Cleansed by Death Read online

  “I can still taste the bitter fear that came over me that day. He slammed on the brakes and sent the car skidding to a stop. He was shouting. I don’t even remember what he was saying, but he was shouting.”

  I paused. Two small girls walked a dog through the dirt toward the designated pet area. They didn’t seem old enough to read. How old did you have to be to read these days anyway? Nick kept his hand steady on my shoulder, his rhythmic breathing hypnotic. Oh, how I longed to turn around and lean into his arms. My heartbeat raced and I kept my eyes trained on the fence post, taking deep breaths and counting backward.

  “The next thing I knew, he was grabbing me by the shoulders, hard, shaking me, yelling at me, saying crazy things. I was so shocked; I didn’t even respond. I think that made him madder. He shrank away from me, but he kept yelling. And then he pulled his heavy set of keys out of the ignition and threw them. Right at my head. They hit the edge of the passenger window hard enough to crack it. And that’s what stopped him.

  “He got out of the car, still yelling, wanting me to drive. I climbed over and closed his door, and then I locked him out. I didn’t even think about it, I just locked all the doors.”

  I drew in a deep breath and held it as long as I could. My face was hot enough to fry an egg, and the pulsing of my heartbeat in my temples was an out-of-control bass drum set.

  “He got so mad that he started kicking the doors in. Put a dent in the passenger door of his brand-new coupe. Something snapped inside of me, and I did something really wrong that day, Nick. Something I’ve been ashamed of ever since.”

  I finally turned glistening eyes to face him.

  He cupped my face in his hand, and I read the heartbreak in his eyes. “What did you do, Josie?”

  I locked my eyes on his, the unleashed shame leaking away. “I let him back in.”

  Twenty minutes later, we were back on the road, bottles of water in hand and the talk of all talks momentarily behind us. I’d finally broken the dam, but that was all I could handle for today. Probably for tomorrow, too. I steered us back to something I could talk about and breathe at the same time—the murders.

  “So, why me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why include me in this investigation? I mean, I appreciate the professional courtesy, but why are you bending the ear of a small-town police chief to help you solve a murder one state over? What’s up with that?”

  “You’ve got a good nose for this kind of stuff. You’re one of the few people I know with the both the guts and the brains to track a killer like this, and to help me find the connections between the kills. We’ve been talking about it since the murders started, and your gut hasn’t failed me so far. You were the first one to wonder out loud if these cases were connected. You were the one to notice the little girl factor. And since the FBI’s second-best solve rate is off on another case, I’m sticking with you. Despite the fact that, for a brilliant woman, you sure can be slow on the uptake sometimes.”

  “Could be we’ve seen one too many bad movies. Could be we’re making up connections where there aren’t any.” I wasn’t about to ask him to cut me any slack or remind him I wasn’t exactly a hundred percent today.

  “I don’t think so. This case, the Mad Town Massacre, as the press is already calling it, is singing. Loud and clear. It’s the same guy. And there’s plenty about it that you’re not going to like, my friend.”

  “Such as?”

  “You’re catching the killer’s geography, right?”

  “Huh? Geography?”

  His deep sigh seemed legit, and a wiser woman would’ve stopped there and thought it through. I barreled on. “What do you mean by ‘geography’?”

  “Last murder. Spokane, right? And the gruesome one before, in LA, remember?”

  “Sure... the Spokane murder was in Lilac City, not too far from where my sis lives. And yes, I’ve got a niece in LA. I haven’t forgotten. So?”

  His uncharacteristic eye roll seemed like a clue, but about what? I might’ve picked up on it had I not been suffering from last night’s trauma.

  “So... Madison, new crime scene, same perp.”

  “Yeah, I know. We’re headed there now. So?” I shifted in my bucket seat.

  “Didn’t you go to school in Madison for a day or two? And you’ve just admitted your small-town ties to the gov.” He gestured to me with his right hand, completing his sentence in true Italian fashion.

  “See, now that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t you think that’s a bit of a stretch? My nearly one whole year at UW Madison and a family member in LA and Spokane does not a crime nexus make. And I’ve gone to high school or college with lots of people. That means nothing. You need to admit it. You missed me and drew me into this to get the opportunity to sharpen your skills. Just like the good ole days.” I playfully punched his shoulder.

  He snorted and smiled, ignoring my comment as he soldiered on. “So, is it safe to assume you have neither a plan nor any ideas to offer up along with our condolences when we meet with the grieving governor in a little less than an hour?”

  “Condolences? As in, on behalf of the police force? What condolences?”

  Nick’s energy shifted. He stared straight ahead for a good two or three miles, and when he finally spoke, he kept his words measured and slow. “There are a few anomalies in this case I thought you might have already discovered.”

  “Yeah? Go on.”

  “This one hits pretty close to home.” He sighed and eased up on the gas.

  “As in, Madison? Because I went to high school with Governor Burke? That kind of close to home? Is that what this is about? Me being an old high school classmate of Robert’s? Really?”

  “No. There’s more to it.” He was quiet. Too quiet. He pulled over onto the side of the highway, put the car in park, and turned to face me.

  My throat dried up like a summer canyon. My shoulders sagged, and my head started to ache. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to say?”

  “The latest victim. It was Robert’s wife. Jazmine Burke is dead.”

  The low rise of the marble stairs curved around an alabaster statue on the third floor. I stood on the first step, looking up at it, mouth open. I shook my head, set my lips back to neutral. The last time I’d passed through this antechamber, I wasn’t interested in the priceless works of art. Nick had saved a congressman in a mysterious but heroic way in a distant land that he preferred not to talk about. I had served as Nick’s date as he stood before the then-governor to receive accolades and honors. The fish and the dessert were equal parts amazing at the banquet that followed the decoration ceremony.

  The vision of a wonderful dinner party sure beat focusing my whirling thoughts on the disaster I’d been drawn into. My eyelids crushed my eyes like anvils, and my legs refused to match Nick’s long stride. The pain in my shoulder slowed my thoughts, allowing me to savor the anger and fuel my commitment to bringing the killer down.

  “I hate to interrupt whatever party’s going on in your head, beautiful, but we need to nail down who’s playing which role in about thirty seconds.” Nick had stopped on the second landing, waiting for me in my sluggish state to catch up.

  I started at the sound of his voice. He frowned.

  “Looks like someone’s a little on the edgy side. This isn’t exactly your first rodeo. Why are you so jumpy?” The puzzled look on Nick’s face was a rarity.

  I smiled, finally joining him on the landing. “Well, it is my first federal case hitting this close to home and, if you must know, I guess I’m a little nervous.”

  “It’s an investigation like any other. You’re great at this. Don’t over-think it. Now, are you going first, or am I?” He put his hand on the small of my back and ushered me toward the final flight of stairs.

  “Given the way you sped around looking for a parking space, I’d say you should leave the elected officials to me.” I stepped ahead of him onto the first marble slab.

  “Wha
t’s that supposed to mean?” He passed me effortlessly, sluicing long legs over the stone risers, two at a time, and then paused for effect.

  “Nick, we’re in the state capital. They’re gonna be sticklers on laws and stuff. Particularly on breaking them. Like pulling into your not-quite-legal parking spot today.”

  “I prefer to think of it as reasonably legal. Besides, I’m FBI. Perks of the job.” He reached the top of the stairs and then turned and reached an arm out to me.

  The hard marble surfaces of the building echoed with energy as Nick and I strode down the hallway. The door to the governor’s office suite was slightly ajar, and sounds of someone talking on a phone drifted through the doorway. We exchanged glances without breaking stride, and slid inside. Plush carpet muted our footsteps. Nick waited for the receptionist to end her call before showing her our badges. A moment after she announced our presence over the phone’s intercom, she waved us toward the inner office. I pulled open the door. We stood in the doorway while Nick rapped a few times on the wooden doorframe.

  Governor Robert Burke stooped over his desk, palms planted on the glossy surface, staring at an open file while murmuring questions to two uniformed men. He looked up and glanced at Nick before locking eyes with me. I gasped at the zap of pain when our eyes met. I held his gaze and nodded subtly. Even in the midst of his private horror, Robert winked at me. Force of habit.

  My best friend Georgi, Robert, Jazmine, and I had been inseparable all four years at Baraboo Senior High School. We’d also been biology lab partners our sophomore year. Dissecting frogs, Georgi and I tossed a coin to see who would make the first incision. Robert made his frog stand up and recite the Gettysburg address to impress Jazmine when the teacher wasn’t looking.

  After high school, Georgi married Cliff, Robert tied the knot with Jazmine, and we all fell out of touch. After today, I’d still have Georgi and Cliff. But Robert would have non-stop sorrow. Nothing about life was fair.

  I was about to learn something beyond horrible, based on Robert’s expression. He poured over gruesome crime-scene photos of his wife’s murder. The state police hadn’t had the sense to deny him his wish to see them. I swooped in, closed the files, and pushed them gently toward Nick, all the while keeping my eyes locked on the governor.

  My friend didn’t say a word as I moved to his side of the desk and hugged him with my good arm. His grief engulfed me, and I sagged as I whispered in his ear, “We’ll get this monster, Robert. I promise.”

  He hugged me harder in response, nodding. We sat down on opposite sides of the desk and spoke in hushed tones. Nick took another leather chair in front of the governor’s desk.

  “You can say as much or as little as you’d like, Robert. We can get the story from the state team if you’ve had enough for today.” My voice wavered, my eyes moist.

  Nick pulled out a notebook and pen. “Anyway you want it. If you’re more comfortable with just Jo, that’s okay too. We’re here for you, Governor.”

  “I hope so. Besides you, Jo is the only one I can stand to talk to right now. So no, I’m good. I have to share this with you, and I want you to know how much it means to me to have you both personally involved.”

  Nick tensed beside me.

  Robert turned intense eyes on Nick. “When Jo Oliver endorses you, that’s all the background check I need.”

  Nick nodded at him.

  Smooth move.

  “I need to know I have the best men and women working to end this evil, and I know I can trust both of you.” He was a shadow of the man I’d supported during the last election. Grief had already taken up residence in him, offering a preview of the havoc it would wreak upon his body, mind, and soul in the coming weeks and months. I needed to relax and absorb every detail he was rational enough to share. I slowed my breathing, quieted my internal dialogue, and took out my notebook, sinking into the heavily-padded leather seat. I nodded for him to begin.

  “Jazmine volunteered everywhere. You know that, Jo. Everyone knows that. She’s been involved in the Mentor Sisters organization since before we were married.”

  Famous for her passion and poise, Jazmine Burke was one of the most powerful fundraisers in the country. She was the Mentor Sisters’ poster child. Had that made her a target for a psychopath?

  “Every Saturday morning, she’d bring the girls from Mentor Sisters with her to volunteer at the Farmers’ Market on the square. All last summer, they worked with Festers’ Flower Farms—you know how she loves her flowers. So, when she decided to volunteer with the girls for the Holiday Fair on the square again this year, I didn’t think a thing of it. It was the glads that did it.”

  “The glads?” Nick looked up from his notebook.

  “Gladiolas. She had been working with Drew, her Mentee Sister, selling gladiolas all summer. Drew grew into just as big a flower nut as Jazmine. When Festers decided to freeze-dry some of their best stock and save them for the Holiday Fair, Jazmine and the girl jumped at the chance to turn them into holiday bouquets.” His voice trailed off.

  I waited for him to continue, moving my gaze past him to the painting of Lake Mendota hanging behind him. If only I was kayaking rather than listening to Robert’s sad tale.

  “The police report said she’d just sold a big bunch of long-stemmed, purple gladiolas to some dark-haired guy with a walker, and she wanted to help him to his car.” Robert drew a sharp breath and stared at his hands for several seconds.

  My own tears welled up as I pictured the horrible scene and the grisly ending.

  “They found the walker knocked on its side, next to some gladiolas, near the west parking lot. A witness watched her help the guy out of the flower shop, bending over and chatting with him. Gave the police a pretty clear description of the white van she put most of the glads in. He said he didn’t give it a second thought. He saw the whole thing—said it happened so, so... normally. He never even knew what he was watching. Never thought to call the cops or report it until his wife saw the story on the news last night. Until Jazmine turned up…”

  She’d turned up dead, brutally murdered, skillfully flayed... most likely while still alive. I ached for him. He would have seen every photo, read every description, pieced together a second-by-second understanding of the attack that led to his beautiful wife’s death. He was in shock.

  Robert and Jazmine had fallen in love in August, right before beginning our sophomore year, in the last seat of a long, yellow school bus. On the ride home from summer camp. Four giant teenage boys had been firing insults at an effeminate boy seated across from them. He asked them to stop after catching an airborne lunch bag with his head. Robert flashed between the bench seats and grabbed the hand of the biggest kid as the first punch was thrown, getting cuffed in the head himself. When I turned back to begin the color commentary with Jazmine, I saw the soft love shining through her tears. They’d been together ever since. How do you get over that?

  Robert glided to his feet. Nick and I followed suit. An awkward silence hissed through the room.

  “The eyewitness, what happened to him?” Nick was on point. Thankfully.

  Robert looked past us. He shifted his weight, clasped his arms around himself, and then unclasped them again. “He’s in the hospital right now. Within an hour of the story about him airing on TV, the witness began to receive death threats from all over the state—online and over the phone. Some people are blaming him as if he should’ve somehow known what was happening and stopped it.” He drew in a sharp breath, let it out. “And there was more than a little concern that he might harm himself. We don’t need any more tragedy to come from this.”

  I hugged Robert once more before I left the office, Nick in tow.

  Our footsteps echoed off the walls, and I shivered at the hollow sounds bouncing around the empty corridors. Snippets of the last moments of Jazmine’s life soldered themselves to my subconscious, slowing my steps. Nick reached the end of the grand vestibule. He turned around to watch me as I treaded heavily toward him,
my eyes tearing up. He nodded as I reached him, and we turned in unison to exit the building.

  We paused outside and ducked behind a pillar as he produced a bag of barbeque corn nuts and offered them to me. I tore open the bag and shook several into my palm before handing it back. We descended the steps, passing the bag between us under a canopy of shared silence.

  “Alright, let’s start from the beginning. How many times has this guy struck, and for how long? And what do you make of the geography? What’s driving him? Are there always little girls involved somehow?” I’d taken the leap and become convinced of all Nick had theorized. This was a consummate killer, and we needed to stop him before he killed again.

  “Here’s the thing, we think this guy feels right for a ring of unsolved cases centering on the islands, but spanning over a decade.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the islands’? Which islands?” I turned the bag of corn nuts bottom up, shaking the last few morsels and all the crumbs into my mouth.

  “Everybody’s dream destination. Hawaii.” He kept his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. He could have knocked me over with a feather.

  “Hawaii! That’s crazy—there’s no crime in Hawaii!” I practically screamed the name. A vacation there was near the top of my bucket list. In fact, Del and I were supposed to spend the Christmas holidays at a timeshare in Maui this year. Just a few days from now. Would we still be going?

  “And there’s no shark attacks there either, right?”

  I frowned at Nick’s half grin.

  “Nine years ago, a restaurant owner’s wife was found dead in the restaurant after hours. She’d been knifed to death. It hadn’t been quick, and it hadn’t been painless, and there were no signs of drugs at the scene or in her system. That was on Oahu. And she and her husband had just completed the legal adoption of their six-year-old niece, who had been living with them for the past year. The child’s biological mother was the suspect from the beginning; messy family case. Three years later, another kill, but this time in Maui.”