The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  “Sad? That’s all you can say?”

  Stan took in a breath and somehow kept a measured tone. “We have an entire team focused on finding the person or persons responsible for those killings, as well as what’s going on here at the field house. Are they related? Can’t say for sure.”

  “I understand you found Satanic symbols now at all locations.” Peterson paused, giving us ample opportunity to take in his smug look.

  Again, he had information that had not yet been released to the public, which I knew annoyed Stan. Me too, for that matter. Peterson, in general, was beyond annoying.

  “I can’t discuss specific pieces of evidence that may or may not have been found at the crime scenes,” Stan said.

  “But this is impacting me, do you hear me? Me, me, me!” he shouted.

  Not his students, but him.

  “I’ve got to go give an update to the assistant superintendent.” Peterson took two hard steps, then stopped and looked Stan in the eye. “You, that redhead detective, all of these cops…you all need to find out who’s doing this and lock them up. I never knew we had such an incompetent police department until this crap went down.” He walked off before Stan could offer a retort.

  Stan flipped around and tried scratching his chin with his fake hand, but he basically punched himself in the jaw. He was pissed. He flipped a few pages on his notepad. I could see he was giving himself a minute to cool down. Meanwhile, the paramedic said he was done with me, but he encouraged me to rest on the gurney for the time being. I was about to push back—I had a strong urge to see this graffiti for myself—and then Brook showed up, asking Stan all sorts of questions.

  He looked at me. “You ready to go over all this again?”

  Considering I had little to no memory of our first Q&A session, I was game. “Hit me.”

  Cristina looked at me with a blank face, and then she cracked up. It took me a second to catch on to what I’d just said. “I’m a piece of work right now. I think I need a little sleep.”

  “You look like shit, by the way,” Brook said. She looked like a million bucks, even at this hour of the day, but I was too tired and my head hurt too much to care.

  “Thanks. You should see the other guy.”

  I wasn’t sure if she’d picked up on my sarcasm. I wasn’t even sure where it had come from. Probably because my brain was operating like I’d had one too many lemon drop martinis.

  “Just glad you survived the mugging.” She looked to Stan. “Any Satanic symbols on this one?”

  “Good question.” I was glad someone’s brain was functioning properly.

  “Nothing we can find thus far. Not unless it’s somehow painted in that mess of graffiti on the side of the field house. Not sure what the hell they’re saying.”

  “But that’s the key here, Stan,” I said in a moment of clarity. “They’re saying something. They might be high school kids getting off on killing animals and vandalizing the building, but they want us…someone to hear them.”

  Outside of the paramedic putting his gear back into containers, our space was quiet for a moment.

  “I’m glad you pointed that out, Ivy. I mean, it’s rather obvious, but even the obvious clues can be disregarded as just another piece of evidence.” Using his left hand, Stan scribbled something on his notepad. He then asked me to start from the beginning with what I had seen.

  I wasn’t a minute into my answer when Brook interjected another question. “How many were there?”

  I took in a breath, looking away to try to resurrect my memory. “Hard to say. It was chaotic. It was dark. Six, seven. Maybe more.”

  “Girls too?”

  “Yep.” A few images came to mind. “Did I tell you about the robes?”

  Stan shook his head, so I gave them the details.

  “Like a monk?” Brook said, putting a hand to her face as if she were about to laugh.

  I shrugged. “That’s the first thought that came to me.” An image flashed across my mind, but it was so fast I couldn’t determine its origin.

  “So, you never told me why you decided to show up here at the school,” Stan prompted.

  I could feel Cristina’s eyes on me. I was about to share ECHO secrets…the kind that made me sound borderline crazy, or maybe just desperate.

  “It stems from two conversations. One that I had with someone, and one that Cristina and I overheard.”

  Stan moved his fake arm, a robotic gesture for me to get to the point.

  “Both conversations were with kids who are in athletics here at the school. They sounded really pissed at the coaches.”

  As expected, Stan and Brook looked at me like I was borderline crazy. “I didn’t think you’d take me seriously.”

  “Guys, wasn’t her hunch right?” Cristina said. “I mean, we don’t know for certain, not unless we can get a student athlete or coach or administrator to enlighten us. I bet if we figure out what’s painted on the side of the field house, we’ll have a better idea if her theory is valid or garbage.”

  “Thanks…I think,” I said with a wink. A pain shot through my head, then that same image flashed across my mind. This time, I saw something metal, shiny. I was lying on the ground, looking up. Was it after that asshole had punched me?

  An officer walked up and handed Stan something.

  “Is that my phone?” I asked. He handed it over, and I saw the screen had been cracked even more.

  “Is it usable?” Cristina asked.

  I opened my text app and sent a test message to Cristina. She gave me the thumbs-up. I then called Stan. He pushed a button on his phone without looking at the screen. “That could have been Bev asking if you were coming back to bed,” I said, grinning.

  He tilted his head, then checked the time. “Hell,” he said with single chuckle, “this is almost the time I get up to take my morning jog. Not sure I’ll get to it today. Might have to go twelve miles tonight.”

  He was serious. It was still hard to believe this was the same guy whose sugary snacks were considered appetizers before a four-course meal of pure fat.

  A moment later, my phone rang. Everyone looked at me. “It’s Saul.” I answered the phone as I heard Stan say, “Now who’s acting like the old married couple?”

  Saul initially was relieved to hear my voice. He had just awakened and seen Cristina’s text messages. I wondered exactly how dire she’d described my condition. It was kind of cool to have someone care about me like Saul did. This was new territory for me, so I wasn’t sure how to take it. I only said, “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  He then convinced me that I needed to get to his place and he would make sure I was as comfortable as possible.

  “Okay, I’ll be there soon. Sorry I wasn’t there to wake you up in that special way.”

  He laughed, then said we’d have plenty of special opportunities in the future. After I ended the call, I used my powers of persuasion to get a ride over to Saul’s. Brook volunteered and even grabbed one of the uniforms to drive my car behind us so it wouldn’t be stuck in the neighborhood.

  Back on my feet, the terrain seemed a lot less even. I knew it was me and my physical instability, but it would pass eventually. On the way to Brook’s car, we walked by the field house to view the graffiti.

  “Any ideas?” Cristina asked us.

  “I haven’t learned how to read Chinese yet.”

  Brook looked at me. “Now that you’re seeing it in person, what do you think?”

  I studied the series of letters—which looked more like a two-year-old’s chicken scratch—for a good couple of minutes. They were starting to blur together, so I used my phone to take a few pictures.

  “Does your camera even work?” Cristina asked. “You’ve got an old model anyway. Might need to throw it in the gadget junkyard. Your car should have been there a long time ago.” She gave me a toothy grin.

  Smart ass. I tried to arch an eyebrow, but that tugged at the gash on my forehead. A moment later, the skies opened up and unl
eashed a heavy, chilly downpour. We scrambled to the car. From the passenger-side window in Brook’s car, I watched the white letters dissolve into nothing. Save for the few pictures Christina and I had taken, I wondered if our best clue to date had just gone down the drain.

  37

  Who knew that Saul had the culinary skills to cook homemade chicken noodle soup? Not that it required years of training and hours in the kitchen, but it was the most delicious bowl of soup—actually, I had two bowls—I’d ever downed.

  I reclined on Saul’s comfy couch after taking my second catnap in the last three hours. While I missed my Zorro—he was probably tearing through a roll of toilet paper back at my place—I felt remarkably revitalized by the soup, the rest, and Saul’s compassion. After a look of shock on his face when I’d showed up at his door, he’d asked me one probing question: “Why do you keep putting yourself in danger like this?” I’d told him he should know by now, and he’d dropped it. From then on, he was the ultimate caregiver.

  What else could a girl ask for?

  I had to practically push Saul out the door so he could head off to work. Because of his caring hands, I even convinced myself to not worry about Kyra, the centerfold ice cream scooper.

  My headache had subsided into the normal range. While my cuts and bruises were still pretty fresh, the pain meter only hit the red zone when I accidentally brushed against something. Like earlier, when I’d turned onto my side, I draped my arm over my head and clumsily bumped the gash on my forehead. I could have bitten through steel at that moment. Instead, I unleashed a string of expletives that would have put Cristina to shame.

  I grabbed my cracked phone off the coffee table, opened up my photos, and studied the pictures of the graffiti. The first showed an entire word, or letters, or artwork, or whatever. And that was the real problem. It was impossible to determine if it was nothing but letters that had been disfigured by the rain, or if there was a graphic in the spray-painted mush. And if I was looking at an image, not words, was it Satanic? And what did it mean? What were the perpetrators trying to communicate?

  After coming face to face with at least one of the monk-looking perps, I was still vacillating between the two options: devil worshippers who had a specific message they were trying to communicate, or punks who were just going for the shock factor.

  I swept through the subsequent pictures, pausing to study each letter or blob. Some were connected, but it was difficult to tell if that was by design or because of the rain. The ninth and tenth pictures appeared to be related to each other, though they also looked very similar. I opened up a browser on my phone, and in between the cracks in the glass, I clicked on my favorites list and found the website I’d referenced earlier with all of the Satanic symbols.

  My eyes went straight to the two symbols that had been used at the three different crime scenes, the anarchy symbol and the hexagram. I was almost certain that neither of those images were represented in the graffiti. I scanned through two dozen other symbols, continuously flipping back to my photos to see if there was anything that matched.

  I came up empty. But if there was no Satanic symbol at this crime scene, what did that tell me? Had the objective of the group who committed the first crime at the high school changed? Of course, they’d killed an animal this time too, albeit a raccoon. The creature probably wasn’t a pet, but to kill a living thing like that was just sickening. And for what? Kicks? To incite fear? Make a statement about Satanism?

  Another thought: what if this group wasn’t involved in the first sacrifice? They could be copycatting the crime. Teenagers mimicking bad behavior of other teenagers was pretty common. Follow the leader, that type of thing.

  My mind then went in yet another direction: what if this group of teenage thugs was behind all of it—the other animal sacrifice, the brutal murders of the teens at the missions? After all, the football player killed at Mission San Jose had been a student at Lee. Who knows why he was killed or why he was at the old church? The two murdered girls were high school age, although they went to different schools. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have a connection to someone at Lee. Maybe from the parties they attended? Seemed like a stretch.

  A sudden throb of pain shot through my head, and I got that same mental snapshot I’d seen earlier: right after that asshole had sucker-punched me. I’d looked up from the ground and noticed a glint of metal. It was round, hanging from the guy’s chest. My brain then hopped to the next image: the links in the chain around his neck. They were familiar to me—their dirty brass color, their fairly large size. Something about the links stayed with me. I gently pressed my fingers against my eyes for a moment and probed my thoughts for more memories.

  I snapped my fingers and pushed up from the couch. I had to find Brandon.

  38

  If nothing else, Cristina was good for one thing. She made me think before I made certain decisions. Decisions that, before I’d met Cristina at a women’s self-defense class almost a year earlier, I would have easily considered not to be worth my time pondering. I would have taken the risks, hands down.

  In this instance, I considered jumping into Black Beauty and driving myself across town. I knew better, though. My reflexes and vision weren’t up to snuff. Cristina, who’d turned out to be a treasure as both a streetwise PI and a friend, would definitely be pissed if I tried it and probably lose all respect for me.

  So, I took an Uber back over to Lee High School. I used my free time wisely and exchanged a few text messages with Cristina explaining my plan to confront Brandon. She first asked if she could come watch—she claimed it might be better than a UFC match. Very funny, Cristina. Then, she got serious and insisted that I pick her up so she could be my wingwoman. Not necessary, I told her. Once she knew that pressing me further was a lost cause, she said she was headed to the MACC to see if she could find any of the staffers who might have more information on Jasmine and why she was so skittish. She also said the social media search for Mia’s alt ego had gone nowhere. She asked if she could somehow recoup those wasted hours. I told her to stop the drama and move on. Which she did.

  I then called Stan. He said they’d learned a bit more about the arrow used to kill Benito Alvarez.

  “It’s actually not called an arrow.” He had a lot of energy in his voice, which was rather surprising since he’d been working before the sun came up.

  “So the long, thin rod with the deadly sharp edge at the end is not an arrow? I’m either confused or my brain was really scrambled by that punch.”

  “Yeah, this isn’t one of those bow-and-arrow type of arrows. We’re not talking Robin Hood here. The killer used a crossbow.”

  A crossbow. Well, I wasn’t expecting that. “So were you able to figure out who sells crossbows, get a suspect list together?”

  “We’re looking at both crossbows and bolts.”

  “Bolts? Are there screws too?”

  He clapped out a quick laugh. “No, no. Arrows fired from crossbows are actually called bolts.”

  “Since when did you become such the expert?”

  “In the last two hours. We have two uniforms still pulling together data from retailers and manufacturers. Unfortunately, we can’t really get a bead on the exact type of crossbow, since there are so many different types of bolts that can be used. For now, they’re focusing on the bolts.”

  “Any luck? I mean, don’t retailers have to keep records of sales of these bolts? Aren’t they basically ammunition?”

  “In some respects, yes. But since a crossbow is fired mechanically without the aid of burning, expanding gases, it’s not considered a firearm. Retailers aren’t required to record owner information. For the officers, it’s been a very manual effort. They’re on the phone, using all sorts of spreadsheets and pivot tables. It’s kind of amazing what the younger generation knows.”

  Again, I thought of Cristina’s exceptional skills. “I get it. Have they been able to put together a suspect list?”

  “Very sketchy rig
ht now, just because it depends on each retailer, what data they recorded, whether the buyer used a credit card, check, or paid cash. So, maybe another day or so might turn up something. Hard to say at this point.”

  A day at best. I’m not sure I wanted to hold my breath for another night to pass. And lately, everywhere I turned, I seemed to run into a thug, or a thug wannabe. We were about to end the call when I thought of something. “Stan, if a crossbow is not considered a firearm, anyone can purchase one, right?”

  “I guess so, why?”

  “Well, aren’t felons restricted from owning firearms?”

  “You’re sure as hell right,” he said, catching on to where I was headed.

  “Which means that a felon could easily buy one of these crossbows and all the bolts they could afford.”

  He said he’d share that thought with Brook and the two data monkeys and get back to me if they found anything. Feeling like I made a small contribution to the effort, I relaxed in the back seat of what was a reasonably clean Passat. I stared out the window for a couple of miles. My vision had just begun to glaze over when yellow and black ribbons snagged my gaze. I sat up and spotted dozens of ribbons tied to light poles, trees, school signs in front of Lee High School. I wondered if they were the school colors. The Uber driver let me off in the back parking lot.

  I stepped out of the car and took in a full breath. The storms had cleared, and the cool air felt good to my lungs. Knowing most teens were creatures of habit, I walked toward the area where I’d last seen Brandon’s pickup. With every step, though, there was a reverberation in my head, as though my ears were clogged with water. I found myself reaching my hand out to the nearest car to make sure I maintained my balance. It wasn’t so much that I sensed I was going to fall as it was I just didn’t trust my balance.

  The parking lot seemed less full, but there was no sign of Brandon’s pickup. Maybe he was driving a different vehicle. I wandered around as students began to filter out of the school. A few kids looked my way, and I looked back, hoping to spot the cocky teen. Dozens of students passed by me, but Brandon wasn’t one of them.