I huff. “It’s not my fault the man is a pompous fuckface. And she needs to go have sex with a cactus. She’s so prickly she wouldn’t feel a thing.”
Drake slowly turns his face toward me, his forehead in his hands. A smile is teasing the edges of his mouth, and there’s more than a little restrained laughter in his eyes.
“Never a dull moment with you around,” Sheriff Bates sums up, shaking his head. He’s smiling, too.
The only person who isn’t is Trent, so I offer him a stunning smile.
It works.
Sometimes, being the only girl out of four has its perks. Like when your big brother is pissed off and you want to win him over.
“You really do need to check your attitude,” he chides through his smirk.
“Oh, please. What’s he going to do? Fire me? I just all but got an admission that he needs me on this case more than I need to be on it. I don’t need a contract to find everything out. I’ll just bribe you, annoy Drake, and borrow files from the server.”
“Borrow files?” Sheriff Bates asks, one eyebrow raised.
“Yeah. I give them back when I’m done.”
Drake rubs his face harshly. “I have no idea why I’m so attracted to you.”
“It’s the tits,” Detective Johnson rumbles from the window.
Four heads turn and shoot him a murderous gaze. Drake and all three of my brothers. Even Sheriff Bates looks mildly put out.
“Hey! Y’all don’t need to be so scary. He knows, if he tries it, I’ll shoot him. Right, Johnson?” I look over my shoulder with an evil grin. “Besides, he’s totally right.”
He winks.
The door opens, and as if she were a model on a runway, all attention goes to Charlotte. She’s flanked by Tim, who has a large file pressed to his chest. The expression on his face is grim, and the dark shadows under his eyes only seem to exaggerate it. The light mood of the room instantly dissipates. A chill runs down my spine, one I shiver with. Drake reaches over and curls his hand around the back of my neck, stroking his thumb across my skin.
“Tim wants to see you, sir,” Charlotte says quietly, stepping to the side. She ducks out of the room, leaving the fifty-something coroner alone in the doorway.
“Autopsy?” Drake questions, glancing at the file.
“Yes, Detective,” Tim answers. “Both bodies. I just got word that Austin has placed a rush on the DNA tests and we’ll have them by the end of the week.”
Oh, look at that. We might actually have some DNA evidence for this murder investigation!
“Nice of ’em,” Brody mutters, slouching down in his chair.
“Sit up, Bond,” Sheriff Bates demands. “You’re not at home.”
My baby brother shoots up, wincing a little. I guess he still has stomach pain every now and then. As it always does when I see him in pain, the guilt hits. Fortunately—or unfortunately—Tim sets the file on the table in front of Sheriff Bates, distracting me from the ugly swirl of emotion.
Tim opens the file and shuffles some papers. “Both girls were poisoned and killed.” He pauses.
Oh, fuck me. If he’s pausing already, shit’s about to get real. I don’t want shit to get real. I’m not ready for it to get real. Walt Disney? Where are you?
“They were also raped. I believe the killings to be ritualistic in nature, per the runes carved into their bodies.”
“Satanic?” Drake asks, dropping his hand.
Tim confirms it with a nod. “The berries in their stomachs are berries from the belladonna plant. They’re the most lethal part of it, and as little as two berries can kill an adult human. I found remains of several, but given their various degrees of digestion, they were ingested over a period of time.”
“What is belladonna?” someone asks behind us.
I turn. It’s Peters, the young, gangly guy who drives the sheriff crazy.
“Belladonna is a plant that was once commonly used for beautification purposes. It goes by the name deadly nightshade and contains the drug atropine. It is naturalized in parts of North America, as most poisonous plants are.” Tim puts the sheets down and adjusts his glasses.
“Why would you use it for beautification purposes if it’s so deadly?” Johnson asks.
“A hundred or so years ago, women believed that the smaller your pupil, the most beautiful you were. They used it in eye drops.”
“Hence the name,” I say softly, swallowing hard. “Belladonna is Italian for beautiful woman.”
“Precisely,” Tim agrees. “The symptoms of it are most commonly delirium and hallucinations. It’s my belief that the victims ingested the berries then, while in a delirious state, were raped and whatever ritual was being performed happened then.”
“How many suspects are we looking at?” Drake asks.
“This is where it gets interesting. I can find little DNA on their bodies except for minute traces of semen. Toni had three different DNA profiles when I did her rape kit, but Melissa only two. The good news is that Melissa’s profiles match two of Toni’s.”
I narrow my eyes as he removes his glasses.
“The bad news is that we can’t get a hit on either, so whoever did this has never offended. Or, of course, they simply never got caught. The semi-good news is that the third profile from Toni Thompson’s body did get a hit.” He casts his eyes over all of us. “It matches the sample we have on file from one Brook Meyers.”
I sit bolt upright. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything in regards to their murders, but it does mean that, on the day Toni went missing, she saw Brook Meyers, and she had sex with him.
“But Melissa was dating Brook,” Drake reminds everyone. “Toni’s parents claimed she hadn’t seen him for a month outside of school.”
“She saw him the day she died, which I’ve estimated as Friday, when Melissa leaving for Dallas.”
“Was it consensual?”
“Yes. There are no markings or further DNA to prove otherwise.”
“Bond!” Sheriff Bates stands, and my brothers and I all focus on him. His eyes flick between us. “Damn Bonds,” he mutters, his eyes coming to rest on Devin. “Find Brook Meyers and arrest him. Charge him with statutory rape. I want that boy in an interview room within an hour.”
“Sir.” Dev gets up, taking Johnson and Peters with him.
Well. That escalated like an erection in a strip club.
“Anything else?” Sheriff Bates demands.
“Yes, sir,” Tim answers, replacing his glasses and pushing them up the bridge of his nose. “If this is a ritualistic pair of murders, you need to find out as much about the manner in which they died as possible.”
“Which means…” Trent trails off.
“Y’all need to get acquainted with Satan.”
Nonna is gonna pray for my soul not to burn in Hell. Right after she has Father Luiz in to bless my car, my house, my office, and the police station. She’ll probably have him perform an exorcism or two, just to be safe.
As soon as she finds out that her beloved grandchildren are playing with the devil, she’s going to flip out Italian-style.
In related news, I’m going to find someone with a contagious disease to keep me away from family dinner tomorrow. Nothing serious. A stomach bug or maybe the flu.
God only knows where I’ll find a flu bug in small-town Texas in June. I’ll have to ask Him.
You know. Once I’m done getting to know Satan and those who worship him.
It occurs to me, as I substitute a decent dinner for a rich, chocolate cupcake with strawberry frosting, that DNA forensic evidence is wonderful… As long as you can match that DNA with someone. Also, if you’re able to find that someone.
Yeah. Turns out Brook Meyers’s body swallowed his balls and he’s disappeared. The general assumption is that he hasn’t been kidnapped like the girls—and possibly our third missing female—but rather, he ran away.
It does flit through my mind that, right now, Holly Woods is rather like a washing machine and we’re all socks. I just hope the missing ones don’t turn up in any more random places. And, indeed, that no one else gets swallowed into the abyss.