Luke chuckled. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, absolutely. You try to hex him into loving you. Or maybe it’s more academic than that. Maybe you want to ace your midterms. Or you’d like the other kids at school to stop picking on you and mocking your outfits. I suppose there are plenty of reasons. And then one day, a friend invites you to join her coven, and it’s such an alluring proposition. You’ll be part of an exclusive club. It’s a chance to control your own destiny. So you join the sisterhood and learn about rites and divination. You cast your first love spell, conjure up straight As, and before you know it, you’re hooked … and now you’re spending all of your hard-earned babysitting cash on spell kits and Ouija boards and malediction books. Eventually, though, you realize things haven’t been working out the way you’d hoped. And so, when you don’t get your way, when the cute boy still ignores you, and you get a B-minus on your midterm, and the mean girls are still picking on you, well then … things can take a darker turn.”
“How dark?” he asked.
“It all depends. When you find yourself kneeling before a handmade altar, chanting to invisible forces … that kind of wakes you up. At some point, most kids quit the craft and move on.”
“What was your wish?” he asked her.
“My wish?”
“You just said it always starts with an unfulfilled wish.”
“Oh.” The moment stretched until it became painful. She wanted to confess her deepest secret to him, to tell Luke—it was you. The boy she cast a love spell on. The reason she’d gotten into witchcraft in the first place. Simple, really. Nothing complicated about it. Natalie hesitated, then said the only thing that popped into her head. “I had a lot of pain and shame whirling around inside, and so it was tempting to do something radical. To not let the world overwhelm me.”
“I get that,” he said softly.
That night, she fell into a merciless slumber full of black voids and swirling emptiness. She woke up the following morning to the sound of her blaring alarm clock. She thumbed the OFF button. The darkness gradually washed away and an odd drumming sound grew louder. Rain on the roof.
She took a shower, got dressed, and drank her coffee inside the drafty, outdated kitchen. The jerry-rigged plumbing should’ve been upgraded ages ago. The farmer’s sink wouldn’t drain properly. The stove light was always on, because that corner of the kitchen was so dark. She’d spent her entire youth inside this house, imagining herself elsewhere. Now she couldn’t picture herself anywhere else. It was a paradox.
After graduating from the police academy, Natalie applied for the position of a rookie patrol officer with the BLPD. When she was twenty-five, her mother died of breast cancer. Deborah spent the last few weeks of her life in the hospital. In the will, Natalie’s parents had bequeathed everything to her, which wasn’t much—but it meant the world to her. An old house on two overgrown acres. A collection of boxy rooms. The windows were drafty as tissue paper. The fireplace was unusable. Large flies buzzed around the ceiling in the summertime. Maybe it was time to claim the place as her own, tear everything down and start over again.
Joey loved telling stories—or more accurately, he told one long, rambling story his entire life, constantly interrupted, a story without end and punctuated by the phrase, “But the point is…” All those years later, he never managed to come to the point.
Toward the end of his life, during one of Natalie’s last visits to the hospital, after Joey had coughed up half a lung, she asked him, “Dad? Were we enough?” He didn’t seem to understand the question, so she repeated it. “Were we enough for you? Mom, Willow, Grace, and me. Were we enough?” After a beat, he cracked a smile and said, “You were the whole fucking point.”
Now her phone buzzed.
“Natalie?” said a husky male voice. A little desperate sounding.
“Brandon?” she responded.
“Can you meet me in twenty minutes?”
“Where? Your lawyer’s office?”
“Fuck that Ivy League gorilla. Meet me at the old farm in Chippaway. Remember the place I showed you last year?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Thirty-six Crying Lane. Come alone.” He hung up.
23
Natalie sat inside her idling Honda Pilot, staring at the barn through the pouring rain. Last year, Brandon had lured her out to this fringe-of-nowhere place, this eighty-acre plot of ruination, to show her the one thing in the world that created a kind of magic inside his head.
She didn’t see it. The magic.
She kept her keys in the ignition and the headlights on. She stepped out of the vehicle, stamped her feet and shivered in the rain, her breath smoking before her. Thunder. Lightning. Rain pissed down on her head. With all the fancy equipment she’d remembered to stash inside her SUV, how could she have forgotten an umbrella? She grabbed a slicker out of the back and put it on.
The barn formed a monstrous face in the dark. The Honda’s headlights illuminated the tangled burdock lapping against the crumbling foundation. She glanced around at the various outbuildings and tumbledown sheds composing the abandoned farmstead. The village of Chippaway was twenty miles west of Burning Lake, two towns over in the back of beyond. Chippaway was a hardscrabble burg, appropriately named because it had been chipped down to nothing by the modern world. It was little more than erosion and rust now. Lots of boarded-up buildings. Lots of foreclosures. A synergy of misery and abandonment.
Brandon’s grandparents used to own this farm, but at some point they’d sold it off for pennies on the dollar. Now Brandon wanted to buy it back from its current owner, who’d left it to rot. Natalie sensed he might already be there, waiting for her. She shielded her eyes and searched the misty fields around the barn and the watercolor woods beyond. She studied the deserted road, then spotted his 1955 Porsche Speedster Replica zipping along Crying Lane—scarlet with a black top, a tremendous eye-catcher. Hard to miss. Because of the threats to his life from the Skinner clan, who’d been spreading false rumors that he’d punched Riley into a coma, Brandon should’ve ditched the Speedster for something less flashy, like a Japanese import, but he couldn’t let go of his toys that easily. They were inextricably woven into his rich kid identity. The Buckners had made their fortune harvesting timber, and Brandon and his father were always butting heads about his career choice. Being a police officer was simply beneath Kenneth Buckner, II.
Now the Porsche swung into the driveway, chirped to a halt, and Brandon got out. “Thanks for coming, Natalie,” he said moodily, heading toward the barn and motioning her inside. “Let’s talk in here.”
The interior of the old barn was musty and dank. She choked back the cloying smell of pickled hay and took a seat on a questionable wooden crate, while a wet-leaf chill clung to her skin.
In this confined space, Brandon said softly, “I swear to God, I didn’t touch that kid. Dominic is running around saying I acted like a thug, not a law officer, which is complete bullshit. You know I didn’t hurt him, right?”
“That’s what the internal investigation’s going to clear up,” she said evenly.
“It’s bad enough I had to lose my wife and baby, now I have to deal with this crap.”
“I’m sorry, Brandon.”
He looked bloated and puffy-eyed, as if he’d been up all night. His cheeks sagged, and the veins in his neck pulsed dully. His father, a vastly wealthy man, had hired the best criminal attorney available for his son’s defense. Frank Moorecraft, Esquire, was one tough son of a bitch—assertive, irascible, impatient. He had forked hair and dead eyes, and he looked like Satan, if Satan dressed in Brooks Brothers and owned a Cartier watch.
“I’ll admit it was dumb of me,” Brandon said, brushing his fingers through his hair, “to go chasing after him like that. But I was in shock. My wife was dead. Jesus Christ, it still doesn’t register.” He rubbed his nose and scowled. “My blood alcohol content was only slightly over the legal limit—and those tests have been proven wrong befo
re. And I’ve never received so much as a warning about my behavior, Natalie. I’ve never been suspended or disciplined. No verbal or written warnings. I have an outstanding record.”
“I know,” she said sympathetically.
“The minute Riley fled the scene, my training kicked in, and I followed standard procedure … I gave chase, but as I approached the suspect, he swung at me and started spouting gibberish. Then he collapsed.” He sighed and looked at her. “They say he might never come out of this.”
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”
“Do I have any regrets? Yes. I wish I could take it all back,” Brandon admitted, crossing his arms protectively. “But the truth is, I did nothing wrong. They’re looking for a scapegoat. Dominic’s attorney keeps hounding Internal Affairs, asking them to charge me with abusing the suspect’s civil rights. Believe that? My attorney says the hospital staff couldn’t find any evidence of assault or bodily injuries that weren’t caused by Riley’s own seizures or CPR performed in the ambulance. Hopefully the toxicology results will clear things up.”
“You’ve got yourself a great lawyer,” she said.
He rubbed his forehead worriedly. “My attorney tells me the union will stand by me, because that’s their assigned role.”
Rain pounded against the roof of the barn like thundering horse hooves.
“Where were you on Wednesday between four and six P.M.?” Natalie asked, and his face grew clouded with shock.
“The hell? Am I a suspect now?”
“You know how it is, Brandon. We have to eliminate all of those closest to the victim—spouses, lovers, relatives,” she told him. “What’s your alibi for Wednesday between four and six P.M.?”
He rocked gently back and forth. “My shift ended at four. I stopped by the gym after work. Then I headed for the Barkin’ Dawg at six.”
“So you were at the gym for two hours? Can that be verified?”
He studied his hands. “Well, not the entire time.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Christ,” he said, his mood toggling between frustration and anger. “I went for a drive after work, and then I headed for the gym, okay?”
“How long of a drive?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. About an hour.”
“An hour? Where’d you go?”
“I came up here. To the farm.”
“Did anyone else see you?”
“I don’t know,” he said defensively. “I’d been thinking about buying the place, you know? I figured we’d need more room for the kids.” His eyes glazed over. “I was hoping there’d be more children.…”
She nodded sympathetically. “No witnesses, though? You didn’t stop for gas?”
He stared at her without blinking. “No.”
“So you came up here. Looked around. Drove back. And went to the gym?”
He nodded. “Around five o’clock, I guess.”
“Okay. Now, listen.” She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to go there, but she had to. “You’ve indicated there were problems with your marriage, Brandon. Do you think it’s possible Daisy may have been having an affair?”
He looked about as stunned as she’d ever seen him. “What are you talking about?”
On the surface, Brandon and Daisy had led the perfect life. She was a popular teacher, and he had a prominent position in law enforcement. They were both involved in local charities, like the women’s shelter and the Special Olympics. They were exceptionally good-looking and well-to-do, a power couple in this town.
Brandon grew agitated. He stood up and started pacing back and forth across the sagging floorboards. “An affair? Hell, no.”
“But you told me the other day you two were having sexual issues.”
“I said my marriage wasn’t perfect, okay? I know I brag a lot, but I can’t help myself. My dad’s a jerk. I inherited his jerk genes. They’re hardwired into my DNA. Anyway, what kind of questions are these, Natalie?”
“Well, look,” she said, “we found something inside the house. Sonnets. Love sonnets to Daisy. Signed ‘Tristan.’ Would you know anything about that?”
He reacted as if he’d been stabbed in the chest. He drew his hand to his heart and muttered, “God.”
“I’m sorry, Brandon. But I’m trying to get to the bottom of things.”
He shook his head, bewildered.
“Because if you two were having marital problems, then maybe she was cheating on you?” Natalie suggested. “And if she was cheating on you, then maybe it was her lover who killed her? If you could give us a name, anything, any little detail … we can investigate further.”
He plopped down on a nearby hay bale and said, “If Riley didn’t do it, then I don’t have a fucking clue.”
“Think a minute. Take your time.”
Brandon cradled his head in his hands. Then he took one fierce, shuddering breath and lifted his head. “It’s true Daisy and I were having problems but, listen … we were committed to making it work for the baby’s sake. We were really looking forward to being parents. And it kills me that you think…”
“I’m sorry.”
He shifted his weight on the soggy hay bale. “We’ve been trying to get pregnant forever, it seems. Two miscarriages. She was so damn nervous about this one. She didn’t want to jinx it again.”
“Regarding the sonnets, though, do you have any suspicions?”
“No.”
“At the autopsy…”
“Christ.” He lowered his head into his hands again and groaned.
“I apologize, Brandon. But at the autopsy, we found scars on Daisy’s wrists. Old slash marks. Barry Fishbeck called them hesitation scars from an old suicide attempt.”
He nodded slowly and said, “I had a crush on her forever. But we fell in love for real our senior year of high school. We fooled around. She got pregnant. She had an abortion, but it messed with her head. She fell into a depression. At one point, she cut her wrists, but they were superficial … more like a cry for help.”
“Then what happened?”
“We put it behind us. We went away to college. Look,” he said, “we were both so young. It was a tough decision, but neither of us was ready to raise a baby. Are you kidding me? We went away to different colleges. How was that supposed to work? But then I think that over the years, Daisy came to regret her decision, because of the miscarriages…”
“So she thought the abortion may have made it more difficult to stay pregnant?”
Brandon scrubbed his head hard with his fingers. “You know what I think, Natalie? I think Riley Skinner had a thing for my wife. And I think she was trying to help him, but he took it the wrong way. Maybe he’s the one who wrote those sonnets? Maybe he’s Tristan?”
Natalie nodded. “That’s a possibility. But the handwriting doesn’t match.”
He gave an angry shake of his head. “There’s no way this baby isn’t mine. Daisy would never cheat on me. I loved her and she loved me. We were committed to this baby. God, I mean…” he said in a sinking voice. He looked at her. “Do you think she was cheating on me? Really, Natalie? Do you think it’s possible?”
“I don’t know.”
“But with who?”
Natalie shook her head.
“Fuck.”
She took out her phone and scrolled through images of Daisy’s messy desk. “Can you tell me something else, Brandon?” She handed him the phone. “Is there anything missing from Daisy’s desk?”
He stared at the phone screen for several minutes, swiping through the images of Daisy’s desktop and open drawers full of clutter. “Well, yeah … I don’t see her diary.”
“She kept a diary? What did it look like?”
“Leather-bound. Pink, with yellow daisies on the front—daisies for Daisy—and a little brass clasp. It was from her childhood. One of those vintage-looking things. She kept it in the top drawer. It had a tiny key for the lock.”
“I kept all my childhood diari
es,” Natalie said. “Just the one?”
Brandon nodded absently. “I think so. I’m not sure.”
“And she stashed it in her top desk drawer? You’re positive?” Natalie would have to search the house again, since they hadn’t found any diaries—no leather-bound pink diaries with yellow daisies on front. “Where did she keep the key?”
Brandon shrugged. “In her jewelry box, I guess. I’m not sure.”
“Did she let you read it? Her diary?” Natalie asked.
He studied her blankly. “No. Why would she?”
“I don’t know. Was there stuff written in there about you?”
“About me?” He looked as if he’d never considered the possibility.
“Do you have any idea what was in her diary?”
“No.”
“Are you sure, Brandon?”
“What are you implying?”
“Nothing. It’s just that … if she had a diary, I would’ve thought you might be curious to see what was in it. Right?”
“Natalie.” He drew a sharp breath, on the verge of losing it. “It wasn’t like that between us. I didn’t care. That was girl stuff. Besides, I trusted her.…” His voice faltered. He looked at her with tears in his eyes. He wiped his sweaty face with his hands, then straightened up and said, “Listen, I wasn’t supposed to meet you against the advice of my attorney … but I wanted to help with the investigation.”
“Help us how?”
“I have this snitch who knows everybody on the west side. He’s plugged into the drug culture—Jules, you know him?”
“No.”
“Anyway, he’s an expert in Wicca and has knowledge of occult activity in the area. He’s reliable, he’s credible. We’ve done a dozen drug busts together—Jules, Jacob, and me—and I trust the guy. He just might know where Riley was that day. Here’s his contact information.” Brandon opened his wallet and handed her a slip of paper. “Jules Pastor. You should ask him what Riley was up to during the TOD. He can at least steer you in the right direction.”
Trace of Evil Page 17
