by Kate Morris
“Whatever. I still didn’t see your moves.”
“If I used the moves on you, you’d turn to putty in my hands.”
“Not likely.”
“Maybe we both need to get a life.”
She snorted. “Yeah, that’s a great idea. Start dating. Get serious. Leave the house at all hours of the night to go to the scene of a murder. Real romantic stuff, Foster.”
“Yeah, didn’t work so good the first time, either.”
She instantly regretted her words. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s not you. Being the spouse of a cop is hard. It’s hard on any marriage.”
“Seems like a good reason not to do it,” she said.
“Don’t be so cynical, Evans. You’re too young.”
She looked at him with confusion, “You’re not that much older than me.”
“I’ve been around the life lessons block a few more laps than you, though. From the military, active duty combat, marriage, and working as a cop, I’ve got a little more mileage on me.”
“I may not have the resume you do, but I’ve seen my fair share of things.”
“But you’re so young. You should find happiness, get married, have some babies. You can still be a cop.”
“I tried dating a few times. It just doesn’t work out,” she confessed, not sure why she was doing so.
“What goes wrong? Do you do a yoga pose on your head during dinner?”
She slugged his arm. “No!”
“Wear sweats and forget to brush your hair?”
“What? I don’t do that,” she reprimanded. Then Lorena thought about it for a moment. She wasn’t sure if she brushed her hair from earlier when it had rained so hard on it. “Well, sometimes. But I know what I’m doing on a date. I’m not that naïve.”
Jack mocked her and said, “Sure. I can just picture it.”
“It’s not like you’re blazing a trail through Cleveland’s single ladies’ scene.”
“Don’t want to break too many hearts,” he said.
“You’re so annoying,” she retorted.
He said a moment later, “Plus, I can just see dating a woman once she found out that my partner was a woman.”
“Why?”
He chuckled, “Seriously? Women are by nature jealous. Then if she met you, it’d be even worse.”
“Why would that make it worse?”
“Oh, trust me. It would.”
She didn’t have time to ask him what he meant because they pulled off to the side of the road behind the rest of the vehicles and parked.
“Must be the spot.”
“There’s nothing here,” she said, looking around in the dark.
Craig jogged back to their vehicle, and Jack rolled down his window.
“Wait here. We’re gonna spread out now and look. We’re not sure if there’s a cabin in those woods or what’s going on.”
“Got it,” Jack answered and rolled the window back up when Craig walked away again.
They waited, and waited even longer while Craig and his agents combed the woods. Eventually, he came back to the car and showed them the phone in a plastic bag.
“He must’ve known she had it. He’s messing with us.”
“Asshole,” Jack remarked.
Craig said, “We’ll run through it. See if there’s anything to see. I’m assuming he dumped it out here to waste our time and throw us off.”
“It worked,” he said.
They left the scene since the FBI would work it throughout the night trying to find any shred of evidence they could. There was nothing they could do here anymore. Jack drove them home to their apartment. They let themselves in, and she immediately checked on Grace, who was asleep in their room. Then she went back to the office, which was Jack’s room, with her bag of Twizzlers.
He was taking a shower in his bathroom, so she added notes to their whiteboard. He emerged twenty minutes later in boxer briefs and nothing else.
“What the hell?” he blurted, looking at her.
“What?”
Lorena tried not to stare but did eventually turn around to offer him some privacy.
“Jesus, Evans,” he said. “Do you ever sleep?”
“I just wanted to add our findings today to the whiteboard,” she lied. She also wanted to do some work on the case. “I always work better when I’m a little tired.”
“A little? You haven’t slept in about two days. Go to bed, woman!”
When she turned around to glare at him for being a chauvinist, he had thrown on a clean black tee.
“Go!” he roared.
“Fine!”
Lorena stormed out and went to her shared bedroom with Grace. She stripped, showered quickly, and collapsed into her bed with her hair still wrapped in a towel.
She dreamt of the night she went to that damn party with Jack where the freaks had drugged her. It ended even stranger than it had that night. Lorena was tied in the basement of the abandoned warehouse by a madman who called himself Trix. Through the bars of her five by five cell, she could see her captor. It was her father.
Chapter Eleven
Jack
His phone buzzed at 7:20 the next morning, and Jack answered it on the first ring.
“You two need to get to headquarters,” Craig said. “Something happened.”
“On our way,” Jack returned it groggily but was already flinging the blankets off as he moved into motion.
Once he was dressed and had his service weapon strapped on under his blazer, he went to wake Lorena. He was met by Grace in the living room.
“Good morning, Jack!” she greeted cheerily.
Seeing her happy, smiling face made him feel a little hope for the world. Just a little.
“Hey, kid. Your aunt awake yet?”
“No, she’s out. She had a bad dream last night. She was talking in her sleep. I had to wake her.”
“She do that a lot?” he asked.
Grace shrugged as she poured cereal into a bowl at the small dining table. “Sometimes. It’s usually worst when she’s been without sleep for too long.”
“Then she must do it all the time.”
Grace chuckled.
Jack went to her bedroom door and knocked softly. He cracked it open just enough to speak through it.
“We got a call, partner.”
“I’m up. I’m just getting dressed,” she said, her voice scratchy and rough.
He left her to get ready and made a pot of coffee. Then he poured two portable, metal bottles full and added sugar and cream to hers. Lorena came out of the bedroom dressed and ready to go. Jack barely glanced up as he collected his shoes and bag. Grace’s loud laughter drew his attention.
“What’s…” he said. Then he noticed Lorena’s hair. “Oh. Oh, geez.”
“I know!” Lorena barked. “I went to bed with it wet!”
Her hair looked like it survived a tornado. Just barely.
“Here, Aunt Lo,” Grace offered and stood. “Let me braid it for you.”
She sat in a chair while Gracie braided her hair into a single, thick coil that hung halfway down her back. She used the elastic tie from her own ponytail and knotted Lorena’s at the end.
“There! Voila!” Grace announced. “It’s the best I can do. Want some lip gloss?”
This caused Lorena to send a glare her niece’s way. “No, and you’d better not be wearing makeup, either. You’re not allowed.”
“I’ll be fifteen in two months. Why don’t you just ship me off to a convent?”
“I’m gonna ship you off to an orphanage if you don’t stop,” Lorena warned. She turned to look up at Jack with big hazel eyes. “Do I look like an idiot?”
“No, you look fine,” he said, remarking honestly. And she did. The braid made her look younger than she was, but nobody at the FBI was going to say anything. She was brought in to do a job that they couldn’t get done, and they all knew it. Besides, she looked nice. She was dressed better for the weather today in a pale tu
rquoise turtleneck, blue jeans, and a black blazer. “You’ll be warmer, at least.”
“Fine,” she retorted, still upset about her hair.
They left the apartment, warned Grace about not going anywhere or answering the door, and drove to the FBI building. Then she left her niece money to order takeout in case they weren’t back for lunch.
“Get any sleep?” he asked as he drank his coffee.
“Yeah, I slept.”
“Grace said you had a nightmare?”
“Just something stupid. Stress,” she answered simply.
“It’s a good thing you don’t smoke. It might finish you off,” he remarked.
“Please, my healthy diet would keep me going,” she joked.
Jack laughed and took another sip of his coffee.
“What’d they call us in for? Catch him while we were asleep?” she quipped.
He chuffed, “Sure. I’m sure it’ll be that. No, Craig didn’t say. He just said we’d better get in there. Something’s going on.”
She stuck her earbuds in and didn’t say anything else on the ride. However, her fingers worked dexterously taking many notes.
They were shown into a smaller office, not the boardroom where they’d held the big meeting.
“Deputy Director Marshall, this is Detectives Evans…” he paused so she could shake hands. “… and her partner, Detective Jack Foster,” Craig said, making the formal introduction.
“Have a seat,” the older man said, offering them the chairs in front of his desk. Craig stood off to their right leaning against a credenza.
“We’ve received a letter, Detective Evans,” he said, addressing Lorena directly.
“Oh? From the Tooth Fairy?” she asked.
“Yes, it would seem that the press leaked your working on the case,” he told them.
“Yeah, we heard from some people about that. It happens.”
“Not in my department it doesn’t. I’m not pleased with this, but it’s too late now.”
Jack looked quickly to Craig, who seemed like he just got his ass chewed on this. They probably all had a meeting in the boardroom this morning, but it wasn’t a pleasant one.
The Director continued, “We got a letter from the Tooth Fairy, who wants us to call him Trix. Doesn’t matter, if you ask me. As long as he’s behind bars when this is all over.”
“Yes, sir,” Lorena concurred.
“It’s to you.”
“Excuse me?”
“The letter,” he explained. “He wrote it directly to you. He obviously watched the news last night. That’s actually a good thing, though. At least we know he’s in the area of the local news broadcast.”
“We’ve checked,” Craig said. “It was only on the local news, and we have a clear radius of where that reaches.”
“Unless he’s originally from here and now lives out of state and keeps abreast of Portland news and just watched it on a podcast on his laptop or something,” Lorena said.
There was silence for a moment while the other two men considered what she said. They looked disappointed as if they hadn’t thought of that.
“Can we read it?” Jack asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” the Director said. “This man seems to know you, Detective.”
“How?” Jack questioned.
“I was wondering the same thing,” he said. “Do you think that you’ve hunted him before and didn’t catch him? Is there a possibility that he ran in your territory for a while and got away?”
“No, sir,” she answered. “Juliette Nicholson is the only serial I’ve worked that escaped.”
“She jumped bond. That’s different,” Craig said. “You still closed the case.”
She nodded but seemed to blame herself for Juliette’s disappearance. Jack didn’t. The woman was a psychotic bitch with money and access to a full-proof escape plan.
“Craig will take you to look at the letter. The original is down in forensics, of course, but you can read the copy.”
“Yes, sir.”
They rose to leave.
“And, Detective,” he said, stopping them, “I’d like this solved as soon as possible. I don’t think I need to remind you or anyone else that a young girl’s life is at stake here.”
Lorena nodded and left. Jack followed with Craig. The Deputy’s speech wasn’t a lot different from the ones they heard from their own police captain all the time. It was just different for Jack because it involved his ex-wife’s step-daughter.
“I’m set up in here,” Craig said, leading them to a small, corner office. “I’m sharing this space with someone else who was flown in from our D.C. branch. The letter’s on my desk. I’ll be right back.”
“Great. Thanks,” Jack said as Lorena crossed the room, dropped her bag onto a chair and snatched up the letter.
She said, “It’s typewritten. How’d he get this here? Did they say? Courier? Email?
“Not sure. Two pages. This should be interesting.”
He read over her shoulder.
My dearest Detective Lorena Evans,
Do you ever have nightmares?
“Good Lord, was he in your room last night? That’s a damn creepy coincidence,” Jack remarked and got shushed.
I do. It’s always the same one. When I was a young boy, I lived on a farm with my father. We raised many different animals and grew crops. We even raised rabbits, mostly for meat. Rabbit stew is lovely in the winter with some warm crusty bread.
Rabbits don’t always have full-sized kits. Many are born too small to survive. My father, cruel beast that he was, would thin the herd, so to speak. We’d walk down the aisle of rabbit pens, and he’d pick out the runts, explaining that they would take milk from the others that were more viable. I didn’t particularly care whether any of the herd lived or died. I don’t care much for most animals, other than for the eating of them.
He’d pull the runts from the litters. Their bodies were pink, mostly hairless, and tiny. Disgusting, disturbing looking pathetic things. Then he’d drop them to the dirt barn floor and step on them. With one booted foot, he’d squash the life from them. We always had a mangy farm dog, who treated this as breakfast.
For years, I’ve had the same recurring nightmare about hairless rabbits. They are bigger, the size and shape of the cartoon rabbit in the cereal commercial for the brand Trix aimed at being adorable and appealing to young children so that they’d nag their parents to buy the sugary cereal. There were dozens of those Trix the rabbit type rabbits hiding in tall grasses in a field near our home- only they weren’t white like the one from the commercial. They’d come for their vengeance, their hairless, pink bodies covered in blood, their black eyes huge and malevolent, their teeth not those of an ordinary rabbit. I grew up hunting and farming. This shouldn’t have frightened a kid like myself, but to this day, this nightmare causes me to awaken in a tangle of sweaty sheets.
Sometimes we fail to lose the fears that once held us as children. I wonder, do you hold onto any childish fears and insecurities? I would bet anything that you do. Is this why you work so hard to catch killers? Do they remind you of someone from your youth? Are you killing your own demons with each arrest?
I would like to skin humans and see if I can reproduce the scene from my dreams. Women, nude and covered in blood, hairless. What a sight it would be.
I know you have solved many cases, my dear, but you won’t solve this one. Hailee is gone. You are not going to find her. I’ll let you know when I’m done with her. I’ll leave her where I leave all the dirty whores who need to be cleansed like her.
You are far too young to navigate a mind like mine. Hailee is already boring me. I would like to crack open the skull of someone much more interesting. Perhaps, we’ll meet in person soon and have a nice chat.
Your friend,
Trix
“Jesus,” Jack proclaimed when he finished. “Sick bastard.”
Lorena stood there not commenting, but he did notice that the paper trembled in her hand
s. He took the two sheets and placed them back on Craig’s desk.
“I need to send Gracie home to live with Bob,” she said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Jack agreed with a nod. “This isn’t safe for her here now. It’s not safe for you, either. The fact that you’re here working the case was already leaked to the press. Who knows what will get leaked next? He could find out where we’re staying. Then he’ll watch our patterns and try to take you, too.”
This thought sent a shiver through Jack’s core. It made him sick to think of that happening to Lorena.
“Hell, Evans, maybe you should go home, too,” he said.
She spun and stared up at him, “What? No way. We can’t leave. We’ve gotta help them catch this psycho.”
“But…”
“No, you’re just trying to be protective. Stop doing that. I’m not a helpless female you have to shelter and protect. I’m your partner.”
He grimaced but nodded just the same. She was right. He was treating her like he would one of his sisters, and that wasn’t what she deserved. She was an intelligent detective.
“Now let’s dissect this,” she said, retrieved her pack, and sat at an L-shaped desk near the windows.
She opened her bag while he grabbed the letter again.
“What do we know?” she asked.
“He grew up on a farm. But it sounds like it wasn’t forever and that he definitely doesn’t live on one now.”
“Abusive father. He had to be. Trix didn’t like him. He calls him a cruel beast.”
Jack nodded and continued, “Also, he grew up somewhere with cold weather at least during the winter season. He describes the stew in a way that sounds like he liked eating it during the winter.”
“Good. Raised on a farm. Cruel father. Lived somewhere either in the Midwest or the Northeast.”
“Grains would indicate that, too.”
She nodded and said, “There was something else. Here,” she said, pointing. “He says that he cleanses them like ‘her.’ I think he might be speaking of an ex-girlfriend, wife, someone he knew.”
“Mother,” he said.
Lorena frowned. “Probably.”
“He’s arrogant. He thinks he’s gonna get away with doing this forever. He’s obviously mentally unstable.”
