by Blake Pierce
She knew what he did on Mondays and Thursdays. But she didn’t know with whom. The dumb ass had used a credit card to pay for the room one time and he did a poor job of hiding the smell of perfume and sex. He tried, dousing himself in Axe body spray as if that in and of itself wasn’t a clue as to why he came home late on Mondays and Thursdays.
So the tequila helped with that. She was usually pretty sloshed by the time he got home, making the conversation easier and making it simpler to slide into bed next to him when the lights went out, pretending that everything was just fine.
She sat at the kitchen table, taking several shots as she scrolled through his Facebook profile. She looked for any messages or comments from women she didn’t know, anything that might be taken as flirting. But there was nothing incriminating.
It was nine thirty when she realized that if she didn’t stop drinking now, she was going to get sick. She capped the tequila and placed it back in the cabinet. As she did, a very light knock came at the door. She found this odd and had she been of a sober mind, she might have been a little more scared rather than just curious.
She walked to the door, half of her heart expecting her husband to be there—maybe with flowers and champagne. Maybe he was going to tell her everything, to come clean and beg for her forgiveness.
She went to the door, trying to be as quiet as she possibly could as to not alert Olivia. Even as Lacy walked to the door, she could hear the light murmuring of whatever pop music garbage her daughter was listening to these days. It came from upstairs like a bored person whispering to themselves.
The knock came again just as she reached the door. She turned on the porch light and looked out through the trio of small square windows at the top of the door. The face she saw was not her husband’s but it was a familiar one. Confused as to why she had a visitor so late, she opened the door. She wasn’t afraid; she knew her visitor quite well. While he wasn’t the nicest guy and, quite frankly, creeped her out at times, she thought he was mostly harmless. Also, being here at this hour, maybe something was wrong…
She opened the door and he stepped forward.
She did not even see the knife. All she saw was him making a hard slashing motion and then her neck felt like it had popped open. She tried to speak, to ask the question What are you doing?
But all that came out was blood. So much blood.
She stumbled back, falling to a knee, and then he was on her. And then the knife came down again and again.
Unable to draw breath and feeling the actual rush of blood from her body, Lacy turned her head toward the stairs.
Please God, let him stop with me. Please God…
And that plea to a God she had never really even believed in was the last coherent thought that raced through her mind as the knife came down again and her blood started to collect in a pool around her on her nicely polished hardwood floor.
CHAPTER TWELVE
One of the things Kate had not shared with her coffee community was the fact that she hadn’t slept worth a damn since she had retired from the bureau. She’d originally had issues sleeping after Michael died but that had been more from getting used to having one side of the bed empty than anything else.
But after the bureau, the lack of sleep had come from a series of dreams and nightmares that had nearly made her afraid to sleep. Her doctor had prescribed some natural remedies that had worked for a while but had eventually tapered off. For a while, she’d relied on heavy-duty allergy medicine to knock her out cold, allowing her a peaceful night’s rest here and there.
The thing about those sleepless nights, though, was that she could usually tell when they were coming. She’d feel something like a weight on her shoulders as the sun went down, followed by an anxiousness she could nearly touch and taste and feel.
She felt all of those things the night after the court hearing for parole concerning the Mueller case. She’d tried just ignoring it at first because it had been nearly two months since she’d had one of those nightmare-plagued nights. But when she settled down to bed, she knew what was going to happen; she knew what was coming. She could feel it almost like another presence in the room.
She thought about going to the medicine cabinet for a few shots of allergy medicine but decided against it. As stressful as the idea of the oncoming nightmares was, she also knew that they could, on occasion, help her to later analyze and structure her life. Also, as morbid as it may seem, they were usually an excuse to get a glimpse of Michael in something other than the few pictures and videos she had of him.
So she went to sleep, her thoughts chaotic as they were spread across thoughts of Michael, of Julie Hicks, of the Mueller case, of having recently met with Logan and Assistant Director Duran. Despite the knowledge that she would almost certainly be plagued with nightmares before the sun towed in a new day, Kate was able to find sleep almost right away.
And as it turned out, her hunch was dead on.
***
The dream started in a way it had not before. In it, she saw herself twenty-five years younger, scaling down the side of a small drop-off along the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was nearing noon and it was a gorgeous day. She knew the moment at once, knew that she was going to find the bodies of the newly married Muellers mutilated and gory at the bottom.
Only after Kate’s feet descended the last few feet, holding tight to the nylon rope that was anchored about sixty feet above her head, the sun went dark and it was suddenly night. She found herself standing at the bottom of the drop-off. She looked up ahead and did not see the rest of the mountain. What she did see, though, was another person scaling down the side of the cliff face.
It was a man, dripping blood as he came. It splattered against the rocks directly beside Kate’s foot. When the man got to the bottom, she saw that it was Michael. His face was distorted and bloody, over half of it covered by a black mass. And despite the gory state of him—the condition he had been in when his body had been found in the park—Kate found that she wanted to kiss him.
“It’s all a wheel,” Michael said. “It goes around and around. You either cling helplessly to it or you fall off and get crushed. A wheel…”
He crumbled to the ground and became dust, billowing out in all directions. And suddenly, Kate’s subconscious mind understood that what she was experiencing was much worse than the typical nightmares she’d had in the past. This was something darker, something deeper…
She turned around in the direction of where she knew she would find the Muellers. When she had first been on the case, she’d been here with three other agents, a series of police, and a forensics team. But now there was just her, in the dark, knowing there were gruesome bodies somewhere along the dark rocky terrain.
“Hello?” she called into the darkness, not sure who she wanted to answer.
“Kate!”
A familiar voice very much like music came from the darkness ahead. There were looming shapes up there, the jagged edges of trees. Only, it appeared that some of them were moving.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
Another figure stepped out of the darkness. A smiling man, waving at her in a way that reminded her of old footage from silent film, a disjointed and almost broken sort of motion.
It was her father. When he smiled at her a wave of panic, terror, and disgust rode up her back. He took a step toward her, his eyes shining white in the darkness. Without hesitation, Kate reached for her sidearm only to find that it wasn’t there. She took a step away from him, feeling her heart shrink inside of her chest as, in one dreaming moment, she resorted to her nine-year-old self. She was terrified at the sight of him, of the dark around him, of the—
A hand reached out and grabbed her shoulder from behind.
She wheeled around and there were both of the Muellers, freshly killed with their blood still glistening. The wife’s head was bludgeoned, resulting in a crooked and fragmented smile. Her very recent wedding band shone in the moonlight, the last sign of light Kate saw as the
darkness closed in on her and swallowed her whole.
***
She woke up the next morning to start her daily routine. But rather than sliding out of bed right away like she usually did, she lay there for a few minutes, shaking off the cobwebs of last night’s nightmare. She had not dreamed of her father in a very long time. Having him show up in her dreams so suddenly felt strangely like an invasion of privacy.
She took a moment as she sat up, looking at the three pictures hanging on her wall. One was of her during her second week as an agent, fresh off of her first arrest. It had been a drug bust, netting nearly one million dollars in cocaine. Her very first partner, a guy named Jimmy Parker, stood in the background with a smile.
That was back before shit got complicated and my career started to form a little history—almost like an urban legend.
She supposed that was why she was so drawn to it—why she wanted to go back so badly. If people were going to view her as a legend of sorts, she had something to live up to. Legends didn’t just call it quits and live their days for chats over coffee or reading books on the back porch.
She looked sadly away from the picture of her and Jimmy Parker, fully aware that dwelling on the past could only make things worse.
She usually started her day off with a run through Carytown, or, if her ankles were giving her hell, she’d opt for the small treadmill in the basement. But she didn’t feel up to it this morning, every ounce of her drained from the nightmare. When she finally did drag herself out of bed and started banging around in the kitchen for breakfast, she started to wonder why last night’s nightmare had been so powerful. Was it perhaps the stress of being asked by a friend to look into the death of her daughter? Was it revisiting a courtroom and having to come face to face with Patrick Ellis again?
She supposed it could be all of those things, all coming to a head and raising up her nightmares again.
But why my father? Kate wondered. I let that part of my past go a long time ago.
Just thinking about him as she fried up a few eggs made her feel immature and small. It made her feel that what Michael had said in the nightmare last night had been true. Life is like a wheel that you either cling to or fall from and get crushed. And one way or the other, it just keeps rolling on and on in an infinite loop.
As she sat down at the table with her eggs and a cup of coffee, her cell phone rang. When she saw that it was Debbie Meade, she answered it right away.
“Hey, Debbie,” she answered. “How are you doing?”
“As well as anyone could expect, I suppose,” Debbie said. “It feels surreal knowing that I can no longer make a phone call and Julie will be there on the other end. I tell you, Kate…I don’t know how parents get through this when it’s a younger kid—a kid that lives in their home, under their roof…”
Debbie trailed off here, as if distracted. Kate could hear a series of shaky breaths on the other line and decided it would be best to let Debbie take her time to collect her thoughts. She didn’t want to seem pushy, even though it was Debbie who had called her and not the other way around.
“Look, Kate, I apologize if this is out of line, but I felt you should know something.”
“What is it?”
“There was another murder sometime last night. Another woman, a little older than Julie but pretty close to the same age.”
“Do you know where?” Kate asked.
“I do. And that’s why I’m calling you. Kate…it was in the same neighborhood. A woman Julie knew pretty well.”
“How did you find out?”
“There were police cars everywhere this morning. Clarissa somehow found out first and called to see if I had heard anything. This is…well, it has to be related, right? Same age range, same neighborhood…”
“It would seem that way,” Kate admitted.
“Do you think you can get in on it?” Debbie asked. “I know it sounds stupid but knowing that someone I know would actually be looking into it…”
“No, I understand that. It’s just…there are protocols in place, you know? The local police aren’t exactly eager to hand over information.”
“I figured as much,” Debbie said. “Well, nonetheless, there you go. You at least have the information now. Do with it what you will.”
Debbie attempted to insert a chuckle after this comment but it came out flat. She still sounded infinitely sad and at a loss of how to carry on.
“Thanks, Debbie,” she said. “And please…let me know if I can do anything for you.”
“I will.”
But as they ended the call, the weariness in Debbie’s voice made Kate think that she’d do no such thing. For the foreseeable future, Debbie Meade would be wallowing, sitting in the loss and trying to come to terms with it on her own.
And feeling his, Kate felt that she had to at least try to see what she could do.
Without any hesitation at all, she picked up her cell phone and placed a call.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It took three different calls, but Kate eventually got Duran on the phone. She was bounced back and forth between Logan, Duran’s receptionist, and then, after ten minutes of waiting, a return call from Duran. She’d expected him to sound a little flustered and maybe annoyed that she was pestering him so soon after his offer of coming in on a part-time basis.
Surprisingly, though, he seemed happy to hear from her. “Look, Wise…I know you miss the work and you loved seeing me the other day, but let’s give it some time, okay?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Kate said. “Look, I have a favor to ask. And maybe one that’s going to piss you off.”
She heard a sigh on his end of the line before he responded. “You already heard about the second murder, I take it?”
“I have,” she said. “The mother of the woman that was killed four days ago told me. The location of this new murder and the age range of the women killed can’t be a coincidence.”
“Right as always,” Duran said. “I have a couple of agents working with the State Police on it right now. I expect to have a pair of agents assigned to it by the end of the day. I think it’s clear we have a serial on our hands and would love it if we could stop things before anyone else has to die.”
“Likewise,” Kate said. “Which brings me to my favor. I want you to temporarily reinstate me. Let me in on this one.”
“Wise, I can’t do that. It would be impractical.”
“No, it would be impractical to not at least consider it. I live in the area. And it’s not like this is coming out of left field. Two days ago we talked about having me come on as a part-time agent.”
“Yes, to spend most of your time riding a desk and working on cold case files. Not to be an active agent out in the field. No offense, Wise but you’re fifty-five years old.”
“And you’re fifty-eight. What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“We discussed bringing you on for cold cases. This is not a cold case. You aren’t trying to get greedy with my offer, are you?”
“No. I’ll be honest. This one is right here in my backyard and a friend of mine is involved. So yes, I want it for selfish reasons. There….that’s my reasoning. Now what’s yours for keeping me off of it?”
“You mean except for the fact that you’ve been out of practice for a year?” he asked.
“That’s the best argument you have?” she asked.
She was glad she’d always had a mostly friendly relationship with Duran. She knew some directors who would practically behead their agents for speaking to them in such a way.
“Let me make some calls,” Duran said. “I promise nothing, but I’ll call you back in about an hour.”
He didn’t bother with a goodbye. He simply ended the call, leaving Kate to wait and wonder. Never one to just sit idly by, Kate finished up her breakfast and left the house. She got into her car and headed east, toward the subdivision of Amber Hills, where the two murders had taken place.
As she expected, the
re were police cars at all three entrances to the neighborhood. At the third entrance, she tried her luck at getting inside. As she pulled her car into the entrance, driving between two decorative pillars with the name AMBER HILLS emblazoned in gold trim on them, two officers stepped forward. Their cars were parked to the sides of the road, flashers twirling red and blue lights in the morning sun.
She gave the officers a little nod of salutation and entered the community. As she’d expected, there were a few looky-loos walking up and down the street. They were all looking to the south, down the same street Kate was driving down. She rounded a bend and saw several police cruisers parked in front of a two-story house that looked identical to most of the other houses on the street. An ambulance was also on the scene, but pulled to the side and not running; it was obvious that it would not be used for anything urgent.
She passed the scene and came to a T-intersection at the end of the street. She took a left, connecting back to the street that the Hickses lived on. She drove by their house, noticing that there were two cars in the driveway. One of them, she saw, was Debbie’s. She wondered if she was currently in her daughter’s house, collecting things to remember her by.
Kate made her way back out of Amber Hills and was five minutes back toward her house when her cell phone rang. Duran’s name popped up on the display. She let it ring a few times before answering, not wanting to seem too anxious.
“Hello,” she said, resisting the urge to answer with: “This is Agent Wise.”
“Wise, here’s the deal,” Duran said. “I’ve had a conference call with the Section Chiefs and we came up with something that’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
“Sounds promising.”
“We are going to grant you a temporary reinstatement,” Duran said. “It will last for one month. In the course of that month, we expect you to crack the case down there in Richmond and to get your hands dirty in some of these cold cases I mentioned during your trip to DC. Based on your performance, that temporary reinstatement will be stretched out to a year. After that year, we’d keep you on staff as a consultant. Do you understand?”
