The Roses of May (The Collector Trilogy Book 2) Page 19

  “We’re not giving up,” I mumble.

  “Sweetheart—”

  “He’ll kill until he’s stopped. Isn’t that what they always say? That if they’re getting away with it, they have no reason to stop?”

  “Priya—”

  “Other mothers will lose their daughters.”

  “Other sisters,” she sighs. “You know, I am this close to sending you off somewhere to vacation for a month. Should send you ahead to Paris to decorate the house.”

  “He’ll keep killing.”

  “Stopping him is not worth destroying you.”

  I watch her get up and walk away, knowing she won’t go far. To my room, maybe, to clean up the cookies before they attract bugs. The mini-vac whirrs, and a moment later she comes back with my toothbrush in hand.

  My mouth is currently a kind of nasty I’m not sure a toothbrush can touch, but I brush and rinse and spit obediently, and when there isn’t imminent danger of more hurling, Mum helps me wash my face. It’s early yet, especially for us, but we curl up in her bed that’s been too big since Dad died. She clicks the TV on, skipping through channels until she can put on a nature documentary narrated by a man with a deep, soothing British voice.

  Mum says BBC is the only thing she really misses about London.

  I’m not sure either of us ever really sleep; we just sort of drift on exhaustion and emotion-numbed minds. When her alarm goes off, she throws it across the room.

  It keeps going off.

  I bury my face in her shoulder. “There’s nothing to unplug.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not going to stop until you make it.”

  “Shush.”

  It’s another five minutes before either of us feels like making the effort, and even then we just haul her comforter downstairs to curl up together on the couch. She has her phone in hand, and I can hear her fingernail tapping against the screen as her thumb flies, typing out a message. I’m assuming it’s to her boss.

  It could also be to Eddison.

  I should probably let him know I had an Oreo incident, but I really don’t want to. Not because he’ll be disappointed—he understands—but because he’ll be worried.

  More worried.

  Shit.

  Eventually Mum’s stomach starts growling enough she has to leave our nest of warmth. I’m hungry, but the thought of eating anything makes me queasy. She brings back a bowl of oatmeal and bananas for herself, and hands me a smoothie. It’s a good compromise. Substance, which my body still kind of needs, but not heavy. And it’s a drink. I’m not sure why that makes a difference, being able to drink it instead of bite and chew, but it does, and it might just be purely in my head.

  “Will going to chess make you feel better?”

  Brotherhood isn’t the only reason struggling vets cluster. Seeing your own demons reflected back at you, it creates a safe place to just be wounded. It gives permission, in a way, to not be okay. You go to your brothers (and sisters) and not only will they watch over you when you are clearly incapable of doing so yourself, they will never tell you to be anything other than what you are, even if on that particular day what you are is a collapsing wreck of a human being.

  “Maybe,” I say eventually.

  “Then go get showered and dressed; I’ll go with you.”

  “To shower and get dressed?”

  She shoves me off the couch.

  When I come back downstairs, still slicking on violently red gloss over the lip stain, she’s standing at the base of the stairs dressed to go out. As I lock the door behind us, she checks to make sure the new camera is on and positioned.

  Given the casual way he disarmed and ripped out the last one, I don’t think the camera is really going to help.

  But it’s like locking the door, the sense of safety more than the fact of it, so I wait until she’s finished fussing with it before I lead the way down the sidewalk. At the end of the street, she stops, looks back over her shoulder at the house, and shakes her head.

  When we walk up the grass—slowly brightening as spring settles in—half the vets stumble awkwardly to their feet at the sight of my mother.

  Happy and Corgi let out wolf whistles.

  Mum gives them one of her sharp-edged, charming smiles.

  They gulp, and Pierce starts laughing. “You must be where Blue Girl learned it,” he wheezes, one hand clutching his chest.

  Settling comfortably across from the slumbering Gunny, Mum shoots me a look. “Blue Girl?”

  “Speaking of, we should really pick up some dye. My roots are nearing voting age.”

  The weird thing about Mum coming to chess—one of many weird things, really, given that it’s the middle of a workday—is that she hates chess. She hates playing it, hates watching it, hates even hearing about it. She once canceled our cable subscription for a week so Dad couldn’t try to make her watch any more documentaries about famous games or players. So the fact that she’s sitting at the end of the table, watching all the games with barely concealed bemusement, isn’t about chess, it’s about me.

  Because Mum isn’t clingy, doesn’t hover, but sometimes you just need that visceral affirmation that the people you love are all right, that they’re just there in front of you. Close enough to touch.

  Sometime after Gunny’s woken up and introduced himself, a navy-banded police car pulls up next to the island and parks. All the vets straighten, the ones with their backs to the lot twisting around to try to see. A pair of officers climb out, puffy black jackets over dark blue uniforms with mustard trim down the pant legs.

  A handful of the men relax, recognizing them.

  “Pierce, Jorge,” greets the older of the pair, his thick hair entirely white and silver. “How you doin’?”

  “Nice and warm today, Lou,” answers Jorge. “What brings you out here?”

  Lou pulls a hand-size notebook out of his back pocket. “We heard from some neighbors that Landon Burnside plays with you sometimes.”

  Burnside?

  Mum pokes me hard in the thigh.

  Corgi scratches at his bulbous nose. “We’ve got a Landon, sure enough. Don’t know his last name, though. Average sort of guy?”

  A bland, little nothing of a man.

  Lou’s partner holds up a photo, and yes, it’s Landon, not that there was really any expectation otherwise.

  Corgi nods along with some of the others. “That’s him. What’s he done?” His eyes don’t go to me when he says it, but Yelp’s do, and Steven’s.

  “He was found dead last night in his room.”

  White light flares in my vision, but doesn’t clear with frantic blinking. It just hangs there, blinding me, until Mum’s finger pokes between my ribs hard enough to make me choke. Spots dance as the world flickers back into view.

  “How was he killed?” Mum asks calmly. “Can you say?”

  The officers exchange a look and a shrug. “Hard to say; he’s been dead awhile. Examiner’s working to figure out what was done to him.”

  “Done to him,” Mum echoes. “So you do suspect foul play.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Tapping the back of my hand to pull my attention to her face, Mum nods toward the parking lot. “I’ll tell them. You call.”

  “Ma’am? You have any information on Mr. Burnside?”

  “I can tell you that the FBI considers him a person of interest in an ongoing investigation,” she says, and her voice is smooth and strong the way it is at work.

  I pull away from the table, careful to keep within sight of the officers as I take a few steps from the island. My hands shake, and the phone nearly drops twice before I can get a good grip on it.

  “Hey, Priya,” comes Eddison’s hoarse voice in my ear a minute later. “Checking in?”

  “Landon’s last name is Burnside.”

  “A last name? Excellent, that will—Priya, how in the hell do you know his last name?”

  I choke on a bewildered laugh. “He was murdered a while ago
. He was found yesterday.”

  “Local cops?”

  “Who else?”

  “Hand over the phone, will you?”

  The cops are both looking at me, though Lou is listening attentively to Mum. I walk back up and hold out the phone. “This is Special Agent Brandon Eddison; he’d like to talk to you.”

  Lou’s partner looks at me intently, then takes the phone from my hand, gently, like he’s afraid if he touches me I’ll shatter, and steps to the far end of the island before speaking. He must introduce himself, but I can’t really hear. Before I can sit back down, Mum hands me her phone.

  “Agent Finnegan. Just in case.”

  I nod, walk away again, and pull up the number Agent Finnegan gave us. I usually email him, though lately I’ve fallen to texting whenever there’s a new flower delivery. I count the rings until he picks up.

  “Agent Finnegan,” he says crisply, half a bite away from brusque.

  “Sir, this is Priya Sravasti, and Landon the creep was found dead yesterday.”

  He mutters a handful of curses in Japanese. “I’m going to ask this, understanding that it’s a rude question—”

  “They don’t know when he was killed, so I can’t try to tell you where we were.”

  “Have you informed Hanoverian?”

  “Eddison’s on the phone with one of the local cops right now.”

  “All right, I’ll get the contact info from him so we can request a visit to the body and scene. Are you safe?”

  “Mum and I are out at the chess park.” Which, come to think of it, isn’t exactly an answer. It’s all I’ve got, though.

  “Once the officers let you go, head home and stay there. If you don’t feel safe there, come up to Denver and get a hotel, just let me know which one.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Priya?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “We’re going to get you through this.” His voice is warm and firm, and under other circumstances I’d probably find it reassuring, perhaps even comforting.

  But his hands are tied.

  I sit back down and give the phone to Mum. God, the smoothie feels so heavy in my stomach, and I keep swallowing against the need to vomit.

  “So this man was stalking you?” asks the older officer.

  “Maybe,” I mumble. “He was definitely a little too focused on me for comfort.” I glance at Mum, who nods. It’s not like they aren’t going to learn all this anyway. “I’ve been getting flowers that correspond to a series of unsolved murders; given Landon’s attention on me, the agents thought he might be connected. They wanted to talk to him but he stopped coming to chess, and they weren’t finding any trace of him on paper.”

  “He didn’t have ID; his landlord told us his name.”

  His partner returns to the table and offers me my phone. “You seem to have Murphy’s own luck, Miss Priya.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, only that I was on the force in Boston when your sister died,” he explains in a thick Texas drawl. Oh God, no wonder he looked at me so intently. He recognized me. “My wife and I moved here when her pop got sick, but I’m not like to forget your family. What a tragedy. Tell you what, though, you’ve grown just as pretty as your sister.”

  I gape at him. I don’t think I’m even capable of more than that.

  Mum gets to her feet and slides around until she’s mostly blocking me. “If that’s how you feel is appropriate to speak to my daughter, you won’t be speaking to her at all,” she informs him frostily. “Your partner can deal with us, while you back the hell away.”

  As the officer stumbles through an apology, Corgi leans over to tap my knee. “Keep learning from your mama, Blue Girl,” he whispers. “Together you two could scare the world into behaving right.”

  I squeeze his hand because I can’t even attempt a smile.

  “Go call the captain,” Lou tells his partner, and watches him walk away. “My apologies, ma’am, miss. I’ll speak to him about it.”

  “Remind me of his name,” Mum says, in a tone that’s far less question than command.

  “Officer Michael Clare,” he replies. “I’m Officer Lou Hamilton, and I’m sorry to be doing this, I know it’s a stressful time, but I do have to ask you both some questions in light of this new information. I promise, I will be the one asking.” He gestures up to the Krogers. “You might be more comfortable inside. Gentlemen,” he adds to the concerned vets, “Clare will have some questions for you, too, about Mr. Burnside, if you don’t mind.”

  Gunny nods gravely. “We’ll wait for him. Be safe, Miss Priya.”

  Inside the café, Lou settles us at a table and goes to get us drinks. I can see Joshua a couple of tables away, buried in a book, and behind the counter, the sparrow-barista greets the officer with cheerful familiarity.

  I don’t remember Officer Clare. To be fair, I don’t remember any of the uniformed people I met the night of Chavi’s murder, or the couple of days after. Really the first strangers to make an impression were the Quantico Three. Five years later, though, Officer Clare remembers me.

  Even though I never really thought Landon was behind the deliveries, there’s something terrifying about learning for sure that he isn’t.

  If it isn’t him, then who?

  “All right, Finney, you’ve been digging for a week now; tell us something good.”

  The helpless laugh from the speaker in the middle of the conference table is less than reassuring. “I really wish I could, Vic, but we lost the only person remotely on our radar.”

  “Now that we know more about him, was he likely for the previous murders?” asks Vic, sprawled in one of the high-back rolling chairs. One elbow is braced on the plastic arm to prop himself up, two fingers digging into his temple to hold off what looks like a hell of a headache. Ramirez’s pen is tapping a mile a minute against the table, which can’t be helping.

  It’s most of why Eddison is being careful to pace behind Vic.

  “Landon Burnside lived off the grid. No state-issued ID, no car, no credit cards, no bank accounts, no property. Worked odd jobs for cash, rented the mother-in-law suite for cash in a friend’s house.”

  “But?”

  “But the friend was a cousin, and our guy’s name was actually Landon Cooper. Did two and a half years of a seven-year sentence for statutory rape and assorted charges. Was supposed to register when he got out, instead he skipped state and turned up in Colorado. DNA came back this morning to confirm his identity.”

  “Any chance he detoured through San Diego two years ago?”

  “No; he was still locked up. He just got out fourteen months ago. He only served time the once, but he went to trial a couple other times, and had complaints that never made it that far. Garden-variety creep”—all three agents cringe—“who likes teen girls a hell of a lot more than teen girls like him. He was in prison in Michigan when Aimée Browder was killed.”

  “What if he was killed to protect Priya?”

  Ramirez and Vic both swivel in their chairs to look at Eddison, and even Finney is silent on the phone.

  Eddison shrugs. “Asking seriously: what if the bastard killed Landon because he was bothering Priya?”

  Ramirez is still staring, looking somewhat sick, but Vic’s clearly had the thought already. “Walk us through it,” he suggests.

  “I could buy the flowers being taunts, if anyone else got them. Any other family member, any other victim. But it’s just Priya. The deliveries are about her, not the murders. If we look at the flowers as gifts . . .”

  “He was courting her, and when she moved away, he killed Aimée because it was as close as he could get to Priya,” Ramirez says.

  “Whatever motivates him to kill, it isn’t sex; only half of his victims are raped, and even that seems more about punishment than sex. He sees something else in them, and whatever that thing is, he sees Priya as being better. He wants Priya for something the others were never even considered for. She means enough to him that he
actively looks for her not once, but twice. And he finds her.”

  “So he starts courting her again,” Ramirez picks up, the flow familiar from a thousand other conversations, when the teasing falls away for the sake of work, and they’re so close to being on the same page on a case. “Flowers, cards. But then there’s Landon. If he’s watching her, he knows Landon is bothering her.”

  “How?” asks Finney.

  “Because he’s watching, too. He knows when the Sravastis are out of the house, knows when to make the deliveries or have them made. Deshani’s schedule is fairly fixed, but Priya’s changes based on her mood. And we know the psychology of these kinds of gifts: he’ll want to see the reaction to them.”

  “He sees Landon because he’s already following Priya.”

  “And that’s where Landon crosses the line this guy has drawn. He thinks of Priya as his, and Landon was encroaching.”

  “It’ll be a few days before the official autopsy results are in,” adds Finney, his voice crackling through the speaker, “but the Huntington ME feels pretty comfortable loosely mapping out the events. Landon had been dead roughly three weeks when he was found, probably since just after Eddison’s visit. He didn’t have heat, so the cold slowed decay, but eventually the smell started filtering into the rest of the house and the cousin went to investigate. First came a couple of subduing blows, and there’s evidence of some kind of restraint. Rope, probably. Once he was tied up, he was castrated.”

  Eddison knows that, the local lieutenant told him that, but it still makes him wince.

  “Guy wasn’t neat about it, either,” Finny continues. “He wanted it to hurt. There was a hell of a beating after, just to let it really sink in, before he went at Landon’s throat. It’s messy, strong, full of rage. This guy was pissed.”

  “Same knife?”

  “Impossible to know. They’ll make casts, but the decay will make it hard to be definitive. It’s similar, at the very least.”

  “And nothing left behind.”