Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries)

BLOOD DAHLIA

A Thriller by

VICTOR METHOS

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

-Genesis 6:5

Ten Years Ago

1

Deputy
Will Lowe walked around the tree in the midmorning sun and nearly gagged. The blood coated the base of the tree and ran down into the grass. It was a frosty Lancaster, Pennsylvania, morning, and Lowe could see his breath rolling like fog in front of his face. He tried to focus on it for a second, turning his eyes away from the horror in front of him.

The body was just a little
way off from the tree. A woman—he guessed but couldn’t quite tell. She was nude, and he thought she was covered in dirt because her skin was nearly black, but only after observing it from up close did he realize those were bruises. They went from her neck all the way down to her feet. Her face was buried in the dirt, and he couldn’t see it, but he didn’t want to see it anyway. That was something he could live without.

The woman was cut in half at the waist.

Lowe turned away and trudged back up the hill to his patrol car. He leaned against the car and tipped his hat up. Two boys out ice fishing at a nearby stream had come across the body. One of them was no older than twelve. He wondered what seeing something like that would do to a young boy.

Another patrol car came to a stop behind his. Sheriff
Mitchell Bullock stepped out, his heavy frame making the car lift as he removed himself and shut the door behind him. He ambled over, pulling his scarf tighter.

“What do you have, Will?”

“Same thing, Sheriff. Young lady.”

The sheriff looked down into the gulley. “Did you check?”

“No, Sheriff.”

“Well
, you can’t be sure until you check.”

Lowe swallowed. “All right. Lemme get some gloves.” He reached into the backseat of his car
for a box of latex gloves. He snapped them on. He wasn’t by any means a forensics guy, and in fact, a lot of the science behind crime scene investigation confused him. He became a cop because he liked helping people. He didn’t care about anything else. He wished like hell the county could afford their own forensic people instead of calling over to Philadelphia PD when they needed it. This wasn’t what he’d signed up for.

Lowe
hiked back down the hill to the tree. The body was still there. He didn’t know why he hoped it wouldn’t be, but he had and now felt stupid for doing it. He bent down near the head and lightly lifted it with both hands. The face was missing. In its place was a slick red surface and jagged tears where the flesh had been cut. He placed the head back down and immediately snapped off his gloves. He strode back up, got a plastic bag out of his car, and put the gloves inside.

“Well?” the sheriff said.

“It ain’t there, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Bullock exhaled and leaned against the patrol car. Neither one of them spoke for a long time.

“That’s three bodies, Sheriff.”

“Hell, I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

“Well, what we gonna do?”

He shook his head. “We need help.
Medical examiner said this sumbitch burns the bodies with acid after to take off any prints and DNA.”

Lowe spit onto the frozen ground. “I ain’t… I ain’t trained to deal with this, Sheriff.”

“I know… I know. I’m sorry you had to see it, Will. But sometimes the Lord does things we ain’t meant to understand.”

“Yeah, suppose so. So who we gonna get to come help us? I saw this show where the local police called out the FBI and they can come in and help.”

“I ain’t havin’ no fed come up in here and boss me ’round in my own county. I had them out once on account of ’em bank robberies ’bout two years before you joined up. Didn’t much care for how they treated us.”

“Yeah, but we ain’t got no one else.”

The sheriff thought a moment. “I wanna go talk to someone.”

“Who?”

“Little girl. ’Bout ten years old.”

Lowe
drove with the sheriff as they entered the small Amish community in Lancaster. Lowe had grown up seeing their horses and buggies, the men with long beards and plain clothes, and the women with dresses that came down to their ankles. He knew about them and knew about their
rumspringa
, their “running around” that the teenagers did before settling down with a spouse. But he never ventured into their community, except once to eat at a restaurant they had set up for tourists.

They stopped at a plain
-looking house with a barn behind it and got out. The sheriff knocked on the front door several times. Finally, a man in slacks and suspenders answered the door. His beard was long and scruffy, and he was wearing thin glasses that appeared like they could fall apart at any moment.

“How are ya, Isaac?
” the sheriff said.

“Good, Sheriff,” the man said
in a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent.

“I was wondering if I might have a word.”

The man looked from the sheriff to Lowe and then back again. “Not sure I can be much help.”

“You haven’t even
heard what I’m gonna say. Let us come in and talk about it for a bit.”

He sighed. “Suppose so,” he said, stepping aside so they could come into his home.

The interior was simple: wood furniture, a few handmade rugs, and windows that overlooked the white field of snow that was lush green in the spring and summer. Lowe thought the home was nice enough that he would like something similar when he got the money.

The sheriff sat on an old blue couch that
looked handmade, and Lowe sat next to him. Isaac sat across from them and offered them some hot tea, which they declined.

“So what can I do for ye, Sheriff?”

“I was hoping we might have a word with your daughter, too. Maybe just take her and you out on a drive somewhere to see something.”

“Why would I possibly let my little girl out with two grown men?”

“Because I’m stuck, Isaac. I feel like this man, the one I’m looking for, might not be a man. And I need help finding him.”

Isaac gently rocked back and forth
, and Lowe wondered if he knew he was doing it.

“You came here once before
, and I told ye I didn’t want her goin’ out again.”

“I know. And I’m sorry I have to ask this.”

He inhaled deeply. “I think I’m gonna have to refuse, Sheriff.”

The sheriff opened his hands placatingly, as if showing him he had nothing else. “Isaac, I am
stuck. This sumbitch cuts these girls up so much I can’t even imagine what they go through. And he’s gonna keep doin’ it ’less we catch him. This is God’s work, Isaac. Your little girl is his instrument.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about instruments of the Lord, Sheriff. I just know it ain’t good for my little girl.”

“The young woman we found was eighteen. Sarah’s gonna be that age in a handful of years, ain’t she?”

Isaac stared at both men a long time, gently rocking without saying a word
for a moment. “She’s at school right now.”

“It won’t take more than an hour.”

He nodded. “We’ll have to follow ye.”

2

The patrol car Lowe drove could go no more than twenty miles an hour or they’d lose the buggy rolling behind them. It would have taken a fraction of the time if they’d just rode along with the sheriff and him, but Isaac had refused.

The patrol car crawled
back to the crime scene, and Lowe parked on the side of the road. He waited for the buggy to catch up. Lowe glanced at the sheriff, who was staring out the window at the collection of aspen trees blocking the view of the gulley. Neither of them spoke until the buggy arrived.

Lowe followed the sheriff out. Isaac hopped out of the buggy
then went to the back and reached in, helping a young girl out.

The girl had black hair.
A long streak of pure white hair ran along one side as though a paintbrush had streaked that side of her head. Her dress was blue and looked thick and sturdy.
Handmade
, Lowe thought.

She appeared weak and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. Her father took her hand and led her around the buggy to meet the sheriff and Lowe.

“I don’t want her seeing no dead bodies,” Isaac said.

“No, of course not. Maybe if she can just look down there… or something. I don’t know. I don’t know how this works.”

Isaac exhaled loudly and bent down to look the girl in the eyes. “Sarah, be a good girl and look where the sheriff wants you to look. Tell them what you see.”

“Okay,
Daddy.”

Sarah
took the sheriff’s hand, and he led her to the edge of the gulley. Lowe stood next to them; he wanted to see what this was all about.

They had a view of the tree and,
just visible past it, a hand and some hair from the body. The sheriff turned to Lowe and whispered, “We’ll call it in after this, but this stays between me and you. All right, Will?”

“All right, Sheriff.”

The sheriff bent down to eye level with the girl and said, “Sarah, do you see anything, sweetheart?”

The girl was quiet a long time. So long that Lowe began to feel the biting cold on his exposed face. He rubbed his ears with his gloved hands to warm them up and glanced back
at Isaac, who was feeding his horses some treats.

“No,” the girl said.

Lowe and the sheriff both looked at her. Her face had changed—she looked frightened.

“I don’t care,” she said
, looking down at the gulley. “No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to! Daddy!”

The girl was crying and ran to her father
, who threw his arms around her.

“It’s okay, Sarah. It’s over. It’s over.”

The sheriff looked at Lowe and then back to the girl. “What did you see, Sarah?”

Isaac said, “That’s enough, Sheriff. You wanted her to come look
, and she did.”

“Don’t mean anything if she doesn’t tell me what she saw.”

Sarah looked up at the sheriff, her eyes glistening. “She was hurt really bad, and she was crying. She was telling me to help her, and she started running to me.”

“It’s okay,” Isaac said, lifting her up into his arms. “It’s time
to go.”

The sheriff strode up to the buggy and peered in through the opening as Sarah was placed inside. “Did you see anything else, Sarah? Did you see a man?”

She nodded.

“What did he look like?”

Isaac, his face contorted with anger now, shouted, “That’s enough, Sheriff! We helped all we could. Now please move aside.”

The sheriff ignored him. “What did he look like, Sarah?”

“He was at a big place with sick people. That’s where he saw her. He really liked her, and she really liked him. She said he likes lots of girls. He sees them there. He walked with her at night to her car.”

Isaac had already gotten in and got his horses moving. The sheriff followed the buggy.

“What else, Sarah? What else did you see?”

“She said she scratched him.”

The buggy turned around and headed back toward the Amish settlement. The sheriff stood in the road, his breath like smoke in the cold. He had his hands on his hips and stood there awhile before walking back to Lowe.

“Sheriff, what the hell was that about?”

The sheriff didn’t answer as he ambled back to his cruiser. “Call in the body, Will. Stay here until the forensic people are done, and then get the medical examiner’s people out here to haul it outta my woods.”

With that, the
sheriff drove off, leaving Lowe alone with the trees. He glanced down to the body and then decided to sit in his car and make the call from there.