A Thorn Among the Lilies (16 page)

C
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32

E
ven though it was the day after Christmas, Leah couldn't settle her mind. She decided since the kids were going to be busy all day playing with the stuff they got, it was the perfect time to sneak out and do some research. Also, this day was usually pretty dead at police stations, so it would probably be easier for her to gain access to the file room. They'd either just give it to her or have to call their superiors at home, and nobody wants to bug their superior on the day after Christmas.

Before heading out, she ate breakfast with her family. Hank was still here, but leaving as soon as breakfast was over.

“Can't you stay a little longer?” Carry whined at him.

“Nope, sorry, my little sugar plum,” he said. “Gotta get to my boys' house. They're cookin' me up quite a spread; it should be a delicious turkey supper!”

“But you had turkey last night.”

“My dear,” Hank said, setting a plate of eggs, bacon, and hash browns down in front of Carry, “one can
never
have enough turkey.”

“I'm really gonna miss you, Hank,” Leah said.

“Oh, I'm gonna miss you guys, too. I always do. But don't worry, I'll be back soon as I can.” He turned his attention to Abe. “How 'bout you, my little wrangler? You gonna miss your Uncle Henry?”

“I'm not your ‘little wrangler,'” Abe said. He had his bow in his hand. Leah was pretty certain he had slept with it, but she wasn't about to say anything. She was just happy he was enjoying his gift. “I'm Luciheed, Elf Prince of Newpyr.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry, Lucihead,” Uncle Henry said. “Please forgive an old fool like me and don't shoot me to death.”

“You're forgiven. And it's Luci
heed,
not head. And of course I'm gonna miss you.”

Carry said, “Does he
really
have to wear that bow and arrow while we eat?”

“One day you'll be happy I have it. It might be just the power you need for me to save your life,” Abe said.

“You ain't got no power, other than the power to hang around with your dimwitted friend. Where is he, anyway? I haven't seen him yesterday or today. That's like a world record, I reckon.”

“He's been busy,” Abe said, sounding a bit let down.

“Doin' what?”

“Practicin' bein' Black Blade, his favorite comic book hero. Says he wants to get real good before we fight again.”

Carry laughed. “He has a sword? You have a bow with just six arrows I bet you can't aim at all. That's
your
power. You're gonna get so walloped by him. I can't wait to see it.”

The rest of breakfast was quiet. Afterward, everyone shared in clearing the table. Then they all said good-bye to Uncle Henry and waved to him out the front window as he backed his car onto the street and headed out of town.

“So what are we doin' today, Mother?” Carry asked.

“Well, y'all got fine new gifts to keep you busy. I thought I might slip out and get some police work done. I have a few things that I have to work on and today's a good day to do that.”

“So you're abandoning your family on the day after Christmas?” Carry asked.

“Look at it more like I'm lettin' you do whatever you want.”

“Oh, that
does
sound better.”

“She can't beat me up!” Abe squealed. “Tell her, Mom! Tell her she can't beat me up!”

“Okay, anythin' you want other than beatin' up Abe.”

“Thank you,” Abe said.

 

Actually, Leah hadn't completely run out of clues in her case. She
did
still have the weird videotape she had gotten from Dan. Every time she ran it, she had the same reaction.
Something about it is wrong.

She wondered if it was worth researching newspapers from all the major towns in the Alabama areas, looking for news reports in the last few months about finding bodies with sewn-up eyes.

Then she thought,
If that were true, someone would've put two and two together by now
. But then, it took Chris to do it with the newspaper from Birmingham, so who knew?

If this was a serial killing, and it certainly was chalking itself up to be one, shouldn't there be more murders happening? Shouldn't there be a trail of them? What made the killer start with Graysville? And did he really live in Alvin? And did two killings make a serial killer? Leah thought somewhere in the back of her mind that the number had to be three before it was official. Oh, but that was the Feds talking.

And there was another thing that had been bothering her lately. Should she bring the Feds in on this? She knew Ethan's stance on the whole thing, but maybe this was a case that was too big for her. Even with Ethan's help and his forensics analysis, she felt somehow out of her league.

Pulling a map of Alabama from her drawer and laying it on the table, she examined all the small towns in the vicinity of Alvin: Satsuma, Chickasaw, Grand Bay, Stapleton, Le Moyne, Semmes, and Atmore. There were more, of course, but those were the handful that jumped out at her. If a killing similar to the one Luanne Cooper had found in Willet Park had happened in any of these places, would she hear about it? She was pretty sure she would.

C
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33

M
e and Dewey spent the morning practicing with our new weapons. Before he left, Uncle Henry didn't just set up my target for me, he created a big body bag out of canvas, stuffed it full of old newspapers, and hung it from the boughs of one of the cherry trees for Dewey to hit with his sword and pretend it was a person.

I turned out to be a naturally terrible shot with the bow and arrow. Not only could I not hit the center of my target, I couldn't hit the target. Anywhere.

Dewey fared much better with his body bag.

I was getting so frustrated that by lunchtime I was ready to call it quits and start on our real mission: finding out who the serial killer was in Alvin.

Me and Dewey were pretty certain it was Isaac Swenson, but my mother was still searching all over town for someone else; she was searching for someone she considered to be the
real
killer. We had to find out for sure if we were right, and that involved some closer investigation. I didn't dare go to my mother until we knew for certain. We'd just be given heck.

So, we decided to sneak into Isaac Swenson's barn and search for clues. We figured if there were any to be found, that was where they'd be. We knew his patterns very well—he'd be out with his cattle for another half an hour. That gave us plenty of time to do a thorough examination of his barn.

Like most barns in Alvin, Isaac Swenson's was painted red. We approached the front doors from our hiding spot in the long golden grass and the two of us pulled one side of the large doors open. The door squeaked so loud, I figured they could hear it in Birmingham. “That's far enough, Dewey! If we keep pullin' this thing, we'll have the entire Swenson family out here with shotguns.”

“Okay.”

We actually hadn't opened it far enough, so we had to suck in our guts really hard and turn our heads to push ourselves through the opening. But we did make it inside. Once we were there we decided to leave the door partially ajar rather than close it and make all that noise again.

The barn stank like horses. Mainly because there were horse stalls down each side. Four of the stalls actually had horses in them. The rest of the horses must've been out in the fields. “So what do we do now?” Dewey asked.

“Investigate,” I said.

The floor was covered in sawdust and it was dark. The only light came through a bank of paned windows on the back wall of the barn that looked like they'd never been cleaned since the barn was built. They caused the sunlight falling through to cast weird, eerie shadows that I didn't like. They looked like they belonged in some kind of spooky funhouse. There were also holes between some of the boards in the walls and the roof that let a little light in, and that light sliced down like bright sheets. The whole thing was really eerie.

“I'm sure glad I've got my trusty sword,” Dewey said. I told him to shut up and just whisper. And only talk about things that are important.

“Look,” Dewey said in a clipped whisper as we approached the back wall where Isaac Swenson kept his tools. There was a workbench that ran the width of the barn. “He's got an ax!”

I checked out the ax. It did look mighty suspicious. It even appeared to have dried blood on it. My mother had to see this. It was definitely a major clue to her case. He had many other tools, but what gripped my attention next was his collection of shovels. They were even more suspicious than the ax. He had five of them. Who needs five shovels unless they're burying a lot of bodies? I figured only serial killers would be collecting shovels.

Then I saw it. At first I thought I was imagining it, but then I realized it was real. It was rolled up and hanging from a hook just beneath the workbench. For a second I froze there, just staring at it. My heart started bouncing like someone was kicking a hacky sack into my guts. “Dewey!” I whispered, trying to keep my voice down even though it was hard when it was full of excitement. “Look!”

There in the darkness with a splinter of light casting across it from a slice in the ceiling was a big roll of rope, the kind you'd use to tie people up with. It was yellow, but parts of it were splattered red that I knew had to be blood. Even the spool had flecks of red on it.

We'd found the clue my mother had been looking for.

We found more clues, but none as incriminating as that rope, that ax, or that shovel collection. We were about to start investigating the stalls when, from outside, I heard the sound of whistling and footsteps approaching in the mud.

“Oh, no!” I said to Dewey, trying to keep my voice low. “He's coming!”

“Why did he break his pattern?” Dewey asked, lowering his voice, too.

“How the heck should I know?” I looked around for any exits, but there were only the large front doors of the barn. “We're trapped!”

“Don't worry,” Dewey said to me in a very calm voice, “we have Icarus. We'll be fine.” Dewey had named his sword Icarus because he read somewhere that all great swords had names. Why he picked Icarus, I would never know.

This just raised my panic and added a bit of anger to it as I stared at him for a second in disbelief. “Dewey,” I said. “What are you going to do? Swordfight him? Other than giving you that ability, the sword don't
really
give you any powers. It's all just make-believe. Please tell me you know that, right?” I remembered he still believed in Santa Claus, so anything was possible.

“‘Power is in your heart,' Abe,” he replied. “‘Believe in it and it will come to you.' ”

I shook my head clear. “Where the hell did you get
that
from? Did Yoda say it?”

“No, it came from a comic book. Captain Defender number fifteen, I reckon. But I believe it's true. If you truly trust in yourself, you can do anything.”

Right now I was pissing my pants scared. “Well, comic books ain't real either, Dewey. We're in
real
trouble here.”

Slowly, Isaac Swenson pulled the left side of the barn doors open, casting sunlight into the darkened interior. Dust motes floated in the air. I realized too late that we should have at least
tried
to hide in one of the horse stalls or something, but we didn't. We were just standing there at the end of the barn in front of Isaac Swenson's tool bench, squinting into the sudden burst of sunlight, Dewey with his sword held with both hands at the ready and me with my bow in my left hand, an arrow ready to be loaded in my right.

C
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34

W
hile knocking on the door of her seventh farmhouse, most of which were decorated very nicely with Christmas lights (some even had a blow-up Santa and baby Jesus in the yard) and wreaths, Leah realized this was an exercise in futility. Near on every single visit went the same way. Number seven included.

The door was answered by an elderly man, tall and lanky, with a beer belly that the rest of his body didn't quite know how to support, making him lean forward. He wore spectacles and had age spots on his head, and what little hair was left was combed over the top. Black suspenders held up his brown trousers, and he had on a blue collared shirt that was barely tucked in. In his hand was a walking cane.

“Hello?” he asked.

“Hi, sir, I'm Leah Teal, the detective for the Alvin Police Department?” She flashed her badge so he would know she wasn't making this up.

“Eh? What? I can't hear you. My hearing aids aren't in. You need to speak louder.”

She wound up screaming at him. Right away that made a bad start.

“You sayin' I have sawdust and clay somewhere? What are you talkin' 'bout? 'Course I've got sawdust. And God put the clay in. I got lotsa clay if you want clay.”

“No, sir. I'm askin' if you've . . . can I see your barn?”

“You wanna look at my alarm? I don't have no alarm. You don't need no alarm round these parts. Folks round here are good people.”

She screamed louder. “I want to look at your barn. You know, where you keep your horses?” She made horse sounds and tried to make herself look like a horse. She felt as though she looked more idiotic than anything else.

“One minute.” The man turned around and Leah thought she finally got through to him, but a minute later he appeared back at the door with a short, portly woman wearing an apron. She had creases around her blue eyes and her hair was pulled tightly into a bun.

“Hello. Zacharias tells me you are alarmed about our horses. Did something happen? Did one get out again?”

“No, ma'am.” Leah couldn't help it. She laughed. It wasn't a smart thing to do. Neither of the elderly people laughed along with her. They were looking at her like she just stepped out of the Twilight Zone.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm the detective from the police department? I'd like to see the barn. Where you keep the horses and stuff.”

The woman's hand came to her mouth. “Oh, why?”

“There's been a report of a missing girl. We think she's a runaway.” Leah rehearsed this story beforehand and gave it to Chris to use, too. It was a good story because it didn't indict anyone. “I just want to make sure she's not hiding back there anywhere.”

“Well, I don't think she is; we'd have seen her,” the woman said.

“What's she want?” Zacharias asked his wife.

“To see if there's a girl in the barn,” the wife screamed back.

“I sent her home already.”

The woman looked at Leah. “He's talking about Molly. She comes to help sometimes in the mornings.”

Eventually, Leah was led to the barn, where she saw exactly what she expected to see. Horses, straw, a bunch of tools, a workbench, but no blood. No sign of foul play. “Do you mind if I check the hayloft?” she asked the woman.

“No, by all means go ahead.”

“Why's she goin' up there?” Zacharias asked his wife.

“To check for the girl,” his wife screamed back.

“I told you. I sent her home.”

After she was finished with searching that barn, Leah took pictures of the tread on the couple's Chevy pickup. “One last thing,” Leah said to Zacharias's wife. She turned and looked back at Leah, expectantly. “What size and type of footwear does your husband have?”

“That's a weird question,” she said.

“Just tryin' to whittle down all my suspects, is all.”

“We're suspect?”

“No, no, ma'am. Just . . . please answer the question and I will be out of your hair.”

“He rarely leaves the farm and when he does, Zacharias wears the same thing he's always worn. Size-eleven galoshes. That good enough?”

Leah jotted this down in her pad. “That is more than helpful. Y'all have been saints with your patience today. I can't thank you enough.”

And with that, Leah returned to her car and radioed Chris, telling him to abandon his search. It wasn't working. It was a dumb idea.

There had to be a better way.

She must've missed
something.
There was always
something.

Then, an hour after getting back to the station, Leah got a call.

Another woman, Scarlett Graham, had disappeared.