Bat and the Bone

by Alexa Gregory

  "Well…" I sigh with a deep eye-roll. "When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much…" I begin.

  "I get that, Agent Starling." He doesn't snap, exactly, but it's clear I'm pushing his buttons.

  Deciding to play nice for now, I shrug. I have to tuck away my sass and focus on getting Mom back behind bars. If this delicious mancake is the one who has the information I need, I have to keep him on my side.

  "I have my father's name. My mother kept her own because it was the name on her doctorate. It would have been too much of a hassle to change all of her practice documents when she got married. She's a Markov; I'm a Starling."

  "Fine, but how are you the expert on her crimes?"

  That's a fair question. From what I'm told, most people wouldn't have submerged themselves in every detail of every murder their mother committed.

  Nope.

  They would have been in denial or been too distraught to delve into the dark mind of a killer.

  Me? I might have been only sixteen when she was caught, but I immediately needed to understand. Why, how, the woman who tucked me into bed and read me bedtime stories turned out to be such a monster.

  "When I did my masters and Ph.D. in forensic anthropology and criminal psychopathology, I used my mother as my case study. I visited her in prison and played on the mother and daughter bond to get information out of her. She had no idea, of course, that I was using her."

  It hurts to think of the deception I applied to get her to talk to me, but hey, the woman was lying to me most of my life. You know, sneaking around to kill people instead of going to PTA meetings.

  Ugh.

  If only that were true. She never missed one single teacher conference. And she was at every single science fair I ever entered, cheering me on as I beat out the other kids for first place.

  She was a good mother. That's why it was so shocking when her secret life exploded. It was the last thing I expected.

  After I found out who my mother really was, I had to do something to make right what she had done. I threw myself into my studies to offer some kind of peace to the families that mine had destroyed.

  "That..." Agent Thrussell clears his throat and runs a hand through his hair, ruining his beautiful pompadour-stylized hair. "Yeah, that's... Well, let's just say I'm impressed. Now I need you to help me find her."

  His tough-guy veneer slips very slightly, and there is a pleading in his eyes.

  I get the fear.

  We have to get her back behind bars. With hundreds of confirmed kills, my mother is way too dangerous to be out in the world.

  3

  T-Bone

  I pause and take stock of what I've learned about this woman in the past fifteen minutes.

  First, when I walked in, she was definitely talking to the bones on her worktable while the most disturbing music played in the background. How Mila can enjoy music that is head pounding with no way to understand the lyrics is beyond me. This doesn't exactly make her odd, just... peculiar. Perhaps that is a kinder word to describe her. Second, she is not what I expected.

  Agent Starling's reputation and her work in forensic anthropology is very much at odds with what I’d expected. She is one of the most respected people in the field, but she looks entirely too young to have garnered so much experience in the field. I've read some of her papers. She's smart as hell, and I always appreciated how she seemed to understand the psychology of killers.

  Now I know why.

  She was raised by one.

  I shake my head, running a hand across my beard.

  I was expecting a clinician. Perhaps an older woman wearing scrubs or a power suit. Definitely not a tiny woman blessed with curves for days, sharp blue eyes, and waist-length hair dyed fire engine red. It can't be a natural color, but it works with her very pale skin and her black attire.

  Not that I want to judge her for the way she's dressed, but her tastes definitely mesh well with her history. She's the daughter of the most monstrous person in recent history. A female serial killer.

  And here Mila is, wearing a shirt that reads I'd be more interested in you if you were dead. The humor is shocking, but I suppose forensic anthropologists need their dark humor to survive, just like police officers.

  "What can I do to help you find my mother?" She crosses her arms and watches me closely. She is definitely sizing me up like I was just doing to her.

  I like feeling her eyes roam over me. That's inconvenient. We have a killer to find. Her mother, for fuck's sake. It's not the time to notice that she has the most alluring beauty mark at the corner of her right eye.

  I take a deep breath, ignoring her sweet smell of orange blossoms. It does nothing to help me center my thoughts on the task at hand. I hate feeling destabilized. It irks me, like an itch I can’t quite scratch.

  "I need to know where she would most likely hide." I finally manage to answer her question.

  It's difficult to look away from her. Her deep crimson lipstick is a little bit distracting. I'm here on a mission, goddamn it. I have to track Markov down before she kills again. I won't have any bodies on my conscience. Not when I'm the incident coordinator chosen to apprehend Markov before the public is made aware of her escape. I can't let the pretty woman standing there, attitude rolling off of her, distract me.

  "You know Markov better than anyone," I explain, getting back some of my composure as I step away from her. "I didn't realize how true that was until just now. We need to find her."

  "I completely agree. But before we figure out how to track her down, I also need to think about the announcements you’re putting out in the media, which of course you have to do because people are in danger. But I also have to mitigate the attention it shines on me.”

  I try to interrupt her, but she seems to be on a roll.

  “When she was arrested, my life became a circus. I had to hide for months to keep my identity secret. I'd rather not have to go into hiding again."

  "No media." Her shoulders tighten at my words. It's not the reaction I was expecting. I had anticipated that she would be relieved that the vultures wouldn't be notified, so I go on. "We can't have mass hysteria. We're trying to keep this contained. Besides, if we were to release this to the media, we'd be inundated with thousands upon thousands of bad tips. We don't have time to deal with that."

  "That seems risky." Mila shakes her head, releasing a deep sigh. "People should be on the lookout for her. She has a very clear MO. She goes for people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. We should put all of the university campuses in the region on alert."

  "Agent Starling." I put a hand up to get her attention. "Stop, please. You're talking extremely fast, and I'm scared you're not breathing. Let me explain what we've done to contain the threat. We are canvassing the towns surrounding the prison. She was seen leaving in a white truck, so every similar vehicle is being stopped. There are roadblocks in and out of the city."

  There's no way in hell this stopped Sveta Markov. She was killing people, undetected, for nearly thirty years. Before she was arrested, she was the most respected hematologist in the world; she is a genius. I'd bet anything she's been planning this escape for a while. There’s been no word on who her accomplice could even be. One thing is for sure; there was definitely a getaway driver.

  "She's already long gone, and you know it." There's an edge of panic in Mila's voice.

  "I do." She’s right. I can't deny it. "So help me find her."

  "We have to find her," Mila clarifies. "She can't be allowed to kill again. I'm still trying to clean up her first mess. Good thing I have an idea as to where we can look."

  The determined set of her shoulders and her clear voice are pretty admirable. At least she doesn't seem to be rooting for her mother.

  That’s a huge comfort.

  Mila walks to one of the multiple workstations on which a large box named Project Broken Mamma sits.

  “What’s in the box?” I ask, frowning in curiosity.

  Ign
oring me, she pulls out a large map and unfurls it onto the table. "The first step should be to go to her old safe houses."

  "That's too obvious," I argue, surprised she would even suggest that.

  Mila shakes her head and rolls her eyes. "Not the ones we know about and raided. Others. Ones that we never discovered."

  Looking down at the map, I'm hit with a profound sense of sympathy for Mila. She's clearly spent a lot of time thinking about her mother's crimes, and I can't even begin to imagine would that would be like.

  The map is an organized mess of color. Some cities are circled in red with a wider black circle traced around. Others are marked in orange or yellow.

  "So," Mila begins, "while she was an active serial killer, my parents rented a few lake houses for the summer holidays. I looked up each little town, and I traced back the number of missing people. The yellow is for towns with zero to five missing people during the time we visited. The orange is between six to ten, and red is eleven to twenty." As she speaks, she points to different areas of the map. "Taking into consideration the national average of missing people, I've pinpointed the ones that seem likelier to be an epicenter of her victims. I've cross-referenced each concentration of missing people with places we visited during my childhood or where my mother lived or worked.”

  Mila seems so detached from the fact that we are talking about her mother that I have to wonder how it must have been for her to discover that her mother was a serial killer. And at such a young age.

  "We can check a few of these, but I'd start there." She drops a delicate finger on the map over a small town by a lake. "When I was a kid, we had a cabin there for a few summers. I'd bet this is the first place she'd go. She put go-bags everywhere. Like the one that was found at the Maple Ridge property.” Mila’s mention of one of the country’s most notorious mass graves makes me shiver. “She had fake IDs, passports, and enough cash to disappear without a trace at each location. A total of four different go-bags were discovered. So that's why we have to check these. She’s going to be looking for cash and identification. If we don't find her at Willowbend, then it'll be at Lake Murray." She points to another town by a lake.

  “Why do you suspect Willowbend above the others?”

  Realistically speaking, she could be on her way to any of her old haunts to find a go-bag.

  “It’s either one of these two.” Her conviction is strong. “These seemed to be some of her favorite locations. Not to mention, the go-bags at those cabins were really well hidden. Even if my mother suspects that her stuff was found, she’d head to one of those two.”

  “Right. I remember.” The recollection of Mila’s own books pop into my mind. “She buried them far away from the bodies instead of with them.”

  “Precisely. And those two cabins are so far back in our family history that she might think they’re safer than the rest.”

  "You've thought about this." There's no stopping the wonder in my tone.

  “I was hoping that this would never happen. I really wanted my research to be used to find more hidden bodies, not to find her."

  Mila sighs and flips her long hair over her shoulder, taking the ends to twirl them around her fingers.

  “How much time have you spent on all of this?”

  I reach into the box and pull out case file after case file of notes Mila has taken.

  "A lot.” She sighs. “I've dedicated my entire adult life to finding all of her victims. I want to give those families peace. Closure. I know it can't bring their loved one back to life, but..."

  She turns around and begins typing away on her computer. Sensing that she needs a few moments to compose herself, I take in the lab.

  Her workspace is confusing. The office part of the area is pure chaos, a mess of papers and files. On the other side, a few metal examination tables are kept in pristine condition. Even the glass partition between the two areas is spotless.

  One thing is obvious: Mila takes pride in her work.

  The outer perimeter of the lab is framed by glass boards. A few of the names listed in various different colors catches my eye. As I get closer to the neat and tidy list of names and pictures, the bottom falls out of my stomach.

  It's a list of all identified Markov victims, as well as dozens of more names like Mid-twenties Martha and Short Pete. Mila has given them temporary names. I understand the need for the descriptors, but the fact that she has humanized them breaks my heart.

  She clearly thinks about her mother's crimes often. A flash of doubt presses against my conscience. Perhaps now that I know Mila is Markov's daughter, I should leave. Though her knowledge of her mother's thought process is impressive and would be a great asset, I don't want to put too much on Mila. She clearly does that all by herself.

  She doesn't deserve to be made to feel like she has to stop her mother. She has definitely taken on enough.

  "FUC gave me permission to keep working on some unsolved cases to see if they're connected to my mother." Mila comes to stand beside me. Seeing this extensive work makes me feel like a creep. Like somehow, I've crawled into her head to see all of the skeletons hiding there. "These are the eleven that I think she is responsible for. I haven't been able to identify them yet. It's not easy, going over all of the missing people reports and trying to identify each one. But..."

  She cuts herself off. Mila doesn't have to go on. I understand what she isn't saying. This is her way of coping with what her mother did. By giving the families closure, she is hoping to obtain her own. A wave of uncomfortable sadness rises in the pit of my stomach.

  I'm used to dealing with the bereaved families. Not with the guilty person's loved ones. It's new, and I don't know what to do with the sympathy I feel.

  Clearing my throat, I look around the room, looking to distract myself. Mila is frantically pulling papers together and filling her bag.

  "When did you start working for FUCNA?" I ask, gesturing toward the framed Ph.D. diploma that's leaning up against the wall as if no second thought had been given to it.

  "Oh, that." She bites down on her lower lip, her white tooth digging into the deep red flesh. I don't know why, but the gesture makes my skin hot. I roll up the sleeves of my thermal shirt, trying to cool down.

  "My dad insisted,” Mila answers, digging through a drawer. I can see the light tremor in her hands as she rushes around her workspace. “He had it framed, and he wanted me to put it up in my office. I just haven't gotten around to it in the last..." She pauses, scrunching her face in thought in the most adorable way. "Two years?"

  "Is that a question?" I arch my eyebrow, punctuating my question.

  "How long I've been here and why that isn't up yet aren’t as important as the work I do."

  "Is that why you talk to the bones?"

  Nice, T. You're teasing her like a creep. Not. The. Time.

  "Well, it's only fair. They talk to me."

  I feel the color drain from my face. "What?" For a few seconds, I start to doubt her sanity. Someone so hot would have a flaw.

  "Not actually. I might look like the perfect candidate to be a female Hannibal Lecter down here, but let me assure you that the bones don't physically talk to me. They tell me their story merely by the state they're in."

  Mila shoots me a wicked grin, and my heart stops for a whole different reason that time.

  4

  T-Bone

  Mila walks back toward the map and points at the red circle, indicating a high concentration of missing people.

  "We need to go to Willowbend first," she instructs again.

  Quelling the various feelings warring in my head, I grab my phone and quickly send off a text to my superiors and the team leaders working under me to let them know we might have a possible lead.

  "It's only about a three-hour drive from here," Mila goes on. "We can go now, but there's something you need to know about me before we head out on the road together." Mila takes a deep breath and releases it as she speaks, making the end of her words squeaky. "I'm
a vampire bat. That means that I have a very severe allergy to the sun. We'll need to take one of the Academy's armored cars, which have insanely good tinted windows."

  "You have an allergy to the sun." I repeat the words, letting my eyes roam over her body. That definitely explains the perfect creamy tone of her skin. She's never felt the pain of a sunburn or the joy of lying in the grass on a cool spring day. Seems like a shame.

  "That's right. And I need to grab some food before we go. I doubt my dietary restrictions can be met where we're going, and I need to eat something specific once a day... or..." Mila looks away, her cheeks nearly matching her lipstick.

  "Or?" I prompt.

  "I get a bit sick." She says it quickly, avoiding my gaze.

  I narrow my eyes, not quite understanding the undertones of her comment.

  "Let's just get to the cafeteria. The sooner I eat, the quicker we can get out of here."

  Mila rolls up the map and slides it into a cardboard cylinder, which she stuffs into a large messenger bag. I watch her move around the lab with agility and efficiency.

  The energy in the elevator is electric. Clean stainless steel walls glimmer, and no matter where I look, I see Mila. She's nervous, I can tell. Though her back is straight and her shoulders squared off, she is chewing on the inside of her lower lip. There's a dip in her skin where she is working the sensitive flesh. What I wouldn’t give to work off some of our mutual tension right about now.

  I have to bite down on the inside of my own cheek to keep from asking her if she’s really okay with coming on this retrieval mission. I have a feeling she wouldn't be too pleased with that question, however. This is a clearly capable woman. More than that, she seems determined. She wouldn't have all of that research if she weren't. She wants to do this, and I won't be the one to stand in her way.

  But that's not to say that I won't worry about her wellbeing. I vow to keep an eye on her and pull her at the first sign that she is taking on too much. I get the distinct impression that Mila is quick to blame herself for other people's shortcomings and wrongdoings. Not many people would choose to dedicate their lives like Mila has.