Spider's Web (7 page)

“Then why drown her?”

Jacob shook his head. “It was intentional. It was the way he planned it. It was important.”

“Why?”

Jacob looked at him. “How the hell should I know? I don’t have all the answers.”

They both became quiet. This was worrying. It was all beginning to sound very obsessive, and very insane.

“Would her father do something like that, if he found out where she lived?”

Jacob thought about it. “I don’t know,” he said. “Doesn’t sound likely. The deranged used-underpants customer sounds like the more likely scenario.”

“Then we need to get cracking on that list.”

“Yeah.”

The two detectives stood above the grave for a minute more, then turned and walked back to the car.

Mitchell felt drained as he walked into his apartment. The entire day felt like one big failure. What had they managed to learn? That a paltry number of their suspects had alibis? That Kendele had been abused by her father? That she jogged regularly? Somehow all those little facts didn’t feel as if they were about to amount to anything.

“Pauline?” he called.

“In here,” she said from the bedroom.

He walked over, stopped in the doorway.

She lay on her stomach on the bed, staring at her laptop screen. She was watching an episode of
Shameless
, a series which she had repeatedly tried to convince him to see with her, to no avail. She wore a black tank top with spaghetti straps, and slightly translucent white shorts. She was barefoot, and her feet kept swinging up and down as she stared intently at the screen. Her long brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, as it always was. Her bare upper back, tawny beige and smooth, beckoned to him. He felt as if the entire day’s weight slowly dissipated from his shoulders. Gently he got on the bed, lying on top of her, hugging her from behind.

“You’re squashing me,” she complained, breathless, and elbowed him.

He rolled away, laughing. “How was your day?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said distractedly. “A customer at the clinic flirted with me today.”

“Yeah? Did you tell him you were taken?”

“Don’t be silly. I wanted to hear what he had to offer first.”

“Ah,” Mitchell said, his fingertips caressing the top of her back gently. “And what did he have?”

“A root canal.”

“Sounds like a fantastic catch.”

Pauline worked as a dental assistant. Mitchell constantly tried to convince her to try and do something better with her life. He was convinced she could be so much more. She often got angry at his attempts. There was nothing wrong with being a dental assistant, she always said.

“And then,” she said, “when I rode the bus home, it had a flat tire and I had to wait for the next one, and ride it standing up, stuffed with all the other bus refugees like a can of sardines.”

“The struggle is real,” Mitchell said.

She glanced at him. “Are you mocking my suffering?”

“No, not at all.”

“How was your day?”

“I interviewed about twenty people who like to sniff underpants today,” Mitchell said.

“Really?” This made her pause the video. She rolled to her side, smiling at him. He loved her smile.

“Yeah.”

“And what did you find?”

“I found that most people do not like it when you ask them about their underpants-sniffing habits.”

She grinned at him. He smiled back. Her tank top was a bit crooked, exposing the top curve of her breast. He shifted closer, wrapping his arm around her, and pulled her toward him.

“Are you getting turned on by this panty-sniffing conversation?” she whispered.

“No,” he said. “I’m getting turned on by being near you.”

She kissed him, her hand sliding on his stomach, and Mitchell rolled to his back, pulling her on top of him.

Chapter Six

He stood in a small clearing in Buttermere Park’s grove. The police had found the body of Kendele Byers nearby, just a week before. That was not part of the plan, though he wasn’t particularly disturbed by it. He had been careful.

He was looking at the ground, where just four months before he had scattered hundreds of yellow flower seeds. He was pleasantly surprised by the results. There were dozens of flowers growing all over the ground, dotting the clearing. He did it in memory of
her
. She had loved the color yellow, wore yellow shirts and dresses almost every day.

He had come to the clearing to think of a very special date. Over thirty years had passed since that occasion, and it was still the most vivid memory in his mind. He smiled as he thought of it, looking at the blossoms around him. It was a warm and sunny day, and the park teemed with people: families spending time together; couples in love walking on the paved paths, holding hands; dog walkers marching briskly, their pets padding along with their tongues lolling. And one man, traveling down memory lane. Thinking of Kendele Byers, thinking of a day long ago, thinking of another beautiful girl, and the invisible thread that tied them together.

He had been dormant for so long before his awakening. Years lost to routine, a dull job, tepid encounters with other people, a long stretch of colorless days and dreamless nights. He almost felt sorry for the people in the park, leading the same drab lives, doomed to waste their short lifespans on nothing.

They were too blind to see the truth. There was more to life than that. There were pure moments of thrill and joy. One just had to find them. Kendele had understood. Just before she’d died, she had understood; he could feel it.

He felt the growing anticipation inside him. Soon, it would be time once again. He could almost imagine the moment of impact as his next victim would die. His heart thumped a bit faster as he pictured it happening, late at night, not far from her home.

It was going to be a violent death.

Anticipation. There was almost nothing better.

Mitchell occasionally thought of himself as a hound dog. Sniffing at the trail, catching a scent, following it, getting ever closer. Maybe at times the scent would dissipate, and the hound would sniff around, trying to catch it once again, running into a few dead ends, finally catching a break.

Other times, when cases were vague and frustrating, he felt he was more akin to a chicken, pecking the ground for morsels, looking for anything edible. Peck peck peck. What was that? A tasty seed? Nope, just a small rock. Peck peck, hang on, found something! A paper clip? What was a paper clip doing here? Peck peck peck peck, completely random pecking, shoving its beak hopefully into the ground again and again. Peck peck. Nothing good here. And eventually, this chicken might tire, and begin to think it would never find anything worthwhile to eat.

Kendele Byers’s murder investigation seemed to be more like the chicken type of investigation. For every tiny seed, the detectives would find a lot of sand, a lot of pebbles.

Kendele’s father had a tight alibi for the date of her murder. He worked every morning at the grocery store he owned. Started working at six. Never missed a day. He had security tapes and customers to support his alibi. He claimed that he had never abused his daughter, and his wife and son said the same.

Peck peck peck.

Kendele had eighteen regular customers, and thirty-two additional customers who had purchased from her once or twice. Alibis trickled in. Most of the customers lived abroad. There was no hint of the so-called “creepy” e-mails Kendele had received, nor was there any indication of those customers in the subreddit Ronnie Kuperman gave them. Perhaps there were no creepy customers, and Kendele had only said it to dissuade Debbie from going down the same path. Who knew.

Peck peck.

The plants found in Kendele’s lungs matched plants in the pond, but they were commonly found in other ponds and lakes in the area. It probably meant the detectives’ theory about the murder was correct, but there was no way to be sure.

Peck peck peck.

There was no DNA match in CODIS, the database used by the bureau, for any of the objects found at the crime scene.

Peck peck.

They searched for other similar crimes. Other crimes in which someone was drowned, then buried nearby. Other crimes involving women who sold their underwear online. They found nothing.

Peck.

The chickens were getting tired.

Chapter Seven

Kenneth Baker should have known better.

Cocaine? Hell, he snorted the stuff on a daily basis. How could anyone function in this crazy world without cocaine, anyway? Who could even generate the amount of productivity modern life demanded, without resorting to a bit of snow? No, cocaine was fine.

Alcohol was also fine. No question there. Alcohol was even legal. You could walk into a store, buy a bottle of whiskey, and walk out—just like that, no questions asked. Was there any better way to go to sleep then after a glass or two of cheap whiskey? There wasn’t. In fact, these days he couldn’t manage to fall asleep at all without drinking first.

But mixing the two?

He really should have known better.

And now it was on. Kenneth’s heart raced like crazy. He was overcome with massive waves of euphoria. When the euphoria was gone, he realized he was shaking with rage. Someone was screaming. It was him.

“—this is how you repay me?” he yelled. “After all these years that we’ve spent together? After all the money I invested in you? I took care of you! I did everything you asked me to do, and now… this?” Tears ran down his cheeks. How could this happen? His life… ruined.

He grabbed his helpless victim, his fingers whitening as they pressed hard. His victim emitted strange, unintelligible noises, but Kenneth ignored it.

“We’re done, you and me,” he growled. “This is the end of the road, darling. No! It’s too late to try and make amends now. It’s gone. It’s all gone!”

He stomped out of the bedroom, carrying his victim with him, not hearing the panicked screeching and moaning. He paused in the kitchen, opened a drawer, and grasped the gun inside. He had never used it before, except at the firing range. He would use it tonight.

He kicked the front door open, the drug in his blood pumping him with adrenaline. There was no going back.

This relationship was about to end. Terminally.

Officer Tanessa Lonnie opened the front passenger’s door of the patrol car and got in, handing a Styrofoam cup of coffee to her partner, Sergio Bertini.

“There you go,” she said. “I asked them to make it extra strong.”

“Thanks,” he said, his face sagging with relief as he held the cup in his hand. He sipped from the cup and shut his eyes for a second, taking a long breath. “God, I needed that.”

“Didn’t sleep again?” Tanessa asked, sipping from her own cup. It was one a.m. They were parked near a small gas station, having just began their patrol shift an hour ago. Tanessa and Sergio were on the graveyard shift—midnight to eight—as they had been for the past six weeks, ever since Tanessa finished her training in the academy.

“It’s Gabriella. She keeps waking me up,” Sergio said, shaking his head. “She’s driving me insane.”

Tanessa nodded, her face full of empathy she didn’t feel. The whole thing with Gabriella should never have started; it had clearly been a mistake. Tanessa had warned Sergio he would regret it. But she wasn’t the type to spread salt on the open wounds of a suffering man. She squeezed Sergio’s shoulder—a sympathetic touch, full of support.

He turned to face her, his eyes red and swollen, his bushy eyebrows raised in an expression of acute misery. When he wasn’t so tired and morose, he was quite attractive. Tan, wide-shouldered, a nice enough face, white teeth. Teeth were important to Tanessa. She was really turned off by bad teeth. He was bald, which was a shame, but he shaved his head on a weekly basis, so it had a certain sexy appeal, if one liked that sort of thing.

“She screams,” he said. “All day long. Terrible screams. Ear-shattering.”

“Yeah,” Tanessa nodded.

“And she bites me! When I try to calm her down she bites me! Look!” He showed her a scratch on his finger.

“Why don’t you get rid of her?” Tanessa suggested.

“How? Who would take her?” Sergio asked, his voice dripping with misery.

“No one needs to take her,” Tanessa said patiently. “You just… open the window, and she’ll fly away.”

She had told him buying a parrot was an idiotic idea. Her cousin had had a parrot once. She remembered the incessant noise that had filled his house whenever the damn thing was awake. When that parrot died, they’d nearly thrown a party.

“I can’t do that,” Sergio said. “She would never survive on her own.”

“Who knows,” Tanessa said. “Think about it—”

The radio suddenly burst to life. “Attention all units, report of shots fired at the corner of Adams and Cedar Road.”

Tanessa grabbed her shoulder mic and pressed the PTT button “Four fifty-one, responding.”

Sergio shoved his cup into the cup holder, and started the car. They weren’t far, no more than five minutes’ drive. Tanessa buckled her seat belt and took one last sip from her own cup before putting it down as well.

If there was one joy in the midnight shift, it was the absence of traffic. Rush hour was not a thing when Tanessa and Sergio drove through Glenmore Park’s streets, the moon high in the sky. A few cars passed them, the drivers inside quickly making sure their seatbelts were fastened and their car lights were switched on. At one point they slowed down as a man dressed in rags crossed the street slowly, pushing a supermarket cart full of plastic bottles. Other than that, their drive was a smooth and silent affair.