Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) (17 page)

32

The offices of Skid Row Gossip were in a boxy brown building. Next to their office was a pornography studio that specialized in married couples having sex with strangers, usually just men off the street who weren’t even paid. Lott had done it a couple of times himself and found it a fun distraction. He would sleep with those women anyway—what was the difference if he did it on tape? As he parked and entered the building, he thought maybe he should ask for another session.

The elevators were scratched up ins
ide. Lott stared at one long scratch that went from the upper right corner to the lower left, as if someone had tried to cut the elevator wall in half. He leaned back and took the flask out of his pocket. Before the doors opened, he’d knocked back enough to hold him over for the next few hours.

As he
walked down the hallway, he pulled a piece of gum out of his pocket. Shoving it into his mouth, he waited a moment to let it take effect before opening the door and stepping inside.

The offices were a sprawling landscape of cubicles.
There were really only two offices with doors and one was for the owner who, as far as Lott could tell, owned the pornography studio next door as well. The other office was for the website’s editor, Dave Sa.

Lott went to his cubicle and checked his email. Though the offices were old
, and technically he could’ve just as easily done his job from home, he liked the busy atmosphere. Phones were always ringing, and someone was always discussing a story. A lot of their content came from independent contractors, but they had a few full-time reporters. At least, he liked to call them reporters. Two were dedicated to celebrity gossip and had the best jobs at the site. One was in Hollywood and would spend her days tracking down celebrities at the gym or grocery store and try to get an interview or a photo that no one else had. Another was in New York and tried to do the same thing.

T
he third reporter was Lott. His job was to follow up on any sensational crime stories. Wives who had killed husbands or their children, police chases, politicians caught with prostitutes or drugs, and most of all, serial killers.

Serial killers were always hot. But this one, the Blood Dahlia, felt different. This was a national, even worldwide, story that was happening right in his backyard. And the high-brow journalists, the ones
who considered Lott and his kin bottom-feeders, weren’t doing much of a job keeping up with the investigation.

Lott knew this was special when he’d found out that a body had been dumped on the front porch of the director of Behavioral Science. The gall it t
ook to do that was off the charts. The Blood Dahlia wasn’t someone strangling random hitchhikers. Lott was convinced he was something the world hadn’t seen before.

G
oing through his email, he saw he had a message that Dave wanted to see him. Lott pulled out his flask again and took a few more sips before heading into Dave’s office.

Dave didn’t appear
to be the kind of man who would run a place like this. He was neat and thin, with horn-rimmed glasses. Today, he was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.

“Have a seat,” Dave said in his somewhat effeminate voice.

“What’s up?”

Dave finished typing
and then leaned back in his chair. “Just wanted to see what’s going on with that Blood Dahlia thing.”

“It’s actually pretty interesting. That new person that the FBI brought in, Sarah King
—you remember me talking about her?”

“The one you couldn’t pull up a background on, right?”

“Yeah. So they took her to two crime scenes. One was the director’s house, and then they took her to the first victim, or at least the first body they found—Michelle Anand. She was killed out in the forest, and they drove her all the way there and just had her, like, look around.”

“What’dya mean
, ‘look around’?”

“Like
, literally just fucking
stand there
and look around. It was really weird.”

“Hm. What else?”

“Well, I paid my contact at the FBI a thousand bucks for the background file they got on her, and she said she’d get it to me today.”

Dave took in a deep breath, as if rolling the case around in his head. Though he was
not a man someone in polite society would look up to or emulate, Lott knew he had a certain knack for this type of business. He instinctively understood that to be successful, you gave people what
they
wanted rather than what
you
wanted to give them.

“Well,” Dave finally said, “serial killers are
hot. We got over three million views on that piece you did about the body at the director’s house. Keep it up. I really would like to know who Sarah King is and why she’s being taken to crime scenes.”

“I should know by tonight
, hopefully.”

Dave turned back to his computer. “Keep up the good work.”

33

The night seemed to close in around Sarah as she sat in her living room. Giovanni had called, but he had work to catch up on and wouldn’t be able to come over tonight. With Jeannie barely able to hold a conversation on the phone, that left Sarah by herself.

Television could entertain her for only so long before she grew restless. She tried reading a book, a biography of someone famous, but that didn’t hold her interest, either. Her guts were balled up, and as anxious as she was, she wanted to be out and surrounded by other people.

She dressed in jeans and a nice black shirt that exposed her arms. Knee-high boots finished the outfit off
, and though she didn’t care how she looked, she checked herself in the mirror anyway.

Once outside, she wasn’t quite sure where to go
, so she googled all the bars near her. A couple of miles away was a place she’d never been to. She got into her car.

The bar, a place called Bricks, was more of a nightclub than someplace people went to relax and have a few drinks. The park
ing was between the club and a factory, and she found a spot about a block away and walked.

The night air was cool and gave her goose
bumps. She ran her hands over her arms and then stopped, as though she could fight the cold just by ignoring it. She walked past several people in line at a door marked VIP, right up to the bouncer there, and said, “I’d like to go in, please.”

He looked her up and down and then nodded and let her past. Most clubs and bars let women in for free because without the women, the men wouldn’t go.

The club was dimly lit and had two floors. The music was so loud it hurt her ears. But being in a crowd comforted her, and it was wall to wall, so crowded she could hardly move. As she made her way across the dance floor to the bar, she caught a glimpse of someone staring at her. Her head whipped around to see who it was, but they were already gone.

Sarah leaned against the bar and ordered a Long Island iced
tea: the drink that provided the most alcohol in the least amount of space, if done correctly. But when the drink came, she could tell this bartender didn’t know how to mix. The drink was mostly cola and very little of anything else. Before she could complain, a man came and sat next to her.

“Hi,” he said.

She didn’t look at him. Instead, she sipped her drink and debated telling the bartender how to actually make it correctly. “Hi.”

“I saw you from across the club. I just wanted to come and introduce myself
. My name’s Brandon.”

“Sarah.”

“Cool. Whatchya drinkin’?”

Sarah
looked at him. The man was cute, with brown hair that came to his shoulders and a tattoo on his shoulder that came up to his neck. Normally, she would be flirting right back and asking him to buy her more drinks. But the words wouldn’t come to her. Something was wrong that she couldn’t quite understand.

Soon t
he iced tea was nearly gone, and she asked the bartender for a shot of tequila.

“
Lemme get that,” Brandon said.

After the shots, they ordered another, and another. By the fourth shot, Sarah felt much better
—maybe not better, but looser, as though she could actually have a conversation with someone without unloading all of the crap going on in her head. And that’s what she did with Brandon. They talked about traveling and what types of liquor they liked, tanning, colleges, and work—nothing to do with death or blood. Nothing to do with horror.

The conversation was pleasant
, and toward the end she was laughing at jokes of his that weren’t even funny. At some point, she wasn’t sure when, he had stood up next to her and put his arms around her. At the sensation of his touch, only one thought came to her: Giovanni.

“Wait,” she said, pulling his hands off, “wait. I can’t.”

“Come on, let’s get outta here.”

She shook her head. Stepping away from the bar, she said, “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Brandon watched her a moment and then mumbled, “Bitch.”

She turned away, humiliated and confused. The dance floor was even more packed now than it
had been before, and she slipped through the crowd. Several male hands pawed at her, copping feels—something she normally would’ve turned around and slapped them for. But she didn’t care right now. Right now, she had to get away from all these people. The exit seemed so far away that she just ducked into the bathrooms.

The
re was a line for each stall in the black-and-white tiled bathroom. She pushed past the lines and stood in front of the mirror, staring at herself. The faucet was already on, and she looked down to turn it off. When she looked back up into the mirror, she wasn’t the one gazing back at her.

Sarah jumped back. She thought
about running, just taking off right now, not looking back. But she couldn’t move, as though all the muscles in her legs had turned to ice, and the pain in her head was back.

Michelle Anand
stared back at her from the mirror. Her face was still missing, and Sarah couldn’t look right now. Instead, she stared at the sink.

“What do want?” she said.

“You have to stop him,” Michelle said.

S
arah shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“How?”

“You have to stop him, Sarah.”

Sarah looked up from the faucet. “How did you know my name?” she whispered.

“You have to stop him
. There’s no one else.”

“Who did this to you? Michelle, who did this to you?”

“He’s the father of lies. I don’t know his real name…”

“What did he look like?”

But the image was gone, along with the phantom pain in her head.

Sarah ran out of the bathroom and raced through the club. Getting out into the night air helped the nausea she was feeling but did nothing for the pain.

Jumping into her car, she looked around. She was alone. She put the key into the ignition and started it. As she glanced in her rearview, she saw Michelle Anand’s faceless head staring back at her.

She gasped and screamed, but when she turned around, the backseat was empty. Sarah was breathing so hard she thought she might
be hyperventilating. She put her hand to her heart and just tried to calm herself.

Once she had opened her mind up to it, the door
s were much harder to close. She hadn’t realized until now that each time she allowed it all in, the doors grew weaker. And the most frightening thought she had ever had struck her just then: What if the doors simply didn’t close anymore? What if every moment of her life was filled with the screaming dead—with those who’d had everything taken from them and didn’t know how to get it back?

That, she decided, would be a life she would
not want to live.

34

Kenneth Lott woke up early, before 7:00 a.m., and had a bowl of breakfast cereal with coffee. Spiced up, of course, with just a small amount of whiskey—his favorite morning drink. He read the paper as he ate, the op-eds first, then the headline news section, and then the gossip section. Nothing terribly interesting, and certainly nothing about the Blood Dahlia, as if they had already captured him, and the news was too old to pay any attention to.

He would be the first. This story was his chance for actual journalistic credentials. In college, he’d majored in communications with an eye toward going into journalism
, but the market was so tough to break into that he decided to find something else until he could find a decent job. That something else had been being a cop.

He worked for the Philadelphia Police Department, primarily focusing on DUIs. Unlike many other
infractions, DUIs were never just about DUIs. A lot of the time he found drugs in the car, or the driver was wanted for burglary, robbery, or some other felony in another jurisdiction. One time he even found a prostitute tied up in the trunk of a gang banger’s car. Apparently she’d sold him some weed and scammed him out of five dollars. Five dollars was enough to convince him that she needed to be kidnapped and beaten.

But the problem in Philadelphia, more than in many other jurisdictions, was that police officers were paid so little. Most
new officers could expect to qualify for welfare if they had a family. It wasn’t until well after he had already been forced out that the city finally upped the pay for its police force. By then it was too late—he’d already been blacklisted for nothing more than turning a blind eye to a few dope pushers who lined his pockets a few times a year.

After breakfast, Lott took a plastic bottle of Coke out of his fridge and dumped half of it into the sink. His liquor cabinet contained only a few bottles
, but that was because he knew what he liked to drink: whiskey and rum. Anything else wasn’t a man’s drink, as far as he was concerned.

He
filled the rest of the Coke bottle with whiskey and shook it up, then waited for the carbonation to settle before taking a long drink. Now he was ready for his drive.

As he got into his car, he glanced across the street.
Ever since he moved in, he’d been trying to get with the single mother who lived there. She was a teacher, blond, and middle aged with fake breasts and a manic attitude. Her husband, he’d heard, had killed himself in their front room for her to find.

Convinced she wasn’t around, Lott got into his car, started it, and pulled out of the driveway.

Lancaster County was only an hour away by freeway. He blared a classic rock station and rolled down his windows but decided it was too cold. Though it was summer, a storm had come through the city and left a chill behind that no one had expected.

By the time Lott took his exit and arrived in the county, half the Coke bottle was gone. He felt
fine, better than he had in awhile. The euphoric haze right between buzzed and drunk. After doing what he needed to do here, he should definitely stop at a café somewhere and get some coffee. A DUI was the last thing he needed right now.

The county was farmland
—green fields and trees as far as you could see. Rolling emerald hills dotted the horizon, and several roads ran around them, surrounded on either side by classic white farmhouses, churches, and homes. It looked like something from another century.

Lott didn’t
know much about the Amish. Though everyone thought that everyone in Pennsylvania knew about them, it just wasn’t true. They hated interacting with the outside world and thought that it was a corrupting influence. On that point, Lott knew, they had the right idea—cut yourself off from all the horseshit of the world, and have a simple life working with your hands, hot food on the table, and a wife in your cold bed.

GPS was sketchy out here
, at best. There were few road signs or addresses. New buildings seemed to pop up without much government red tape, which meant that landmarks weren’t a good indicator of where everything was, either.

Lott drove around, having to stop
once and let a horse and buggy go past him. He nodded to the passengers, but they just gave him an icy stare.

Finally, he decided he needed to stop and ask for directions.
Two women—teenagers, really—were walking along the side of the road, and he pulled to a stop alongside them. They kept their faces forward and quickened their pace.

“Excuse me,” he shouted. “I just need directions. Excuse me!”

The girls didn’t stop, and he sighed. As he was about to pull away, he saw a man walking toward him from the fields, a shovel hoisted onto his shoulder.

“Hello,” the man said. “You lost?”

“Yes,” he said, relieved. “I’m looking for the home of Isaac King.”

“You got business with him?”

“I do. It’s about his daughter, Sarah.”

The man held his gaze but didn’t move or speak for a moment. “Now what would you want with Sarah?”

“I just have a few questions. Is Isaac here or not?”

The man nodded. “Down the road about a mile then turn left. You’ll see homes on the side of the road. Isaac’s is the one with the white barn.”

“Thanks,” Lott said, pulling away.

He
drove on, honking and flipping off the teenagers as he zipped past them, and found the turn the man had told him about, and found the houses. Each house was spaced far enough from the others so that neighbors were nearby if you needed something but not so close that they could see into your home.

Behind one particularly large home was a white barn. Lott parked in front of the house. He sat in the car awhile and just watched
, making certain no one else was around. Then he got out of the car and strode up to the home.

As he
stepped onto the front porch, he was amazed by how sturdy the home felt under his feet. Made completely of wood, he thought it would feel flimsy and weak. But it felt as immovable as cement.

Lott knocked on the thick front door and waited.

A few seconds went past before a girl answered, maybe sixteen years old. She didn’t say anything, but he could tell she was surprised to see him. He guessed they didn’t get many visitors.

“Hi,” Lott said.

“Hi,” she said quietly.

“I’m looking for Isaac King.”

“Pa’s out in the barn.”

Lott peeked into the home. Clean
, with furniture covered in quilts and blankets, handwoven rugs on the floors. “Do you mind if I go out there and see him?”

“Hold on a minute.” The girl turned around. “Ma, someone’s here.”

A middle-aged woman in traditional Amish clothing approached from the other room. She brushed her daughter away and stood facing Lott. She didn’t hide behind the door—rather, she opened it wider, and Lott wondered if she was somehow trying to show him she wasn’t afraid.

“Morning, ma’am.”

“Morning,” she said sternly, her lips pursed tightly.

“I’m looking to speak to your husband, Isaac King.”

“And what business do you have with my husband, sir?”

“It’s about your daughter, Sarah.”

The woman’s face instantly changed. Where it had projected strength and steadfastness before, now it softened. Her lips loosened, and her eyes widened. Lott thought he saw the beginnings of tears glistening in her eyes.

“He’s in the barn,” she said softly.

“Do you mind if I go and meet with him?”

She shook her head and then closed the door.

Lott stood there dumbfounded for a moment before stepping off the porch and heading around the house to the barn. Behind the house, vast open grassland stretched all the way to the other neighbor’s house, probably half a mile away. Lott could imagine waking up to this view every morning and wondered if how a man started his day determined how that day would go.

The barn was white and open, with slats missing on the roof that let in sunshine. Lott poked his head in and saw a man bent down
shoeing a horse. Lott waited patiently as he finished. When he let go of the hoof, Lott cleared his throat.

The man had a white beard
, and even though he was in the barn, he wore his hat. He straightened and mopped the sweat off his brow with a white cloth he’d kept tucked in his pocket. When he stepped out from behind the horse, he eyed Lott a moment before speaking.

“Who are you?”

“Um…” Lott took a few steps closer and held out his hand. When he saw Isaac King wasn’t going to shake it, he shoved it in his pocket. “My name’s Kenneth Lott. I’m with the
Washington Post
.” Lott realized as soon as he said it that King may not know what the
Washington Post
is. Didn’t matter, though—
he
still preferred it.

“Reporter, huh? Well, you can talk to our preacher
if you got any questions.”

“It’s actually about your daughter, Sarah.”

Unlike his wife, King’s face didn’t change. He held an icy gaze on Lott and didn’t speak for an uncomfortably long time.

So Lott
went on. “I’d like to know what she’s doing working for the FBI.”

“I ain’t seen her in years. I don’t have any information as to what she is and isn’t doing.”

“Well, that’s the thing, though. See, I can get background information for anybody. Anybody. But there’s nothing in her background that would indicate she should be taken to murder scenes and—”

Lott stopped speaking. At the mention of murder, there was the slightest trace
of reaction from King. It was gone almost instantly, but it was undeniable. King seemed to understand that Lott had noticed.

“You know why she’s working for them, don’t you?”

“I don’t know anything. And I would appreciate it if you left my property now.”

Lott suddenly noticed another man in the barn with them. He was across the way in another
stall, younger and with shaggy blond hair. The man was holding a broom and listening intently to the conversation.

“I can pay handsomely
, and all I want is a reason. Why’s she working with the FBI? What can she give them?”

King turned back to his horse and bent down again as though Lott wasn’t there.

“Mr. King, I can pay money.”

“We don’t need money. Now please leave.”

Lott stood there a moment, watching the man nail a shoe onto the horse’s hoof. He thought maybe the Amish would use something else, something that wasn’t metal, and was slightly surprised they thought that metal shoes, nails, and a hammer were okay but a car wasn’t.

Lott exhaled and turned. He walked out of the barn and wasn’t more than twenty feet out when he saw somebody coming over to him. He glanced over and saw the man from the barn. The man was glancing
back, apparently making sure King couldn’t see them.

“How much you pay for that information?” he said
, with an accent Lott couldn’t place.

“Depends how good it is.”

The man wrung his hands and looked back toward the barn. “Sarah’s my cousin. We all know about her.”

“What about her?”

“How much you pay, first?”

Lott took the man in. He was frightened of King but also wanted th
e money. Lott decided he wouldn’t really know the value. “Hundred bucks.”

The man
snorted. “Shit. I can make more than that here.” The man turned to walk away and Lott grabbed his shoulder.

“A thousand.”

The man looked at the barn again and then nodded.