The Body Finder

CHAPTER 19

IT WAS ANOTHER RESTLESS NIGHT FOR VIOLET, but this time it had nothing to do with Jay. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, it had a little to do with Jay, but there was something else interrupting her sleep. Something that made her feel unsettled…troubled…that sixth sense that something wasn’t quite right in her world. And even though she had no idea what it was supposed to mean, she had learned not to question her intuition.

She gave a valiant fight, though, tossing and turning, and repositioning herself as she drifted in and out of the uncomfortable slumber. She’d dozed; she was sure that she’d caught little catnaps here and there, because she had dreamed. They were segmented and incomplete, extremely unsatisfying dreams that were cut short before they could even begin, but they were dreams nonetheless.

It wasn’t until well after her digital alarm clock finally said seven o’clock, which to Violet was torturously early, that she reluctantly called off her battle with sleep and surrendered to the fact that she was awake-wide awake-and finally got out of bed.

She should have been ecstatic today. This was the fairy-tale ending she could only have imagined a few short months ago. Not only had she stopped a killer, using skills that no one else possessed, but she finally had Jay all to herself. No more sharing him with all the other girls at school.

And yet, instead of being elated, she felt worn down. Even the absolutely breathtaking possibility of seeing Jay again today had little impact on her washed-out energy level. She was sure that he was half the reason she was so exhausted.

By the time he’d left last night, after spending hours getting to know each other all over again, in ways they never had before, it was nearly midnight, and she was completely sapped. She felt like she’d been through the wringer yesterday…emotionally speaking anyway.

That didn’t mean she wanted to skip the seeing Jay part; in fact, it was probably the only part of the day that Violet didn’t want to skip. It just meant she was exhausted.

She showered before going downstairs, hoping it might revive her, and it did…a little. And by the time she stumbled her way downstairs she was actually feeling halfway human again.

Her mom and dad were at the table. And so was her uncle Stephen.

And if Violet thought she was exhausted, it was nothing compared to the way her uncle looked. His eyes were rimmed in red and bloodshot throughout, and the deepening circles beneath them were heavy and dark. It made her own eyes water just to look at him, he was so grizzled and worn.

He held on to a travel mug, which Violet could only assume was filled with the darkest, nastiest coffee that could be consumed and still be considered a liquid. That was the way her uncle liked his coffee: police-station black.

“Hi, Uncle Stephen.” She acknowledged him curiously, pulling out a chair at the table. She wanted to ask a million questions about what had happened after she’d left yesterday, but from the look of him, she decided to wait and see why he’d stopped by. She doubted this was a courtesy or social call, since the only thing he should be visiting right now was his bed.

He nodded at her but didn’t say anything right away, and from the look on his face, and the raised eyebrows cast in her father’s direction, it was obvious that he was deferring to her dad to explain his surprise appearance this morning.

Suddenly that nagging sixth sense that had been toying with her all night clamped its razor-sharp teeth around her and wouldn’t let go.

Something was wrong.

She looked from her uncle, to her dad, and then to her mom, who Violet was sure was still harboring a grudge over being lied to…something she hated more than almost anything in the world, especially coming from her own daughter. She shook her head at Violet, telling her with a weary look not to come to her for help, not this time. So Violet glanced back to her dad again. The tension was almost palpable.

When her dad finally spoke, his normally calm demeanor was rigid and strained. “Your uncle was at the station all night. Since yesterday afternoon they’ve been gathering all the information they could and trying to tie up as many loose ends as possible. They don’t want to make a mistake on this one, so they’re being very thorough.”

“Uh-huh…” Violet said, letting her dad know that he was taking way too long to get to the point. “What about a confession?” she asked, directing her question to her uncle. “Did he admit to anything?”

Her uncle Stephen nodded, bleary-eyed. “Everything. He confessed to doing all kinds of horrible things to those poor girls. He confessed to more than we asked him about. Apparently this has been going on for years, all over the state.” He looked up to her dad, as though asking his permission to go on, and when her dad nodded his approval, her uncle dropped a bomb on her. “He even confessed to killing the girl you found.”

Violet was confused. Of course he’d killed the girl she found; she knew that much the instant she saw the oily sheen on him yesterday in the woods.

The look on her face must have said what she was thinking, because her uncle clarified, “No, Violet, not the one in the lake. The other girl. The one you found when you were eight, out in the woods by the river. That was his first victim. He told us that when she’d been found so soon after he’d dumped her there, it spooked him. He thought he’d done a better job of hiding her than that. And he probably had. He had no way of knowing that an eight-year-old girl with a special knack for finding bodies would come across her, buried there. He said that when she was found, he decided to branch out farther from home to find his victims, so for years he’s been looking for girls in every county but our own.”

Violet wasn’t sure which question to ask first, so she picked the one that seemed the most obvious, the one that bothered her the most. “So, where does he live?”

She saw her mom shudder across the table from her, clutching her robe and pulling it tighter around her as if staving off a phantom chill. Violet looked back to her uncle.

“He lives here in Buckley. Well, just outside of town. He has about twenty acres of farmland between here and Enumclaw. He’s lived there most of his life,” Uncle Stephen explained. And then, as if he were angry at himself for not finding the killer sooner, he added, “Right under our noses.”

Violet understood why her mom looked so shaken. It was close. Too close.

But after seeing the man yesterday, Violet knew exactly why he didn’t need to bother moving from place to place, why he didn’t worry about anyone being suspicious of him. He could live anywhere. He was invisible. Or he might as well be. Ordinary. Plain. Normal…or at least normal-looking anyway. There was nothing about his bland appearance that made him stand out. There was nothing about his harmless facade to cause suspicion or alarm.

“So, if he’s confessed already, why are you here?” Violet asked. It was the next-most-obvious question she could think of.

More glances were exchanged over her head. She wished they would just spit it out.

Until they did. And then she wished they’d take it back again.

It was her dad this time. “They need you again, Violet. Uncle Stephen’s here to ask for your help.”

“Why? You’ve got him. He confessed. It kinda sounds like a no-brainer.” She looked around the table. “What else is there?”

Her uncle took another long drink of the thick black ooze he called coffee before answering her. He dropped his head back and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s the girl,” he finally admitted, dropping his chin again and rubbing eyes that looked more like they were hemorrhaging than bloodshot. “We exhumed the body, from right where you said it was, and we’ve already been able to identify her.”

“The girl from the party on Friday? Mackenzie Sherwin, right?” Violet asked, finally feeling like she had a grasp on the conversation.

“No, Vi,” her mom corrected, speaking to her for the first time since Violet had gotten home yesterday. She reached over the table and squeezed Violet’s hand. Her eyes were starting to fill with tears. “It was Hailey McDonald.” Her voice broke.

Violet felt as though she’d just been punched in the gut. It wasn’t like she hadn’t suspected that Hailey was dead; it was just that, for some strange reason, actually hearing the words, and knowing that she had been so close to the girl’s dead body, was just too, too terrible. Hailey was someone she’d known.

“Okay…” Violet struggled to keep her words coherent. “…So I still don’t get it. Why do you need me if he confessed?”

“Because he’s confessed to every one of them, and to more, but not to Mackenzie Sherwin,” her uncle explained tiredly. “He refuses to take responsibility for her disappearance.”

“Maybe he wasn’t responsible,” Violet offered, as if she were the first one to think of it. “Maybe she really did just wander out into the woods and get lost. Maybe she’s still alive.”

He shook his head. “He’s lying,” her uncle insisted adamantly. “I don’t know why, but he’s lying about her. I think he knows exactly where she is, and he doesn’t want us to find out. I feel like we’re missing something-something important-but I just can’t pin it down yet. We’ve already executed a search warrant on his property and tried offering him deals in exchange for her location. He claims he doesn’t know, but he’s full of shit. Sorry, Vi.”

Normally the sound of her uncle swearing would have made her giggle; it sounded so strange and unnatural coming out of his mouth. He was the only person Violet knew who sounded dorkier swearing than her dad. Her mom, on the other hand, had a mouth like a sailor, and only barely tried to conceal her love of curse words. But now wasn’t the time, and this wasn’t funny.

“Maybe he didn’t have a chance to move her to another location yet. We’d like to take you out to his house to see if you can, you know…feel…anything there. Perhaps help us find Mackenzie.”

Violet looked up at him with wide eyes and, without blinking, stated out loud what they all knew to be true. “You know I can only find her if she’s dead.”

There was no real plan once they got to the killer’s house, but Violet knew what was expected of her. She was there to search for echoes.

Violet had been comfortable with her ability ever since she was a little girl. She’d even been kind of okay with accidentally stumbling onto the two human bodies she had found in her life. Three, including Hailey McDonald’s. And she definitely hadn’t shied away from looking for the killer when she thought she could help.

But this…

This was different. This was gruesome.

She was purposely looking for a dead girl. This would not be chance…no random discovery.

There were only a few officers at the site, and they were all too busy doing other things, searching for clues and gathering evidence, to even notice she was there. Violet trailed behind her uncle, letting him lead her at first through the house, which was small and dark and dirty, and then leading him as they walked the extensive property, which was sectioned off into several pastures by low wooden fences. Her dad followed right behind them.

It was eerie being here…knowing that she was standing in the very places that a killer once had. Seeing where he ate, and rested, and lived.

She stopped several times, feeling old echoes that were faded and weak from the passage of time. Violet was sure they were nothing…at least nothing that the police were interested in. She could only assume that cats hunted rats, coyotes killed chickens, and men slaughtered livestock. At least those were some of the reasons she imagined for finding echoes on a farm.

But her uncle tagged each spot anyway, marking it with a small orange flag that he stuck into the ground. They wouldn’t start digging until after she’d gone. It was one of the many contingencies placed on this plan by her father. She was to get in and out as quickly as possible, with as few people, even her uncle’s own officers, aware that she’d ever been there.

She knew before they were even finished searching that Mackenzie Sherwin wasn’t here. Violet would have known, as clearly as she would have heard Brooke’s bells or seen the rainbow sheen of an oil slick; it would have been fresh and strong.

If Mackenzie was dead, she was dead somewhere else.

HUNTED

FROM WHERE HE STOOD HE COULD SEE THE weathered facade of the aging farmhouse. He had seen this house hundreds of times before. But this time-today-he studied it through different eyes.

He stayed out of sight, watching as the officers came and went, taking photographs, tagging evidence, and carrying corrugated boxes from inside the house out to their cars. This house, the one he’d visited so many times before, had become a crime scene. Or at least, part of a criminal investigation.

He still didn’t understand where they’d gone wrong or how they’d been caught. Well, maybe he hadn’t actually been caught, but the effect was just as catastrophic for him.

They’d been stopped…he and his partner.

Their perfect killing spree had ended.

So he watched and waited, to make sure that there was no way they could tie him to any of this mess.

He wasn’t entirely surprised to see the police chief pull up in his unmarked, city-issued vehicle. It might as well have had PIG emblazoned across the side of it, as conspicuous as it really was. But it wasn’t the chief’s presence that caught his attention; it was the ordinary-looking sedan that followed right behind it. Actually it was the passenger inside the sedan that had him on alert.

He had seen her before…the pretty girl from the search party yesterday.

He’d noticed her out there in the woods, admiring her even then…her youth…her innocence, while the entire community searched for a girl who would never be found. At least not alive, anyway.

Had they been out there alone, just him and the girl, without all of the rescue workers and volunteers, things might have ended very differently.

He froze in place while he watched her, a skill he had mastered after years of military training, surveying and analyzing the scene before him.

He’d learned later, after that chance encounter with the girl, that she was Chief Ambrose’s niece. And until this very moment, he hadn’t given a second thought to the fact that she happened to be there when they’d discovered his partner, while he’d been standing right where he’d been ordered to stand, making sure that no one searched that spot too closely.

And yet here she was again. Strange coincidence.

He watched as she led the police chief, and a man he assumed was her father, around, the three of them speaking quietly among themselves. He saw how Chief Ambrose marked the spots where she pointed.

This was wrong, something was wrong about her being here today. And was it really just a coincidence that she had been there yesterday too? She knew something, but how? How could she know anything…and still be alive to tell it?

He wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t take any chances. They’d already captured his partner; he couldn’t let them find him too. He knew what he had to do.

He was going to have to stop her. Silence her. Once and for all.

It was the only way he could stay safe. It was the only way he would be free to hunt again.

The chief’s niece would have to die.