House of V (Unraveled Series) (12 page)

I felt the metallic taste of the
blood seep into the back of my throat as I finally released the clamp on the
inside of my cheek. I couldn’t let Sister Josephine be another notch. But why
was he after me? Who would want me dead?

“I’ll do it.”

“
Evie
,”
Sanchez started again, this time quieter.

“No, I’ll do whatever you want me
to. I’ll help with the investigation to track this son of a bitch down. I don’t
have any leads or any special persons of interest that I can think of, but
there has to be something.
Someone who Holston crossed.
I think he’s coming after me to seek revenge. He knew the only way to get me
here was through Father
Haskens
and Sister Josephine.
He knew he couldn’t get close to Delaney or any of the Jones family. I assume
you’re watching them, right?” I broke my thought, looking up to a bewildered
Sanchez.

“Yeah, we are now,” Sanchez
stammered.

“Before Father
Haskens
died?”

“We were checking on Delaney every
once in a while to make sure she wasn’t having any contact with you,” Sanchez
replied.

“He knew it would be too high
profile if Delaney or anyone else was taken. The FBI would get involved
immediately,” I said, my head now reeling.
“But this.
This is low profile enough to only have the local police department on it,
enough to get me here. So here I am.
Just what he wanted.”

“The perpetrator broke into the
rectory on June 14. It was a relatively silent break-in. Just the clips on the
window were broken. Sister Josephine happened to be staying with Father
Haskens
that night in the other bedroom across the house.
She called the police right away, and after he left, went to investigate.
That’s when she saw Father
Haskens
. He died of a
heart attack before the ambulance could get him to the hospital,” Sanchez said.

“So he didn’t take anything else?”

“No, he wasn’t there to burglarize,
but I don’t know that he was there to kill Father
Haskens
,
either. There was no sign of a struggle, and Sister Josephine said he couldn’t
have been in the house for more than five minutes. She said she’d barely heard
him come in, but that she’d heard him leave in a hurry, which makes me think
things didn’t go according to his plan.”

“I didn’t know that Sister
Josephine had moved in with Father
Haskens
.”

“She didn’t. She was staying that night
with Father
Haskens
as a favor. She said that he had
been complaining for the previous week of light-headedness and shortness of
breath.”

“Signs of a weak heart,” I
whispered, nodding my head. “So the
perp
didn’t know
that Sister Josephine was in the house.”

“We don’t think so. She didn’t
think so, either,” Sanchez said, flipping open the folder again. “
Which leads me to believe that while the man maybe has done some
petty theft in his life, or he’s watched enough CSI since there weren’t any
fingerprints, he’s not someone that breaks into homes regularly.
I don’t
think he surveyed the house that night; otherwise, he would have taken Sister
Josephine.”

“But he waited two more days and
left a warning note.”

“Right.”

“He’s playing a game.”

“A deadly one,” Sanchez said,
pulling a full-colored photo from his folder of a man with a bullet through his
head. “Do you know this man?”

“Should I?” I looked closer,
noticing the entry wound in his skull was right through the forehead. The man’s
eyes were open and his face rigid, pale and sunken in; decomposition was
beginning to take place. A black plastic bag surrounded his head as if it had
been opened or peeled back. I moved my eyes back to the bullet wound in the
forehead. The deadly impact was familiar.
Too familiar.
“Nine millimeter?”

“You got it. Right through the
forehead, just like?
”

“Holston.
But it’s a pretty targeted way to kill someone.
Pretty
smart?”
I said, before adding, “And common.”

“Common enough, but we have reason
to believe that this man,” he pointed to the picture that would make most sane
people squirm, “was killed by the same man that is looking for you.”

“What’s his name? How long ago was
this?” I asked, trying to envision the man with a filled out, flesh-colored
face, but nothing came. I couldn’t see past the decomposing skin; I finally
turned my head.

“Fred Sullivan. We found him in a
dumpster near the Appleton police station. An officer was heading into work two
days ago when he stopped to throw his coffee away. An arm was sticking out of
the bag.” Sanchez pulled the picture toward him and placed it back in the
folder.

I closed my eyes and racked my
brain for a Fred Sullivan at Parker Enterprises, but nothing came up. “He
wanted you to find the body.
Any cameras outside your
building?
Any pictures of the man alive?”

“No cameras, not that far away.
Here.
” Sanchez took out a mug shot of a thirty-something,
disheveled man. His frayed hair stood straight from his head. His blood-shot
eyes were half-shut, and he was hunched over, as if someone had previously held
him up and he was about to fall.

“We could have started with this
one,” I said, holding the picture just inches from my face. I peered around it
to see Sanchez’s grin creep onto his face. I moved the picture back and studied
Sullivan’s drugged-out eyes and face, trying to place him, yet I still had
nothing. I threw the photo down. “Looks like a meth addict that I don’t know.”

“This picture was taken in the
mid-nineties, so I don’t know that it was meth at the time. But he was booked
on several drug charges and spent a couple years in county jail.”

“Nothing
enlightening there.”

“Then he was thrown back in jail on
charges of sexual assault of a minor around 2001. The girl was sixteen. Throw
in some more drug offenses, and he’s in jail for a little over a decade. He got
out six months ago and was a registered sexual offender in Oshkosh.”

“A sexual
offender?”
I said, shaking my head. Being a sex offender was another
clue that could peg him as someone Holston would have taken down, but it wasn’t
enough. It was all coincidence so far.

“His name was on a list we found,”
Sanchez said, leaving the mug shot out. He wiped a bead of sweat that was about
to drip from his brow with the back of his hand.
“A list that
the FBI has, too.”

“A list?
What kind of list?” I asked. Holston had a list
alright.?
He never functioned without a daily, written list. He had carried that tiny
bound book as long as I could remember. But it was always a list of his daily
activities, meetings he had and tasks he needed to complete. And despite that
he had the latest technology at his
fingertips,
he
chose to write in that little notebook that he had always tucked in the pocket
of his jacket. I had gotten my hands on the notebook once, thumbing through to
find his neat handwriting following each line perfectly straight. The days and
activities were all in chronological order; nothing out of its place and
nothing particularly special. I would know, I checked.

Sanchez threw another photocopied
sheet of paper onto the table. I was getting sick of these papers, and I
wondered how many more Sanchez had in that folder. The big reveal, one at a
time, was starting to drive me wild. I looked up at Sanchez. His eyes were full
of what looked like sympathy, or maybe it was pity. I wasn’t sure, but either
way, I was sick of seeing these sheets.

“It was a small entry in the back
of the book. A small sheet tucked in the back cover. We almost didn’t catch
it,” Sanchez said, deliberately.

The last page of the book held his
perfect handwriting. As I studied the perfectly round
Os
and stick-straight letters, I recognized the handwriting immediately. Fred
Sullivan was number five on the list.

“The FBI has the real one.
The real book that contains the to-be-killed list.
We only
got a photocopy, and from what it sounds like, two FBI agents will be in
Appleton in the morning,” Sanchez said.

I didn’t hear his words. Instead, I
felt a hand reach down my throat and squeeze my heart until I was sure it was
going to disappear or explode, either way, I didn’t care. I just wanted it to
stop. I wanted the overwhelming nausea and blackness to vanish, just like
Evie
Parker had a year ago.
To-be-killed.
TBK.
The letters chanted in my head.

Lucky number seven and last on the
list:
My darling,
Evie
Parker
.

10

June 17, 10:00 a.m
.
Appleton, Wisconsin

Sister Josephine gripped the
handlebars of her bike, moving her legs slowly up and down in the same rhythmic
motion she had for the last ten minutes. Carol’s house wasn’t far from Church,
only barely over two miles, plus she knew her body really needed some exercise.
She had been incredibly tense over the last few days; really, it had been four
days.

The death of Father
Haskens
was taking a deep toll on her body, and she knew
that the funeral arrangements should have already been well underway. She had
intended for them to be, but with all the police questioning and now the
anonymous note that she needed to attend to, the hours in the day were melting
much too fast. Once she let the police know about the note, she would focus on
the funeral. With Carol’s assistance, she knew they could have everything ready
in a day or two.

The warm summer air filtered
through Sister Josephine’s light blouse and skirt while the rosary that hung
from her neck swayed back and forth gently with each push of her leg. She
thought back to the note, wondering if and when the man would try to find her
again. She would be safe during the day, but the nighttime was becoming quite
worrisome for her. He would eventually find her and the locked doors wouldn’t
stop him forever.

As she watched the Victorian homes
pass her by, she wondered who the man was. What had he wanted from Father
Haskens
and what could he possibly want from her? Despite
what she had been taught to only let the light of the Lord into her soul, to
not fear what she would face throughout her life, she felt the darkness seeping
in. She couldn’t push past this eerie feeling that the man would stop at
nothing to get to her.
But why?

She thought of the only other time
in her life that she’d felt that fear. It had been when she was a little girl
at Cooper Orphanage. She had been six-years-old at the time, living in the
orphanage since the age of four. Her mother had been raising Josephine on her
own until she was no longer able to care for her. Josephine had learned her
mother died just two weeks after she arrived, and no one wanted a mischievous
child, so Josephine stayed there, longer than usual, but she hadn’t know it at
the time as she watched children come and go. It took Josephine another year to
figure out that being a spitfire wasn’t going to get her out of the orphanage.

One new boy in particular had it
out for her, teasing and pulling her hair when no one was looking. He was the
boy that had made her feel the fear that she felt now. She had told the other
kids in the orphanage that he had a disease, a really bad one is all she could
remember, and that if you stood too close to him, that you might catch it, too.
As much as she didn’t like spreading this rumor, it was all she could do to try
to get him to stay away and to keep the other kids on her side.

It had worked for a few days until
one night after dinner when he had pulled her outside behind the large garbage
containers on the backside of the building. No one had heard her screams during
the boisterous and loud dinner of the orphanage.

He had pulled her hair again,
stripping it of the red ribbon that was tied neatly in the back. He had held
the ribbon in his hand with a clump of her hair that he had pulled out, swinging
it back and forth. She had jumped at it, but he had caught her arm, twisting it
behind her back. He held a rock in his other hand, ready to strike her. That’s
when she had felt the fear overcome her body.

She had closed her eyes, waiting
for the blow, yet instead, she heard the scuffle and grunt of the boy. She had
opened one eye to see another boy on top of him, hitting him with the rock. The
moaning noises of the boy had made her cover her own ears. It was only when one
of the cooks emerged from the building to throw away some scraps, that the rock
was finally stopped. She had seen the cook pull up the attacker, her guardian
angel.

The boy, who she had never learned
the name of, had been shipped out that night. No one dared to whisper the name
to her in case she lashed out in anger. She had left the orphanage not a week
later
herself
, but it wasn’t before she could thank
the boy that had saved her life. George Boyd. She had sputtered to him at
first, explaining that she could have taken care of herself, but George had
stopped her with a wave of his hand and a hardening of his eyes.

“Josephine, I will always be your
guardian angel,” he had said as he made a small cross against his heart.
“Everyone needs one. Wherever you are, I will be yours.”

It had been an elegant thing to
say, Sister Josephine realized now, at such a young age. He was only a few more
years older than her, but she had known that day, that George Boyd would stop
at nothing to help those in need. He had erased the fear in her life.