Pieces of Ivy (10 page)

Vicki savored the penetrating sunshine on her face as they walked toward the smell of the diner.

“Out for another cigarette?” she asked as the sheriff stepped into the late-afternoon sun.

“I don’t smoke—it’s bad for you,” he said, lighting the Marlboro.

“Funny,” Vicki said, waving off the noxious fumes. “I’d have pegged you for a smoker—easy way to hit on young girls.”

He drew in a deep drag against her blatant insinuation, as he narrowed his eyes on hers and then released another offensive cloud. “Hitting on her, was I?”

“Yeah, hitting on her,” she confirmed with disgust as she winced against the sharp glint off his gold star. Vicki was fine with her double standards.

“Hitting on who?” the sheriff’s wife asked from behind them. “And get that thing outta your mouth,” she snapped.

He looked at Hank. “Funny, I usually say the opposite.” He ditched the cancer stick, replacing it with two sticks of gum.

“Hitting on who?” Rose repeated.

Vicki had no problem calling him out in front of his wife. She liked Rose Roscoe. If this got him in trouble, so be it—
Don’t do the crime
…

“Tasha,” he admitted, taking Vicki off guard.

“Leave that poor girl alone. There’s no way you’re gonna talk that pretty little gal into a threesome.”

Vicki’s jaw went slack.

“Besides, I’d be chasin’ her ass outta my bed before you could drop your socks and grab your cock.”

By the easy flow, this was a frequent conversation.

“I love it when you talk nasty.”

She ignored her husband and turned to Vicki. “If he’s hit you up, I apologize. If he hasn’t—he will.” She shot him a warning glare, and then scanned Vicki up and down to legitimize her point. “You’re gorgeous—and he’s an asshole.”

“Love you, too, precious.”

There was a tiny smile behind her extended middle finger.

Hank wore an amused smirk.

“Well,” the sheriff announced with a stretch and heavy swing of his arms, “this has been wonderful, folks—the highlight of my fuckin’ day—but if I can’t smoke, I’m gonna go fight some crime.” He leaned over and kissed the cheek his wife had already tilted at him.

“Don’t forget your tights,” she said.

He snatched a second kiss, from her lips this time. “See you at home, babe.”

“There goes a class act,” Rose offered as she watched her man strut toward his squad car, waving a smile at every passerby—all happily returned.

Vicki didn’t feel the need to edit herself around Rose. “How the hell is that man the sheriff?”

“He’s a bit of a prick,” Rose admitted. “And one might assume he must know where bodies are buried, who has a favorite hooker or which drug is too much of a habit—but I think it’s because he’s so adorable.”

Both agents knew she was kidding, but Vicki remained unimpressed.

“I don’t know what it is,” Rose continued. “But I can’t help but love the big lug. God knows why—must be the Helsinki syndrome.”

“You mean
Stockholm
,” Hank corrected but immediately knew that Mrs. Roscoe was making further light of the situation by playing dumb. Instead,
he
felt stupid.

“Yeah, whatever, smart guy. Point is”—she turned to Vicki—“he’s a better man than most think. He’s a better man than he lets on. It’s like he gets some twisted joy out of people hating his ass.” Rose looked Vicki over again. “
You’ll
probably wanna slap him on a daily basis—but if you ever get in trouble, that man will lay down his life for you.”

Hard as she tried, Vicki could only detect sincerity.

Rose smiled and took Vicki’s hand, giving it a gentle double pump. “Don’t worry. I like your honesty—means I can trust you.”

Rose glanced slyly at Hank. “But I hope I’m not able to trust you completely, Mr. Dashel,” insinuating her playful preference for bad boys. She winked and nodded toward the ice cream shop. “I’m gonna swing by and apologize to that poor girl—
again
.”

Vicki stopped her. “Shouldn’t your husband be the one apologizing?”

“Nah, no good—he’d just ask her for makeup sex.” Behind her resounding sigh was the confidence of a woman who knew her man better than any and was comfortable with her measure of control.

“I hope to see you two later.” She smiled and tootled, “Bub-bye.”

They watched the shapely woman own her path as she jaywalked across the street toward Scooper’s.

“I don’t buy it,” Vicki complained, crossing her arms as Rose entered the ice cream shop. “His wife’s nuts. He’s a complete ass. How can such a brilliant,
honorable
woman be so insane?”

Hank shrugged. “Love.”

Vicki gave him a quizzical stare.

Then he added with a suspicious grin, “Or maybe she’s a robot.”

† †
†

While paying the check at the diner, the agents had agreed to revisit the crime scene. The place had left something unsettled in both of them, beyond the obvious horror.

Hank offered to drive. Vicki didn’t protest, even though Hank’s dusty Buick was the antithesis of her fiery wheels—certain she could park her Corvette in the trunk of his grumbling behemoth. Having played nice as the passenger while she drove, Hank probably wanted to slip on the pants and drive for a while.

I’m driving tomorrow for sure,
she thought as a wellspring of dust puffed from her seat when she sat. Her phone buzzed.

“Starr.” She nodded and mouthed
Charlie
at Hank. “Just a second, Charlie, I’ll put you on speaker.”

“Hey, Coop.”

“Hank, I was just telling Vicki that the forensic team confirmed traces of semen at the scene.”

“What about the body?”

“I’ve found no vaginal or anal traces of semen. There was extensive tearing in both openings with traces of a latex compound.”

“Condom?”

“Actually, no. With the excessive breach and penetration, the object in question was likely an instrument such as a large sex toy. We’re scanning the database for matches in girth.”

“So what about the semen?”

“We found a trace mixed with the victim’s blood in her mouth, throat, stomach and lungs, meaning contamination occurred while the victim remained alive and respirating.”

Vicki blew out a tight breath. This never got easier.

“I also found traces of semen in several wounds.” He paused. “All indications point to deliberate application rather than overspray.”

Hank’s face twisted. “God.”

Vicki thought of the vile desecration—him standing over her, rubbing his semen into her wounds. A sick intimacy with his victim’s suffering. A revolting quiver forced itself upon her.

Still, it was pretty sloppy, DNA-wise. They couldn’t get overzealous. It was possible that the semen was a plant.

As they pulled into the farm field and approached the morose structure, Vicki felt her stomach tighten.

Even with the body gone, it was a hard fight to press back the blinding flashes of Ivy’s mutilations from Vicki’s mind’s eye as they stood in the barn once more. The dead smell of barn dust reaffirmed what her mind maliciously sought to reapply. Vicki crossed her arms tight around her chest, slowly scanning her colorless surroundings.

“I can’t pin it down,” Hank said, looking out the doors and across the field. “Do you think anyone could hear a scream from this far away?”

“Are you assuming that her scream wasn’t muffled?”

“Hard to tell by the way her mouth was left.”

Vicki shuddered as she moved next to him. “Do me a favor”—she pointed at the walking path lying along the far edge of the field, separating it from the town—“go out there. I’ll cover my mouth and scream. Tell me if you hear anything.”

He nodded.

Hank jogged to the edge of the property and stood on the walking path, noticing three inline skaters wheeling down the walk. He looked back toward the barn, raising a high thumbs-up and listened.

Vicki closed the heavy doors and then pressed her hand against her mouth. The torment Ivy had faced was too easy for Vicki to imagine. She allowed her muffled scream to match that terrifying reality as it sent living shivers crawling up her spine.

From the street Hank heard the muffled scream—audible, but just barely. The volume was a tough call because he had been actively listening. But then he saw the skate enthusiasts look at the barn with concern. He raised his hand. “Just a test.” They looked at Hank warily but then continued on, satisfied, after seeing the flash of Hank’s badge.

The sinking sun scorched his eyes as he walked back to the barn, trying to see where he was going. Stepping again into the gray shroud of the dusty shadow, Vicki’s form slowly materialized as his eyes adjusted.

“Someone should have heard something,” he said.

“I thought so.”

“According to Coop, she was definitely alive during most if it.”

Charles had described the self-inflicted damage her fingernails had made into her palms. He said Ivy had scraped away most of the flesh—only thin scrapings were left.

“And, even with what he’d done to her tongue, she should’ve been able to scream—gagged or not.”

This wasn’t right. Vicki jostled old buckets and dusty boards with her toes finding nothing beneath them to stir her ponderings.

“And there were no tire tracks?”

Hank shook his head. “Not for months—not before Roscoe and then our crews got here. The men who found her were on foot.”

Hank checked the time. “If you wanna hit that sermon, we should go.”

She nodded and joined him, as she continued to scan the space for something—anything—that would satiate her niggling feeling that this scene was wrong.

After their last encounter, all Vicki wanted to see of Father Reilly was the priest keeled over her knee. She came, not to hear more of his self-righteous drivel, but to monitor the responses in the crowd. The killer might come out of interest—say something, expose himself.

Tonight was going to be a full house at the small church. Parking spilled onto the street. Old and new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks were strewn about the roadway. Parking had devolved into a hoedown free-for-all, and Vicki felt the excessive magnitude of their car as Hank slowly coursed in between the mess of vehicles. He managed to find a wide berth to dock his boat, and they went inside.

† †
†

Cole slipped behind a rotund farmer dressed in his Sunday best, as the agents stepped through the entrance. He had hoped that Miss Starr’s earlier outburst would preclude their intention to attend the father’s gathering but was prepared for her arrival regardless.

There was an art to blending in. Even in a small town where people had a heightened sense of strangers, he was adept at passing through and waiting among them unnoticed—mastery of his craft.

Maintaining a position of stealth, he allowed himself to look upon her and remember her silky-wet curves from the other night. He was a man, after all.

He was stunned when, for no explicable reason, she turned and looked directly at him.

† †
†

Hank turned but she was already rushing through the incoming crowd toward the open doors. “What is it?” he cried but knew by his partner’s sudden action that he had to follow.

She launched herself off the sixth step, landing hard on the walk but able to continue at a full sprint.

Hank watched her slip over the hood of a crawling car and rush toward the blackened trees lining the road across the street. He pushed with everything he had and was still losing ground on her, even with his longer gate.
Goddamn, she’s fast.

She stopped short of the trees and lunged left, running along its berth. He angled toward her, narrowing their gap, when she planted her foot and reversed course. She rushed back and forth along the black expanse of trunks and branches like a freshly caught wildcat, frantically seeking a way through the cage bars.

“No! Fuck!” she yelled as Hank caught up to her.

“What?” he huffed.

“That man—did you see him?”

He shook his head no but took to scanning the trees with equal vigor.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck! I know it was him.”

“Who?”

She spun around in frustration, scanning the path before and behind her and then back toward the church. “A man. I saw him the other night, outside my place. Tall—black hat and coat.”

Instead of questioning, Hank started running left. “You go that way,” he yelled.

She nodded and sprinted with a jolt of renewed optimism.

That hope fizzled. Too much time had passed. He was gone. She continued her futile scans as she jogged back to the front of the church. She included Hank in her scan as she rested against the tree she had pummeled that morning—her heart pounding, lungs screaming for oxygen. Appreciation welled when she caught sight of Dashel scouring the parked cars, above and below. She beckoned him with a loud whistle, drawing the attention of everyone approaching the church.

“Sorry, nothing,” he said as he approached, trying to reclaim his breath.

She nodded in gratitude and frustration, and then added through her labored breath, “Too fast—he was too fast.”

He
was
too fast. Vicki was the fastest sprinter at Quantico her graduating year, and this man had turned, had slipped through the moving mass of oncomers like an oil-slicked eel, and had ran through the cars and across the street faster than anyone she had ever seen. But she
did
see him—that she knew for sure.

She looked at her partner for a moment. Even though the man’s escape had seemed impossible, and Hank hadn’t actually seen him, her new partner didn’t once question her. She wasn’t sure why she had expected him to—past experience, she supposed—but the fact that he didn’t meant the world to her.

And his pursuit hadn’t stopped there. She watched as he quickly polled people walking toward the church steps. She could tell by the shake of their heads that his queries were fruitless—but he was asking.

She shifted uneasily and pushed herself off the tree trunk. How could all these people be approaching, seeing her rushing past, and not catch a glimpse of her quarry? “I did see him,” she whispered. “I did.”

As Hank approached, defeated, a sharp whistle snapped their attention. One of the patrons Hank had spoken to pointed frantically at a black Escalade weaving slowly between the mash-up of parked cars.

Vicki rushed toward it. By the time Hank broke into a sprint, the SUV accelerated. Vicki hurled herself between two cars to intercept and narrowly missed getting crushed. The tinted window prevented Hank from catching a glimpse of the driver as it sped past, but he snapped a mental image of the California plate.

They both rounded into a full run from their respective positions toward Hank’s car, and already Hank was yelling the plate numbers into his phone. They had reached his car, realizing it would be no small chore to back it out, when Vicki asked who he was talking to. He raised a finger. “Yes, black Escalade. Heading east on Pritchet. Let me know.” He hung up and said, “Roscoe.”

Vicki watched Hank dutifully fish for his keys, knowing it was futile at this point and that Sheriff Roscoe was their best chance.

She turned her gaze back up to the church as a few stragglers climbed the steps. Music began spilling from the large doors.

“Your call,” Hank offered as he opened his door.

She knew it was no good. “No. Let’s go inside.” Vicki’s thoughts lingered on the night when she had first seen the stranger before turning to follow Hank in.