Crossed

by Meredith Doench

  That’s when I see it—the jagged edges along the short wall, the corners of the carpet not tucked in as carefully as they could be that pop up even higher under Ainsley’s weight.

  “Take up the carpet,” I direct. “See how it’s one complete piece in the bath and bedroom? There’s a new piece of carpet that starts over here, at the beginning of the hallway.”

  Two officers comply and roll back the aging vomit-green carpet to reveal a worn pad and a thick layer of concrete slab beneath that. Cracks splinter through the slab like a spider’s web. Particles of dust and dirt fly everywhere.

  “Piss-poor foundation,” Ainsley says. “This place will probably cave in in the next few years.”

  “Got something.” The crew crowds around me as I lift the edge of the carpet in the hall to show the side of what appears to be a dark package made from some sort of silk. Gently, I position it in my gloved palm. The silky fabric envelope is a deep navy blue and reminds me of the popular cloth wallets and bags I’ve seen women carry in Asian films or on Travel Channel shows.

  I unclasp the back of the envelope, a small shiny button, and let the contents fall into Davis’s open gloved palm beside me. A stack of photographs emerges, each featuring a naked Nick Sambino with a nude female corpse. In most of the pictures, Sambino stands near the corpse’s head, a hand on the shoulder in some sort of twisted caress while his veneer fangs flamboyantly drip blood from the corners of his mouth. Beside the bodies, on the steel table of the funeral home, sit Sambino’s piled tubes of fresh blood.

  The photographs are professional quality, the paper a thick stock. A fanged Sambino poses for the camera in each photo, complete with long acrylic fingernails painted black. I thumb through the rest of the stack. Twelve nearly identical photos—only the victim on the steel gurney changes.

  “He’s draining their blood,” Davis says.

  “That’s what they do when they embalm a body,” Ainsley says. “Not this way, obviously, but they start by draining all the blood and then replacing it with an embalming fluid.”

  “No one would’ve even noticed.” I hold the beam of my flashlight on a photo. “He filled them back up with the fluid and kept the blood.”

  “But it’s not fresh,” Davis says. “It’s not live blood.”

  “It’s still blood,” I say. “He’s a copycat, remember? It’s good enough to fool all these young women that are so taken with him.”

  “Sambino’s smarter than I gave him credit for,” Ainsley says. “But where is the blood? He couldn’t have kept it at the funeral home. Chad would’ve caught him.” He directs a detective to dismantle the old refrigerator.

  “He drinks it.” I think of the rumor that we’d heard about why Sambino had been fired from Walmart, with the blood in his lunch. Obviously a rumor based on truth.

  I fan the photographs out on the coffee table, each photo more disturbing than the last. Davis kneels next to me. “The funeral home basement is our kill scene,” I say. “He’s bleeding them out there and then someone is transporting them to the quarry for placement.”

  Davis nods. “This answers why we found no blood at the crime scenes.”

  “Someone?” Ainsley says. “Come on, Hansen. Give it up. We got Sambino.”

  I ignore him, looking for something more. When I flip through the pile to photograph number twelve, I push it across the wood table toward Davis. “Look.”

  Although the last picture shows Sambino in his usual getup and pose, this particular shot features another figure hidden between the corpse’s thighs on the steel table. Only gloved hands are visible around the dead woman’s hips, pulling her closer, clearly wanting something much more than just dead blood.

  “Christ.” Davis can’t say aloud what we’re seeing. Someone other than Sambino appears to be performing oral sex on a dead woman who must be in her late seventies. The naked body shows numerous abrasions and long open incisions.

  “Meet Picasso,” I say. “The camera must have been set on a timer. It took the photo before he could completely get himself out of the frame. See?” Sambino’s body’s blurred with movement. “Sambino isn’t posed yet.”

  “Sambino has some other guy to help, at least with this part.” Ainsley leans in for a closer look.

  I shake my head. “Sambino is the other guy, not Picasso. Look at the destruction to this particular body. It’s far worse than the others.”

  “Like he’s been practicing. Fuck,” Davis says. “He’s completely out of the picture except for the bends of his wrists and gloved hands. This could be anyone.”

  We all know he’s right. If Sambino can drive the hearse without Eldridge even knowing he’s gone during the night for hours on end, then Sambino can certainly sneak anyone inside the funeral home.

  “Picasso’s nothing like Sambino,” I say. “Not an ounce of showman in him. He knew a photo would eventually be taken. He’s gone to great lengths to be out of all the pictures.”

  Davis gives the last photograph to the techs to see if they can pull any extras from it.

  “Here’s Sambino’s secret,” I say. “He can lead us to Picasso. We need him, Davis.”

  “On what charges?” Ainsley asks. “It’s not like we have photos of him killing our girls.”

  “It’s a felony—desecration of a corpse,” I say and fan the photos out in my hand like a deck of cards. “We got multiple felonies here, boys.”

  Davis steps away to make a call downtown. Twelve new charges to hold Mr. Sambino.

  “One night in a cold cell with a few guys ready for Mr. Fairy Teeth and Sambino will be screaming the answers,” Ainsley chuckles.

  But I’m not so sure. Sambino’s been threatened by our mystery Picasso. Those threats to remain silent can go a very long way.

  While Ainsley gets evidence bags, I study the photographs again, this time scanning the counters and floor of each for any personal belongings. There, in photograph number seven, on the corner of a counter, lies a pair of eyeglasses, folded neatly. They would have been invisible if not for the reflection of the camera flash on one of the lenses.

  “Rimless,” I whisper and trace my gloved fingertips over the glasses.

  “Pull up the carpet in the entire place,” Davis calls out. “Let’s get Luminol in the kitchen, bed, and bath.”

  Techs spray the bottoms of the bedroom walls, around the tub and toilet, the sink drain, and over light fixtures. They also spray heavily the area where the photographs have been found.

  “Showtime,” one tech calls out after a few minutes. He kills the lights and everyone turns off their flashlights. A trail of smear glows and leads to the sink while other occasional droplets shimmer in the darkness. An eerie blue design surrounds us.

  “He’s a sloppy feeder,” I say, pointing out that the kitchen is only glowing around the sink area. “We need to match this blood to victims.” I walk back to the far corner of the family room.

  “Keep searching,” Davis calls out. “We need DNA profiling and the entire place tested for prints.”

  The air pressure around me shifts, the floor tilts much the same way the cave did the day I found Marci—these are my instincts kicking into high alert. Detectives swarm around me and flashlights sweep across my body yet I am standing still. Their voices dim to only the pulse of my blood rushing inside my ears. My skin prickles and the hairs stand up. I know with every fiber of my being that our Picasso’s much too smart to leave pictures hidden under some outdated, puke-green carpet. He’d never draw attention to himself with the high drama antics of role-playing a vampire and drinking blood from corpses.

  From the corner of my eye, Ainsley swirls the thick brush inside the canister of print powder and then sweeps it across the front door handle and lock. He sneezes. Then again.

  “Damn powder,” Ainsley grumbles under his breath. He pulls the glasses off his face and digs his fingertips into his reddened eyes. “Gets me sneezing every time.” Ainsley gives a long, harsh snort and sets the rimless frames on the w
ood beam that serves as a mantel.

  “Davis.” I wait for him to appear by my side. “See this?” I point to the glasses in the photograph so as not to alert Ainsley. “Now look over there.” I point to Ainsley’s glasses on the mantel.

  Suddenly Davis has a firm grip on my elbow. “I need to see you. Now.”

  Outside Sambino’s apartment, I follow Davis until we’re a few feet away from the officers at the front door. Davis turns to face me and crosses his arms over his chest. “I see what you’re doing.”

  “You’ve lost me, Davis.”

  “And we’re losing time, Agent. I need you focused on Sambino, not Ainsley.”

  I tuck my hair behind my ear and avoid eye contact with him. “There’s something there, Davis. I feel it.”

  “Luce, there’s nothing there.” Davis’s definitive words match his glare. “We don’t have time for this now. I’ll pick you up at the hotel tomorrow morning at seven.”

  Davis turns and is almost back at the apartment door before I can ask, “Wait. Why?”

  “Tomorrow. Seven a.m.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  What’s my standard answer when everything in my life seems to fall apart? When all I really need is blessed sleep, but it’s mountains away, beyond the violent churn of my thoughts?

  Wine. Boxed wine, actually, since it’s the only kind the never-closing Michaels’s Mini-Mart keeps in stock. I left the familiar store with a brown bag full of the cheap red stuff and Hot Pockets—a dinner of true champions. In thick, fleecy sleep clothes complete with a spattering of dark hairs from the dogs, I plant myself in front of the television for old reruns of CSI (it’s my guilty pleasure) with little plastic hotel cups full of wine and semidefrosted cheesy ham Hot Pockets.

  Three and a half episodes and an empty wine box later, I’ve got a magnificent buzz on. Even drunk, my mind continues to work the crime scenes, to twist them into every possible angle, searching for evidence that might have been missed. Sometime after midnight, I finally understand I can’t avoid it any longer. I sit cross-legged in a T-shirt and boxers, perched on top of the desk before the murder board, while the soles of my boots bite against the bare skin of my legs. The pinch feels good, real, somehow, a reminder that I am here in this hotel room and not in the limestone quarry during the summer of 1989. Finally, I open the case file I’ve avoided since my arrival in Willow’s Ridge: Tucker, Marci Ann. DOD: 7 / 27 / 89. Case # 7124285.

  “Pull back,” I whisper to myself and close my eyes. I call up the words of advice from so many of the instructors at the academy: Think of yourself as a doctor. You have no emotional attachment to the body that is before you. If there is no attachment, you can examine everything without judgment or feeling. The body before you is simply a vehicle to the truth.

  I’d practiced this level of detachment throughout my career, though I don’t always succeed. Tonight liquid courage aids in my quest for the truth.

  Marci’s high school picture tumbles out of the side sleeve and her blond hair shimmers in the desk light. My fingertips trace her smile full of metal braces and I can feel the softness of her warm lips, still fresh with laughter. All at once it’s as if Marci’s right beside me; I smell her—fruity shampoo and Downy on her cotton clothes. I take in the distinct aroma of peppermint from her candies, laced with cigarette smoke. Marci’s palpable beside me and the tears I’ve been holding in for days erupt.

  Hair so blood filled, I’d never guess she’d been a white-blonde.

  Sobs heave through my core and there is nothing for me to grab but the edges of the wooden desk. The earth has shifted below and I can’t trust my balance or my own strength. I head to the water’s edge, the place I always run to in my mind when the emotions are too overwhelming. The water’s different tonight, though. I find myself at the surf’s berm, the sea a frothy churn tumbling around my legs as I walk out past the break of waves. The water rises, slipping over my mouth and nose, soaking my hair that floats around me in tendrils. Oxygen bubbles flit up and away as they have a million times before. But something different happens this time. Something new. I’m desperate to reach the surface for a breath. Lungs burning, I spread my arms and kick for the ocean’s top, but it’s so far away, hardly any light filters down into the depths. What’s happening? I’ve never needed breath before in this safe, watery world, and in my panicked fight for oxygen, salty water seeps into my nose and mouth.

  Above, a familiar hand reaches deep beneath the surface for mine. Through the thick sheen, Marci’s shifting figure pulls me up. The choppy movement of the water obscures her face. She’s saying something to me, words I can’t make out underneath the rush of water, until finally she hoists me through the water’s surface. Sputtering and gulping for air, I look around, but there’s no one else. I’m floating in the center of a sea alone. The flow of my breath, haggard and harried at first, finally settles into an anxious rhythm.

  Something about this waking nightmare is too real; she was here. Marci has been here all along, and that knowledge gives me the strength to wipe away the tears, to keep going.

  Breathe, Luce. Just breathe.

  I flip to the police report. Marci Tucker’s file begins by listing the primary detective on the case, who I’m surprised to find is not Ainsley. He’s listed as secondary. Detective Mark Smith led the investigation and typed up the notes. Apparently the station hadn’t shifted over to computers yet and the paper is filled with those little white typo-correction squares. Near the bottom of the page he let the errors go—must have gotten tired.

  On Thursday, July 27, 1989, at 3:27 p.m., dispatch took a 911 call from me, Lucinda Hansen, aged sixteen. My call to 911 from the pay phone outside Michael’s Mini-Mart was quick and panicked with short phrases that my friend needed help and was very hurt, maybe even dying. I detailed the amount of blood for the operator and told her Marci had been bleeding from the back of her head. I told the operator I was supposed to have met my friend at 3 p.m. but was late, and I gave the directions to the cave inside the quarry. Smith noted that I refused to remain on the line and told the operator I was going back to be with my friend to wait for help.

  Police and EMS workers arrived in the quarry parking lot at 4:02 p.m. Marci was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:16 p.m. The cave was declared a crime scene and more detectives were called in to photograph the body and investigate the area for clues.

  Officers found me along the rocky edge of the quarry soaked and unconscious. I have to read this bit of information again and again. How did I get into the water and so far from Marci’s body? No explanation is given and I cannot remember what happened once I returned to Stonehenge. I was immediately transported to the Willow’s Ridge hospital, where doctors found me in good health except for a few minor cuts and scrapes, though I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten into the quarry’s water. Police bagged my wet clothing and notified my father that I had found Marci’s body. Once he arrived at the Willow’s Ridge hospital, police questioned him, but he was quickly dismissed as a suspect with so many witnesses at the police station.

  All of the blood tested at the scene was found to be O positive—Marci’s blood type, but also the most common. Nothing else was found on Marci or at the crime scene. Investigators collected a rock near Marci’s body, a heavy stone about the size of a softball. The rock had one rough edge to it, a jagged ridge that most likely was used to hit Marci’s skull. Traces of clotted blood with a few blond hairs caught in it were linked back to Marci.

  Investigators continued to search the quarry for weeks after Marci’s death, combing through the lush vegetation of summer, but found nothing. No one claimed to have seen or heard anything. The last known person to see and talk to Marci was Doug, the clerk from Michael’s Mini-Mart. Marci stopped in at 2:41 p.m. and purchased a forty-four-ounce fountain drink of Mountain Dew and a pack of peppermint candies. Doug told the detectives that this was her usual purchase and that she paid with a ten-dollar bill. She’d left the change for him, as usual. D
oug seems to have conveniently left out that her usual included a pack of Marlboro Reds. He would have been fired for selling cigarettes to a minor. He reported she acted the same as she did any other day: happy and without any sort of agitation.

  Detective Smith quickly cleared Doug on the basis of the mini-mart’s surveillance video that clearly showed him behind the counter at the time of the crime.

  Detective Smith also led my interview in the hospital emergency room after my father arrived. He described me as very fearful and clinging to the teddy bear that Detective Ainsley had given me. He documented that I answered all his questions with streaming tears and appeared weak, shell-shocked, and much too innocent to be involved. I chuckle at the too innocent comment. I’m not so sure the Jamesons would agree.

  Marci’s parents didn’t believe I was innocent either. Most parents of murdered children have their suspicions about who might have killed their child. Most times, it is the person they believe was the last to see their child alive. Marci’s mother was quoted in the file as blaming me: That Hansen girl is stronger than she looks. Her father remained silent on the matter. Marci’s mother claimed that although as parents they had led their daughter to the word of the Lord, they couldn’t force her to drink. Detective Smith’s notes insinuated that Marci’s mother believed her daughter’s death was retribution for disobeying the word of God.

  Marci’s father had been a strong suspect early on in the case, mostly due to his silence and refusal to take a lie detector test. He’d been questioned at length because he frequently butted heads with his only daughter over issues like her insistence on playing soccer or her determination to be with the female assistant coach, that left everyone questioning the nature of their relationship, but he had a strong alibi. He’d been on his second-shift job as a hospital janitor when the murder took place. Due to his distant and aloof nature, though, many people in Willow’s Ridge never quite believed that he was completely innocent of the crime.