The White Iris

by Susanne Matthews

  “Where to, buddy?”

  “The airport,” Trevor said, leaning back against the leather seat.

  “You travel light,” the cabbie joked.

  “I flew in this morning for a meeting,” he said.

  “I’d fly in for a couple of hours with her, too,” the driver said, his tone annoying Trevor.

  The cabbie’s right. She’s worth four hours of flight time.

  Their morning had been far more productive—and difficult—than he’d expected. Being in her apartment had been like stepping back in time. The couch, the cushions, even those silly little glass animals she collected had all been exactly as he remembered. The only thing that had changed was that damn painting. And, of course, she now had three cats.

  When Lenore had let him into the apartment, he’d expected Julie to boot him out just as quickly. Instead, she’d warned him not to hurt her cats, animals he distinctly remembered she disliked, and offered him coffee.

  Seeing her wearing that old Georgia Tech T-shirt had been like a punch in the gut, the idea that she could have a lover in the bedroom waiting for her spearing him. He’d tried not to show his distress as memories of the day he’d bought her the shirt flooded him. They’d gotten caught in the rain and her white top had become translucent. Seeing her today had made his body respond in an unprofessional fashion, reminding him of everything he’d lost. Thankfully, reciting those damn timetables had his ardor under control quickly.

  I shouldn’t have kissed her.

  He’d been fighting the urge to touch her from the moment he’d seen her, and when he took her hand in his, the urge to kiss her had been too strong to resist. The familiar texture of her lips had ignited a fire in his gut, one he knew had nothing to do with his ulcer.

  He sincerely hoped she’d come to Boston, although whether or not he’d be able to stay away from her was a toss-up. She might think their relationship had been a mistake—she’d implied as much in July—but it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Too bad he’d thrown it all away.

  If she did come to Boston, maybe they could at least rekindle their friendship. They’d done well until he’d stepped over the line. He’d have to work harder at maintaining his distance from her, but he needed her help, and like it or not, the case came first.

  Chapter Six

  Trevor handed the kid twelve dollars and closed the door. He carried the pizza box into the kitchen, grabbed a couple of slices, some napkins, and another beer, and returned to the living room. He’d spent the whole day watching football, thinking of Julie, and waiting for her call. The fear she’d tried to hide bothered him, but since she was unwilling to confide in him, there wasn’t much he could do.

  Only one good thing had happened so far today: The Patriots were playing the Cowboys and the second half had just started with Boston up by seven. The Bengals had beaten the Seahawks earlier, which meant his brother Nick owed him at least twenty bucks. He’d enjoyed their brief conversation. The question of Christmas had come up, and Trevor had promised to think about it.

  He grabbed a slice, took a bite, and washed it down with a mouthful of beer. After he’d gotten back from Atlanta, he’d spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what the hell Becca’s last name might’ve been. He hadn’t been able to find a marriage license, but he’d gotten into Thaddeus Lucius’s service record. Unfortunately, the name on the life insurance policy that no one had ever claimed was Becca I.H. Lucius. He’d give his eyeteeth to know what that damn I.H. stood for.

  He was engrossed in the game, cheering on the Patriots, watching their number-one running back head down the field, when his cell phone rang. He looked at his watch: 7:00 p.m. here translated to 9:00 a.m. tomorrow in Australia, so it could be Lilith … but he wanted it to be Julie.

  Reaching for the phone, he swiped the screen. Caller ID told him it was Boston PD’s central dispatcher. Damn. He’d had what, four cans of beer? It was supposed to be his day off.

  “Clark,” he said. Maybe his meeting with L.D. Hamilton, the president’s advisor on domestic terrorism, had been rescheduled again.

  “Special Agent Clark, this is Central Dispatch. You and your team are to meet the detective on the scene at 467 Crosby Road. That’s in the Boston College area.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “The 9-1-1 caller said there’d been multiple deaths. Lieutenant McNamara has asked for you specifically. I’ve contacted the members of your team, but I haven’t had a response from Detective Adams yet.”

  “He’s out of town. Tell Lieutenant McNamara I’m on my way.”

  Trevor ended the call and pressed speed dial for Tom’s number. The man should be on his way back to Boston. He’d leave a message to meet him at the scene of the crime. Trevor would call a cab since he’d had the beer and had no idea where the hell that street was. He could probably pull rank and get a squad car to pick him up, but tying up a car and an officer like that didn’t seem right.

  “Hey, Trevor, I just got in,” Tom’s voice surprised him. “The voice mail light’s flashing on the phone. I haven’t even had time to check it. Is it from you?”

  “Not me. Central Dispatch. Looks like you won’t be checking in with Boston PD tomorrow after all. There are multiple homicides at Boston College.”

  “Why were we called?”

  “I don’t know, but the detective on-site asked for us. That can’t be good.”

  “Son of a bitch. He’s back—that has to be it,” Tom said.

  “That’s what I figured as well. Can you swing by and pick me up?” Trevor asked. “I need to clean up and don’t know my way around that part of town.”

  “Be there in twenty.”

  “That should do it. I’ll be waiting downstairs.” It looked like the rest of the pizza would have to wait. He turned off the television and headed into the bathroom to shower.

  When Tom pulled up in front of the apartment hotel Trevor called home, he hurried out to the vehicle.

  “How was Canada?” he asked.

  “About the same as here, although we did get some sun this morning.”

  “I spoke to Lynette James on Friday just after you left.”

  “That name’s familiar.”

  “She’s the forensic pathologist I requested to look at the graves in New Mexico.”

  “Right. Took her a while.”

  “It did, but her report is a doozy.”

  Trevor proceeded to explain about the cyanide, the empty grave, and the oleander poisoning.

  “Shit. I planted some of that for Fiona just last week. Looks like I’ll be getting rid of it before she gets home. Do you really think that bastard would’ve killed his own father and brother, not to mention another thirty people?”

  “What do you think?”

  “How’d Jacob take the news?”

  “Not well. He doesn’t want to believe Duncan could’ve done that either, but he’s more upset about the missing corpse.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Ten minutes later, Trevor got out of Tom’s unmarked car, pushed his way through the crowd, and hurried up the steps of the brick home, the Greek letters affixed to its front proclaiming it one of Boston College’s sorority houses. Two of the letters on the house, alpha and omega, said it all. The beginning and the end. The dispatcher hadn’t said how many were dead, but she’d used the word multiple—definitely more than one. If this was the Prophet/Harvester’s work, he wouldn’t have stopped at one, but why here? Why these girls? They had nothing to do with the task force.

  Flashing his credentials at the young officer standing outside the closed door, he waited for Tom to catch up. Judging by this man’s pallor, Trevor would bet his last dollar the kid had puked his guts out. Hopefully, he’d done it without contaminating the scene.

  “What have we got?” Trevor asked as soon as Tom joined him.

  “A bloodbath, Agent Clark. It’s like a scene from a slasher movie. I’ve never seen anything like it. I only went as far as the
hallway … There are three there. The lieutenant says there are more throughout the house.”

  Jesus! How many are dead here?

  “Ten girls share the house, but only nine of them were here last night. The tenth had gone home for the weekend. She got back about an hour ago and found them like that. She ran out of the house screaming, and the man in my patrol car made the 9-1-1 call. He went inside—it’s his vomit next to the body at the bottom of the stairs. The girl’s over there with the paramedics.” He pointed to the ambulance out front, parked next to the coroner’s wagon.

  “Did the guy give a statement?”

  “He did, but Lieutenant McNamara said to keep him here until you guys talked to him. We took his phone. I don’t think he took a picture or anything.”

  Trevor nodded. “Thanks.” The last thing he needed was a grisly picture of three dead coeds and a pile of puke going viral. “What about the girl who found them? Has she said anything?”

  “No. My partner tried to talk to her, but she’s in shock. The paramedics are awaiting your okay to take her to the hospital. That girl’s damn lucky to be alive. There’s a message on the wall addressed to you,” the young officer added.

  What were the chances this wasn’t the Prophet’s second plague? They’d done their best to keep a lid on the note that had accompanied the pub explosion last month. Now more people were dead, and he didn’t have the faintest idea who or why.

  With Pierce dead, the Prophet had obviously found someone else to do his dirty work. Trevor was damn sure the bastard wouldn’t be getting his own hands filthy, and murder was usually messy.

  If this was the second plague, it was two weeks late, but with Pierce, the orchestrator of the first plague dead, the Prophet would’ve had to regroup. Lilith, Jacob, and Rob would have to come back now, whether they were ready to resume their duties or not. He needed their expertise.

  “Ready to go inside?” Tom asked, his voice stating plainly that he wasn’t.

  “No, but what choice do we have? Let’s see what the bastard has to say.”

  Trevor opened the door and stepped inside, Tom following close behind him, shutting the door quickly to keep the crime scene private. These girls deserved a little dignity. He stepped on something soft.

  “What the hell?”

  “It’s a dead frog. I’m Jim McNamara. There has to be a hundred of them scattered about the place, like a science experiment gone wrong.”

  “More like a plague,” Trevor answered. So Lilith had been wrong. The bastard had brought in the real thing, not knives in weird cases as she’d suggested after the pub bombing when they’d discussed frogs. “How bad is it?”

  “Ten dead. Since the girl outside lives here, we don’t know who the other one is yet.” He cleared his throat. “Someone delivered Chinese food last night—the receipt’s in the kitchen and the leftovers were in the fridge. The medical examiner mentioned drugs or poison, so we’re checking the food first. Looks like everyone wasn’t feeling too well. That’s not the only puddle of vomit we found, although the other stuff was dry. No one struggled, so the chances are they were out cold before their throats were slit. We called the Crimson Dragon, but they claim they didn’t deliver this even though their name’s on the bill. I’ve sent someone down to the restaurant to see if anyone else ordered these particular dishes.”

  Trevor nodded. Knives and frogs. Lilith hadn’t been wrong after all. He and Tom followed McNamara out of the foyer and into the hall. Two bodies lay in the hallway, one halfway into the living room, the other at the bottom of the stairs. A third was partway up, as if she’d just crumpled there.

  “What have you got, Amos?” Trevor asked, recognizing Boston’s crusty medical examiner. He’d gotten to know the man far too well on this case. Hell, he’d lost track of the body count.

  “I won’t know for sure until I get everything back to the lab, but it looks to me as if they were all drugged or poisoned and then murdered. It could be some sort of nerve agent. When it kicked in, they just dropped. Whatever it was wasn’t airborne or we’d all be goners ourselves by now. Rigor’s still there, so I’d put time of death at least twenty-four hours ago. That would fit with bad takeout. One of the techs is collecting the frogs, but I’m pretty sure they were all dead before they were dumped around the house. You can smell the formaldehyde. Your mail’s in the living room.”

  Trevor walked into the room on the right and stopped. One girl sat in a lounger, a blood-covered book open in her lap, her head tilted back, the slash on her neck stretched open. The words on the wall filled him with anger.

  So, Agent Clark, you’ve called my bluff. Return what’s mine or more parents will cry.

  A mare doesn’t need an education. A whip and a firm hand can set her on the right path. You have five days.

  H

  “Son of a bitch,” Tom said, standing beside him. “Not much of a window. If this happened yesterday, we have until what? Thursday? The press is going to have a field day.”

  “I assume you know who the hell did this?” Lieutenant McNamara asked. “He seems to know you.”

  “I do,” Trevor answered. “It’s the same bastard we’ve been hunting for close to two years, and he’s targeting women again.”

  “Not the Harvester,” McNamara said, his confusion written on his face. “I thought that was Pierce, the guy you brought down in the raid.”

  “Then you thought wrong.” Tom turned away from the girl on the chair. “Pierce only worked for the bastard who ordered this, and someone else has picked up the slack.”

  Trevor moved closer to the wall. The words were written in blood, no doubt this girl’s blood. His stomach churned. It took a coldhearted psychopath to dip his fingers in someone’s neck as if it were some damn inkwell.

  How much longer could Trevor do this work without damaging his own soul even more than he’d done twenty-some years ago? Maybe suffering this kind of hell, unable to stop a monster, was some form of purgatory. He returned to the hallway, where Amos was directing the men carrying the body bags.

  “How many were responsible for this?” Trevor asked.

  “I’d say two or three—wounds aren’t all the same,” he answered, “but one of them left you a gift.” He indicated the military knife on the floor next to the body. “Do you see that nick on the blade? I’ll bet it’ll match the wounds on Eloise Colchester, Lucy Green, and the Williamsons, maybe even Tina Jackson, four of our original victims from the Harvester. At least I’ll be able to close those files. Five will get you ten this is Pierce’s knife, and I’ll find DNA on it to prove it.”

  “So, why would the son of a bitch leave it? We know Pierce didn’t do this.”

  “To honor his predecessor? Maybe this sick bastard aspires to be just like him.”

  “Terrific, just what I need. A Pierce wannabe.”

  “We’ve managed to identify all of them, Doc,” McNamara said, coming back into the hallway. “The tenth one was from down the street—a classmate. How long before family members can come to the morgue for formal identification?”

  “Give me until midmorning to get them cleaned up. No parents should see their daughters like this. It doesn’t look as if any of them were sexually assaulted, so that may be some comfort. And, out cold as I’m sure they were, they never felt a thing. Compared to Pierce’s crimes, these were far less violent and vicious even if it doesn’t look that way. Have the techs go over this place with a fine-tooth comb. With this much blood, there’s no way whoever did this got out without leaving evidence behind this time.”

  The ME shook his head, and Trevor noticed how much older he suddenly looked. Maybe, like him, the job was taking its toll. He stepped away from the body to allow the techs to bag it.

  “We’ll be up the rest of the night with this,” Amos said grimly. “Good thing we had all those other bodies cremated. If not, we’d have had to double-park them, and a full morgue isn’t something I enjoy. I’ll be in touch.” He turned and followed the last body bag out
of the house, stopping in the doorway. “I’ll give you all the evidence I can, but you have to stop this once and for all. It can’t go on.” He turned and closed the door.

  “I’ll send someone to the morgue to help question the families,” Trevor said to McNamara, who was standing next to him. “I doubt they’ll have any useful information. I take it this will be a joint investigation?”

  “Probably. They may just kick it upstairs to you,” McNamara said.

  Trevor nodded. “I hope not. There’s another part to this case, and I don’t have enough manpower to deal with both, but whatever the brass wants.” As long as it isn’t my head on a damn platter. “God, when we thought the Prophet was after the task force, we knew who to protect. Now he’s declared war on every daughter in Boston.”

  “What’s all that crap about mares?” the detective asked.

  Tom put his hand around McNamara’s shoulder. “Come on outside with me, and we’ll talk to that witness before I cut him loose. I see the press has arrived. Before you talk to them, you need to learn a thing or two about the Prophet, the Harvester, and New Horizon.”

  “While you do that, I’ll call Australia,” Trevor said. “It’s time for the team to come home.”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. “We need all the help we can get.”

  • • •

  “How was the weekend, Dr. Swift?” Leon asked when Julie stepped out of her lab for the day. She’d finished up later than usual, because she hadn’t been able to concentrate.

  “It was good,” she lied, fighting to hide her unrest. “Thanks for telling me about the craft fair. Lenore loved it.”

  Removing her gear, she tossed it into the contaminated materials bin. She pulled out the scrunchie she’d used to keep her hair back. Arms out, she stood still while Leon did his thing. “How was your weekend?”