Her Final Words

by Brianna Labuskes

  The rest of the names were from the Church, the vast majority of them infants. It was something like out of the old West, where pregnancy and labor were a very real, fatal threat. And these were only the actual deaths. Lucy couldn’t imagine how many women probably had suffered through major complications.

  On a sudden stroke of inspiration, Lucy turned to dig in her bag for the files for the “missing” kids Peggy had sent her, handing them over to Zoey as well so they could add the names to the board.

  When they’d finished grouping them into sections, Lucy stepped back, not even sure of what she was trying to find.

  She had listed the babies together, off to the side. As sad as that story was, she doubted those particular deaths had anything to do with her current case.

  Removing them from the overarching picture left only a handful of older kids from Jackson’s list. The number was slightly higher than the non-Church folks, but not by much. Certainly nothing to suggest Jackson was actively covering up some kind of systematic abuse and murder.

  And the deaths of the Church kids were strikingly similar to the Knox Hollow ones. Accidents, tragedies.

  One of the few red flags was the girl Hicks had mentioned back in the bar that first day. A teenager who had vomited to the point of rupturing her esophagus. The COD details in the column next to her name simply mentioned food poisoning. Lucy wondered how many of the others were misleading because the context had been left out.

  The other notable difference was the deaths from cancer and other such illnesses. There were none from the Church. Even if they hadn’t gotten a diagnosis while they were alive, that still should have shown up in a postmortem autopsy.

  Lucy stepped up to the board and circled the four who were from Knox Hollow but not the Church, and then glanced down at her phone once more as if there were information she’d been missing. It was as bare as the first time she’d looked at it.

  She turned to Zoey. “Do you know anything about these deaths?”

  Zoey’s eyes slid over the names, and she tugged at her stubby ponytail. “Only the last one. Marsha Redburn.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Her father’s the principal of the public school, and her mother works at the diner in town,” Zoey said. “They have three kids. She was the middle one.”

  “What happened?”

  Zoey grimaced a little. “The details are vague. I had just gotten to town at that point. But I know they drove her into Spokane a few times, and even flew down to California to visit a special doctor.”

  The information settled into the puzzle, all smooth edges, nudging right up against the names from the folders Peggy had given her.

  A motive would be nice.

  There was something here, but was that what it was? The motive? And for whom? Their serial killer or Eliza?

  The thought slipped away, elusive, as if she could catch it from only the corner of her eye. When she tried to look at it dead on, it disintegrated.

  Lucy felt Zoey’s attention on her, and she realized she’d missed a question. She shook her head, just slightly. “Sorry, my brain is slow this morning.”

  Zoey groaned in sympathy. “Tell me about it.”

  “You guys don’t happen to have coffee here, do you?” Lucy made a point to glance around. There had been a stained pot out by the reception desk, but it looked like it hadn’t been used in years. “I wasn’t able to grab any at the B and B.”

  “Oh man, you poor thing.” Zoey was pushing to her feet with a sympathetic smile. “Our stuff is crap. We don’t even bother anymore, what with the coffeehouse only a block over, which”—she glanced at the clock on the wall—“is blessedly open now. Let me go grab us some.”

  Lucy clasped her hands in front of her chest in exaggerated gratitude. “I will literally name my firstborn after you.”

  Laughing, Zoey headed for the door. “Yes, that is my normal charge for a coffee run.”

  Even after Lucy was sure Zoey was actually gone, she waited another minute, and then another one. When Zoey didn’t come rushing back in with an excuse of a forgotten wallet or something equally bland, Lucy felt safe enough. She glanced at the clock, running the calculations even as she crossed quickly around to Zoey’s side of the desk. If there wasn’t a line at the coffeehouse, Lucy might have six, seven minutes, depending on how fast Zoey walked.

  Her intention in letting Zoey go get the coffee hadn’t been to snoop, but when the opportunity presented itself . . .

  Zoey’s office proved easy. One drawer was filled with candy, the other with paperwork for traffic stops over the past three months. There was a picture of Zoey and another woman who looked startlingly like her on the desk, and that was the only obvious personal item Lucy could find.

  Lucy hesitated, considering if she could risk it. Her feet were headed toward Hicks’s office almost before she’d even made the conscious decision. The door was open, the lights off.

  His desk proved much messier than Zoey’s, but Lucy dismissed the clutter with a quick glance. None of it seemed relevant. She sat in his chair and began opening drawers. The top four were some combination of junk and keys and miscellaneous cell phones, none of which turned on.

  The bottom two, though—that’s where it got interesting. Old files were neatly ordered alphabetically by name. Lucy had opened the P–Z side, and she immediately shut that, swiveling over to the A–O, her fingers flying over the tabs, searching, searching, searching . . .

  Bingo.

  MARTINEZ, KATE.

  “Find what you’re looking for?” a rough voice asked from the doorway.

  Lucy flushed hot as she looked up into Hicks’s eyes.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  MOLLY THOMAS

  One day earlier

  Molly had thought the footsteps day would have been the worst.

  Weeks, months, years, she didn’t know how long she’d been in the bunker, but that had been the worst day until now.

  Because that was when the people had come. They’d walked over the hatch, a crowd of them, dozens maybe. Everyone in the Church? Everyone in Knox Hollow?

  She couldn’t hear them, not really, the bunker and the soil doing their jobs. But the door at the top, the most vulnerable part of her prison, had shivered against its hinges, signaling the constant flow of footsteps above her head.

  Molly had screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. She’d pounded on the walls until something had snapped in her hand, sending a sharp, white shock through her body. Holding her broken finger close to her chest, she’d used that agony to amplify her voice. Surely the pure pain in it would seep into the ground above her, its tendrils coiling around ankles, crawling up legs, a thick, insisting vine that refused to let them continue on until they looked down.

  Look down. Look down. Look down.

  The words had lost meaning, and still she’d screamed them, the plea sinking into concrete, dying there. It had gone on for so long, the torture worse than anything she could comprehend.

  Her mind had unraveled into strings that tangled into knots that pulled tighter and tighter and tighter until everything went quiet. Dark, because that was her reality. Dark, always. Dark with footsteps above and people, people, people who walked and talked and lived as if she wasn’t below them screaming, Look down.

  When her mind had rejoined her body, she’d been crumpled on the floor, her face wet with tears, her hand throbbing in time with her heartbeat, swollen and tender to the touch.

  It had been quiet, but not the kind that had taken her away to another place in her head.

  No, it had been quiet because the footsteps had been gone.

  No one had looked down.

  That day had shattered a piece of her she hadn’t known was still intact.

  But this day might be the worst day. She’d been drugged. In the water probably, or one of the protein bars. Molly had been in her bunker, and then when she’d blinked, she was waking up on an old, thin mattress with springs digging i
nto her ribs.

  Without moving, in case someone was there with her, Molly cataloged the aches in her body. They were all familiar to her—her hand that hadn’t healed right, her dry throat, the dull pang in her stomach from eating anything. Dread chased relief, though—overtook it and pounced, teeth sinking into a vulnerable neck.

  She’d been moved.

  Molly didn’t think she knew much in this world anymore, but she knew that wasn’t a good sign.

  She’d thought the footsteps day would be the worst, but at least she’d been in the darkness that had become her constant, her reality, her . . . safety. Now she was in the light, and somehow she knew that was far more dangerous.

  This was the worst day because it would probably be her last.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  LUCY THORNE

  Sunday, 7:15 a.m.

  Lucy sat back slowly, nudging the bottom drawer closed as she did. There was still hope that Hicks might not realize she’d found anything.

  His eyes tracked her movements, but his face was impassive.

  She looked over his shoulder, but Zoey still wasn’t back. Would the woman help Lucy if she were?

  “Sorry.” Lucy held her hands up, all contrition and appeasement. “Zoey thought you might have started a file on Molly Thomas. You know, before . . .”

  Before we found out you were lying about your connection to the self-confessed killer.

  That part went left unsaid.

  Hicks stepped into the office, and Lucy used the opportunity to get to her feet. A better tactical position. As he crossed the small space, she moved in tandem, and they orbited an invisible point in the center, something like relief unspooling within her as she realized he wouldn’t try to trap her there.

  He kept his eyes on her even as he reached down to open the drawer opposite the one she’d been rifling through. Hicks barely had to glance down before pulling out the file and tossing it to the far side of the desk, so she wouldn’t have to get close to him.

  “It’s alphabetical,” he murmured, as she took three quick steps forward to grab it. He waved to the drawers. “My system.”

  If that was the worst that he was going to dole out, she’d be grateful. Sarcasm she could handle. Actual physical force could get messy.

  “Thanks,” she said, giving him a cheery smile just as Zoey breezed back in with two cups of coffee.

  “Boss,” Zoey called out. “Didn’t realize you’d be here.”

  Hicks’s eyes didn’t leave Lucy’s face. She tried to mirror the blankness he seemed to be able to deploy at will. “Had some work to catch up on.”

  Zoey peeked over Lucy’s shoulder at the file, and there was a new tension in her voice once she realized which one it was. “Molly.”

  Lucy glanced down for lack of something better to do. Molly. She hadn’t been in the woods, hadn’t been a body they’d pulled from the earth. Was she still alive?

  “Don’t let me keep you,” Hicks said. It was a polite nudge that Lucy found interesting. She would have thought he’d try to get them to spill information on the case. That’s what she would have done in his situation. But here he was, moving them along.

  Zoey glanced between them. “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “Come on.” Lucy shifted. Once she turned, heading back to Zoey’s office, she realized how silly her fear had been. Hicks was a sheriff. He wasn’t going to assault her in his office. It might not even be that strange that he had Kate Martinez’s file, considering she died after she worked at his family’s ranch.

  But even as Lucy told herself all that while leading the way back to Zoey’s office, she couldn’t stop replaying the way he’d smiled at the Laundromat the night before when she’d told him she’d find his secrets. Couldn’t help but wonder if the clothes in the dryers had even been his or if he’d just been waiting for her to stumble upon him.

  Couldn’t drown out the thought that she’d found that file way too easily.

  When they got back to Zoey’s office, Lucy gratefully took the coffee, feeling a slight quiver of shame from having searched the deputy’s desk while she’d been gone. “I know it was only a brief conversation with Molly, but did you get the sense that she was . . .”

  “Nervous?” Zoey guessed. “Heck yeah. She about peed her pants.”

  “No.” Lucy shook her head. “Guilty.”

  “Oh.” Zoey took a careful sip of her coffee. “A little, I guess? Like a kid, you know? Like she was doing something she knew she shouldn’t be doing.”

  “Tattling.”

  “Exactly.” Zoey snapped her fingers and pointed. “On who, though?”

  “Hicks?”

  Zoey shrugged. “I guess.”

  Lucy glanced between the file and the whiteboard, thinking about the initials carved into the wooden fence post. What if the three girls had come up with some kind of scheme? Eliza, Molly, and Alessandra. They’d been close, probably.

  What if something had gone wrong, and Alessandra had died. And then Molly had seen it headed south once again and tried to get help. Eliza had found out and snapped, killing Molly, as well.

  “Did anyone see you?” Lucy asked. “Talking with Molly?”

  “I don’t . . .” Zoey tipped her head. “She’d been watching me in the coffee shop but didn’t talk to me until we were both outside in the alleyway.”

  “Was there anyone in the shop? Any Church people?” Lucy asked, vaguely noting how she’d already fallen into giving them their own designation.

  “Yeah, I think. I think,” Zoey said, her voice starting out unsure but getting stronger. “But I don’t . . . maybe.”

  “Okay, what about right afterward?” Lucy didn’t know why she was hounding this point, only that something about that moment felt important. Molly had disappeared only a few days after she’d tried to go to law enforcement. The dots weren’t hard to connect.

  “Um, I walked to the sheriff’s office,” Zoey said. “I can’t—”

  She stopped, her eyes flying to Lucy’s. Then she exhaled. “Darcy Dawson.”

  “What?”

  Zoey visibly swallowed. “I . . . I can’t believe I forgot that. I ran into Darcy on the sidewalk outside.” She jerked her head toward the left. “We didn’t stop to talk, but now that I think about it, she might have been in the coffee shop.”

  “Did she see you talking to Molly?”

  “Maybe? I don’t know.” Zoey stared at her, almost helpless.

  Lucy reined in her own galloping speculations and dropped down into her seat.

  “So what’s next?” Zoey asked.

  Connections. Which ones were important?

  “I’m tired of feeling like I’m trying to solve two different cases,” Lucy said, looking back to the board. “Let’s figure out where everything connects.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  LUCY THORNE

  Sunday, 10:00 a.m.

  The three girls. They were at the heart of this.

  Eliza Cook. Molly Thomas. Alessandra Shaw.

  Lucy tossed the folder about Molly onto Zoey’s desk. In the past few hours, they’d been going over their interviews from the case, the new notes that Vaughn had sent about the bodies, and doing a lot of staring at the whiteboard without actually getting anywhere.

  “I think you should go out to the Shaws’ place,” Lucy said, breaking Zoey’s concentration. The woman looked up, blinked a couple of times like she was somewhere else, and then sat back in her chair.

  “By myself?”

  “Do you have an officer you can take?” Lucy asked.

  “Maybe,” Zoey said, staring at the desks in the bullpen like they’d offer a solution despite the fact that they were still empty. An elderly woman had come in to man the reception a few hours back, but besides that, no one else had been in or out. Which meant Hicks was still there. “But you’re not coming?”

  “Someone’s already called them to give them the news,” Lucy said. “You don’t need me.”

  “You don�
��t think there’s anything to find.”

  “I want to use our resources selectively,” Lucy corrected, though in truth she didn’t have high hopes the trip would turn up anything useful. The family had left town more than a year ago, and the address Vaughn had sent them was an hour away from Knox Hollow. They had clearly cut ties with the place, the people. “I want one of us to have talked to them. And I trust you to do it.”

  That was an exaggeration at best, but it got Zoey’s shoulders to lower.

  “What are you going to be doing?” Zoey asked, her voice having lost some of its defensiveness.

  Lucy’s eyes slid over to the list of names. The kids, the missing ones, the dead ones.

  A motive would be nice.

  The killings weren’t about torture. The killings were about . . . the killings were about . . .

  What?

  An idea crept in, not quite the right one, she didn’t think, but an idea nonetheless. It was one that had been hovering ever since she’d heard about the Church.

  It was the idea of power. Of having it, of safeguarding it.

  “I’m going to talk to the Cooks,” she said, keeping it vague. The idea wasn’t fully formed yet, and she wanted to tread cautiously. Anyway, she could ask about Kate Martinez while she was there, too.

  “You’ll need to be able to get there,” Zoey said, standing up to cross over to one of the walls. Three sets of keys hung in an even row on built-in hooks. She grabbed a pair and tossed it to Lucy. “The truck is out back.”

  “Thanks,” Lucy said, the cool weight of the metal in her hands surprisingly reassuring. She’d been missing her car, feeling too vulnerable without it. She wondered why Hicks hadn’t offered these keys up. Wondered why Zoey so easily had.

  Zoey shrugged into the jacket she’d slung over the back of her chair. “Well, might as well get going. I’ll keep you updated.” She sent Lucy a little salute and then headed for the door.

  Lucy watched her go, but her mind was already swinging back to the Cooks, to Kate Martinez. To Hicks.

  Standing, she shoved the Molly file into her bag, palmed the keys Zoey had thrown her, and then headed out of the office.