She'll Never Live

by Hunter Morgan

  A pickup with Maryland plates pulled into the gas station, blasting country and western music. The Bloodsucker hated country and western music and he thought it was rude for people to drive around with their windows down, polluting the air with that southern my dog and my truck drivel.

  The guy, dressed in blue jeans and a tank top, got out. He nodded in the Bloodsucker's direction as he removed his fuel cap.

  "Hey," the Bloodsucker said. He didn't let on like he hated the Dixie Chicks. He even tapped his foot to the music.

  A tan and green police car whizzed by, lights flashing, catching both men's attention.

  The stranger turned his head, watching the lights disappear. "Wonder what's up. The cops have been crawling all over this town tonight."

  "Another missing woman, I heard," the Bloodsucker remarked. The pump clicked off, the tank full, but he took his time. "I think they're looking for her."

  The man shook his head. "Unbelievable, huh?" He leaned against his truck. "You know, when they catch this guy, I think they ought to skip the due process crap and kill the bastard."

  "You think so?" The Bloodsucker settled the nozzle into the pump and turned back to screw the cap securely on the tank.

  "I sure as hell do." He threw back his shoulders. "But I think they ought to torture him first, the same way he tortured those women. They always ask in those commentaries in the paper if those who believe in the death penalty would be willing to do it. I would. Hell, I'd volunteer. Only it wouldn't be his wrists I'd cut, it would be his jugular." He made a motion, drawing his hand across his neck.

  The Bloodsucker closed the little door on the gas tank, annoyed. He thought about the pistol under the seat in the car. He just kept it for protection, but he wondered what this redneck would think if he pulled it on him. Shot him right in the face. Wouldn't be so macho arrogant then, would he?

  But the Bloodsucker didn't have time for the redneck tonight. He had to take care of Marissa. Besides, shooting the guy would be dangerous. He'd have to kill the clerk inside the mini-mart, too. Then what if someone drove by, or if someone remembered later seeing him pull into the station? Only idiots did impulsive things like that.

  He heard a voice in his head. Twitched.

  "I'm not an idiot," he whispered under his breath.

  "What's that?" The redneck had completed his gas purchase and was now hiking across the blacktop toward the mini-mart, probably to buy cigarettes or something equally stupid.

  "I said, have a good evening," the Bloodsucker called cheerfully with a wave.

  "You, too."

  The Bloodsucker pulled back onto the highway and just drove. Usually he had a plan as to where he would go, where he would leave her, but not tonight. He stopped at a traffic light and watched with interest as one of the tan and green police cars ahead of him signaled and turned into an alley that ran between two restaurants. It was Patrolman Rumsfeld. What was he doing down there?

  Then, the Bloodsucker smiled. He knew just what Rumsfeld was doing. The same thing Claire Bear had been doing the night she'd almost caught him dropping Anne off.

  That was when he got the idea. The brilliant idea. Because he was a brilliant man.

  He made a U-turn, a left turn, and then a right.

  This would be riskier than the other times, but that was what it made it fun. Okay, Claire Bear wanted to make this personal? She wanted to buzz around in his head?

  He'd make it personal.

  * * *

  "Ah, Jesus," Claire breathed. She ran her hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, Robinson. That was uncalled for." Her detective was a religious man and she knew he took offense at her using the Lord's name in vain. It had actually come up at one of the shift meetings a couple of weeks ago.

  "It's all right, Chief," he said quietly.

  "No. No, it's not." She swung her legs over the bed and ran her fingers through her dirty hair. She felt as if she'd only been asleep a few minutes but her clock said 6:05. She'd slept in and it was already light outside.

  "It is if you're asking for His help," the detective said quietly.

  Claire didn't speak for a moment; she just closed her eyes. She couldn't pray; she was too scared. Too angry. But the silence, with Walt on the other end of the line, was somehow comforting. "Okay," she said, opening them a minute later. "I have to take a shower, then I'll be in. And I have to get Ashley up. It will be forty minutes before I get there."

  "Not a problem, Chief."

  Claire hung up the phone and padded barefoot down the hall, stopping at Ashley's door. "Ash, you need to get up. I'm getting in the shower now so you can have—" She halted in mid-sentence.

  Ashley was sprawled on the bed, dressed in boxers and a T-shirt, her blond hair spilling over her pillowcase. Her blond hair.

  "What did you do?" Claire cried, flipping on the overhead light.

  The teen groaned and rolled over, covering her face with her arms. "What?" she moaned sleepily.

  "What did you do, Ashley?" Claire covered the distance between the door and the bed in a second. She reached out and brushed her daughter's blond hair, stark against the black pillowcase. She was almost hysterical. "Your hair."

  Ashley rolled onto her back, lowering her arms, squinting. "I made it blond again."

  Claire sank down to sit on the edge of the bed, afraid she was going to burst into tears. Her hands were shaking. She knew her fears were unfounded. She was keeping her daughter with her every moment of the day, but seeing her blond hair spilling over the pillow made her think of the dead women, their hair fanned out on the dark pavement.

  "I thought that was what you wanted me to do, Mom."

  Claire ran her hand over her daughter's head, over the silky tresses, trying to get a hold of herself.

  Ashley jerked her head from her mother's reach and pushed up on her elbows. "Mom, why are you crying?"

  Claire looked away, her gaze falling to the huge pile of clothes on Ashley's floor that she had, supposedly, been putting away. "I need you to get up and get ready," she said, taking a deep breath and rising off the bed.

  "No. Just let me stay here," the teen moaned, pulling the sheet over her head. "I swear, I won't go anywhere. I won't talk to anyone. I won't move from this spot."

  "We're leaving here in twenty minutes." Claire walked to the door, willing herself not to fall apart. "Shower if you like, or don't shower. Dress or don't dress. Twenty minutes," she called as she headed for the bathroom.

  * * *

  It took Claire almost an hour to get to the station. While she was in the shower, Ashley had gone back to sleep and when Claire woke her again, the teen had dug her heels in. She said she wasn't going with her mother, not if she carried her out of the house. It had almost come down to that.

  As Claire pulled into the parking lot behind the station, Ashley sat in the backseat, hugging her pillow, her eyes closed despite the fact that she wasn't asleep.

  The scene in the parking lots, front and back, were a dreadful repeat of all the previous homicide scenes that summer. Men and women in police and medical uniforms milling around. The first of the reporters beginning to pull up in their minivans, having to be forced back behind orange barriers. There were police cars everywhere, and not pulled neatly into their parking spaces like most mornings. They were parked catty-corner, some even on the grass with personal vehicles thrown in between. There were emergency medical team trucks, and the ME's car, too. Only there were no flashing lights this morning and the lack of them was almost eerier. There were no pulsing blue police car lights because the crime scene was in their own backyard.

  "I need you to go inside," Claire ordered Ashley as she opened the car door.

  In the rearview mirror, Claire saw her daughter open her eyes as she lowered her pillow and brushed the tangled blond hair from her face. "What's going on?"

  "Chief" Robinson approached the car. She knew he'd been up all night; he looked like it. It was the first time she ever recalled seeing him without one of his polyes
ter sports jackets. His tie was loose around his neck and his light blue shirt wrinkled with a stain on his belly. Coffee, maybe.

  Claire thought it was funny the things you noticed at times like this. How acute your senses become. And how the senses could so easily be confused. Like right now, while she couldn't yet see the body, she could smell the blood. Or the lack of it.

  "Something happened." Ashley craned her neck, looking out the window. "What happened, Mom?"

  Ashley's voice penetrated Claire's disjointed thoughts. "Detective, would you mind escorting my daughter inside? Then you and I can talk. And have someone get the news vans off the front lawn. Do they know what it cost us to reseed that lawn last fall?"

  "No problem, Chief." He opened the rear door. "C'mon, Ashley. I think we've got OJ in the break room."

  Ashley left her pillow in the backseat and climbed out, still trying to see what all the commotion was about. The detective put his arm out to steer her in the opposite direction of the yellow crime scene tape, but he was a split second too late.

  Ashley halted, and stared.

  Claire turned to look in the same direction and then cursed under her breath. The killer had changed his MO again. Marissa Spicer was not on the ground beside the dumpster . "Ah, Walt. You left her like that?" She turned to her daughter, caught between wanting to pull her police chief hat on and wanting to be the mother who could protect her child from such a horrifying sight.

  Ashley's beautiful blue eyes, devoid of even a hint of black eyeliner, filled with tears. "He left her here?" she murmured, her voice filled with a mixture of shock and disbelief. "At the station?"

  Claire didn't know what to say. What to do. The motherly instinct that filled her the moment Ashley had entered this world wanted to pull her daughter into her arms and shield her from the terrible sight of the dead woman hanging partially out of the large dumpster , her long blond hair pale and shimmering against the green metal. But a part of her knew that Ashley needed to understand why Claire enforced the rules she did. Why Ashley had to be so careful where she went, who she spoke to, who she became friends with.

  Marissa had obviously made friends with the wrong person.

  Claire reached out and squeezed Ashley's shoulder, knowing that if she took her in her arms right now, she might break down, herself. She couldn't let that happen because she had a job to do. "Go inside, hon."

  The teen pressed her lips together, her voice trembling but in control as she spoke. "It's okay, Detective Robinson. I can go myself. You stay here and help my mother."

  The detective glanced at Claire and she nodded to let Ashley go. Then Claire took a deep breath and approached the Dumpster. "What time was she found?"

  "Six a.m. Jacob found her when he dumped the trash."

  Claire ducked under the yellow tape. "And what time do we know she—" A pair of familiar shoulders caught her eye and she turned. "Kurt, what the hell are you doing here?"

  He ducked under the yellow tape. "Easy there, girl."

  Robinson lifted his hands, palms out, making it plain he had nothing to do with Kurt's arrival.

  "Don't you easy girl me," Claire ground out under her breath. "Who called you and how the hell did you get here before I did?"

  "I was already up when the call came in. And no one from here contacted me. Someone at headquarters picked it up on a radio frequency or something."

  "You guys are eavesdropping on our radio communication." As she spoke, her gaze strayed to the body. Unlike Brandy, Marissa didn't just have a split lip; she had a black eye as well.

  "Claire, let's not turn this into a grassy knoll. I'll be taking over within the week. I should be here."

  She stared at the dark pavement. A beige trash can lay on its side, probably just where the custodian had dropped it when he saw the body. "So as of right now, you've not officially taken over."

  "No," Kurt said.

  She set her jaw. "Then step back and let me do my job. Robinson!"

  The detective was at her side.

  "I want the photographing done this second." She pointed at Marissa, grinding out each angry word. "And I want you to get her the hell down from there."

  * * *

  Mid-morning, the phone call Claire had been dreading almost as badly as having to speak with Marissa's parents came in. She'd spent the entire previous day dodging his phone calls. Expecting to see him any second in her office or at her front door.

  "Claire," Graham said. "I tried to come in, but one of your patrolmen turned me away."

  "We found Marissa," she said quietly, brushing the hair out of her eyes, resting her head on the heel of her hand, her elbow on her desk.

  "I know, I heard. You okay?"

  "Yeah. This is my job. I don't have the luxury of not being okay."

  "I mean about us. About the other night. I'm sorry about Marissa Spicer, but I know you can't talk to me about that right now. I know you shouldn't."

  She exhaled slowly. "I'm all right."

  "You're sure?"

  The backs of her eyes stung. She felt like such a ninny. A weak, girly ninny. "Graham, I can't do this right now. I had a dead girl in the station house dumpster this morning."

  "I understand," he intoned. "I just—"

  "Listen. I came to you of my own free will. I don't want you feeling guilty about anything. You hear me? We're not teenagers and this is definitely not prom week."

  "It's just that you've been under so much stress," he said. "You—"

  "Graham," she interrupted again. "I came to you because I needed to get laid." She was quiet for a second, knowing how awful that must have sounded. "What I mean is that I needed you to make love to me. If anything, I took advantage of you, of my situation. I used it as an excuse."

  "Well, I just wanted you to know that I'm thinking about you. That my door's always open."

  She half smiled. "And your bed?"

  She could hear him smiling back. "You bet."

  Claire lifted her head, surprised to realize she felt a little better. "I've got to go."

  "I won't bug you. Call me when you can."

  "Thanks, Graham," she whispered.

  * * *

  Three days later, Claire sat at her desk wishing she was anywhere on earth right now, but there. She ran her pen over the list of questions on her legal pad, trying to be sure she'd covered everything. This was the second time she had sat down and talked with Marissa's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Spicer and she didn't want to have to put them through this again, if she didn't have to.

  "I think that's everything I needed to know." Claire looked up at the teary-eyed couple who sat across from her desk.

  Mr. and Mrs. Spicer were in their late fifties. He was a bank manager; she was a homemaker. Marissa had been their youngest daughter. They had another daughter waiting for them at home; she'd just had a new baby the week before.

  All Claire had been able to think of since they told her about the new grandbaby was that Marissa would never make Marty and Valerie Spicer grandparents.

  "I really appreciate you coming in and talking with me," Claire continued. "I know this must have been very hard for you to do."

  "Anything to help you catch this animal," the mother said, patting her mouth with a damp, balled-up tissue. "Anything to keep it from happening again."

  Marissa's father nervously retrieved bits of the tissue that fell on his wife's skirt. After their appointment with Claire, they would be going to the funeral home to make arrangements. Marissa's body would be released by the state's medical examiner by the end of the day.

  Claire glanced down at her notes and then up again. "One more thing," she said hesitantly. "And I know this is going to sound silly, but, do you know how often your daughter ate at the local diner? Did she go a particular day each week, or maybe she liked to have breakfast, lunch?"

  Mrs. Spicer glanced over at her husband, then looked to Claire. "Marissa wouldn't have eaten at a diner."

  There it was, that free-falling feeling again. />
  Claire held her breath. "Never? You're certain?" She leaned forward on her desk.

  Mrs. Spicer shook her head. "Ask anyone who knows her. It was very important to her that she eat healthy. She preferred organic food and shopped at the little store down near the post office."

  "Adam's Apple?"

  The older woman nodded. "You see, Marissa had serious food allergies. Eating organic seemed to alleviate most of those allergies."

  Claire pressed both hands to the desk. All along, she'd been sure the killer was picking his victims from the diner. Every single other woman had been from there, but if Mrs. Spicer was right, if Marissa didn't eat at the diner, that meant that either he had changed a strategy he had used from the beginning... or the women were linked in a different way. In a way that she had missed. "You don't think she might have come in just once in the last week or so? Maybe for a cup of coffee? A bagel?"

  Mrs. Spicer shook her head firmly. "Absolutely not. In fact, she just had an allergic reaction last week and had to go to the emergency room for treatment. After an episode, she was always extra careful."

  Claire scribbled down a note to check with the emergency room and then laid down her pen, rising to her feet. "I think we're done here, Mr. and Mrs. Spicer. Let me walk you out front." She opened the door and glanced over her shoulder at her father's retirement clock on the wall. All through the interview it had appeared as if it were barely ticking. Now, in her mind, the clock's second hand was moving faster.

  Chapter 12

  "Kurt, listen to me. I'm telling you, he's not finding these women at the diner."

  She slapped her hand on her desk with an enthusiasm she hadn't felt in a long time. This whole case was so grim that enthusiasm was probably too strong a word. Hope. Hope was what she felt.

  "I thought the diner was the key," she continued. "And I've wasted days, weeks, staking the place out, watching every male who came and went, but I was wrong." Resting both hands on the desk, she gazed at him over piles of paperwork and file folders. "Now I know that. I can feel it."