Lovely Bad Things: A Dark Romance (Hollow’s Row 1)

HALEN

Evil exists.

Even if you don’t believe in evil, whatever your spirituality consists of, when those two words are strung together, you feel the rattling shiver bone-deep.

It’s that impactful, and it should be this town’s slogan.

Welcome to Hollow’s Row, where evil exists.

I sift through the tall marsh reeds, careful of my foot placement. Mud adheres to the plastic booties covering my rain boots. They make a suction sound every time I lift my foot. The sodden earth feels like walking on an overused sponge beneath my soles.

The sun is a failing disk in a violet sky, casting splinters of neon-orange over the tweed marshland. Fireflies dance like little flares jettisoned from the setting sun as they blink over the horizon. But that’s where the picturesque landscape ends.

As we head farther into the marsh, the barren, gnarled trees rise up from the reeds like black claws, twisted and decayed. They’re too thin, sickly, and widely spaced. I don’t like the trees.

I tried to get here before daylight was lost, but the delay at the airport is just another factor of my career.

Some assignments take a day, others a week. My last case I was onsite for over a month. Hotel rooms and takeout. Starbucks, if the town has one. Otherwise it’s whatever local coffee shop brand I can get on tap.

This town happens to have a chain coffee store, but I left my mocha latte in the rental Volvo. After trekking for nearly twenty minutes, I really wish I had the caffeine.

My life wasn’t always this way, so unstable, always on the move and away from home. But home is no longer home; it’s some abstract thought from a life I don’t recognize.

After over ten months of coming to terms with this fact, I finally put my quaint Tudor on the market last month. Then I fled to another case.

I rub the ink beneath my sleeve, reminding myself to focus on the present task.

“Right over there.” Detective Emmons points to a cropping of wiry trees ahead. “That’s where the hunters found them.”

Relieved to be close, I nod to the detective as I follow in his footsteps. He’s dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. A wide-brimmed police hat tops his head. He’s tall and stocky, with extremely broad shoulders. Tough skin and hands. He stands out amid the spindly trees and reeds like a scarecrow—if that scarecrow was a linebacker. He was the first to greet me when I arrived at the police station, regaling me with tales of his high-school football glory days.

He’s not a bad detective as far as I can tell, just small-town. As he made detective less than a year ago, the extent of his detecting work has been locating missing teens, who typically disappear for a weekend bender, and lost pet cases.

Which is oddly dull, considering the dark lore this town is steeped in.

Things have been quiet for Hollow’s Row for too long.

The town’s reputation is why my director tossed the file on my proverbial desk. That, and the fact the locals are overwhelmed and wary of the inevitable FBI invasion.

“This part of the marshland is called the killing fields,” Detective Emmons explains. “Local hunters toss the carcasses of their kills out here.” He nods down to the skeletal remains of an animal as he steps around the protruding rib cage.

I pause to inspect the sizable, sun-bleached bones. Deer, probably. A stag. Difficult to determine from a glance without the antlers. The hunters keep those as trophies.

Emmons goes to remove a fallen branch to clear our path to the scene, and I hold up my hand.

“Wait.” I move quicker to reach him. At his puzzled expression, I add in a less alarmed tone, “Please, don’t move anything. I need to keep the scene preserved for my colleagues.”

Referring to the FBI as my colleagues is a stretch, but I’m a professional, nonetheless.

Dark eyebrows pinched, he runs his tongue over his teeth, gaze narrowed. His eyes flit to the streak of white framing the left side of my face, quickly meeting my gaze again before his stare becomes rude. “All right, then.”

He starts again toward the scene which has already been marked-off by his colleagues. Yellow crime-scene tape bounces gently in the open air above the reed grass.

I don’t take offense to his questioning pause. I understand a man of his stature—both physically and large in reputation—would hesitate before taking an order from a petite woman, and a fed at that.

I give him credit, though, his hesitation was brief. He even made an attempt not to stare at my defect. I should correct him on at least one of his assumptions, though. I’m not a federal agent. The logistics are typically too complicated to explain when I’m called to a scene, however, so I let the assumption ride most of the time.

Technically, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did send me here. But as a subcontractor, I’m not on the government’s payroll. I’m a crime scene investigative criminologist with CrimeTech, one of the leading research authorities on criminal behavior and corrections in the country.

But that’s still not exactly what I do.

There’s a sub agency within the company which specializes in the more bizarre cases. The ones that make most detectives and FBI agents say: what the fuck.

Ones like the scene we’re encroaching on now.

As I take in the sight boxed-in by yellow tape, I feel the urgent buzz prickle my skin, that anxious sensation which swarms my insides like a nest of relentless hornets trying to escape.

Bizarre is what I do.

The dark and macabre underbelly of the crime-solving world.

If it can’t be explained by an investigator or your average forensic psychologist, and it’s disturbing enough to make law officials uncomfortable, then my unit’s services is requested to explain the unexplainable.

As a crime-scene profiler, I read motives and clues in what the offenders leave behind in the aftermath of their crimes. Behavior is not just observed within the person; it’s observed in the echo of their actions, in the delivery of their violence.

When others look away from a morbid scene, I look deeper.

In truth, I’m here to put people at ease, so they can sleep at night knowing their world makes sense.

What I’m staring at right this moment, however, shouldn’t be explained away, or have a label slapped on it like psychopath or mentally disturbed. We should see it for the gruesome deed it is, for the truth of its existence.

Sometimes, evil things just are.

Detective Emmons can only stomach the sight for a minute before he has to look away, his features failing to mask his repulsion. But I see what he’s trying to disguise there: fear. For most law officials, when you come face-to-face with soul-tainting evil, you fear being contaminated by it.

It’s like walking a tightrope over an abyss.

“This is just…” The large detective shakes his head, unable to articulate his thoughts. “God, it’s fucking sick, is what it is.”

I scan the site, feeling an unsettling touch coast my skin. The fine hairs on the nape of my neck lift away. I let the sensation crawl over me, consume me, because this is the reason the perpetrator went to the trouble of staging his scene. He wants to provoke a response.

As I drop my satchel in the mud, I shift my gaze to the detective. “I’ve never seen any god have a hand in things like this.”

Emmons rubs the back of his neck, measuring my comment with a kernel of disbelief in his eyes. “Seriously? You’ve seen something like this before?”

I don’t hesitate. “I’ve seen a lot.”

He drops his hand and says, “I’ll leave you to it, then.” As he passes by, he swipes the tall reeds aside, making a point of leaving.

I stare after him and watch the way the tall grass parts for his large form. Then I glance around the crime scene, taking in the techs marking evidence and snapping pictures, the fireflies blinking against the pale backdrop. The silence is loud.

Inhaling a breath laced with the swampy scent of marsh, I face the scene.

Yes, I’ve seen a lot of things—but this fact doesn’t minimize the grisliness before me.

A cropping of thin trees stretch high into the twilight, their branches bare and warped like distorted talons. The trees look dead, mangled. Like they themselves are the victims.

Affixed to the pitch-black bark of three eerie trees are the dissected eyes of thirty-three victims.

The lifeless eyes are filmed over and stare vacantly out over the wetland. The sight chills my blood.

No bodies were recovered.

The eyes have been positioned together, staged. I’d have to measure, but I’m assuming the perpetrator took the time and care to place them the exact distance apart as they were on the victims’ faces. Unless he’s over seven-feet tall, he would have needed to use a ladder or some tool to reach high enough overhead.

“I don’t understand.”

Lost in thought, I realize I’ve been standing in the same spot for too long. I adjust my stance to unlock my knees, and look over at the woman crime-scene analyst who comes to stand beside me.

“It’s so damn creepy,” she continues, “like, I feel like the eyes should be following me, like they should see me, how a doll’s eyes seem to do, you know? But they’re not looking at anything at all. Just…lifeless.”

“I wonder who they did see,” I remark

She turns toward me, her deep-brown skin amber hued in the setting sun. “Let’s find out and catch the sick bastard.”

Lips rimmed tight, I nod. “Absolutely.”

“I’m Devyn Childs, by the way,” she says. “Glad to have you here to help.”

A smile lifts the corners of my mouth despite our bleak surroundings. She’s the first person to welcome me on the case. Not even Detective Emmons offered an official welcome. “Halen St. James,” I reply, leaving off my credentials. “And thanks. I really hope I can help.”

“I typically wouldn’t welcome the feds,” she says, “but you seem harmless enough. Halen… That’s an interesting name.”

An observation I hear plenty. “My parents were big heavy metal fans in the eighties.”

She nods, but her tapered gaze conveys she’s not quite making the connection. Anyone under the age of forty rarely does. I’ve had thirty-two years of being subjected to the band Van Halen. I’ve memorized nearly every song, and know Eddie Van Halen was the “best guitarist ever” according to my father. My mother proudly touted she was first—and always would be—in love with David Lee Roth.

The surfacing memories are bittersweet, and I regret I can no longer listen to the songs.

Devyn gives me a sincere smile. “Well, I’m back at it. Let me know if you need anything while you’re with us in Hollow’s Row.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you, Devyn.”

Before I set up my tripod and digital camera, I inspect the reeds around the trunk base of the trees. The grass has been flattened, creating a clearing. No noticeable footprints. As I walk the perimeter, I come up to a blackened patch of reeds. The grass has been singed and burned away by fire to create a pit.

“No remains in there,” one of the techs say as he passes. “Already processed.”

“Thanks.” But I still snap a round of pictures with my phone and text them to my field manager, Aubrey. Which is an odd title to hold when he never actually enters the field. A point I make often when he rides me on field hours and reports.

A couple curious glances are directed my way from the crime-scene techs, but otherwise, the locals let me work independently in peace. Which, I suppose, is all any of us can aim for in the face of chaos.

I document the scene, starting from a distance and work my way closer. The dissected eyes have been removed from the eyelids cleanly, giving no initial indication of ethnicity to any of the victims, and they all appear a similar silver, grayish-blue due to corneal opacity and the film covering the irises.

I use a plastic probe to reach overhead to inspect one. The whole oculus of the organ is present. The optic nerve has been neatly severed. A medical examiner may be able to identify the exact instrument used, but for the purpose of my preliminary report, I note a general scalpel.

The pupils stare emptily out into the marshland, unseeing. I wonder what horrors they took in right before the perpetrator carved them from the sockets as, based on the cell structure, all organs appear to have been removed while the victims were still alive.

I try to imagine the difficulty, the patience and sheer sadistic brutality one would need to master in order to remove not just one pair of eyes from a struggling victim, but over thirty people.

How did he detain them? Were they drugged? Where were they kept?

Where are the bodies?

I’m impressed with the offender’s measure of medical knowledge, if not horrified. The perpetrator was able to extract the eyes so efficiently. No retinal tears or mistreatment.

Every observation is noted and logged in a spreadsheet on my tablet, which is fed directly to the CrimeTech database in real time. But I also keep notes in a basic notebook—my own personal findings no one can access.

Once I’ve completed my preliminary examination, I move on to what really interests me. The eyes were not just simply tacked to the trees. That would’ve been sloppy, but also a timesaver. No, he took the time to painstakingly thread lace-weight yarn around the nerves in such precise manner and detail that the thread is almost unseen at first glimpse.

Then he strung the thread to the bark, weaving it in so it disappears around the girth of the three trees. It’s clever and well-constructed. The techs will need to cut thread away from the trees and run individual tests. They might even be able to narrow down the age and where the skein was purchased. If it’s a rare brand or color, that would be even more helpful.

I highly doubt there will be any DNA retrieved from the yarn or anywhere else in this scene. But, I’m not here to collect and run lab tests. That’s up to the techs and detectives to build their case against any suspects.

I’m here to tell the scene’s narrative, to paint the gruesome picture of an offender who is methodical enough to dissect thirty-three pairs of eyes and string them to eerie trees in the middle of a killing field.

It’s my job to find the killer’s story.

When building a profile of a crime scene, I have to consider all the elements. The location, the weather, the wildlife. I have to walk in the killer’s proverbial—and sometimes literal—footsteps to uncover evidence the killer may have left behind.

While I’m photographing the intricate detail work on the woven thread, the caw of a nearby crow captures my notice.

Finding the source, I move away from the scene and duck under the caution tape, slogging farther out toward the low-lying ground of the marsh where a murder of crows circle overhead. I don’t have to walk far before I see what’s drawing their attention.

A fresh kill.

A large stag has been skinned and gutted and left to bake in the sun.

I get close enough to search for a kill shot before stepping away from the putrid stench. From this angle, I can’t determine what was used to kill the deer. But what I do notice is this animal wasn’t killed for its meat.

I glance over to the scene to gauge the distance, then look up at the circling fish crows.

If he used a dead animal to attract the birds away from his exhibit, then he knew the area well enough to anticipate the crows pecking at the remains. He didn’t want his work destroyed.

He could have buried the bodies out here and simply left them to decay. The bodies may have never been found. Instead, he made a production of a very specific organ.

He’s telling his own story.

The decisive difference is in whether or not the display is for his own purpose or for someone else’s. Because if it’s a message, why go through the burden of wandering all the way into the deep marsh where there’s a chance no one will ever come across his work? Carting all those remains and tools twenty minutes into the killing fields wasn’t an easy feat.

Then of course he had to hunt and kill the deer. Skin it, mutilate it. Leave it in a strategic and possibly tested distance away from his display.

The perpetrator could be a hunter.

So why didn’t he claim his trophy and take the antlers?

Because those aren’t the trophies he keeps.

I look up at the darkening sky, at the crows circling the barren trees. A team is already scouting the marshland in hopes of recovering the bodies.

A commotion of shouts erupt at the crime-scene perimeter as a man with a press badge tries to gain access. He snaps pictures around Devyn as she tries to barricade him from the scene. I start in her direction to help, but suddenly the reporter takes off back through the reeds.

Exasperated, she shakes her head and looks at me. I shrug, because she seemed to handle him just fine.

I’m honestly surprised only one member of the press has found their way out here, considering the history of this town and the media craze this scene will incite once the story breaks.

About five years ago, Hollow’s Row was a national hotspot for conspiracy and innuendo when people went missing.

Disappeared.

Thirty-three town residents vanished, never to be heard from again.

As I head back toward the crime scene, I feel it in the dense, marshy air, the whisper too fragile to voice. It’s what’s not being said in the silence that screams so loud.

Every single person on this scene knows who the victims are—some may even be their family, their friends—even if no one is willing to give voice to that thought. They’re just waiting for DNA analysis to confirm it.

Thirty-three pairs of unseeing eyes with a horrific story to tell.

Where have these people been for the past five years? The mystery is far more disturbing than the gruesome scene.

The mystery is the reason I’m here.

Deciding I’ve cataloged enough of the scene for the first day, I begin to pack up my case and bag the rest of my tools and supplies. I’ll return tomorrow when there are less people so I can immerse myself in the scene. I roll off my gloves and stuff them into my jacket pocket as Devyn comes to see me off.

“The trees have eyes…” she mutters beneath her breath.

The fine hairs along my skin stand up, and a fierce shiver races up my spine. “Excuse me?”

“Oh,” she says, waving a hand dismissively. “Just something I recalled from a torturous college class. It’s been stuck in my head since I got on-scene.”

I give her my undivided attention, every nerve ending flaring with an electric current. “I’m curious,” I prod her.

“Chaucer,” she says. “My professor was obsessed. Made us read The Canterbury Tales without the translated cliff notes. Have you ever tried to read Middle English? Pure damn torture. And I just remember how boring those stories were. Like, I’d rather watch the dullest shade of vanilla paint dry on a wall.

“Anyway,” she continues, “one of Chaucer’s proverbs was: the trees have eyes, and the fields have ears.”

A flash of beautifully disarming blue-and-green eyes…his gaze so arctic and devoid of feeling I can still feel it raking over my body with malicious intent.

Then his final words to me: “Time and tide wait for no man.”

A quote he delivered from Geoffrey Chaucer.

A twisted apprehension sinks down to my marrow and pits out my bones.

I’ve tried for six months to bar him from my thoughts, but he’s like a dark silhouette caught in the edge of a film flare, some demon affixed to my soul that follows me like a shadow.

“Chaucer,” I repeat, the name like acid on my tongue. After Kallum’s departing words, I searched the quote, then—with difficulty—attempted to read the author’s works. “This was a philosophy class?” I ask her.

She nods skeptically. “Yes, obviously. Halen, what’s wrong? You look ill.”

I am ill. A deep-seated sickness twists my insides like the gnarled trees staring down on me, and it’s done so since the moment I stepped foot on the university grounds and laid eyes on Kallum Locke. For three months after the court trial, I obsessively worked the Harbinger case to find a connection, any link, to tie back to him.

“I have to go,” I tell her, shouldering my bag. “Thanks, Devyn.”

“Sure… See you tomorrow?”

I glance around the scene, wondering how long I have before the techs and officials start removing the remains. “How much sway do you have with your department?”

She cocks an eyebrow. “That depends on whether or not you’re going to let me in on whatever you’re up to.”

“I know someone who can offer insight to this scene,” I say. “But, he’s not easily accessible.” A severe understatement.

Devyn looks at the barren trees. “I might be able to postpone the dismantling until tomorrow afternoon. But I won’t push out longer. We have to preserve the evidence, Halen. And the victims could be…” She trails off as she looks at me, an imploring depth in her brown eyes.

“I know,” I say, nodding my understanding. “I promise, if it doesn’t pan out, you’ll be the one I call. Thank you.”

“All right. Don’t let me down, fed.”

I smile, deciding I’ll eventually let her in on the whole truth of my involvement here. She’s more assertive than Detective Emmons, and seems to have a more open mind. Something this case will need.

The sky has darkened, a midnight-blue bleeds into burnt umber, hindering my navigation as I maneuver back the way I came through the reeds. My phone chimes with a text, and I dig it out of my back pocket, already knowing who the message is from before I tap the screen.

Aubrey: You’re done already? I haven’t received an updated report.

I call him rather than have this conversation over a text. “I have to make an impromptu trip. I need you to get me a plane ticket.”

Silence clogs the line before he says, “You’re in the middle of a wetland on an active investigation. Where the hell could you possibly have to suddenly go?”

I wish I didn’t have to answer that question. Not for the first time, I wonder what it would be like to work freelance and independently away from the company. There are pros and cons and risks on both sides, of course, and right now, I’d miss the security of the full-time work which keeps me busy.

Placing the call on speakerphone, I light my phone flashlight. I grip my bag strap and sidestep the picked-clean carcass I passed earlier.

“These trees have eyes, Aubrey,” I say into the line.

“Yes, I know. That’s why you’re there,” he says, his tone incredulous and short.

“No, not literally. It’s a proverb.” I drop my gaze to the reeds. “It may be nothing, or there may be some connection. I don’t know. Philosophy was never my strength. But that’s why I need to find out.”

“Wait…philosophy?” His weighted beat punctuates the air with uncertainty. “Halen, don’t go there. Don’t do this to yourself again.” Aubrey’s desperate tone bleeds into my own doubts. “I thought this obsession was over—”

“I don’t have an obsession,” I fire back, my jaw clenched around the words. “Can you find me a philosophy scholar with extensive knowledge in Western esotericism?”

“I’m sure I can,” he says.

“One who can also think like a killer?”

He expels an audible breath across the line.

The Harbinger case remains unsolved, a suspect never named. But I know exactly where that likely suspect is right now, and I know he will eventually charm his way to the outside world.

My forearm flares with a heated itch, and I rub at the ink over the top of my shirt, then touch the pendant around my neck to center my diverging thoughts.

Focus on the present.

“This isn’t going to go over well,” Aubrey finally relents.

I release a cleansing breath, exhaling the tension from my chest. “Look. I’m not looking at him for this…not directly. And I’m not working the Harbinger case. I’ve put that to rest. But he’s an expert in his field—the expert—and I need his insight on this.”

“And what makes you think he’ll be willing to help you?”

My field manager makes a logical point.

Despite the humidity, the evening air drops a degree cooler, the darkness encroaching. I think about his question in earnest. Not because I don’t know the answer—but I’m not sure how to phrase the answer aloud.

Kallum will be all too willing to help. Whether or not his participation will actually be helpful…well, that’s a risk I have to take.

But he will help me, because he’s a narcissistic sociopath who’s been locked away for the past six months, and my asking for his help will feed his starved ego.

“I don’t know, Aubrey,” I say as I come up on the rental car. “But if you get me that plane ticket, once I get there, you’ll be the first to know.”

I end the call, knowing once the evidence confirms the eyes were removed perimortem, the priority of this case will escalate drastically. The FBI will then take over and may even push me out. Media will descend and congest the town. I have a limited time to work, and I need specific answers.

Answers only a deranged philosophy scholar can give me.

Yes, evil exists.

And I have to look evil right in his beautiful eyes and ask for his help.