Eating Crow (The Birdman Series Book 1)

by Hayton, Lee

  When Victoria’s friends asked her in thinly cloaked accusations why she wanted to be a cop, the park was one of the few tangible things she could offer. The disgust and sadness that overtook her—seeing the pure things that had decorated her childhood with happy, crayon colors transformed in the space of a decade to fear and filth.

  Victoria forced herself to enter the toilet block—female first, then male. Forced herself because she already knew the number of bodies, dead and barely alive, routinely collected from there.

  The council didn’t have the funds to empty the rubbish bins or keep the sandpit clear of needles, but they could haul away the dead before they started to stink up the neighborhood. Even homeless people didn’t hang out in needle park. For the most part, they were mental, not crazy.

  The sky had been overcast, a storm rolling across the heavens. Although the clouds looked pretty, fluffy and white, inside terrifying winds blew them apart. The bright edge of the horizon was tipped with the deep hulking shadows of a lightning storm.

  It was those menacing shadows that tricked Victoria into thinking Shelly was still alive. Her sister hung from the top of the slide. The clouds reflected light onto her like energy, like movement.

  Victoria rushed to Shelly, frantically tearing at the stained wood with panicked hands. Splinters lodged deep in the nail beds of her fingers. Her own violent actions, driven by desperation and fear, caused Shelly’s body to sway. Victoria felt the motion and thought her sister was moving independently. Trying to fight.

  As panic quickly exhausted Victoria, turning her clumsy and weak, she fell from the wooden platform of the slide. Unable to tame her confusion, her overwhelming fear, Victoria had run from the park. Screaming. She’d run onto the road, eyes open by unseeing. A car swerved wildly to miss her, leaving long black tire marks.

  Victoria hadn’t realized the danger, hadn’t calculated the distance that could have meant the end of her life. She pounded on the driver’s side window. Only her white skin and young face signaling she was a girl in trouble—not a carjacker needing a fix.

  She’d shouted and pointed. Words had poured uselessly from her mouth in random order. It took an eternity of wasted time to convey her desperate message.

  The driver pulled his car to the side of the road, Victoria banging on the side the whole way. She’d been terrified he was driving off, leaving her alone. The park was empty. No one else was there to help. Her sister was dying. Dying.

  But he’d stayed with her, run after her. Overtook her inadequate shambling run to reach Shelly first. Victoria had strained and lifted Shelly’s body from below while the driver scrambled up the wooden steps to reach the fort at the top. He used a glinting penknife to cut through the rope holding her sister in its deathly noose.

  Shelly’s body had still been warm.

  Even though Victoria could see her sister’s lips were deep blue, she’d still pounded aggressively on Shelly’s chest. Exhaling short, panicked gasps into her sister’s indifferent mouth.

  The confused driver ran to look for a payphone to call for help. Victoria didn’t know where he’d found one. How he’d managed to reach out to the ambulance service that attended. When he left the park, she’d never seen him again.

  Apart from when his face was etched into her nightmares.

  The ambulance had arrived. Victoria couldn’t even begin to guess how many minutes or hours later. They loaded her sister into the back of the van, a devastating cargo, and drove them both to the hospital.

  She’d expected action. Drugs, heart paddles. Someone to crack her sister’s chest open to massage her sorely abused heart.

  At the time, Victoria hadn’t thought twice about the tacky friendship bracelet encircling her sister’s wrist. While her dad wept at the graveside, Victoria had stood apart in isolation. Empty eyes watching Shelly’s coffin be lowered into the ground.

  That awful bracelet had still clung like a loathsome barnacle to her dead wrist.

  Victoria cleared her throat, feeling the kiss of Shelly’s unresponsive lips beneath hers.

  “When the next body was found, I thought it was a coincidence.” Victoria found it harder and harder to talk. Every inch of her face felt like it was clogged with stiffening blood.

  “When they found the one after that, I went to my old Captain and told him about Shelly. He pulled her autopsy report but the bracelet wasn’t noted, and nobody wanted to exhume her. Any evidence would have been washed clean off her body. Nobody had thought they were dealing with a murder.”

  Her old Captain. Ian Smithson. Black as the night sky and twice as broad-shouldered as any human should be. When he’d retired, Haggerty had been assigned, but he’d never taken his place.

  Until the report was pulled, Victoria had blamed herself for her sister’s death. For when she found her and acted too slowly, not for the events that led up to it. Both Victoria and her father agreed the blame lay squarely in his court.

  She hated herself for being slow and weak during the seconds when it truly counted.

  On the ride in the ambulance, Victoria had realized that if she’d just climbed above Shelly and held her sister aloft under the armpits, she could’ve screamed for help until someone came. Her sister’s airway open and able to breathe the whole time.

  But the autopsy told her Shelly’s body was warm, not from life but from the sun. It had been a powerless inanimate object for hours before that. The sun had heated it up gently in the morning until the storm and Victoria arrived together.

  The breaths she’d pumped into her sister’s stiff lungs were not seconds, not minutes, but hours late.

  The choice she’d made to run for help wasn’t a choice between life and death. Just a choice as inconsequential as the brand of coffee she picked up at the supermarket.

  Victoria shuddered, then realized she was still staring out of the window and turned to look back at the class. The pupils sat still, rapt with open curiosity. Even the teens stacked up the back weren’t fidgeting or ribbing each other.

  “So, remember,” Edwards said, moving back to center stage. He didn’t clap his hands this time, or smile. “You can stay safe by staying at home or staying together. Don’t go anywhere by yourself, especially at night. Even when you’re going out with a group, make sure someone at home knows where you’re going and what time you’re coming home. Get your parents to put their credit card on your Uber app, or call them to pick you up. When it comes to a choice between being grounded and being at risk, make the safe choice.”

  The bell for a change of period rang, but the class remained where they were until Mrs. Sanderson stood up and told them to move along. As the pupils filed out of class, she turned to Victoria, her face strained and white.

  “I don’t think you should tell them that story,” she said. “These kids may look adult, but they’re young and impressionable.”

  “Then let’s hope I made an impression,” Victoria countered. She moved over to Edwards and nodded at the door.

  He looked like he was caught up in a dream, his movements languid, his gaze sitting in the middle distance between them.

  Victoria looked over her shoulder. “Better they’re traumatized and careful than pandered to and dead.”

  #

  As they left the high school, Victoria made the mistake of checking her phone. “And it’s back.”

  “What’s that?” Edwards turned to look back at her. She showed him a video on her phone—a YouTube link that Haggerty had provided. Thanks, Captain.

  Jackie Mancini was standing in front of a crowd of reporters making another statement to widespread glee.

  “My son was gunned down in the street by a careless officer who didn’t bother to ask whether she had the right man. This latest murder is further evidence that the police were wrong in their assessment and my son paid the price with his life.

  “I’m sad, not only for myself but for the parents of the last two murdered young women whose parents are grieving. Their bodies are in the mor
gue because the police got it wrong. I have new counsel, and we’re as determined as ever to see justice done.”

  “So you have to go through it all again?”

  Victoria put the phone away and rested her elbow on the door frame, the window fully rolled down. “Freddie Lawson said I wouldn’t have to. Of course, he also said that the whole case was going away, and he wasn’t spot on about that.”

  “Timing’s weird, isn’t it?” Edwards said.

  “For the case?”

  “For the murders to start back up.” He turned on the blinkers, then pulled into the station car park, finding a spot near the street. Victoria pulled her arm back sharply as he pressed the button to wind the window up.

  “She’s had this case on the books for the last six months. The judge approved her to pursue it four months ago, and just as she finally gets organized to do something about it, young girls start dropping dead again.”

  Victoria caught his train of thought but shook her head. “Come on. She’s in her late sixties.”

  “So are the nominees for president, and I’m not saying she’s going out on the streets and choking them herself.”

  Victoria rubbed the back of her neck. There was a twinge from where she’d pulled a muscle earlier, deepening into an ache. “You think she could be paying someone to kill them?”

  “All I think is it’s a coincidence. And we’re paid to investigate coincidences.”

  Victoria stared at the end of the video. “Play next” options tempting her with a baby sloth video. YouTube had met her before. Chatted her up and got her number.

  “You’ve got a point. I’ll run it past the Captain.”

  “No offense, but if you don’t mind, I’ll run it by Haggerty.” When Victoria glared at him, irritated, he offered her an amused grin. “If you do it, he’ll probably put it on the back burner until she’s dead of natural causes.”

  So Victoria wasn’t wrong in her assessment that Haggerty had it in for her. Edwards was brand new to the department, and he’d already sussed out the tension.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “And remember I’m free if you want to recommend someone to give you a hand. It’d be nice to chase up a lead for a change.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “You’re the kiss of death, you are,” Edwards complained, helping himself to a perch on Victoria’s desk. Right on top of the papers she’d been looking through.

  Victoria leaned to the side to see Haggerty withdrawing into his office. “Did it not go well, then?”

  “Went perfectly well until I mentioned your name, then it’s all ‘we don’t want to stretch out too thin’ and ‘many cases are derailed by setting off on the wrong tangent.’”

  “Shot you down, huh?”

  Edwards snorted. “Shot you down, love.”

  Victoria felt the eager worm of excitement he’d hooked with his theory, wriggle and die. “Well, at least we’ve still got the school lectures to look forward to.”

  “Nope. Had a complaint from that first teacher, what’s her name?” Edwards stared up at the empty ceiling. Then he clicked his fingers. “Ms. Sanderson. You’re not to be trusted with anything.”

  Her face flushed with shameful heat and Edwards gave her a poke in the shoulder.

  “You underestimate my charms, woman. I talked him round. Starting tomorrow, we’re following up the perfectly valid lead of Mrs. Mancini being the killer. Unlike you consultant types, the Captain still trusts my judgment.” He grinned. “What’s the bet we’ve got Jason’s mom on our hands?”

  When Victoria shrugged her shoulders, confused, he sighed. “I thought that was more your era. Friday the Thirteenth. Who’d you think killed all the teenagers down in the old boat shed? Jason’s dear old mom is who.”

  Victoria gave him a grin back. “You’re right. I’ve seriously neglected my horror movie research.”

  She hooked her purse out from under her chair. The light had faded from the sky long before, and there were no points to be had for staying late.

  As she stood to leave, she felt a pang of hesitation. “You don’t mind me coming? I don’t want to jeopardize anything for you.”

  “You wish you had that much influence,” Edwards shot back.

  He stood, and then looked Victoria in the eye, his face serious. “I don’t give a shit what Mrs. Sanderson thought about your talk today, that talk was courageous. Those kids listened to you, and I know that can’t have been easy for you.”

  Eyes shifting away, Edwards slapped her on the shoulder. “Got some life in the old girl, yet.”

  #

  “Cut me down. Quick. Cut me down.”

  Shelly had been dead so long that her long hair fell in twisted clumps from her head. Her skin was waxy, streaked with the blue and black of lividity. The energetic blue eyes that had so entranced a generation of high-school juniors were sunken. Their beauty obscured with opaque white cataracts. Victoria was crying at her loss at the same time as she tried desperately to cut her sister free.

  “Hurry, I can’t breathe.”

  Victoria tried even harder, but the penknife was blunt. The blade was powerless against the thick twists of rope. When she applied more pressure, it snapped. Leaving her with a corkscrew and a red plastic handle. She tried stabbing the tip of the corkscrew into the ropes but it only frayed the fibers, there wasn’t enough edge to sever them.

  “You always hated me.”

  The phrase was a favorite of her sister. Spoiled little brat, Victoria had spat out at her one day when her frustration was pushed to the limit. None of the vitriol true or lasting, but in the heat of the moment, she’d delivered it with a deep thrust, spot on target.

  “Let me hold you up,” Victoria pleaded. She tried to hook her hands under Shelly’s armpits, tried to hold her up so the rope could grow slack, but the rotted dress Shelly had been buried in, split with her frantic motions, and her sister slid out of her grasp, her neck jerking as the rope caught her full weight again.

  Her sister twisted and the rope spun, so Shelly was facing her. The pink tongue that had explored ever so many teenage mouths—if Shelly’s diary was to be believed—protruded from her mouth, blackened with clotted blood and a thin film of mold. Victoria sobbed in shock and rage, she reached for Shelly again but this time gravity worked in allegiance with the decomposition of tissue. Her sister’s neck first elongated then snapped. Shelly’s body fell to the ground, and her decapitated head rolled after it a moment later. Turning over and over until it came to rest with her eyes opened accusingly at Victoria.

  #

  Victoria jerked on the bed, her hand stretching out to push away an image that existed nowhere but inside her own tired brain. She gave a sob and sat up, wiping away the tears that had flowed from her eyes to pool in her ears while she slept.

  Already, her mind felt as though it were stuffed full of cotton wool. Even the shock value of her nightmare wasn’t enough to enliven her, the drag of sleep wanted to pull her back under.

  Instead of giving in, Victoria pushed aside the sheets that were sodden with her own dank sweat and sat on the side of the bed. A walk. Dr. Rueber had suggested that when she couldn’t sleep, she should go for a walk. Put aside the fact that she could sleep, she just couldn’t control her own damn dreams, and it sounded appealing.

  She grabbed a cardigan from the closet and pulled it over the t-shirt and old sweat pants she used as a nightdress. No one was going to see her, so there wasn’t any need to make herself presentable. Victoria padded on tiptoes across the lounge and kitchen to let herself out the back door.

  There was a waning full moon, a tint of yellow on its descending curve. Between that and the glow from nearby street lights, there was more than illumination to see her way around her small backyard.

  One circuit, two. Victoria began to feel self-conscious. Any neighbor peering over the fence would think she’d gone mad. After another round of her ragtaggle lawn, Victoria made a decision and walked down her driveway out to the pavement.
If somebody wanted to rape and murder her, statistics told her they’d be more likely to do it in daylight anyhow. Walking around the streets at night was probably safer, no matter what her years of behavioral conditioning shouted at her.

  As one concession to safety, Victoria headed for the University Campus. There were patrols that monitored the streets at periodic intervals. Usually to make sure the drunken students stumbled back to the right dorm so they could be up bright and early at noon for lectures. Again, there was more trouble on campus during the day when students were attending class so opportunistic burglars could scope out the empty houses and be in and out before anybody noticed something awry.

  Everything looked different in the night. The soft light of the moon expanded shadows and softened the cracks and crumbling brickwork that would be noticeable by day. Sounds weren’t quieter, but they were different. The sounds of animals venturing into the suburbs to snuffle out a meal. Crickets chirping a lonely solo, having missed their summer opportunity to mate. Cars were still around but in such depleted numbers that Victoria could trace their journeys by ear, hearing each twist, turn, and the slam of doors as they arrived home.

  She tensed up as she rounded a corner and saw a group of three men in quiet conversation near an alley. For a moment, she considered retreating, then smelled the sweet fragrance of marijuana on the night breeze and saw the ember of light as it was passed from hand to hand, toke to toke.

  “Night,” she called out softly, walking by.

  “Night,” they returned, one of them giving a low wolf-whistle and starting up a chain of giggles from his mates. Soon, they were out of earshot behind her.

  The muscles in her neck and back that had tensed throughout the long, relentless day, began to unravel, freeing each pinched nerve in turn. Her legs fell into a long-stepped rhythm, eating up the sidewalks without Victoria noticing how far she’d traveled until she yawned and thought about how nice it would be to jump back into bed. Then she observed that there was an hour between her and home and still, she kept going. Choosing streets now at an angle so that eventually she’d loop all the way around back home.