A Thorn Among the Lilies

by Michael Hiebert

  Sort of dumbstruck, Leah answered, “Medium well?”

  “And I’ll have mine medium rare. Thanks.”

  The waitress took the menus and left the table.

  “Why did you just order for me?” Leah asked Dan.

  “To speed up the process so we could get back to this case. You have caught my interest, oh, grasshopper.”

  “What if I hadn’t liked steak and ribs?”

  “Then you would’ve never agreed to meet me here. Now, can you please tell me about this murder victim of yours?”

  “Not much more to tell other than what I told you on the phone. We found her washed up on the shore backside up. She was under one of the wharfs at Willet Lake.”

  “Where’s Willet Lake?”

  “It’s a small lake just a few miles northwest of here.”

  “In Alvin?”

  “Yep, anyway, when we turned her over, I found the cross in her pocket. Here’s a picture of the cross.” She passed a blown-up black-and-white photo across the table.

  “Pretty much matches the one we got off our Jane Doe,” Truitt said.

  “And, of course, we discovered the writing across her chest.”

  “This is where, to me, it gets interestin’,” Truitt said. “The differences in the messages. Yours said . . . what?”

  Leah passed over another image. “Justice Is Blind in the Eyes of the Lord.”

  “And ours said, ‘A Thorn Among the Lilies,’ which comes from the Bible.”

  “Well,” Leah said, “like I told you on the phone, it sort of does. It’s been reversed from what appears in my King James Version of the good book. The real text I found in the Old Testament in Song of Solomon 2:2 read: ‘As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.’

  “To put it in context, I included here the passages surrounding it.”

  She pulled another sheet from her file folder and began reading from Song of Solomon:

  2:1 I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.

  2:2 As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

  2:3 As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

  2:4 He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

  2:5 Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.

  “And what do you make of all that?” Dan asked.

  “I reckon this is more than enough to see what the killer had meant by the expression. He was the opposite of what was in the verse. He was the thorn in the valley. The one not to be trusted. The one son not to put your faith in. I believe the message is to us. It’s a taunt.”

  “You really think that?”

  “I do. I assume final death for your Jane Doe came from a .22 caliber round fired into her right temple?” Leah asked.

  “Yes, same with your Mercy Jo?”

  “Yeah, my chief of police figures the killer must be left-handed because he went for the right temple while he likely had her bound and tied, probably to a chair. Figured he would’ve wanted to watch her die.”

  “Interestin’ conclusion.”

  “Did your guys find glue around the mouth where she had been duct-taped?”

  “Yeah, but there was no tape anymore. The killer had removed it before dumping the body in the mine. Yours too?”

  “Ours too. Sounds like the same MO exactly. We need to get ballistics to check both our rounds out and see if they match. I assume yours are in the crime lab in Birmingham?”

  He nodded.

  “Mine are in Mobile. Here’s the report from ballistics.” She began reaching into the file.

  Dan Truitt put his hand on her arm. “Don’t worry ’bout showin’ all that to me now. I can go through it myself later. Right now it will just flood my head with useless numbers. Same goes with footprint casts and tire-track casts. Let’s get the experts to look at ’em and cross reference ’em and get back to us and tell us what matches and what don’t.”

  “Okay . . .” Leah said, passing him the file folder. He put all the pages she had given him back into it. He passed her his folder and the videotape.

  “For now,” he said, “let’s just relax, have a few drinks, and enjoy our steaks. Too much police work makes Dan a dull boy. He goes a bit crazy.” He looked around the room and spotted the waitress. Tapping his glass, he ordered another drink. “Two, please,” he shouted out.

  Leah thought that he must’ve had too much police work a while ago. This guy was just a few apples short of a full cart.

  CHAPTER 21

  Turned out nobody follows patterns like ranchers. After church, despite the downpour of rain, me and Dewey started our mission with Isaac Swenson, the owner of Southpoint Ranch way up in the northern part of Alvin. You have to ride your bike up Fairview Drive, which splits off into Bogpine Way, which you want to avoid at all costs because it leads to the bog, which is full of stench and toads. It’s probably not so bad during the winter.

  But we stayed left, which meant we had to continue uphill near on a mile and a half before we came to Swenson’s ranch.

  We picked Isaac Swenson to start with on account of I overheard my mother telling Officer Chris that a pickup truck was used during the serial killer’s murders. Unfortunately, everyone in town drove pickups. However, there were two people who seemed particularly suspicious to me. They were Jacob Tyne, the owner of the Red Lightning Cattle Farm, and Bubba Swenson, Isaac Swenson’s son. I picked Isaac Swenson over Jacob Tyne on account of Jacob Tyne also owning Superfeed and K’s Bait & Tackle. It seemed to me like having so many things on the go would lead to less patterns in your life and probably a lot less time to go out killing people.

  We started watching Isaac Swenson on Tuesday after school and planned to do so for two days. We had lots of people we wanted to watch, and so we didn’t have a whole bunch of time to spend on each one of them. Sure enough, on the first day, Isaac Swenson started a routine he followed near on exact to the T on the next day. Everything from feeding the hogs at the same time, to wiping down the horses, to feeding the chickens. His wife even called him in for dinner at the same time both days, almost right down to the minute. I was sure glad my Uncle Henry had given me my very own watch a year ago. More and more it was coming in very handy in my life.

  CHAPTER 22

  Wednesday, Leah woke to a cold, wet rain. The forecast called for it to get even worse and possibly turn into thundershowers. It wasn’t the best day to have to walk twenty minutes to pick up your car from where she’d left it the night before after having too many martinis to drive it home.

  But Leah managed to make it, despite the weather.

  And after finding her car where she’d left it in front of Vera’s, Leah went back home and watched the videotape Dan Truitt had given her the night before. Thank God she hadn’t tried to drive home. Her head felt like a construction site. She’d lost count of how many cranberry apple martinis the two of them had drunk, but it was more than Leah needed, that’s for sure. Everything was a blur of martini as the video went into the slot and she pressed the PLAY button on the machine.

  Truitt was right, the video was amateurish, the camera unstable. Also, because it was taken inside a mine, the picture was rather dark. But there was no escaping the body lying on its back, looking like a life-sized rag doll with its eyes sewn up with thick black cotton thread and its arms outstretched. Leah felt her heart go out to this woman who, like Mercy Jo Carpenter, looked to be in her late twenties, lying there dead for all the world to see.

  The camera zoomed in on the face as well as it could do given the fact that the photographer was obviously being held back by police tape cordoning off the area. Then the cameraman did a slow sweep of the officers tending to the crime. There were six. Leah couldn’t help but be envious of a town with enough of a police force to send six officers to a crime scene. As the picture continued to pan, t
he shot slowly coming out of the cave entrance, she saw Detective Truitt, with his notebook in hand, talking to someone. Probably that was the witness who called the scene in, Leah suspected.

  Then the camera did a slow sweep of the gawkers gathered trying to get a glimpse of a real dead body. There must have been thirty or forty of them. They were all clumped together, pushing their way toward the incident, held back by a fragile line of yellow tape.

  Then something in the video caused a surge in Leah’s stomach. She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something she had seen that caused her to react. Did it have something to do with Truitt? Or the officers tending to the crime scene? She didn’t know. She just knew that something was wrong, and it tugged at the back of her brain like a small dog gnawing on a piece of bone.

  She even forgot her hangover for a moment.

  The video came to an end and Leah immediately rewound it and played it again. And again she felt that same feeling. It was almost a déjà vu feeling, only not quite. She didn’t know what to make of it.

  She watched the video four more times until finally pulling herself away, deciding that whatever it was would come to her in time. She went back to the rest of the evidence Truitt had given her, going over it meticulously, making sure there was nothing she’d missed during their conversation at the restaurant.

  CHAPTER 23

  “If you’re right,” Detective Dan Truitt said, “and your killer lives in Alvin, then there’s a good possibility my Jane Doe is from Alvin. Do you mind circulating her picture in the more . . . how do I put this . . . seedier parts of town and see if anyone knows who she was?”

  Dan had called shortly after Leah got into the station. Chris had brought in donuts. She was on her first bite. She had just finished pouring herself a cup of coffee and was watching the rain pound the street outside, wondering when they were going to hear their first clap of thunder, when the phone rang. Somehow Leah beat Chris to it. It was Dan.

  “Not at all. I think that’s a great idea,” Leah said, trying not to sound like she had a full mouth.

  “Why do you sound like you have a pillow over your head?”

  “Sorry,” she said, swallowing, “I was eating a donut.”

  “I know it’s going to be tough to get an ID with the eyes stitched. Some folk ain’t gonna wanna even look at the picture, but see what you can do, okay?”

  “I will. And, Dan . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  There was a pocket of silence while she collected her thoughts.

  “That video you gave me . . .”

  “Yeah, sorry it couldn’t be better. It was taken by a kid. I think he was sixteen or something.”

  “No, no. It’s not that, it’s just . . . something about it.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know. Somethin’ doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “Hmm. How good are your instincts? I’ve watched it a dozen times or so. Seems all right to me. We did a good job on the scene, Leah. Collected all the physical evidence we could find.”

  “I know, I know. It’s not that. I’m really not sure what it is.” She sipped her coffee.

  “Well, you let me know if you figure it out.”

  “I will.”

  Leah hung up the phone and thought about canvassing with one of the photographs Dan had left with her. If he was right and his Jane Doe was a prostitute, there was only one area really she’d have to go and that was Oakdale Road on Alvin’s west side. That was considered the “bad side of town” in Alvin. Even a town as small as Alvin had a bad side.

  And the eyes were going to be a problem. They’d be a problem with the identification, but mostly they’d be a problem with the viewing. She’d have to warn everyone before showing them that what they were about to see was pretty damn graphic, even though everyone had seen the images in the Examiner and on the television news, she was absolutely sure about that.

  She decided to visit the one place Mercy Jo had frequented so much. For anyone who liked their booze, and especially if she ran on the wrong side of the tracks, the Six-Gun Saloon seemed like the place to go. Especially if she really was a hooker. The place was like a funhouse for drunks and easy women.

  She drove up Oakdale, the sun still over the treetops, fighting its way through the deluge of rain coming down around her. It was starting to set with the sky just beginning to turn dark gray. Parking out front of the Six-Gun, she admired the décor from the outside. It looked like a barn with a large sign on top featuring a girl in a bikini riding a bull. Beside her were the words WELCOME TO THE SIX-GUN SALOON. The words were in two rows and flashed on and off. As they did, the girl on the bull pulled her hat off her head and put it back on.

  Leah entered the establishment through a set of saloon doors like you’d see in one of them old spaghetti westerns. The door kept swinging behind her until they finally went back to being still.

  Inside it was the same as her last visit. Booths around the edge, a half-moon dance floor around one side of the central bar. She immediately recognized Margaret from before and approached, having to wait until Margaret finished with a customer before she could talk.

  “You again. The woman who brings me nightmares.”

  Leah sighed. “I’m sorry, and I’m ’bout to do it again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have another body I need you to ID for me, and this time I don’t even have a name. Once again, her eyes have been sewn closed. Do you feel up to it?”

  “You say this killer is in Alvin and takin’ out my girls . . . girls who come to my bar?”

  “That’s right. At least so far.”

  “Then I’ll give you all the time in the world, honey. Show me the picture.”

  Leah handed over the Polaroid. She saw Margaret wince for a second and then study the picture for probably almost a minute. “It’s tough to identify someone without their eyes. It’s so weird. But I’m willin’ to bet this is Faith Abilene. But I haven’t seen Faith in months.”

  Reba McEntire belted something about Little Rock over the loudspeakers.

  Leah took a deep breath. “She’s been missing for months? The body was found up in Birmingham. Is Faith her real name or her stage name?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she worked, so it could very well be her stage name. She had a few close friends. One, named Bamby Dearest, comes in quite often. I could give her your number.”

  Leah reached into her pocket and retrieved her card. “Please do. Make sure you tell her I’m not ’bout to bust her for hooking.”

  “I will. I know how to handle these girls. Besides, I think she’s just a stripper. Works the Rabbit Room some nights.”

  “Thank you, Margaret.” Outside came a giant roar of a thunderclap, followed by a downpour of rain.

  “Starting to look ugly out there,” Margaret said.

  “Yeah, and to top it off, it’s a cold, bitter rain.”

  “You take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” Leah said, and with that she walked back outside to her car, thinking about how much Margaret treated these women as though they were her children. In a way, they were. They were children of the street and they’d found a home here. And now they were being slowly taken out of that home and being shown the harshness of reality.

  One thing for sure, Leah was going to put a stop to it.

  Back at the station, Leah immediately called Detective Truitt. He’d gone home for the day. Then she remembered he’d given her his home number, so she tried that. Once again, he answered on the first ring. “Truitt.”

  “Do you just sit, waiting by the phone?” Leah asked.

  “Um, this is . . . don’t tell me . . . Leah. I knew you wouldn’t be able to avoid my charms forever.”

  “I got a name for your Jane Doe. It’s her street name, I think, but at least it’s a name. I also have a lead on getting her real name.”

  “So what’s the street name?”

  “Faith Abilene.”
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  “I like it. And I’m betting it’s not a street name. It sounds too normal.”

  “Well, we’ll see. Anyway, sorry for bothering you at home. Have a good night.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What?”

  “You call me at home and that’s all I get?”

  Leah had been nervous when she called and had no idea why, and now her nervousness just went up a notch. “Um, what do you want?”

  “What are you wearing?”

  She laughed. “You’re a funny guy.”

  “I am a funny guy. Have a good night, Leah.”

  “You too . . . Dan.”

  She hung up with a feeling in her stomach she hadn’t felt in years.

  CHAPTER 24

  We didn’t have much time Wednesday for watching Isaac Swenson on account of my mother made me go to church, but we had two good hours of surveillance we could get in. Despite the downpour and the rolling thunder and the lightning, we kept our vigil.

  Surprisingly, even Bubba became part of Isaac Swenson’s routine. Bubba came home from work at the same time both days (twenty after four), put the horses away at the same time each night, and even went in for dinner at the same time as his father. This whole family followed an extreme pattern every day. I started thinking they must all be serial killers.

  Me and Dewey watched all this from the golden grass that had long ago been painted from green to gold by the winter sun. We were both dressed in greens and browns. That was my idea: Earth tones would help us blend in better with our surroundings. Had the grass still been green, I would have blended in perfectly. Luckily for us, though, the days were short this time of year and it started to get dark fairly early. It didn’t take long before we began to disappear into the darkness and what we were wearing became meaningless.

  We also stayed quite a ways back from the actual ranch. Dewey had gotten a set of binoculars for Christmas last year—which he never used; in fact, they were still sealed in their box before we took them on our scouting trips—so they allowed us to watch things from a distance.