The drive to the medical examiner’s office wasn’t a short one. Trish hated to say it, but Levi’s truck was a whole lot more comfortable than her car, and she felt safer. Well, not because of Levi, but her car was sort of a dump and this pickup seemed to be pretty new…
Trish sent Levi a sideways glance. One arm out, wrist hooked over the steering wheel. The other arm bent with the elbow resting on the door. He ran the side of his index finger along his lips.
Sure he was gorgeous, but she tried not to think of that. Instead she surreptitiously studied the ink that swirled up and down his arms, over his hands, up his fingers. She’d heard that tattooing yourself was addictive. Clearly if he was tattooed up and down his arms, hands, fingers, neck, and who knew where else, he was addicted. But what did all those swirls and loops mean to him?
“You gonna tell me about the kidney and lung?”
Trish jolted, almost forgetting that they really had things to discuss. “Oh.”
“Or you got something else on your mind?” He nodded to the clock on the dash. “We’ve got time.”
“What do they mean?” Trish blurted, gesturing to his arm.
“What? The tattoos?” He glanced at her, then turned his eyes to his forearm, down his wrist, then spread his fingers out so she could see down each individual finger. He wore rings, too, but he was tattooed to his fingernails. “They’re reminders.”
“Of what?”
“Of who I used to be.”
“Who is that?”
He tightened his hand on the steering wheel and with the other plowed his fingers through his hair. “Let’s just say you wouldn’t have wanted to know me way back when. Each one of these tattoos is a mistake I made, a reminder of what I’ve done so I never do it again.”
She swallowed. Did she really want to know what he used to do? It mustn’t have been legal, not if they were mistakes. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Maybe she shouldn’t know. But then… “Did you kill people?” she asked, without even thinking about it. The words flew past her lips and she almost squealed in embarrassment.
But Levi grinned. “No. I did punish them, though.”
“You were a theology professor,” she muttered.
“Yep. One that saw too much and one that wanted to make everything right.”
“But you didn’t kill.”
“Nope.”
Trish frowned. The whirls of black on his arms were dark, menacing, but they didn’t look like any kind of punishment. In fact, altogether, they appeared, in a way, beautiful. “So how do these make you remember?”
He tightened his hand on the steering wheel. “They just do.”
“But how? They’re just a design.”
“They aren’t just a design.”
“I guess I don’t understand.”
He blew out a breath. “I’ll show you.” He took his left hand and wiped it down his arm. That’s it. Just wiped his palm down his arm, starting from under his T-shirt sleeve down to his wrist. Such a simple move.
But Trish sat transfixed.
The whirls and loops coalesced into faces. Young and old. Beautiful and ugly. Snarling and smiling. She couldn’t take her eyes off his arm. Where had the faces come from? He’d just touched his arm. Wiped his palm over his skin. Was there makeup on the tattoos? To hide what they were?
Levi swiped his palm back up and the faces disappeared. Back to whirls and loops. Trish reached out and grabbed his bicep.
“How did you do that?”
When he didn’t answer, she squeezed tighter and looked up into those gorgeous eyes.
“How? How did that happen?”
“Why don’t you start telling me what’s wrong with your town? Then I’ll start spilling my secrets.”
Trish pulled her hand back as if badly burned. “I-I—”
“Yeah. Look, Trish, we’ve both got secrets. And we’ve got plenty of time to discuss them on the way to the ME’s office. I’ve shared. Now it’s your turn.”
Trish returned her gaze out the front windshield. Miles and miles of desert as far as the eye could see. There was no way out of this, she’d have to tell him. But for a while now, Trish felt like maybe she needed an outsider to help her make sense of this all. With the murders happening, she really needed to figure this out.
Maybe Levi was the one she needed. But who was he? Theology professor, her ass. And how did he turn those tattoos into faces? What did those faces mean? What had he done? Who was he?
She covertly looked over at him. He watched the road out the window, driving his massive pickup with ease. He might be here to steal her job. He might just be here to drive her out of town. She moved her gaze back out the window, again watching the desert go by. How many more bodies were out there?
“Trish,” he said softly.
When she didn’t answer, he leaned over and took her hand. She gazed down at where their fingers entwined and she felt tears come to her eyes. In that moment, she decided that he wasn’t there for any of that. He was there to help those people, those poor savagely murdered people, the same thing she wanted to do. She knew it, felt it in her detective’s gut. She could sense it about him. He wasn’t here to destroy her. He was here to help.
“I thought I could make a difference,” she whispered. She blinked back the tears because this was no time to cry. “I didn’t realize that no one wanted me to make a difference.”
He squeezed her hand.
Trish took a deep breath. “Something is wrong in Magnolia. Someone is wrong in Magnolia.” She blew out the deep breath and looked over at him. “That someone is killing people.”
*****
How hard it must have been for Trish to finally trust him enough to talk to him. To explain all of this to him. He watched her struggle, now looking for the words, not the strength or the courage. Finally she blew out a breath, her bangs fluttering.
“Okay, first you need to know why I’m here.”
“All right.”
“I grew up in Georgia. All I ever wanted was to be a cop. Homicide. I dreamed of it.”
She was turned to him and he saw her eyes glitter with the thought. “Dreamed of homicide?” he asked, cocking a brow.
“No!” she retorted, irritated. “Dreamed of helping people. Solving mysteries. Catching the bad guy.” She gazed out the windshield and sighed. “That’s all I ever wanted. To help. I became a cop and I finally made it to homicide. I finally thought I’d made it…” She looked down, played with the tie on her file folder. “There was a murder. It was bad. I mean, bad-bad. But it was odd, too. Things didn’t fit. Evidence, interviews, suspects. I was the lead investigator and everyone urged us to arrest someone. But I didn’t think the evidence was right. I just couldn’t pull the trigger.”
When she was silent, Levi filled in the blanks, the things she couldn’t say. She was a woman, a strong woman. That could frighten some. Emasculate others. He could even hear the arguments she would have had with those buffoons in Georgia.
“I refused to arrest the suspect. I didn’t think the evidence would hold up.” She snapped the tie on her file folder and looked out her window. “They replaced me as lead investigator and eventually railroaded me off the force altogether.” She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “My parents were upset. My dad was a cop, my mom was a lawyer. They asked why I didn’t just arrest the guy.”
“What happened to the case?”
She smirked. “They arrested the suspect a day after I walked out. While the prosecutors decided if the evidence would hold up in court, another murder occurred. They had to let him go. The guy I thought had done it, the guy I told them all along had done it, was arrested two weeks later.”
“He in prison?”
“For life,” she confirmed. “The chief came to see me. Asked me to come back. I refused. I’d already reached out and found Sheriff Grande. At the time, Mayor Jefferson was still alive. I thought I could relax here. I thought I could find a home here…”
“And now you have Mayor Elliott.”
“He’s an asshole,” Trish spat.
Levi chuckled. “No arguments there.”
“So the kidney and the lung.” She turned again, her hair swishing as her big blue eyes found his face. Her focus was laser-like. Her past was just that, her past. She moved on, put it behind her and moved the fuck on. Sure it had hurt, but she was here now and this case meant everything to her. He could see it in her face, hear it in her voice. Again he thought, hell of a detective.
“Yeah. Not on your wall,” he agreed.
“Right. Perfect reason for that. His name is Mayor Elliott.”
Levi frowned. “What does he have to do with it?”
“He knew about it.”
She might have thought that made sense to him, but he was lost. He raised his brows. “Uh, sure. That doesn’t help me—”
“It wasn’t on my wall, but he knew about it.”
Now Levi glanced at her. “What do you mean?”
Trish rolled her eyes at him. “Do I have to spell it out?”
“Apparently.”
The look she gave him was priceless, but she humored him. “I went out to the first crime scene. Came back with photos, evidence, all sorts of stuff. I’m going through it in my office, doing paperwork for evidence to send it off, that kind of thing. My wall isn’t even started at that point, but I did put up one picture, just one, of the victim. One 8x10 photo.”
She scrabbled through her file folder, pulling out picture after picture, replacing them and muttering to herself. Until finally…“This one.” She held it up so Levi could see it. “The mayor comes in, end of day, has a shouting match with the sheriff, then comes in my office. I’m bracing myself because I really don’t want to go through this crime scene with another person, but that’s not what he does. He walks right up to the photo. This photo,” she said while shaking it. “And says to me, ‘Is the body missing both kidneys?’” She stopped, her expression one of expectation. “He asked me if the body was missing both kidneys, Levi.”
“All right, all right, calm down.” Levi took the photo out of her hand and glanced at it while driving. “What the fuck?” he muttered. The mass in the picture could barely be considered as once being human. How anyone determined if an organ was missing, any organ, from that photo was ridiculous.
“Right?” Trish demanded.
He handed the photo back. “Let me get this straight. He didn’t come out to the crime scene…”
“Nope.”
“Did the sheriff show him or tell him anything?”
She snatched the photo out of his hand. “Nope. I asked. Besides,” she continued. “No one even knew that kidney was missing until after the autopsy.” She put the picture back in her folder. “All the innards were on the bottom and who even knows if that person came with two kidneys, you know what I’m saying? So how did he know?”
Levi ran a finger along his moustache. “And the lung? Did he know about the lung?”
She sighed. “Yes. After the second murder he sat in my office studying the picture and finally he said something like ‘We might be missing a lung.’” She squinted at Levi. “How would he know?”
Something stunk in Magnolia, of that Levi was sure. And it could very well be the mayor. Levi sighed. “Yeah, how would he know.” He paused, then glanced over at Trish, her face flushed and her eyes bright. “But then why am I here?”
“To put it to bed quickly? To jump on the Satanist bandwagon?” Trish dropped back in her seat, her head listing sideways to stare out at the passing scenery. “I don’t know. But trust me, I’m going to figure it out.”
*****
Colton tiptoed out of his bedroom, the sounds of his mother’s party having wound down about an hour before. He paused in the hallway and tried to judge if anyone in the living room was still awake. Purposely, he stepped on the floorboard that creaked, then waited for someone to notice. When no one did, he moved to the edge of the hallway and peeked around the corner.
His mother was passed out on the couch, her boyfriend passed out on the recliner. The television was on, a baseball game being played on mute. Curtains billowed out over the broken down recliner, catching on the boyfriend’s nose and blowing hot air into an even hotter room. Between himself and freedom was another man stretched out on the floor, his face smashed into the carpet, bloody drool pooling under him.
Colton winced.
Of course, he’d done this before. Snuck out of the house. Tiptoed past the men his mother brought home. It was just, at the young age of eleven, he was getting tired of it all.
Colton didn’t risk going back to his room for anything, or even running to the bathroom. His bladder could wait until he got to the gas station. He’d stuffed a twenty dollar bill into his back pocket before he’d left his room and a ten was hidden in his shoe. The old man at the gas station wouldn’t let him use the bathroom if he didn’t buy something.
Stealthily, he slid around the corner of the wall, into the living room. Luckily he and his mother had little in the way of furniture, so the couch, recliner, and coffee table were it and they weren’t in his way. Not like the man on the floor was.
Colton decided he could walk across the coffee table, jump off the other side, and make it to the door. But then he caught sight of the mess on the table and chose not to walk through the broken hypodermic needle, the lingering rocks of drugs, the empty baggies, or the drips of blood.
Only one way, then.
He stepped softly, thoughtfully. He planned out his steps before he even took them, careful to not dislodge a piece of the man’s dirty hair. The heels of his sneakers never touched the ground and he moved quickly. Over one arm, then the next, past the discarded syringe and what looked like vomit. His heart beat against his ribs, but he was almost home free—
Hands grabbed him around the ankles and Colton stuttered to a stop. He pitched forward, landing awkwardly on his right side. Pain skidded up his arm and he tried not to whimper. But hey, he was eleven.
The hands dragged him closer and Colton tried to scramble away. He managed to kick out and felt his foot connect with the guy who’d been passed out only moments ago.
“Ow, you little fucker!”
Colton struggled fiercely, even with the pain in his arm, but the man hooked a hand in his jeans waistband and dragged him backward. Colton couldn’t stop the movement and there was nothing to hang onto. The guy was kneeling now, his bloody drool staining his scraggly beard.
“Stop fighting, you shit,” the guy muttered. He cuffed Colton upside the head, hard enough that Colton’s ear started to ring.
He put a hand to his ear and the man took advantage of the moment Colton used to protect his ear. The man yanked him back, his body jarring hard against the floor. Then the man started digging through Colton’s pockets.
“Your ma says you always got money.”
Colton attempted to pull away, but the man’s grip was too strong. He looked over his shoulder at his mother, still out. But she wouldn’t help him anyway, would she? When the man’s hand fumbled into Colton’s back pocket and found the bent, folded twenty dollar bill, he crowed in triumph.
“Yep! The bitch was right!” He shoved Colton to the side.
The little boy scrambled away before the guy could look anywhere else. This wasn’t the first time he’d been robbed by one of his mother’s men. It probably wouldn’t be the last. That’s why he always kept money in his shoe. He’d learned.
Now Colton watched the man scrabble to his feet. He listed to the side, coming down off his high. Colton slid away from him as the man stumbled past him to the door, going to look for more drugs with his stolen money.
Colton looked over at his mother again. Still passed out. The hot wind ruffled over her and Colton glanced away as the pain inside of his little boy chest began to ache. He painfully got to his feet and went to the door, still open from when the thief left. He peeked out, and seeing nothing, hightailed his way to where he’d hidden his bike.
He didn’t bother to shut the door behind him.