Ten til Twilight Chapter 1 part 1
Chapter One
August 25th, 2005
Thunder boomed and cracked across the indigo-churning sky, making the craggy mountainside tremble. These were the Rockies, wild and temperamental as teenagers. Halfway down the mountain, Finna Jorgensen sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly as grape-sized drops of cloud-exiled rain pelted thickly on the roof of her black Jeep Cherokee. “Come on, midnight angel” she muttered, and fired up the engine. Inside it she sat, more soaked and chilled than warm and dry. Chilled deeper than the cold rain warranted. A prickled thought buzzed at the back of her mind and she pushed it away forcefully. No point in letting her mind go there tonight. She tried her best to dry herself off with a spare sweatshirt she kept in the Jeep for emergencies, then pulled her slim metallic cherry-red cell phone out of her black leather purse and dialed Kennington’s cell number. There would be hell to pay in the morning, but she’d deal with Hardwicke then. Static on the cell phone crackled as lightning split the mountainside trees about a mile in front of her. Finna willed Kennington to answer quickly. Luck was with her for the first time that day when he did.
“Hi, Wade?”
“Hey Jorgensen, you’re up late” Kennington’s voice cracked over the rain-thrilled ether.
“You’re up late too, or did I wake you?” Finna asked, thinking she probably hadn’t, due to Randy Travis’s honey mead voice crooning in the background. Then came the sound of five-week old Derek squalling, quite close to the phone.
“It’s feeding time at the O.K. Corral - as usual. There’s no other state than awake in this house for the time being” Kennington groaned - but Finna could hear the pride and joy in his voice nonetheless. Wade and his wife Margaret had tried for years to conceive, to no avail. Derek’s adoption had finally come through four weeks ago, and Wade and Margaret were now both up to their elbows in diapers and formula. Both were higher than the mountain air of their cabin home on the thrill that the little boy was theirs at last.
“Good news” Kennington’s voice sputtered through again, almost lost in another fall of thunder. “Derek’s doctor said his heart is fine, he doesn’t have the cardiac problems that can come along with Down Syndrome.”
“That’s awesome!”
“Yeah. What a relief.” Finna swore she could hear Wade’s grin widen. “But I’m sure you didn’t call in the middle of severe weather for an update.”
“True, but I’m thrilled for the update just the same.” She realized with a surprise that she was, felt her chest loosen and lungs expand. It had been a nettled day. Hearing the good news about Derek helped loose the reins she had ratcheted in. “I was wondering how many sheehans the archaeology department has.”
“Six.”
“Can I borrow all of them early tomorrow morning?” Lightning flashed again, half a mile ahead this time.
“Sure. Call Julie LePres, she’s got the keys and can help you move them in her truck. What’s up?” Another flash lit the nighttime sky. Cue thunder, Finna thought, and it obliged.
“Bad body dump site, with a side of gag order” she said into the phone.
“No questions asked - we’ve finished our excavations for the summer, so we’re not using the sheehans at all.”
“Thanks, Wade, that’s a big help. I’ll call Julie right now.”
“Glad to be of help. Goodnight”.
Finna quickly dialed Julie. Her request for help was met with an agreement to get together at five-thirty in the morning and take the sheehans out to the site. Finna was grateful - and reminded herself how lucky she was to be swimming in grad students who were worth their weight in gold. That luck helped to offset the fiasco the day had been, she thought as she started up the Jeep and began the winding drive down the mountain toward home. The lights of Cuerno Blanco twinkled wetly through the downpour, spilling down the side of the steep mountain and out across the rolling juniper-and-yucca-studded plains. White Horn - or Cuerno Blanco, as the Spanish explorers had dubbed it - rose a startling 14,200 feet above sea level, towering over the usually dry prairie below. The lights of Cuerno Blanco the city spilled down the mountain and out across the dark rolling plains, splashing all the way to the lights of the steel mill to the southeast, the lights of the maximum security prison to the northeast, and encircling the merged pinpricks of the university and Clemsing Institute. Clemsing was one of the foremost forensics labs in the country. It was a teaching institution, and had been more a home-away-from-home than just Finna’s workplace for the last four years.
One of nature’s compulsive station-changers, Finna played with the radio preset buttons as she began the ribonned descent down the rain-soaked mountainside until she came across Poco’s In the Heart of the Night. The song filled the Jeep and warmed Finna’s crime-scene chilled soul. It had been Robin’s favorite song since she was a child, and in her head the song and the woman were inseparable. Robin, she reflected, was just the balm that she needed tonight. If it weren’t for Hardwicke taking the scene over, Robin and Brendan would have been by her side today through the whole ordeal. The Jeep slid and she recovered, shoved Hardwicke out of her mind and concentrated instead on Robin, her life partner of five years. In her head she could hear Robin’s throaty alto voice singing along with the radio. She could see Rob’s face, cream-pale studded with plenty of freckles to go along with her long flame-red hair. All thirteen members of Robin’s family were red-haired and blue eyed, with the exception of Robin herself, whose eyes were a startling green. Finna could lose herself easily in those eyes, and often did. Finna reflected not for the first time that she envied Robin’s strong family ties. Her own family consisted solely of her father, who had become an on-again-off-again alcoholic after her mother and brother’s deaths when Finna was eleven. As lightning ahead of her split and arrowed down in half a dozen places, she reflected that she could have really used a mother to talk to tonight. She really could have used a mother to talk to in 1986. Thunder followed, sounding as if it intended to flatten the boulder-strewn mountainside and do the same to the plains below. The drunk driver who had struck her mother in 1981 had ensured that Finna was on her own.
Finna brushed that thought away and concentrated on her driving. The journey down the mountain was made longer and more arduous than usual because of the wet conditions. The whole mountainside was carved of pink granite which weathered into little chunks in multiple sizes, all the shape of ball-bearings, making the natural gravel roads precarious. Heavy rain was a staple of late Southern Colorado summers, though the downpours were usually thorough but brief. Tonight’s weather pattern was odd for the climate, and promised to leave the area socked in with rain for days. The farmers, tending the precious chili crops that Cuerno Blanco was famous for, would be grateful for the water. In another month the smell of roasting chilies at the annual Mercado and chili festival would suffuse the plains. Rain was a gift to the farmers. For Finna, the downpour promised to wash away what little trace evidence might still exist at tonight’s crime scene - a crime scene which was probably months cold to begin with. The road leveled out as she reached the foot of the mountain and began the traverse across the gentled plain. She again pushed the buzzing thought at the back of her mind into fidgety silence as she drove past the dark pool of Germantown, Cuerno Blanco’s Amish-like enclave of farmers and ranchers living off the land and off of the public water and electrical grid. Finna seldom had professional cause to be in Germantown. Just that once, though back then she hadn’t been a professional yet. The people of Germantown mostly kept to themselves harmoniously. Finna felt a measure of kinship with them due to her own Teutonic roots. People who hadn’t yet met Finna often envisioned Dr. Jorgensen as a tall and willowy Scandinavian. Tall she was, but willowy and Scandinavian, she mused, not so much. Finna had dark chestnut hair and dark brown eyes and, unlike the top models of the day, had meat on her bones and was descended from women that seemed to be designed to pull the plow all day in case the oxen wore out. Jorgensen was in fact not the family name. Finna’s family had been German immigrants who were last in line the day they came through Ellis Island. The frustrated clerk who had served them took one listen to the German family name’s pronunciation and had re-Christened them Jorgensen, the name of the people in line in front of them - or so the family story went. Finna had tried her hand at genealogy, but so far had come up dry as to what the original family name was. Wanting to fit in, the family had become Jorgensens and left the original, difficult to spell surname behind.
Finna slowed and emerged from her musing as she finally turned onto Sunne Street, where pools of light spilled from bustling houses full of college students settling in for the fall semester. Behind the wheel, Finna frowned and bit her lip. The thought in the back of her mind had resumed its buzzing. She shied it back again like a twitchy horse.
Her eyes took in the myriad students, some running indoors to escape the rain, and a handful of young men and a few scattered women with arms upraised, worshipping the elements. The young men doing so were shirtless, and the young women nearly so. Finna fancied she could see belly-button piercings sparkling in the orange of the sodium streetlights on every taut and Colorado-sun tanned female torso. The students were all as soaked to the bone as she as they scrambled to carry boxes and odd items of furniture from their over-packed cars into what would soon become over-packed apartments. The street was lined on both sides with old Victorian-style ramblers - houses that had started their lives as merely big and had grown bigger by multiple additions, some congruous to their original nature, some not.
Close enough to Friday for some, most of the houses were buzzing with Thursday-night get-togethers, cases of beer up for grabs -- a sure sign that the first week of classes was drawing to a close with nary a test or quiz in sight. Finna’s own house, a light moss-green giant with octagonal shaping at each corner and cream shutters at each window nestled in the middle of the south side of the block, was the exception. It was one of the few this close to campus and Clemsing that had not been cobbled into smaller student apartments. The former property of a hermit-like elderly man, the house had fallen into ruin when it was bought by a fledgling fix-and-flip company. For some unknown reason, the fix-and-flip company had pulled out after building a two-story garage with a sunroom and spa addition facing south on the back and an apartment upstairs. They hadn’t touched the house, which had been battleship-grey with black shutters dipping drunkenly from every window when she and Robin had first seen it. She and Robin had looked at it and fallen in love with its potential and bought it the previous May, just after Robin’s birthday. So far they had fixed up the outside and the kitchen, but the rest of the house still needed a ton of work and TLC. So for the time being, Finna and Robin were living in the garage apartment while they made the rest of the house habitable. Their house was also one of the two or three that tonight stood in darkness. Darkness at 756 Sunne Street was not unusual in itself. Finna suspected that Robin was awake, but the only light on was the light over the driveway. Sometime in the initial jumble of the afternoon she’d left Robin a brief message along the lines of “a body was found, don’t wait up”, so there was no reason to expect that she was still awake. It was likely, though, that she was in the solarium behind the garage finishing her evening workout. Finna now wished she had asked her partner to leave a few lights on in the front of the house. She knew, though, that the request was one she would never make. The buzzing thought at the back of her mind rocketed forward. Coming home to dark windows the night Jackie disappeared.
Coming home to dark windows the night they identified Jackie’s remains.
Finna swung the Jeep into the driveway, hyper-aware of the silence that descended as she turned the wipers off. Normally she welcomed the darkness, with its implication that there was no reason to make a fuss. Tonight, though, was different.
A dirty once-white nylon cord from 1986. Tonight, a length of nylon cord in construction-site yellow. Both used as ligatures, both tied with six knots.
Finna let the Jeep idle in the driveway for a moment. She felt the edge of panic in her mind and knew she should get inside, into the light where the macabre visions that churned her thoughts would flicker and fade. The fear stopping her from activating the opener was that she would get inside, into the light, and find the visions still there. Blunt force fractures spidering along Jackie’s skull, eleven hits in all. The sign of an amateur - the sign of overkill. The dirty white cord ligature tied with six knots, encircling vertebrae that had once been Jackie’s neck. As Southern Colorado’s premier forensic anthropologist, Finna was in demand when corpses were discovered. Unlike so many other nights, tonight she felt truly shaken to her core. Nine skeletons, arranged in three neat rows of three shallow graves. The first one excavated, a woman by features on her cranium, had lain there in the soil with a yellow nylon cord knotted around her cervical vertebrae. There were blows to the cranium, but from the fracture patterns, she knew the skulls had been hit with a blunt object after death, not before or during. Additionally, the woman’s pelvis had been smashed into bone flakes like so much dry mashed potato mix. That was new. The cord with six knots was old. Could it really be him, after all these years? She had managed to shunt the thought to the back of her mind all day, but now it broke through every single one of her protective barriers triple force. Jackie’s skeleton, lying at the edge of the creek below the overhang of the cutbank. Jackie in cat makeup at her locker on Halloween in the ancient, dimly lit east wing of Rundell high school in Rocky Creek. Jackie laughing, making the pink-and-black sequined cat ears on her headband shake and sparkle under the flickering fluorescents. Halloween 1986, the morning she and Jackie had been in the gym when the power had gone off for two hours. Jackie that afternoon, catching Finna’s eye as she rummaged in her locker and slid a folded note out of her pocket just far enough to let Finna see it, then stuffed it back in as the hall monitor came their way. The note. Finna closed her eyes and rested her forehead in her hand, her elbow on the steering wheel. Jackie’s unruly blonde curls plastered to the Colorado soil, veteran of months of heavy snowfall. She opened her eyes and stared at the raindrops streaming down the now-foggy windshield. How long had she been sitting here? The ligature from 1986 had been dirty white, not construction-site yellow. But then again, killers had been known to make changes in their modus operandi over time. And quite a bit of time has passed. Shit, nineteen years. White or yellow, it was basically the same type of cord, sold in thousands of handyman shops nationwide. With any luck Robin would be called in tomorrow and could get a better fix on it. Nineteen years. How can it possibly have been that long ago? Finna’s temples throbbed and the blurred world beyond the rain-channeled windows seemed to spin. She needed to get inside, now. And still she sat, the Jeep content to stand in the pounding rain and burn gasoline.
In the solarium behind the big garage addition, the only lights on were those of the large aquariums which stood on the back wall flanked by leafy Chinese palms. In front of them, Robin Harlowe McShane frowned, stereo remote in hand. Autumn-red hair in the disheveled remains of what had been a ponytail before her workout, she sat still and silent on her 80’s vintage Schwinn Aerodyne exercise bike, listening intently to the noises outside the window. All she could hear, though, was the steady hum of the aquarium pumps and the silvery pipping of the myriad bubbles that they generated. As if Robin’s twin, Finna’s huge and ancient black tomcat sat next to the bronze-and-crimson Aerodyne, his ears pricked up in concentration.
“I’m in full agreement, Skite.” Robin said, glancing down at the suave, entirely coal--black cat, a note of concern in her voice. She looked back through the small window into the garage, then out the side window. She had seen headlights, presumably from Finna’s Jeep, flash against the trees outside the window. Skite had jumped up from where he had been sleeping on the stone floor in the cool of the rushing air from the Schwinn. It had to be Finna to get that reaction - but normally there was no long pause between the flash of headlights and the smooth humming of the garage door opening. The muted black stereo’s display continued counting out time in lit blue numerals. Robin dismounted from the Aerodyne. As if cued, the garage door suddenly opened. Finna pulled the Jeep in next to Robin’s indigo 4-Runner and cut the headlights and engine. If Robin hadn’t already known that something was wrong from the long pause, she would have known now that she could see her partner. Finna sat tensely, her chocolate-brown eyes on the dashboard but unseeing. Finna abruptly got out of the Jeep and stepped into the small laundry and shower room they had built into the garage for nights like this one. After the laundry room door had closed, Robin set the remote on the Aerodyne’s seat and moved across the dimly lit room. On her way to the kitchen she stepped over two more cats blissfully sleeping on the cool flagstones. Skite followed her. Robin looked down at the old cat as she opened the refrigerator door.
“It’s extra TLC duty tonight, kiddo.” Robin’s voice was low and throaty, with a distinct Southern drawl. She took out a covered plate and mug, placed them in the microwave, and hit the necessary buttons. Light spilled out the window of the microwave oven door, illuminating Skite. The big cat meowed up at her inquiringly. Robin smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I won’t tell on you for worrying over her if you won’t tell on me.”
The small dual laundry-and-shower room in the garage was Finna’s baby. They had added it to the garage so that neither of them - especially Finna, with her macabre job description, wouldn’t have to troop through the house dripping in human gore after investigating crime scenes. It had a small walk-in shower, tiled in white and mottled light green ceramic tile. The floor was tiled in mottled green-and tan tile that reminded Finna of mossy rocks near a river’s edge. White tile trim extended halfway up the walls for ease in cleaning. Just stepping into the dual-use room made Finna feel cleaner, closer to nature but without the gore that seemed to inevitably lie at nature’s heart. Finna stripped off her sodden clothing. She checked her jeans and then her shirt carefully before placing them in the washer. A bottle of vodka sat on a shelf next to detergent and fabric softener. She sprinkled detergent into the washer, then reached for the vodka. Hell, she needed it even worse than her clothes did. After taking a swig of it, she poured half a cup over her clothes, closed the washer door, and hit the start button. She reached across clean white tile to turn on the shower taps and waited a moment for the water to get good and hot. She stepped into the steamy deluge. Her breathing and heartbeat sped up. What if it was him? Cold prickles ran down her spine in total disregard of the steaming water needle-jetting into her back. They were cold prickles, but anxious and tipped with jolting adrenaline. Six knots. Just let it be him. Her nerves seemed to sing. Just let it be him and let me finally nail the bastard.
Back in the solarium, Robin turned the stereo volume back up, mounted the Aerodyne, and resumed pedaling. She heard the washer and shower start and felt cool relief that routine was overtaking fear. Once Finna eased back into her routine, fear never stood a chance. At the familiar sound of water in the pipes, Skite went back to sitting in the rush of the Aerodyne’s fan, but his stance remained vigilant.
“Calm down, buddy, all’s well” Robin chided Skite. The cat, however, remained sitting.
At half-past ten, Finna walked over the cool flagstones and through the lush foliage to the corner of the solarium, clad only in an oversized moss-green towel. Her long chestnut hair clung to the skin of her neck and shoulders as she walked across the room, stepping over the two still-sleeping cats and up to the Aerodyne where Robin was finishing her nightly workout. The Aerodyne’s handles continued their arcs, though Robin was by this time sitting back on the bike lazily and pedaling without operating the handles.
“Hey, you” Finna reached down to pet Skite, who began rubbing up against her bare legs contentedly.
“Cold-hearted orb, that rules the night,” Robin intoned along with the end of the CD. Robin reached over to trace her short, practical fingers deliberately down the tendrils of wet hair clinging to Finna’s neck. Carpenter’s hands, Finna thought, remembering how those hands had helped saw, plane, and peg the oak cupboards they had installed in the kitchen. Finna felt a welcome shock of heat at the undertone in her lover’s voice, and felt this time heated chills down her spine at Robin‘s touch. If they’re chills, can they be hot? Damn, I don’t know, but these are . . . She knelt beside Skite so that Robin could continue her petting. “Removes the colors from our sight,” Robin murmured, trailing a finger along Finna’s jaw line to her chin, then up to her lips. Robin smiled and looked her in the eye, her right eyebrow slightly raised, and Finna realized it was going to be a memorable night - a night full of matters having nothing whatsoever to do with crime scenes. “Red is grey and yellow, white - but we decide which is right, and which is an illusion.”
Finna’s long, sensuous fingers skimmed up Robin’s arm as the musical crescendo built, then down the inside of Robin’s arm, nails scraping slightly, as it released. “So which am I,” She smiled, “that which is real, or that which is an illusion?”
“One hundred percent real baby, all the way.” Robin said in her low, thrilling voice. She smiled and stopped pedaling, then dismounted. She pulled Finna close, hands caressing, massaging away the tension in Finna’s shoulders.
“Bad one, baby?” Robin asked.
“Decayed down to skeletons - shallow graves. Mostly disarticulated.” Finna’s voice was muffled, her lips brushing Robin’s neck.
“So bodies rather than a body. And a bit more to the story than that?”
“Yessirree Bob.”
Robin hugged Finna tighter, rocking her slightly. She could feel the tension snaking across Finna’s naked shoulders. She had never known Finna to come home this tense, not once in the five years they’d been together. Finna was actually trembling. Robin grazed her way up Finna’s neck and kissed her softly on the cheek. “Have you eaten yet, babe? You feel a little shaky.”
God how Finna loved Robin. “No, I could use something.” She burrowed deeper into Robin, smelling the lush hormones exuded with her workout exertion. She always thrilled at how Robin smelled, of light jasmine and rich maple syrup, sweet nutmeg and exotic cloves. “Someone handed me a granola bar at some point this afternoon, and I haven’t had anything since.”
“There’s Tennessee slow-fried chicken and okra, with a side of stuffed mushrooms for good measure in the microwave for you, already good and hot. And I have a surprise for you to go with it.”
Finna drew back from Robin, brushing against the lightly arcing leaves of the Chinese palm behind her and closing her eyes for a moment before meeting Robin’s gaze. “Then to the kitchen it is.” She felt herself blush slightly and laughed as Robin’s gentle green eyes met hers. Though she truly hadn’t eaten anything since that granola bar in the afternoon, she knew Robin had seen right through her. The beauty of it was that with Robin it didn’t matter. There would be no questions to answer, no third degree about the state of her emotions. Robin would be there if she needed to talk, would be there to listen wholly and without pretense. She made her way to the nighttime kitchen, Robin close behind her. Skite was trying his hardest to comfort Finna by brushing up against her legs, making walking difficult. Finna heard Robin’s rippling chuckle behind her.
“He always manages to hold the cool cat exterior until your pet him” she drawled. “Once you’ve come in and petted him, he loses it and risks blowing both our covers. He’d almost make it seem we get concerned for you.” Robin shook her head, smiling, and took the covered plate from the microwave. She retrieved a knife and fork from the silverware drawer, and set the plate in front of Finna. At the sound of cutlery, the two cats that had been sleeping in the solarium appeared.
“Moochers” Finna smiled. Bass stretched his grey and white frame unconcernedly and looked up at Finna’s plate intently with his one remaining eye. Lovejoy, white but for a peach patch on her left ear and a black dot on her forehead, merely blinked at Robin and Finna as if granting them permission to carry on.
Robin reached over to the counter. “Time for the surprise. Close your eyes!”
Finna obliged and felt Robin curl her hands around a warm mug. “You found it!” she squealed. She opened her eyes to her beloved and much chipped w00t-comic mug. “You found my Sarah-heads mug, I love you!”
“Well, seeing as I’m the one who lost it in packing, I’d damn well better have found it, really” Robin grinned.
Finna sipped the tea. Peppermint. “Delicious” she proclaimed, and it was. She then bit into the chicken. “Mmm. Dill and . . . ?”
“A little bit of mustard seed, cumin, mustard seed, some paprika.”
“This is exactly what I needed - a little down home southern hospitality. New recipe?”
“Yup. Tried it out tonight just for you.”
“Sorry I got to it late.”
“Not a problem, babe.”
Robin sat down across the corner of the table from Finna and took her free hand. “Patti called. She’s got a seven AM meeting tomorrow so went to bed early tonight. She said she can come over tomorrow night around six” Robin said, stroking Finna’s hand. “So she said to call and leave her a message tomorrow, or if you play the ponies right she said you might be able to catch her between meetings.”
“What odds does she figure?”
“Ones that’ll make anyone you bet against very happy” Robin grinned.
“In that case I think I’ll put my money on the message route. Would you like to have dinner with us, then, around six thirty?”
“If I wouldn’t be a third wheel.” Robin squeezed Finna’s hand and kissed it.
“Not at all -- it was her idea as well as mine.”
“Then dinner sounds great.”
“Your dad called as well.”
“And he was?”
“A bit soused, and he loves you.”
“Thanks, babe. Is your car running yet?”
“No, thanks for reminding me, I need to call Brendan for a ride tomorrow. I should probably do that before it gets any later.”
“Probably you should” Finna smiled, arching her brows as Robin continued sitting and stroking her hand, slowly and sensuously.
“I’m just a bit loath to let you go is all” Robin smiled into the warmth of Finna’s dark eyes. “I’m glad you’re home.”
“I’m glad I’m home too, believe me.”
Finna was relaxing, and Robin felt her own tension ease at the prospect of Finna’s friend’s visit. By this time tomorrow night, the horrors haunting Finna would be laid open and analysis and processing begun. Though Brendan insisted that Finna should be able to talk to Robin about her deepest concerns, Robin was disinclined to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Finna finished dinner.
“Dessert?” Robin asked.
“Just you try to weasel out of it.”
“I was talking about bunny tracks ice cream” Robin said innocently, but her right eyebrow was raised and Finna knew better.
“Bunny tracks ice cream is slated as second dessert.”
“Who’s on first?”
“You.” Finna pulled Robin close, sliding her hands intoxicatingly up under Robin’s red and white three-quarter sleeve shirt. “And you’re already nice and sweaty, too” she whispered, lips close to Robin’s ear.
Robin chuckled. “Batter up, baby.”
August 25th, 2005
Thunder boomed and cracked across the indigo-churning sky, making the craggy mountainside tremble. These were the Rockies, wild and temperamental as teenagers. Halfway down the mountain, Finna Jorgensen sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly as grape-sized drops of cloud-exiled rain pelted thickly on the roof of her black Jeep Cherokee. “Come on, midnight angel” she muttered, and fired up the engine. Inside it she sat, more soaked and chilled than warm and dry. Chilled deeper than the cold rain warranted. A prickled thought buzzed at the back of her mind and she pushed it away forcefully. No point in letting her mind go there tonight. She tried her best to dry herself off with a spare sweatshirt she kept in the Jeep for emergencies, then pulled her slim metallic cherry-red cell phone out of her black leather purse and dialed Kennington’s cell number. There would be hell to pay in the morning, but she’d deal with Hardwicke then. Static on the cell phone crackled as lightning split the mountainside trees about a mile in front of her. Finna willed Kennington to answer quickly. Luck was with her for the first time that day when he did.
“Hi, Wade?”
“Hey Jorgensen, you’re up late” Kennington’s voice cracked over the rain-thrilled ether.
“You’re up late too, or did I wake you?” Finna asked, thinking she probably hadn’t, due to Randy Travis’s honey mead voice crooning in the background. Then came the sound of five-week old Derek squalling, quite close to the phone.
“It’s feeding time at the O.K. Corral - as usual. There’s no other state than awake in this house for the time being” Kennington groaned - but Finna could hear the pride and joy in his voice nonetheless. Wade and his wife Margaret had tried for years to conceive, to no avail. Derek’s adoption had finally come through four weeks ago, and Wade and Margaret were now both up to their elbows in diapers and formula. Both were higher than the mountain air of their cabin home on the thrill that the little boy was theirs at last.
“Good news” Kennington’s voice sputtered through again, almost lost in another fall of thunder. “Derek’s doctor said his heart is fine, he doesn’t have the cardiac problems that can come along with Down Syndrome.”
“That’s awesome!”
“Yeah. What a relief.” Finna swore she could hear Wade’s grin widen. “But I’m sure you didn’t call in the middle of severe weather for an update.”
“True, but I’m thrilled for the update just the same.” She realized with a surprise that she was, felt her chest loosen and lungs expand. It had been a nettled day. Hearing the good news about Derek helped loose the reins she had ratcheted in. “I was wondering how many sheehans the archaeology department has.”
“Six.”
“Can I borrow all of them early tomorrow morning?” Lightning flashed again, half a mile ahead this time.
“Sure. Call Julie LePres, she’s got the keys and can help you move them in her truck. What’s up?” Another flash lit the nighttime sky. Cue thunder, Finna thought, and it obliged.
“Bad body dump site, with a side of gag order” she said into the phone.
“No questions asked - we’ve finished our excavations for the summer, so we’re not using the sheehans at all.”
“Thanks, Wade, that’s a big help. I’ll call Julie right now.”
“Glad to be of help. Goodnight”.
Finna quickly dialed Julie. Her request for help was met with an agreement to get together at five-thirty in the morning and take the sheehans out to the site. Finna was grateful - and reminded herself how lucky she was to be swimming in grad students who were worth their weight in gold. That luck helped to offset the fiasco the day had been, she thought as she started up the Jeep and began the winding drive down the mountain toward home. The lights of Cuerno Blanco twinkled wetly through the downpour, spilling down the side of the steep mountain and out across the rolling juniper-and-yucca-studded plains. White Horn - or Cuerno Blanco, as the Spanish explorers had dubbed it - rose a startling 14,200 feet above sea level, towering over the usually dry prairie below. The lights of Cuerno Blanco the city spilled down the mountain and out across the dark rolling plains, splashing all the way to the lights of the steel mill to the southeast, the lights of the maximum security prison to the northeast, and encircling the merged pinpricks of the university and Clemsing Institute. Clemsing was one of the foremost forensics labs in the country. It was a teaching institution, and had been more a home-away-from-home than just Finna’s workplace for the last four years.
One of nature’s compulsive station-changers, Finna played with the radio preset buttons as she began the ribonned descent down the rain-soaked mountainside until she came across Poco’s In the Heart of the Night. The song filled the Jeep and warmed Finna’s crime-scene chilled soul. It had been Robin’s favorite song since she was a child, and in her head the song and the woman were inseparable. Robin, she reflected, was just the balm that she needed tonight. If it weren’t for Hardwicke taking the scene over, Robin and Brendan would have been by her side today through the whole ordeal. The Jeep slid and she recovered, shoved Hardwicke out of her mind and concentrated instead on Robin, her life partner of five years. In her head she could hear Robin’s throaty alto voice singing along with the radio. She could see Rob’s face, cream-pale studded with plenty of freckles to go along with her long flame-red hair. All thirteen members of Robin’s family were red-haired and blue eyed, with the exception of Robin herself, whose eyes were a startling green. Finna could lose herself easily in those eyes, and often did. Finna reflected not for the first time that she envied Robin’s strong family ties. Her own family consisted solely of her father, who had become an on-again-off-again alcoholic after her mother and brother’s deaths when Finna was eleven. As lightning ahead of her split and arrowed down in half a dozen places, she reflected that she could have really used a mother to talk to tonight. She really could have used a mother to talk to in 1986. Thunder followed, sounding as if it intended to flatten the boulder-strewn mountainside and do the same to the plains below. The drunk driver who had struck her mother in 1981 had ensured that Finna was on her own.
Finna brushed that thought away and concentrated on her driving. The journey down the mountain was made longer and more arduous than usual because of the wet conditions. The whole mountainside was carved of pink granite which weathered into little chunks in multiple sizes, all the shape of ball-bearings, making the natural gravel roads precarious. Heavy rain was a staple of late Southern Colorado summers, though the downpours were usually thorough but brief. Tonight’s weather pattern was odd for the climate, and promised to leave the area socked in with rain for days. The farmers, tending the precious chili crops that Cuerno Blanco was famous for, would be grateful for the water. In another month the smell of roasting chilies at the annual Mercado and chili festival would suffuse the plains. Rain was a gift to the farmers. For Finna, the downpour promised to wash away what little trace evidence might still exist at tonight’s crime scene - a crime scene which was probably months cold to begin with. The road leveled out as she reached the foot of the mountain and began the traverse across the gentled plain. She again pushed the buzzing thought at the back of her mind into fidgety silence as she drove past the dark pool of Germantown, Cuerno Blanco’s Amish-like enclave of farmers and ranchers living off the land and off of the public water and electrical grid. Finna seldom had professional cause to be in Germantown. Just that once, though back then she hadn’t been a professional yet. The people of Germantown mostly kept to themselves harmoniously. Finna felt a measure of kinship with them due to her own Teutonic roots. People who hadn’t yet met Finna often envisioned Dr. Jorgensen as a tall and willowy Scandinavian. Tall she was, but willowy and Scandinavian, she mused, not so much. Finna had dark chestnut hair and dark brown eyes and, unlike the top models of the day, had meat on her bones and was descended from women that seemed to be designed to pull the plow all day in case the oxen wore out. Jorgensen was in fact not the family name. Finna’s family had been German immigrants who were last in line the day they came through Ellis Island. The frustrated clerk who had served them took one listen to the German family name’s pronunciation and had re-Christened them Jorgensen, the name of the people in line in front of them - or so the family story went. Finna had tried her hand at genealogy, but so far had come up dry as to what the original family name was. Wanting to fit in, the family had become Jorgensens and left the original, difficult to spell surname behind.
Finna slowed and emerged from her musing as she finally turned onto Sunne Street, where pools of light spilled from bustling houses full of college students settling in for the fall semester. Behind the wheel, Finna frowned and bit her lip. The thought in the back of her mind had resumed its buzzing. She shied it back again like a twitchy horse.
Her eyes took in the myriad students, some running indoors to escape the rain, and a handful of young men and a few scattered women with arms upraised, worshipping the elements. The young men doing so were shirtless, and the young women nearly so. Finna fancied she could see belly-button piercings sparkling in the orange of the sodium streetlights on every taut and Colorado-sun tanned female torso. The students were all as soaked to the bone as she as they scrambled to carry boxes and odd items of furniture from their over-packed cars into what would soon become over-packed apartments. The street was lined on both sides with old Victorian-style ramblers - houses that had started their lives as merely big and had grown bigger by multiple additions, some congruous to their original nature, some not.
Close enough to Friday for some, most of the houses were buzzing with Thursday-night get-togethers, cases of beer up for grabs -- a sure sign that the first week of classes was drawing to a close with nary a test or quiz in sight. Finna’s own house, a light moss-green giant with octagonal shaping at each corner and cream shutters at each window nestled in the middle of the south side of the block, was the exception. It was one of the few this close to campus and Clemsing that had not been cobbled into smaller student apartments. The former property of a hermit-like elderly man, the house had fallen into ruin when it was bought by a fledgling fix-and-flip company. For some unknown reason, the fix-and-flip company had pulled out after building a two-story garage with a sunroom and spa addition facing south on the back and an apartment upstairs. They hadn’t touched the house, which had been battleship-grey with black shutters dipping drunkenly from every window when she and Robin had first seen it. She and Robin had looked at it and fallen in love with its potential and bought it the previous May, just after Robin’s birthday. So far they had fixed up the outside and the kitchen, but the rest of the house still needed a ton of work and TLC. So for the time being, Finna and Robin were living in the garage apartment while they made the rest of the house habitable. Their house was also one of the two or three that tonight stood in darkness. Darkness at 756 Sunne Street was not unusual in itself. Finna suspected that Robin was awake, but the only light on was the light over the driveway. Sometime in the initial jumble of the afternoon she’d left Robin a brief message along the lines of “a body was found, don’t wait up”, so there was no reason to expect that she was still awake. It was likely, though, that she was in the solarium behind the garage finishing her evening workout. Finna now wished she had asked her partner to leave a few lights on in the front of the house. She knew, though, that the request was one she would never make. The buzzing thought at the back of her mind rocketed forward. Coming home to dark windows the night Jackie disappeared.
Coming home to dark windows the night they identified Jackie’s remains.
Finna swung the Jeep into the driveway, hyper-aware of the silence that descended as she turned the wipers off. Normally she welcomed the darkness, with its implication that there was no reason to make a fuss. Tonight, though, was different.
A dirty once-white nylon cord from 1986. Tonight, a length of nylon cord in construction-site yellow. Both used as ligatures, both tied with six knots.
Finna let the Jeep idle in the driveway for a moment. She felt the edge of panic in her mind and knew she should get inside, into the light where the macabre visions that churned her thoughts would flicker and fade. The fear stopping her from activating the opener was that she would get inside, into the light, and find the visions still there. Blunt force fractures spidering along Jackie’s skull, eleven hits in all. The sign of an amateur - the sign of overkill. The dirty white cord ligature tied with six knots, encircling vertebrae that had once been Jackie’s neck. As Southern Colorado’s premier forensic anthropologist, Finna was in demand when corpses were discovered. Unlike so many other nights, tonight she felt truly shaken to her core. Nine skeletons, arranged in three neat rows of three shallow graves. The first one excavated, a woman by features on her cranium, had lain there in the soil with a yellow nylon cord knotted around her cervical vertebrae. There were blows to the cranium, but from the fracture patterns, she knew the skulls had been hit with a blunt object after death, not before or during. Additionally, the woman’s pelvis had been smashed into bone flakes like so much dry mashed potato mix. That was new. The cord with six knots was old. Could it really be him, after all these years? She had managed to shunt the thought to the back of her mind all day, but now it broke through every single one of her protective barriers triple force. Jackie’s skeleton, lying at the edge of the creek below the overhang of the cutbank. Jackie in cat makeup at her locker on Halloween in the ancient, dimly lit east wing of Rundell high school in Rocky Creek. Jackie laughing, making the pink-and-black sequined cat ears on her headband shake and sparkle under the flickering fluorescents. Halloween 1986, the morning she and Jackie had been in the gym when the power had gone off for two hours. Jackie that afternoon, catching Finna’s eye as she rummaged in her locker and slid a folded note out of her pocket just far enough to let Finna see it, then stuffed it back in as the hall monitor came their way. The note. Finna closed her eyes and rested her forehead in her hand, her elbow on the steering wheel. Jackie’s unruly blonde curls plastered to the Colorado soil, veteran of months of heavy snowfall. She opened her eyes and stared at the raindrops streaming down the now-foggy windshield. How long had she been sitting here? The ligature from 1986 had been dirty white, not construction-site yellow. But then again, killers had been known to make changes in their modus operandi over time. And quite a bit of time has passed. Shit, nineteen years. White or yellow, it was basically the same type of cord, sold in thousands of handyman shops nationwide. With any luck Robin would be called in tomorrow and could get a better fix on it. Nineteen years. How can it possibly have been that long ago? Finna’s temples throbbed and the blurred world beyond the rain-channeled windows seemed to spin. She needed to get inside, now. And still she sat, the Jeep content to stand in the pounding rain and burn gasoline.
In the solarium behind the big garage addition, the only lights on were those of the large aquariums which stood on the back wall flanked by leafy Chinese palms. In front of them, Robin Harlowe McShane frowned, stereo remote in hand. Autumn-red hair in the disheveled remains of what had been a ponytail before her workout, she sat still and silent on her 80’s vintage Schwinn Aerodyne exercise bike, listening intently to the noises outside the window. All she could hear, though, was the steady hum of the aquarium pumps and the silvery pipping of the myriad bubbles that they generated. As if Robin’s twin, Finna’s huge and ancient black tomcat sat next to the bronze-and-crimson Aerodyne, his ears pricked up in concentration.
“I’m in full agreement, Skite.” Robin said, glancing down at the suave, entirely coal--black cat, a note of concern in her voice. She looked back through the small window into the garage, then out the side window. She had seen headlights, presumably from Finna’s Jeep, flash against the trees outside the window. Skite had jumped up from where he had been sleeping on the stone floor in the cool of the rushing air from the Schwinn. It had to be Finna to get that reaction - but normally there was no long pause between the flash of headlights and the smooth humming of the garage door opening. The muted black stereo’s display continued counting out time in lit blue numerals. Robin dismounted from the Aerodyne. As if cued, the garage door suddenly opened. Finna pulled the Jeep in next to Robin’s indigo 4-Runner and cut the headlights and engine. If Robin hadn’t already known that something was wrong from the long pause, she would have known now that she could see her partner. Finna sat tensely, her chocolate-brown eyes on the dashboard but unseeing. Finna abruptly got out of the Jeep and stepped into the small laundry and shower room they had built into the garage for nights like this one. After the laundry room door had closed, Robin set the remote on the Aerodyne’s seat and moved across the dimly lit room. On her way to the kitchen she stepped over two more cats blissfully sleeping on the cool flagstones. Skite followed her. Robin looked down at the old cat as she opened the refrigerator door.
“It’s extra TLC duty tonight, kiddo.” Robin’s voice was low and throaty, with a distinct Southern drawl. She took out a covered plate and mug, placed them in the microwave, and hit the necessary buttons. Light spilled out the window of the microwave oven door, illuminating Skite. The big cat meowed up at her inquiringly. Robin smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I won’t tell on you for worrying over her if you won’t tell on me.”
The small dual laundry-and-shower room in the garage was Finna’s baby. They had added it to the garage so that neither of them - especially Finna, with her macabre job description, wouldn’t have to troop through the house dripping in human gore after investigating crime scenes. It had a small walk-in shower, tiled in white and mottled light green ceramic tile. The floor was tiled in mottled green-and tan tile that reminded Finna of mossy rocks near a river’s edge. White tile trim extended halfway up the walls for ease in cleaning. Just stepping into the dual-use room made Finna feel cleaner, closer to nature but without the gore that seemed to inevitably lie at nature’s heart. Finna stripped off her sodden clothing. She checked her jeans and then her shirt carefully before placing them in the washer. A bottle of vodka sat on a shelf next to detergent and fabric softener. She sprinkled detergent into the washer, then reached for the vodka. Hell, she needed it even worse than her clothes did. After taking a swig of it, she poured half a cup over her clothes, closed the washer door, and hit the start button. She reached across clean white tile to turn on the shower taps and waited a moment for the water to get good and hot. She stepped into the steamy deluge. Her breathing and heartbeat sped up. What if it was him? Cold prickles ran down her spine in total disregard of the steaming water needle-jetting into her back. They were cold prickles, but anxious and tipped with jolting adrenaline. Six knots. Just let it be him. Her nerves seemed to sing. Just let it be him and let me finally nail the bastard.
Back in the solarium, Robin turned the stereo volume back up, mounted the Aerodyne, and resumed pedaling. She heard the washer and shower start and felt cool relief that routine was overtaking fear. Once Finna eased back into her routine, fear never stood a chance. At the familiar sound of water in the pipes, Skite went back to sitting in the rush of the Aerodyne’s fan, but his stance remained vigilant.
“Calm down, buddy, all’s well” Robin chided Skite. The cat, however, remained sitting.
At half-past ten, Finna walked over the cool flagstones and through the lush foliage to the corner of the solarium, clad only in an oversized moss-green towel. Her long chestnut hair clung to the skin of her neck and shoulders as she walked across the room, stepping over the two still-sleeping cats and up to the Aerodyne where Robin was finishing her nightly workout. The Aerodyne’s handles continued their arcs, though Robin was by this time sitting back on the bike lazily and pedaling without operating the handles.
“Hey, you” Finna reached down to pet Skite, who began rubbing up against her bare legs contentedly.
“Cold-hearted orb, that rules the night,” Robin intoned along with the end of the CD. Robin reached over to trace her short, practical fingers deliberately down the tendrils of wet hair clinging to Finna’s neck. Carpenter’s hands, Finna thought, remembering how those hands had helped saw, plane, and peg the oak cupboards they had installed in the kitchen. Finna felt a welcome shock of heat at the undertone in her lover’s voice, and felt this time heated chills down her spine at Robin‘s touch. If they’re chills, can they be hot? Damn, I don’t know, but these are . . . She knelt beside Skite so that Robin could continue her petting. “Removes the colors from our sight,” Robin murmured, trailing a finger along Finna’s jaw line to her chin, then up to her lips. Robin smiled and looked her in the eye, her right eyebrow slightly raised, and Finna realized it was going to be a memorable night - a night full of matters having nothing whatsoever to do with crime scenes. “Red is grey and yellow, white - but we decide which is right, and which is an illusion.”
Finna’s long, sensuous fingers skimmed up Robin’s arm as the musical crescendo built, then down the inside of Robin’s arm, nails scraping slightly, as it released. “So which am I,” She smiled, “that which is real, or that which is an illusion?”
“One hundred percent real baby, all the way.” Robin said in her low, thrilling voice. She smiled and stopped pedaling, then dismounted. She pulled Finna close, hands caressing, massaging away the tension in Finna’s shoulders.
“Bad one, baby?” Robin asked.
“Decayed down to skeletons - shallow graves. Mostly disarticulated.” Finna’s voice was muffled, her lips brushing Robin’s neck.
“So bodies rather than a body. And a bit more to the story than that?”
“Yessirree Bob.”
Robin hugged Finna tighter, rocking her slightly. She could feel the tension snaking across Finna’s naked shoulders. She had never known Finna to come home this tense, not once in the five years they’d been together. Finna was actually trembling. Robin grazed her way up Finna’s neck and kissed her softly on the cheek. “Have you eaten yet, babe? You feel a little shaky.”
God how Finna loved Robin. “No, I could use something.” She burrowed deeper into Robin, smelling the lush hormones exuded with her workout exertion. She always thrilled at how Robin smelled, of light jasmine and rich maple syrup, sweet nutmeg and exotic cloves. “Someone handed me a granola bar at some point this afternoon, and I haven’t had anything since.”
“There’s Tennessee slow-fried chicken and okra, with a side of stuffed mushrooms for good measure in the microwave for you, already good and hot. And I have a surprise for you to go with it.”
Finna drew back from Robin, brushing against the lightly arcing leaves of the Chinese palm behind her and closing her eyes for a moment before meeting Robin’s gaze. “Then to the kitchen it is.” She felt herself blush slightly and laughed as Robin’s gentle green eyes met hers. Though she truly hadn’t eaten anything since that granola bar in the afternoon, she knew Robin had seen right through her. The beauty of it was that with Robin it didn’t matter. There would be no questions to answer, no third degree about the state of her emotions. Robin would be there if she needed to talk, would be there to listen wholly and without pretense. She made her way to the nighttime kitchen, Robin close behind her. Skite was trying his hardest to comfort Finna by brushing up against her legs, making walking difficult. Finna heard Robin’s rippling chuckle behind her.
“He always manages to hold the cool cat exterior until your pet him” she drawled. “Once you’ve come in and petted him, he loses it and risks blowing both our covers. He’d almost make it seem we get concerned for you.” Robin shook her head, smiling, and took the covered plate from the microwave. She retrieved a knife and fork from the silverware drawer, and set the plate in front of Finna. At the sound of cutlery, the two cats that had been sleeping in the solarium appeared.
“Moochers” Finna smiled. Bass stretched his grey and white frame unconcernedly and looked up at Finna’s plate intently with his one remaining eye. Lovejoy, white but for a peach patch on her left ear and a black dot on her forehead, merely blinked at Robin and Finna as if granting them permission to carry on.
Robin reached over to the counter. “Time for the surprise. Close your eyes!”
Finna obliged and felt Robin curl her hands around a warm mug. “You found it!” she squealed. She opened her eyes to her beloved and much chipped w00t-comic mug. “You found my Sarah-heads mug, I love you!”
“Well, seeing as I’m the one who lost it in packing, I’d damn well better have found it, really” Robin grinned.
Finna sipped the tea. Peppermint. “Delicious” she proclaimed, and it was. She then bit into the chicken. “Mmm. Dill and . . . ?”
“A little bit of mustard seed, cumin, mustard seed, some paprika.”
“This is exactly what I needed - a little down home southern hospitality. New recipe?”
“Yup. Tried it out tonight just for you.”
“Sorry I got to it late.”
“Not a problem, babe.”
Robin sat down across the corner of the table from Finna and took her free hand. “Patti called. She’s got a seven AM meeting tomorrow so went to bed early tonight. She said she can come over tomorrow night around six” Robin said, stroking Finna’s hand. “So she said to call and leave her a message tomorrow, or if you play the ponies right she said you might be able to catch her between meetings.”
“What odds does she figure?”
“Ones that’ll make anyone you bet against very happy” Robin grinned.
“In that case I think I’ll put my money on the message route. Would you like to have dinner with us, then, around six thirty?”
“If I wouldn’t be a third wheel.” Robin squeezed Finna’s hand and kissed it.
“Not at all -- it was her idea as well as mine.”
“Then dinner sounds great.”
“Your dad called as well.”
“And he was?”
“A bit soused, and he loves you.”
“Thanks, babe. Is your car running yet?”
“No, thanks for reminding me, I need to call Brendan for a ride tomorrow. I should probably do that before it gets any later.”
“Probably you should” Finna smiled, arching her brows as Robin continued sitting and stroking her hand, slowly and sensuously.
“I’m just a bit loath to let you go is all” Robin smiled into the warmth of Finna’s dark eyes. “I’m glad you’re home.”
“I’m glad I’m home too, believe me.”
Finna was relaxing, and Robin felt her own tension ease at the prospect of Finna’s friend’s visit. By this time tomorrow night, the horrors haunting Finna would be laid open and analysis and processing begun. Though Brendan insisted that Finna should be able to talk to Robin about her deepest concerns, Robin was disinclined to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Finna finished dinner.
“Dessert?” Robin asked.
“Just you try to weasel out of it.”
“I was talking about bunny tracks ice cream” Robin said innocently, but her right eyebrow was raised and Finna knew better.
“Bunny tracks ice cream is slated as second dessert.”
“Who’s on first?”
“You.” Finna pulled Robin close, sliding her hands intoxicatingly up under Robin’s red and white three-quarter sleeve shirt. “And you’re already nice and sweaty, too” she whispered, lips close to Robin’s ear.
Robin chuckled. “Batter up, baby.”