Ainsley stomps his foot and ignores my apologies. “Fuck, Hansen!”
Davis says nothing but readies a new glass tube. This time, he holds it himself. I gather the glass into the palm of my gloved hand as they work, but I wonder why Ainsley and Davis didn’t get the DNA samples themselves. Why bring me along, given that I had a close relationship with the victim? Maybe Davis isn’t completely aware of all I’ve gone through with Marci Tucker, but Ainsley certainly is. Could this be an attempt to show me up, some sort of test, in the same way taking me to a restaurant where Marci’s brother works had been? I freeze and look up at Detective Cole Ainsley. He’s calmed down and works diligently to get the sample into the tube. His wide shoulders are solid and determined. He keeps his large hand on the side of the evidence box as if to signal to me and Davis that this is really his case.
Ainsley’s trying to get rid of me.
*
My car feels like a freezer after so many hours parked in the police lot. The heater is set to blow on high but only gives out a blast of cold air. I’ve picked away circles of ice from the windshield and passenger-side window with my sad excuse for an ice scraper. The blade has seen better days, its edges broken and beaten, but I’m able to chip away enough ice to get me safely back to the hotel. Back to Rowan.
A tow truck pulls into the lot for the scheduled hearse pickup in the morning. As it reverses, beeps pierce the quiet night. The ice and snow twinkle in the truck’s red-taillight glow. I let the car sit and warm up, ignoring the plumes of white smoke that spill from the exhaust while I let the truck do its thing.
I work at the shard of glass still lodged beneath my skin from the broken glass at breakfast. It seems like it happened a year ago, not only this morning. I squeeze the skin into a ball of swollen red until I can finally see the tip. And then the tiny shard of glass shoots out, the pressure of the squeeze releasing it, leaving behind a rush of fresh red blood.
*
Steam from my bath covers the bathroom mirror. Rowan sits on the bathroom counter, her legs dangling as she kicks her feet back and forth and watches me pull a brush through my tangled wet mess of hair.
“What I wouldn’t give for a shower,” I groan.
Rowan’s been lost in thought, contemplating my theory that all the victims were lesbians. We’re both treading lightly; discussing my work is new ground for us both.
“Why only lesbians? Why not gay men?”
I pick at the huge knot of hair at the base of my skull. “He’s targeting a very specific community. I’m sure he believes he has a good reason for it.”
“But if it truly is a hate crime, wouldn’t it be all gay people?”
“I doubt he’s thinking that way, Ro.”
The flick of her eyebrow asks me why.
“That thinking is way too rational. These crimes are all about power and domination.” I toss the brush into the sink. The knot refuses to let go.
“Come here before you rip out all your hair.” Rowan waves me to her and with my back turned, I step back between her parted knees. Soon her fingers are in my wet hair gently picking apart the knot. Rowan’s hands have always been my fascination. Such strong hands. Such capable hands—her instruments of creation.
Rowan kicks her socked feet out one at a time and the innocent movement reminds me how much I want to keep her safe. Crime is my world, not hers. I want to keep her far away from that darkness.
Rowan has questions, she always has, about my involvement with One True Path. Ex-gay ministries are a completely foreign concept to someone like her, who has always accepted herself as she is. Rowan respects my space, though; she hasn’t asked personal questions, only listened to the bits of my past I’ve dealt out to her piecemeal.
“If you feel this strongly about the connection, Luce, you’re going to have to tell the captain.”
She’s got the knot out and pulls the brush through my hair. “Why are you holding back this theory about the organization?”
I recognize the ridiculousness of it, but strangely, somewhere inside I need to protect this group of people. I want so much for my instincts to be wrong. I’m still connected to One True Path in so many ways.
“It’s complicated.”
Her hand squeezes my right shoulder and slides down toward my elbow. She whispers into my ear, “There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of.”
She’s right, of course. Somewhere in the very core of me I am ashamed I ever took part in such a group. That shame, most days, feels like I’ve betrayed my own family. To tell the captain and Ainsley would mean I’d have to reveal those dirty secrets about myself.
Rowan closes her knees in around me and I smell her, that heady combination of Downy fabric softener and clean skin. Turning to face her, I settle into the bowl of her arms. Her wild eyes, green with specks of gold, see through me. Rowan’s so close, so very close, that my Berlin Wall quakes with her intensity. Somehow this woman still loves me. Suddenly my throat tightens and I feel as though I might cry.
Rowan knows best what to do—those strong and gentle hands that touch so deep. She reaches out, cups my face, and strokes my cheeks and lips until the teary feeling passes and her mouth softly closes on mine. Wrapping her legs around my waist, I carry her to the bed. I’m hungry for her, suddenly starving, and the ache for her inside me is damn near unbearable.
Chapter Ten
Friday, January 11
The team meets in the Willow’s Ridge crime-scene processing area. Clad in protective goggles and gloves, we watch the analysts in action. The hearse’s back gate yawns wide and the front seats have been lifted out from the car’s frame. The carpet has been extracted from the bed of the hearse and is spread out over a large metal table. Even the doors lie on the cement with their locks and handles removed. The crime-scene guys are running different tests on the hearse and its parts: a stain that might be blood, trace that might be drugs. Nothing is overlooked.
When the team arrived at the Eldridge Funeral Home with a warrant to seize the hearse hours earlier, there’d been no drama from Mr. Sambino. He’d merely met Captain Davis and the officers at the back door, alerted Chad Eldridge the police had arrived, and watched all the action as though it were a movie. Eldridge, however, had been much more vocal. He argued that he needed the hearse for his business and that the police had next to no evidence.
I don’t blame Eldridge for demanding a warrant. His business will suffer because of the suspicion placed on Sambino. As a business owner, he’s in a difficult spot. Sambino has a lot of responsibility and can not easily be replaced. But if he keeps Sambino as an employee, families will go elsewhere for funeral services.
All around us, drills screech as they take apart the hearse. The passenger-side door lies on the cement not far from me and I kneel down as an officer swabs the innermost corners of the hinge. Spilling blood is like pouring a pitcher of sugar water—the sticky liquid seeps into the slightest of cracks and even a pinprick-sized drop leaves just enough behind for testing.
The lead analyst reports to Davis, Ainsley, and me. “It’s been thoroughly vacuumed and the outside washed with a cleaning agent that has a bleach base. There’s also a thick residue of cleaner over the dash, the steering wheel, and the doors.” He rubs his recently buzzed hair. “Tell you one thing, sure is a thorough cleaning job.”
“A fool’s errand,” Davis says with the shake of his head. “Run all the tests just to make sure there’s nothing, but then close the hearse up and return it to Eldridge.”
Ainsley kicks at a screwdriver that’s been dropped near him, cussing Sambino. With all the commotion, I don’t think he notices when one of the crime-scene analysts approaches me with a small evidence bag. It looks like a gum wrapper inside.
“Not sure if this will help, Agent.” She hands me the bag. “We found this stuck to a current auto insurance card inside the glove compartment.” In black ink, someone had scrawled: Dr Weaver 9 Richards. “There’s a thumbprint on the back of it that’s a match fo
r Sambino,” she says. Davis took elimination prints from Sambino and Eldridge when they collected the vehicle.
Earlier, Davis confirmed with the morgue that it had been Sambino who picked up Chandler Jones’s and Emma Parks’s bodies, not Eldridge. In fact, no one in the morgue witnessed anyone else with Sambino. There’s no telling how recently the gum wrapper was left in the hearse. Yesterday? Two weeks? Two months? Based on date, the insurance card has most likely been in the glove compartment for four months. Judging from the meticulous cleaning job someone gave the hearse and the absence of any other miscellaneous crap, I’m holding something I’m not meant to see.
Thank God for mistakes.
*
It turns out Dr. Eli Weaver isn’t nearly as hard to locate as I thought he would be. Sambino has left me all the information I need. After a few computer searches, I learn that Dr. Weaver is a tenured professor of religious studies at Sandon University, a small, private Catholic institution on the outskirts of Columbus. I’ve been sent alone to meet with Dr. Weaver at his office in Richards Hall to find out why Sambino would have his information scrawled on the back of a gum wrapper inside his work vehicle.
Columbus is just over an hour’s drive from Willow’s Ridge, and I soon merge onto the crowded belt that surrounds the city. Davis stayed at the station to review some case reports, and Ainsley was sent on his own hunt to track down four different leads from the tip lines. The truth of the matter is no one really believes that this interview with Weaver will lead to anything. After all, it’s entirely possible that Sambino might have considered enrolling at Sandon University. It’s odd: none of the information I’d read on Sambino suggests to me that he’d be interested in a college degree, much less one in religious studies. He barely graduated from Willow’s Ridge High and had only done a few classes online for a mortuary science certification that he never completed. So my curiosity has gotten the best of me. Why would Sambino, aka Vampire Man Tristan, visit a religion professor at a Catholic university?
My cell rings and I hit speaker so I can talk and drive.
“Do you know it’s almost six o’clock?” Rowan asks.
The sound of Rowan’s voice reminds me of last night and my body warms instantly. “That explains this heavy traffic.”
“You promised me dinner tonight.”
I grunt as a pickup truck nearly swipes my front end as it slides into my lane. “I’ve got an interview in Columbus. We’ll still get dinner. Just not at six thirty.”
She doesn’t have to say it—I can hear what she’s thinking in the silence: Here we go again.
Rowan may not be a BCI profiler, but she certainly knows my behavioral patterns. We got close last night, closer than we’ve ever been, and when things like that happen, I run. I make myself scarce for a few days to build protection back up.
“Ro?”
“I’m here. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“This won’t take long. Eight at the latest. I promise.”
From the moment I met Rowan, I understood that she loved differently from the way I do. She has absolutely no fear. Rowan loves her lovers, family, and friends with a wide-open heart. Nothing is guarded. Her love is flat-out fierce.
Rowan was the photographer hired by the bureau to do our portraits and the monthly newsletter. When I signed on with BCI, I was scheduled for a sitting within the first months of duty. I sulked my way into her studio in full agency garb. I’d rather pull my toenails out with tweezers than sit for professional photographs.
It was her hair that caught my attention right away, that swarming nest of curls that spilled all around her, the golden-hued spirals that lined her face. She moved all around me with her black camera, all this hair on a tall body angling around the room. She bounced around with a smile that I couldn’t resist. When she primped at my hair and adjusted my coat, sheer electricity shot through my every blood vessel. There’s simply no other way to say it. When she handed me her card on the way out, her number was scrawled on the back: Call soon.
I thought long and hard about those sparks later that evening during my three-mile swim. I thought about how her emerald green eyes showed no fear and how her light touch warmed everything in me. And that was through clothes! Skin on skin? That could be an addictive intoxication.
I stopped midlap to catch my breath against the side wall. It had been so long since I’d let someone in. Still, I knew I’d call her within a day. Letting the water rise over my head, I sank down in the swimming pool, the coolness taming the burn of my cheeks at the thought of Rowan. Yes, I thought within the safety of that water, I’ll definitely call her. And when my thoughts raced ahead to imaginings of us together months down the road, I chastised myself within that water. Don’t, I cautioned. Don’t set yourself up for more hurt.
It’s been over a year since Rowan and I didn’t share weekends together or work a couple of hours on one of our endless house projects. It’s been over a year since we didn’t rock-paper-scissors it over whose turn it was to let the dogs out at midnight or put off a grocery run another day—we could make do one more day, couldn’t we?
I miss all that. I miss what I had with Rowan. Why does talk of commitment and ceremonies have to change anything?
*
Coincidence. Random elements. Chaos theory. Rowan would say it’s karma, that wheel of life coming back around to bite you in the ass one more time. Call it what you will, but the connections this case had with my past can’t be denied.
When I was eleven, my father decided it was time for us to start going to church. I’d been to a few services with my grandmother before she passed on, but never with my father. Once my mother left us, it was all my dad could do to work every day and take care of me. He stumbled through cooking mac and cheese, bathing me, and getting me to school on time. I realize now he’d been overwhelmed with grief and duty.
We’d attended a new church for about a month when one Sunday after service my dad turned to me at a stoplight on the way home. He looked funny in a suit with a tie without his uniform. Even his black duty boots were left beside the front door, and he slipped in and out of his new black loafers all through the church service. “Does it make you feel better to think that everything happens for a reason? That there’s a God taking care of us?”
I looked over at him then, my father who had never been anything but a hero to me. I smelled his potent aftershave, evergreen and way too strong. It was his eyes that told me how hard he’d been trying. He questioned why my mother left, why she left him—even then my instincts were strongly honed. I could sense his confusion, his anger, and I felt some of those same feelings. I convinced myself that I was fine without my mother as long as my dad was there for me. “It makes it sound like we’re just in a game or something,” I said. “I want to be in control of what happens to me.”
“We’re not, hon. Sometimes we’re just not.”
“You’re doing a good job, Dad.” I looked out the windshield as I said it. Sometimes it’s just too much to look people dead on. “We don’t need her.”
Tears rolled down his cheeks, though in the silence I couldn’t tell if they were from relief or grief or some sort of mixture of both. I stared out the window with steely resolve. We don’t need her.
I wait beside Dr. Eli Weaver’s office door thinking of those words I shared with my father. Not long after that, we abandoned the church idea for some time until my father began to feel guilty over my lack of religious training all over again. The next church we attended was the one that directed us to Pastor Jameson. If I’d had any control, we never would have stepped foot inside that church.
Here I am once again, face-to-face with the universe showing me I’m not in control. Never in a million years could I have possibly guessed that this professor and scholar specializes in the study of ex-gay ministries and conversion therapy. But Google says it, so it must be true.
Dr. Eli Weaver opens the office door and steps out. He has to duck his head not to knock the door
frame. “Agent Hansen”—he reaches his racquet-sized hand to shake mine—“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Come in, come in.”
I like Weaver instantly. He has a spring in his gait for such a tall man, probably close to six and a half feet, and a comforting office painted in different shades of blue. Crosses of all different variations hang on any available bit of wall space. The entire double windowsill is filled with flowering plants of all shapes and sizes. Weaver has pinned up an overgrown vine that wraps along the wall and over a large abstract painting that features the colors of the LGBTQ freedom flag. Soft classical music lulls in the background.
Weaver has a gentle way about him and he handles me with a quiet ease. He offers an oversized chair that curls around me and he moves behind his desk in one loping step.
“Do you mind if I record our conversation?” I ask. “The police captain wants to hear it.”
Weaver drops into his high-backed chair and nods. He weaves his fingers together and puts his open palms behind his head. His shoulder span’s immense, at least twice mine. His shirt sleeves, though, ride up his forearms, dreadfully short. It must be just as annoying to never have sleeves long enough as it is for me to never find sleeves that are short enough. “Anything I can do to help, Agent Hansen. I don’t know anyone who could be involved in a homicide.”
“Please, call me Luce.” I set the recorder on the edge of the desk between us. “Your secretary was able to look back at your schedule for the past school year, and at student records. There’s no current or past student under the name Nick Sambino.” I reach into my pocket and place a photocopy of Sambino’s gum wrapper on the desk. Weaver leans forward and investigates the writing. “Why would he have your office information if he’s not a student?”
Weaver taps his long fingers next to the paper. “Everyone I meet with here is either a current or potential student in religious studies here at Sandon. There hasn’t been anyone I’ve met who doesn’t fall into those categories.”
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