Chasing Darkness (21 page)

After
that, Eva had received some job counseling and short-term childcare assistance.
A service worker was supposed to check on them every few months, but it was
always the same excuses: the system was overwhelmed with need, and they lacked
funding and manpower to take on the massive problems. This one, another one,
had simply fallen through the cracks.

“You
know her?”

Sam
focused on Nick, now standing beside her.

Shivering,
she crossed her arms. “I knew them both.” She was the only link between the
cases. Sloan, Walters, now Larson.

He
moved closer, so he was almost touching her, and she felt the warmth between
them, thankful for the gesture.

Nick
sighed. “I figured.”

She
was grateful he didn’t say what they were both thinking, that this didn’t make
things look any better for her. Her alibi tonight was only slightly stronger
than the last time. Derek and Rob had been in and out and had seen her. But two
orphaned nephews would surely lie to protect their guardian. Any jury knew
that. Sam looked around. “You find the daughter?”

Nick
met her gaze with dulled eyes. “In the other room.”

“How
is she?” From his expression, she should have known not to ask.

Nick
ran a hand across his face. “Not good.” He put his hand on the small of her
back and guided her toward the other room.

Sam
stepped forward. The smells of urine and mold were overpowered by a stronger,
more potent odor coming from the back room. She recognized it instantly and it
caused a thick, syrupy rise in her gut. Halting in the doorway, Sam didn’t need
to go farther. She could see the blue paleness in the girl’s hands and arms.
Her body was way too thin and her face was sunken from neglect.

“She’s
been dead three, maybe four days.” Nick’s tone was flat.

Sam
forced herself into the room. “And the mother?”

“Only
a few hours.”

“You
think the mom killed her?”

Nick
squinted in the direction of the far room. “I think she let her die. Can’t tell
if it was violence or just neglect. Coroner will tell us more.”

Sam
nodded. Had the killer been distracted from leaving his clue by the presence of
the dead girl? She studied Becky’s face, her closed lids. “I’d check for prints
on the eyelids. Someone’s closed them, and I’d bet it wasn’t the mom.”

Nick
motioned to an officer, who wrote her suggestion down.

Sam
leaned over the girl, examining her expression. Besides her closed eyes, it
didn’t look like she’d been disturbed in death. Her mouth was partially open,
her purple-tinted lips showing the signs of old bruises. She glanced at Nick,
watching the muscles in his jaw tighten in concentration. “Any leads?”

He
shook his head. “None.”

“Lugino?”
she asked.

“He’s
in jail. Has been since we picked him up.”

“Damn,”
she said.

“And
to add to the mess, Charlie Sloan’s family is suing for wrongful death.” Defeat
resounded in his voice.

It
didn’t surprise her. “Charlie was guilty,” she reminded him.

“He
never confessed.”

“We
had half a dozen people I.D. him with four of the six victims. He was guilty,
and he was working alone. The D.A.’s office will handle the petition. We’ve got
some time.”

“It’s
not time I’m worried about—it’s answers.”

Sam
looked around. “This feels different.” She thought about the method of Sandi
Walters’ death. “Lugino confessed to having sex with Walters postmortem,
right?”

Nick
nodded. “He didn’t know she was postmortem—or so he said.”

“So
the signatures are identical.” If they had found the presence of semen at Sandi
Walters’ crime scene and not at the others, it would have been easy to prove
that the signature of the killer, what he did to get off on the kill, was
different. If the signature was different, they had a strong case that it was a
different killer. But if the semen had come from Lugino
after the fact
,
the signatures were identical. It gave Sloan’s family a good shot. Who the hell
else could have known about the eucalyptus?
Who else
? That was the question
she didn’t want to ask.

“The
signatures are identical—M.O.’s too,” Nick commented. “We found a flashlight by
the body. Maybe we’ll get lucky with that.”

Sam
nodded. “Check the batteries. They always forget about wiping those off.”

“Good
thinking.”

Someone
from the medical examiner’s office called his name.

He
waved, then looked at her again. “Will you take a look around, tell me what
else you see?”

“Of
course.”

He
leaned in and lowered his voice. “We’ll talk more about the other stuff. Don’t
worry, okay?”

She
gave him a stiff smile. “Thanks, Nick.”

He
started to walk away.

“Sloan
never used drugs with them,” Sam called out to him.

“No,
he strangled them,” Nick agreed, motioning to the other room. “Which is what
this one looks like. The transition to use of a drug could be a sign of a
maturing M.O.—or someone experimenting with a new method, not necessarily a
different killer.”

“You
have someone checking into the source of the heroin?”

He
nodded.

“I’ve
got a list of people who knew about the eucalyptus in the last case,” Sam said.
“It’s a short list, but I’ll dig deeper tomorrow.” Then, scanning the
apartment, she added, “I’ll add what I can.” The prospect of spending any more
time in this depressing place made her back ache. She forced away the pity and
pushed herself out of the room where a tiny girl would never have a chance for
a happy ending.

Sam
tucked deeper into the warm flannel sheets and pulled the denim comforter up
under her arms. Propping her notebook on her lap, she tilted the light. It was
almost two in the morning and yet she couldn’t imagine sleeping, didn’t feel
the slightest fatigue. Instead, each time her eyes closed, she pictured the
skeletal form of Eva Larson and the discarded body of her young daughter. The
image was followed by one of herself before a jury. The judge was her father.
“I warned you,” he was saying, over and over.

A
part of her longed to go pull the thick diary of her cases off the living room
bookshelf. But if she did that, she knew she would never sleep. She closed her
eyes and processed the scene of Eva Larson’s death in her head. As she went,
she opened her eyes to make notes—the location of the body, the appearance of
the apartment. She drew a crude sketch of Larson’s resting pose, the right hand
clenched as though she’d been gripping something. A weapon maybe. But where was
it? Or perhaps it was something her killer had taken from her. She couldn’t
imagine Eva Larson had anything worth killing for. She made a question mark on
the page beside her notes and set the notebook down. She’d have to wait for the
results from the sheriff’s crime scene.

Tonight
she had promised herself she would finish chapter six of the book she was
reading,
The Teenage Jungle: A Parent’s Guide to Survival
.

The
peppy little pictures of parent/child relations had irritated Sam to the point
that she covered them as she read. The first sentence of the chapter was “Where
do feelings come from?” She made a gagging sound and forced herself to read on.
There had been a quiz at the end of the last chapter. Scoring you as a parent.
She’d gotten a fifty-two, the low end of the “non-nurturer.” The paragraph that
followed began, “There is nothing wrong with being a non-nurturer. A lot of you
men out there are probably just that. And you have some real advantages over
the natural nurturer.” Bah. Why didn’t they just come out and say, “Not fit to
parent.”

Sam
refocused on what she was reading. The chapter was on listening to what your
teenager was telling you. “Listening is different from hearing. We hear the
cars on the street, but we’re not listening for one with a diesel engine or
squeaky brakes. This is how we have to listen to our kids. It’s the best way to
understand your child. Like a car, people (and especially teenagers) give all
sorts of warning signals in what they do and say. This chapter is going to
teach
you
how to translate this secret language.”

The
author’s cheerful prose describing the difficulties of rebellious teenagers
scraped Sam’s mind like sandpaper. Older than his twin by two minutes, Rob had
always been bigger and stronger, louder and more outgoing, and eminently more
difficult for Sam to understand.

Sam
turned the page and started the next paragraph, then heard a knock on the door.
Slipping the book under the covers, she snatched a magazine off the bedside
table and flipped it open. “Come in,” she called.

Derek
stuck his head in the door. “How come you’re up?”

She
shrugged and laid the magazine across her lap. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me
neither.” He crossed the room slowly, his left leg stiff and awkward beneath
him. Despite his frequent visits to a physical therapist over the past eight
years, Sam didn’t notice much change in Derek’s limp. She never suggested that
he stop going, and neither did he. If after all these years Derek retained the
faith that he would learn to run, then she admired him for it. Hope would carry
him further than any doctor. The mind was a powerful instrument, and his faith
was something she refused to allow anyone to take away.

Derek
sat on the edge of the bed and looked, without comment, down at the magazine
Sam had been flipping through.

Sam
watched him. “You want some tea?”

He
shook his head.

“Warm
milk?”

“Gross,
Aunt Sam.” He scrunched his nose and shook his head again. There was a sad look
in his eyes, under it just the slightest edge of anxiety or even fear.

“Something
happen?” she asked, following the advice of the book hidden under her covers to
make herself available if he wanted to talk to her.

“Just
stupid kid stuff.” He sounded like an adult as he spoke, rubbing his hand over
his bad hip and staring down at it.

“People
say stupid stuff all the time,” she said, guessing someone had commented on his
limp. She thought of her own experience at work the day before. “They feel
threatened and call people names because they’re different, and they don’t
bother to try to understand that different doesn’t mean bad.”

Derek
frowned and then smiled softly. “They do, don’t they?”

She
nodded. It was the first time either of the boys had spoken to her without
being spoken to first in at least three days. She wanted to reach out and hug
Derek, but she didn’t dare. Instead, she put her hand on his and squeezed.

“They’re
such morons.”

She
laughed. “Mostly.”

Derek
stood and made his way to the door, his limp less noticeable. “Good night.”

When
the door closed, Sam pulled the book out and found her lost page. The book
warned not to try to compare her own childhood emotions to what her child was
feeling. At least
that
wasn’t a problem. Nothing in her childhood was
worth repeating. The doctor talked about ways to avoid pushing your own past on
your child, avoiding the cyclical pattern of parent/child relations. Sinking
deeper against the thick pillows and flannel sheets, Sam concentrated on every
word. Maybe there was something to be said for the doctor’s suggestions after
all.

Thick
smoke billowed through an open window at the far side of the room. It floated
down the long length and circled the bed like a ghost. She drew up the covers
and tucked herself further in, but she couldn’t escape the low sound of his
voice. It haunted her, stirring fears buried beneath years.

“Samantha
Jean, where are you?” he called, his voice a record that played on her
insecurities and mocked her successes, the Southern drawl nauseating.

She
sat upright and sprang out of bed, hearing his
thump, thump
on the stairs.
She looked around the dark basement, realizing for the first time why she slept
down there when everyone else was upstairs. Her mama put her there so her daddy
could come get her.

“Sammy
Jean,” he called again, his voice closer, his words drawn out.

Sammy
froze in her tracks.

She
heard him laugh, but it was a short, tired laugh. He didn’t like the game.
“It’s not hide-and-seek, Sammy Jean. It’s a different game. All the kids play
games at home, Sammy. This is ours.”

The
sound of her father’s voice sent fear skittering up her spine. It wasn’t the
same as with other kids. She knew it wasn’t the same.

She
scanned the room for a new place to hide, but she had used them all. She
sprinted to the crawl space and sank her toes in the cold dirt, pushing her way
to the back. Flat against the cement wall of the house, she could hear the
wheezing of her own breath. Tightening her jaw, she held herself quiet and
still.

Her
knees pulled up to her chin, she squeezed her eyes closed and willed her father
away. She blinked hard. No matter what, she wouldn’t cry. Last time she went
crying, her mama had said, “Worse thing you can do is cry. If you just keep
your mouth shut, it’ll be over in no time.”

She
didn’t want to do it again. Why did she have to do it? The other kids in school
didn’t. Tammy Sue thought she was crazy when she asked. Nobody else had to
touch it, to kiss it, to let them put it there. . . . It had
hurt so much. Her lips began to quiver and she held them tight between her
teeth. Don’t cry, stupid.

“Sammy
Jean?”

She
leapt at the sound of his voice. He was practically next to her. He wasn’t
usually so quiet when he was drunk. Usually she could hear him coming a mile
away.

“Sammy
Jean, are you hiding from me?” he growled, and she could tell he was getting
angry.