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Prologue
1 Monday Morning P arking behind the house, I crawled out of the battered SUV, slung my canvas bag of forensic nursing supplies over a shoulder and blinked into the early morning light. Jas ran from the house and jogged over to me. Bending, she kissed me once on the forehead. “Bye, little mama. I haven’t fed the dogs.” “You never feed the dogs anymore,” I grumbled, feeling the age difference as she loped to her truck, looking lithe and nimble. And skinny in her size-five jeans. Waggling her fingers at me through the driver window, she gunned the motor of her new little GMC truck and spun out of the drive, heading to early class at the University of South Carolina. “And good morning to you, too. How was Sunday night at the hospital, Mama? It was lovely, Jasmine. Thank you for asking,” I said to the trail of dust in her wake. Thinking I was talking to them, Big Dog, Cheeks and Cherry yapped at my hips, thighs and knees according to their height, demanding attention, which I absently gave
2 I held on to the saddle horn as Cheeks walked west, the reins twisted in my right hand. The saddle was an old western cutting saddle Jas had found at a sale when she’d started badgering me to learn to ride. The high cantle held my hips securely, the horn keeping me upright and in place when I wanted to slide left or right. I had never really understood how riders managed to stay on a flat English saddle. I was graceless on my own two feet, and any sense of balance I had on the ground was lost when perched up high. If I could have convinced someone to tie me in place on horseback, I’d have done it. Cheeks pulled hard against the leash in a straight line west until we were over the first low hill, and then he seemed to have a problem. He moved left and right and back again, ignoring the hooves of the huge horse, so intent on his task that Mabel snorted and stomped in warning. “Easy, girl.” I pulled back on the reins, bringing Mabel to a halt. With my other hand, I gave Cheeks more leas
3 I shared more Fig Newtons with Cheeks—not the best food for a dog, but not the worst, either—took the animals to the creek for water, and used the quiet time to compose myself before moving horse and dog to the edge of the woods near the sandy depression. Once there, Cheeks and Mabel and I remained in the shade of the trees and waited for law enforcement. Cheeks had developed a bad limp and wouldn’t make it back to the barn on his own four feet. His medication was in the kitchen, too far away to do him any good, and I could tell he was in pain. Not much of a reward for a job well done. “There’s a price to be paid for every good deed, sweet Cheeks,” I said, stroking the hound. “You find a body, you get aching joints. And I’ll bet you the cops are going to be mad at us for finding the body in the first place.” Cheeks just panted in the rising warmth, his huge tongue hanging out one side of his mouth. In the distance, I heard the unmistakable sound of engines. Standing, I tied the dog o
4 I stayed behind the two old oaks when we arrived; Jim stood at the edge of the grave site only a few feet away, hands on his hips while cops ran crime-scene tape from tree to tree at the sheriff’s direction. Though the scene was far from pristine, Jim obviously wasn’t going to add tracks or evidence to it until the photos were finished. Skye and Steven, another deputy, set up cameras and began to take digital and 35mm shots. Steven was giant, an African American with a shaved head and biceps as big as my thighs. Well, almost as big as my thighs. “Ramsey?” Skye said almost instantly. “Headstones. I count three, lying flat.” “Where?” he demanded. “With this marker as six, we got one at two o’clock, one between ten and eleven, and a broken stone that looks as if it’s been moved recently at five and eight.” I looked where she pointed, my gut tightening. “Got it. Keep your eyes open for any other signs of grave markers,” Jim said. “Ash says this is nearly three hundred years old. A plot l
5 H e entered the mega-store, whistling Vivaldi. The notes were classic and quick, spare and tripping. A good omen for today’s business. He trailed through the grocery aisles, buying things she liked. Blueberry yogurt, bagels, soft cheese in a wheel, pears, caramels, frozen pizza. Because he had to keep her healthy, he added baby spinach—organic, of course—and tomatoes, apples. Big, red, seedless grapes. For himself, he tossed in a bag of shrimp and a couple of thick steaks, baking potatoes. Sour cream. A bottle of merlot, an underappreciated label but a very good year. Surprising to find in a superstore. Dawdling, enjoying himself, he pushed the buggy through the clothing section, picking up a pair of jeans, a few T-shirts in vibrant pinks and purples. Satiny nightclothes. The ones in her room were getting worn. He wasn’t sure what underwear size she had worn, so he added three packets in different sizes, each containing several pairs. Socks. There were athletic socks with pink stripe
6 H e heard a soft noise above him, a scraping sound like a shoe on wood flooring. Quietly, he locked all the doors, pocketed the key and went up the steps. On the way, he lifted a hammer, tested its heft and balance. Just in case. Not that he expected it to be a trespasser. At the top of the stairs, he paused and turned off the basement lights, the door behind him open. The only light downstairs now came from the window into the pink room. It cast a soft glow in the hallway. From the kitchen he heard off-key humming, familiar, congenial. Still silent, he set the hammer on the step and carefully stood, locking the door behind him. Again he pocketed the key. Pasting a smile on his face, he went to the kitchen. After Special Agent Julie Schwartz left, I stood at the kitchen sink and washed dishes by hand. Neither of us had eaten all day, so I had whipped up cheese omelets with bacon, and we’d eaten while she’d questioned me. The meal obviously wasn’t by the book, but we both had wanted
7 Tuesday B y noon I had found my way through horrid traffic to the South Carolina FBI field office. Luckily, I discovered a parking spot close by, not that easy in a metropolitan area that was growing so congested. The inner city had been designed with gracious living and farming in mind, rather than good use of government resources, and many of its streets were narrow and twisting. And I was sure its belt loop and interchanges had been designed by a caffeine-charged five-year-old with a box of crayons. Inside the entrance, my ID was carefully checked, twice, my photo compared to my face, and my reason for coming to feeb headquarters questioned by a guard with the personality of a block of stone. Finally I was given a name badge with a security locator device attached so I couldn’t get lost or misplaced, and directed to a room on the second floor. I passed large rooms, some full of frenetic activity and ringing phones, and offices with closed doors. I heard a variety of languages, tho
8 “O pen the blue folder,” Jim said later, “and let’s go over the evidence we have so far on yesterday’s case. We have an ID by dental records as of eleven this morning. Her name is Lorianne Porter, she was twelve years old, abducted from a schoolyard after school where she was playing with friends. A man had been watching them from his car. There was an MVA across the street and the girls ran to see. Later, they found Porter was missing. None of the girls remember what the man watching them looked like or what color the car was. Some of them thought he might have been bearded.” I watched as my fingers reached out and opened the blue folder. This was my victim. The one found in my family plot. She stared up at me, artless and vibrant, a mischievous expression on her face. “—and so I’ll turn it over to Ashlee Davenport to tell us how she discovered the shoe and subsequently the body of the second vic.” Me? Jim wanted me to…? How nice of him to share that information with me ahead of tim
9 M acon Chadwick was from both Aunt Mosetta’s side and Nana’s side of my family. He was half brother to my first cousin, Wallace Chadwick, which made him a…half cousin? All this convoluted genealogy gave Macon astonishingly beautiful skin tone—chocolate and milk, heavy on the chocolate—hair in soft locks, lashes long and curling over very dark green eyes. A one-hundred-percent gorgeous man. Wearing a hand-tailored black suit, Macon pushed in the door of observation room 27. “They treating you all right, cousin?” he asked, his dark eyes seeming a deeper green in the light of the barred window. I nodded as he set a sweating Diet Coke beside me and opened his briefcase on the table. “You need anything?” I popped the top on the can and swallowed deeply. The fizz roared against my tissues on the way down, just the way a good cold Coke is supposed to. “Not anymore. Thank you for coming.” “Sorry you had to wait. I was in court,” he said, his deep voice bouncing off the walls of the narrow ro
10 H e watched the girls playing, the soccer ball arcing off an elbow. The movement was effortless, clean, the goalie rejecting the attempted point with ease. His daughter caught the ball and pivoted, sending it back to the other end of the field with a single kick, the team instantly repositioning for attack. She was grace and beauty, her dark hair flying. Of course, the hair was a problem. He’d have to dye it back blond. The dark hair was her mother’s fault. Had to be. He would never have allowed her to darken her hair. As he waited for the end of the game, he sketched words and phrases on a legal pad propped on a small portable writing desk, finding a meter and rhythm as lyrical as the girl flying on the sporting field. It was coming quickly this time, the words flowing faster. Perhaps this was the one. Yes. This one. When inspiration waned, he stopped and watched his daughter. Another thought drew him back to the pad. A referee’s whistle sliced the air. He turned up the CD player,
11 I called the number on the cell’s readout to let the hospital know I was on my way and opened the car door. Steven had added enough quarters to the meter so that I actually wasted half an hour of parking time as I raced away. Well, crawled away, through rush-hour traffic toward I-77 and the brand new trauma center where I worked, Carolina HealthCom. Traffic was bumper to bumper, all lanes stopped in the quickly falling dusk. I looked at my watch. I’d be late to the call. I had a yellow emergency light perched atop my car to speed me past most obstructions, but it was pretty useless against several thousand cars all heading in different directions on the same freeway system. I craned my head out the car window and tried to see around the eighteen-wheeler ahead. I wondered if I could blame the FBI for my tardy appearance. Probably not. Frustrated, I turned on a National Public Radio station and tried to relax. It took me forty-three minutes to get to the Emergency Department. I made i
12 I pointed at Emma and got in the first volley. “This is a hospital. My patient has to go to surgery as soon as a surgeon gets here. She’s bleeding. She will not be harassed, do you understand?” Behind me, Maggie took up position between the door and Mari, her arms crossed. “What the hell are you doing here.” It wasn’t a question. “My job as a forensic nurse.” “Get her out of the way,” Emma ordered. “I don’t think so.” Emma turned blazing eyes to Jim Ramsey. He held up a hand. “You wanted her on the task force because of her skills in nursing for just this reason. In case we got a live one. Well, we got a live one.” “And I have HIPAA laws to deal with. Federal laws you would have to arrest me over if I broke them,” I said, my voice hard, but my eyes trying to tell them what they needed to know. “And you didn’t give me permission to take the red folder.” Jim caught on. Turning to Julie, he pulled a red folder out of a stack of paperwork under her arm. I took it and opened the folder t
13 I hadn’t planned for the girls—fourth cousins and best friends—to join me in the bathroom, hadn’t planned on the evening becoming a pj party, but it did. Two young women, one pale-skinned, one cocoa-skinned, blew into the master bath, informing me there were more friends on the way. “Class don’t start till noon tomorrow and we want to partay,” my daughter said. I turned on the jets again for another water-obscuring four-second cycle. “Mamash!” Topaz shouted over the jets’ roar as she draped herself across my tub and hugged my bare shoulders. “That bubble bath smell’s chou!” “And that’s good?” “The best!” “Move over, girl. Hey, Mama,” Jas said and hugged me, too. “If you two fall in, this tub will overflow, and I will not be the one to mop it up,” I threatened. I added bubble bath and turned on the jets one last time to preserve my privacy. The girls laughed at my modesty, high on life, college, youth and the latest gossip. Jas and Paz, friends for life. And, in the Dawkins County wa
14 T he girls left me alone, finally closing the bathroom door on the way out to answer the doorbell. The other girls were here for the partay, the music changing to some whiny singer crooning in a minor key, the volume going up a notch. I could smell fresh pizza. I turned on the jets again and lay my head against the pillow. My muscles again began to relax. It had been a long and exhausting couple of days. I nearly dozed off in the tub, waking with a jerk when the door opened. Jasmine stuck in her head, a big smile on her face. “What?” I asked. “You better get out of that tub. You’re famous.” “Huh?” I turned off the jets and pulled myself from the water, wrapping a huge towel around me. It draped to my calves, which was a good thing as the bathroom filled up with girls, all laughing and smelling of pizza and Clinique Happy and the newest J Lo scent. Two of the girls were chanting, arms making the circular motion of a cheer or maybe a rap singer’s backup dancers. “She famous. She famou
15 Wednesday Morning J as landed on the bed, waking me just before seven with a blare of the television. “Wake up, Mama. Jim’s on TV.” I rolled over and shoved the hair out of my mouth and face. A sexy sleeper, I’m not. I rubbed my eyes and focused on the set in the armoire across from the foot of the bed. I expected to see a press release, Jim giving a statement. Instead I saw aerial footage of cops in SWAT gear and plainclothes cops in vests, cars with blue lights flashing, all surrounding a small house in the pale light of dawn. Jas slid from the bed and pointed to a tiny figure in the corner of the screen, kneeling in weeds, protected behind an old Jeep on cement blocks. My heart leaped into my throat. It was Jim. He held a long-barreled gun across the hood, his head bare in the early light. “Don’t cops wear protective headgear?” I said, more insult than question. Idiots. “They’ve been in a standoff for half an hour in Blythewood,” Jas said, climbing back into the bed with me. “Whe
16 I was halfway home before I calmed down enough to think about the consequences of striking a police officer. A federal cop. Can I be any more stupid? My phone rang, and when I saw Jim’s number, I considered not answering. Instead I flipped the phone open and said, “I’m sorry I slapped an FBI agent. Are you pressing charges?” “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “You gonna forgive me for being an ass?” All the tension drained out of me and I eased my foot off the accelerator. I was hitting eighty, moving with the northbound traffic but still traveling faster than I liked, and faster than my old Ford wanted to go. “Maybe,” I said. “If you know what you were an ass about and this isn’t just a ‘placate the little woman’ ploy.” “I invited you on a date, suggested a fast-food place instead of a restaurant more suited to your refined elegance, showed up late, somehow made you pay and questioned the integrity of your family, obviously someone you like.” He had it all down pat. Smart man. “Wicked
17 T he kid was stripped to his Skivvies and was so smeared with blood, it looked as if he’d been finger-painted in bright red by a dozen preschoolers. He was receiving chest compressions and being bagged with oxygen through a tube into his bronchial tubes. The paramedics wore PPEs—personal protective equipment—but large patches of bloody skin showed on both, where the blue and white plastic and cloth had been shoved aside in the heat of the moment. I sucked down the final swig of a Diet Coke, washed my hands with fast-drying alcohol and slid into a trauma gown and gloves. The kid was going to need more IVs and a lot of luck. I spotted what might have been a vein—if the kid had had any blood to fill it—on the left arm, proximal to the one in his hand, and reached for an IV kit. Dr. Christopher took one look at the patient and turned him over to a general surgeon standing nearby. “He’s all yours, Will.” “Gee, thanks,” the surgeon said. “Why didn’t I leave when my wife called me an hour
18 Thursday I was home by 8:00 a.m., every bone in my body aching. Hungry dogs met me at the door of the SUV, and I dumped a bag of food into their bowls, not worried about the amount they each should get. I was just too tired to care. Inside, I relocked the doors and stuck my head in the rec room. Music played at a decent volume as Jasmine and Topaz snoozed on the couch. It looked as if they had fallen asleep studying. They raised their heads when I rapped on the wall. “Don’t be late to class.” They grumbled and yawned, but at least they were awake. I waved and went back to the kitchen, where I tore a head of lettuce into a salad bowl and added raw veggies. Along with a glass of wine, I carried it upstairs. For someone who had once hated baths, eating in the tub was becoming a habit. And a glass of wine for breakfast sounded just dandy. As I soaked, I watched the news on a little five-inch TV. Additional charges had been filed against the man who had abducted Mari. Statutory rape char
19 T hey were bent over Jasmine’s open laptop. “The Muses were the daughters of Zeus,” Jas said, her voice taking on a tone of teacher to student. My lips softened into a smile, but Jim was too tightly focused on the laptop to notice. “The number of Muses varied, but usually there were nine—Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania.” “I’ll never be able to pronounce all that,” Jim murmured. I curled onto the couch and watched Jim with my daughter. The sight brought a bittersweet sadness close to the surface. Jack should have been the one leaning over her, encouraging her, teasing her. Jack, who had died. And now Jim, who…I trusted him. It was a strange feeling. “Apollo became their leader in Delphi and Parnassus, which were their favorite places,” Jas said. “Man, I should have taken that course with you,” Paz said. “Does my cousin get a reward for this?” Jasmine laughed abruptly and turned to Jim. “Do I?” “I don’t know,” Jim said, nudging Jas
20 Friday Morning K nocking woke me. I stumbled to the back door to find Nana standing there with a shovel in one hand, a pair of gloves in the other, and dressed in bib overalls. She scowled at my state of dishabille, and said, “I’ve been up and working for over five hours. You still in bed?” I yawned and leaned into the doorjamb, smelling flowers, coffee, clean-turned earth and dog. Big Dog bumped my hip, long-haired tail wagging. The coffee scent was from behind me and I glanced over at the ancient Mr. Coffee. “We were up till two-something solving murders. Want to hear about it over coffee?” “What I want is someone to watch the wetbacks in the field on Tyler Road,” she said, propping the shovel and following me inside. “They do okay on the hay yesterday?” “You don’t hire illegal aliens, Nana, and wetback is not PC. They did fine.” I poured two mugs and passed her one. Nana drank it black—“Straight up, just the way I like my whiskey,” as she put it. I added both cream and sugar to m
21 “Y our mother is not someone you can trust. You must not expect her to help you. She’s an evil woman who wanted to take you away from me. She tried. She tried.” He nodded slowly. The girl in the corner stared at him with huge eyes. Her tae kwon do uniform was wrinkled and dirty. Her hair hung in straggles, and he wanted to brush it back and up, securing it with combs, but it was too soon. He had to win her over first. She had put up a fight, but he had been prepared this time, and the duct tape had been perfect for holding her still. No wonder maintenance and construction types praised it so highly. But he would have a hard time getting it off her favorite blanket. The velour held tightly to the sticky tape. “You’re that crazy man the TV has been talking about,” she said. He smiled gently. They were always this way, but it would be harder now, he knew, with all the media attention. He had expected that. “I’m your father. The courts and your mother have been trying to keep us apart.
22 Saturday B y 7:27 a.m., I was on the way home, drained by more than just the hours, the codes, the misery and the blood from the shooting that had come in at 5:05. A young father, who had lost his job, his family and his hope, had shot his young son, his ex-wife and himself. We’d worked for thirty minutes to save the child, before turning him over to the OR crew, thinking him stabilized, believing him savable. The seven-year-old boy had died on the table at 6:18. Any sense of accomplishment and hope I had died with him. When Jas called me, I was pulling out of the employee lot, tears streaming down my face. My voice was calm when I answered, however, and Jas never knew that I was upset. Which was the way I wanted it. I never wanted any of the darkness I faced day in and day out to taint my baby. Jas was excited—hyped, she called it—her words and sentences running over each other in her enthusiasm. “You can’t tell anyone, ’cause they’ll get in trouble, but we found another site under
23 J im knew all about Poulous. The curator had already been questioned, in his home, by police. Jas was deflated at the news, and sat back, arms crossed tightly, her legs twisted and wrapped around each other in an impossible position only a teenager or a yogi could attain. She stared at me with mutinous eyes, telling me without words that the police had missed something. Knowing my daughter, I had to call her off or she would hunt the curator down and question him herself. So I said into the phone, “Jim, there’s something else. Paz hacked into the Web site with the Muses and found another Web site beneath that one.” The girls did that identical eye-roll thing. “Or inside it or beside it or something.” Jas held out her hand for the phone and I shook my head. “It shows additional photos.” “Yeah?” Jim said, sounding interested and amused. “You know those girls are going to cause you major trouble, don’t you?” “Going to? One headache after another,” I agreed. “On the new Web site, there
24 Monday A fter a Sunday off, when I missed church and spent the time catching up on sleep, I was back at work, finishing up a shift with Lynnie Bee. We were sharing cups of caffeine—she had coffee; I had hot tea—in the office. Lynnie sniggered into her cup. “I can’t believe they said that.” “They did.” I raised my pitch into Jas’s higher range, imitating our conversation. “‘But Mama, they weren’t boy boys, they were geek boys—and not cool geeks who might become rich computer geniuses someday. They were gamer boys.’” Lynnie laughed. “Sounds like some of the guys I used to date.” “I know. Me, too.” I lifted my teacup to Lynnie and we touched rims. “In Jas and Paz’s way of thinking, they weren’t breaking the major number-one rule about having boys stay over at night because they were geeks, not boys. I reminded them the geek boys had penises. I thought they were going to die, right there in the rec room.” “Well, Mamash shouldn’t use such foul language.” “We both know they’ve said worse.
25 I couldn’t drive, bandaged as I was, so Jim put me in the passenger seat of my vehicle and drove me home, Julie following in his Crown Vic. Though I was hurting, I felt amazingly good. I didn’t know if it was the aftereffects of the attack or being with Jim. Okay, maybe I did know, but I wasn’t ready to look at that yet. I rode the miles with my hand in his, knowing I was safe, my daughter was safe, and I could, at least for a moment, relax and close my eyes. The tires hummed on the interstate and soft music played on the radio. Some small, romantic part of me thought it was wonderful. Partway there, the night pressing against the windows like a living thing, Jim said, “You awake?” I nodded sleepily. “He’s decompensating. He’s falling apart. Now he’ll start making mistakes. Now we’ll catch him.” His tone held something, some chaotic, shadowed quality that brought me fully awake. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “But will you catch him before he kills that last little girl? The diabetic?” I felt J
26 A weight landed on me, trapping my hands between us. Trapping me under the black cloth. Over the concussive deafness, I heart grunts and sobbing. “You shot me. You shot me.” Time seemed to slow with the words, each bright and sharp like shattered crystal. I knew the voice. I was sure I knew the voice. Through the covering of the black cloth, I struggled to get the gun up. “Get away from me,” I panted, nausea rising in my throat. “Get off me.” He rolled toward the steering wheel and away. Collapsing down and back, toward the ground. His body pulled the cloth with him. It slid from me, measured and surreal. Like stop-action photography. It skimmed along my body, pulling my hair in a static charge as light found me. Exposing my shirt, my bandaged hands holding the gun, my slacks. His body slithered to the ground, taking one of my shoes, twisting my leg. I raised up, pulling my legs into the cab to uncertain safety, free. My attacker was propped on the street, sprawled half-under my SUV
27 B y 7:00 a.m., I stood in the doorway of the small room with the administrator of Sunnyvale Acres, a full care facility for the disabled. The cops stood a few feet behind me and the feebs were across the hall at my request, to give me space and a moment with my charge. The private room was painted a pale pink, with pink linens and drapes, and a soft pink-and-peach plaid chair in the corner. The colors should have jarred but they didn’t, instead making the room warm and inviting and girlish. A soft light burned beside the bed, and sunlight, weak and dull this early, came through the window, revealing flowers planted just beyond. Dolls, books and stuffed animals were on shelves against the walls. I instantly noticed the preponderance of dancing dolls of all kinds, from large porcelain dolls swathed in silk, some standing en pointe, to small dancing dolls dressed as if to perform Swan Lake. Grief knots held back the drapery. All over the walls hung framed photographs and cards. When I
28 W e followed the rambling trail along a winding, rain-gutted course, Jim banging his head once on the cab roof when the truck hit a particularly deep dip. After ten minutes of jouncing and bouncing, I pointed to the left through the trees. “There,” I said. Jim stopped the truck quickly, skidding over a patch of bare, potholed ground. Up a slight incline, about a hundred and fifty yards away, was a shack, but only by the most slim definition. The hut had been built of scraps, things that might be left over from a construction site. There was rusted sheet metal, plywood that had separated and buckled, two old windows with the panes busted out, sheets of rippled fiberglass and tar paper on the roof. Everything had been camo painted to blend in with the environment. Out front, half-hidden by the dry and spring vegetation, was a small red car. If it had belonged to a serious hunter, the vehicle would have been camo painted, too, so the car belonged to someone else. Jim flipped open his c
29 “L ynnie?” “Get inside,” she said, her voice sounding bruised and breathless and cold. I backed away and she followed. With the gun, she waved me to the table and said, “Sit.” I did, and she shoved the chair beside mine out, and eased down into it. She was filthy, her face smeared with grime and dried gore. She stank of sweat and old wounds. She was wearing jeans, a man’s button-down shirt and dirty sneakers, all crusted with blood. There was a bullet hole in her jeans’ right lower leg and in her shirt, upper chest, near the collarbone. Blood stained her clothes. Two GSWs. At least. It all fell into place. “It was you, today, wasn’t it?” I asked. When she didn’t answer, I said, “You and Christopher?” She laughed, the sound half agony, half disbelieving. “I tried to get you to date him, but I fell for him myself.” “He was kidnapping little girls,” I said, stunned. “Little girls.” “Not like that,” she said, resting an elbow on the table so she could square the gun on me. The wound in
Epilogue
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