Authors: Dean Covin
Fighting the bright early morning sun, Vicki answered her partner’s sheepish silence. “Rough night?” Regardless
he
had no idea.
“That bad?” It came with a hoarse bite in his throat. He was just glad Roscoe had left no visible marks—not for lack of trying.
The new resolve in her belly made her feel better than he looked—and smelled. “You’ve looked better.”
Yesterday’s thick warmed-over coffee at the auto detailing shop earlier this morning had been effective, but she could feel the caffeine spike beginning to wane. While the owner wasn’t impressed by Vicki’s before-dawn banging to have him open up sooner than planned, he had been thrilled by his compensation. “Might get to close up early today,” he had said, grinning as he winced against his own bitter brew. Vicki was fortunate that her messy
nosebleed
had spilled mostly on her, allowing the scoured Corvette to hit the road by 8:00 a.m. The smell of the strong cleaner lingered, but Hank hadn’t asked—he seemed distracted, even more so now, and she saw the reason.
† †
†
Roscoe’s patrol car was parked up ahead. He stood over an animated drunk crouched against the liquor store wall. Hank winced—having had enough of the guy last night—unsure what would be said this morning. Vicki pulled in behind the sedan.
“Fuckin’ fuck! The law never listens to me. Not now. Not even then. Dumb fuckers, all a ya. I donno why you stupid cops don’t check the old catacombs,” he slurred. “It’s where I’d do it.” Then he looked up at the two approaching agents. “Fuck, yer pretty.”
“Sorry, Phil”—Roscoe pointed at Hank—“Agent Douche here is a little too young for you, ol’timer.”
At least Roscoe seemed the same after last night.
“
Douche
! Aha-ha, that’s funny.” The drunk’s wheezing cackle hacked up a fistful of sour-smelling phlegm, which he smeared across his soiled jacket. “But I ain’t no fuckin’ fag-boy.”
Roscoe grinned at Hank. “Sorry, Dirty Hanky, I tried.”
Vicki fought against her gag as she grabbed Dashel’s arm and squeezed some patience into him. “What catacombs?”
“Phil’s being crazy,” Roscoe replied for him. “Urban legend bullshit. He’s been spewing this crap since long before I got here.”
Phil wasn’t listening. “Well, I just think it’s stupid y’all aren’t lookin’ there. It’s the perfect place to gut some fillies. You should all just—” He nodded into a heavy snore.
“And that, my friends, is what happens to career altar boys,” Roscoe said.
“Molested?”
He shook his head, tipping his fingers to his lips. “Addicted to the ol’ blood o’ Christ—just like you, Drunkel.”
Hank ignored the quip—after last night, it could have been worse.
“So he would have known the church before it became a school,” Vicki mused.
“It’s bullshit, Vicki. This is tiny-town USA—
we don’t have catacombs
.”
Vicki pressed. “You have an exceptionally old church. Two of them in fact. And an altar boy who just might know something the rest of you don’t.”
Roscoe’s face changed. “Sure, but so would the town planners.”
“So you checked?” Vicki challenged.
For the first time, Hank saw John Roscoe look sheepish. “Didn’t see the need. We already had the crime scene.”
Both agents felt the same stirring from their initial visit to the old barn.
“How about we check now?” she said.
“If you insist.” He offered Vicki the front seat next to him, and Hank got what the sheriff called the
drunk bum hole
in the back.
† †
†
“You can put those away. I know who you are.”
They withdrew their badges.
“There are no catacombs in this town.” The aging male clerk at the county court’s office looked miffed at being interrupted by someone as insignificant as the authorities. “Does New Brighton look like the reminiscence of a monastery? Besides, they didn’t build things like that at that time—this isn’t bloody Europe. Now let me get back to my pudding.”
“What about Missionary Hill?” Hank asked.
Roscoe nudged Vicki, then whispered, “Popular make-out point just east of town.”
“Missionary Hill was man-made,” Hank continued. “Too much soil for a church basement, even a big one. Where did all that dirt come from?”
The man shrugged. “How should I know? It’s as old as the town.”
“Exactly,” Vicki said.
The old man scowled. “Really? It’s that important?”
Vicki stared.
He released a long stinking pout, rested his pudding cup and glared at them, annoyed, for far too long, before getting up slowly, painfully, from his well-worn seat. He shuffled to the back.
Roscoe called after him, “Can’t you just look it up on the computer?”
“This’ll be faster.”
It wasn’t.
Eventually he lumbered back. “Well, I’ll be dipped in dog shit,” he said, lugging a long tube behind him.
He unrolled the large yellowed plans, and there they were—the catacombs of New Brighton. Roscoe looked sick.
The tunnels and chambers were extensive. They ran deep beneath most of the old part of town. Vicki’s finger jumped to the map. As she had suspected, there was an entrance beneath the former church—Ivy’s school.
“Well, looky here.” Roscoe pointed as if this whole idea had been his. “There’s a corridor leading right to the spot where the old barn sits today.”
“Holy shit,” Hank whispered.
Vicki leaned over the counter. “Can we get a soft copy?”
“This is soft.” The clerk glowered. “It’s paper!”
† †
†
The school was abuzz as teachers struggled to keep the students focused and in their seats. With two squad cars, the sheriff, a couple of FBI agents, and both the principal and vice principal all sequestered behind the deputy closing off the gymnasium, there was plenty to be excited about.
Mrs. Gerletski’s voice echoed over the intercom dispelling the raging tweets and texts inferring everything from a gunman to aliens to terrorists.
Vice Principal Towers led them to the location indicated on the hi-res copy of the old drawing zoomed in on Vicki’s phone. She had been there before; only this time, she let Dashel join her.
“Tell me this wasn’t some perverted town planner’s idea,” she said.
“The entrance to the catacombs should be right here.” The vice principal pointed at the shower wall of the girl’s locker room.
Roscoe was scanning the large room, smiling to himself.
“Is there any way in?” she asked, seeing nothing obvious, nor would it be.
“These tiles are solid,” Hank finally announced. “If the entrance is here, no one’s used it since this shower room was built.”
Vicki took a bench, frustrated, churning through thoughts.
“Stop that,” Principal Marrow said, scolding the sheriff for browsing through lockers.
He threw up his hands. “I’m a cop. It’s what I do.”
“Put those back!”
“
Evidence
?” He scowled and tossed the panties into the locker.
“Shut up! I’m thinking,” Vicki yelled.
Hank took a seat beside her and waited. Then he felt her body tense. “What’ve you got?”
She wasn’t sure at first, but she gave it a shot. “John, the Pieces of Eight murders, where did they find the bodies of the killer and the two boys?”
“The coach’s office, why?”
She jumped to her feet. “Where’s that?”
“This way.” Marrow led them out of the locker room and across the large gymnasium.
“What are you thinking?” Hank whispered as she slowed down.
“This isn’t right.” She saw the two coaches’ offices overlooking the gymnasium.
“What is it?” Hank asked again.
“I thought maybe the boys had found him in the catacombs, but then the final fight had been dragged out by the entrance.”
“That still could be,” Principal Marrow said. “The girls’ shower is only fifteen years old.”
“Even if that’s the case, the entrance couldn’t have been used in Ivy’s murder.”
“Wait!” Hank remembered. “This wasn’t the coach’s office in ’84. It was—”
“Back there,” Towers confirmed. “
Between
the two change rooms.”
“That’s it!” Vicki cried and rushed back the way they came.
† †
†
“This is where they found all three of them.” Roscoe remembered the photographs of this room from the file. Save for the missing office furniture, little had changed, other than … “There was a lot of blood.”
The old coach’s office had been converted into storage for aging gym equipment. Things were piled against the opposing walls, leaving half of the back wall clear. This excited Vicki. Working together, it only took ten minutes to empty the room.
“Nothing,” Hank said, moving his gloved hand against the old brick of the back wall along what could have been one side of a potential seam. The wall didn’t budge. “How old is this wall?”
“Looks original,” Towers said.
Hank agreed with a frown.
“It’s not where the map points to anyway,” Marrow reiterated. “That’s behind the shower wall.”
“I know,” Vicki admitted. “It’s just—” She stared at the old wall, and her peripheral picked up on a loose brick at the bottom of the adjacent wall. She kicked it with her toe. A faint echo of a click filled the room. She looked at Hank. “Try it now.”
He nodded and pushed open the wall.
The dusty passage wasn’t old, just a few decades, which fit Yilmaz’s tenure, and of course it was Roscoe who discovered the tiny peepholes along the back of the shower wall.
“Get your face off there,” Hank said. “There might be prints.”
Behind Roscoe there was a small heavy wooden door with a patch of dust missing on the long levered handle. Vicki used two gloved fingers under the tip of the handle to move it up from its slot.
“Hand me a lantern,” Hank said. He pressed the rubber nub, and the bright LED lamp filled the ancient-looking chamber. Litter was scattered among the dust and cobwebs on the floor. There were two used candles, several crushed cans of Red Bull, beef jerky wrappers and a short stack of porno magazines. Vicki fingered the magazines, gently exposing their covers. “Mostly
Club
,
High Society
and
Swank
,” she said. “April through June, 2011 … these are new issues.”
“They still print those?” Hank asked. “Why bother?”
Vicki pointed at her iPhone. “No signal.”
“Got it.” No signal required low-tech porn.
“That looks like one of our old wrestling mats,” Towers said. “Someone must have dragged it in here.”
The heavy pad was leaning against the far wall. Roscoe peeked over Vicki’s shoulder at their backup physical specs and then looked behind the mat. “Yep, there’s a door back here.” Hank helped him carefully move the mat to the side.
“It’s locked.”
A boy’s voice came from behind them. “I don’t want to go back in there.”
Another said, “Stop shoving!”
Deputy Parsons ushered the two freshmen into the chamber. “These two claim to have been in this room recently.” She explained that the boys had come forward believing their discovery was the reason for the commotion.
“We found the passage and decided to hide out here and stuff between classes.”
“What did you do here?” Vicki asked.
“Just hung out, you know. Talk n’ stuff.” He blushed, catching a glimpse of their porn stash jostled out of place on the floor. Then he saw the small pile of spent tissues in the corner. “I had a cold!”
Roscoe laughed. “Yeah, my dick sneezes, too, kid.”
“Roscoe,” Vicki snapped.
He rolled his eyes and stepped back.
Hank chimed in, “It had nothing to do with the girls showering?” He pointed at the wall in the passageway.
One boy’s mouth dropped, and then his buddy’s hand slapped the back of his head. “You idiot!”
“Frak off! I didn’t know, okay!”
Vicki pointed at the shiny new lock. “Is that yours?”
They both shook their heads.
“You weren’t curious? You didn’t think to try cutters?”
“Fuck that,” the second boy answered. “There’re noises and shit behind that door—ghosts and howls and shit. That’s why we never came back. Bro here even left our mags behind. There are serious spooks down here. We should all go.”
“When was the last time you were here?” she asked.
“I don’t know, like Monday last week.”
Ivy’s murder.
“Are we in trouble?”
Vice Principal Towers spoke up as the resident enforcer. “Less than you would have been.”
He escorted them out while Roscoe followed, making his phone call. “I don’t care,” he yelled, “just get that sonofabitch down here!”
† †
†
In less than twelve minutes, the vice principal returned with Deputy Parsons and Jason Oliver in tow.
“What am I doing here, Roscoe?” Oliver yelled.
“You didn’t tell us about the catacombs,” Roscoe snapped back. “When the town gave your firm the contract, as architect and civil planner, you had to have known about them.”
“Of course I knew this was here. We scanned the plans into the database three years ago. So what?”
“Did you know the Pieces of Eight killer was found dead in that storage room back there, along with two other students?”
“Didn’t really think about it. I’m from Raleigh, North Carolina. I wasn’t anywhere near New Brighton in ’84.”
Vicki was pissed. “I find it inconceivable that no one thought to investigate it as the missing crime scene.”
Though it had been before Roscoe’s time, he knew the barb was directed at him. “The case was solved, the killer dead. These plans wouldn’t have even been on the books back then, not with the eighties’ cutbacks.”
“No excuse for shitty police work.” This angered Vicki because she knew this information was vital to her own case, and she was sure that her actual crime scene hid behind that door. Also, now, she had a narrower list of suspects. The suspect had to have known about the catacombs and its secret entrances throughout the town.
She turned on Mr. Oliver. “I know this is directly connected to
my
investigation.
You
had access to the detailed plans. Who else?”
His face fell under the weight of this new accusation. He stammered, “I—I … just Martin and me. He’s my senior architect. We’re the only ones with unrestricted access. Martin’s still away on vacation with his wife—been gone three weeks.”
“We checked the clerk’s register,” Vicki said. “These plans haven’t been checked out since the town office started keeping records in 1905. With Martin away on vacation, that leaves you with some explaining to do.”
He nodded, understanding. “You know”—he paused then proceeded slowly—“you should tread carefully.”
“
We
should tread carefully?” Hank said. “Is that a threat?”
“I had nothing to do with Ivy Turner’s murder,” he insisted, but his voice was cold and dire. “I know that I’m not under arrest because you have no evidence, so I’m gonna leave now.” He stepped around Hank as if he were inconsequential and stopped by Roscoe’s shoulder. “Don’t you
ever
interrupt my day for no reason again.” And then he left.
“You gonna let him talk to you like that?” Marrow said.
“He always talks to me like that. Talks to everyone like that.” He shrugged. “He’s right, I have nothing on him. I’ll let him stew until I find something.”
“And if he runs?”
“He won’t,” Towers said. “He believes he’s untouchable.”
“Gimme those.” Roscoe grabbed the bolt cutters from Towers. “Let’s open ’er up.”
He was eager to get inside. The catacombs map had been incredibly illuminating. The bodies of the Pieces of Eight victims had been found in eight different locations throughout the town, each known not to be the scene of the actual murder—that location had never been found.
Behind the locked chamber door, the smell of dust hit them first—then the familiar rot of decaying blood.
Both principals excused themselves from the overwhelming stench, and Vicki didn’t blame them. The familiar scent burned the gruesome barn scene back into Vicki’s memory. As the vile retch bred once again in her belly, she did what she could to fend it off.
“We need to call in Coop,” Hank said.
Vicki nodded through her fist.
† †
†
Charles Cooper wasted no time rushing to the scene and was already scouring the pieces left behind.
Noticing the missing blocks randomly highlighting holes in the brick walls of the expansive second chamber, Hank peered into them finding nothing. “Why do you suppose these bricks were pulled out?”
“No idea,” Vicki said as she moved slowly around the space, feeling the echoes of horror and pain in her head. The setting was terrifying. She broke a sweat as her heart hammered.
“You okay?” Hank asked.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “It’s just disturbing.”
“To say the least,” he agreed.
Vicki swore she could hear desperate pleas on the dusty air—not quite audible, but real. Her hairs stood on end, accompanying the apprehensive tingle in the base between her legs, with terrified empathy for the horrible suffering.
Roscoe discovered Ivy’s purse, and Vicki failed to repel the shivers. The killer had used Ivy’s lipstick on her damaged face and had sprayed her perfume into her painful wounds. And the sharp tweezers that had been pressed into her belly button numerous times had been Ivy’s own pair.
“What have you found, Charlie?” She was afraid to find out.
He offered her a gentle smile. A truce of sorts, she realized, as he recognized her brave front and true sensitivities. “You can wait until my report,” he offered.
She glanced back at Dashel and Roscoe scouring the large room. “Thanks, Charlie, I’m good. What do you have?”
He sighed. “Finger and toe pieces. Cut from the tips and then cut again—over and over—small pieces at a time rather than the whole digit at once. Brutal, but not professional. Intended to inflict continuous suffering rather than meet some objective—my fingernail DNA suspicion was wrong. Thankfully there’re no rats or there’d be nothing left.”
Pursing her lips tight, she nodded gratitude for the information and turned away.
“Jesus Christ!” Roscoe hopped away from his own light beam. They all scrambled forward. “Don’t step on it!” he yelled.
In the dark corner, he found a sticky mash dried to the floor. Charles marked it, took his photos and then lifted it up with tongs, studying it in the light. He stood silent for a moment.
Vicki watched him waver. Charlie never wavered. “What is it?”
He jumped then stammered. “Oh—oh, it’s—”
She glanced closer in horror at the twisted, bloody, mangled flesh.
“They appear to be her lips,” he said, wiping nervous sweat from his brow. With his audience of three looking on, he cleared his captured breath and set a more professional tone to level himself.
“You see, the mashed edge around her lips is where they struck her mouth multiple times with the hammer. Explains her teeth being knocked out and found in her throat. Then the killer sliced her lips from her face—see the straight edges elsewhere—likely with a surgical tool or utility blade.”
Vicki turned away, picturing Ivy’s brutalized mouth—mirroring Vicki’s last night. Seeing the mangled lips brought forth the horror Ivy must have endured having a hammer repeatedly smashed into her mouth. The dried streams of blood down the sides of her face had proven Ivy had been desperately coughing up her blood and teeth to breathe.
Vicki rushed to the far corner and let go of her guts among the old oil barrels. Hank was by her side immediately. Roscoe came moments later with the tissue box from the first chamber. Her shaking hands could barely wipe her quivering mouth. She could see Hank’s face, even in the dim light. “Are you crying?”
He shook his head.
Realizing her misstep, she quickly turned to stave off Roscoe’s cruel comment about to come. Instead, his eyes were unmistakably wet. Still, he asked, “Are you okay?”
“As good as you two big lugs,” she said, forcing a smile.
“That bad, hey?” Hank said. “You okay to continue looking around?”
“If you are, then I am.” This time her smile came easier.
“And don’t sweat the mess,” he said. “Forensics can mop up after they’ve cleared the room.”
† †
†
“I can’t figure out why these holes are here,” Hank repeated. “Why the missing bricks?”
“I think I know.” Vicki carefully traced the far wall with her fingers. “Look here.”
Hank didn’t notice at first because the bricks beneath her fingers were all the same, but looking closer he saw that the mortar was different in an area of the wall—an area the size of a door. The missing bricks were used to conceal a passage. “Last time you kicked a brick at the bottom of the wall.”
“Tried that.”
“How about this?” Hank pushed a loose stone by the ceiling, and the wall clicked.
They pivoted the heavy brick wall and stood in stunned silence.