Spider's Web

by Mike Omer

  “Hey,” he said. She didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned over him, lifting her leg over, straddling him. He could hear her breaths, short and fast, as she bent forward. Her lips brushed against his and opened slightly. He lifted his head a bit, his hands still at his sides, pressing his mouth against hers. She tasted fresh; her tongue darted forward just a bit to meet his. She bit his lower lip, and he realized he was holding his breath.

  His hand grabbed the back of her neck, pulling her closer, suddenly craving the taste of her mouth, the touch of her tongue. His other hand caressed her back over the shirt, fingers light against her spine, the shirt silky and smooth. As he reached her lower back he realized she wore nothing except for the shirt, that she was sitting on him naked, and it drove him wild. Both his hands grabbed her ass, pulling her forward; her arm crept back, her fingers sneaking into his underwear.

  Later, as she slept by his side, her hair tickling his ear, he felt completely calm for the first time in days. After a few minutes, he was asleep as well.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “This is the one.” Jonas Roza, the manager of Roza Storage Solutions, stood in front of a blue metal door. It was one of a dozen metal doors in that row, and looked just like the others, but Mitchell didn’t doubt Jonas’s ability to distinguish one storage compartment from the other.

  “Can you unlock it, please?” he asked.

  The manager nodded, and bent to unlock the door. As he fiddled with the stubborn lock, Mitchell glanced at Zoe, who seemed fascinated by Jonas’s efforts. Or maybe she just didn’t want to meet Mitchell’s eyes.

  She hadn’t been in the spare bed when he woke up, though he wasn’t sure when she had left it. He’d slept deeply, and his phone had beeped for thirty seconds before it managed to penetrate his dreams and wake him up. Zoe had come out of her bedroom a few minutes later, already dressed, and asked him pleasantly how his sleep was. All morning, she’d acted as if the night before hadn’t happened, talking with him about the case, and the best way to tackle their leads.

  Mitchell followed suit, though he wanted to say something about it. But what? “You remember the sex we had last night?” Or maybe, “Hey, great sexing last night. Maybe we should have more sex in the near future.” Any sentence he came up with sounded like something Austin Powers’ slower brother would say.

  Perhaps Zoe’s attitude of leaving the night to linger only in their memories was better.

  “There you go,” Jonas said as he rolled the door up. “Knock yourself out. Call me once you’re done.” He turned and left, leaving them alone with Meredith’s storage container.

  It would have been nice if the storage contained only Wanda’s things, preferably in boxes labeled For serial killer clues, start here. This side up. But instead the storage container was packed with what could only be called junk. Meredith was a hoarder. There were stacks of magazines, a rusty bike, a bag full of glass bottles, old fabrics, a broken chair, a tent… and that was just what Mitchell could reach. It got worse further back. There was an odd smell in the air, as if Meredith had decided at one point to store food in this container, and then forgotten about it.

  They began pulling things out, searching for the boxes. They decided to create a small tunnel in the junk, cutting toward the back, after noticing that the far wall of the container was lined with boxes. After a few minutes, Zoe began to sneeze and cough.

  “Dust allergy,” she explained.

  “You should stay back,” Mitchell said. “I’ll do this.”

  She shook her head, shut her mouth tight, and kept pulling bags and items out. But she got worse, and eventually she just sounded like a sneezing beat box. Finally, she walked out and sat on an old mini fridge, a look of frustration on her face. Her nose was as red as a tomato, her eyes were watering, and she coughed constantly.

  It took Mitchell two hours, but eventually he located four boxes labeled Wanda. He prayed to the saint of storage containers that there weren’t any more in there. He pulled the boxes out, and he and Zoe opened them and started to sift through their contents.

  It was anyone’s guess what Meredith’s strategy had been when she decided what should go into the boxes. There were several books, as well as some clothes. In one of the boxes they found a bunch of CDs, mostly Johnny Cash.

  Two boxes brimmed with papers, and those were much slower to sift through. Diplomas—both Wanda’s and Jovan’s—a bunch of bills, several printed medical articles, in two of which Wanda Stokes was mentioned as a contributor, some medical magazines… stuff and stuff and more stuff. Just random papery noise.

  And then, stacked between an insurance policy and a thick pile of receipts, Zoe located an envelope that contained some Polaroid pictures.

  They looked very old; the color was beginning to fade. One was of a small grove, the trees sparse. A second picture was of the same grove, further back. The third was the same. Six pictures of the same grove. They were not good photographs by any standard; some of them were a bit fuzzy, as if the camera hadn’t been focused properly.

  Zoe was about to put the pictures aside, when Mitchell grabbed her hand. It was the first time he had touched her that day, and for a moment he felt her tense, her breathing becoming rapid. Then she pulled her hand away.

  “That grove,” he said, ignoring the angry frown on her face. “It’s in Buttermere Park.”

  “Where’s that?” she asked.

  “It’s where Kendele Byers’s body was found,” he said.

  It was a relatively pleasant day, and Buttermere Park was full of people. There were several joggers as well, despite the fact that a jogger had lost her life in this very park only a few months before. They jogged past Mitchell and Zoe, who walked briskly toward the grove. Mitchell had a dark duffel bag on his shoulder. It contained two shovels and a bottle of water.

  They didn’t really expect to find anything, but they felt they were following the best lead they had. Wanda’s lover, it turned out, had moved to Texas. He spoke with Mitchell briskly on the phone, saying repeatedly that he knew nothing, claiming he had never known a woman named Wanda Stokes. A quick check found that he had been married at the time of the supposed affair, so his denial was easily explained. If needed, they would dig deeper into it, but for now they had a grove to investigate.

  Kendele’s burial site had been filled in, though there was a small memorial stone with several bouquets of wilted flowers and a framed picture of Kendele. Mitchell wondered where it had all come from, as Kendele hardly knew anyone in Glenmore Park. Sometimes people were just attracted to sadness. He could relate. He was relieved that none of her customers seemed to have left anything.

  The pictures in the envelope were of a deeper part of the grove, though it was hard to determine where, exactly. Mitchell and Zoe had hoped they’d locate the exact place by walking around, comparing the trees in the pictures to the ones around them. Of course, they hadn’t accounted for the fact that trees tended to change with time. They had walked around for about forty-five minutes, seeing nothing similar, when Mitchell noticed something.

  Most of the ground in the grove was carpeted with dead leaves, though there were occasional clumps of yellow flowers here and there. But at one spot, the trees were sparser, and numerous flowers grew there.

  “That’s weird,” he said.

  “What?” Zoe asked.

  “Those flowers,” he said. “I didn’t see them anywhere else in the grove, did you?”

  Zoe shrugged. “No, I don’t think so, but this point is sunnier. Perhaps that’s why they grew here.”

  “But where did they come from? They didn’t just sprout out of nothing.”

  “The wind carried their seeds or something,” Zoe said. “I don’t know, I’m not a botanist.”

  Mitchell held the photographs in his hand, looking at them then at his surroundings. He walked slowly, circling the patch of yellow flowers. Suddenly one of the pictures clicked. He would never have noticed the similarity if he hadn’t been actively loo
king for it, but it was the same place, beyond any doubt.

  “This is the place,” he said. He showed her the image. Zoe looked at it, and glanced around.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  “Do you think that Jovan planted the flowers here?” Mitchell asked.

  “Fuck if I know,” she said, and shrugged.

  “If he did, and this is what we think it is, you were wrong,” Mitchell said. “Gwen’s murder was the important one in Jovan’s life.”

  “Even I can be wrong occasionally, Mitchell.”

  One of the pictures focused on the ground. After studying the picture and the surrounding ground for several minutes, Mitchell pointed at one of the thickest patches of flowers. “This is it,” he said.

  They began to dig. It was just a random theory, of course, assuming the pictures marked a grave site. But it felt right.

  The digging turned out to be a lot harder than Mitchell had thought it would be. He began to suspect that all the roots in the area had heard there was about to be a party in the grove. They invited all their rock friends, and converged in that very spot. He grew tired of sticking the shovel in the ground and hearing the noisy clang of a rock being struck. He also came to understand that when the shopkeeper had tried to convince them to buy some gardening gloves, he wasn’t just trying to make a quick buck off of stupid city people. He’d been trying to prevent the blisters that now began to show up on Mitchell’s palms.

  “I once thought…” he said, breathing hard, “that gardening must be a very relaxing job.”

  “Why…” Zoe said, out of breath herself, “would you think that?”

  “I don’t know, really,” he said. “Because they don’t need to fill out paperwork, I guess. And handle criminals.”

  “Well,” Zoe said, sticking her shovel in the ground and standing up, “if this is similar to gardening, I don’t think I’m interested.”

  “Yeah,” Mitchell nodded, his teeth jarring as he hit another rock. “Damn it!” he dropped the shovel and stretched.

  “My back is killing me,” he said.

  Zoe simply nodded, looking tired. He looked at her. Her face was sweaty, a strand of hair matted on her forehead. A bead of sweat crept down her neck, where Mitchell had kissed her the night before. He wondered if he should do it again.

  “I don’t think there’s anything here,” Zoe said. “I think we should talk to the loverboy again, threaten to tell his wife if he doesn’t cooperate.”

  “Just a bit more,” Mitchell said. “I think I got to a spot where there aren’t any roots.”

  “You said that three times already,” Zoe said.

  “This time it’s true,” he said. He picked up the shovel and began digging again. “So, last night…”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was nice.” He found it easier to talk while focused on the ground.

  “Yes, it was,” Zoe said.

  “Maybe we could do it again.”

  “I don’t think that’ll happen,” Zoe said.

  “Oh.”

  “No offense. But I’m working on some issues.”

  “What issues?”

  “Personal issues.”

  “Okay,” he said. His shovel hit a root again. He tried to chop it, but it didn’t break. He bent, and uncovered the root with his fingers. Except it wasn’t a root at all. “This looks like a bone,” he said, uncovering it a bit more. It was smooth and gray.

  Zoe joined him in the hole, helping him dig around the smooth object. It definitely looked like a bone, though he wasn’t sure it was human. Finally they managed to remove enough dirt to be sure: it was definitely a bone.

  Now they dug very carefully, searching. They uncovered two more bones.

  “Do you think it’s… her?” Zoe asked, her face pale.

  “I think so,” Mitchell nodded, “But we shouldn’t touch anything else.” He crawled out of the pit and called Captain Bailey. “Hey, Captain,” he said when Bailey answered.

  “Hey, Mitchell, how’s the vacation?” Bailey asked

  “It’s… good. I think I found the remains of Gwen Berry.”

  There was a moment of silence. “I take it that you didn’t spend your vacation on the beach,” Captain Bailey finally said.

  “Not exactly, sir.”

  “Where are you, Mitchell, and what are you talking about?”

  “I’m in Buttermere Park, sir. Zoe Bentley and I followed some leads, and they led us to a place where someone buried what looks like a human skeleton.”

  “And are you sure it’s Gwen Berry?”

  “Reasonably sure, sir. Jovan Stokes had some pictures of this location in his possession. And it looks like he planted dozens of those flowers… what’s their name? Uh…”

  “California poppies,” Zoe said.

  “Right. California poppies. They’re all over the…” His voice trailed away.

  “Mitchell? Are you there?” Captain Bailey asked. But he sounded so very distant.

  Tanessa’s words flashed in his mind. If you send a bouquet made entirely of California poppies it just looks boring!

  He pictured her room in his mind, the last time he was there. Dozens of bouquets, colorful splashes of different colors. And one big bouquet that consisted only of yellow California poppies.

  He turned to Zoe. “Tanessa had a bouquet of those flowers sent to her,” he said.

  “What? When?” Zoe looked confused.

  “I was in her home a few days ago. Someone sent her these flowers. Just these flowers.”

  Zoe considered this, her eyes worried. “Jovan sends messages to all his victims,” she finally said.

  “Could this be a message?” Mitchell asked urgently.

  Hesitantly, she nodded. Mitchell realized he was still holding his phone, Captain Bailey’s voice buzzing on the other end. He hung up and called Tanessa’s number.

  There was no answer.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mitchell knew something was very wrong the moment he got up to the floor of Tanessa’s apartment. The air was rich with the familiar and foreboding aroma of blood. His eyes caught a small brown smear on the floor next to Tanessa’s door. He pulled his Glock from its holster and approached the door carefully. He heard Zoe behind him, finally catching up, breathing hard. He turned around, put his finger on his lips. Then he carefully twisted the door handle.

  It opened, and he immediately saw the feet. He pushed the door wide open, exposing the body of Officer Riley Poe lying on the floor in a brown pool of dried blood, the chair Riley had sat on outside Tanessa’s door tossed carelessly by his side. There was a lot to process. Was Riley alive or dead? When had this happened? How had this happened? Questions popped in Mitchell’s mind and disappeared instantly. Nothing mattered right now. Nothing but the burning, terrible question: Where was Tanessa, and was she still alive? He heard a swift intake of breath as Zoe saw the cop, and could only hope she would realize that Jovan might still be there, that they had to keep quiet until they knew exactly what was going on.

  He stepped carefully around the dried blood, his gun barrel leading the way. He could still smell the scent of blood, but it intermingled with the smells of the various flowers in the room. He glanced at the bouquets. The bouquet of California poppies was missing from the table it had stood on. Maybe it had simply rotted away, but Mitchell doubted it.

  One by one he went through the rooms, making sure each was clear before moving to the next. If Zoe had been his real partner, he would have been able to count on her to watch his back. As things stood, he looked over his shoulder constantly to make sure no one was creeping up on him. Eventually he got to the bedroom, whose door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open with the Glock’s barrel. The room was in disarray, the pillows and sheets crumpled on the floor. The bed itself was covered with rotting California poppies. Had Jovan brought them with him, or had he taken them from the living room? Again, the question blinked into his mind and disappeared instantly, his brain hardly registering
its existence. He had trouble concentrating; he felt as if hundreds of bees were humming inside his skull.

  He heard someone running behind him, and turned around, his gun aimed at the man’s chest. It was Jacob. Mitchell lowered the gun.

  “She’s gone, Jacob,” he said, his throat clenching. “Jovan took my sister.”

  Jovan Stokes felt as if he was on fire. He literally shivered with excitement as he paced around the small warehouse. He circled the room twenty, thirty, maybe even forty times, occasionally smiling or laughing to himself. Was it the thrill of the successful kidnapping? The feeling of victory as he took his victim despite her police protection? Or maybe it was because it was Tanessa Lonnie, whom he had tried to kill before and failed? Maybe that was the reason for the way his body was charged with energy?

  He didn’t know, but finally… finally he had managed to feel as he did that night, when he killed Gwen Berry.

  It had been January, and the city covered in snow. It was freezing; anyone who stayed outside for more than five minutes would feel his snot frost up, his eyelids crusting with small icy particles, the skin of his face burning from the cold. Was it any wonder Gwen Berry had been glad when Jovan stopped to offer her a ride home in his dad’s car as she walked down the street?

  She was happy he’d happened to notice her. It never occurred to her that he’d driven by because he knew she would be walking there. Because she always walked down that street on Tuesdays at five in the afternoon, straight after cheerleading practice. It also never occurred to her that Jovan might still be angry, because three months earlier he’d asked her out and she had turned him down.

  The streets were abandoned as he strangled her in his car. There was no one to see her struggling, her fingers clawing at his arms. No one there to hear her cough and choke. And finally, she stopped moving.