Cause to Hide

by Blake Pierce

  The hell of it was that Avery didn’t blame her. She’d just have to figure out a way to make it up to her—if Rose would even let her try, of course. And at this point, there was no guarantee that she would.

  She sadly set her phone down and tried to drift off to sleep. When she finally did, it was a fitful sleep. There was no real rest, just a frantic mind trying to relax while also sorting through the chaos that its owner’s life had become.

  ***

  She knew it was a nightmare right from the start, but that did nothing to make it any less horrific. She was walking through the lot where they had discovered the remains. There was a new pile of bones there, only these weren’t as cleanly stripped and pearly white as they had been in real life. Meat still clung to these bones. Flies buzzed almost comically around them.

  From the back of the property, where the marshy ground began, Rose came walking toward her.

  “Messy, huh?” Rose said.

  “Did you see it?” Avery asked. “Did you see it happen?”

  “I don’t see much these days,” Rose said. “Especially not of you. But maybe this will help.”

  With that, Rose pulled a lighter from her pocket, flicked the flame to life, and threw it at Avery. Avery was alight at once, her pants catching on fire. The flames blazed upward instantly, charring her shirt and the underside of her chin.

  She screamed. From behind her, she heard Ramirez calling her name. She turned to him and saw that he was there with an arm outstretched and a blanket like the fire department often carried into fires to put out burning victims.

  “Just take my hand,” Ramirez said. “I can save you. You just have to trust me.”

  And although she badly wanted to, she did not reach out. In response, Ramirez screamed her name.

  Avery fell to the ground, the flames now catching her arms and hair. She burned quickly, her skin like wax as she fell to the ground. She did not writhe, but merely lay there and looked back at Rose.

  Rose held a stick with a marshmallow at the end of it. She hunkered down on the ground and held it over her flaming mother.

  “I’ll take the quality time however I can,” Rose said with a laugh.

  It was then that Avery finally screamed. Flames erupted from her mouth as her entire body went up in a flash of ash, smoke, and intense white light.

  Avery jerked awake in bed, the dream-scream locked in her throat and dangerously close to springing forth into the land of the waking.

  It took her a few moments to realize that she was awake and that she had been pulled from sleep by the ringing of her phone. She reached for it with her heart hammering in her chest and saw that it was 5:15—thirty minutes before her morning alarm usually woke her. On the caller display screen, she saw Connelly’s name and number.

  “Yeah?” she said as she answered it.

  “Get up, Black,” he said. “We’ve got another body.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Avery pulled her car into the dusty and vacant lot behind what had once been a flour mill, something about the scene instantly jarred her. Faded white letters along the front of the building had once said STATLER BROTHERS FLOUR but the letters were barely visible now. She wondered how long ago this place had last seen a work day. Easily fifty years, she guessed. It was nothing unique, really. Nothing on this side of town had seen much activity in a very long time. These were more than the outskirts of Boston—this was just on the edge of the Mattapan area, a place that at times felt like some weird borderland that time had forgotten.

  When she stepped out into the lot and headed over to the gathered policemen at the edge of the back lot, she could actually smell the neglect of the place. These were the sorts of places that were perfect for young experimental couples to explore the back seats of cars or for drug dealers to peddle their wares. But it felt different here for some reason…it felt wrong to display the end of one’s life in such a forgotten place.

  When she reached the gathered group at the edge of the lot, one of the policemen was finishing putting up the crime scene tape. There were only three others, one of whom was Connelly. Finley was also there looking excited yet a little hesitant as usual. He had a pale look on his face as he took in the scene beyond the crime scene tape.

  Avery joined them, ducking under the crime scene tape and hunkering down about six inches from what the tape was blocking off.

  It was another pile of remains—more bones and ashes. Only this time, there seemed to be much more ashes and fewer bones than before. The skull was the easiest to pinpoint. Avery also saw a femur, a few ribs, and what looked like a fractured wrist. She leaned down closer, inhaled deeply, and found that she could catch traces of the chemical smell that had been detected at the last crime scene.

  What the hell is that? Pretty sure it’s not something common or basic. Maybe he’s having to special order an accelerant from somewhere. If so, that could be potentially easy to trace.

  “How did we find this?” she asked.

  “Some guy on the highway department turned around back here about two hours ago,” Connelly said. “He said he only saw it because he got out of his truck to take a leak.”

  “So we have no idea how long these remains have been here?” Avery asked.

  “Nope.”

  Avery scanned the rest of the area. The ashes and bones were in a fairly tidy pile like the previous crime scene. That led her to believe that everything else about this scene would also be identical to the previous one. The first indication of this was the several shards of what looked like broken porcelain or colored glass about five feet away from the ash.

  “Looks just about the same as the shards from the last site,” Avery pointed out.

  “I noticed that,” Connelly said.

  As she was about to duck back under the crime scene tape and have a look around the area, she watched as two police cars came barreling into the lot. Their flashers were on but their sirens were silent. The lead car came to a screeching halt and the driver wasted no time in getting out.

  “You guys from the A1?” the cop asked as he hurried over to them.

  “Yeah,” Connelly said. “Why?”

  “Well, this is about a mile or so outside of your jurisdiction,” the cop said. It was clear that he was irritated; there was an edge of annoyance to his voice. “This is a B3 matter. While we appreciate the interest and help, we can handle it from here.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Connelly said. “But this scene is an exact replica of one we found yesterday. It’s highly relevant to our case.”

  “But this is our turf,” the cop argued. “This is—”

  “Really?” Avery asked. “Your turf? This isn’t some gang war. We’ve got two bodies so far…and no rhyme or reason to the attacks. If you want to talk about people stepping on your turf, take it up with your captain. We’re too busy trying to catch a killer to worry about if we might be infringing on someone’s turf.”

  “You better believe I’ll take it to my captain,” the cop said.

  “You do that,” Connelly said. “And by the time the right calls are made and the forms are filled out and filed, we’ll be done here.”

  “Asshole,” the cop said.

  “Oh, I’ve been called much worse,” Connelly said.

  “You can’t just take over a crime scene when it’s outside of your jurisdiction!”

  “We can if it’s directly linked to a murder that was in our backyard. If anything, you and your boys should be gladly assisting.”

  “This is our jurisdiction,” the B3 cop said. “You’ll be doing the assisting.”

  “Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Connelly said.

  Avery could tell that he was starting to get ruffled. If O’Malley were also here, he might have been a little more aggressive. Then again, Avery thought, if it gets any more aggressive, this could turn out very bad.

  “You really want to make this an issue?” the B3 cop asked.

  “We were here first,” Connelly sa
id. “It seems to me that you’re making this an issue.”

  “Damn it! My captain is going to hear about this!”

  “You already said that. Now stop threatening me and let us work here, would you?”

  The cop looked to Connelly for a moment, as if trying to think of a rebuttal. When it was clear he had no interest in starting a district versus district fight before going through the proper channels, he retreated back to his car. He kicked up dust and squealed tires out on the road as he left.

  “So that’s going to be a mess if he actually complains about this,” Connelly said. “He’s actually more right than wrong…so let’s do our work quickly.”

  Avery wasted no time. She started scouring the area and took note as other cars appeared. Forensics worked quickly and efficiently once they arrived, bagging up the remains and the porcelain shards, taking measurements of the area, and so on. Avery walked along beside them, looking for any additional clues the killer might have left behind.

  If he did leave clues, I don’t know that they’d be accidental, she thought. It could be another way of him showing off. But if he messed up and left a footprint, a thread, a hair, or some other damning evidence and we miss it because we’re so thrown off by the nature of his crime, that could be bad.

  She looked around the immediate area bordering the crime scene tape and found nothing. The guy moves like a ghost…which means he’s careful and fast. The amount of planning he’s doing is borderline obsessive.

  Done with the immediate area around the crime scene tape, Avery made her way to the farthest edge of the lot. It was separated from the one-way street that ran alongside the building by a tall brick wall. She walked along this wall, looking for any sort of accidental evidence such as stray fibers, but found nothing. She then checked the other side of the wall, but other than scattered litter, there was nothing to be found there, either.

  She then turned her attention to the old flour mill. Just about every window was broken and it was covered in graffiti. There was a large door along the back that was halfway open. It looked to be an old loading door, permanently frozen in a partially open position. She walked up a set of crumbling concrete stairs and slipped inside.

  Morning sunlight came in through the broken windows, casting an almost ethereal glow to the place. Dust motes drifted here and there, floating up to toward the high ceiling. The place was nothing more than old posts and a single large machine in the far back of the building. It was all one large room, littered with old broken equipment, rotted pallet boards, and dust.

  That’s why it was so easy for her to spot the earring on the floor. The fact that the dusty sunlight was reflecting from it made it that much easier. She walked over to it and could tell right away that it had not been here for very long. Unlike everything else around here, it was not coated in dust. The small diamond in the earring still had its luster and shine.

  She heard footsteps approaching, coming up the concrete stairs outside. She looked to the loading door and watched as Ramirez walked in. He took a moment to observe the interior of the place and then looked down at her.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he said.

  “Good morning,” she said. “Hey, can you run out and get someone from Forensics in here? I have something I need them to pick up.”

  Ramirez nearly seemed disappointed by her quick transition from flirtatious to professional but nodded anyway. She took no time to think about his reaction; she was looking at the floor, noticing yet another sign of recent activity.

  She saw her own footprints, treading across the dusty floor. But she also saw another series of prints…and then another. There were no clear prints, but many scuffed ones, indicating that someone had been moving with urgency. One of the pairs of footprints—the smaller ones—looked as if they were being dragged.

  The larger set gave her about three whole prints to go from. It was likely a boot of some kind. A work boot. Around a size eleven or twelve if her guess was correct. The other was a flat-soled sneaker of some kind. Avery thought she saw part of a star in a pattern of tread. It reminded her of the Converse All-Star symbol.

  Probably a younger person, then. No older than early twenties.

  There had been an altercation here. And while the prints were not brand new, they had certainly not been here for very long. A few days at most.

  As she got to her feet and trailed the course of the prints, she saw the earring was directly in the path of the footprints. A woman had been attacked. She had been wearing sneakers, maybe All-Stars, and the man in pursuit had likely been wearing boots.

  She stepped back and traced the course of the tracks with her eyes. She tried to picture the chase and struggle. The strides of the prints made her think there had been an element of surprise to the attack.

  One of them was in here already when the other arrived. The faintness of the maybe-Converse prints makes it seem like that person was in a hurry, running. So the younger one was running away—probably surprised and terrified. The remains outside probably belong to this person.

  Ramirez came back inside with a member of Forensics, breaking her train of thought. “What do we have here?” the Forensics member asked.

  “An earring and some pretty telltale footprints.”

  “Goldmine,” Ramirez said. “Nice work.”

  Avery nodded her thanks but was too preoccupied with the prints to pay much attention to him. There was no blood, nor any visible remains. They might be able to get DNA results from the earring post but that was a stretch.

  But even that didn’t bother Avery as much as the trail of footprints in the dust.

  While there was no blood or visible signs of violence, those prints told a story that she did not like at all.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The day felt weighed down by the discovery they’d made in the morning. By the time four o’clock came around and results had started to pile in, Avery felt like she was wearing a set of lead weights around her shoulders. It was a weight she felt as she walked into the A1 conference room, growing heavier with every set of eyes that fell on her.

  As she took a seat across from Ramirez, she noticed the stir of energy in the air. She knew that bits and pieces of information had been coming in (mostly things being ruled out by Forensics) and that the earring had been confirmed as belonging to an expensive set. Other than that, though, Avery had heard nothing concrete. The hushed whispers around the table and the fact that O’Malley was running late made her pretty sure that there’d be plenty to go over in the coming minutes.

  She also knew that there was some nastiness going on behind the scenes. The A1 higher-ups were having some very heated conversations with the B3 brass. While she was not interested in the politics of it all, she knew that if things didn’t get settled in a civil way very soon, they were going to have a logistical nightmare on their hands that might hinder the case.

  At exactly 4:07, the room was filled with nine officers and the growing volume of rumors. Someone speculated that local media had caught wind of the story and would be talking about it on the evening news. Someone else speculated that the value of the earring suggested the killings were financially motivated, as the earrings were valued at about five hundred dollars.

  When O’Malley arrived and finally entered the room, all whispers and rumors fell flat. O’Malley looked anxious and maybe even a little flustered—two words that Avery would have never used to describe him before this afternoon. He held a thin stack of papers in his right hand and his cell phone in his left. When he entered the room, he shut the door a bit too hard. The slamming noise made a few of the officers in the room jump.

  “Welcome to one hell of a mess, everyone,” he said as he stood at the front of the conference table. He instantly selected two stapled sheets of paper from his pile and slid them across the table to Avery.

  Avery looked at the paper and was impressed at how quickly Forensics had gotten results. The paper in her hands identified the victim as Sarah Osborne,
twenty-two years old.

  “That name ring a bell?” O’Malley asked, nodding to the paper.

  “The last name does,” Avery said.

  “Sarah Osborne,” O’Malley said. “Niece of City Councilman Ron Osborne. The earring was confirmed as being hers exactly ten minutes ago. Turns out she also frequently wore Converse All-Stars.”

  A pair of Converses and five-hundred-dollar earrings, Avery thought. This was a young lady who was still struggling to find her identity.

  “We’ve already got more news crews on this now,” O’Malley continued. “Given the nature of the killings and the high profile of this victim, we can expect tons of media attention. And that means I’d like to wrap it up before it hits national headlines, especially with the B3 bitching about it. So someone…please tell me we’re making some headway.”

  “There are no obvious connections between the victims,” Avery said, still skimming the report on Sarah Osborne. “They lived in different parts of town and were from different financial backgrounds. I’m currently looking over the records for all traces of arson over the last ten years. It’s slow going, but there are no links yet.”

  “I’ll get three others to help with that,” O’Malley said. “Meanwhile, let it be known that some of the guys from over at the B3 district are going to be working with us on this case. The newest body was on their grounds and seeing as how the victim had some notoriety about her, they’re insisting on staying involved. I’m not a fan of this but it’s just not worth the argument or media attention.”

  “Another thing,” Avery said. “I think it’s now safe to say that this is a serial killer. If you want this wrapped quickly, I think we need to consider bringing the FBI in.”

  “And in addition to the arson,” Connelly said from his place at the table, “I think we should also cross-reference any records from former law enforcement. Maybe even Forensics, specifically. This guy cleans up after himself a little too well. It’s almost like he knows the sort of things we would be looking for.”