Skeleton King Read online

  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 seemed 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.

  “I have a dozen reporters outside, what do I tell them?” Tennison asked from behind them.

  This time, no answer was forthcoming.

  You can’t have her.

  Kendra shook her head.

  Who is you?

  What’s with the milk?

  And why the fuck is a four-year old writing those words in Latin?

  CHAPTER 9

  Brett accepted Kendra’s offer to come to her hotel room for a drink, even though she knew that the man never touched the stuff. When she opened the door, she realized that her clothes from the day before were still on the bed.

  “Sorry about the mess,” she lied.

  Kendra didn’t really care about these sorts of things, mostly because she wasn’t overly concerned with what people thought about her. Still, she was not so immune from social graces that she didn’t pick up her clothes and place them on the faux wood dresser.

  “Not a problem,” Brett replied, taking a seat at the end of the bed.

  Kendra went to the mini bar next, letting out a sigh of relief when she saw that it had been refilled during the day.

  Fuck the Agency, she thought, remembering the scolding she had received after returning from assignment in Knoxville, Tennessee, a little over a month ago.

  “Three hundred and sixty-seven dollars and twelve cents,” the director said, holding a sheet of paper up to his face, hiding his features.

  Kendra picked at the torn upholstery on the arm of her chair and waited. Only when Director Ames lowered the paper did she look up.

  Her face was blank, his was not: the director’s lips were pulled into a frown. Even though she had been in his presence more times than she could remember, she was always struck by how young he looked. Square jaw, dark brown eyes, a straight, if slightly over-sized nose, and brown hair cropped close to his head. Nary a hint of a beard on his smooth face. When she first joined the FBI, Kendra figured they were both around the same age… both in their early thirties. But while gravity had gone to work on her over the years, causing her cheeks and breasts to sag just a little bit, the skin under her neck to become softer and more pliable, and the lines around her mouth to deepen, for some reason—which must have been an illusion—the director’s skin seemed to become softer, tighter, more youthful with time. On one particular occasion, she had been so dumbstruck by this that she had gone so far as to ask Brett how old the man was, but he kindly yet assertively suggested that it was best not to inquire about such things.

  “Inquire”… like they were asking an aging cougar to sign an affidavit about her height and weight for an online dating service.

  “Really, Kendra? Nearly four hundred dollars?”

  Kendra’s thoughts turned to the case in Knoxville. A Jewish teenager had walked into school with a loaded shotgun, screamed “Allahu Akbar,” and then proceeded to shoot himself in the dick.

  So what? She wasn’t entitled to a few drinks as she tried to wrap her mind around that one? To determine whether they should bring in Homeland?

  The director put the hotel bar bill on the table in front of him, and as if reading her mind, said, “I could care less about the four hundred, Kendra. You know that. What I am concerned about is you: you were there for one night.”

  Kendra had very quickly realized that the Jewish boy had no affiliations with ISIS or Al Qaeda; in fact, she doubted he knew anything about terrorist organizations outside of their names. The boy was just a confused homosexual who wasn’t accepted by his faith, his teachers, his parents… he was basically shunned by everyone who he cared about.

  “I need to know if I can count on you, Kendra.”

  “I’m fine,” she answered curtly, to which the director responded with a sigh.

  “I’ve been in your place, Kendra, I know what it’s like—I know what this job can do to a person.”

  You’ve been in my place? Did you start in the FBI when you were eleven?

  “I said I’m fine.”

  The director leaned forward, laying his thin forearms on his over-sized desk.

  “You are one of my best agents, Kendra…”

  “I’m fine,” Kendra said out loud, cracking the top of the bottle—Jack Daniels—and taking a long swig.

  “What?”

  Kendra ignored Brett, pausing onl
y to take a breath before finishing the bottle. Then she grabbed another and slammed the door closed with her foot. As she made her way over to Brett, who, she noted, was staring at her with that damn look on his face again, she debated turning on the TV. It dawned on her that she might have left the porn channel on, but she shrugged this off.

  She doubted that Brett would care, but decided against turning it on anyway.

  “What happened to you back there in the closet?” he asked as Kendra took a seat beside him on the edge of the bed.

  It was an honest question, one that she had expected. And yet she was unprepared to answer it. This wasn’t out of the ordinary for their relationship, and she hoped that Brett would just let it slide.

  He didn’t.

  “Kendra? The closet?” Brett’s eyebrows were knotted in concern. When he spoke again, he lowered his gaze, almost as if he were ashamed of what he was about to say. “I need to know I can count on you.”

  Kendra made a hmph sound.

  ‘I need to know I can count on you.’

  It was an identical statement to the one that Director Ames had posed a few weeks back. Yeah, they most definitely had been talking about her.

  “I’m fine,” she said, offering the same response to her partner that she had given her boss.

  The two men worrying about her or talking behind her back came of no surprise, really. And it didn’t really bother her. Maybe tomorrow it would, but then again, maybe it wouldn’t. For now, however, her mind was preoccupied.

  What was really bothering her was the picture of the lake or pond with the sticks. And the fire, which for some reason she was now convinced was a pyre… that bothered her too. Which was strange, given how horrible the rest of the scene at the Black residence had been.

  You can’t have her.

  Kendra took a swig of the whiskey.

  Sis, why don’t you come join us? Mater est, matrem omnium, sis.

  She finished the bottle and, holding the caustic liquid in her mouth, she turned to Brett. Without saying a word, she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He must have known that this was coming, because instead of being taken by surprise, he tried to kiss her back. She felt his tongue try to probe into her mouth, but she pulled away before it gained entrance.

  Kendra grabbed the man’s wrists, which were at his sides, his palms pressed into the bed, and pulled them over his head. At the same time, she moved a leg to the other side of his body, and shoved him backward. In a second, she was straddling him, his arms held high above his head, her hands gripping his wrists hard enough that she could feel her nails bite into his skin. Closing her eyes, she lowered her face to his and started kissing him again. This time when their tongues met, she let the whiskey that she had been holding in her cheeks spill into his mouth.

  Brett’s eyes snapped open, and he turned his head to the side, sputtering, the liquid spilling out and coating his cheek.

  “What the hell, Kendra?”

  For once, the incredulous look on his face was gone.

  “Kendra? What—?”

  He tried to push against her, to raise his arms, but even though he was much stronger than her—he was made of solid muscle—he couldn’t gain any leverage.

  “Kendra! Get off—”

  Eyes wild, Kendra let go of his left wrist, but before he could react, she brought her hand between his legs, finding his cock.

  It was hard, and a smile crossed her face.

  “I want you to fuck me hard, Brett. Fuck me like you mean it.”

  Then she leaned in and kissed him again, her upper lip pushing against his teeth so hard that it hurt.

  Agent Brett Cherry stopped complaining.

  CHAPTER 10

  Lacy McGuire didn’t know where she was—the blindfold that had been placed over her eyes a day ago, or maybe two, kept her in the dark. But when she was hoisted out of the—car? Van? Bus?—that she had been lying in, Lacy knew that she was somewhere with water. It reminded her of the time she had spent with her father, in the early days when they would go camping back when Mommy wasn’t sick yet.

  Lacy had a great memory for a four-year-old, her dad always told her so. She remembered as far back as when she was only two, during her first time going camping with her mother and father. She also remembered her father throwing her off the dock, and her screaming half in fear and half in delight as she hit the cold water. As the blackness of the underwater world enveloped her, her bubbling screams would lean more toward fear than delight, but then she would bob back to the surface, her arms splayed out at her sides from the water wings. When the fear eventually passed, she would beg him to throw her in again and again and again, and each time she felt the same conflicting mix of emotions, despite the fact that the result was always the same.

  Lacy remembered the campfires, the stars, the strange noises at night.

  And the smell, the smell of water hanging in the air, not after a rain—that was thinner somehow. The smell of water from a lake or stream or pond was more permanent, permeating the air with underlying odors of vegetation, rot, and fish, in a natural and not unpleasant way.

  And this was what she smelled now.

  A pond or a lake.

  So when the hand on her shoulder gently guided her forward, Lacy’s steps were cautious, her toes probing before landing, hoping that the next time her toes extended, they wouldn’t find water.

  This charade reminded her of a story her dad had read her just a few nights ago, one about pirates. He had said it was too scary for her, but she had insisted. She could tell by the way his reading was choppy, taking short but perceptible breaks between sentences, that he was editing on the fly, cutting out the scary parts, but that was okay.

  Even with his editorial decisions, the story had still been scary.

  ‘Walk the plank!’ the pirate demanded his captive, ushering him onto a board extending over dark blue waters frothing with the frenzied activity of sharks. ‘Walk the plank, scoundrel!’

  “Almost there,” the man’s soft voice behind her instructed.

  Lacy was scared, but all of her tears had dried on her face after first being taken from her room. Her initial fright had been one of the unknown, of thinking that the hand that had snaked across her mouth had been the thing from under the bed.

  When she’d found out that it was just a man—a kind man, at that—some of her visceral revulsion had left her.

  Lacy knew that she shouldn’t be here, that she should have at least asked Daddy if she could go, because she knew that he would be angry that he left without telling him.

  But the man said he was an uncle, and that he was taking her to see someone really special. And the mask on her face? That was because it was a surprise.

  And that made sense, because it had been her birthday just a few days ago.

  “Just a little bit further,” the man instructed, and Lacy felt herself nodding. Her probing foot hit something soft, and she felt her bare foot sink in a little, the substance thick and wet, oozing from between her toes.

  Beneath the mask, she made a face.

  Gross.

  As she pulled her foot up, there was a loud slurping sound, and she nearly giggled. If it had been the monster from under the bed that had taken her and not Uncle Martin, then what she had just felt was probably the monster suckling her toes.

  The sound wasn’t giggle-worthy, but the tickling was.

  When Lacy took another breath, she caught something else clinging to the humidity in the air, a scent that stopped the childish laughter in her throat.

  Fire—I smell fire.

  It was only a faint whiff, an odor trailing behind all the others, while at the same time underlying them all.

  “We’re here,” the voice said, and before Lacy could react, she felt the hood being pulled off.

  All of the smells increased without the thick black fabric as a filter.

  Including the fire—which reminded her of her nightmares.

  Lacy, breathing more q
uickly now, the fear that she felt in her bed that night slowly creeping back, blinked rapidly. She didn’t know how long she had been in the bag—she might have fallen asleep in the vehicle—but long enough that the sky had lightened a little.

  As her eyes slowly adjusted from the pitch darkness of the bag to the fractal light split between tall, branchless trees, fear began to build inside her, filling her up from her stomach before radiating to the rest of her body.

  Guilt at leaving her father struck her next.

  Then confusion, and distrust.

  She intended to turn, to get a good look at the uncle that she had never met before, but something else caught her eye. There was a woman standing before her, a woman in a white dress that was strangely clean in this dirty place.

  “Say hello,” the man behind her whispered almost breathlessly.

  Little Lacy, as her father had a penchant for calling her—even though she was four, a big girl and not little—blinked twice and the woman’s smiling face suddenly came into focus.

  It was the face of the woman in her dreams, the one whose mouth was wide, the one who was burning, her flesh turning black like overcooked bacon.

  “Welcome home, Lacy. Welcome to the family.”

  Little Lacy didn’t respond. Instead, she screamed.

  PART II – MISSING

  ~

  CHAPTER 11

  THE ALARM ON KENDRA’S PHONE started beeping at exactly 6:15 in the morning, but she didn’t move.

  Instead, she squeezed her eyes closed even tighter, trying to determine if she had a headache or not.

  She did.

  The next thing she did was clucked her tongue; it felt two sizes too big.

  Her breasts hurt, as did her ass and vagina.

  Brett had really taken her words to heart; he had fucked her like he meant it. Like he absolutely meant it.