“Okay, I think we’re ready,” I said loudly, my words echoing in my headphones. “The safety’s on. Pick up the weapon, get a feel for it. And keep your index finger straight against the barrel until you’re ready to shoot.” I handed her my mm.
“I’ve shot a gun before,” she said coyly as she took the pistol in her right hand. “This one’s a little heavy though.”
“Yeah, there’s some recoil too,” I said. “But nothing you can’t handle.”
Ali turned to face the target as I stood behind her and placed my hands around her waist. The front of my body pressed lightly against her back, and my mouth was against the side of her cheek as I showed her a proper stance. I could feel her lean her body against mine as I began positioning her like a mannequin. She looked back at me and smiled. “This isn’t about sex,” I reminded her. “It’s about safety.” Deep down, though, I knew I was reminding myself too.
Ali stood up straighter and turned her attention to the target. “Look through both sights on the top of the gun,” I said. “You’ll want to focus on the front sight, so that the target is slightly blurred in your sight line.”
I brought my hands away from hers as she steadied the gun. I breathed in deeply and let the aroma of her shampoo fill my lungs. “Click the safety off and squeeze the trigger slowly whenever you’re ready,” I said.
She took aim and I stepped back to give her room. I didn’t want to be close enough to feel the kick of the gun after she fired. I watched her take a deep breath and fire the gun once before she exhaled. She lowered the gun and turned around to face me.
“Nice,” I said. “Try again.” She turned around, steadied her aim, and fired the gun two more times before turning the safety on again and setting the gun on the shelf. I pressed the button to bring the paper target forward.
“All three hit the target,” I said with a bit of surprise as I pulled the sheet of paper off the target carrier and showed it to her. “And one’s in the red. You’re a natural.” I was impressed. “Do you want to try some more?” She nodded. I grabbed a new target and pushed the button to send the paper out again.
After each shot, Ali turned around to see if I was watching her. It was next to impossible not to watch. She was absolutely irresistible. As the hour grew to a close, I collected a few of the casings scattered around her feet and placed them in my pocket to give to her later as a souvenir.
When we got back to the first floor, Michael gave Ali her driver’s license back, and we went out to the parking lot. The thrill of watching her fire my gun was still rushing through my body as we both walked her over to the passenger side of her truck. As she reached forward to open the door for me, her forearm brushing across my chest, I leaned in to kiss her. What initially started as light and sweet soon turned heated and passionate as my tongue danced around hers. Letting my bag fall to the ground, I placed both my hands around her hips and guided her toward the side of the truck. As she leaned back against the door, I felt her grip the front of my shirt with both her hands as she pulled me in closer.
A gust of wind suddenly blew by, and I remembered we were outside. Breaking from the kiss, I looked at her, my pelvis still pressed against hers as she steadied herself on the side of her truck. We stared intently into each other’s eyes, with nothing but our yearning, pounding hearts breaking the silence. I gently bit my bottom lip and smiled as the taste of her tongue lingered across my skin.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be.” She smiled. As our moment blew away in the breeze, I took a step back and looked at her. I couldn’t remember ever wanting anyone more than I wanted her at that very moment. It took everything I had not to take a step forward and kiss her again. And again. And keep kissing her until we were back at my place and she was in my bed.
As that thought crossed my mind, I knew I was ready to be with her.
Chapter Nine
I slowly opened my eyes and looked around my room as daylight peeked through the curtains. Next to me, sleeping in the middle of my bed, was Viggo—taking up more room than any dog could possibly ever need. On the other side of him was Ali. She was sleeping on her side, facing me. A few strands of her blonde hair had fallen across her face. Although my room felt like a sauna, she had the blankets over her shoulders as if she had been freezing all night long.
As I continued to look around my room, my very messy room, I realized that my insurance policy hadn’t been the least bit effective. I knew I should have picked up the clothes I had strewn about the place. But it didn’t matter now because she was in my bed. And I didn’t care if there was mold growing on the walls; I wanted her to be here.
I couldn’t help but smile as I remembered our night. The way she traced her fingers down my neck, over my chest and against my abdomen as she skillfully unbuttoned my pants. The way she bit down on her lower lip as I slid my tongue inside her. The way the rhythm of her body matched mine. She had completely saturated my sheets, my skin—and my heart—with her scent.
As she lay there sleeping, I slowly arose and started cleaning. If she knew what a mess I could allow myself to live in, I’m sure she would grab her dog and run out the door before I had a chance to explain.
“You forgot some,” she said, pointing to the crumpled pile of clothes resting on the reading chair in the corner of my room.
“How’d you know what I was doing?” I asked with a laugh.
“Do you think you’re the only adult with a messy bedroom?” She laughed back.
That was one of the reasons I had started to fall so hard for Ali. She was real. There was no mind game. She brought a certain level of comfort that made me feel as if I could be myself—my real self with her. Messy bedroom and all. But it wasn’t my messy bedroom that I wanted to keep from her. She may be tolerant of dirty laundry on the floor but would she stick around once I started to air it out?
“Your bedroom was clean the other night.” I reminded her.
“I may have cleaned it that morning, hoping you’d come home with me,” she replied. “What are your plans for the day?”
Before I could answer, my cell buzzed twice. I unplugged the phone from its charger and saw a text from Bishop. Another body had been found. He sent me the address. I texted back that I was on my way.
“It looks like I’m going to Vantage Woods today,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be, but you’re welcome to stay while I’m gone.”
“No, I should go. I have some errands to run before work. Call me when you’re home?”
“Sure,” I said as I headed toward the bathroom to brush my teeth and get dressed. I closed the door behind me, and I could hear Ali get out of bed and scoop Viggo into her arms. She knocked lightly and said goodbye before I had a chance to open the door.
Back in my bedroom, I noticed that she had quickly made the bed by pulling the comforter over the disheveled sheets underneath. And on the nightstand, where my phone had been charging overnight, she had wrapped the cord into a heart shape. I wasn’t big on over-the-top romanticism, but I felt my heart flutter when I saw the subtle gesture.
I met Bishop near a bait shop on the side of the road about a mile north of Tammy Davis’s murder scene. This stretch of road wasn’t technically part of Vantage Woods, but it was close enough that most of the city folk referred to it as such. Bishop waved me over when he saw my car pull up. He was talking to Detective Braxton and motioning theatrically as if he was trying to prove a point. Braxton just kept shrugging.
“Ask Mills. See if she agrees,” Braxton said when I approached. I looked around the wooded area and saw yellow tape wrapped around three trees, sectioning off a triangular area at least three hundred feet wide. It was a dense portion of the woods, but the sun managed to sneak past the dead branches of the surrounding trees.
“See if I agree with what?”
“Braxton has a theory that these murders are copies of some that took place in New England several years back,” Bishop said, not sounding convinced.
“Where in New England?” I asked, not sure why that was relevant.
“Connecticut,” Braxton said. “Same M.O., same type of body dumps too,” he added.
Before I could hear more about Braxton’s hypothesis, a lanky officer with short blond hair called to us.
“She’s over here,” he said, more to Bishop than to Braxton and me.
Looking down, I saw yet another young woman, likely in her late twenties, wearing a short denim skirt and a light blue blouse. Her throat had a small nick next to the windpipe, presumably where a knife had been placed to threaten her. Her skirt was covered in mud and debris, probably from a struggle, and her shirt had been ripped across the abdomen. Then I looked at her head and saw an entry wound similar to that of a small-caliber bullet.
“Sexual assault?” Bishop asked the officer.
“No sir,” the officer answered.
“Victim’s name?” I asked.
“Jessica Reynolds,” the officer replied. “Her purse and personals are all intact. Driver’s license, money, cell phone are all there. Her car isn’t far—about a hundred feet or so from where the trail picks up at the road.”
“Do we have a time of death?” Bishop asked.
“No, not yet,” the officer said. “She was found early this morning. Some kids who were trying to enjoy their summer vacation found her when they were walking to the lake to go fishing.”
I looked down at Jessica Reynolds and wondered what she was doing out here. She didn’t seem like someone who would be visiting the Villa. There were no ligature marks around her hands or ankles, so her attacker must have caught her by surprise. Her curly, dark-brown hair had started to kink from lying in a pool of water mixed with her own blood.
“Whoever’s doing this knows the area well,” I said. “He’s comfortable here. He’s taking his time because he knows he can. Braxton, did they ever find your New England killer?”
“Nope,” he said, almost proud of this fact. “Four bodies were found in the course of three years. All women, all in their twenties or thirties. Single shot to the head, nothing left at the scene.”
“Just like ours,” I muttered. “What happened?”
“Nothing. The guy just stopped. I called the lead detective, and they think he was picked up for some other crime. There’s been talk in the prison around there. Someone’s taking credit for the murders, but none of the inmates will testify.” Braxton looked at Bishop before continuing. “I think the guy’s still out there. I think he moved to another state. Someone like this doesn’t just stop.”
“Over here!” another officer called from thirty yards away. Bishop, Braxton and I ran over to where the officer was standing by a mound of loose dirt that had a fresh footprint in it. It wasn’t the clearest impression. It looked as if the person was running or had slipped and caught his balance. Bishop took a step back when the investigator came over with her camera and began to take photographs.
“Can we get a casting too please?” Bishop asked her. “What do you think, Mills? Size ten in men’s?”
“Seems to be,” Braxton answered for me as he pulled out a tape measure from his pocket and knelt down next to the footprint.
This was the first time we found an isolated footprint close enough to the body. Both murders had too much in common to dismiss the probability that the killer had simply become bolder, more impulsive. “Has next of kin been notified yet?”
“I was going to do that next,” Braxton said. “Her parents are going to have to come to the morgue to identify the body. We’ll get her cleaned up a bit before they get there. No parent should have to see their kid this way,” he added.
“I’m heading to the Villa,” I said to Bishop. “It’s about time we started asking the Villagers some more questions.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time if I was you,” Bishop replied as he walked closely by my side. He turned to the officers who were still searching the scene and instructed them to bag anything that seemed out of place and have it rushed to the lab.
“They live here, Bishop. They have to have seen something… anything,” I reasoned with him. He remained quiet as he continued to walk the short distance with me toward my car.
“You seem happy,” he finally said.
“I do?” I asked, wondering how he could interpret my empathy for the victim—or my eagerness to solve her crime—as happiness.
“Not back there just now, but when you first arrived,” he explained. “You just seemed…happy,” he repeated.
“I suppose I am,” I said, trying to be nonchalant.
“Does it have anything to do with that young lady from the fair?”
I felt uncomfortable talking to him about my possible-girlfriend, but I couldn’t lie to him.
“It might.”
“Why don’t you bring her by for dinner tomorrow,” he said. “I’d like to officially meet her.”
“Bishop…I don’t know.” I stopped walking.
“I just want to meet her. I care about you, Mills, and it seems like she makes you happy. That’s all I ever wanted for you girls.”
I knew he meant that he wanted Tara and me to be happy, but that was no longer a possibility.
“Okay,” I sighed. “I don’t know her availability, but I’ll see what she says.”
“What happened to your car?” he asked suddenly when he noticed the donut on my car.
“It was flat—teenagers must have been out slashing tires over the weekend. And the garages were closed yesterday, so I have to take it somewhere later this afternoon.”
“Hmm.” He paused, lost in thought. “See that you do. It’s not safe for you to drive out here on that spare,” he said before he started walking back toward Braxton and the responding officers. “Tomorrow night, my house, six o’clock,” he added sternly with a smile.
It took less than three minutes to drive to the entrance of where the Villagers’ territory began. I parked my car and walked toward the Villa, counting the number of Villagers I passed along the way. The closer I got to their shanty town, the clearer their faces became. I could see eight Villagers standing around an array of tents. Most of them didn’t look any older than twenty-five—and, considering their lives, their struggles, and their likely drug abuse, most of them were probably younger than they appeared. Their clothes were tattered and worn, which might have been an advantage for them during this current heat wave.
When I was less than twenty feet from the rusted metal trashcan that served as a visual barrier between the Villa and the rest of the park, all eight of the Villagers looked up at me, staring me down as if they were trying to figure out if I was friend or foe. I must have been deemed a foe—because all but one of them took off running in the other direction.
Before I had a chance to tell them I wasn’t there to bust them for drugs, I heard the only Villager who stayed behind start to speak. “Don’t mind them, dearie…”
She was sitting in a broken camping chair next to a blue tarp draped over a metal pole sticking straight up out of the ground. Under the tarp, I could see several filthy blankets and a pile of empty aluminum cans inside a shopping cart.
“They don’t know any better.” She smiled as the wrinkles around her eyes and lips revealed she was at least a decade or two older than the rest of the Villagers who ran from me. Her white tank top was caked in a month’s worth of dirt and grime, and her short brown hair peeked out from under the corners of a gray bandana she had tied around her scalp. Her jeans were faded and soiled with the same layers of dirt and grime as her shirt.
“Why did they run?” I asked. Her smile widened and she laughed at my question. Her teeth were darkened around the gum line and broken along the edges, as if she’d been chewing rocks for breakfast every morning for the last thirty years. I could see track marks up and down the inside of her forearm, but she made no attempt to hide them from me.
“They think you’re here to arrest them, dummy.” She sighed to herself. “Too bad they don’t realize drug
s are easier to get in prison than they are out here.” She laughed again, seeming completely at ease with herself and with my presence, as if she knew that arresting her was the last thing on my mind. “If they bothered to read the papers before burning them,” she said as she gestured toward the trash can, “then they’d know you have much bigger problems to worry about.”
“You know what’s going on then?” I tried to be vague in case she wasn’t talking about the murders. I wasn’t naïve to the fact that plenty of other crimes took place in and around the Villa, but the murders were our top priority.
“All those young girls.” She sighed again. “It’s a shame, really. It seems like nothing good happens to people in this park.”
“I’m Detective Mills,” I said as I took a few steps closer to her.
“I remember you.” She coughed and I could hear the phlegm in her lungs rise to the back of her throat. “You and that man came ’round here a few years ago, asking questions.”
And then I knew why she didn’t run when I approached her. She remembered me, remembered when Bishop and I scoured the Villa asking questions of anyone who would talk to us about Tara. It took us three visits before we realized the only way anyone would to talk us was if we gave them money. The more money we offered, the more information they suddenly recalled—although that backfired. Once they ran out of truths, they just made up the rest to keep the cash rolling in.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t remember your name.”
“Not too many people do anymore.” She laughed to herself. “Tiffany. Tiffany Jones.” She lowered her head, as if her name no longer had any meaning. To the world, she was just a Villager, just another homeless junkie, and it was easy to tell she believed it too.
“Ms. Jones.” I cleared my throat and took another step toward her.
“T.J.,” she corrected me.
Sight Lines Page 8
