The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2)

by Dot Hutchison

  On Friday, there’s a wreath of honeysuckle nestled on a bed of blue tissue paper, sitting in what looks to be a cake box on the porch.

  On Monday, there’s a bouquet of freesia in a violent explosion of color, pink and yellow and white and purple and rusty orange, the stems curling out past the large blooms to show the partially unfurled buds.

  The carnations come on Wednesday, the burgundy tips bleeding down through the veins of the white petals. That’s where they stopped last time. Instead of Agents Sterling and Archer, the latter of whom I’ve seen only in passing as he drives down our street, Agent Finnegan comes to check on those.

  “Are you doing okay?” he asks, not looking away from the rectangle of card stock in his gloved hands.

  “Sure.” I lean against the doorframe, holding my cup of cocoa close to my face so the steam can offset the breeze. It is warming up outside, hovering in the high fifties the past couple of days, and the meteorologist is cheerfully predicting low seventies next week. It’s just that I’m in pajamas meant for inside only, without the urge to reach for the coat only a few feet away. “Just wish I knew what to expect next.”

  “Columbines,” he answers absently, tucking the card into a separate plastic bag. “You know what those look like?”

  “Blue? There’s a song about them, I think.” I didn’t actually mean the flowers, but his response is weirdly reassuring, like it didn’t occur to him not to tell me.

  He stays in his crouch, forearms draped over his knees as he looks up at me. “Your friendly neighborhood creep is hard to learn about.”

  “Landon?”

  “Eddison narrowed down his possible neighborhoods, but no one in those areas claims to recognize him and we’re having trouble finding any paperwork on him. No lease, no mortgage. Neither the DMV nor post office has any records of a Landon in the area. We’re expanding the search, but it’s slow going.”

  “It isn’t Landon on the security camera,” I remind him. “The eyes are the wrong shape.”

  He frowns and glances up at me. “Archer was supposed to tell you: we found the one on the camera.”

  “What?”

  “Student down at Hunt U; he makes extra cash doing deliveries. One of your neighbors identified him in the picture with the freesia. When we talked to him, he said the flowers were dropped off in his car with an envelope containing the address and his delivery fee, and a requested time of delivery.”

  “He leaves his car unlocked so people can anonymously deliver things through him?” I ask incredulously. “That sounds . . . that’s . . .”

  “Idiotic in the extreme,” he agrees. “Also a good way to land in prison if he assists with illegal goods. He said he’d contact us if anything else showed up.”

  “So either he chose not to, or these were delivered a different way.”

  “Exactly. And something off the grid like this could match your paperless friend Landon. He’s not at the chess pavilion this morning—I checked on my way here—and we’re in court the rest of the week; next week, either Archer or I will accompany you to chess, and hopefully we can talk to him, or even follow him home.”

  “I haven’t seen him since Eddison was out here. So, week and a half?”

  “Not at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have your vets?”

  “Haven’t asked.” I watch his frown deepen, his gloved fingers rubbing against each other in thought. “You’re worried.”

  He reaches for his hair, catching himself just in time. He’s an odd mix of parentage, delicate of face but burly of body, his skin Irish pale and densely spattered with very light brown freckles, but his hair silky and dark. “Victor Hanoverian trained me. We were partners until I got my own team and he pulled Eddison and Ramirez. I’ve seen him walk into hostage situations and crossfire without so much as twitching. So the fact that he emails me every day to ask if there’s any new information? Yes, I’m worried, because him being twitchy scares the shit out of me.”

  It’s an honesty I don’t expect out of someone who’s practically a stranger, but I’m grateful for it. “He’s scared about what happens when the flowers catch up to last year’s victim, isn’t he?”

  “Or what happens if you leave before they’re cycled through,” he admits. “If you move, what if he does too? That puts the case out of FBI hands.”

  “Could you give the case file to Interpol?”

  “Yes, and if it comes to it, we will. But will they give it any attention?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For not downplaying,” I say with a shrug. “If I hadn’t hidden my head in the sand after Chavi died, maybe I would have known to report the flowers in San Diego. We wouldn’t be doing all this, and you wouldn’t have to sneak around your section chief. Maybe Aimée would still be alive, and the girl after her.”

  “Hey, now, no.” He straightens out of his crouch, one knee cracking painfully, but aside from a wince he doesn’t seem to care. He’s a little shorter than I am, but he holds himself taller, a presence even when he isn’t putting effort into it. “You can’t think that way.”

  “It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

  “We have absolutely no way to know that. Priya, look at me.”

  His eyes are dark, iris almost impossible to discern from pupil, but he has the most ridiculously long lashes I’ve ever seen on a man.

  “You cannot think that way,” he repeats firmly. “None of this is your fault. We have no way to know what would have happened if things had been different in San Diego. What we’ve got is right now. You are doing everything you can.”

  “Okay.”

  He looks frustrated, and I wonder if I’m going to be getting a call from Eddison or Vic. Agent Finnegan, while very kind, doesn’t know me well enough to successfully argue a point. “Let’s see what the camera caught.”

  The footage shows a woman this time, a heavy sweater open over the black, red, and yellow polo shirt worn by the employees at the gas station a few blocks down. I don’t recognize the woman herself, but that’s no surprise; I only go into the store when the cold makes me have to pee too badly to get all the way home from chess. When that happens, I’ll buy a drink or a candy bar so I’m not the asshole who uses the bathroom without being a customer, but it’s not so often that I know anyone who works there.

  “I’ll go down and see if they can identify her,” Finney says as he heads out. “And, Priya . . . the sum of what you can do is what you’re already doing. Don’t suffer weight that isn’t yours to carry.”

  Columbine comes in a variety of colors, and looks like two different flowers stacked together with a white broad-petaled heart, throats dark to match the thinner, longer petals underneath. The ones that arrive on Friday, delivered by a very confused postal worker who found them in his passenger seat, are blue and purple.

  Emily Adams sang about blue columbines, just a few days before she died.

  Which is probably why, for the first time, the ribbon on the bouquet isn’t curled plastic. It’s white satin, printed with black music notes. Not just the flowers of her death, but something of her life, as well.

  Ramirez is in Delaware, doing a follow-up consultation to a case they closed in February, but apparently she didn’t tell the sort-of girlfriend this, because there is an enormous bouquet of sunflowers on her desk. The deliveryman had to hold them while Eddison shoved aside enough paper to make room for it. Ramirez loves sunflowers. He knows this.

  But he also knows that he’s got flowers of an entirely different sort on his mind, so he can’t find the delivery anything less than disturbing.

  He’s a decent partner, though, so he takes a picture and sends it to her so she can make the appropriate noises of appreciation to the gal from Counterterrorism.

  Then Vic walks into the bullpen, half a chicken salad sandwich in his hand and a pinched look on his face. “Get your coat,” he snaps out. “We’re going to Sharpsburg.”

  “Sharps—K
eely?”

  “Got attacked. Inara’s with Keely and her parents at the hospital.”

  “Inara’s in Maryland?” But he’s already got his coat and Vic’s, as well as their guns and badges, and they can sort those out once Vic’s swallowed down the rest of his lunch. He grabs the small bags under their desks just in case. They shouldn’t need to spend the night, not so close to home, but it doesn’t cost him more than a second so he might as well.

  “Keely’s on spring break; she asked Inara to visit for a couple of days.”

  It’s probably for the best that Inara works at such a ridiculously upscale restaurant, given how much time she’s having to take off in all of this.

  Vic finishes the sandwich in the elevator and takes his gun and badge, getting them hooked on his belt. “We’ll get an update on the way.”

  Except for the update—which really only tells them which hospital Keely was taken to, and that the attacker is in custody—it’s a silent two hours to Sharpsburg. It’s hard not to imagine the worst.

  Keely has been dealing . . . as well as she could possibly be expected to. She was kidnapped on her twelfth birthday, brutally raped and beaten, only to wake up in the Garden. She was only there a few days, staunchly protected by Inara and the other girls, but to hear Inara and even Bliss tell it, those few days stank of more fear than any other time. Then the explosion, and the rescue, and the publicity . . . Keely has already dealt with more than any child her age should have to.

  The local police told the hospital they were coming; they’ve barely held up their badges before they’re being directed to a private room near the ER.

  They find Keely’s father pacing anxiously up and down the hallway, scrubbing at his face. Inara stands beside the doorway, watching him, her arms crossed over her belly. Eddison’s not sure if it’s to ward off vulnerability or cold; the air-conditioning is blowing a little too cold for her tank top to be comfortable. He can see the edges of one tattooed wing over the curve of her shoulder.

  “Her mother is in with her, and one of the female officers,” Inara tells them instead of hello.

  “Our update was terse,” Vic replies. “What happened?”

  “We were in the mall, and decided to stop for lunch. Her parents were in another part of the food court. Keely picked a table for us, I went up to get the food. Heard a fuss and turned around, a woman was going after her with a knife. Called her a whore, said rape was a punishment from God.”

  “And then?”

  “It caught everyone by surprise. They were just sort of frozen. So I pushed through and decked the bitch. May have broken her nose. She dropped the knife, and by then one of the security guards had approached, so he cuffed her and I got to Keely.”

  “How bad?”

  After shrugging out of his coat and handing it to Vic, Eddison pulls off his thick black sweater. It had seemed more comfortable over his shirt and tie than a blazer that morning, when they were supposed to be at their desks all day. Now he’s glad for it, because Inara actually smiles at him when he holds it out to her.

  “Thanks. I gave my hoodie to Keely, to help her hide a bit. People were staring.” The sweater is big on her, the neck wide enough to show her collarbones, but she shoves her hands in her pockets rather than crossing them again. “The cuts are shallow, mostly on her arms because Keely was holding her arms up to defend herself. There’s one on her cheek, but they called in a plastic surgeon to come take a look at it.”

  “Is this the same mall where she was kidnapped?”

  “Yes. It’s not her first time back there. Her therapist encourages her to go.”

  “So her attacker knew who Keely was.”

  “Hard not to,” Inara says dryly. “Not like our faces haven’t been plastered all over the news or anything. And Keely lives here.”

  Keely’s father acknowledges them when he paces close enough, but spins on his heel to keep pacing the other way.

  “They’ve been trying really hard not to be clingy,” Inara tells the agents. “There, but not hovering. It was their idea to let the two of us eat alone.”

  “Are we about to have a conversation about where guilt belongs?” Vic asks in a mild voice.

  Inara snorts. “No. I’ve had enough of those for a while, thank you. He’s just trying to pace himself exhausted before he goes in to see her, I think.”

  Vic gives Eddison a look, then knocks on the door. “Keely? This is Agent Hanoverian. Is it okay if I come in?” He waits for her muffled assent before he pushes the door open, and gently closes it behind him.

  Eddison leans against the wall next to Inara, both of them watching Keely’s father pace. “You only hit her the once?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m impressed at your restraint.”

  “If the security guard hadn’t been there by that point, I might have done more. Maybe not. Guess it would have depended on whether or not she came at Keely again.”

  Mr. Rudolph finishes another lap and spins to start the next.

  “They’ve been talking about moving to Baltimore. He can transfer, and her mom has family there. They think it might be better for Keely to get out of Sharpsburg.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Baltimore gets basically the same news,” she sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not the best judge. I went back to the same apartment, the same job.”

  “Eighteen is different from twelve.”

  “Is it really? I never would have guessed.”

  He smirks, and because they’re side by side, he can even pretend she doesn’t see it. “You injured at all?”

  She holds up her left hand, which has a bandage wrapped around the palm. It’s not the same as when he first met her, but it’s close enough to make him wince. “I was an idiot. Went to grab her hand, grabbed the knife instead. But it gave me the leverage I needed for the punch. It’s a couple of stitches. Shouldn’t scar too badly.”

  The burns from the explosion in the Garden scarred, and she has a set of stretches to do whenever she thinks of them so she doesn’t lose flexibility with the hand.

  “I’m surprised you’re not in there with her.”

  “I was for a while, but she kept looking over to me when the officer was trying to take her statement. I offered to come out here so the officer could be confident the statement was Keely’s alone.”

  “And you stayed out because?”

  She mutters a curse and pulls her phone out of her pocket, awkwardly because it’s on her left and her grip isn’t as strong. But as she thumbs the screen on, ignoring a fresh stream of texts with names he can recognize as other Butterflies, she pulls up a message from Bliss that makes his heart skip.

  It’s a screenshot from an article online, time-stamped less than an hour ago, and under an obnoxious click-bait headline, there’s a picture of Inara. He can’t see much of Keely, hidden behind Inara’s body with the older girl’s too-large hoodie wrapped completely around her, arms holding it in place in a tight embrace. But he can see where Inara’s tank top rode up her back and hasn’t been fixed yet, showing the lower wings of a Western Pine Elfin, can see the fierce protectiveness on her face as she looks off to one side.

  “They call me by name. The restaurant, too. Bliss is warning Guilian; he’ll remind the staff that no one answers questions about anything that isn’t connected to the food.”

  “Do they mention her?”

  “Keely Rudolph of Sharpsburg, Maryland. They even say her school. Her fucking middle school.”

  “Maybe Baltimore wouldn’t be a bad idea. They could register her under her mother’s name.”

  “We survived. We shouldn’t have to keep hiding.”

  “No, you shouldn’t.”

  “Some of her classmates have been giving her a hard time. Keep covering her locker in butterfly stickers. Leaving craft-shop butterflies on her desk. Even one of her teachers asked if the Gardener had a butterfly picked out for her.”

  “Inara.”

 
“I’m used to a shit life. It means I’m grateful for my friends at every moment, but it also means I’m used to being deluged with terrible things. She’s not. She shouldn’t have to be. She’s a good kid, with parents who would do anything for her, and . . .”

  He clears his throat uncomfortably. “It isn’t fair?”

  “What is? This is just wrong.” She puts her phone away and knocks her head gently against the wall behind them, closing her eyes. “Scars fade,” she says quietly. “They don’t disappear. It isn’t right. We live with the memories; why do we have to live with the scars as well?”

  He doesn’t have an answer for her.

  She wouldn’t accept one if he tried.

  So they watch Keely’s father pace the hospital hallway, listen to the indistinct murmurs that come through from the room, and wait.

  Her name is Laini Testerman, and the silk hibiscus she wears tucked behind one ear every day may be the most concealing piece of clothing she willingly wears.

  You’ve really never seen anything like it, but the hotter-than-usual Mississippi spring has this girl stripping down at every opportunity, even when she really shouldn’t. You’ve never seen shorts so short, so high up her ass you can see the curves of her cheeks. If she’s not at school, she’s in a bikini top, each one smaller than the last.

  When she babysits, she brings the children out of doors to run through sprinklers and hoses, or to play in pools, and never urges them to change into swimsuits first. Right out in the open where anyone can see, she tells little girls to just strip down to their underwear and jump in, often with boys there in the yard or pool with them. Right out facing the street.

  You were contemplating killing her for her own lack of modesty, but this seals it. You can’t let her corrupt other girls like this.

  You don’t want the children to see, though, and she spends most of her time when she’s not at school babysitting. She’s saving up for a car, you learn, listening as she waxes eloquent to a friend about the freedoms she’ll have with her own car. It’s hard to get her alone given how busy she is.