by Marci Bolden
Silence was like a weighted blanket, pressing down on all of them.
“Let’s go,” Jack said.
“Forgetting something, Detective?” Reinhart lifted his brows at Jack, who scoffed before taking his badge and gun from his hip.
“No,” Holly started.
Jack waved his hand to dismiss her protest. Setting his ID and protection on the captain’s desk, he stared at his boss. “You know, maybe if Meyer had listened to us instead of pissing on the case folders and rejecting any outside information, those women would still be alive.” He put his hand on Holly’s arm and steered her from her office.
Once outside, she frowned. “Jack?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted, but his tone implied otherwise. He was angry and maybe even a little worried about the outcome.
She opened her mouth, but he started moving faster, almost trotting out of the station. “This way,” she said when he headed for his car.
He turned and stared for a moment before following. Climbing into her passenger seat, he slammed the door. “One of these days, I’m going to drive,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Doubt it.” She backed out of the parking spot, and the silence closed in around her. “How long is your suspension?”
“Two weeks.”
She frowned and heaved a heavy sigh. “Desk duty?”
“Nope. Unpaid leave.”
Glancing at him, she said, “I can use some help at HEARTS. I’ll have Sam set you up on payroll.”
He looked at her and shook his head. “No thanks. Honestly, after all this, I need the break.”
“But unpaid, Jack?”
“Yeah. Unpaid.”
She was quiet for a few moments before softly saying, “I’m sorry. I tried to cover for you.”
He nodded. “And what did the captain have to say about that? Besides that you should be in jail?”
“That pretty much covered it.” She swallowed as they closed in on the park and the uneasiness in her stomach grew. “It’s them, isn’t it? Julia and Penelope.”
“Probably.”
“That means Susan is on her way to the hospital.”
“Probably.”
Reaching over, she grabbed his hand. Rare was her need for some kind of comfort, but the feeling rushed through her and she needed to connect with him. “We did everything we could to save them. Didn’t we?”
Lifting her hand to his mouth, he kissed it.
But he didn’t say a word.
12
Jack’s stomach twisted as he climbed out of Holly’s car and looked at the area surrounded by yellow tape. The ME was just getting supplies out of his van when he looked over at them through thick-framed glasses. Holly trotted up to him, and Jack followed.
“Jack, this is Dr. Joshua Simmons.”
Jack held out his hand, and Joshua paused in pulling up a white full-body suit. He shook Jack’s hand briefly and then zipped himself into the protective clothing. Holly had said this guy was Eva’s ex-boyfriend, and Jack couldn’t imagine two people better suited for each other. Eva’s midthirties, not-quite-out-of-the-hipster-stage look matched the coroner’s perfectly. Though he was wearing a jumper, his stylish glasses and shaggy hair made Jack imagine him standing in skinny cords, a button-down plaid shirt, and an oversized grandfather sweater while sipping an organic decaf soymilk latte with a shot of hazelnut.
“Do you know what happened?”
“Kids hiking through a wooded area of the park tripped—literally—over what turned out to be a few shallow graves.”
“Do you know anything about the woman who survived?” Holly asked. “She was here?”
Joshua frowned but didn’t stop gathering the equipment he needed. “I haven’t made it to the scene yet, but according to the call, he buried them alive. All of them. The kids heard her screaming and realized there was a survivor. They were still trying to dig her up when the PD arrived.” He finally stopped moving and looked at Holly. “I’ll know more by morning. Bring doughnuts—the kind with maple icing and bacon crumbles on top—”
“I know,” she said, sounding irritated.
Joshua wasn’t deterred by her attitude. “You can bring me coffee, too. You know what I like.”
“I can’t wait until morning.”
“I’m sorry, Hol, but you’ll have to. Two bodies? I’m probably going to be here all night.” He nodded a brief farewell to Jack and then headed toward the bright yellow tape blocking any onlookers from getting too close to the scene.
“Come on,” Jack whispered, reaching for Holly’s hand.
She pulled out of his reach and shook her head as she watched Josh walking away. “I’m staying.”
“Why?”
She looked at him as if the answer to that was so damned obvious. “Julia is my responsibility, Jack. I may not have saved her, but I will not walk away from her until this is done. I will not leave here until she does.”
He started to argue—logically there was nothing they could do—but then he realized this wasn’t logic. This was duty. A duty instilled in her in the Army. And a guilt instilled by sitting just a few feet away from her mother while she died. Accepting that she wasn’t going to budge, he decided he wasn’t either. How could he possibly leave her here all alone to roll the case over and over in her mind until she figured out how to blame herself? No. He would be right there, discounting every fault she tried to find in herself. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “We’ll stay.”
She returned her focus to the lights shining in the woods. “What did I miss?”
Yup. There it was. He almost laughed at how predictable she was in taking the blame. But nothing about this was amusing. Not the murdered women. Not Holly’s deep-rooted need to blame herself. Not his inability to help her see that she really had done everything she could. “Stop,” he said anyway. “Stop blaming yourself.”
“Who else am I going to blame?”
“The lunatic who just buried three women alive. Let’s start with him.” His attention shifted from Holly’s tightly drawn lips to the silhouette of a figure leaving the crime scene and headed their way. He recognized Meyer even though he couldn’t make out his features. The man’s cocky gait was unmistakable. “Meyer!”
Jack stepped around Holly and met the detective halfway across the parking lot. Holly was right beside him when he stopped to get an update. Jack wasn’t expecting to get any information, but he had to ask. Before he spoke, though, he reminded himself to check the innate need to give this dickhead attitude and to be humble. “Can you tell us what you have?”
Meyer shifted as he looked around the gathering crowd. Dark had long since fallen, but that didn’t stop people’s natural instinct to want to see whatever they could. The lighting—yellow fluorescent in the parking lot and bright white at the scene—mixed to give Meyer’s naturally tan skin a green hue. Or maybe that was the distress of what he’d just witnessed.
“They were buried alive.” His voice was strained and his shadowed eyes looked haunted. Yes, the green hue was a physical reaction to the crime scene, not the magic of bad lighting. “All of them. In what looked like a handmade coffin. The ME said they would have slowly suffocated to death.”
“How do you know they were alive?” Holly asked.
Meyer took a long breath and looked around again. He swallowed so hard that his Adam’s apple lurched in time with a gulping sound. “There were scratch marks and blood on the coffin lid. All the women’s hands were cut up and nails torn from trying to claw their way out.”
Jack swallowed hard, too, as the mental image filled his mind. Shit.
“From the looks of the coffin, he’s reusing the same one. He must dig them up after they’re dead to put his next victim in.”
Jack flinched at the thought, but he had to say what he was thinking. It could give Meyer insight into the criminal that he hadn’t considered. “Think he dug up the coffin in front of them to let them know what was coming? A kind of p
sychological torture?”
Meyer puffed his cheeks out as he exhaled and squeezed his eyes tight as if that could somehow clear his mind. “Probably. A little mind-fuck before forcing them into their own grave. Sick bastard. We’ll know more after we question Susan Adams.”
“So it is Susan?” Holly asked, just above a whisper.
Meyer nodded. “She’s pretty shaken, but she’ll be okay. Physically, anyway.”
Holly lowered her face, and Jack guessed she was once again blaming herself for what the woman had been through. Even if she would have allowed him to, Jack didn’t try to comfort her in front of Meyer. Not because he didn’t want to but because she wouldn’t have appreciated the show of affection in front of another officer of the law. Jack knew her enough to know she’d fear that was a weakness in Meyer’s eyes or assume Jack was letting her in on the case because he was screwing her. Knowing Meyer, he probably would.
Instead, Jack kept his focus on the case, putting the need to console Holly on the back burner for now. He did his best not to picture Penelope screaming for help as she clawed at the coffin, using up what little oxygen she had left, but he knew once he saw pictures from the scene, he’d have those images permanently burned into his memory. “So we definitely have a serial killer.”
“We definitely have a serial killer,” Meyer quietly agreed.
Holly finally spoke. “Can you confirm if it is Julia Fredrickson and Penelope Nelson?”
“We won’t know for certain until their families identify their bodies.”
She tilted her head at him, giving him that bullshit look she had perfected, and he exhaled loudly.
He put his hands on his hips and seemed to debate for a few more seconds before nodding. “It’s definitely Nelson. The second victim is in stages of advanced decomposition. There’s no way to visually identify her body.”
“May I?” she asked. “It will help us both if you know for certain now instead of sometime tomorrow.”
“She’s too far gone,” Meyer insisted.
Holly stared at him until he caved and led them under the tape and into the woods. Though it wasn’t necessary, he warned Holly and Jack to watch their step. Then reminded them anything they saw was confidential and if he saw them on the news, he’d toss their asses in jail for interfering with his case.
Again.
“This is a murder case now,” Holly said. “Trust me. I’m not going to do anything to stop you from nailing this asshole.”
They didn’t have to hike far before finding a crew of technicians combing the area. Yellow flags marked what little evidence there seemed to be.
Just like Meyer had said, the coffin looked to be homemade, likely from plywood and lumber that could be found at any hardware store. Nothing about the box was fancy, but it was certainly sturdy enough to keep someone trapped inside. A young man with a jacket that identified him as a crime-scene investigator was using a pair of tweezers to pull something out of the wood. When he succeeded and held it up, Jack’s stomach rolled at the realization that it was a fingernail.
They wouldn’t know whom it belonged to until DNA could confirm, but Jack was certain it was one of the three women he and Holly had been on the search for.
Meyer stopped at the grave where Joshua was examining Penelope Nelson but didn’t say a word. In an unusual show of humanity, the detective seemed at a loss for words. Jack didn’t blame him. This was one of the most horrific things he’d seen in all his years on the force.
He glanced at Holly to see her reaction. Stone-faced. But he could practically hear the gears in her mind racing. She was seeing the scene, memorizing every detail, calculating what had happened to her client’s wife. He also hoped she was finally understanding that she couldn’t have possibly prevented Julia from dying. She’d been dead long before Holly had ever heard her name.
Josh glanced up but didn’t acknowledge the three of them standing there before returning his attention to the woman in the ground.
Jack stared at the body, remembering how Penelope had always smiled and waved when she saw him stopping by to visit his mother. She had been a good friend to his mom, kind and generous and never treating her differently because of her religion or thick accent.
His mother was going to be devastated when he told her. His mother rarely cried, but he imagined he’d be holding her for some time to ease her tears when she found out Penelope was gone. He’d just have to do his best to keep the details to a minimum and hoped the news stations would do the same.
Joshua used a gloved hand and lifted Penelope’s wrist, turning her palm up and examining her bloodied and bruised hands. She’d fought like hell to get out of that box.
“You okay?” Holly asked.
Jack nodded and put his hand to the small of her back. He’d been restrained earlier, but he needed to touch her now. Not only for his peace of mind but to remind her that he was right there, absorbing all this horror with her. “You?”
She drew a breath but didn’t answer.
“I want to warn you again,” Meyer said. “This next body…. It’s bad.”
Following Meyer to the second grave, she looked down, standing as still as the soldier she probably was calling upon to keep her from showing the emotion Jack didn’t doubt was boiling inside her.
As Meyer warned, the body exhibited advanced decay. Though the coffin had been open since the discovery of the bodies, a sickening sweet smell hung in the air. The smell—unmistakable to those who’d experienced it—of human decomposition.
Jack had no doubt that the body before them belonged to Julia Fredrickson. Even though her sun-kissed skin was now discolored and her sockets were nearly empty, making it impossible to determine what color her eyes once were. Her once beautiful face was now a thinly veiled skull. What struck Jack immediately was the big diamond ring on her left ring finger. That ring had been in almost every photo of Julia Fredrickson that Jack had studied.
The only way to positively identify this body would be dental records or DNA, but Jack felt in his gut this was Julia. He glanced at Holly and knew she felt the same.
Holly closed her eyes. She was likely blaming herself for the condition of the woman lying in a shallow grave before them.
“I’m pretty sure that’s her,” Holly said. “That’s Julia Fredrickson.”
“You can’t know that,” Meyer asked.
“I’ve been staring at her picture for weeks. That’s her.”
“You have the contact information for the detective working her case?”
She opened her phone and read off the name and number while Meyer jotted it down in his little notepad.
He started to leave but stopped. “Go home, Ms. Austin. The detective will take care of notifying her family.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You’ve done everything you can do here.” He hesitated in walking away. “Look, I don’t appreciate you sticking your nose in my case, but I don’t appreciate shit like this, either.” He gestured to the graves behind him. “You did good.”
Holly frowned. “Yeah, well. I should have done better.”
Jack caught Meyer’s gaze when Holly walked away. “Did you catch Pearson yet?”
“Yeah. He’s downtown. I’m going to go question him when I’m done here.”
“Can I—”
“Don’t push it,” Meyer warned. “Besides, you’re on leave, remember?”
Jack scowled and straightened his back. Meyer was undoubtedly loving that he’d been the one to put that ball into motion. “Yeah, I remember.”
Without another word, Jack left the scene, hoping he could somehow get the images out of his head as much as he was hoping he could convince Holly to put the blame where it belonged. On the sick fuck who had kidnapped and buried Julia alive.
The drive from the crime scene back to the police department, where Jack’s car was still parked, was heavy with silence as Holly and Jack tried to process the reality of how their cases had ended. He had tried to ease
her guilt, and she appreciated that, but it wasn’t his place to try to prove to her that she couldn’t have prevented this. She knew who was to blame.
Vance Pearson.
She understood Julia had been dead for weeks, probably before Eric had even hired her.
She understood all the things Jack kept telling her. But that didn’t ease the knot in her stomach or lighten the cloud hanging over her heart.
“I don’t know what to say to my mother,” he said, breaking the heavy silence.
Holly squeezed the steering wheel. “Just…make sure she knows not to say something to Mr. Nelson until the police have notified him.”
He nodded and looked out the passenger window.
“Eric Fredrickson is going to be devastated,” she whispered.
“At least he’ll have closure.”
“I guess.”
Parking next to his car, she faced him, finally seeing him instead of the scene that kept playing out in her mind. He looked as exhausted as she felt. His hair, though short, was disheveled. He tended to run his hand over his head when he was frustrated. He’d been frustrated a lot since those bodies had been discovered.
“They never had a chance, did they?” she asked.
“No, they didn’t. Listen, Holly, Julia Fredrickson has been dead for weeks—probably since the day he took her. You aren’t to blame for this. Do you hear me? She was dead before you even got this case.”
“Stop, Jack. Please. I know. I hear you. I do. But…”
“But you’re still going to let this eat at you.”
“I’ve got a lot to process.”
Leaning across the console, he rested his palm against her cheek and gave her a soft, lingering kiss. “I have to go see my mother before she hears this on the news.”
Holly squeezed his fingers in hers and pulled his hand from her face. “Give her my condolences.”
“I will.” He turned and leaned close to her. “Susan Adams is alive. Let’s hold on to that.”
She nodded as he climbed out of her car and shut the door behind him. She waited until he was in his car before pulling away.
