Winter (Four Seasons #1) (15 page)

She looks at
me finally, her eyes swimming. “I know you’re not going to believe
me, Avery, but I only took one pill, I swear. I’ve been clean for
months and months. I took one a couple of weeks back and it was
fine, so I thought I could do it again. I have no idea how I got to
that party. I just remember being there and Tate getting really
sick and then…I wake up here with a tube down my throat.” A single,
fat tear rolls down her cheek and she brushes it away angrily. “My
mom’s never going to let me go back to school now. Never in a
million years. I had a coke problem and she thinks I’m back on the
slippery slope because I took one single pill. This is so messed
up.”

“
It really
is,” I agreed. “Wait, you took a pill a couple of weeks ago? When?
Where?” I’ve been with Morgan at the last few parties she’s
attended. I’m wracking my brain, trying to figure it all out,
when…

“
Oh, God,
Morgan.
The Irish party
? That’s why you freaked when you saw the cops?”

Morgan slumps
back against her pillow, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry,
okay. I thought it would be all right, and it was. Nothing bad
happened. I didn’t wake up the next day desperate for coke or
anything. I felt great, remember? We went running. It’s no big
deal.”

“
No big deal?
Shit, Morgan, if it wasn’t Luke, if it had been some other cop who
wanted to search you, what would he have found?” I’m met with a
tense silence that speaks for itself. “Great. That’s just great.
And now here we are with you in hospital. I can’t believe you don’t
remember anything. Jeez, Morgan, anything could have happened to
you!”

“
Yeah, well it
didn’t. I’ve already been poked and prodded at and suffered through
the indignity of a rape kit, and I was thoroughly un-interfered
with. Tate took care of me. I just hope
he’s
okay. He was so sick when I saw
him last. He was puking his guts up. He hasn’t been by yet; he must
be terrified of bumping into my parents. Will you tell him to come
anyway? I
have
to
see him. This is all getting completely out of hand.” Morgan drops
her head into her hands and starts crying, but instead of hysteria,
it’s the exhausted weeping of someone who ran out of tears hours
ago.

“
I’ll find
him. I’ll tell him,” I say. “Can you just swear…please swear to me
that you’re never going to touch anything like that again.
Please?”

She scrambles
across the bed and falls into my arms. “I promise, Avery. No buzz
is worth all of this.”

The nurse
comes in then, with Mrs. Kepler hot on her heels, and I make my
excuses and leave, wondering if Morgan is going to keep her
promise. Doubting she will.

Luke’s
Fastback pulls up outside the hospital at eight thirty, twenty
minutes after I call him to come get me. The heat and the music are
cranked up high when I get in, and Luke hits the volume control so
that the indie tune he was listening to is a muted buzz in the
background. The past few times I’ve seen him he’s been clean
shaven, but now he already has a couple of millimeters of stubble
marking his jaw. His hood is pulled up again, hiding most of his
face. He opens my door for me and drives us back to his place
without saying much. He asks after Morgan and smiles briefly when I
tell him her mom accused me of being a drug dealer, but then we
fall into an easy kind of silence. He hums along to the music and
waits patiently when the traffic is particularly bad. I watch him
out the corner of my eye, trying to figure out why it’s so easy to
sit in silence with him. I can’t think of anyone else I’ve ever
been able to do that with. Not even Morgan or Leslie. There always
has to be something going on, something to chatter or laugh about.
Luke just seems content to…
be
.

When we pull
up outside his place, he jumps out and grabs the door for me like
he usually does. The only difference is that this time I thank him
properly. He gives me a broad smile and gestures me into the
building.

“
Did you eat
at the hospital? I was going to order some Chinese,” he says at the
top of the stairs, producing keys from his pocket and rattling them
as he opens his front door. I push the memory of Casey smiling at
me nastily right there on his doorstep out of my head and shrug. “I
didn’t eat. I could go for Chinese.”

That seems to
please him. He orders a whole bunch of stuff he assures me is good
while I properly inspect his apartment. The last time I was here
was after he told me about Mayor Bright’s book and I drank myself
into oblivion. I hadn’t been in the most observant frame of mind
back then but now I’m feeling particularly nosy.

The place is
open plan, very much a bachelor pad. A huge flat screen TV is
mounted on the wall and a book shelf to one side is filled end to
end with DVDs. Oddly his books are all on the floor, which seems a
little backwards to me, but what he’s done with them is pretty
cool. The row of books presses from one side of the apartment to
the other, and they undulate as they grow taller or smaller in
waves. I pace along, trying to see what kind of stuff he reads.
There’s a bit of everything there: Stephen King, Neil Gaiman,
Dickens, even a few poets. To round things out there’s a huge stack
of comics at the very end. Spiderman. Luke doesn’t strike me as the
type of twenty-three-year-old that reads Spiderman.

“
You like Stan
Lee?” His hot breath grazes the back of my neck, and I nearly jump
out of my clothes with surprise. He pushes back his hood when I
turn around and pulls his sweatshirt up over his head, revealing a
simple plain black t-shirt underneath. He has a lot of those. And
they’re all ridiculously tight across his shoulders, his arms, his
chest. Hell, they’re tight everywhere. I can’t help but notice his
jeans are slung a little low off his hips; it isn’t a style I’m
usually into, but they aren’t obscenely low or anything, and he
makes them look unbelievably sexy. I scowl and slip by him, angry
with myself for even admitting that.

“
Not got a
clue who Stan Lee is, I’m afraid.”

Luke pulls a
mock-horrified expression and follows me into his kitchen. “He only
created some of the most amazing comics ever. The man’s a
genius.”

“
Then why are
you keeping his masterpieces on the floor?”

A slow smirk
tugs at Luke’s lips. He really needs to stop doing that. He steps
forward into the kitchen so I have to back up to give him room. I
panic for a second when he reaches out—I think he’s going to touch
my face—but he leans toward the fridge and plucks a postcard out
from underneath a magnet. He hands it over and raises an eyebrow.
The card is plain black apart from some block white
lettering:

Floor: the
world’s biggest shelf.

I roll my eyes
and clip it back to the fridge. “You kept that just so you could
use it in this situation, right? I bet you get to reference it all
the time.”

“
All the
time,” he murmurs. There’s a playful glint in his eye that I’ve
never had directed at me before. It makes my skin prickle. I back
out of the kitchen and sit down at the breakfast bar in the same
spot I occupied when I polished off half his whiskey supply. “Want
a beer?” he asks, his head disappearing into the fridge.

“
Sure,
thanks.” He produces a Bud Light and sets it down in front of me,
and then starts rifling in his cupboards for plates and cutlery.
“Aren’t you having one?” I ask.

“
Uh, no. I’ll
have to drive you home later. It’s kinda frowned upon for cops to
get DUIs.”

“
I can get a
cab, it’s fine. I’m not drinking on my own.” I hold out the beer
and shake my head. Drinking alone is bad enough; doing it in front
of a guy you’re liable to spill your guts to…so not a great idea at
all. He shrugs and gets another bottle out of his fridge for
himself. He leans back against the black marble counter—all the
furniture seems to be black in this place—and twists the top off,
looking at me. I follow suit and take a swig, aware that he’s still
staring.

“
What?”

“
Are you sure
you want to do this, Avery? I mean, there are some pretty horrific
things in this file. Have you seen a dead body before?”

I swallow back
more beer and set the bottle down on the counter, picking at the
label. “No, I haven’t. I don’t really
want
to see one either,
but…”

Luke stuffs
his free hand into his pocket and studies me. He’s trying to assess
whether I can handle whatever is in the file or not, and from the
torn look on his face he doesn’t think I can.

“
You can’t
hold out on me, Luke. I need to be ready for this nightmare when
Colby Bright releases his book. It’s all lies. I have to be able to
prove that.”

“
Okay. Fine.
But you’re going to freak the fuck out. Be prepared for that,
too.”

He disappears
down the long corridor to the right of the kitchen and when he
comes back he’s taken his shoes off and there’s a bulging manila
file in his hand. A split, red elastic band holds it all together.
He drops it onto the breakfast bar in front of me and goes back to
leaning. The file is so huge, I can’t even pick it up with one
hand.

“
Your old
partner took the time to scan this in for you?”

“
Yeah, I know
right?” Luke agrees.

“
She must be a
good friend.”

“
She is.
Doesn’t have much family. Her sister died when she was a kid and
her parents are both long gone. I think I’m the closest thing she’s
got to a living relative.”

That’s sweet.
And so like Luke to be that for someone. I eye the file, frowning.
“Have you already looked through everything?”

He shakes his
head. “Not all of it. Just the evidence relating to the first few
killings. I wanted to wait for you.” I place my hand on top of the
file, but Luke places his own over it before I can open it.
“Remember, you can’t tell anyone about this.
Ever
.”

I nod.
“Secrecy, good. Prison sex bad.”

“
Yeah, prison
sex
really
fucking
bad.”

I give him a
reassuring look—
I’d never let you
down
. He reads me loud and clear. Removes
his hand. What the hell have I ever done to earn his trust? I sure
as hell don’t feel like I deserve it. And am I really strong enough
to do this? It’s one thing watching a horror movie or reading about
something in the news. It’s another matter altogether being faced
with the gory, clinical details of murder—to see the actual
pictures and read the statements of the victim’s families. It feels
like the contents of the stack of paper underneath my hand is
burning a hole into my skin and for a moment I consider pushing it
away and telling him to forget it. But then I think of Dad. I fill
my lungs with oxygen, grasping at my resolve.

“
Come on,
then. Let’s do this.”

Thirteen

Devil’s In
The Details

THERE ARE four
categories on the front page of the file, each with subheadings:
Immolation, Decapitation, Poisoning, and Drowning. Under each are
names. Some have more names under them than others. For instance,
decapitation has seven under it, while poisoning has only two. I
scan over the names, all female, trying to see if I recognize them
from somewhere. Maybe they were on the news. Maybe I even knew some
of them. The names are just names, though. No faces materialize
when I turn them over in my head. Just girls who went missing one
day and wound up murdered. I swallow and instinctively know Luke is
watching me. I flip the page over and look up at him.

“
What does
Immolation mean?” I try to keep my voice nonchalant. Luke steps
forward to lean closer on the other side of the bench.

“
It means to
be burned to death.”

“
On fire?” I
choke while he nods, feeling sick. “So all these girls died in one
of four different ways?”

“
Yeah. Which
is part of the reason why it was so hard for the police department
to catch the guy. He wasn’t like a regular serial killer. Usually
they have a pattern, like I was saying before. There’s a reason why
they kill the people they kill. It’s useful to figure out their
pattern and build a profile from that. You can make predictions
based on that profile—how they’re going to behave in the future.
It’s worked a hundred times before when we’ve tried to catch a
killer. It was different this time, though. None of the
psychologists on staff could figure this guy out, or how the
symbols tied any of the victims together. The only obvious clue was
the way they died, but that didn’t give us anything.”

My pulse feels
oddly present everywhere, pumping in my lips, feet, fingertips.
It’s hard to focus when my body is itching to push away from the
counter and get as far away from the file as possible. “What do you
mean? How was the way they died an obvious clue?”

“
Sorry, I’m
not explaining myself very well. The four ways of dying and the
four symbols tied in together. See,” he flips forward a couple of
pages and plucks up a sheet of paper, which turns out to be a copy
of a photograph, in startling Technicolor. A close up of a hand,
palm upwards, laying on what looks like wet grass. Blood mottles
the pale skin over the wrist, and where the fingers are curled
inwards, the nails are shored up with grimy crescents of dirt and
blood. In the center of the palm is the first symbol I’d
recognized, the sideways figure eight, burned into the skin. The
flesh is puckered and angry. I suck in a sharp breath through my
mouth, because I swear I’ll be able to smell the story this picture
is telling me if I breathe through my nose: burning, coppery, and
pungent. Luke turns over the photocopy and points to the scrawled
text on the back.