The Last Echo: A Body Finder Novel Page 7

  They passed an open pair of accordion doors that revealed a mismatched washer and dryer. The washer was avocado green, its enamel dull and chipped, and the dryer was stark white and shiny, brand-new. On top of the dryer was an overflowing basket of rumpled laundry.

  It all looked so normal, like Antonia had just stepped out for a bit and would be back to fold the clothes soon.

  But Violet knew she wasn’t coming back.

  Rafe stopped outside a second door, this one only slightly ajar, and Violet watched as he tentatively touched his fingertips to it, nudging it open. The blinds covering the window were closed, and it was far too dark to see exactly what they were looking at. Violet strained against the shadows to get a better view. She settled her hand against Rafe’s shoulder as she eased forward, trying to see around him. Reaching inside, Rafe flipped on the light switch, filling the room with harsh overhead light.

  That was when Violet saw the black smudges, like ebony feathers that coated nearly every surface. She’d never actually seen sooty film before, but she knew exactly what it was: fingerprint dust.

  “You shouldn’t touch anything,” she told him, worrying about everything they’d already come in contact with. Would the police find their fingerprints and know they’d been there? She thought about wiping the light switch with the sleeve of her jacket, but when she turned to look at it, it too was smeared in a layer of the sticky black powder.

  Rafe ignored her warning and barged inside, already sliding his hands—his fingers—over nearly every surface of the bedroom.

  “This is it.” Violet’s voice rasped against her throat. “This is her bedroom.”

  Rafe nodded, as if she’d been asking him a question as he reached for the top drawer of the nightstand and started sifting through bras and underwear. He probably didn’t hate this part of the job, Violet thought wryly.

  The furniture in this room looked more like it belonged to a little girl than a college coed. Stark white and carved with flowers, the twin-sized headboard, the dresser, and nightstands were all part of a matched set. Violet guessed that Antonia had moved to this house from her parents’, bringing with her the bedroom set she’d grown up with. The comforter was more sophisticated, bright jewel tones made from raw silk, with matching throw pillows and satiny sheets.

  Antonia’s room was tidier than the other one had been. Even in the aftermath of an investigation, with her belongings ransacked, there was a sense of order to the chaos. Her closet was neatly arranged, divided by clothing types—sweaters in one section, T-shirts in another, jackets and dresses each in their own designated spaces. Her jewelry was neatly organized in a polished lacquer jewelry box perched atop her dresser. And even her makeup had been compartmentalized in a tray on her vanity. Violet didn’t need Rafe’s special skills to tell her that Antonia had been a bit of a neat freak.

  Violet watched as Rafe left his fingerprints on nearly every possible surface, but she was much more cautious with her own. She kept the sleeves of her hoodie pulled down over her hands. When she opened the vanity’s drawer to get a peek inside, she used the fabric as a barrier between her and the knob, trying to avoid leaving any physical evidence that she’d been there at all.

  “Are you almost finished?” she finally asked, when they seemed to be getting nowhere. She watched as Rafe thumbed through the pages of a paperback romance novel. “Or do you have a thing for sexy, half-naked pirates?” she asked, pointing to the book’s cover.

  Rafe scowled as he flipped the book over, sparing only a superficial glance at the shirtless swashbuckler with flowing blonde hair. “Not yet.” He frowned.

  “Not yet, you don’t have a thing for pirates?” She grinned meaningfully. “Or not yet, you’re not finished?”

  Rafe shook his head, ignoring her pitiful attempt at cracking a joke as he flipped to the back of the book, fanning through the pages, his concentration rapt. “Hold on. I think there’s something here.”

  He didn’t have time to find what he was looking for, as Krystal came bounding breathlessly into the bedroom. “Someone’s here! I think we’ve been caught.”

  But it was already too late. A deep voice boomed from over Krystal’s shoulder, and Violet saw Krystal’s eyes bulge so far she thought they were going to pop.

  “What are you kids doing here? This is a crime scene. Didn’t you see the tape?”

  Flinching, Violet watched as Rafe hid the paperback behind his back. Her heart catapulted into her throat as she turned and saw the police officer in his uniform, framed by the doorway to the bedroom, eyeing them suspiciously.

  Krystal stood beside Rafe with her hands up, like she was already under arrest. “I swear we weren’t doing anything, sir. Just trying to help.”

  That was when Violet saw it. A tiny slip of paper drifting gently to the floor from between the pages of the book Rafe was concealing. No one else seemed to have noticed it.

  “Helping, huh?” He glanced at Rafe, his voice demanding. “What do you have there, son?”

  Rafe sighed but withdrew the paperback, holding it out to the officer. “A really good romance novel,” he drawled as he tossed the book on the floor between them. It landed on the carpet at the man’s feet with a dull thud.

  Violet moved quickly then, bending down to pick up the book with one hand, and discreetly snatching the small slip of paper with the other one. When she stood back up, she held out the paperback, her expression earnest. “Here you go.”

  The officer took the book from Violet, turning it over to examine it as Violet went to stand beside Rafe and Krystal. The man’s lips thinned with impatience. “Do you mind explaining why you kids are in here?” His gaze fell on Violet this time as she wadded the paper into a tiny ball and shoved it into the pocket of her hoodie. She wondered why he’d singled her out. Did she really look that honest? Or just like she’d be easier to break than the others? “And I want the truth this time.”

  Violet wanted to glare at Rafe for putting her in this position in the first place, for forcing her to lie to the police. Sweat beaded across her forehead as she pictured her uncle Stephen, the chief of police in Buckley, and wondered what he’d think of her if he knew what she was doing now, where she was. She swallowed, wishing the knot in her throat wasn’t choking her.

  She opened her mouth, grasping—flailing, really—for the first excuse she could think of, but it was Rafe who stepped forward. “Fine,” he said, his voice smooth and his expression unruffled. “We get it, we’re in trouble. You caught us.”

  “You got that right,” the cop said.

  “Listen, just do me a favor. Can you call Agent Sara Priest for us?” Somehow he managed to say the words without smirking, despite the smugness Violet could hear in his voice. “She’s with the FBI. She’ll explain everything.” Rafe pulled a business card from his front pocket as if he kept them there at all times, for just such an emergency. He handed it to the officer, who looked at the three of them standing in front of him with unguarded suspicion, probably wondering why in the world someone with the FBI would bail them out of the mess they were in.

  They’d been taken to the police station, but since they weren’t handcuffed, and hadn’t been fingerprinted, Violet assumed they weren’t actually being arrested or anything. At least not yet.

  But she knew she was in trouble. Even though they’d been told Sara was on her way, she was still a minor. She wasn’t stupid; she knew her parents had probably been called too.

  They would not be happy about this.

  Violet chewed on the side of her fingernail as she played out a dozen different scenarios in her head . . . none of which included being allowed to keep her cell phone, or possibly even her car.

  Still, they were lucky, she supposed. Apparently they hadn’t done anything bad enough to get themselves locked in the holding cells, where all the real criminals were waiting to be booked into jail.

  Rafe didn’t seem to care that they’d been caught. And Krystal was just . . . caught up in all the commo
tion around them.

  “This is your fault. If you hadn’t stolen that key . . .” Violet let the accusation hang there, both of them knowing what she meant.

  A devious half smile lit Rafe’s face. “Then you’d be clean and safe and warm at home, wouldn’t you?” he offered, looking at Violet with blue eyes that were anything but contrite. “How boring is that?”

  Violet shook her head. “It’s not boring, it’s . . .” She struggled, trying to find the right words, trying to find a way to make him realize he couldn’t just go around doing whatever he wanted. “It’s about doing the right thing. About not breaking the law.”

  From the other side of Rafe, Krystal snickered, and Violet turned to glare at her. “I don’t see how this is funny,” she practically choked out. “Besides, I thought you’d be on my side here. I mean, look at us, we’re in jail!”

  “We’re not in jail.” Rafe leaned back on the bench, stretching his arms across the top of it. His stance was far too casual, which only infuriated Violet even more. “Sara will spring us. Then you can go back to your safe, suburban little life.”

  Violet was about to tell him where he could go—where they could both go—when she felt something in the air shift, making it suddenly hard for her to breathe. Hard to blink.

  It took several heartbeats before she realized what was happening as she sat there, openmouthed, waiting to see who it was. Her chest tightened with each second that ticked by, constricting until she felt as if her lungs might implode.

  And then she saw him. The source of her sudden discomfort.

  A killer hiding in plain sight.

  Unlike the three of them, this boy was most definitely being arrested. He was surrounded by three uniformed officers as he was pushed through the station doors. He didn’t bother struggling. It would have been futile, she supposed. His hands had been cuffed, and all three of the men escorting him were armed, as was nearly every other officer in the station.

  Time slowed as Violet watched, and a chill gripped her. Instinctively, she wrapped her arms around herself, leaning closer to Rafe, seeking out his warmth. She could hear her own pulse as it established an eerie backdrop to the rhythm of each footstep the boy took.

  Imprints clung to him like a thick layer of fog, so intertwined that it was almost impossible to distinguish one from the next.

  Violet was stunned that the boy in front of her could be responsible for carrying so much death. He couldn’t possibly be much older than she was, hardly qualifying as a man. At first she thought she must be wrong, that she was confused . . . she had to be sensing imprints coming from the officers too. Surely these were men who had killed in the line of duty and were wearing those reminders on their skin.

  But then she looked at the boy . . . really looked at him. He should have been too young to be so hardened, so dangerous. Yet Violet knew better. She knew that sometimes evil was born.

  He was covered in tattoos that were almost tribal-looking, finding space on his forearms, hands, neck, and his face. Every place his skin was exposed. His black hair was short as if his head had once been shaved, but was now growing back, springing up lightly over his scalp . . . thin, like new grass.

  Somewhere nearby, she heard the hum of Rafe’s voice, trying to break through to her, to reach her, but she was too distracted to make it out clearly.

  The moment was surreal, as Violet felt immediately detached from everyone around her. It was just her . . . and the boy. And the echoes—the imprints—that whispered to her.

  One was a haunting choir of voices, constant and eerie.

  Simultaneously, candied apples, sweet and tart, licked across her tongue, making her mouth water. That was another.

  And then there were the tattoos. She almost didn’t notice what was so unusual about them at first. One seemed to blend with the next—those were the ones that were real, the ones that were visible to everyone, and not just to Violet. But then she saw some of them move, shifting and slithering like black vines just beneath the surface of the boy’s skin. They snaked in and around his permanent tattoos, the ink that would never move or change. They stopped now and then to form a new pattern or a shape: interlocking circles, a rose, smoky swirls, a dagger dripping with blood. But then, before her eyes could fully adjust, they’d moved again, reshaping. That was the third distinct imprint, these ever-changing tattoos.

  There were other imprints too. Some she could make out, and some that were too tangled with the rest to distinguish clearly.

  “What’re you lookin’ at?” The man-boy wearing the imprints of the dead snarled at her, and Violet’s skin puckered, chilling her all the way through.

  She glanced away, trying to decide if the icy blast she felt was yet another imprint or if it was just the sensation of being so near a killer.

  Violet glanced nervously, first to Rafe and then to Krystal, both of whom were watching her now, even as she saw one of the officers shove the boy: “Shut up! Don’t talk to her.”

  “I’ll talk to whoever I want, bitch,” he shot back, his voice bold and full of menace.

  He turned to Violet then, his stare intense. The creeping vine of a tattoo wound its way around his brow, framing his black eyes with dark tendrils. The whispering chant remained steady, filling the small space with its ghostly cacophony.

  Violet pressed herself closer to Rafe, trying not to look at the boy, but unable to look away from the ink curling and creeping beneath his skin. She shook her head, her heart racing, bruising her ribs.

  He was directly in front of her now, being led to wherever they were taking him.

  At last, Rafe’s voice broke through Violet’s reverie and she heard him talking to her softly. “V, look at me.”

  “I’m okay,” she tried to say, but the words didn’t quite reach her lips.

  She could see in the boy’s eyes that her fear incited him, and he jerked toward her, throwing his body in her direction, struggling against his restraints like a madman. He held her gaze as he tried to get to her. “You like me, girl? You like what you see?”

  But he didn’t get far.

  Two of the officers pushed him down, forcing him to his knees. “I said shut up!” One of them was yelling as they gripped his handcuffs, hauling him upward until his shoulders were so contorted they looked like they might snap.

  Violet squeezed as far back against the bench as she could. When the boy lifted his head, she found herself staring into his black eyes. A menacing smile curled his lips as his gaze roved from the top of her head down to her feet, pausing only momentarily over her chest. “You’d like me even better if we were alone,” he promised, licking his lips lasciviously.

  Violet glared at him. She hated that he could see her fear, that he knew he’d gotten to her.

  He laughed then, a vulgar bark that sounded like a growl. “I knew she liked me. Me and her would get along just fine,” he said to the cop as he was yanked to his feet again and dragged away.

  And then everything was moving again, in real time. Voices rose around her, returning to their normal, fevered pitch. She would never admit how her pulse choked her, or how her breath felt hot and shallow, hard to find like the air was suddenly too thin in that cramped space. But she was grateful when Rafe’s hand closed over hers . . . when she felt the familiar spark from his touch. She didn’t care that he practically hauled her up from the bench, his body shielding her from the boy being taken into custody.

  By the time Sara arrived, she looked as if she could spit fire at the three of them. Her gaze leveled on Rafe as the door closed behind her.

  And then she paused when she saw Violet—when she saw the way Rafe stood in front of her like a sentinel—and the furious scowl she was wearing cracked, fracturing into something . . . softer. “What? Did something happen?”

  “It’s Violet. Some guy just threatened her,” Rafe explained, his voice hard and filled with lingering menace.

  Violet had just barely managed to control her shaking, and the unearthly choral voi
ces had vanished. She realized she could have left it at that. That she could have let them both believe that the boy had simply frightened her. But now that he was gone, his imprints tucked away somewhere deeper in the building, she could feel her pulse steadying. “No. That—that’s not it,” she stammered. “He was . . .” She felt stupid for faltering, for her fear.

  Violet felt Krystal’s hand on her shoulder, and felt her fingers tightening. It was reassuring in a way Violet couldn’t explain, and she relaxed. Despite what they’d been through tonight, these were exactly the people she could talk to about this.

  “He was a killer, with imprints all over him. Strong ones. Almost overpowering . . . like they are when they’re new.” Violet swallowed, waiting to see what Sara would say.

  But Sara didn’t say anything. She just gave a brief nod, and then left them standing there as she marched assuredly toward the officer already heading in her direction, the same guy who’d caught them at Antonia Cornett’s house and brought them there in the first place. Sara coolly revealed her identification . . . ID that looked suspiciously close to a badge, Violet noted, despite the fact that Violet now knew that Sara was no longer actually in the FBI. She showed it to the officer, while her other hand compulsively smoothed over her hair, which was pulled into a flawless ponytail fastened at the nape of her neck. As usual, there wasn’t a single strand out of place. It was Sara’s tic.

  “I’m Sara Priest. And these three”—she glowered in the direction of her team—“are with me.” She turned her attention fully on the officer then, smiling as she leaned in conspiratorially. “Can we talk privately for a moment?”

  Violet watched as the officer grinned back at her, an almost too-eager expression on his face. She seemed to notice, for the first time really, how Sara’s sapphire eyes stood out against her ivory skin, and the way her auburn hair, always so sleek and severe, captured light in its fiery strands. Strange how she’d never realized those things before.

  Sara reached for the officer’s arm, just the barest of touches, as she expertly drew him away from her team.