Chapter 19 Eddie
Eddie
Red Hands has turned the department into feeding time at a zoo.
Everyone wants a piece of the action—detectives who usually work property theft, the lab techs who typically process DUI blood samples, even the desk sergeant who hasn’t left his chair in fifteen years. All of them huddle around the whiteboard.
I hang back, nursing coffee that tastes like motor oil. Seriously, how hard is it to get a good cup of coffee anymore?
The victim from Sera Vale’s basement—Melissa Holloway, twenty-six, reported missing three weeks ago—smiles from her photo. Her hand is slightly raised, like she’s waving hello to the man who would eventually murder her and paint her nails bloodred.
I can’t stop thinking about how Sera looked standing over that corpse in her basement. Not shocked. Not horrified. Not even disturbed. Just…slightly annoyed, maybe. Like finding a dead woman was an inconvenience rather than a trauma.
I’ve seen grown men—hardened cops with twenty years on the force—weep over strangers’ bodies. But she didn’t even blink. And that means something.
It means she’s either seen worse or done worse.
“Crowe!”
Sheriff Vincent’s voice cuts through the station chatter. He’s standing in the hallway outside his office, his face thunderous. When our eyes meet, he jerks his head in a clear command that says, Heel, boy.
I follow him into his office. He shuts the door with more force than necessary, the blinds rattling against the glass, then he reaches behind his desk and produces a plastic shopping bag. He thrusts it into my hands.
“Test this,” he orders. “Right fucking now. I have to go speak to the press again about this Red Hands nonsense.”
I peer inside the bag and—Jesus Christ—it’s shit. A literal pile of coiled turds.
“Sheriff…?”
“Someone’s leaving these on my porch. On my driveway. Lighting them on fire so I have to put them out.” His face contorts with rage. “I want a name.”
I struggle to keep my expression neutral. Some poor bastard is literally leaving flaming bags of shit for the sheriff to stomp out. It’s juvenile, petty, and absolutely hilarious.
“Uh…all right,” I manage.
“They think they can mock me.” Vincent’s voice drops, his fury turning glacial. “I want to know whose hands touched this. Down to the cell. Down to the breath. I want their name so I can teach them what it costs to spit on Vincent Harrow.”
His intensity is disproportionate. It’s shit, not a bomb. But I’ve seen this before—Vincent can’t stand being disrespected. His pride isn’t just wounded; it’s hemorrhaging.
“I’ll get it to the lab,” I say, already mentally composing the awkward conversation I’ll have with our long-suffering lab tech, Marla.
“Priority,” Vincent adds. “Above the Red Hands case.”
Since when does shit override a serial killer?
I leave with my fragrant package, contemplating what kind of person would dare antagonize Sheriff Vincent Harrow with something so childishly provocative. Someone with nothing to lose, maybe. Or someone playing a very dangerous game.
***
“You want me to do what?” Marla stares at me over her glasses, her expression oscillating between disgust and disbelief.
“DNA test. Shit. Sheriff’s orders.”
“And this takes precedence over a serial-killer case because…?”
“Because Vincent has priorities that are different than everyone else’s.” I lower my voice. “Look, just run it, okay? See if you can pull any human DNA—skin cells, anything that might identify who handled it.”
Marla sighs dramatically. “Fine. But you owe me. Like, fancy coffee and actual pastries from that place downtown, not the vending machine crap.”
“Deal.”
I spend the rest of the morning interviewing Melissa Holloway’s roommate, who insists Melissa never mentioned feeling threatened or stalked.
She just disappeared after her shift at the Daisy Chain Café.
No warning. No signs of a struggle in her apartment.
Just gone, until she reappeared in Sera’s basement.
After that, I swing by the Gas N’ Go to question Rick, but he’s not there. He's not anywhere, which doesn't exactly help him look innocent.
When I return to the station, Marla waves me over to her lab.
“Your poop results,” she says with mock solemnity, handing me a folder.
“It’s mostly canine DNA, consistent with several different types of dogs.
Mutt, mostly. But”—she points to a highlighted section of the report—“I did recover trace amounts of human epithelial cells. Skin cells, shed while handling the…evidence.”
“Do we have a match?”
“Actually, yes.” She looks almost surprised. “The profile came back with a hit in the system. Penelope Seskeny.”
The name means nothing to me.
“Who’s that?”
Marla shrugs. “Don’t know. Apparently has priors somewhere, enough to be in the database. You can look her up on your own. I’ve wasted enough time on shit.”
I take the folder to my desk and pull up the name in our system. The screen flickers, and a mugshot appears.
My heart slams against my ribs.
The woman in the photo is younger, slimmer, with blonde hair and a sharper jawline, but the eyes—those sad blue eyes that seem to look straight through you—are unmistakable.
Penelope Seskeny is Sera Vale.
I click through her record. Arrested when she was sixteen in Kansas City, Kansas, for burglary at a mall. Not much else on file, other than a few parking tickets.
I stare at her picture again. Her face is fuller now, she’s put on weight, her hair is dyed black instead of blonde, and she wears heavier makeup—but if I squint, it’s her.
My mind races, replaying our conversations, her flat expression at the crime scene, her directness about Rick when I spoke to her at her house… Who the hell is this woman, and what game is she playing?
I dig deeper, pulling strings with contacts in Kansas City to access more records. And then I find it: a police report, filed by Penelope Seskeny against—
I blink. Read the name again and again. Vincent Harrow. Sheriff Vincent Harrow himself.
The incident happened over five years ago. Rape and battery.
My stomach clenches as I read through the details. She was a librarian at the Kansas City Public Library. He was in town for a friend’s wedding. They happened to be at the same bar.
What followed sounds like a night of hell.
The photos attached to the report show horrid bruises in the shape of fingerprints on her thighs, her throat, her wrists. Cigar burns on her back. Lacerations from a belt. Evidence of sexual trauma so severe she required surgery.
She filed charges, and the case went all the way to court with a final verdict of not guilty due to lack of evidence.
This was before my time here in Wichita, but still, how did I not hear about this before now?
The ice in my veins turns to fire, and suddenly I feel like vomiting. This is why she’s here. This is why she’s leaving flaming bags of dog shit on Vincent’s porch. This isn’t about finding peace in a small city like she’d told me.
It’s about revenge.
***
“Did you find out who it is?”
Vincent’s text comes at 7:30 the next morning, and I’ve been avoiding him ever since. He’s been in a foul mood all day, snapping at deputies, making the coffee girl cry, kicking a chair across the break room when someone used the last of the creamer.
Because people are accusing him of not doing enough to capture Red Hands? Or because dog shit has shattered his ego?
While I stare at his text, I sit very still, listening to my heart betray me with every beat. I should tell him. It’s my job. He’s my boss. He’s the law in this town.
But he’s also a monster who tortured and raped a woman and got away with it. A monster now hunting the woman he traumatized because she had the audacity to leave burning shit on his doorstep.
I have no reason to believe he didn’t do it. No justifiable reason can explain why Sera—Penelope—relived her trauma over and over all the way to the end of a trial if she wasn’t absolutely, one hundred percent certain who did it.
In these kinds of cases, I believe women. To doubt them about something like this… It’s unfathomable to me.
Instead of texting him back, I look up the number Sera called the station from yesterday about the body in her basement and then type out a message:
We need to talk. Now. – Detective Eddie
Then I answer the sheriff:
Just dog shit. Maybe you should get a Ring doorbell with a camera?
I immediately delete that second part, then I hover my thumb over the send button.
If I help Sera, if I lie to Sheriff Harrow, I’m betraying my badge, my career, everything I’ve worked for. If I don’t, I’m betraying something more fundamental—the reason I became a cop in the first place. To protect people from predators like Vincent Harrow.
I press send.