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  “Sorry about that,” Tennison grumbled, more to himself than to the two FBI agents that flanked him. “We’re—we’re not used to this sort of thing here.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Agent Cherry—Just Brett, please—nodding.

  “You never get used to this sort of thing,” he replied, the smile gone from his face.

  Tennison nodded.

  This was one of the—if not the—most gruesome crimes he had borne witness to, and he had seen some terrible things during his twenty-seven years on the job. Although most of the people of Torrance had forgotten, two decades ago a serial killer had come through their quiet town, leaving three dead and two missing—two teenagers whose bodies were never found—but somehow this was worse. He wasn’t really sure why he felt this way, but he had long ago learned to listen to the knot in his guts that occasionally helped form words and thoughts in his head.

  Yeah, this was worse… seeing little Steph Black’s frozen outstretched hand, her tiny fingers trying to grip the linoleum floor, was worse. And seeing her room…

  He shuddered uncontrollably.

  Seeing her secret room was also worse.

  Detective Tennison led the two agents into the house, pushing through the thick plastic screen that he had erected to block the entrance. Once inside, leaving the reporters and other talking heads behind them, he turned to face Agent Kendra.

  “Tox came back clean on all three of them. Not even alcohol in their system.” He took a few steps to his left to avoid the trail of blood from the door to the kitchen. “The ME says cause of death was bleed out for all three, throat slash on the—”

  “Did you find any milk containers in the garbage?” Agent Kendra asked, cutting him off.

  Tennison shook his head. He was unsure what the fascination with the glass of milk was all about, but he fought the urge to ask too many questions. When the murders had happened in Torrance all those years ago, the FBI had also gotten involved, and he had learned very quickly back then that they kept their cards close to their chest. Which was fine by him. He had already achieved rank of detective, and he was happy to stay there for the next three or four years that he had left before retirement; this wasn’t about pride, this was about finding out why a little girl had been savagely murdered by her father on the eve of her fourth birthday.

  “No, we didn’t find a cartoon anywhere. Searched the compost and garbage cans—nothing.”

  Agent Wilson nodded, and she and her partner exchanged looks.

  Tennison continued along the lines before he had been interrupted.

  “Both father and mother died from throat slashes, the latter having also been stabbed in the liver. At first I thought it was a simple case of the father losing it and killing wife and child. But, here’s the thing: the blood on the kitchen door? The words: ‘You can’t have her?’ Well, there was blood on the mother’s finger tips—looks like she was the one who wrote them.”

  He turned in time to see Kendra’s eyebrows lift.

  “The mother?” she asked.

  “Yep. At least, that’s the way it looks. And even stranger still is that the blood in the hallway at your feet isn’t the mother’s as I first thought.”

  Tennison stopped in front of the massive bloodstain on the kitchen floor. The bodies had since been sent away to the morgue for further processing and testing, leaving a strangely serene, albeit ghastly, pile of congealed blood. It was as if the house itself was bleeding.

  “It was the girl’s,” he said, swallowing hard. “They dragged her bleeding body to the kitchen before both parents lay on top of her.” He waited for a moment to sink in, then added, “But that’s not why I called you. We need to go upstairs for that.”

  Chapter 7

  Kendra was on her knees; it was the only way she could fit inside the small room hidden at the back of Steph Black’s closet. Claustrophobic to begin with, when Tennison flicked on the light, the walls seemed to close in around her and the air left her as if it had been forcefully sucked out.

  “Oh my God.”

  She hadn’t meant to say those words, but she was helpless to control herself.

  Every square inch of wall space was covered with the same four words, scrawled over and over again, written in the crooked hand of a four-year-old.

  Mater est, matrem omnium.

  To say that Kendra was floored wouldn’t have been completely accurate. After all, she lacked the disposition to be floored.

  But she was disturbed and unsettled.

  Mater est, matrem omnium.

  She mouthed the words, rolling her tongue with the every ‘r’. And then it hit her; she hadn’t realized it at first because she had never seen the words written. But she had heard them before, whispered from Christine’s lips in the—

  ‘Sis, why don’t you come join us?’

  Kendra, still on her knees, scrambled out of the room, nearly knocking Brett, who was standing behind her, over in the process.

  She bolted upright.

  “What the fuck? Who said that?” she snarled, her eyes darting from Detective Tennison to Brett, who had since steadied himself.

  “Wha—Kendra? Who said what?”

  “Who the fuck was it?”

  Both men stared at her as if she were insane, their eyebrows lifting high on their foreheads. She swallowed hard, and tried to calm her heartrate, control her breathing.

  But her eyes—she could feel them blazing.

  No one said anything for several seconds, until Kendra finally broke the silence.

  “Fuck, I need some fresh air.”

  She pushed by Brett, who still had a concerned expression on his face, and quickly headed downstairs. Passing a few of the green officers, she found herself outside, once again facing the reporters and their obnoxious lights that seemed to only add to the blazing sun.

  Her hands found the railing and she closed her eyes for a moment, breathing deeply, blocking out the noise.

  Sis, why don’t you come join us?

  The words had appeared inside her mind, as if she had thought them. But they had come out of left field, arising out of neurological stasis.

  What the fuck was that?

  Just thinking about it made her heart race again.

  Get a hold of yourself, Kendra. Keep it together. It was some sort of déjà vu—it had to be. And the writing… that’s—that’s—

  Well, she didn’t know what the fuck that was—why words written in a murdered girl’s closet were the same ones that Christine used to mutter in her sleep nearly thirty years ago.

  But now wasn’t the time to reminisce.

  To distract herself, she turned her mind to what Detective Tennison had said when they had first entered the house, before she had crawled into Steph’s secret room.

  And they didn’t at all jive with the narrative that her mind had constructed based on her experience and what she saw and felt.

  The daughter was the one that bled all over the floor? The mother was killed after the daughter?

  These things didn’t mesh, because in Kendra’s world, which was filled with monsters that would commit such atrocities, the man almost always committed the crime, especially when either the wife or girlfriend were present. These thoughts weren’t born out of some sort of man-hating feminist credo, and it wasn’t anything that she affixed any moral value to or even held against the male sex; it was simply a fact that experience and statistics had offered up.

  It was the case when it came to the fourteen serial killers that she had helped capture during her tenure in the FBI; they all thought that they were unique, that their crimes were the most heinous, their motives the most clandestine. But it simply wasn’t true, especially the latter; almost all of them had been scorned by a lover or two, or their daddy hadn’t hugged them enough.

  Sure, these were generalizations, but Kendra had learned a very valuable lesson early on in her career: they were called generalizations because they were generally true.

 
She sighed, bringing herself out of the strange reverie that had captivated her for the past thirty or so seconds.

  When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see Brett and Detective Tennison standing beside her.

  “You okay, Kendra?”

  She blinked twice.

  “Fine.”

  Brett’s concerned look transitioned into one of incredulity.

  “You sure?”

  Kendra nodded, and Brett turned his attention to Tennison.

  “Any idea what the words mean?” he asked.

  The elderly detective shrugged.

  “No clue.”

  Kendra shuddered involuntarily.

  She knew.

  She knew exactly what those four words meant.

  Chapter 8

  “So, tell me, why is a four-year-old girl writing in Latin in her closet?” Detective Tennison asked.

  Kendra looked at Brett, who just shrugged. They had gone back inside the house, after talking for a few minutes in hushed tones to avoid being overheard by the reporters had grown annoying.

  They were in the kitchen now.

  “No idea,” Kendra said. A thought came to her. “Religious family? Did they go to church? Whenever I think of Latin, I think of the church.”

  Tennison mulled this over.

  “No, not that I’m aware of.”

  “Some secret, maybe? Any signs of sexual abuse?” Kendra continued.

  “No, nothing that the ME could identify.”

  “Journals? A diary?”

  Brett answered this query.

  “She was only four, Kendra.”

  Kendra grimaced.

  “Yeah, well, four-year-olds don’t usually write in Latin, either.”

  Brett held up a hand defensively.

  “Hold on a sec. What makes you think she wrote it?”

  Tennison nodded.

  “Good point; I doubt a four-year-old can even write like that.” He shrugged. “Maybe. Just to be sure, I’ll get one of the uniforms to find some of her schoolwork, compare the writing.”

  Kendra turned back to the detective, pushing aside thoughts about the words and instead concentrating on Steph.

  “What about her past? Records of problems at daycare? Extended time with an uncle? Stepbrother? The file indicated that Roger was in his late thirties… a grandfather, perhaps?

  Tennison shook his head.

  “No to any of that… at least as far as the uniforms could dig up. But, here’s the thing: I can’t really find much of a record of the Blacks from anything before about three years ago—before they moved here. This house? Not theirs… they rent. Even their two cars are new leases.”

  Kendra made a face, and her eyes darted about the kitchen. It was a modest house, nothing elaborate or extravagant; melamine countertops, snap-and-go cabinets. Not dirty or grungy or poor taste, just nothing too expensive.

  “What are you reaching for here, Kendra?”

  Kendra ignored Brett’s comment.

  “What did the Blacks do for a living?”

  Tennison answered without hesitating—at least her instincts had been right about one thing to this point: Detective Tennison was a good detective.

  “Roger Black was a scientist—worked as a mid-level manager a couple of counties over for big pharma. Miriam Black worked as a part-time chef at Eagle’s Nest Golf Course.”

  Kendra squinted one eye, as was her habit when she fell deep into thought. She stepped around the pile of blood, and headed away from the kitchen toward the family room. It was clear that the eyes of her partner and the detective, as well as that of a uniformed officer—the one I berated yesterday?—were on her, but she didn’t care.

  She needed to get away again, to think. Less than a minute later, she was alone, staring at the mantle above the fireplace. There were three pictures in matching gold frames—Mom, Dad, Daughter—but these didn’t interest her. It was the fourth, the crude drawing of a lake or a pond, with what looked like thin sticks or trees poking upward on either side, that kept her attention. On the left hand side, with the proportions all out of whack, stood what looked like three girls, with hands like chicken feet sticking out from brightly colored dresses. There was also some sort of fire by the side of the lake, thin strips of orange and yellow and red, reaching halfway up the page. It was clearly Steph Black’s art from school or daycare, a piece that for whatever reason her parents had thought special enough to frame and put on the mantle.

  Kendra felt a strange pang in her gut then, something that she hadn’t felt in a long while. It was so strange, so foreign a sensation, that she actually gulped.

  Guilt—I feel guilty.

  She blinked once, twice, and then a third time, trying to right herself.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  For a second, she thought maybe it was just a manifestation of self-doubt at having completely struck out with her initial analysis of what had happened here.

  This was no normal murder/suicide.

  But while this fact was irksome, it wasn’t all that was bothering her. After all, she had been wrong before, of course—every agent had an off day—and yet she never felt like this.

  Kendra shook her head and allowed her eyes to defocus as she forced her thoughts back to the case; the facts of the case, not her personal opinions or bizarre inclinations.

  Man, late thirties, working as a manager at big pharma. Wife working at a golf course as a chef… she wanted or needed to work?

  She had never been to Eagle’s Nest Golf Course, of course, but the fact that it had a chef and not a cook was telling. It wasn’t likely to be a greasy spoon like the one that Brett had met her for breakfast that morning. Which had her leaning toward the former. And Roger was a manager at big pharma… Kendra had been to enough Torrance, West Virginia-type small towns to know that real estate around here was cheap. Dirt cheap. Which also had her leaning toward Miriam wanting to work, as opposed to having to work.

  So why the fuck are they renting?

  Something just wasn’t adding up.

  A thought suddenly struck her, and she hurried back to the kitchen.

  “Tennison, you said that Roger Black was a manager at big pharma? He would most likely need a higher degree for that… a Master’s at least. See if you can comb the records, check the local colleges, the ones with research programs—chemistry, biology, pathology, micro—see if you can find a record of Roger Black. If that doesn’t work, keep expanding outward… first statewide, then if you have to, nationwide.”

  The past, there is something about their past.

  Tennison, who had since taken a small flip pad out of his pocket, started scribbling something down. She admired the man, she realized.

  Not many detectives, regardless of age, still wrote freehand. Most used a cell phone or tablet.

  But not Detective Tennison.

  Her eyes drifted to Cherry, who was giving her a strange look. It was one she had seen many times before, but no matter how many times she saw it, no matter how many years she worked with him—going on seven now—she just couldn’t get used to it.

  Cute and charming, but annoying—it annoyed Kendra that he always looked like he was contemplating life while taking a shit.

  Before she knew it, her eyes landed on the bloody words on the fridge: You can’t have her.

  She nibbled on her lower lip.

  Who can’t have her? And what is with mater est, matrem omnium?

  A quick Google translate revealed that it loosely translated as mother of one, mother of all.

  A lot of help that was.

  Mother of all? Mother of Steph Black? It was her mother that killed her?

  Kendra took a deep breath.

  “You know what? Do a DNA test on the girl, compare it to the parents,” she instructed.

  Tennison stopped writing and stared at her through his puffy eyelids.

  “You think—”

  “Don’t know—just in case.”

  The man see
med to contemplate this for a moment.

  “I don’t actually think we can do that here—we have a population of only—”

  Kendra turned to Brett, and the man’s expression immediately changed from confused to serious. He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out his wallet. Then he removed a white business card.

  “Can I borrow your pen?” he asked Tennison, who immediately handed it over. Agent Cherry wrote something on the back and handed both the card and the pen over to the detective.

  “Call the man on the back… Agent Grover. Tell him that you are sending some samples for DNA testing. Also, make sure to check the glass of milk for fingerprints, and see what you can find if there is anything else in it.” He appeared to think this over for a moment. “Can you guys do that?”

  “In it? What do you mean?”

  “Look for sedatives, opiates, anything that shouldn’t be in milk.”

  Tennison nodded.

  “Yeah, that we can do.”

  “My number is on the other side of the card, and you already have Agent Wilson’s, right?”

  Tennison said that he did, but a look of confusion crossed his face.

  “Wait, you guys are leaving?”

  Cherry’s response caught both the detective and Kendra by surprise.

  “Leaving in the morning,” he confirmed.

  Kendra repeated the words in her head, but they had transformed into a question. Thankfully, Tennison was the one who asked what was on her mind, sparing her the embarrassment of asking it herself.

  “Why are you leaving? You just got here…”

  “Nothing else we can do for you.” He pointed at the business card. “Call Agent Grover.”

  A tired-looking Tennison held up the card to acknowledge that he understood.

  “Where’re you going?” he asked in a voice that suggested he wasn’t expecting an answer.

  But Brett replied, and quickly.

  “To find a missing girl.”

  Kendra walked over to the detective and shook his hand. His grip wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been when they had met yesterday.

  As she and Brett turned to leave the house, her eyes fell on the words on the fridge again.