by Nolon King
Jordyn nodded.
“And … how does it feel?”
“I dunno. Is it wrong that I want to talk to him?”
“Do not talk to him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s crazy.”
“People say you’re crazy.”
“You know what he did to get in here?”
“No.”
“He killed people.”
She started to interrupt.
“And before you say so did I, he killed his next-door neighbor, an old woman who never hurt anyone.”
“Why?”
“Robbery gone wrong, needed money for drugs. She came home and saw him. He did it so she wouldn’t call the cops.”
She stared at the ground.
“Still want to talk to him?” Jasper asked.
Jordyn still didn’t answer.
Jasper felt a pang of guilt. “Listen, I understand you’re lonely.”
“No, you don’t. You have no idea what it’s like. I can’t talk to anybody but you.”
“I think I know exactly how you feel, Jordyn.”
“No,” she said, pulling her hands free so she could use them to talk. “Maybe if I was stuck somewhere like you, at least there’d be someone to talk to. Maybe you don’t have the best options, but at least there are other people you can have a word with. I’m stuck around people I used to know, but they can’t see or talk to me. I may as well not exist. I can’t go to Heaven or Hell, if there is such a thing. And every time I ask myself why I’m stuck here, I get more and more certain it’s all because of you.”
“I don’t think you’d want to go to Hell.”
“I feel like I’m already there.”
Jasper felt that same ache he used to feel when his daughter was alive and dealing with problems he didn’t know how to solve. He was her father. It was his job to make her problems go away. But all too often, he felt powerless. Just like — or perhaps even especially — now.
“You can talk to him. But … just be careful.”
“Gary can’t hurt me,” she said.
“Don’t tell him what Hernandez did for us or is having us do.”
“Thank you.”
Jasper nodded. He assumed that was the end of it, but she kept staring at him. “What is it?”
“You don’t see it?”
“See what?” Jasper asked.
Jordyn approached and put her hands on his face. “This.”
Flashes of a giant of a man murdering a child then fixing her to a cross. Mallory inside the church. The killer calling her.
Another flash, this one of the man with a knife standing in front of a girl tied in a chair, her minutes numbered.
Jordyn removed her trembling hands. “We need Mallory to come here.”
Chapter 24 - Mallory Black
Another dream, this one making her feel like Alice in Wonderland.
Mal found herself moving through a giant dollhouse full of plastic furniture. She’d gone from room to room in search of an exit, now she was stuck in a loop in a dark hallway with four doors, one on each end and two on either side.
The hallway was ink black except for bright red flashing above, throwing crimson blotches of light on the wall. The house felt familiar, though she wasn’t sure why.
Mal was trying to escape the hall, but every time she came to a door, it would deposit her back into the very same hallway. Even when she turned to try and leave out the door she’d just entered through, Mal was turned back around in the same spot, now facing forward.
She moved faster, more and more desperate to flee, walls closing in on her and the ceiling drifting down, grinding like thunder as she was squeezed from all sides.
Mal kept moving until she was forced to start crawling across the floor.
A door appeared to her right, too tiny for her to squeeze through, though she had to try anyway. She scurried toward it as the walls, ceiling, and floor crushed the hall from existence.
She fell face first on plush carpet into a well-lit room, still inside the doll house filled with plastic furniture. A set of two eerily familiar dolls sat on the bed, staring.
Mal moved to get a closer look at the porcelain faces before the dolls became Jessi and Ashley, both frozen in time. Her daughter’s doll eyes blinked open, and a muffled cry bleated from her porcelain lips.
“Mommy,”
Mal hugged the doll, hard enough to turn her human. But it didn’t work, and from the other side of the door came a terrible scratching, followed by an agonizing howl.
“Don’t let the wolf get us!” the Jessi doll screamed.
Mal turned as the door exploded open and Paul Dodd came growling into the room, his wolf’s mouth wide and frothing between rows of jagged, twisted teeth.
“Come to join the girl?” Dodd asked in the voice of a nightmare.
Mal raced toward him, her hand in a claw, ready to tear his flesh apart.
Then the phone rang, yanking her out of the dream.
It took her a moment to realize she was awake and holding her phone, her blankets kicked off the bed. Startled, heart racing and lungs short of breath, she answered without looking to see who it was.
“Hello?”
“Detective Black? It’s Sheila Shaw.”
Mal sat up, shivering in her cold sweat. “Of course, yes, how can I—”
“That girl on the news. I know her.”
“The missing girl?”
“Her name is Cami Rivera. She sits for the girls.”
Mal’s racing heart jolted stop. Cami was one of the names on her list of people she’d been trying to contact. “Are you sure it’s her?”
“Yes. I’ve been calling and calling her but can’t get an answer.”
Of course it was raining.
Mal was lights on, siren off, flying faster than she should down the rain-slicked roads, struggling to see through deluge pelting her windshield. She was racing to the station to meet Mike and Skippy. She’d called her partner on the way, left Skippy to him. Almost hoped he didn’t get the call, but they needed every hand on deck to work this case — assuming Barry would let her anywhere near it.
She got to the sheriff’s office in time to find the night shift deputies pulled from road duty, an additional three detectives, a few deputies brought in early, and Captain Lummock.
They met in the briefing room where Lummock and Mike went over all the new details they’d gotten since learning the victim’s name. Mal took a seat in the first row, not presuming to go up front with the others.
Lummock cleared his throat. “The sheriff will be in soon, but in the meantime, I want the girl’s apartment searched and anyone who knows her interviewed. We need everything we can get and have to work fast. Aanya’s digging into her social media and tracing her phone’s last location. I’ve sent a PDF to each of you with people to interview ASAP.”
Mal checked her phone for the file, saw nothing, and raised a hand.
“Yes, Black?” Lummock said.
“I don’t see the email.”
“The sheriff has asked that you wait until he gets here.”
She glanced at her phone: 4:15 AM. No telling when the fat ass would roll in. He usually made it somewhere around the crack of noon.
“No offense, sir, but we need everyone we can get on this. At least let me work the phones, check the tip lines, and see if anything else came in.”
“I appreciate your dedication, Detective, but my hands are tied.”
“This girl is going to die today if we don’t find her. We don’t have time to punish me.”
“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you broke protocol,” Lummock said.
“If I didn’t break protocol, you all wouldn’t even have this tip!” Now Mal was on her feet. “Sheila saw me on TV, not that weak, glorified press release you all released.”
The other deputies stared at her. She felt suddenly exposed, alone on a ledge and wanted someone else, particularly Mike, to speak up for her.
But it was a room full of crickets.
Lummock lost patience with her as he lost a sigh. “Will there be anything else, or can I get on with the briefing?”
“If anybody needs me, I’ll be waiting for our fat fucking sheriff to show up and do his goddamned job.” Mal stormed out of the room.
She strode down the corridor then sat on the bench Barry would have to pass on his way into work.
Mal got on the phone, contemplating calling Gloria and telling her they had a name, but then she decided to follow the rules. The killer might be counting on them not knowing the girl’s identity yet, and that could maybe give them an advantage.
Still, she was linked to the Shaws. It was only a matter of time before Sheila or someone else recognized the missing girl. Mal needed to be certain she was doing the right thing before breaking protocol again. And right now, she was far certain.
But she was terrified for Cami’s life and knew all too well what it was like to be the prisoner of a sadistic killer. There wasn’t any evidence of sexual abuse on the first scene, but that was a child, not an adult. The killer’s M.O. might change with someone older. Whether she was being sexually assaulted or tortured, every moment Cami was held by the monster had to be another lost to hell.
There were a million things Mal should be doing other than sitting here on her ass.
She stood and paced, trying to think of something she could manage on her own without incurring the wrath of Barry or the other deputies.
The Sheriff entered the lobby, holding a box of donuts and a huge Bubba thermos full of coffee, or knowing him, something with more bite. Never too early to tie one on.
“Ah, Detective.” His furry brows cinched together like a pair of caterpillars crawling above his disapproving eyes. “Let’s go to my office.”
Chapter 25 - Mallory Black
Mal followed Sheriff Barry’s waddling ass down the hall into his office, the whole time telling herself, Don’t blow up, don’t blow up, don’t blow up, don’t blow up.
He sat at his desk, opened the box, then and slid it across the desk. “Donut?”
“No, thank you.” She sat across from him, too anxious to eat despite the tempting scent of fried sugar. She wanted to get this over with, kiss Barry’s ass, do whatever it took to get her back on the streets and working the case.
“Suit yourself.” He eyed her as he licked frosting off his pudgy finger. “Not like you need to worry about your weight.”
Are you fucking serious?
She hid her contempt. Said nothing.
“So …” He took a bite of his donut, probably the first of all twelve. “What the hell was that shit last night?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I felt it was a matter of—”
“I don’t care what you felt. It’s not your job to feel. It’s your job to follow instructions. Why is it people — well, some people — can’t follow simple directions? Used to be so much easier around here. Folks knew their jobs and did what they were supposed to do. Now everyone thinks they know better than the boss.”
“I just—”
“You used to be a good deputy, back before Ms. Bell poisoned you with her bullshit. Now you’re out starting fights, whoring around and getting caught on tape, doing drugs, and God only knows what else.”
She wanted to scream. Wanted to take all eleven of his donuts and shove them so far up his ass they’d give his brain stem diabetes.
He looked at her as he polished off the first donut then washed it down with a big swig of coffee. “If I were to give you a drug test right now, would you pass it?”
“What?”
Barry licked his fingers again, reached into his pocket, fished out some keys, then opened his desk drawer. He pulled out a manila envelope then dumped the contents on the desk.
Photos of Mallory, shots taken from afar, some from when Cameron had run his hit piece on his blog, but others from after.
Mal drinking at the hotel bar and at clubs around town, at an NA meeting, taking pills in her car. And the one she had to mask her reaction to — a photo of Mal going into the club where she’d mauled the rapist.
Does he know what I did?
Barry stared at her.
Her heart was racing, chest tightening as dozens of horrifying scenarios played out in her head all at once. What else had he, or whoever he had following her, witnessed? Had they seen her with Jasper? Did they know about her other crimes?
If so, Barry could arrest her on the spot.
And she could end up in jail, same as Jasper.
Life over, just like that.
Her pulse raced faster. A cold sweat tickled her neck. She wanted to wipe her clammy hands down her pants but knew it’d be obvious. She was going to faint or puke. Maybe both.
“What I see here is a reckless accident waiting to happen.”
If he had more, he would have led with that … I think.
“You’re having me followed?” Seemed like the best offense was a good defense.
“I need to know what the hell I’m dealing with — what kind of lawsuits you’re gonna open me up to.”
“You worried about lawsuits?” She laughed. “That’s rich.”
“You are placed on administrative leave immediately until further notice.”
“You can’t do that. That girl is counting on us to find her. Counting on me.”
“We’ll be fine without you.”
“The killer called me. There’s got to be some reason for that. Give me a chance to bring him in and finish my job.”
“Yeah, about that — hand over the phone. I’ll take his calls from now on.”
“Are you serious?”
“One hundred percent, missy. Hand it over.”
“I think it’s at Aanya’s work station,” she lied.
“Go get it and bring it to me. Then I want you to pack up and go home until further notice.”
The walls were closing in around her. What could she do while sidelined from the case? That girl was as good as dead. And who knew how many more victims there might be?
She nodded, afraid to open her mouth, scared of what might come out of it. Then she stood and left without another word, her heart ready to explode.
In the hall, she leaned against the wall, curbing her dizziness before making her way to the restroom, stumbling inside, then collapsing into the stall.
Mal fell onto the seat then kicked the door closed. She needed a Xanax, right fucking now. A panic attack probably couldn’t kill her, but it sure as hell felt like it might.
She reached into her jacket, realizing that she’d left the Xanax on her nightstand.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
Mal could hear her own heartbeat. She gasped, trying to breathe while closing her eyes.
Center yourself.
But of course, she failed. Fuck if she could focus on anything but the goddamned pulsating in her ears. The squeezing of her chest, and now her skull.
Mal clenched her fists, frustrated, wanting to cry at what a helpless fuck she was being. Needing a fucking pill to soothe herself.
She should be able to do this on her own. Or—
Her hand brushed against a bump in her pocket.
The Just In Case pill.
No, don’t do it, Mal.
You’re doing good.
You don’t need it.
You’re six months sober.
Do not fuck this up.
The bathroom door opened.
“Are you okay in there?” asked an unfamiliar voice.
No, I’m not fucking okay. I’m a fucking train wreck!
Mal couldn’t open the door, not like this. She’d never live it down. She’d have a full meltdown, maybe pass out. And at work! Barry would make sure she never saw action again.
She reached for the pill, pulled it from her pocket.
Just once.
Once and that’s it.
She shouldn’t. But the alternative was worse. Mal shoved the pill into her mouth and dr
y-swallowed before she could stop herself.
“Mallory?” the woman’s voice asked.
Great, she knows who’s in here.
“Yeah, just feeling nauseated … I’m …” she made a fake gagging sound. “I’m fine.”
“Okay,” the woman said before leaving.
Did the woman have business in the bathroom and get scared away, or had she been actively following her?
Maybe another fucker keeping tabs on me for Sheriff Barry.
Mal closed her eyes. The wave of relief wasn’t immediate, but knowing it was coming felt like solace in itself. Maybe a placebo effect, maybe not.
She fished the killer’s phone from her pocket, opened it, took out the SIM, then shoved it into her pocket. She powered down, giving her enough time to get out of the sheriff’s office after she handed it over. She’d be in the parking lot before he realized the SIM card was missing — assuming he didn’t just open and check. Fortunately for her, Barry wasn’t all that bright.
Mal left the restroom, went to her locker, pretended to grab the phone so the closed-circuit cameras would see her, then started walking toward his office, pretending to have a conversation on her phone as she entered his office.
Mal moved fast, and to the imaginary party on the other end, she said, “Yes, I understand, but … hold on …” She dropped the phone on Barry’s desk. “Here you go.”
The sheriff started to raise a finger to get her attention, but she pretended not to notice, turning around and continuing the conversation with her imaginary partner. “No, that’s not what I was saying … you tell me.”
Mal pretended to listen as she headed down the hall, into the parking lot, then over to her car. She heard footsteps running behind her before she could get in.
Shit. He found out.
She turned and saw it was Mike.
“What the hell was that back there?”
“What?” Mal said. “You mean me trying to actually do some police work?”
“No, I mean you undermining the captain, and that whole ‘fat fucking sheriff’ thing.”
Mal stared at him, wanting to take her partner seriously, but suddenly found herself bursting into laughter. “Oh, yeah, I did call him that.”
