The King (12 page)

Chapter 5

In the darkness behind her eyes, the blood-covered teeth burst forward to bite down hard—

Cindy stormed out of bed. Feet on the floor, back pushed up against the wall, she was on the verge of continuing the scream from her dream before she realized where she was. Still, her gaze darted around her room. Impending doom filled her chest, her body covered with sweat.

She could almost feel the teeth on her throat.

She ran to the bathroom just in time to spill out every drip of wine she’d drunk before she went to sleep.

Cindy stared into the bathroom mirror, the bags under her eyes too visible from the lack of sleep. She couldn’t remember the details of the dream. She’d never been able to. But the threat of attack still sat heavy in her chest.

“Everything will be okay.”

She tried to convince herself, and when that failed she moved on to distraction by reviewing the details of what she had to accomplish before she went out. But the fear wouldn’t go away. In the mirror, she looked deep into her eyes and said, “The only way to survive the memories is to ignore them.”

She’d paid good money, and spent way too many hours in therapy to learn to deal with situations like this. If she was going to get through the challenges of the day, she was going to have to fill her head with the tasks at hand. The more she filled her head, the less it would wander to those places she really didn’t want to visit.

She walked down the hall to her kitchen and poured a cup of coffee from the pot Jenkins had set up the night before. She added her favorite creamer, took a deep drink, and started the massive inflow of caffeine she was going to need to function.

With one cup of coffee downed and another started, she stepped into a red-hot shower. Steam swirled up from the multiple showerheads, clouding the cut glass walls, and filling the bathroom. The water was scalding, the pain of it radiating through her, the heat seeking to burn away the memories in her head. Her normally milky white skin turned a deep, screaming crimson. In the end, the shower hurt more than it actually helped.

She stepped out, toweled off, slipped into her robe, and brushed off the mirror. She looked at her face. The dark rings had turned a little red, but were still there.

She closed her eyes, took a deep cleansing breath, and tried to imagine the goal. The face of Stone Daniels, sitting under his perfect hair, admitting just how wrong he’d been.

She smiled as she used that image to drive herself forward to get ready. She’d chosen her outfit the night before. Thick black leggings, a Burberry calf-length pencil skirt, a cream-colored Versace top, and a pair of Walter Steiger ballet flats, with a Burberry calf-length coat over the top.

She stood in front of the mirror, her gaze traveling from top to bottom as she turned back and forth, opening and closing the coat, making sure all the tags were off. Knowing the practicality of the outfit out in the country was highly questionable, she had packed more rustic clothes to change into once she got there. There was no reason not to travel in the same style she’d normally wear to the office.

She made another turn in front of the mirror. “And I do look good,” she said confidently.

Cindy walked into her kitchen alcove, which looked out over the foggy San Francisco Bay and rang the bell that brought Jenkins up with her breakfast.

“Good morning, Miss Allen.”

“Good morning, Jenkins.”

“Is everything okay, Miss Allen?”

“Yes, why do you ask?”

“You look a little anxious.”

“I’m fine! Are my bags ready to go?”

Cindy had replied with more force than she needed to, but Jenkins stood unaffected in his usual stance, his hands behind his back, his shoulders upright, his head held high, an impassive look on his face as he calmly answered, “Yes, ma’am. I’ve loaded them up in the car. And I made sure that everything was properly labeled.”

“Labeled?”

“Name, address, and phone number.”

She just looked at him, confused.

“For the airlines, ma’am.”

“Oh…okay.”

As Jenkins walked away, Cindy was glad he was paying attention to the details of travel that eluded her. She attempted to eat some of the fruit on her plate, but the only thing her anxious stomach could take was the prodigious amounts of coffee she needed to keep going. Unfortunately the side effect was the caffeine made her thoughts spin. Backwards were the memories she wanted to avoid of the dream. Forward were the thoughts she wanted to avoid of being on a plane.

So she turned on her phone to distract herself.

Seven missed calls from Stacy. Cindy wasn’t going to respond because she didn’t want Stacy telling her what a horrible decision she was making. She chanced a look at Twitter. She was still trending in all the worst ways. It was the same thing on Facebook, Reddit, and every other place she looked.

Her stomach fell, as her throat choked up and tears threatened to start welling out.

“I’m doing the right thing,” she said as she took a calming breath and turned her phone off. If there had been any crack in her conviction to follow through on her trip, the continued public humiliation on social media sealed it.

The End Chapter 5

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The Environmentalist

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The Bainbridge Killings

Chapter 1

The clouds above Jon Stevens’ head hung over him like fat, smoky cotton balls ready to burst at any moment, but the rain wouldn’t come. Instead, the air was thick with moisture that collected on his skin until it beaded and dripped down the sides of his face in lazy streaks. Stevens stood, still and rigid at the railing, going through the details of the killings he’d come to investigate as the ferry made its way across Puget Sound, traveling from Seattle to the island of Bainbridge.

The local sheriff, Stan Branson, officially called them suicides. Stevens called them killings. Nobody really knew. The facts pointed towards suicide but the details were too similar even if the connections were non-existent.

If it was as simple as suicide, Jon Stevens wouldn’t be there. If things made sense, if there was a direction for the investigation to go—a suspicion to be followed up on—they wouldn’t have called him in. Nobody called in Jon Stevens until they were banging their head bloody against a brick wall.

Seattle’s concrete, high-rise skyline fell away in the distance to his right as he turned to the left and faced the tree-covered island of Bainbridge. They were two completely different worlds: one an ultra-sleek, modern metropolis on the cutting edge, the other a sleepy, green, resort destination that seemed to spring out of a simpler era. Bainbridge didn’t look like a place where a serial killer would live. It looked like the kind of place that you would run to to relax and get away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities. The kind of retreat where you could escape all of your troubles.

A woman walked out onto the top deck from inside the ferry, breaking his solitude. It was two in the afternoon, and most of the few people on the ferry were sitting comfortably inside, watching the journey through the ferry windows, getting a bite to eat at the restaurant or standing next to their cars below deck. The woman had a long, tan overcoat, similar to what Stevens was wearing except she wore it over a dress, and high, black heels. Her long brown hair framed her thin, sculpted face and fell in blond-tinted curls over her shoulders. She turned to look at Stevens and as their eyes met he saw in hers surprise and dismay, maybe even fear as she turned and walked quickly back inside.

He wasn’t unattractive, just unavailable: his mind was on his job. He tried not to think about the look in her eyes. Was it that obvious? The things he’d seen, the cases he’d worked—what he’d been forced to do—had wormed its way into every part of who he was. People could see that darkness; that’s why they avoided him. But it was more than that. Other things—fluttering at the edge of his brain—made him want to avoid being still long enough to attract attention.

Stevens looked down as the ferry docked. Men moved back and forth securing lines, dropping plates into place for cars, and after a few minutes, people started to disembark. The tourists took pictures. The residents drifted off in the direction of their cars or their homes. The workers trudged slowly, begrudgingly towards their jobs.

When the majority had made their way off the ferry he walked down the stairs to where the rented Mercedes was parked and followed the ferry workers out. He drove away from the dock and up to the main road, made a left and drove leisurely through the village. Charming little shops, galleries, and restaurants lined the sides of the street, filled with people who looked relaxed and happy, as if their lives had a pace to them much slower than that of the cities Stevens was used to working in.

Stevens had been raised in Washington D.C., a city that moved like thunder: purpose in every step, everyone focused tightly on their destination. The crimes that Stevens usually investigated happened in metropolitan areas that were all very similar to his D.C. home. Only the biggest populations produced the solitary, infected minds that created the horrific world that he lived in.

He had little experience with the overwhelming beauty of nature, and the scene that opened up as he headed out of the village stunned him. The concrete jungle of Seattle receded as he drove down the tree-covered roads towards his destination in the center of the island. His lungs felt overfilled with oxygen and the scent of the forest. The pure air, replacing the congestion and grime that coated his day-to-day life, made his head spin.

By the time he hit his turn Stevens was in the deep country, surrounded by soaring pine trees, rolling green hills, and hidden houses. He’d gotten the directions beforehand but as he turned down the lonely dirt road he wondered if he’d gotten them wrong. Then he wound his way around a bend and the forest road opened up to the valley that was home to Holley’s Folly Bed and Breakfast. Stevens had picked the spot because of its central location and because it advertised itself as being isolated from the rest of the world, but the pictures on the website didn’t do it justice. Not by a long shot.

Nestled in a valley surrounded by trees, the main building sat just above a sea of flowers that dropped down into a duck-covered pond, past which there were rows of farmed vegetables, chicken coops, a grove of grazing sheep and a pasture with horses. The city boy in him wondered how people could live like this, while the rest of him wondered why anyone would ever check out.

He drove his car up to the side of the main building. As he got out he heard a female voice, calling to him from behind.

“Mr. Lawrence?”

A beautiful woman was walking towards him, brushing the dirt off of one hand against her jeans, the other carrying a potted plant. She wore a flowered shirt and a wide-brimmed straw hat sat at an angle on her head. As she came up to him she smiled, her eyes glittering with interest rather than fear as he laughed nervously, struggling to remember his cover.

“Jon Lawrence, yes. Are you Mrs. Holley?”

She gripped his large hand with surprising strength as she continued to look into his eyes. “Actually,” she said, “it’s Ms. Faulter. But please call me Holley.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Holley.” He gestured at the sea of flowers. “This is an amazing place you have here.”

She smiled knowingly. “Like the sign says, it’s my ‘folly’—my labor of love that will someday be the death of me.”

Her sincerity was infectious and her lack of fear surprising. “Well,” he said, a little haltingly. “It shows.”

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then shrugged. “Well thank you… now let’s get you checked in.”

Inside, she took his information, grabbed his key, and smiled at him again. “So, what brings you to our island?”

“Shopping.”

She paused. “Mr. Lawrence,” she said, laughing softly, “you don’t look like the shopping type.”

Stevens laughed, trying to hide his shock and surprise at both her perception and her willingness to express it. “Well yes, you have me there. I’m not looking for knick knacks or anything like that. Maybe a house...”

“Oh, so you’re looking to join our happy little community here on the island?” She grinned at him slyly, her face barely concealing her interest.

“It would be a happy retreat from Houston,” he said, forcing his eyes away from her face and towards the door.

“It would.” He felt her eyes on him again and then she nodded and turned away, finishing his registration and then leading him out to his cabin in the forest where he stood for a moment, listening as his eyes scanned the silent wood.

“I don’t see anybody else around,” he said.

She grinned. “It’s off season, so right now it’s just you and me.” Not waiting for a reply she gave him a sidelong glance and walked away. He watched her uneasily, trying to decide if the slow swing of her hips was natural, or a show she was putting on just for him.

Stevens threw his bags on the bed. Holley was the first test of his cover story. Normally he would have checked in with the sheriff, gone over his files, and investigated the crime scenes, but even though Bainbridge was slightly bigger than Manhattan there were only 23,000 people on the island, which made it a small town. And in small towns news travelled quickly. If he had come in as an FBI agent the entire island would have known within a day, and the killer would have been in the wind.

He fell into the big bed, laid his head against the pillow and closed his eyes. The first deaths had come nearly two years ago. Joseph and Gloria Stein were movie producers from LA. For them, Bainbridge was a retreat where they would go to get away from the cutthroat, backstabbing business of making movies. They’d been found in their bed. Their hands locked together. Their bodies looking perfectly relaxed. Their faces happy. Their deaths peaceful. Two, half full glasses of a local wine, Island Mountain Winery’s High Top Red, sat on nightstands to either side of the bed, filled with a combination of aconitine—a poison made from ground wolf’s bane root—and veterinary grade ketamine. The ketamine knocked them out, and the aconitine stopped their hearts. No death is easy, but the coroner said they wouldn’t have felt a thing.

The maid had found the Steins’ bodies two days after their deaths when she’d come in to do her weekly cleaning. The house had been locked from the inside. The alarm was on. Nothing was missing. Sheriff Branson made calls to their studio and found that the Steins’ last movie had bombed. Given that, and the lack of any evidence to the contrary, their deaths had been ruled suicides.

But then it happened again... seven months later.

Bob and Stacy Strong were high profile defense lawyers from San Francisco. Bainbridge was their retreat from the high stakes courtroom drama that dominated their lives. According to their office staff the Strongs would disappear up to Washington after all of their big cases were closed. They would spend a few weeks sailing, fishing, eating well, and drinking fine wine in the blissful privacy of their eleven acre ranch until work forced them back to San Francisco.

They were also found in their bed. Hands locked together. Heads resting peacefully on their pillows. Bodies posed as if they were taking an afternoon nap. To either side of the bed, wine glasses half full of Island Mountain Winery’s High Top Red, mixed with a combination of aconitine and ketamine—a detail from the Stein’s death that had never been released to the public.

Sheriff Branson looked a little harder and a little deeper at the Strongs because of the similarities. The Strongs had closed their last case in San Francisco but they wouldn’t have been celebrating: if anything, they would have been mourning the largest loss of their career. Roman Salvitori had been accused of blackmail, extortion, and tax evasion in relation to multiple building projects throughout the Bay Area. The Strongs had spent two years and countless man hours defending Salvitori only to have him found guilty on all counts.

As in the Stein case the Strongs’ house was locked from the inside, the alarm was on and nothing was missing. There was no sign of a struggle, and the only fingerprints inside were those of the Strongs and their cleaning lady. Branson followed up on the Salvitori angle, trying to connect Salvitori to the Steins, or find a link to the murder of the Strongs, but Salvitori’s organization had been devastated by the trial and a subsequent power struggle had ended with his right hand man, Sammy Terrio, taking over. The trouble in Salvitori’s own house made him an unlikely suspect, and when he was killed in prison it seemed clear that if anything, Terrio would have been happy with the results of the trial. In the end, Branson had reluctantly ruled the deaths of the Strongs as suicides, as well.

Then it happened a third time... nine months later.

Ira and Ema Fishman were real estate agents from New York. For the Fishmans, Bainbridge was the farthest place they could go to get away from the high stress New York real estate market. According to their office staff, the Fishmans’ entire life was spent in a whirlwind of phone calls, showings, and listings acquisition.

Like the other four, the Fishmans were found in their bed, posed peacefully, heads on pillows, wine glasses nearby filled with Island Mountain Winery’s High Top Red and the same mixture—still unknown to the public—of aconitine and ketamine.

But there were additional problems with the Fishmans. First, they were celebrating one of the largest sales in their career, a forty-eight million dollar mansion on the edge of Central Park, which netted them nearly three million in commissions. And the Fishmans didn’t drink, at all, ever. Ira Fishman had pancreatitis, which meant that if he drank any kind of alcohol he could end up dead. According to everyone who knew him he never even thought about touching alcohol. Ema Fishman had grown up with an alcoholic father and had seen the damage it had done to him and their family, and was proud of the fact that she had never taken a drink in her life. Finally, there was a necklace that according to the Fishmans’ children was missing.

This time Sheriff Branson’s first call was to the FBI.

Bainbridge was a quiet, happy community, whose crime problems were simple: mostly theft and burglaries, with only a fraction of what went on in any major city. There hadn’t been a murder on Bainbridge Island in all of Sheriff Branson’s twenty-five year career, let alone six of them. He knew he was in over his head and when he reached out for help, the case caught the eye of Emory Thomas, head of the FBI’s profiling unit and Jon Stevens’ boss.

That same morning Thomas had appeared in front of Stevens’ desk with a thick file. “You might find this interesting,” he said as he handed it over.

Stevens skimmed the file. “There’s something we’re missing,” he said.

“Yeah. A motive.” Thomas gave him a knowing smile which told him they’d been thinking the same thing.