Freak

by Jennifer Hillier

  “She’ll be mid to late twenties, dark hair, slender. She’ll resemble me. But you knew that already,” Maddox had said to him, her eyes shining in a way that had made Jerry uneasy. “She’s buried somewhere in Heavenly Rest Cemetery. Her body will be underneath someone else’s casket. Check for graves that are fresh; she was probably killed in the last couple of weeks or so.”

  “Name?”

  “No idea.”

  “And you know all this how?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow, when you come back to tell me I was right.”

  “And why the hell would I believe you?” Jerry’s jaw was clenched and the words were almost painful to spit out.

  “Because you know I can’t bullshit about something like this.” Maddox had been unfazed by his frustration. “It’s a simple matter of checking, Jerry. If you don’t find a body, then you know I’m lying. If you do find a body, then you know I have something to offer your investigation. Right now, all we have is trust.”

  She was fucking deluded if she thought he’d ever trust her, but okay, she had a point.

  “Tell me this at least,” Jerry had said. “How’d he manage to get the body in the ground before the casket was buried?” He paused for a moment, trying to re-create the scenario in his head. “That doesn’t even seem plausible.”

  “It’s all in the timing.” That glint appeared in her eyes again, and it was unnerving. “And when you see that I know what I’m talking about, I’d like you to come back tomorrow with my deal in place. You. Not the cops or the PA.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “Not my problem. You’ll figure it out.”

  Jerry and Sheila had stood up to leave, but before he could knock on the door, Maddox said quietly, “By the way. Say hi to Ethan for me.”

  “Excuse me?” He turned back to face her.

  “Heavenly Rest Cemetery, where you’re going to dig up the body?” Maddox looked up at them with moist eyes. “It’s where Ethan is buried.”

  And now here they were, digging by the light of the moon and a few spotlights, the nasty chill in the air only adding to the misery of it all.

  They’d been at it for an hour, but since “six feet under” really was six feet under, progress was slow. Luckily, Heavenly Rest had only had one burial in the last two weeks, for one Mrs. Doris Wheaton, age ninety-two, according to the background check they’d run on the way over. Her burial had taken place only ten days earlier, so the ground remained soft and unsettled. Still, it was slow going, because the dirt had to be moved carefully. They didn’t know what they might find.

  On the other side of the cemetery, a small, plain tombstone marked Ethan Wolfe’s grave. Jerry had passed it on the way over, pausing only briefly to look down at the Tell-Tale Heart Killer’s name etched into the stone, just above the dates of his birth and death. It made him wonder again why it was in this cemetery, of all places, that the newest victim was hidden. Everything about this felt contrived. He couldn’t shake the feeling they were being set up.

  The full moon was a formless blob behind the clouds and the light cast strange shadows over the trees and tombstones. Heavenly Rest Cemetery was downright spooky at night. It was set high on a hill overlooking Seattle, and while the twinkling lights of the city below were pretty, the heavy mist made the cemetery feel eerie. He tried not to think about the decomposing bodies only a few feet beneath him, about the maggots and other little insects making their way through the rotting flesh, about the bones of the skeletons that would eventually remain. He shuddered, and it wasn’t from the cold.

  Jerry’s grandmother had died of cancer when he was ten years old. She’d lived with them in his family’s house, in a small room at the top of the stairs, and he was often entrusted to watch over her whenever his mother worked or was too tired. His responsibilities consisted of bringing his grandma her biscuits and juice, and sitting with her while she watched Jeopardy.

  He had loved his grandmother, and so at first, helping with her care had been fine. But as the months passed and she grew weaker, it became not so fine. Jerry had watched his grandmother deteriorate from a laughing, vibrant woman who could spank him just as easily as hug him, into a withered mess of skin and bone.

  And then there were the smells. The room she’d died in had smelled like her for weeks after her death—a sickly blend of stale breath, antibiotic ointments, and urine. Jerry hadn’t been able to set foot in her room for a long time because the smells always brought back powerful memories of her death.

  He had been present at her burial, laying the final white rose on the casket before it was lowered into the ground. And then later that night—and for weeks to come—he’d had nightmares about her being deep in the earth, her frail body slowly rotting into nothing. Even though his mother had spent years trying to tell him that cemeteries were among the safest places you could be, and that God was always watching, Jerry had never felt comfortable being in places where people were laid to rest.

  To his left, a few feet away, stood a man who actually looked pleased to be here. Roger Aubrey, age fifty-five according to his DMV info, was the cemetery’s head caretaker. They’d knocked on his door on the way over, disrupting Aubrey’s date with his satellite dish and a bag of Cheetos. While they weren’t exhuming Doris Wheaton’s body and therefore did not require the permission of Wheaton’s family to dig up her grave, they did require the cooperation of the caretaker to determine which grave sites were fresh.

  Jerry ambled over to the man and smiled apologetically. “Sorry to have disrupted your evening, Mr. Aubrey. We appreciate your cooperation in locating the grave site, but you really don’t have to stick around. We’ll put everything back the way it was.”

  The man’s attention stayed focused on the diggers for a moment longer before turning to Jerry. “Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of not being here.” His voice was high-pitched and excited. “I’ve been caring for this cemetery for the past two years. It’s my job to make sure everything gets restored properly.”

  “Well, then, let me ask you a question.” Jerry tucked his hands deeper into his pockets. “Have you seen anyone hanging out near this particular grave since the burial two weeks ago? Or the weeks leading up to it?”

  Aubrey shook his head. He was balding, and the wind blew the few hairs of his comb-over the wrong way, revealing a shiny pink scalp that glowed in the uneven light. “Not that I’ve noticed. We don’t keep records on who visits. When the gates are open, people can come and go as they choose.”

  “And what about the day of the burial? Were you here?”

  “I was, yes.” Aubrey squinted, deep in thought as he continued to watch the diggers. “It was a small service. Only a dozen or so people, and most were dressed in scrubs.”

  “Scrubs?”

  “I assumed they were nurses or caregivers from the retirement home the deceased lived in before she passed away.” Aubrey chewed his bottom lip. “They seemed sadder than her grandson did. He kept checking his watch, as if the funeral service was keeping him from something more important. Very sad.”

  “Sir, let me ask you something else.” Jerry’s low tone got the caretaker’s full attention, and the rotund man finally pried his eyes away from the grave site. “In your expert opinion, how would somebody go about getting a dead body—one that isn’t in the casket that matches the name on the gravestone—into the grave before a burial? How is that even possible? Don’t you check to make sure the hole is . . . empty . . . before you lower the casket in?”

  Aubrey’s eye twitched. “It’s all in the timing,” he said, echoing what Maddox had said earlier at the prison. A tingle went up Jerry’s spine. “It’s certainly not unheard-of to bury other things in a grave along with the casket, though it happens a lot less than it used to. It used to be that graves were dug a few days early and covered with tarp until the burial. But animals used to get stuck in the graves, you see, and it was always a pain—not to mention a danger—to remove them in time for the service.”


  The caretaker suddenly made a wheezing sound, alarming Jerry, until he realized the man was laughing.

  “I remember this one time, a deer fell into a grave and broke her leg,” Aubrey said. “Must have been there all night, and boy, was she spitting mad the next morning when we tried to get her out. Animal Control finally had to shoot her.” He laugh-wheezed again.

  “Funny,” Jerry said.

  “I’ve been in the caretaking business for a while now, and you hear stories like this, but you never think it’ll happen in your cemetery. Urban myths, you know?” Aubrey blinked rapidly several times, an annoying facial tic. “It’s kind of an old-school thing to do, hiding a body under a casket.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Aubrey seemed delighted at the question. He held up a chubby finger. “One, it’s risky. Graves are dug late at night before a burial, and you’d have to know in advance one was being dug because there isn’t a large window of time between the digging and the service.” He held up another chubby finger. “Two, look around. We’re right in the middle of the cemetery. You’d have to be lucky that nobody sees you dragging a dead body across all this open space.” A third chubby finger joined the other two. “And three, if you’re going to kill someone and dump the body, why not just dice it and dump it in the Sound? Like on Dexter. Neat, clean, minimal risk of getting caught, water washes away all trace evidence.”

  Jerry studied the caretaker. “You’ve given this some serious thought.”

  The man shrugged. “Everything you need to know about killing is on television these days.”

  Jerry couldn’t dispute that, but before he could respond, Torrance’s voice cut in. “We’ve got the casket!”

  His former partner was gesturing him over, and Jerry reluctantly stepped closer to get a better look.

  A moment later, a rectangular concrete box was lifted out of the ground with a forklift. Roger Aubrey had explained to them earlier that the casket would be inside a grave liner, which was made of solid concrete and probably weighed a ton. Inside the casket, of course, would be Mrs. Doris Wheaton, who’d been dead for over two weeks. Thank God they wouldn’t be opening it. The victim, according to Abby Maddox, was supposedly buried somewhere underneath Mrs. Wheaton.

  The grave liner was carefully placed about ten feet away on the ground. Jerry watched as the workers who’d dug the hole moved away from it, almost instinctively. He didn’t blame them. At this time of night, with the wind and the mist and the grave liner and the twitchy caretaker, the whole thing seemed like a scene out of a bad vampire movie. All that was missing were the wooden stakes. It was creepy.

  Torrance thanked the workers for their help and told them to get a coffee. They couldn’t leave for the night—they’d have to eventually put the casket back in the grave—but for now, they weren’t needed. The workers didn’t argue and left quickly.

  Torrance shone his Maglite into the hole.

  “See anything?” Gingerly, Jerry stepped closer. He shone his own flashlight down into the grave, afraid to find out what, exactly, was in there. But it turned out to be anticlimactic—all he could see was a hole full of dirt.

  “Somebody get down there and start digging,” Torrance barked.

  The two crime scene technicians from Seattle PD—a young female and an older male—had arrived twenty minutes earlier. They’d been sitting at the back of their truck watching the whole thing from about ten feet away, sipping coffees from Tully’s. At the sound of Torrance’s voice, they looked at each other, uncertain. Neither looked happy to be here.

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything,” the male tech said, hopping down and grabbing his kit. “Let’s saddle up.”

  They brought their gear over to the hole, nodding to Jerry as they passed. The female tech, whose name was Jessica Grieg, tugged at the harness around her waist to make sure it was secure. Jerry thought she looked about twenty-one, though surely she was older than that. Fixed to Grieg’s harness was a length of bungee cord, the other end of which was strapped to her partner, whose name was Vic Chernovsky. Grieg then slipped on a hard hat with a small light attached.

  Face grim, she snapped the bulb light on and began a careful descent into the grave as her partner bore her weight. When she reached the bottom, she pulled something out from her kit that looked like a small spade, and started digging.

  “Aren’t you going in, too?” Torrance asked Chernovsky.

  The male tech shook his head. “Not enough room. You don’t want us bumping into each other, stepping on the remains we’re trying to find.” He studiously kept the spotlight pointed down at his partner.

  Twenty long minutes passed.

  Finally, Grieg called out, “I’ve got a body!”

  Jerry and Torrance both shone their lights down. Sure enough, a hand and leg were exposed. Obviously female, obviously slender. Jerry’s gut rolled.

  Torrance frowned. “Where’s the head?”

  Grieg was squatting, brushing away the dirt to uncover the victim’s head. A moment later, Jerry caught sight of long, dark hair and a bare shoulder. His heart lurched; Maddox hadn’t been bluffing.

  “She’s facedown.” Grieg looked up at them and squinted as their lights hit her face. “You want me to turn her over?”

  “Not yet,” Torrance said. “See if you can clear away what’s on her back.”

  Grieg nodded. Using a small brush, she delicately dusted the torso, revealing stark cuts on the victim’s back. The wounds were pressed with dirt, and against the dead woman’s pale skin, the words were easy to read.

  FREE ABBY MADDOX.

  And beneath those three words, another carving: 3/10.

  “Sonofabitch.” Torrance stared at the body for a few seconds longer before turning to face Jerry. “Three-ten. You know what this means, right?”

  “It’s the third body.”

  “Right.” Torrance frowned. “The third body found, but it’s been here for ten days. We know that, because it had to be left here right before Doris Wheaton’s casket was lowered in.”

  “Right.” Jerry had no idea what Torrance was getting at.

  “Think about it, pal.” Torrance stepped closer to him. “It’s been here for ten days, which means she was killed before Maddox was formally charged with murder. Which means she was killed first. And yet, the killer marked her three-ten.”

  “The third one found, but the first one killed.” Jerry sucked in a breath as the realization hit. “Shit. That means the killer knew exactly when we’d find her. This was planned out well in advance. You think the other seven are dead already?”

  Torrance didn’t answer. He pulled out his phone. “I’m calling right now so we can get Maddox’s deal in place. You ready for another trip to prison first thing tomorrow?”

  It was a stupid question. Of course he wasn’t ready. It was the last thing he wanted to do.

  But Jerry was all in. No going back now.

  chapter 10

  APPARENTLY NO PLACE was sacred.

  Jerry saw the reporter and cameraman as soon as he turned in to his office building’s parking lot, and swore under his breath. Would this day never end? He was dead tired, and his first instinct at the sight of the camera was to turn around and head home. But the only things waiting for him at his house were a few cans of sardines and some leftover Thai food from the night before.

  The reporter was hovering at the building’s back entrance, a petite woman with pale blond hair shellacked to her head. She looked vaguely familiar. As Jerry approached, the cameraman switched his light on. It beamed right into Jerry’s face, temporarily blinding him.

  “Mr. Isaac, good evening. I’m Bernadette Barkley from The Pulse. We’re profiling Abby Maddox. Can I ask you a few questions?”

  Bernadette who? From the what? Jerry shook his head. “Sorry, no time.” He lifted a hand, attempting to shield the bright light of the camera from his eyes.

  Of course the reporter acted like she didn’t hear him. “Mr. Isaac, i
n light of Abby Maddox’s recent charge for the murder of Diana St. Clair, our viewers are wondering how you feel. Do you think she’s capable of murder?”

  Was there no end to the amount of stupid questions a person could be asked? “How do I feel?” Jerry stared down at the reporter, who was a good foot shorter than himself. “How do I feel?”

  Looking directly into the camera lens, he pulled down the collar of his turtleneck, giving them a clear shot of his scar. He could only imagine how ugly it would look on TV, especially in high definition, and the thought brought him immense satisfaction. “This is how I feel, ma’am.”

  And then, deliberately slowing his cadence so there’d be no misunderstanding, Jerry spoke directly into the camera, squinting against the bright light. “Now get that camera out of my face, motherfucker.”

  He was inside the building before the woman could respond. Thankfully, they weren’t allowed to follow him inside, but he latched the door behind him anyway.

  The building in Fremont where Jerry leased office space was old, and he could hear the music blaring through the thin door before he was even halfway up the back stairs. He frowned. It was nearly midnight, and there should be nobody in the building at this time of night. Instinctively, he reached for a gun he no longer carried. He sighed. Old habits never died.

  It had to be Danny playing the music, though he couldn’t figure out why she’d still be in the office this late. He took the stairs two at a time, the noise growing louder with each step. He inserted his key into the doorknob only to find the door unlocked, and he frowned again. Dammit, Danny. His twenty-three-year-old assistant was a smart girl, but she obviously had no sense of self-preservation. Seattle was a safe city for the most part, but they worked in the PI business, which meant they saw their share of angry spouses. An unlocked door at midnight was never a good idea.

  Jerry sighed. Time for another lecture on the importance of safety.

  He pushed open the door and sure enough, Danny Mercy’s back was turned and all he could see was her caramel-hued ponytail bobbing to the music. Heading straight for her desk, he reached for the speakers and pulled the plug. The sudden silence blared, and she jumped.