Wren Delacroix Series Box Set Page 14

  “Okay.” Hawk held up a hand. “Give me a minute.” He gestured for Major to leave the room.

  Major looked at the door and then back at the two of them. “Sorry, Wren,” he whispered, and then scampered out of the room like a frightened mouse.

  Hawk sat up in bed. He rubbed his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. “He, uh, he gets upset sometimes.”

  Wren was still clutching the covers to her chest. “Is he okay?”

  Hawk considered this question. “He’s like this all the time,” he settled on, throwing a leg off the bed.

  “And you what? You take care of him?”

  “Sometimes he takes care of me,” said Hawk. He found his jeans and stepped into them, buttoning them up. He peered down at her from above. “Major and I, we saw things. You know, back when all of this started. We have a connection, I guess. He needs me. It shouldn’t take too long.” He padded out of the room, barefoot.

  Wren vaguely remembered that his shoes and shirt were in the kitchen somewhere. She pulled the covers over her head.

  In the distance, she could hear Hawk and Major speaking in quiet, muted voices, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  She valiantly fought against feeling anything about Hawk being in her bed, anything except being pleased, but it was a battle she was going to lose, and she knew it. She got up out of bed.

  She didn’t get dressed, but she put on pajamas. She went out into the kitchen and had several glasses of water.

  Back when she was in college, she used to have a test that she’d perform whenever she was deciding whether or not she’d go home with a guy or not. She’d ask herself if she’d feel embarrassed telling her roommates who she’d hooked up with. If she thought they’d high-five her and laugh, it was a go. If she thought they’d give her pitying looks and tell her that they’d make sure they didn’t let her out of their sight the next time she got trashed, she gave the guy a pass.

  She wasn’t able to make these sorts of decisions herself because she thought of sex completely differently. She thought of it as something physical and mundane, like needing to urinate. Sometimes, she got the urge and she used what was handy to take care of it. She didn’t get why it was a big deal, but everyone else in the world had a very different idea about sex. To them, it meant something.

  She didn’t like feeling judged. She didn’t like feeling embarrassed. So, she tried not to make choices that her peers wouldn’t approve of.

  She sipped water and considered how Hawk would have fared in the test.

  Well, for one thing, she didn’t have roommates anymore. And for another, standards were even higher now that she wasn’t an undergrad. Now, even a guy who would have rated in college could be considered a bad, drunken decision.

  But if Kimora asked, for instance, would Wren tell her that she’d slept with Hawk?

  She wrinkled up her nose.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell anyone.

  She went over to her refrigerator and rested her forehead against it. She gently brought her forehead down again and again into the smooth surface. “What the fuck, Wren?” she whispered out loud. “He’s a fucking suspect. He’s clearly unstable. He still does acid.” She groaned. She rolled around so that the back of her head was resting against the refrigerator. She looked up at the ceiling.

  The sex had been good, though.

  She kind of wanted to do it again.

  “No,” she told the ceiling. “No, no, no. You will not sleep with Hawk again. You will not.”

  “Ouch,” said a voice.

  She stood up straight, looking around.

  The front door closed.

  She hurried out of the kitchen. “Hawk?”

  He was there, spreading his hands. “Hi, there. So, uh, it seemed like you were enjoying yourself, but—”

  She cut him off by putting both hands on his chest and pushing him backwards, back toward the door. “You came back?” She couldn’t believe it.

  “Well, yeah. I put Major to bed, and he fell asleep, so I didn’t see any reason not to come back.”

  “We… This…” She reached behind him and opened the door. She gestured.

  He surveyed her.

  “Look, you’re the one who said we were just creating another regret.”

  “Right.” He laughed softly. Knowingly. He looked her over. “So, now we just pretend this never happened?”

  “That’s probably for the best,” she said. “You’re still a suspect, you know.”

  “Seriously?” He was angry. “What? You think I’ve got that little Smith girl under the floorboards at my place? You want to come search the place?”

  “Look, I’m just saying that we can’t eliminate—”

  “How could you possibly—”

  Headlights cut across the front of her lawn. Someone’s car was pulling into her driveway.

  She squinted in the darkness. Who the hell would be here in the middle of the night?

  The car switched off, and the headlights switched off, and then she recognized the vehicle. Reilly. She pushed past Hawk and went to the edge of the porch.

  Reilly was getting out of the car. “Hey. They found her.”

  “Who? Jenny Smith?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry, I should have called.” He gestured to Hawk.

  “I’m just on my way out,” said Hawk. He looked Reilly over sourly.

  Reilly walked over to the foot of her porch and then stopped there. “I thought I’d just pick you up. Your place is on the way.”

  “I need to get dressed.” She picked at her pajama shirt. She turned to Hawk. “I have to go.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll be on my way too.” He pounded down the steps and stopped directly in front of Reilly.

  “Mr. Marner,” said Reilly.

  “Detective,” said Hawk. He gave Reilly a little half-salute and then he ambled off into the darkness.

  Wren took a deep breath. “I’ll be ready in a minute,” she told Reilly.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “I didn’t get a lot of details on the phone,” Reilly was saying as he pulled out of her driveway.

  She was buckling her seatbelt. “They’re sure it’s her, though?”

  “Yeah, they’re sure. But the scene’s apparently a little different,” said Reilly. “It’s a little more presentational or something. Like I said, not a lot of details. She’s out at a fire pit. I got directions. It’s on, um, Whisterly Lane?”

  “The fire pit,” she whispered. “Vivian’s fire pit. Where she had the bonfires.”

  “You know where it is.”

  “Take a left up here.”

  He turned the steering wheel. He glanced at her. She was biting her bottom lip. She looked nervous. She smelled like stale whiskey. Reilly shouldn’t throw stones, of course, and he had told her to have a few beers and relax, after all. He hadn’t expected to get called in on a body in the middle of the night.

  And what the hell was Hawk Marner doing on her porch?

  He tried to think of some way to ask her about that.

  Nothing came to mind.

  * * *

  The little girl was propped up on one of the benches. She was dressed all in black, like an initiate, like the last body, but she wasn’t in the same position as the others. This time her arms were spread wide, as if she was waiting for an embrace. There was a black cloth over her face, hiding it.

  Wren knelt down in front of the body, assailed by more emotion than she knew what to do with. This shouldn’t have happened. She was so sure that she could stop this somehow, that she could figure out who was doing this and catch him. This was all too soon. Why had he killed again, so soon after the last murder? And why the change in the display of the body? This evolution meant something.

  The tiny body was so still and so perfectly preserved. If she hadn’t known otherwise, she wouldn’t have even known the girl was dead. She thought of the little girl’s friends and her family. She thought of
her bedroom at home, a bed that would never be slept in, a bike that would never be ridden again, clothes that would never be worn…

  No.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to stop it.

  She clenched her hands into fists.

  Reilly knelt down next to her. “Any initial thoughts?”

  She looked at him. “He changed things.”

  “Yeah,” said Reilly. “It’s still the same guy, though? This isn’t some copycat thing?”

  She shook her head. “It’s him. This all means something.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “I don’t know.” It came out more frustrated than she meant it to.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” said Reilly, his voice gentle.

  She got to her feet. “We didn’t even know this girl was missing. I thought he was cooling off. I thought we had time to put it all together. If I’d known—”

  “Hey, if you’d known, it wouldn’t have made any difference. We’ve been pursuing as many suspects as we could. We’ve been doing everything we can.”

  “But it’s not enough, because she’s dead.” Wren’s voice shook.

  Reilly didn’t say anything.

  Wren drew in a breath and walked away from the body, over to the other side of the circle around the fire pit. She gazed into the distance. The sky in the east was starting to grow lighter. Dawn wasn’t that far off.

  “You know what we need?” Reilly said.

  “What?” she said.

  “Coffee,” he said. “The Daily Bean open yet?”

  She whipped around. “He covered the face. Like he’s ashamed of what he did. He set her up on this bench, like he wanted her found. The last body, he posed her, but he put her in the hallway. I had to walk into the house to find her. It wasn’t so blatant.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. How can he want to display it and be ashamed of what he did at the same time?”

  She started to pace. “He’s… compulsive. He’s driven to do these things, but he isn’t proud of them. He might attribute the impulses to something else. If he’s connected to the cult, then maybe he thinks that he’s being influenced by the Crimson Ram. He has no control over the killing, but he has control over the bodies. He leaves them this way because… because he wants to get caught.”

  “If he wants to get caught, why not turn himself in?”

  “He’s torn. Part of him thinks he’s doing great work, important work. The other part of him is disgusted by it. You notice how he doesn’t seem to take any joy in the violence of killing. It’s all done bloodless, no struggle. He doesn’t enjoy causing suffering. He’s incredibly delusional. He’s falling apart.”

  “You said he was in control.”

  “He was,” she said. “But I don’t know if he is anymore.”

  “So, what’s that mean?”

  “It means to tell everyone in town to lock up their daughters,” she said. “Because he’s not going to stop. And he’s getting worse.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kimora was holding onto all three of her children, even though they were squirming to get away from her, even the baby.

  “Mama, let go, please.”

  Kimora didn’t. “I was down there around 10:00 last night. All the kids were in bed, and I walked up to the fire pit. I know I shouldn’t have left them alone, but I needed some fresh air. I was only gone maybe ten minutes. But he was probably out there. He might have been out there. I left the door unlocked!”

  “Hey, Kimora, it’s okay,” said Wren.

  “You can’t put that on the record,” said Kimora. “Some woman reported her neighbor for letting her kids play unsupervised in the back yard, and then Child Services came and took the kids away. I heard about it on the news. If they hear that I left the house—”

  “Look, I’m just trying to nail down the time line,” said Wren. “You were out there at 10:00 and the body wasn’t there yet. So, whoever did this did it after 10:00.”

  “Yeah,” said Kimora.

  “Okay,” said Wren. “Thanks.” She went over and took her friend’s hand. She squeezed it. “You didn’t do anything wrong. No one’s taking away your kids.”

  “I won’t leave them again,” said Kimora.

  “For whatever it’s worth, there seems to be a pattern,” said Wren. “All the girls are around a certain age, and they’re all related to victims of the original murders. So, um, if it’s a comfort, your kids don’t seem as though they’d be likely victims.”

  Kimora sniffed. “It kind of is, thanks. But it’s still really, really awful. And I’m still not leaving them alone again.”

  “Of course not.”

  * * *

  “So, you discovered the body, right?” said Wren.

  Isaac Scott leaned on a shovel. He’d been planting a rose bush in front of the main meeting house. “That’s right.”

  “And what time was that?”

  “About 2:00 in the morning,” said Isaac.

  “Why were out in the woods at that time of night?”

  “Just walking. I like to walk at night sometimes. No real reason.” He paused. “Wait. You think maybe I put the body there, don’t you?”

  “I never said that, Mr. Scott.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” he said. “But you know who I saw out there?”

  “Who?”

  “Hawk Marner.”

  “What? You saw Hawk?” Her heart picked up speed. “When? At 2:00 in the morning?” But he couldn’t have, because Hawk had been in her bed when the body was being discovered.

  “No, earlier,” said Isaac. “Probably around midnight.”

  “You were out there at midnight?” she said. And she and Hawk had definitely been asleep at that point. There was no way.

  “I was,” said Isaac.

  “Why were out there then?”

  “I told you, just walking.”

  “You walked from midnight to 2:00 in the morning, just wandering around in these woods?”

  “Well…” He thought about it. “Maybe it wasn’t that long. I don’t think it was two hours.”

  “Are you sure it was Hawk?” she said.

  “Who else could I have thought it was?” He considered. “I mean, maybe Major. It could have been Major. I see them together a lot. Sometimes I get them confused.”

  “Major,” she murmured, thinking of him coming to wake up Hawk. I need you, Major had said.

  Because he’d just gotten finished posing a body?

  “No,” said Isaac. “It was Hawk. I think it had to be Hawk.”

  * * *

  Wren shook her head. “Well, we’re nowhere with any of it. Because Isaac was out there discovering the body, apparently wandering the woods with no discernible reason for it. He claims to have seen someone, which could have been either one of our other suspects. Maybe it was Major. Maybe it was Hawk. He’s not sure. But one of them, he saw at midnight in the woods.”

  “Well, Hawk was at your place when I came to pick you up,” said Reilly. “So, he was obviously awake.”

  “But that was after 4:00 in the morning,” said Wren. She could provide an alibi for Hawk, such as it was, but then Reilly would know she’d slept with a suspect. And anyway, it wouldn’t be an airtight alibi. He could have gotten up after she’d fallen asleep, gone out and posed the body, and then climbed back into bed with her. The thought of that gave her chills, and she didn’t want to dwell on it, but she thought it was theoretically possible. So, there was no need to get into her sex life.

  “What was he doing there?” said Reilly.

  “Uh… you know, I don’t really know,” she said. “You showed up before he could tell me, and I haven’t had a chance to follow up with him.”

  Reilly regarded her, as if he wasn’t sure if he bought her story.

  She quickly changed the subject. “I don’t know that any of it helps us. The point is that all three of them are still capable of having committed the crime. And, as far as we know, it could
have even been Roger Green or Kyler Morris. Or someone we haven’t even thought of yet. We need to figure this out.”

  “All right, well, what time is it?” Reilly checked his watch. “Okay, we don’t have time to go see both Green and Morris today, so we could do one today and one tomorrow, or we could split up.”

  “One of us go to Baltimore, one to northern Virginia?”

  “Yeah,” said Reilly. “I’ll go to Baltimore. You don’t want to try to drive in that city, let alone worry about your car being vandalized or stolen or whatever.”

  “You think I can’t handle Baltimore?” She folded her arms over her chest. “Besides, if Roger Green is going to open up to anyone, it’s going to be me. He knows me. I was in the Fellowship with him.”

  “You were a kid,” said Reilly.

  “So?” she said.

  “It’s a longer drive,” said Reilly.

  “I can handle it.”

  “You want to go to Baltimore?” said Reilly. “That’s what you want?”

  She honestly didn’t care one way or another, but now that her prowess had been challenged, she had to double down. “Yes.”

  “All right,” said Reilly. “I’m sending a uniform with you, though. You shouldn’t be off doing interrogations on your own.”

  “I’ve been doing interrogations alone all morning.”

  “On the compound. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Roger Green knows me. And I’m not scared of big, bad Baltimore.”

  “No?” said Reilly. “I am. That fucking city scares the hell out of me.”

  She sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll take someone.”

  “Good,” said Reilly. “Excellent.”

  * * *

  What Reilly called uniforms were uniformed police officers who had been assigned to work for the task force. Since none of the various police departments was keen on losing someone for whom they were still paying a salary (the task force didn’t have the funds to pay extra help), the departments rotated out whoever they sent in to help, and there were different police officers there every week.

  They helped out with various tasks, mostly a lot of paperwork and going over testimonies, looking for evidence, that kind of thing. But none of them were particularly invested in the work, since they knew they’d be back at their regular posts by the end of the week.