A disapproving grunt from the back row startled Olivia, and the candle dropped from her hand, landing like a fallen angel at her feet. It hardly made a sound as she extinguished the flame with the toe of her boot.
“Damn, lady.” The teen viewed her through the apathetic eye of the camera, still rolling, and his exaggerated whisper turned heads. “You almost set the whole place on fire.”
But Olivia had already spun away, seething. Because she knew who to blame. Mr. Wise Guy with his handsome face and his disapproving noises. She concentrated on the back of his head, his hair a perfect match for the mahogany pews, willing him to look at her. When he finally glanced over his shoulder and shrugged, one corner of his mouth turned up.
At the podium, James continued his speech, plodding ahead with the steady persistence of a zombie, and Olivia cursed herself for making it harder on him. She should’ve known better than to cross the threshold into the church. She slipped back into her coat and slunk toward the exit, suddenly craving the burn of cold air in her lungs.
“Drake titled this tribute, ‘A Student’s Haiku’. ‘All our eyes on her. Classroom of second chances. She treats us as men.’” James paused, and Olivia waited, her hand on the door. If she left now, in the utter quiet, everyone would realize.
But standing there, another memory bowled her over, inescapable now as an oncoming train. The last time she’d been in a church, just two weeks earlier. The prison chapel, with its straight-backed chairs, simple wooden crosses and hidden spaces to do very unholy things. What she’d seen there. What she’d run from. It all flooded in, welling up in her throat, thick as cotton.
To hell with it.
She nudged the door ajar, imagining them all looking at her, including that smug detective. For a moment, she froze under the weight of their judgment. Until a scream, sharp as a blade, slit the white-bellied silence wide open.
Chapter Two
Olivia ran in the direction of the screaming. Though it had stopped now, the absence of it chilled her. Down the steps of Grateful Heart, up the stone path that wound around the back and into the grove of ancient redwoods. Here, the path turned to dirt and led to the Earl River that flowed into the bay.
“Doctor Rockwell!”
Olivia heard one of the Murdock twins calling her name before she saw her, bone-white and trembling, near the large drainpipe at the river’s edge. A dog whined and circled her, its leash trailing behind, forgotten. Olivia knew then, it was Maryann and her poodle, Luna.
Just behind Maryann, plain as day, Olivia saw the feet. The soles, booted and unmoving. The legs, still as driftwood. They protruded from the pipe and rested on the mossy rocks below. Whatever else remained lay inside the tunnel, shrouded in the endless dark.
“It’s her,” Maryann said, her voice one-note. Hollow as a dead piano key.
Olivia hurried down the embankment to the river, careful not to slip, and past Maryann toward the pipe’s entrance. In the summer, the river beneath the bridge slowed to a trickle here, and kids smoked cigarettes and weed, and immortalized their names in spray paint under the shelter of the drainpipe. Other things happened too. Bad things. Like the rape of the Simmons girl a few summers back. But now, the water hit Olivia, ice-cold, at mid-calf. She sloshed across the river and toward that pair of feet, extending her arms to keep her balance on the shifting rocks.
“It’s her,” Maryann said again. “It’s her.”
Olivia heard voices behind her. A panicked jumble of them. One, in particular, rose above the others, announcing himself as an officer of the law, telling her to get back. To wait.
She ignored them all. All her life she’d run toward trouble. How else could she explain her chosen profession? Em called it her savior complex. But in truth, Olivia had only ever wanted to save one person. But her dad didn’t want saving. So, she had to settle for saving somebody else. A whole lot of somebodies.
Bonnie, though, was beyond saving.
Olivia had known it from the moment she’d heard Luna whimpering, seen her wandering free, her fur slick with river water. Luna, the kind of dog who had outfits for every holiday and rode around town in a baby carriage and had her hair groomed more often than Olivia. Luna, who Maryann loved so much she had a life-sized stuffed replica in her office at the library.
Maybe, in some dark crevice of Olivia’s heart, she’d known all along. Mothers don’t go missing voluntarily. Not mothers like Bonnie.
When Olivia reached the drainpipe and could finally see inside, it hit her like pounding waves breaking against the sheer cliffs that bordered Fog Harbor.
First, the hands, partially submerged and bloated as oven mitts. Olivia braced herself against the tunnel’s rim.
Then, the blouse strewn open; the jeans undone. Olivia’s legs anchored her to the spot like the roots of the centuries-old trees that watched, unaffected by it all.
The eyes open but opaque and unseeing; the lips slightly parted. Olivia intended to scream, but the sound got stuck, and she only managed a shallow gasp.
Finally, the ligature around the neck. The head, oddly angled. Olivia bent over, dry-heaving, and felt her knees buckle beneath her, just as a hand cleaved to her elbow to hold her upright. She knew that hand. It belonged to the smartass detective.
“What the hell are you thinking?” he asked. “You can’t just go charging into a crime scene.”
Olivia couldn’t tell him she blamed herself for this; it sounded ridiculous. But she’d knowingly gone into Grateful Heart, and now Maryann and Bonnie had to suffer the consequences of her curse. She also couldn’t tell him the other thing: that it wasn’t her first dead body. Not even Em knew that. Only her father knew, and he’d made her swear to take it to the grave.
She couldn’t explain any of that, so she simply nodded, her head bobbing like a child’s balloon as he guided her to the rocks nearby. With his help, she lowered herself onto a dry spot next to Maryann. She focused on her breathing and Luna’s lolling pink tongue until she felt halfway human again.
At the top of the embankment, James pushed his way through the crowd, but he didn’t make it far. His face twisted. Animal sounds escaped his mouth. Someone grabbed him, and he collapsed to the ground, sobbing. Olivia knew it was a moment she’d live again and again in the worst of her nightmares.
“It’s her, right?” Maryann sounded better now. Less like the undead and more like the Maryann who worked as the prison librarian, her nose stuck in a book and everybody else’s business.
There was no one else but Olivia to answer.
“Yes.”
“Tell me your name, ma’am.”
The detective stood with his back to Olivia, notepad in hand, while the other cops milled around the drainpipe. They’d already dispersed the shell-shocked crowd and extended yellow tape around a wide perimeter of the river, marking it as the scene of a crime. Clad in a hooded, disposable jumpsuit, a person—man or woman, Olivia couldn’t tell—captured the whole scene with a camera. Why would you want a job like that? A job that required you to stare, unblinking, into the vilest parts of our animal nature. She’d been asked the same herself.
“Maryann Murdock.”
“Ms. Murdock, my name is Detective Will Decker, Fog Harbor Homicide. I know it’s been a difficult afternoon but I need to ask you a few questions.”