Chapter 27 Trace Evidence
Trace Evidence
I couldn’t sleep, curled in Nick’s arms, sandwiched between him and Gibby. All was quiet, perfectly still. I listened to the dog snore and felt Nick’s breath tickle the back of my neck.
Things were changing. I could feel it. Perhaps all the havoc with this case was a sign from the universe for me to get the hell out of Dodge.
We hadn’t talked about it any further, about Nick moving to the city and me following him.
I thought we had time. I thought for a moment about what would happen if we went beyond the city…
What would happen if we moved west, to land where the sky stretched from horizon to horizon? What if we went to the ocean?
There was part of me that couldn’t do that. At least not until I made peace with this place.
I slithered out from between Nick and Gibby, slipped on my shoes, and stepped noiselessly outside. I walked to the back garden, where the fox was waiting for me among the wilted lettuce and the sunburned tomatoes.
Sinoe watched me with shining eyes.
I wanted to tell her about how I’d fucked up with her mom, how I’d let things get so bad. How I had nothing left and I was sorry. So sorry.
But she was not here for that. She turned and trotted off to the forest.
I followed.
Fireflies hung low, gathering close to the ground. I followed the fox, sweeping through Virginia creeper and past black raspberries. I could feel my pulse, slow and steady; for a moment, I was thinking of nothing. Not of my failures or the future, just tracking with the fox.
Hunting.
Green washed over my vision like an aurora. I remembered hunting with my mom.
We slipped through the forest, following a light in the distance. Not fireflies this time, but headlights. Headlights shouldn’t be this deep in the forest.
We crept up on the man who was our quarry.
We’d been tracking his movements for weeks, the man and his Jeep filled with barrels of sickly sweet chemicals that killed everything they touched.
We’d come to know his tire tracks, how they crossed the two-lane road into the forest at one of two access points.
He always came on Monday and Wednesday nights, after midnight, when the moon approached the horizon.
There was no moon tonight. The forest was black and looming, thick and teeming with anger.
We crouched behind honeysuckle, watching as he rolled from the back of the Jeep big drums that hit the ground with a bang.
He shoved one, two, three, four, five drums to the forest floor.
One rolled within ten feet of our hiding place, but I remained frozen, watching.
Mom was still and silent, her pupils dilated large and black like a cat’s.
Now our quarry was busy rolling the drums to a spot a little distance from the Jeep.
My mom slipped to the driver’s side of the Jeep. She grasped the keys and ripped them out of the ignition.
The headlights went dark, plunging us all in darkness.
—
I awoke from my trance in a little clearing. My heart beat steady and low, and I marveled at this new fragment of memory with both curiosity and dread. Pollution had been happening here for so long, decades. My mom had known.
But what had she done about it? I strained into the recesses of my mind, trying to conjure what had happened next.
I feared for the man with the Jeep. My mom wasn’t a killer, like my father was. And she was a woman, no physical match in a fight with a young man.
But I was still afraid for him, afraid of my mom’s wrath.
I sank down to my heels, sat on the ground and pressed my fists to my temples. Why couldn’t I unlock that darkness at will? Why was it just beyond my reach? Was it truly so awful that I couldn’t cope with it all at once?
Something laughed softly in the night. The fox. She’d caught a snake. She held it between her paws and gnawed at it. She’d already ripped off its head, and she was eating it the way a child might eat a Popsicle.
I didn’t intervene. This was nature. The strong killed the weak; predator killed prey. I knew that was true in the marrow of my bones.
But where was I in all this? What kind of a predator was I, to be stripped of all my tools and cast out of the tribe? I had failed. My father would certainly be disappointed in me.
I lay down in the grass, feeling the earth pressing up against my back.
Part of me craved to be the kind of hunter he was, forever victorious, always getting his prey. Only I wanted to stay on the right side of the law, and get the criminals. I wanted to be the hunter defending the prey.
I’d failed. I hadn’t inherited his ruthlessness. I wasn’t breaking down Sumner’s door and demanding answers. Instead, I’d let the law hamstring me and leave me bleeding in the ditch.
Sinoe, having consumed her meal, trotted up to me and looked down at my face. Her breath reeked of the metallic smell of blood and fresh reptile. Her eyes were black, dilated in the darkness to swallow themselves and swallow me.
The fox had lost. She had lost everything. But still she hunted.
And so would I.
—
I returned to the house.
The fox followed, and stretched out on the dog bed I’d put on the porch. She was domestic when she chose to be, and I could respect that. Perhaps she and Gibby would someday get along. Or perhaps she’d melt into the woods entirely one day, and no one would ever see her again.
I couldn’t control her. And I had to remind myself that no one could control me.
—
When gray morning light seeped from beneath the curtains, I got dressed quietly to avoid waking Nick. I thought I would head into town to pick up Nick’s favorite apple pastries from the donut shop. Gibby wiggled out of bed, eager to join me and have his breakfast.
I paused, looking at Nick’s sleeping form in my bed. He’d be there for the rest of my life—if I let him.
I would just clean up this one case, I vowed. I would find Viv and put the Kings of Warsaw Creek behind bars. I would make a clean break. Justice for all, right? And fuck everybody else. It felt right to be with him. To follow.
But one last hunt, first.
I took Nick’s car. His SUV had all the bells and whistles, and it must have automatically paired with my cell phone, because I got a call that came through his speakers right as I pulled out onto the road.
“It’s Monica. I heard what happened last night. Are you and Gibby okay?”
“Yeah. We’re okay. Luckily. Any news on Viv?”
“Nothing yet. I’ve been searching for Sumner and Lister on the down-low. Nobody’s seen them, either. I’m checking the city’s Flock cameras to see if any passive scanning picked up their license plates.”
“Good idea.” We didn’t have that tech in our rural county, but the nearby city was experimenting with creating a web of interconnected public and private video cameras that would passively scan license plates.
It wasn’t uncommon for police cars to have that kind of tech installed, but involving local businesses was new.
“Also heard from Forensics. The blood found on the basement floor at the Sumner house matches the serotype for Dana Carson. Judge Chamberlain approved an arrest warrant for Sumner, at least. If we nab him, maybe he’ll confess. I can only hope he’ll implicate Lister if we reel him in.”
“Are you ready for that?” I asked quietly. “They might come for you, too.”
She exhaled into the phone. “There will be hell to pay for arresting him, sure, but Chief wants to see them in jail as badly as you and I do. So I’m gonna take that gamble.”
“Good girl,” I said.
“I’ll keep you in the loop,” she promised, and hung up.
I chewed my lip. I was afraid of those slimeballs going after Monica if she tried to arrest Sumner. Her career was one thing, but those assholes could do to her what they did to Jasper. And what they might be doing to Viv.
I considered that. They killed Jasper quickly, expediently.
But they abducted Dana. Maybe in the same way they abducted Viv.
Viv had been conscious when I left her, then suddenly not.
Did they drug her? I doubted they used hospital drugs—that would have taken too much time.
So they had to bring the drugs with them.
I didn’t think that meth would knock anyone out so quickly, but they might have access to other drugs.
Maybe Jasper hadn’t been subjected to any weird ritualistic shit, but it was hard to know, given the flames at the scene.
A lump rose in my throat. But Viv…I could see them doing to her what they’d done to her sister.
And today was the Fourth of July, the anniversary of when Dana had disappeared.
And given the amount of blood on the floor of the Sumner basement…
she had to have died there. I knew it in my gut that they’d done some weird ritualistic shit to her and killed her, too.
When I got to the main street in town I could turn right, for donuts…or I could turn left and visit the coroner’s office.
I was off the case. I could be charged with interfering with an official investigation if I went to the coroner’s office.
But I already had it in my mind that I was going to resign. And I needed to see if there was something Dana left behind that could lead me to Viv.
I parked in the nearly empty parking lot behind the county coroner’s office.
Leaving the air on for Gibby, I locked up and headed inside.
The secretary waved me through without looking up from her phone; evidently rumors of my suspension hadn’t yet reached the coroner’s office.
I was betting my time on that was running out.
The coroner, Dr. Navarro, was waiting for me in the hall, tapping her toe on the green tile.
“You’re keeping us busy, Detective Koray. I had to cancel my Alaskan cruise.”
I winced. “Sorry. I really am.”
“Don’t be. I hate vacationing with the in-laws. Come on. I have some things to show you.” She gestured for me to follow her to the morgue. I suited up in a Tyvek suit and followed her to the chilly examination room of the morgue.