Pieces of Ivy (26 page)

Hank’s torchlight cleaved the dark of the hidden eight-by-ten chamber. Heavy dust-laden crimson drapes rounded out the far end of the room in the four sections like half of an octagon.

“Someone used the old stones to build an invisible door,” Hank said.

Vicki took a few confused steps, guided by Hank’s narrow slice of wavering light.

“Hold it still,” she said.

His beam landed on a large dust-draped pickle jar. Vicki made an instinctive swipe against the dust and screamed.

The mouth hung open in despair as the suspended bone-colored face floated in the uncovered darkness. Caught off guard, Vicki struggled to catch her breath when she realized she had erased their six-foot gap and had folded herself into Hank’s chest. She pushed herself away, embarrassed, just as Roscoe rounded to their spot at the entrance to the hidden chamber.

“What, did ya grab her ass?”

Hank shook his head. “Look.”

Roscoe followed the beam. “Fuck me sideways,” he whispered.

Entombed for twenty-seven years, Ivy’s killer was unaware that behind the camouflaged door were the final lost pieces of New Brighton’s Pieces of Eight—just twenty feet from Ivy’s cutting table.

The forensic team was still an hour out. They called Charlie over and the four of them began scanning, unable to resist taking a cautious look before the team arrived. Roscoe took his lighter to the four torches hanging on their side of the chamber.

Coach Yilmaz’s trophy room concealed eight identical altars evenly spaced along the four crimson drapes. Melted candles at each altar revealed the timeline of the murders.

The tiny feet of spiders crawled along Vicki’s flesh. “He lit them all, every time,” she whispered. They were burned lower, based on the number of times the coach spent worshiping before his precious pieces, with the first dead girl having the shortest melted candles.

“I guess these didn’t end up at the bottom of the lake like they had suspected,” Roscoe said, pointing at the jars.

The shaven spectral heads, with their eyes gently closed, hung suspended like pallid ghosts in their jars, sealed airtight with metal clips. They looked like pretty, overgrown infants sleeping uncomfortably in their dismembered nightmare.

In front of each jar, the clothes the victim had been wearing when she had been abducted were folded neatly next to her cheerleader uniform beneath a clear plastic cover. Charlie agreed that the old dried stains across the clothes were most likely the killer’s semen. There were a lot of old stains. Each pile of street clothes and uniform was separated by long bundles of shorn hair. Any pieces of jewelry they had worn were also staged with meticulous attention across each altar.

Each girl had her own leather-bound scrapbook containing yearbook pages, school and class photos, and related news clippings. And there were letters and notes written between each victim and her killer.

Vicki hung close to her partner as Hank carefully opened one of the eight identical wood-carved boxes resting on the altars. Inside there were four more jars, each preserving a hand or foot, along with a smaller jar filled with tufts of pubic hair, a Rubbermaid container and a small jewelry box.

In the original investigation into the Pieces of Eight murders, the authorities had assumed that the naked, shorn bodies were left headless without hands or feet in a futile attempt to mask their identities. The reality was much more gruesome.

Vicki hesitated before lifting the lid of the tiny box. “Fuck!” Her breath caught in her throat as she stared into the faceless green eyes sealed in the small glass tube. She glanced at the floating head before her, realizing the eyelids were closed and peaceful looking, but, beneath them, their sockets were empty. She shuddered, wondering if all of this … worship was accomplished postmortem. She prayed it was.

“The Rubbermaid’s all yours,” she said.

Hank grimaced as he carefully pried open the container. “Ew, God.” It was his stomach’s turn to twirl. “Coop, think you can get anything from this?”

“Yeesh,” Charlie said, looking around the much-taller man’s shoulder. There were a number of spent condoms. “It must have been a good seal—still looks viable.” The semen-filled condoms likely included vaginal secretions from each victim. Past investigators would have been thrilled with this treasure trove of evidence because the killer had flushed their orifices with hydrogen peroxide and bleach. This find would definitely be a hard coffin nail if the killer weren’t already dead.

Between the fourth and fifth altars, there was a small walnut table with a leather journal resting beneath a layer of dust. Next to it were five diaries bound in twine. After taking the appropriate pictures, Vicki carefully flipped through the pages of the journal.

His journal was an investigator’s dream. There were clippings of each murder and his thoughts around them, from his process of selection and surveillance to plans of execution. The most terrifying revelation was that he had engaged in friendly—and with a few, more than friendly—secretive relationships with each of his girls. He already had secured their attention and affections, and, still, he proceeded to collect them—
cold flesh better than warm
, he professed, as the former could never leave him for a better life.

Subsequent passages would reignite the parental terrors of this town. There were chilling details about how he had actually identified his victims at a young age, watching them since grade school. He was intrigued by each young girl’s budding promise, waiting for them to blossom into womanhood.

The photos he took of the young girls were disturbing, not in content, but in premise. Each set of photos showed a girl happily growing through her innocent life as most girls do, completely unaware of the horrible fate a stranger was orchestrating for them: patiently waiting in secret for their senior year to come.

He may not have been a pedophile, Vicki thought, but he remained every bit the monster. Even at seventeen or eighteen, each of these beautiful young women was someone’s little girl. Vicki felt a hollow pang.

Yilmaz described how he would line the heads up to compare them, studying them closely, to truly judge which was the fairest to him on any given day. He noted his certainty that this would have infuriated the girls, having each compared to one another so closely and not rating as desirable as the next. Regardless, to him, they were all his precious
Pieces of Eight.

Vicki was correct. The five diaries did belong to the victims. Vicki only did a cursory scan of each, but, among the usual schoolgirl struggles and fluff, there were entries about the handsome,
manly
coach Yilmaz.
Such a sweetie
, one had wrote.

Vicki doubted the diaries had been carried on their person at the time of the abduction—few girls would chance that—so he must have stolen them from their homes. A risky venture, considering the authorities would have been on the alert for the missing girls and anyone acting suspiciously. She wondered how he had pulled that off.

The coach’s journal frequently scribed how his good looks drew most of the town ladies to him—it was so easy. But there were also the high school girls. He described how his gallant front, and rejection of inappropriate advances, had enticed their playful games and had earned their trust, making them feel safe to flirt more—and try harder.

I love it,
he wrote, referring to the teen affections.
These silly girls are as clueless as they are beautiful. Like simple playthings, mine to manipulate.
But when it came to his eight marks, he secretly loved and coveted his precious pieces.

The confident fiend was cold and calculating at every turn. Only near the end of his journal did he become conflicted. He had his coveted Pieces of Eight, but there was another that he had become aware of—a ninth jewel that had outshone them all.

This one, he doubted he could enjoy and then dispatch. He believed their love was real. His journal insisted that her boyfriend would not be a problem. Over many fierce entries, he finally convinced himself that she could love him even with all that he had done. But he struggled if he loved her warm—or desired her cold. His entries ended with this internal struggle.

Vicki’s head was swimming—so much to take in. Overfilling her mind, already flooded with too much information about Ivy’s case. She drew in a few calming breaths and focused.

Vicki studied the preserved pieces carefully. The sick cuts, the meticulous care and attention taken by this monster revealed for Vicki that Ivy’s killer was no copycat. The Pieces of Eight killer had worshipped beauty to a sickening degree. Ivy’s killer hated beauty, ruined beauty, stripped it down and viciously ripped it apart.

While the original reports had confirmed that these Pieces of Eight victims had been raped and then killed, Ivy’s killer had obviously inflicted prolonged torture before Ivy finally died. These were two different breeds of monster.

Vicki turned one of the necklaces draped across an altar. On the back it had the victim’s first name inscribed. Each altar had a unique charm with the same. Now Vicki knew where the small eyeball-holding jewelry boxes had come from. Likely gifted from their killer after each abduction.

Then she noticed the one item out of place in this meticulous house of horrors. A small paper bag tossed aside where the heavy curtain met the long stone wall leading back to the doorway. She took the necessary pictures and then opened the bag—a ninth jewelry box. In the box there was a charm necklace, more beautiful than the others. Engraved on the back was the name
Tanya
.

Roscoe had aligned the catacomb gates with Coach Yilmaz’s windows of opportunity for the abductions and subsequent plantings of their bodies. The scenario was a perfect fit. He had used the catacombs to conceal his activities and confuse the investigation.

Roscoe and Hank had also followed the tunnel back to the barn where Ivy had been found, marking evidence that proved she had been wheeled there from this chamber were she had actually died. Both Vicki’s and Dashel’s initial instincts on the crime scene had been correct. As eerie as the old barn was, it hadn’t
felt
like a place of death. Not like this place.

The forensic team was busy working their magic, grateful for the information the four of them had provided and for being so cautious with the crime scene.

Standing in the small corridor where the boys had stored their porn—completely oblivious to the live show available along the shower wall—Vicki thought about ghosts. She considered the ghostly howls that had chased the boys from their hidden stash and also what Charlie had said.

Alive for more than twenty-four hours, Ivy Turner had suffered alone in the dark; and, like those boys, her tormented wails still haunted Vicki’s consciousness. She needed to collect herself. The school would be empty—the distracted and utterly unproductive classes dismissed hours ago.

She strolled the empty corridors, allowing her hollow echoes to flood her thoughts and wash away the dark ones before venturing into the town.

† †
†

New Brighton was ablaze as the discovery spread like wildfire. But it was the gratitude from all corners that took Vicki by surprise.

“This has haunted us for nearly three decades. This town owes you a debt,” one of many longtime residents—in this case an older gentleman—insisted.

“Just doing my job.”

“That matters no less,” the man’s wife said. “These girls can be made whole again and finally put to rest. We owe you, Miss Starr. Big time.”

Something stirred just beneath the woman's words. Vicki wasn’t sure if she should be suspicious.

The relentless gratitude continued even as night fell. Her solo walk was not a lonely one. The sidewalks remained crowded with Midnight Madness shoppers—a monthly town tradition she had only just become aware of.

Her mind churned through her information. Finding Ivy’s actual murder scene was a huge break—but experiencing the terror of the hole in Vicki’s face continued to consume her thoughts. Ivy’s torments would not release Vicki—tangling dark horrors into her thoughts.

What
would
happen if Vicki’s grisly torments reached their end? Where Ivy’s heart stopped …
would
Vicki’s? She fought—but the tears won. Vicki Starr had cried more in New Brighton than the past ten years combined.

Was this mind-over-body run amok? Was she losing her grip? No matter how scared she was, she couldn’t let the FBI know that her sanity was slipping.

Her body threatened to ignite into a spontaneous combustion of nerves as fear and confusion tore through her. She was losing her grip. She could feel the people walking around her; even at a distance, their presence was invading. She needed to get away from the energy of people—she needed solitude.

Vicki turned to the black heavens in a desperate plea as her logical faculties moved to fail her. The mass expanse of the starry night sky was immediately calming, grounding. That was it! She needed to hide in the womb, as protection from the insanity of the world she had been delivered into—
I need a swim.

The sanctuary of water would level her mind—it had been too long since her last swim. Midnight approached, and the public pool would be closed. That didn’t matter.

Her Corvette left behind the town’s warm amber lights as Vicki carved along the edge of the gentle trees, these much more welcoming than those on the far side of town. She would have missed the brush-choked entrance had it not been for the small Private Property sign, smattered with paintball splats and BB holes.

The tranquility of the night was already starting to take hold as she made her way down the narrow road, her mind churning through the scenes. A lot of blood had filled the secret corridor behind the old coaching office. That must have been where the fight between the coach and his two students had begun.

It would have taken the coach a few years to build his hidden corridor to the inaccessible catacomb entrance behind the girls’ shower. His methodical patience was chilling. Their fight would have spilled out into the coach’s office, the secret door closing behind them, and their final moments spent dying on the floor.

She supposed there would have been no reason to suspect a hidden room. Still, the lack of 1980s police work frustrated her. The crime scene was invaluable. Had they known about the catacombs earlier, she might be finished and out of this godforsaken town—sanity intact.

Desperate for the womb, she pulled into the same brush her car had crushed earlier and parked. Only her footsteps and the crackling of her cooling Corvette engine behind her made any sound as she made her way through the trees toward the shore.

Vicki stripped off her clothes in the gently cooling night, stuffing her bra and panties into her shirt and rolling the bundle into the seat of her jeans. She hooked them on the sharp spire of a broken branch and wedged her socks and boots into the crook of the same tree, slinging her weapon beside them.

Vicki streaked through the black gaps of the trees and onto the gray moon-cast shore. She slipped into the water with a slick dive that barely disturbed the onyx-glass portrait of wispy clouds against a full moon painted upon the surface—completely unaware of the figure watching her from the shadows of the gnarled trees.

She met the welcome thrill as the black lake pressed the cool weight of its expansive volume against her naked skin. Her face emerged in a gentle birth, and she scanned the dark, wet expanse around her. The obsidian glass of the water made its sable reach into the midnight horizon where the ebony smoke shadows of the tall pines stood sentry along the far shore and disappeared into the void of night.

The swim was soothing, so freeing. Vicki’s face remained rested in a smile as she moved through the water. She became one with the lake beneath the dark twinkling heavens above. The power and solidarity of the immense body of water was a sane reprieve.

Her silent sanctuary cracked with a hidden snap in the trees. She froze, her heart hammering beneath her breast. “Who’s there?” Her tight voice spread across the empty glass, barely registering an echo off the dark shore.

Nothing.

She allowed the water around her motionless body to freeze to glass as she stared into the dark for a long moment, afraid to breathe, pushing her eyes to see beyond their capability. The deafening silence stretched into an empty sound beyond the void of her surroundings. There was no one there, but she was not alone. She could feel his gaze on her, watching from the black.

To her left, the slightest trickle of water. Again she saw nothing but knew she was not alone. The folly of watching all those horror movies became all too real. Vicki Starr, FBI, always strong, always prepared—now standing completely bare and unprotected in the midnight water, feeling more vulnerable than a naked Janet Leigh showering in Anthony Perkin’s cursed motel.

Against the reflecting moon, she saw the hint of a ripple approaching. Crouching naked in the clear black water to submerge her exposed breasts, Vicki tried to make herself smaller and unnoticeable in the shimmering dark sheet of night.

Wanting to flee, she noted her squatted body, paralyzed with fright, yet her ankles sinking into the rich greasy mud. She fought the urge to leap into the air as she felt the many oily fingers touching her from beneath. Spine-tingling tips of slippery weeds tickled and licked her, exploring her bottom and thighs, unleashing invisible crawlers over her flesh. She fought to ignore them and remain deathly immobile.

Hardly able to take her shallow breaths, her pounding heart roared with rushing blood in her ears. Her heart hitched in her chest when the moon’s glassy reflection shimmered into a growing wake of definite ripples moving toward her, and her terrified scream barely registered as a taut whimper. Still, she couldn’t move.

Her instincts burst into flame, and her muscles primed for attack, as she felt the distinct yet hidden presence coming at her fully exposed and defenseless body. An onyx mound surfaced in the moonlight before her and grew as it slid toward her in the black ink. Vicki’s mouth managed only a tiny terrified squeak as her body began to tremble in the warm, rippling water.

A ghostly face breached the sheet of midnight water, emerging into the moonlight.