Blood Sisters Page 3

  Libby frowned. “I’m not moving.”

  “You grew up in that house.” Aisha’s tone softened. “It’s full of memories and you know it’s made it tougher for you to move on with your life.”

  Libby sighed and then smiled. For a few brief moments, she visualized her twin sister as a pre-teen, laying on the bed across from her talking about boys—long red hair pulled down across her face, the smell of spearmint gum in the air.

  “I know you walk into that house and automatically think of Melissa,” Aisha said. “How could you not? It doesn’t help that you see her every single time you look in a mirror. Or a puddle, or a store window, for that matter.”

  “When we were eight or nine,” Libby said softly, “we’d play hide-and-seek almost every day and she never found me. I’d tell her I could make myself invisible because I was a magical princess.”

  Aisha looked up and seemed to be studying the ceiling, something she would often do before crying. “I remember,” she said. “That was right before you both told me about the secret space under the stairs.”

  Libby nodded. “You hadn’t lived next door for very long.”

  “Do you remember how huge that space seemed?”

  Libby smiled.

  “You’re still so tiny; I think you could fit in it today. Didn’t your dad fix something under the stairs?”

  “I think it was a squeak in one of the treads if I remember right,” Libby said, as memories flooded into her brain unchecked. “He used the old breakfront to temporarily cover up the hole he’d cut in the wall. I hid out in the lower part of the breakfront one day and found out its back panel came off, so I slipped through and replaced it before Melissa came looking. She searched every nook and cranny in the house without finding me, including the breakfront, and eventually started to believe I really was magical.”

  “And you were under the stairs the whole time.”

  Libby smiled and nodded.

  “I remember thinking she was way past the age where magic could explain something like that,” Aisha said.

  Libby pursed her lips. “She was into weird things like that. While we were hiding out there one afternoon, she made me swear a blood oath.”

  “I remember that too. I was too chicken to do it.”

  Libby opened her right hand and exposed her palm. An almost indistinguishable thin, white line ran across it from the base of her thumb to the base of her little finger.

  Aisha traced the line gently with her fingertip. “Blood sisters.”

  Libby was enjoying the trip down memory lane when a phantom pain from her father’s razor blade being dragged across the palm of her hand reared its ugly head. Although it had been well over twenty years since the blood oath they took as children, Libby reflexively clenched her hand into a fist. “That sort of thing was important to her.”

  Aisha reached out and took Libby’s fist in her hands. She managed to pry her fingers open and once again stroked the scar running across her palm. “Mel was different.”

  Libby took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders. “What was the phrase she always used when she didn’t want to play the game anymore?”

  “You mean when she gave up and I won?” Aisha grinned.

  Libby couldn’t help but mirror her friend’s lop-sided smile. “Olly, olly oxen free.”

  “That’s it.” Aisha’s smile melted slowly into pursed lips. “I loved how you talked about it all during her eulogy.”

  Libby sighed. “It was our castle, and we kept it from everyone at first.”

  “Including me.”

  “Just for a few weeks,” Libby said. “We pinky promised. Do you remember the secret code we used to let each other in?”

  “Of course.” Aisha tapped her knuckles three times lightly on Libby’s forehead, paused, then tapped twice again. “That’s the secret code, honey,” she said softly, “which means you need to let me in now.”

  Tears stung Libby’s eyes. She squeezed them shut. “I’m trying.”

  Aisha began to speak but instead reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue, and handed it to Libby.

  “I’m so sorry, Azzi.” Libby dabbed the corners of each eye.

  “Don’t be.” Aisha grabbed the napkin back and dried her own cheeks. “I’m just happy to hear you actually talking about Mel.”

  “I talk to her all the time.”

  “I know. You’ve shared that with me before and I really appreciated it. But you don’t talk about her very much.”

  Libby started to object but changed her mind. Aisha was right. She ran from the pain when her sister died and, if she were to be honest with herself, she was still running—perhaps afraid if she ever stopped, it would all catch up with her.

  “Melissa was the biggest part of your life. And I'm not so sure that changed when she passed. When she died, something in you died. I've been trying to resurrect that piece of you, to take Mel’s place in some small way."

  Libby’s eyes blurred. Although Aisha was a wonderful friend, she was just another moon to Melissa’s sun—reflecting light more than generating it. Replacing her twin simply wasn’t possible.

  “Why don’t you go out with Ryan?” Aisha poked Libby in the arm. “A night out with an adoring prince would do you a lot of good. Get your mind off all this craziness. You were all he could talk about at the party last night.”

  “Ryan is my manager, Azzi. Not only is dating within the company frowned on, but I also tend to be lonelier in relationships than out of them.”

  “What relationships? You haven’t even been on a date in years. All you do is work.”

  She was right. Again. Melissa had filled so much of her life when she was alive, the void seemed too difficult to fill when she’d left for the Navy—impossible after she died. And it was in all those quiet times that the memories and ghosts hounded Elizabeth Meeker with their persistence. “I’ve got you.” She touched Aisha’s hand lightly.

  “Yes, you do, honey, but you’ve been dodging all this for too long—Melissa, a healthy male relationship, your mother.”

  Libby’s shoulders slumped. Did the woman ever get tired of being right? Not only had single men and Marilyn Meeker been difficult challenges over the past ten months, Melissa Meeker had also proven very capable of stalking Libby in her own cerebral cortex—and refusing to take the medications prescribed by her psychiatrist years ago surely hadn’t helped. She had turned her back on drugs, believing the cure to be far worse than the disease. Maybe she was wrong about that.

  Before Libby could explain it all to Aisha, her attention was drawn to ringing coming from her purse. For a reason she didn’t understand, it sounded more like a siren than a phone call. She answered the familiar phone number, and her father was talking before Libby could say hello. Finally, she ended the call and dropped the phone on the table.

  Aisha was staring at her with round eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Dad took Mom to the hospital. She didn’t wake up this morning.”

  6

  Libby knelt beside her parents’ bed, holding her mother’s cold hand while taking note of her heart’s unusual rhythm. Marilyn Meeker was babbling in her sleep, something she often did, but this time Libby could make out certain words that made her shiver. She’d long ago accepted her mother’s mental challenges, because it made no sense to deny the obvious or point fingers. To do otherwise would be like holding the wind responsible for a violent storm. Was it right to blame the tree that was cut down and formed into a cross of crucifixion?

  Her mother's problems had started long before Melissa’s death, and they were the norm on that side of the family. She’d managed to keep them hidden for the most part over the years but, even as a little girl, Libby sensed something dangerous lurking just beneath the surface.

  When she found a box of childhood keepsakes in her grandmother’s attic, it provided greater insight into her mother’s complex issues. Rainbows young Marilyn had colored as a third grader, using only the black and gray crayon
s. Grade cards from every elementary school year featuring hand-written teacher comments expressing concern. Barbie dolls pieced together with glue, after apparently having been ripped apart.

  Libby turned toward her father, who had finally given in to sleep.

  He’d spent over four hours in the emergency room before being sent home with his wife after what was classified as a minor heart murmur. Now he lay slumped in a chair next to the bed, his arms draped to the sides and chin resting on his chest.

  Libby sighed.

  He had acted as if everything was normal in the early years, but his wife’s psychological challenges eventually became too frequent to ignore. Once acknowledged, however, they slowly faded into the background noise of the Meeker home life—which wasn’t that unusual when one thought about it. If an orangutan swung from the chandelier in the dining room often enough, it would eventually be ignored too.

  Which brought them to this place and time…to a key question that remained unanswered. Was Marilyn Meeker finally having the complete mental breakdown Libby suspected or could there be something more?

  Pastor Meeker wouldn’t even consider the possibility that his other daughter had survived the horrible explosion. That would be classified a miracle, and those only occurred in the pages of his precious book. He didn’t believe in ghosts, either, except the Holy Ghost, of course. In fact, other than God, Libby’s father didn’t have faith in much of anything intangible.

  Libby, however, was becoming increasingly open to possibilities, and not just because of the strange sensations she’d been having lately. Navy Petty Officer Third Class Melissa Darby Meeker was not buried at sea. What was left of her twin sister was recovered and returned home for burial, but only after the Navy’s not-so-meticulous cataloguing of both the organic and inorganic remains.

  Libby, like her parents, had accepted the tiny box in disbelief, but always wondered how such a huge presence in their collective lives could be reduced to something so small in size. They all eventually acknowledged the harsh reality, and buried Melissa’s remains in the Meeker family burial plot next to her grandparents.

  Her mother stirred, startling Libby, and an unruly streak of matted gray hair fell across her face. When she opened her eyes, clear blue orbs Libby associated with her mother’s distant past stared into Libby’s own, as if reading her thoughts.

  “You’re not like me, honey,” Marilyn said in a tiny voice.

  Libby winced at the look of pain on her mother’s face. “How do you feel, Mom?”

  Marilyn inhaled hard and then exhaled slowly. “It’s time.”

  Libby jerked backward. “Don’t be silly, Mom. It’s not time.” She turned toward her father who was shifting in the chair. “Dad’s been worried. Let me wake him up so—”

  “Let your father sleep, Elizabeth.” Her mother’s voice was weak but carried a sharp edge. “I must speak to you alone for a moment.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” Libby said, trying to convince both of them. To prove it to herself, she grabbed a comb off the nightstand and attempted to brush her mother’s hair. A surprisingly strong, cold, and bony hand stopped Libby in her tracks.

  “I’ve kept something from you for far too long, Elizabeth. Something Grandma Pearl shared with me many years ago, and I’ve kept secret until now. It’s time you knew.”

  When her mother closed her eyes again, Libby searched for a pulse in her wrist, something she’d been accustomed to doing over the past year. The strange rhythm was gone, but the beat it left behind was weak and irregular.

  Mom opened her eyes. They were darker and eerily focused on Libby. “Your father doesn’t know what I’m about to tell you, but it’s time you knew the truth about your sister.”

  “Truth?”

  Marilyn closed her eyes again and Libby could now feel her mother’s heart racing underneath thin, pale skin. “What about Melissa? What have you kept from us?”

  When her mother didn’t respond, Libby turned toward her father. “Dad! Dad…wake up!”

  Nicholas Meeker mumbled something in his sleep.

  Libby rose, circled the bed, and shook his arm. His groggy gaze stared at Libby for a moment, before suddenly sharpening and turning their focus over Libby’s shoulder.

  He gasped, jumped up, and rushed toward the bed. “Call 911!” he yelled.

  7

  Detective Hunter knelt over the body of Paula Anne Hart. Her blood, now dried, had trickled across the ceramic tile floor. A fluorescent fixture cast a gray pallor over the murder scene, a second involving a young female victim with red hair and green eyes as blank as a statue’s. If not for the crimson river that had flowed from her chest, he might have believed she was never alive in the first place.

  Four days since the Schrupp murder, single stab wound, no signs of forced entry.

  Coincidence?

  He didn’t believe in them.

  Monster?

  Undoubtedly. But the hand that had committed these horrific acts of violence was as human as any other.

  Hunter went about his job in a methodical manner and thirty minutes later, stood behind a house that sat at the very end of a very dead-end street in Magna, Utah, another quiet suburb of Salt Lake City and not far from Farmington. Moonlight reflected off the surface of an above-ground pool in the backyard, shimmering like a floating dream.

  He pulled a cigarette from a new pack, crumpled up the remaining nineteen, and tossed them into a plastic trashcan the shape of a wishing well. On a cop’s pay, his new quit-smoking strategy was working, but painful.

  After smoking the five-dollar cigarette down to the filter, Hunter re-entered the house and edged past crime techs carrying metal briefcases down a hallway leading to the bedroom. The shivers he typically experienced at a murder scene had diminished, but he retained remnants of a dry mouth and moist palms—and the beginnings of a terrible headache.

  His intention was to survey the murder scene for the third time, in the hope that he would see something he'd missed the first two. Instead, a man in street clothes hunched over the body and obstructed his view.

  Dr. Mark Jonas glanced over his shoulder and feigned a thin smile. “Hey, Hunt,” Jonas said, as he turned back to the victim. The thin man had a ruddy complexion bracketed by ears too big for his face, a perpetual five o’clock shadow, and long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. “You don’t look so good.”

  Hunter knelt next to the man he considered the city’s finest medical examiner. “When it stops bothering me, I need to get out of the business. What’s your take?”

  “Single wound to the abdomen again, an inch below the breastbone, upward thrust. No sign of a struggle. No external trauma.”

  Although it was his typical monotone voice, Hunter detected an edge to the man’s words. “Sounds familiar.”

  “No signs of sexual assault, but the blade cut the abdominal aorta, so it didn’t take long before she bled out. It appears Ms. Hart here got luckier than Ms. Schrupp, and died very quickly.”

  “She doesn’t look lucky to me.”

  Jonas shrugged, and Hunter squeezed his shoulder. The good doctor always treated victims as more than tissue and evidence, and Hunter respected him for that.

  It was evident as Jonas carefully lifted the victim’s bloodstained t-shirt, revealing what looked like a three to four inch gash. “This wound came from a blade so sharp it would cut you if you just looked at it,” Jonas said, pointing at the red slash with a latex-covered index finger. “I won’t be able to tell for sure until the autopsy, but the size and depth of this wound appears to be identical to Ms. Schrupp’s. You think you might have a serial killer on your hands?”

  “Serial?” Hunter asked, as if had occurred to him for the first time.

  “Looks like it was the same weapon, and both victims had the same basic physical makeup. Not to mention, four days and twenty miles apart.”

  Hunter cleared his throat.

  “Don’t you think it’s also a bit strange how much she looks l
ike the Farmington victim?” Jonas turned. “Maybe some nutcase was spurned by a red head and took it personally.”

  “There’s no sign of forced entry at either site, Mark,” Hunter said, “which implies the victims knew the perp. Serials rarely know their victims, so it may just be a coincidence.”

  Jonas nodded. “You get anything useful from the Farmington scene yet?”

  “Muddy, cowboy boot footprints in the elevator that matched partials inside her apartment door, and several impressions outside Ms. Hart’s home. Same brand, too. Size ten and a half, so that narrows it down to about a million suspects.”

  “Great.”

  “The place was clean,” Hunter said. “No prints or trace evidence so far. How about here?”

  “We have some skin under the victim’s fingernails and a bloody fingerprint on the wall,” Jonas said. “I’ll dig up whatever else I can here, and see if we can get any matches with Farmington. Either way, I’ll have the techs run them against the CODIS and AFIS to see if they get any matches.”

  Hunter added several entries in his notebook. “Have you examined Schrupp yet?”

  Jonas nodded. “Nothing. She was in perfect health, no drugs or alcohol in her bloodstream, no sign of trauma other than the knife wound.”

  “I meant evidence.”

  Jonas shook his head.

  “I was hoping you’d find something that might shed more light on the perp’s M.O.”

  Hunter’s personal M.O. was to find a quiet place where he could be alone while every detail was still fresh in his brain, one currently shuffling mental cards in various orders to try to make sense of the madness. He needed that space now. “Two innocent women may have died simply because of the color of their hair,” he said. “I’d sell my soul to get my hands on this guy.”

  “Be careful making deals with the devil,” Jonas said with pursed lips. “He might take you up on it someday.”

  8

  Libby hated graveyards, and assumed they didn’t like her either. Memories haunted the Stockton Cemetery—bad memories—the kind that stuck to one like brambles on a wool sweater.