by Dean Covin
The root snatched her foot. She scrambled to the ground, and they were on her.
Fifty-seven
The unnatural screams raging through the forest didn’t come from Vicki. The boy who straddled her, to cage their fallen prey and prove dominance, jumped off of her as quickly as he had pounced.
Vicki rolled to see him join his petrified comrades slowly retreating through a cluster of trees. She leaped to her feet, putting solid wood between her, the Hoods and the spectral howl that terrified the lupine bastards.
The sudden silence in the deadwoods held only the Hoods’ heavy panting and the snapping twigs of their cautious retreat. Then the voice cried, “Go!” and the boys bolted away toward the church.
† † †
Sky wore her jeans, T-shirt and bare feet, carrying heavy burnt shackles around her neck and a menacing blade in her hand. As the boys ran, she slung the shackles over a fallen tree, touched the blade to her lips and set it gently upon a nearby log.
The weight of what had happened crashed with Vicki’s adrenaline. Vicki breathed the heavy words through her dry throat, “Thank you.”
Sky stripped off her T-shirt and then pulled down her jeans. Vicki stiffened. The naked woman tossed Vicki her clothes. “You need these more than I do.”
† † †
Hank found Vicki sitting on her hospital bed. He didn’t have any details, only that she was found walking barefoot along the side of the road. She didn’t appear fine, as she had insisted. Instead, she had looked traumatized. He wanted to press further, but, looking at her, he was uncertain how to proceed.
He recognized the clothes on the counter.
“Why were you wearing her clothes … again?”
She looked at them for a long moment then began trembling. “He took me, Hank,”—she wet her lips—“He took me, and then they found me … naked in the woods. She gave me her clothes because”—her chin quivered—“he still had mine.”
Fear filled his face as he looked upon her, processing.
She stared into her partner’s seeking eyes, and hers started to fill. “He took me—the dark man took me.”
White lips trembling, he tried to form the words but only managed an audible but broken utterance, “Did he—”
She couldn’t answer. She didn’t know. The tenderness within her body terrified her. How far had he gone with her after striking her unconscious?
They sat in silence for nearly ten minutes before Dr. Shepard appeared with Dr. Voxel; she had a bag with her. Hank stood by Vicki as if she were the mother of his unborn child. He didn’t realize he was holding Vicki’s hand until she squeezed it—telling him it helped.
Vicki confirmed that she had requested Dr. Voxel’s attendance. Hank was asked to leave while they discussed the results.
He waited for permission to reenter; instead, Vicki left the room with Allison Voxel. The news must have been good. He waited for Vicki to hug Dr. Voxel goodbye before approaching her.
She looked at Hank. “This doesn’t make him any less dead.”
Hank didn’t argue.
† † †
Regardless of the negative results for oral contact or penile penetration, Vicki had still been sexually assaulted. She shuddered at the leather-gloved invasion, trying to convince herself that she was lucky—escaping far worse.
And what if Sky hadn’t come? She doubted the boys would have let her resurface. In their pack mentality, they wouldn’t have stopped no matter how much she pleaded.
None of this made her feel lucky. Being unable to put a face to her attacker was infuriating. She had seen him multiple times, and yet, somehow, he was able to remain veiled to her.
He may be tied to Ivy’s murder somehow, but Vicki’s gut claimed this was not Ivy’s killer. Vicki’s attacker was standing outside her window while Ivy was being ruined. Vicki would find Ivy’s killer. Then she would find the dark man, get her answers, put him behind bars—and pray he found penile penetration there.
Her capture bothered her. He had baited her, and she had fallen for it. Not knowing why was worse. He had captured and violated her—degraded her. And then let her go. The attack didn’t make sense.
She allowed Allison Voxel to persuade her to stay the night for observation. “Let them take care of you,” she had insisted. “You’ll be more effective tomorrow if you do.”
Apparently Roscoe was on a rampage in spite of his wound, teetering on losing his job. She hated to admit it, but that made her feel better.
† † †
Night consumed her, and the wolves chased her through her terror, yowling, as the depraved threats grew closer, closer, closer. Their heads, enveloped by smoking flames, bared their charred and snapping wolf jaws. Flashing between the gaps of the black trees around her, the vicious pack howled for her destruction, switching back and forth between the burning wolf-boys and the feral, cruel mothers and daughters, trying to run her down and ruin her.
As their debauched threats drew closer, Vicki raced for the bridge, ignoring the roots that sliced at her bloody feet as the sharp, hungry fingers of the forest carved away thin, dripping ribbons of her flesh for their own as she rushed past—her thousand bleeding cuts slowly sapping her scant lead.
Pushing faster toward her terrifying salvation, Vicki’s mind argued to let the pack take her rather than face that malicious bridge again. Her heart drove her forward but the forest held its distance to the bridge, stretching, no matter how fast she ran. She could smell lavish perfume, bone smoke and wolf’s breath, closing in as the savage screaming of their blended taunts—male, female, animal—filled her ears.
Sky stood stripped in the middle of the path. She opened herself up to the marauders as Vicki rushed past. They pounced—man, woman, animal—ripping the witch to pieces, feeding on her flesh—
“Vicki! Vicki!”
Hank shook her. She was still screaming.
“Vicki!”
Vicki blinked up at her partner against the early morning sunbeam. Realizing it was a dream.
“Vicki!” he pleaded, with two nurses standing behind him.
Though wide-eyed and taking in the reality of her hospital room, Vicki could still feel herself screaming.
Hank turned desperately to one of the nurses who quickly left.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he repeated, holding her.
Only then did she hear her cries wind down.
She tried to catch her breath as Hank waved off the returning nurse’s sedative.
“The wolves,” she shivered as he pulled her into his chest, cradling her head beneath his chin where she could feel enveloped and safe. “They’re packs. They kill for competition. They kill for carnage. They just kill.”
“I know—shh, shh, shh,” he whispered. “I know.”
She struggled to sip her grounding cup of tea. She thought of the mean girls, the malevolent wives—the overwhelming envy Vicki had felt in her mirror. “I think I know who did it,” she whispered. She relayed her nightmare, explaining away her screams.
Hank was elsewhere, looking distracted.
“You’re not listening, Hank!”
He looked at her. “We found Ivy’s killer.”
Fifty-eight
Hank had laid out Vicki’s clothes for her—the ones he had fetched from her house—and left her to get dressed. She was happy they had made peace—surely the entire hospital ward was. The shocking revelation of Ivy’s killer aside, the real event was the explosive clash between the two partners.
Hank’s siding with Kempt had triggered Vicki’s verbal assault. She couldn’t tell Hank that her life, possibly even her soul, depended on her solving Ivy’s brutal slaughter—especially since the agents were so close to the truth now. She knew Hank’s outrage at her insane insistence—that she push forward wi
th the investigation, that she didn’t need to rest or take it easy—came from genuine concern. But her nerves were so frayed that confrontation, in any form, brought out her worst.
She was very relieved when he returned from a twenty-minute walk—with an unspoken apology in his eyes. Without another word, they were good.
Both Kempt and Hank were right, of course. Vicki’s capture had added to her secret terror. But against the backdrop of the horrific torments she was experiencing since her arrival in New Brighton, even the latest of three brutal attacks, while adding embers to the slow burn of growing panic in her belly, paled in comparison to the mounting fear she could only arrest by pushing past her apprehension and fright, and solving this case.
The fact that, during his walk to calm down, Hank had called in his own favor and had lied for her, insisting to Kempt that she was fine to continue, showed a loyalty that she never would have expected from the disheveled man she had met days ago. The fact that he didn’t like it, but still honored her enough to back her, moved Vicki in ways she wasn’t ready to share—not now, not in this place.
Lying in her hospital bed, Vicki had realized her precarious situation. Threats surrounded her, both seen and unseen. The danger she doesn’t even know that is coming terrified her the most—the dread of uncovering something deeper, darker, still was gnawing at her bones.
The lack of a phone call, her father’s silence on her attack in the woods, was telling, fueling her suspicion, and, as much as she wanted to deny it, was heartbreaking. Worse, it was foreboding.
It’s what fought her impulse to lash out at him with the twin-sister revelation—to slash open his belly of lies, spilling his deceitful guts on the floor. But that was how Vicki would always react, what he expected. Not gonna happen, Daddy. Not this time. She would hold this one close for now.
She also felt her father’s fingers strangling the media. The lack of attention on this case had the hallmarks of a Lionel Starr intercession—that too terrified her, especially now. But it was also a distraction she could do without and so would take advantage of the media silence.
† † †
Dressed, and taking the FBI’s replacement service weapon from Hank, Vicki’s head still spun in circles after her partner had blindsided her with the night’s astonishing details.
They had found Jason Oliver’s body in his car, parked on his new property in the woods where Vicki had taken her swim. There were two empty bottles of Scotch, a note and the shotgun.
Roscoe had rushed a laptop from the safe in Mr. Oliver’s office to the FBI’s Cyber Action Team. They found the explicit pictures Ivy thought she had bought back, as well as photos of her strapped down in the catacombs in various stages of her torture and of her mutilated corpse. The team confirmed they were from the digital camera found at Mr. Oliver’s office. And he had exclusive knowledge of the catacombs.
After profusely apologizing to his wife and daughter, and confessing to arranging the murder attempts against Vicki and Hank, the note had explained his motive for killing Ivy Turner.
He had tried to blackmail Ivy into having sex using the scandalous pictures he had found. In his nervous haste, he had hit a wrong key and a folder he previously forgot to close opened to his explicit collection of underage teens. This aligned with an encrypted volume CAT found on the hard drive containing the offensive content.
Ivy had tried to go to the police, so he had taken her and had decided to punish Ivy, rather than kill her right away. I couldn’t help myself, he had written.
The opportunity was overwhelming. I started to explore her sexually, but she had made me angry, and so I slowly cut her to pieces. She deserved it. But I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.
Eleven days prior to Ivy’s capture he had stumbled upon, and started visiting, a number of death-porn fetish sites—servicing the sexual desire for torture and death—the news of which had both Roscoe and Dashel horrified, the actual existence of forums like that shocking them to their core. And as ironic as Roscoe’s newfound desire was to line up and fucking gut this class of pervert, Hank couldn’t disagree.
Vicki stared in disbelief, sitting in stunned silence as Hank drove. She loathed Michelle and Morgan Oliver but couldn’t imagine being them right now.
† † †
Vicki felt uncomfortable in the Olivers’ home. Forensics was focused at his office, but a smaller team was here—so were his wife and daughter.
Vinnie came down from upstairs with a grim smile on his face. He held a Ziploc bag containing a pair of women’s underwear. “The dust matches the catacombs,” he confirmed. “And the pubic hairs and discharge belong to Ivy Turner. I found trace semen—it matches Oliver. It’s more than enough to get a posthumous conviction.”
That’s what bothered Vicki. Hank as well because he whispered, “Why do I get the feeling we’re being orchestrated here?”
Michelle Oliver sobbed. “What kind of sick man keeps a trophy like that? It probably stinks of her!”
Morgan Oliver consoled her mother. “It’s not your fault, Mom. None of us knew what monster was living with us.”
Hank scanned the message on his phone. “It looks like he not only had copies of Ivy’s erotic photos but others as well, as if he had hunted down every photo of her that he could find—a complete set.”
“The Visa gift card we found in his safe had been used to subscribe to the member-only site that had her photos. The search history showed frequent attempts to hunt down more,” Vinnie added.
“Obsess much?” Roscoe said.
Vicki looked at the daughter for a moment when something caught Vicki’s eye. She turned to them. “And this is the first time you’d seen these photos?”
“Of course,” they both said, but Vicki wasn’t sure. The daughter, especially, didn’t sound convincing. If they had found out about his obsession, Vicki could see Michelle Oliver being the type to exact a lethal revenge against her husband—not only kill him but frame him for murder.
If the real killer was caught, Oliver’s written admission could be brushed off as a plea for help. But would Michelle Oliver deliberately stomach the town-wide embarrassment of this false confession? That didn’t fit right either, so why did Vicki’s stomach pinch?
Jasmine Boss and Brenda McQueen pushed past the police tape.
“You can’t be in here,” Roscoe said.
They ignored him and went straight to their friend.
“I’m so ashamed,” Michelle said. “I had no clue.”
“No one will fault you. He had us all fooled. Don’t worry. We stand fully behind you.” Boss looked up at Roscoe. “And the town will too. Isn’t that right, Sheriff?” Then she looked at the two agents. “They’re staying with us at our house until they’re ready to talk more—understand?”
† † †
“They alibied out,” Hank said, tossing his room key onto his nightstand. “I double-checked.”
“Let me guess, they were with their girlfriends.”
“Look, even if they found out about the pictures, that doesn’t mean they knew he was the killer.”
That was true. Vicki’s blind hate for the women was starting to skew her judgment; she could feel it. Then her own words surprised her. “You’re glad this is over, aren’t you?”
“You’re not?”
“I think you’re looking for a quick solution so you can get out of here.”
“That’s not fair. I just told you—”
She feared she was losing an ally. “You hate this town—I know you do.” Vicki had a serious personal stake in getting this right—and everything about this felt wrong. “You never wanted this assignment—or me as your partner. This gives you a clean exit.”
“You have no right—”
“I have every right!” She slammed the door.
†
† †
Vicki blamed the demons in her dreams for inflaming her suspicions, fueling her insanity. This didn’t feel done enough to save her from her bloody torments—still weighing as a heavy threat.
She decided to satiate her lingering fears from the previous evening’s nightmare and take the long, dark walk to the bridge—a serious mistake. She had barely made it across. But again, on the far side, she felt better.
Smoke and the scent of fresh tea lured her to her savior’s house.
“I wanted to thank you, again, for saving me.” And make sure you weren’t eaten by a pack of rabid she-wolves.
“That’s not why you came.” She poured a cup of tea. “So tell me. Sit.”
“My gut tells me this is all wrong. Even though my head, our evidence—my partner—all say it’s right, obvious and done—case closed.
“To me, it’s just too convenient—too tight a package. Nothing drew me in his direction—even his knowledge of the catacombs.” She took a long hot sip. “I’m a better agent than that, damn it! My instincts are good. They’re solid.”
“There’s more upsetting you than a bruised ego.”
“I blew up at Hank today. I think the case has been just as frustrating for him, and he’s happy to be done with it, regardless of how the resolution came. That it had nothing to do with any of the hard work we did together.” She absently stirred her tea. “Maybe I am crazy.”
“People think I’m crazy,” the witch offered.
Vicki looked at her and laughed. “That doesn’t help me, Sky.”
But the tea and conversation had.
† † †
She breached the shadow of Cherrybrook Forest, and, more than ever, she was convinced she hadn’t pressed Michelle Oliver enough.
