Jar of Hearts

by Jennifer Hillier

  Calvin said nothing, continuing to listen politely.

  “In case you forgot, her name was Angela Wong. Sixteen-year-old, reported missing some fourteen years ago.” Kaiser slid a manila folder across the table and opened it. Inside was a high school photo of Angela, full color. “She’d be thirty now, same age as me. And she was a good friend of mine, which makes me a little more than pissed off to be sitting across the table from her killer.”

  “Detective, if you have a personal grudge against my client—” Rooney began.

  “Fuck off,” Kaiser said to him, his eyes never leaving Calvin’s face. “Angela was a beautiful girl, wasn’t she? Now there’s nothing left of her but a pile of bones and her purse. Oh, and her camera, which had pictures of you in it.” He leaned in. “Tell me. Did you know from the day you met her that you were going to kill her? Was it Angela you really wanted all along? I don’t know if it was planned or not, and I don’t give a fuck. But killing her gave you a taste for it, didn’t it? Except you didn’t dismember the others. Only Angela. Only the first one.”

  Calvin James’s lips twitched, but he said nothing.

  “You sick motherfucker,” Kaiser said. “Is that why you got close to Georgina back then, so you could get to her best friend?”

  At the mention of Georgina’s name, Calvin’s mouth opened slightly. Then he smiled, the connection finally dawning on him.

  “I know you,” he said softly. “Holy shitballs. You were their little high school friend, the skinny dude who was always following them around like a puppy, always so grateful whenever they paid any attention to you. You were persistent, I’ll give you that.” His grin widened, revealing even, white teeth. “I see your man meat finally came in. You’re looking well, buddy. All grown up, all macho. Now you’re a guy with a gun and a badge. Just look at you.”

  Kaiser returned the smile.

  “So tell me, how is our lovely Georgina?” Calvin asked. “How long did she keep you in the friend zone? Did you two ever get drunk and just make out one night? How far up her skirt did you get before she slapped your hand away? She never slapped mine.”

  “This is all very fascinating, but who’s Georgina?” Calvin’s lawyer interrupted, looking pained.

  The criminal and the cop both ignored him.

  “How involved was she?” Kaiser spoke directly to Calvin. “Did she help you?”

  “You haven’t talked to her?” Calvin sat back in his chair and rubbed his chin. The handcuffs clanged together. He looked as relaxed as could be. “You should talk to her. I can’t speak for her. She wouldn’t like that.”

  “At the very most, she was your accomplice.” Kaiser glanced at Aaron Rooney. The public defender seemed completely out of his depth. “At the very least, she’ll turn state’s evidence against you. We’re going to pick her up later today.”

  Calvin snorted. “So I guess that means you two aren’t friends anymore.”

  “We have you cold, Calvin,” Kaiser said with an icy smile. “You don’t have to talk to me. I’m sure Georgina will. And even if she doesn’t, I’ll find out what happened that night. Like you said, I’ve always been persistent. I’m like a dog with a bone with this kind of thing. I’ll dig and dig until I figure it out. See you at the trial.” He stood, pushing his chair out.

  “She still beautiful?” Calvin asked. “Not that she was quite as beautiful as Angela, but Georgina had something back then, didn’t she? Something … special. I think you and I were the only ones who ever saw it. We have that in common, at least.”

  “Fuck you,” Kaiser said, bristling at the thought that he and this murderer were anything alike.

  Calvin James laughed.

  Kaiser’s phone vibrates on the nightstand beside him, bringing him back to the present. It’s five minutes before six A.M., and nobody calls him this early unless somebody’s dead. He checks the number and answers it, because he’s a cop and that’s his damn job.

  “Morning, Lieutenant,” he says softly, so he doesn’t wake Kim.

  “Good morning.” The voice on the other end is gravelly and female, the voice of a lifelong chain-smoker who’s only recently quit. It’s his boss, Luca Miller. “You sound awake.”

  “Been up for a bit. Got something for me?”

  “Two bodies near Green Lake.” She coughed into his ear. “Supposed to be Canning’s case but thought you might want it.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “One of them is a dismembered woman. Buried in a series of shallow graves.”

  Kaiser sits up straighter. “What did you say the address was?”

  “I didn’t,” she says, and recites it for him.

  “You’re shitting me,” he says, stunned, when the GPS in his head pinpoints the location. “I’ll take a shower, be there in thirty minutes.”

  “No rush, they’re already dead.” Luca Miller says this without a trace of sarcasm. She’s been on the job a long time, and she’s just stating facts. “CSI’s just starting. An hour’s fine. When you get there, do what you can at the scene, and I’ll have Peebles ready for you.”

  She’s referring to Greg Peebles, the head medical examiner for King County. He’s the best of the best, but he’s usually unavailable at short notice because he’s always in high demand.

  “Peebles? Really?” Kaiser says. “How are you going to make that happen? Rub a genie and make a wish?”

  “I said there were two bodies,” Luca says. “One’s a child.”

  That’ll do it. They always prioritize children. And if the child was found with a dismembered woman, chances are the kid didn’t die by accident.

  He disconnects the call. Kim sits up beside him, rubbing her eyes, her tangled hair spilling over her bare shoulders. She’s not a classically beautiful woman, but she’s undeniably attractive, and there’s a warmth in her smile that people are drawn to. She’s often compared to Jennifer Aniston. “What’s going on?”

  He tells her, and when he finishes speaking, she looks more awake.

  “You think this is Calvin James?” she asks.

  “It could be coincidence, but you know how I feel about coincidences. Anyway, it’s after six. You should probably get going.” Kaiser eases out of bed and heads for the bathroom. He doesn’t have to walk far. His apartment is small. He likes it that way—less to clean. And besides, he’s rarely ever home for long. “I gotta take a shower.”

  “Want some company?”

  He pauses, then sighs. Really, it has to stop. This can’t continue. It’s wrong and it’s messy and the longer it goes, the more complicated it feels. They work together, for fuck’s sake. She’s his goddamned partner.

  He doesn’t answer her, pretends he didn’t hear the question. He enters the bathroom.

  But he leaves the door open.

  7

  A drop of water lands on Kaiser’s forehead, falling from a leaf or a branch somewhere above him. It drizzled earlier, and the scent of the soil and trees would have been refreshing if not for the circumstances. Kaiser hasn’t been in these woods in over five years. And yet the crime scene now looks eerily similar to the one from back then. Only this time around, there are two victims: a woman and a child.

  The woman was found first. Or, to put it more accurately, the woman’s body parts were found first. Her torso is in one large piece, buried two and a half feet deep in the ground between two trees. Scattered around it, in a series of shallow minigraves, are her feet, lower legs, upper legs, hands, forearms, upper arms, and head. Her eyes are missing. Two jagged holes remain where her eyeballs once were, now scraped out of their sockets. Crime-scene investigators are still looking for them, but they won’t be found. Whoever took her eyes did so for a reason.

  It’s anyone’s guess what she looked like when she was alive. The face is cold and gray, the skin waxy, the lips pulled back from the teeth in the classic death grimace. There’s too much dirt and soil matted into the hair to determine whether it’s black or brown. Based on the tearing of the skin, she was t
aken apart with a tool that had teeth. Maybe a saw. Dismemberments are always horrific, but this one feels especially gruesome.

  She’s buried in almost the exact same place as Angela Wong.

  He turns his attention to the child, whose body, thankfully, has been left intact. Found less than five feet away from the woman, the grave is a foot and a half deep, three feet long, one foot wide. A tiny grave for a tiny body.

  He looks to be about two years old, based on his size and the number of teeth he has. He’s dressed in Spider-Man pajama pants and a blue hoodie, no T-shirt, little legs tucked into shiny red rubber rain boots. While cause of death is always determined by the medical examiner, it’s clear the boy has been strangled. The dark-red marks around the throat and the self-inflicted bite marks on the boy’s tongue are both consistent with asphyxiation, along with the telltale pinpoint blood clots in the sclera, also known as petechial hemorrhaging. Other than a few faded bruises on his shins—consistent with being an active toddler—he looks normal. The cheeks are still chubby, the belly comfortably round. The top of his diaper is sticking out of his pajama pants.

  Just a baby, really.

  The hoodie is open to reveal markings on the boy’s small chest. At first glance, Kaiser thought it was blood. But it’s not, because dried blood smears in the rain, and this has not budged. The killer drew on him, using dark-red lipstick to draw a perfect heart. And in the center of the heart are two short words.

  SEE ME.

  “I see you,” Kaiser says quietly to the dead child. “I see you.”

  The crime-scene photographer bends over and takes several more pictures of the boy, the bright flash from the camera illuminating everything around her in brief sparks. “This is terrible, huh? Seen anything like this before, Kai?” she asks.

  He resists the urge to zip up the boy’s hoodie. “Yes,” he says, his tone curt.

  She waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. Correctly sensing that he’s not in a chatty mood, she steps back, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He nods to the paramedics, waiting patiently nearby with a stretcher, indicating that the bodies are ready for transport to the morgue. The crime-scene techs are handling the female victim’s remains, which all have to be photographed and catalogued individually.

  Are they mother and son? Is this the work of Calvin James? The heart on the boy’s chest reminds Kaiser of the doodle on his notepad from the trial. Everything about this reeks of the Sweetbay Strangler.

  Except for the gouged-out eyes. That’s new. As is killing a child. But monsters, like everyone else, can evolve.

  The scene is secure, cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. The entrance to this section of the woods is located at the edge of a cul-de-sac, right between two houses on Briar Crescent. Kaiser leaves the woods and heads back to the street, unsurprised to find that a sizable crowd has gathered behind the road barricades. Curious neighbors, of course, along with a couple of news vans and a few reporters.

  Less than two hundred yards away is the house with the blue door. Georgina’s old house. He hasn’t set foot inside it since he was sixteen, but he can still remember the smell of the Crock-Pot, always bubbling with something. Neither Georgina nor her busy doctor father were ever great cooks, but they could make a mean beef stew in the slow cooker.

  How many times did Kaiser ring that doorbell to pick her up to go the movies, or the food court at the mall? How many times did he sit in her living room watching Melrose Place, a show he pretended to hate but secretly enjoyed because it meant he could spend time with her? How many times did they sit on her floor in her bedroom, drinking Slurpees from the 7-Eleven and listening to Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, on the nights her father worked late? Right here, on this street, nineteen years ago, when they were juniors at St. Martin’s high … and also best friends.

  Back when Angela was still here. Back before she was declared a missing person, before her face was on posters all over the city, before her bones were found in these same woods years later. Before Calvin James was arrested. Before Georgina went to prison.

  Before.

  Before.

  Before.

  Kaiser wonders who lives there now, wonders if they know the baggage that house comes with, the secrets it hides. It was photographed extensively after Angela’s remains were found. Reporters were titillated by the fact that her body was buried less than a football field’s length away from where the woman charged with her murder slept every night.

  Kim Kellogg approaches, dressed in tight jeans and a fitted jacket, her blond hair swept up into a sleek ponytail. The only indication that his partner is a police detective and not a college student is the gold shield clipped to her jacket. Kim is method where he’s madness, and they’re a good fit on the job. And in bed, too, if he’s being honest.

  Everybody has a weakness. Kaiser’s has always been unavailable women.

  “How’d it go?” He keeps his voice clipped and professional. There are too many other cops around for him to speak to her casually.

  “I checked the missing-persons reports in Seattle,” she says. A stray strand of blond hair blows across her face, and Kaiser moves to brush it away. He catches himself just in time. “Nobody matches the description of the boy. I’ve sent a request out to the surrounding cities, so I’m sure we’ll get a hit soon.”

  “He was healthy, with newer clothes,” Kaiser says. “Somebody loved that kid. What about the woman?”

  “Nothing yet. I have two officers down at the precinct working on it, but there are too many missing females in that age range.”

  “Where’s the guy who found them?”

  Kim points to an older couple standing on the sidewalk, talking with a few of the other neighbors. “Mr. and Mrs. Heller. He found them; she called 911. I’ll bring them over.”

  Cliff Heller is a sixtysomething-year-old retiree with snow-white hair and a beard to match, and he looks completely traumatized to have discovered the bodies. Roberta Heller is a full foot shorter than her husband, dressed in a fluffy white bathrobe with exactly one pink hair curler secured above her forehead. In contrast, she looks elated to be involved in the most exciting thing that’s happened in her neighborhood in a while. Her enthusiasm would be dampened considerably if she had actually seen the two dead bodies.

  “I have a ’69 ’Vette that I’ve been trying to fix up for the past few years,” Cliff Heller tells Kaiser. “Body’s in good shape; she’d be sweet if I could get her going again. I popped into the garage after breakfast, thinking I’d get a bit of work done on it before we had to leave for church—”

  “He doesn’t care about the stupid Corvette,” his wife interrupts.

  “Right. So the dog starts yapping and I thought I’d take her into the woods for a go.” Heller sighs. “Usually I walk her, but it was raining—”

  “He doesn’t care about the rain,” his wife snaps again.

  “And that’s when you found the bodies,” Kaiser prompts.

  “Maggie found them,” Heller says, his shoulders sagging. He points to their house, where Kaiser could make out a furry golden face in the window, watching the street commotion. “She started barking, and then she was digging at something, and I saw an arm sticking out of the dirt. At first I thought it was a doll, but when I got closer, I realized it wasn’t attached to anything. It was … it was quite a shock. I fell back, and that’s when I found the boy.”

  Heller’s chin begins to waver, and then his voice chokes. “I know I wasn’t supposed to touch him, but when I saw his face and his arm peeking out from the hole, I didn’t think, I just reacted. I … I pulled him out of the dirt. He’s so small. We got grandkids that age.” He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them again a moment later, he’s calmer. “I didn’t mess up the crime scene, did I?”

  “You reacted how any normal person would.”

  “Thank god.” The confirmation that he didn’t screw anything up seems to make Heller feel better. His wife rubs his back wit
h one hand. With the other hand, she takes a sip of her coffee, her gaze flitting around, watching the officers work.

  Kaiser asks a few more questions. Neither Heller remembers seeing anything strange the evening before, no unfamiliar cars parked in the cul-de-sac, no flashlights, and no noises or voices.

  “We do go to bed pretty early,” Cliff Heller says. “Eight-thirty, nine at the latest. So we wouldn’t have seen anything after then, anyway.”

  “Say, does this have anything to do with Angela Wong?” Roberta Heller asks brightly, looking up at Kaiser. The lone pink curler above her forehead bobs. “You know, the girl who went missing all those years ago? Her remains were found in these woods, I’m not sure if you’re aware of that. It could be related. Walter must be going out of his mind wondering what the heck is going on.”

  Kaiser’s head snaps up. “Walter?”

  “Walter Shaw,” Mrs. Heller says. She points to the house with the blue door. “His daughter was the one who—”

  “I know who she is.” Kaiser stares at the blue door. “He still lives there?” He could have sworn Walter sold the house a few years back.

  “Yes, and his daughter will be moving in with him in a few days.” Roberta Heller sniffs. “Back here, to this neighborhood! She’s been in prison, you know. I like Walter, but let me tell you, his daughter is a piece of work. Uppity little thing with her big important job, always clicking around in her high heels whenever she came back to visit. And all along, her best friend is buried in these very woods. I always knew something was off about her—”

  “Enough, Roberta,” her husband says, placing a hand on her arm. “Enough.”

  It’s all Kaiser can do not to rip the ridiculous curler out of the woman’s hair. Instead, he hands Cliff Heller his card. “You think of anything more, call me, day or night.”

  The bodies are being moved. Kim has done a good job pushing the crowd farther away from the cul-de-sac, and only a handful of neighbors standing nearby can see the covered remains—one of them extremely small—being loaded into the backs of the emergency vehicles. Cliff Heller looks as if he might cry again, and even Roberta Heller softens a little at the sight of that tiny shape.