“The Rose Killer Strikes Again.”
This was the screaming front-page headline of the Edenburgh Gazette that smacked me in the face the next morning.
At first I didn’t connect it to the girl that had gone missing. My first thought, considering that Edenburgh was just about the sleepiest place in the known world, was that some deranged housewife had thrown a fit and went to work on a neighbor’s garden with a pair of shears. I was very wrong.
Judith Myers’s body was found in the backyard of someone’s home. The house was surrounded by a lot of land at the end of a cul-de-sac. Out back of the house was a deck, and past that was a large swimming pool. Past that, the yard merged into an orchard that stretched on for quite a ways. There were a few beach chairs set up in front of the pool in the backyard, facing the pool, but, according to the residents of the house, it was still pretty early in the year for swimming, so they never went near the pool. This means it took them six days to realize there was the dead body of a missing seventeen-year-old girl propped up in one of their beach chairs.
Judith Myers had been very pretty, but not anymore.
Her father was the local locksmith, and the Myers family were all churchgoing people. Judith sang in the choir. The Gazette painted the Myers family as the kind of people who would water a neighbor’s plants and collect their mail for them if they went away.
Judith had last been seen alive by her girlfriend who lived just a few blocks away from the Myerses’ house. Judith’s body was found over two miles to the east.
I thought about the church break-in. This shit was getting interesting. The two incidents seemed entirely unrelated, but if I had to put them together to make a picture, I would have presumed that some young assholes went out to paint the town red when they happened upon a young girl alone.
But, of course, they were unrelated, because the murder was the doing of someone called the Rose Killer.
The Rose Killer, as the papers had named him, was not a local phenomenon, which explained why I had never heard of him. He used to be someone else’s problem. As far as the reporters knew—because law enforcement sure as hell didn’t divulge everything they knew—his reign of terror began almost two years before in California with the discovery of a paid escort’s body just outside of Los Angeles.
He was a one-man plague of locusts, traveling haphazardly east, leaving every place he visited mourning and bitter. He did six in California, two in Idaho, three in Colorado, then two in Arizona, one in New Mexico, four in Texas, and two in Missouri. He had killed twenty women, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they had found and identified twenty bodies that he had cut the life from. They knew they were his because there were roses in their heads where their eyes used to be.
Judith Myers was the twenty-first woman to meet this grisly ending.
I vowed that the killer would never again be allowed to claim another life, because right then and there, as I sat in the kitchen at Long John’s, I decided that this motherfucking Rose Killer had made my to-do list from hell, and when the next full moon came around, I was going to take his sorry ass out.
I hate psychopaths. I’d dealt with a serial killer a few years before—this was in a place called Peoria, in Illinois—and I must admit that it was one of the high points in my career as a boogeyman. The difference was he was a local monster who was pretty habitual, dumping people in the river every so often. He wasn’t a ramblin’ man like this bastard seemed to be. The Rose Killer had proven to be highly elusive, not married to a specific type of victim, like Bundy was, nor was he uncomfortable with being in a dozen different places. He was adaptable to his surroundings, whatever they were. He blended well, or was at least a master when it came to blending into the shadows. In a bad way, a way that made me grit my teeth for a moment, this Rose Killer reminded me of me in the way he went from place to place, leaving blood and blues in his wake.
I didn’t know what to make of that connection. I’d been in Evelyn for years, but there was a time when I didn’t stay in one place too long. I didn’t want to be around when my targets were found, and I didn’t want people remembering my face or the fake name I lived under. The road was my home, and there was a strange kind of solace in that.
I remember when I came up with my fake name—the persona I would live under for many years. I was starving, and I went into this little family-owned deli and asked if there was anything I could do around the store to help feed myself. I had never looked for handouts before, and it was humiliating. I once had a home, a girl, a side job I’d worked when I was in school at a local burger joint, but at the same time, I was the walking embodiment of bloodshed, so who was I to complain? Without thinking about it beforehand, I had used a Southern accent when addressing this deli owner. I was the only guy in my company who had been born above the Mason-Dixon Line, and the Southern accent was one I had become accustomed to. What compelled me to use an accent at the time was beyond me. But it did serve as an excellent disguise, and continued to in Evelyn.
The deli owner eyed me up and down and asked my name. The first thing that came to mind, for whatever reason, was Captain America, from the Avengers comics, so I gave his name.
“Steve Rogers,” I said.
The old man gave me a broom, and I went to work.
After a couple of days of doing the floors and the windows, he gave me a clipboard full of papers and had me take inventory of the whole store—every can, every bottle, every pack of gum. As the inventory was coming to a close, I knew the hospitality would run out quickly, so once I palmed the money for that last day, I took off again on the bike, and I lived under the name of Steve Rogers till I almost forgot my real one.
I guess I always felt like I was running from something, something that was always at my heel. I had no destination because there was no escaping it, but I was always running, and I had to wonder how much of that applied to this traveling Rose Killer. Was he running away from something, or was there a destination for him? And if there was, what in God’s name would happen when he got there? What were the chances that Evelyn was the end of that journey?
Whatever this guy was doing, it obviously threw all the investigators way off. There’s no such thing as an immaculate crime scene, I know that much. And with the fact that several state agencies let this guy slip through their fingers, I had little faith that our minuscule police force could accomplish what those people couldn’t. I wasn’t a fucking sleuth, and I wasn’t a goddamn defender of the public, but I knew this was something I’d have to talk to Pearce about.
There are many things the papers can’t mention about crime scenes. These are the bits of information the cops hold back, the ones that only the killer could know about. And in regards to serial killers, which this sick fuck definitely was, they do all kinds of crazy, fucked-up shit at crime scenes. Pearce, being who he was, had access to that information, and if I could squeeze any of it out of him it would only help me take this sonofabitch down when the time came.
I folded the Edenburgh newspaper and dropped it on the floor next to my stool. I was sweating, and I felt this throbbing at my temples that I knew wouldn’t go away until the next morning. I opened up my copy of the Evelyn Post and leafed through the pages, just to calm myself down.
It didn’t work.
The Post informed me that there had been a church break-in the night before, the lock on the back door jimmied open with a crowbar, in all likelihood. Nothing was taken, nothing broken. And a woman who lived about ten blocks away from me had been reported missing. I would definitely have to call Pearce.
“I told you I had a funny feeling,” I told Pearce on the phone that night.
“And I told you your funny feelings scare the shit out of me.”
“I try.”
“Either you’re psychic or you’re the world’s most evil man.”
“A little of both. Have the Edenburgh cops contacted you guys, or vice versa?”
“They put out a description when the
girl went missing, just in case she came thisaways, but that was pretty much it.”
“Listen, man, you gotta figure out what they know. I only know what I read in the papers, but that’s not everything. They may have a suspect, a description, a car, anything. Anything to help with this lady missing here.”
The missing woman was a drinking woman, in the sense that whoever bought her a drink got to take her home. She was single, with a little boy at home. The kid was the one who reported her missing. A good Christian family had taken him in until his mother decided to show up again, but my gut instinct told me that was something beyond her to decide. Her name was Gloria Shaw.
“So far, she’s just missing, Marley, and that’s it.”
“But you can’t deny the coincidence.”
“No,” Pearce said solemnly. “I guess I can’t.”
When we got off the phone, I immediately lit a precious cigarette, then cut the new articles out of the papers and put them up on the wall.
EIGHT
Abraham stuck his head in through the long window in the wall. “I need a Louisiana Burger with cheese fries. Hold the slaw.”
“I need a new truck,” I said.
“Don’t start,” he said, and he rushed back behind the counter.
The lunch crowd was just beginning to filter in. There were maybe five or six people in the restaurant, but that number would quadruple within half an hour.
The investigation into Judith Myers’s murder over in Edenburgh was going horribly, which was expected. Their police were even more useless than ours.
The Gazette wasn’t reporting anything about any new leads or any such thing, but what they did print was an extended history and hit sheet about the traveling scumbag, a time line of his reign of terror going all the way back to the beginning. The information was good for me—I mean, none hurt—and the handful of pages voicing the population’s outrage over the crime only added fuel to the fire. I wasn’t worried about what would happen when that full moon came around.
Out in the restaurant, I heard someone ask for me by name. I couldn’t place the voice, but it didn’t sound like a lawman. Abraham said I wasn’t around, just like I always told him to just in case anyone ever came around for me, but I couldn’t help myself from peeking through the window to see who was out there.
It was Anthony Mannuzza, the kid from back East, all duded up in a pair of blue slacks and a silk button-down shirt with flared sleeves. His hair was slicked back. I could smell his cologne all the way from the kitchen. The fruit looked like a backup singer for the fucking Bee Gees.
I poked my head out the window and said, “Hey, kid, you’re still hanging around?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “I’ve got to see how all this plays out, don’t I?”
“What do you mean?”
“This thing with the dead guy,” he replied.
I lit a smoke and pushed my way through the double doors. He took a step back.
“That’s kind of morbid, isn’t it? Putting your sexy little life on the back burner for some small-town antics?”
“To hell with that. Like I said, this is great material.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Things pretty much went down the way you said. Animals and all.”
“Is that the word from the cop guy that was in here?”
“You mean your most glamorous model?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s affirmative.”
“Huh. In a way, that’s too bad.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “It just sounded too weird to be true. I mean, how many animals eat people?”
“All of ‘em, you give ‘em the chance.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said.
“You going to be on your merry way, then?”
He gave me a look like he wanted to hit me, but something in his eyes let me know that he knew it would be the most foolish thing he ever did.
He’d finally made me smile.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I got a room over on Lincoln already …” Lincoln was over on the east side, in the rough part of town.
“A regular Charles Kuralt,” I mumbled.
“Who?”
“Forget it,” I said. “Anyway, I got shit to do. Is that what you came for? To hear about the monsters out in the woods?”
“Well, yeah, actually.”
“Well, there you go,” I said. “Go back to Jersey.”
“You sound like a New Yorker when you say that,” he said. “You ever been there?”
“Nope,” I lied. “Ever been to Jersey?”
“Nope.” Another lie.
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Well, tell me something about Evelyn. Something for the book. You must have a million funny stories.”
“You’re at my fucking job, man. I got work to do.”
“How often do you get asked to do an interview?”
Just then the phone rang. I was actually kind of peeved about that, because I had a good insult all lined up and ready for the kid.
Abe picked it up, said, “John’s,” listened, then handed it over to me.
“Yeah,” I said into the receiver. “Pearce.”
“Hold on,” I said as I put my cigarette out. “Arright, go ahead. What’s up?”
“I hate to say it, Marley, I really do.”
The hairs on me stood up. I sucked in a great, big breath and let it out fast.
“Have I told you how much your funny feelings scare the shit out of me?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“You were right. Gloria Shaw’s body was found up on the Crowley property early this morning.”
“Is it the same guy? The one from the papers?”
“Oh, God, yeah.”
I didn’t know what to say. He continued.
“We got a big crew over here working on this. I just want you to know that. They have it organized. This is beyond anything …”
“We need to talk,” I said.
“I know. Put your thinking cap on.”
He hung up. I lit another smoke and watched the flame on the match dance for me. Another kind of hell had come to Evelyn. There wasn’t room for two.
“What was that?” asked Anthony.
“That was our detective friend,” I said, blowing out the flame.
“Oh yeah? Any news?”
“Yeah. A murder.”
“Wow,” he let out with glee, and ran his fingers through his wet hair. “This place just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”
I gave him a look. He swallowed hard and walked out.
The Crowley property was up on the northern edge of Evelyn, about a mile past the circle of Old Sherman Road. The property consisted of a big old farmhouse the descendants of the once-opulent Crowley family lived in, a few dozen apple trees, and a vast stretch of tall-grassed land surrounded by a short white wooden fence. It was accessible only by a dirt and gravel path because there were no paved roads north of Old Sherman. Even though the town’s richest people lived there, I guess they liked feeling cut off from the plain folk that lived in town. Maybe it made them feel safe.
Maybe they wouldn’t feel safe anymore.
The man who ran the bank owned one of those houses up north, surrounded by acres and acres of blessed land. Some retired actor who went down in flames and had his livelihood ruined because of that rat bastard McCarthy lived in another house up there. He pretty much kept to himself. Only a few people in town knew what he actually looked like now, and most of those who did were the delivery boys from the local shops. The rest of the homes were held by the old families of Evelyn, handed down from generation to generation ever since the close of the Civil War. Familes like the Crowleys.
It all would’ve been perfect land to do a little bit of farming on—the dirt seemed rich and heavy, and the ground was flat—but there was something almo
st sinister about the land that Evelyn rested on that made seeds die.
And now blood had been shed on that land.
Gloria Shaw was thirty-eight, but she would be remembered as “twenty-two,” because she was the Rose Killer’s twenty-second victim. Her little boy, Luther, was nine years old. The father’s identity was a complete mystery. He could have been dead for all anyone knew. If he was, the boy could have very well been an orphan and no one would have known it.
The papers seemed to suggest that on the night she didn’t come home, Gloria Shaw went over to that little watering hole called the Cowboy’s Cabin—God, I missed that place sometimes—and had a few drinks by herself before getting into an argument with a big, burly guy that no one had ever seen around before. He had offered to buy her a drink, but I guess she had some set of standards because she didn’t want anything to do with him. He eventually walked out, and she left alone about an hour later with a noticeable drunken swagger, which placed the last time she was seen alive at about eleven in the evening.
The burly man was being called a “person of interest.” He was described as being between six-two and six-five, forty to fifty years old, white, and he had a broken nose.
Three days came and went before I heard from Danny Pearce again. They say the first forty-eight hours of an investigation are the most crucial, but I guess this investigation was just a little more special, hence the extra twenty-four hours before he was able to pull himself away.
It was night. I was sitting at the edge of my bed, looking at all the sad articles that I had taped up on the wall, all connected. A collage of sin. Through the curtains I could see the curved sliver of moon up in the sky, like a crooked grin. Like it knew something I didn’t know.
The phone rang, and I ran into the living room and picked it up.
“Pearce,” he said.
I heard him blowing smoke as he said it. I held my tongue about that. Having to see what he saw …
“Talk to me,” I said.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he said, and hung up.
I got nervous. The man had never set foot in my house before. I had never let anyone in before. I didn’t want anyone invading my personal space, but he didn’t exactly give me a lot of options on the phone.
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