  “You okay?” the agent who’d been beside her called over to her.

  She took stock. Maybe embarrassed, but uninjured. “I’m good.”

  He flashed her a thumbs-up and then continued along his prescribed gridlines, the device in his hands giving off low, steady beeps.

  Lucy was about to haul herself back up the banks when she paused. The ground here was soft, almost claylike instead of the frozen soil they’d been walking on since they’d entered the woods. Easier to bury someone in.

  The icy water lapped at her boots, but they were sturdy and could last a bit without her having to worry about frostbite.

  And so she walked. This time her eyes on the sides, where roots reached like gnarled fingers toward the creek, tangling into each other before sinking out of sight. Animals burrowed into the mud, leaving only little prints and the hint of darkness behind them.

  A bird took flight above her, the rustle of wings sliding down Lucy’s spine like a warning. She looked up, but in the shadows of the cloudy afternoon, she couldn’t spot much besides a flurry of movement against the dense trees.

  When Lucy turned her attention back to the slick banks, she saw it. If not for the storms the day before, she might have missed it. But water had surged and then retreated, taking with it enough to reveal fingers that bent in the wrong direction.

  Her tongue went clumsy in her own mouth, saliva pooling against it. She took a step closer.

  And then, in the distance, the dogs started barking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  LUCY THORNE

  Saturday, 7:15 p.m.

  There were three more bodies buried in the quiet patch of woods, including the girl whose fingers Lucy had seen in the riverbank.

  The agents uncovered them, their heads, their shoulders, their arms—an obscene parody of birth.

  It was hard to tell just how long they’d been resting there. Longer than Noah. Far longer. Years, probably. The state of decomp varied between the three, the girl in the riverbank clearly the newest addition.

  The flesh on the oldest was but a memory. From the length of the bones, Lucy would say the person had been on the cusp of adulthood, but they would have to wait for a forensic artist for any of the other details. She ran the stats in her head.

  Without a coffin, it took a normal-size human eight to twelve years to decompose down to the skeleton. A hollow chill settled into her own bones as she scanned the forest, the dense, thick trees that protected far more secrets than they revealed. If she had to guess, there were more bodies to be found.

  While the girl in the riverbank couldn’t have been there for more than a year or so, the third body was clearly in between the two. Partial decomp. Enough left to show just how young the victim had been. Five years old. Six, maybe.

  Eliza would have been a child when the first body was put there.

  Could they have just stumbled on a separate killer’s burial ground? Lucy had been an agent long enough to know that weird things happened, as did inexplicable coincidences that defied reason.

  They did exist. They screwed with logic and investigations on the regular. And the brain so loved patterns that sometimes it couldn’t resist helpfully trying to tie everything together.

  But this? This seemed a stretch even accounting for the “Shit Happens” motto that every seasoned cop knew to be true.

  There was too much degradation to the bodies to get a good feel for if the killing style matched up with Noah’s. But for now, the location was enough to make Lucy’s doubts about Eliza working alone solidify into real suspicion.

  Was Eliza a copycat? A protégé? An unwilling accomplice? Or perhaps a willing one? Maybe she was just covering for someone else? Whatever the case, there was certainly another player involved here.

  The image of Hicks in his truck, slunk low in the seat watching over this little patch of woods, flashed across the back of her eyes. He knew more than he’d ever let on to Lucy. But did that mean he was running this game? Had he groomed Eliza into killing Noah? Had she then broken when she’d actually gone through with it?

  Something about that scenario sat strangely, the puzzle piece all weird angles that didn’t fit into what she’d learned in the past few days.

  “Everything said I should roll left,” Hicks had said about gut instinct.

  “You rolled right.”

  Maybe Hicks was the obvious suspect here. He’d lied and that couldn’t be discounted. Even Zoey had turned on him once she’d realized Molly had been the missing girl they were talking about. But despite the fact that everything was telling Lucy to roll left, something was holding her back.

  Hicks had secrets. But burying these bodies in the woods, well, she didn’t think that was one of them.

  Maybe at the end of this that would leave her with the equivalent of two tons of angry bull crashing into her. For now, though, it was enough to get her to turn away from the shallow grave to search out Zoey.

  The deputy stood back, far from the action. Her curls had finall
y lost some of their bounce with the hint of rain that hung in the air, her face pale, almost as bloodless as Eliza’s had been. Despite her tiny stature, she hadn’t looked small to Lucy before. Now, in the shadows of towering trees, she did.

  Crossing over to her, Lucy then bumped Zoey’s shoulder so they stood side by side to watch the careful excavation.

  “I’m a shit cop,” Zoey finally muttered after the silence had stretched for long minutes.

  Lucy wrinkled her nose. “Nah.”

  “I’m about three seconds from hurling on your boots.” Zoey slid her a look. “You might reconsider when you have to clean my lunch off them.”

  “I think if you weren’t three seconds from hurling, that would make you a shit human.” Lucy shrugged. “Can’t be a good cop if you’re a shit human.”

  “You think that?”

  Hicks. That’s what was unspoken in the question. “Yeah.”

  Lucy could all but see the wheels turn. Did that mean Lucy thought Hicks was a shit cop? Or that he wasn’t involved?

  Whatever Zoey landed on, at least it had pulled her out of the spiral she’d been headed down. Lucy didn’t think about the fact that she wasn’t sure which one she’d meant, either.

  “I take it you don’t recognize them?” Lucy asked. It was not ideal that Zoey had been in town for only six months.

  “Sorry.”

  “No rumors? Nothing like that?” Lucy pushed, not really expecting anything.

  Zoey blew out an exaggerated breath. “I think it’s time you met Peggy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  ELIZA COOK

  One week earlier

  When Eliza had been ten years old, a woman had burst into the church right in the middle of the service. Viewed through the prism of childhood, the woman had been ancient, a witch from the books public school kids read.

  She’d stumbled down the aisle, then had fallen to her knees before the cross that hung behind Uncle Josiah. Once kneeling, she’d proclaimed, God is dead, and put a gun in her mouth.

  Aunt Rachel had thrown herself over Eliza then, so that she wouldn’t see, but Rachel hadn’t been able to block out the sound.

  Eliza still heard it every time she walked into the little church. The sharp crack, the wet splatter, the screams of those who hadn’t been as quick as Rachel. The faint echoes of them stuck around no matter how many times Eliza had tried to exorcise them.

  Her mind worked like that sometimes, clinging to things she so desperately wished it would let go.

  Aunt Rachel and Uncle Josiah had sat at the foot of her bed that night, holding hands, their faces set in that certain look they got when they were serious or disappointed or both.

  At that point she’d been with them long enough that sometimes she had slipped and called Rachel Mom. Eliza thought she might have even done so that day in the church, when Rachel’s body had landed against hers, keeping her still against the hard, wooden pew.

  She never slipped and called Josiah Dad.

  It was funny that she could remember exactly how they’d watched her that night yet not what they’d said. She hadn’t realized at the time, but they’d probably been terrified she was going to run off to Hicks’s place, that somehow hearing the blasphemy alone would unravel years of indoctrination.

  She’d been ten, though. And all she’d wanted was her stuffed bear and to not see the scary witch lady every time she’d closed her eyes.

  Now, Eliza sat in the same pew she’d been in all those years ago, heard those echoes, and breathed in the tangled scent of gunpowder and copper blood.

  There was someone watching her from the doorway.

  Eliza clutched the envelope in her hands until it crumpled beneath the unyielding pressure, but the weight of those eyes didn’t send her fleeing. If God was dead, did she really have anything to fear?

  She didn’t remember Cora. There were flashes. White-blonde hair, like Eliza’s. A melodic voice that sang hymns as lullabies. Thin but warm arms. Laughter. Eliza thought there might have been a lot of that, despite the fact that she knew times had been hard for Cora in those years right after Eliza’s birth.

  Josiah and Rachel spoke of Cora often, as if they’d read a book on foster parenting and were following the advice with excruciating care. But when they spoke of her, they didn’t talk about the laughter. They spoke about how she’d been such a good martyr for their cause.

  After all, in the midst of a war, it wasn’t the people who mattered but the beliefs.

  God is dead, the woman had said and then sunk to her knees in front of a cross to kill herself in a house of God. What did that say about any of them?

  Were they bound to come back? Even with shattered faith, something in the woman had sought out a place of worship. Was that their inevitable fate? To always return?

  Eliza had later learned the woman wasn’t actually old. She’d just turned fifty the week before and had left the Church when she’d been eighteen.

  In the woman’s house, the police had found a clipped article laid out on an otherwise completely bare table.

  It had been of Josiah, at some gathering at the state capitol, a coming together of lawmakers and religious leaders. He’d been smiling that smile of his, his arm around a state senator.

  God is dead, the woman had said before killing herself beneath the eyes of God.

  Eliza thought that if her own side of the war had martyrs, that woman might be one of them.

  She laid the envelope on the pew and then stood and walked out of the church.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  LUCY THORNE

  Saturday, 8:45 p.m.

  “You found them.”

  It was the first thing that Peggy Anderson said to Lucy and Zoey when she saw them waiting outside her trailer. Her tiny terrier yipped at their heels while Peggy unlocked the door and led the way inside.

  “‘Them’?” Lucy asked, her eyes adjusting to the dim interior. It was late, far later than they should be interviewing anyone. By the time they’d driven out of the forest, past Hicks’s truck that was still parked on the side of the road, it had been long past dusk. Getting all the way to the trailer park where Peggy lived put them comfortably into the evening hours.

  Peggy shot her a look at the question, but then simply gestured toward two of the overstuffed floral chairs.

  “Sit,” she directed as she settled herself into the leather recliner across from them. She slipped a pair of bright neon-green reading glasses on, before almost immediately pushing them up on her head so she could level a hard stare at Lucy. “Talk.”

  When Lucy began with introductions, Peggy interrupted. “I know who you are.”

  As everyone did.

  “Right.” Lucy shifted to the edge of the seat so she wasn’t being eaten alive by fabric and stuffing. “What did you mean by ‘You found them’?”

  “What it means is, I’m going to get myself in trouble one of these days,” Peggy muttered, and leaned down to scoop the yapping terrier into her lap. He circled, lay down, and then watched them with dark, beady eyes. “You found more victims.”

  There wasn’t an ounce of surprise in Peggy’s voice as she said it, a statement not a question. So maybe Lucy didn’t need to look too far for her second player. Peggy could fit the bill. “How do you know there were more?”

  “Because I’ve got eyes, don’t I?” Peggy asked, and then slipped her glasses back on as she rummaged in the basket next to her chair. After a few seconds, she pulled out a slim pale blue folder and tossed it onto the table in front of Lucy. “I’m guessing one of them was Alessandra Shaw.”

  Beside her, Zoey started and tried to cover it with a cough that neither Lucy—nor Peggy it seemed—bought.

  The name, that name. Alessandra Shaw. It settled in Lucy’s consciousness like an answer that she hadn’t known she’d desperately been seeking. She rubbed at her sternum, the physical weight of the certainty sitting against her chest.

  Had that been the girl in the riverbank?
Fingers clawing against the red-tinted mud. Pretty, long black hair that hadn’t been touched by time or greedy insects. Was that Alessandra?

  Lucy hesitated for a heartbeat longer than she would ever admit to and then reached for the file.

  Across the top of the page in scribbled writing was a disappearance date from about a year ago.

  “She went missing?”

  Peggy nodded, both her and the dog’s eyes locked on Lucy’s face. “Sweet girl. Church.”

  It was becoming such a common descriptor that it no longer stood out to Lucy. That seemed to be a category unto itself around here, and Peggy said it the same way Hicks did. Derisively, but with a hint of reverence, as well. Hate and love being two sides of one coin. Lucy wondered if Peggy had been raised in the Church. Certainly, she’d left it if she had.

  “Friends with Eliza Cook,” Peggy said evenly.

  Lucy didn’t flinch, but she looked up. Friends with Eliza Cook meant friends with Molly Thomas. Probably.

  Alessandra Shaw, her brain supplied, an overeager pupil trying to please, knowing something she didn’t. “Go on.”

  Peggy’s brows twitched up, but she let the topic of Eliza drop. “Parents walked into their kitchen one morning and found a note.”

  A note. Like Molly’s? “Let me guess. It said she was running away.”

  “Got it in one.” Peggy touched her nose, before letting her hand drop back down to rest on the terrier’s head. “She’d been going with some boy the parents hadn’t approved of. Said she was moving away with him.”

  It was achingly familiar to Molly’s story, but it was achingly familiar to thousands of teenage girls’ stories. It’s why it was so effective.

  Lucy tapped the handwritten message across the top of the page. “You say ‘date of disappearance’ here.”

  The question about how she knew anything about this was implicit, and Peggy was sharp enough not to need further explanation. “Did Zoey here tell you who I was?”

  A social worker is what Zoey had explained on the drive out to the trailer. Zoey shifted in her seat now, a reminder that she was there at all. Lucy had almost forgotten.