Long Way Down, page 1
Lean Dogs Legacy Series
Snow In Texas
Tastes Like Candy
Prodigal Son
Long Way Down
The Complete Dartmoor Saga in Reading Order:
Fearless
Price of Angels
Half My Blood
The Skeleton King
Snow In Texas
Secondhand Smoke
Tastes Like Candy
Loverboy
American Hellhound
Shaman
Prodigal Son
Lone Star
Homecoming
The Wild Charge
Long Way Down
Long Way Down
Lean Dogs Legacy Book IV
By
Lauren Gilley
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are all the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, is coincidental, or meant to serve as entertainment, rather than fact.
Names and characters are property of the author and may not be duplicated.
LONG WAY DOWN
ISBN-13: 9798352294666
Copyright © 2022 by Lauren Gilley
Cover design copyright © 2022 by Lauren Gilley
HP Press®
Atlanta, GA
All rights reserved.
LONG WAY DOWN
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Prologue
There was a pond behind the house. Mud-colored and weed-choked, crowned with wisteria shadows where the vines grew up the skeletal remains of the woodworking shop. It was small; just a puddle, really, Daddy said. The first in a chain of little nothing-special weedy ponds that led deeper and deeper into the woods, a breadcrumb trail of reflective pools brimming with tadpoles, stinking of algae; luring curious children into a treacherous, marshy section of unsettled land the locals called Haley Swamp.
Melissa, age six, wondered if a girl named Haley lived in there, if it was her swamp, and thus named for her.
“Nothing but possums and foxes out there,” Granddad said. “Not any little girls. Least, there shouldn’t be.”
Daddy said, “Mark Wallace said his boys saw a gator in there week before last. They were checking the crawfish traps and it slipped right into the water beside them. Splash!”
“Don’t scare her,” Mama hissed, rapping gravy off her spoon and back into the skillet. To Melissa: “Don’t ever go in there by yourself. You understand?” Her face got that lifted-brow, compressed-lip seriousness usually reserved for don’t-you-dare-shake-those-Christmas-presents-young-lady.
Melissa said, “But I want to.”
“Don’t you dare.”
So she didn’t dare venture beyond the backyard pond…when Mama was around.
Mama worked days, and Daddy worked nights, and Granddad worked on cars in the garage, which faced the street, separated from the back yard, and the pond, and access to the swamp, by a chain-link fenced laced with plastic strips. Melissa had found that, if Granddad was busy talking radiators over three o’clock beers, a wad of chaw stuck in one cheek and the friendly ear of their neighbor, Carl, ready off the other, if she was careful-careful closing the screen door softly so as not to wake Daddy, no one noticed if she stole out by the pond with a box of animal crackers and her rain boots.
She would crouch down at the edge, where the sandy soil turned to mud, and even her small weight pressed dark water up around the soles of her boots. She tossed a cracker in to watch the tadpoles flock to it, nibbling off little bites with their suction cup mouths. With a stick and a string, she fashioned her own fishing line, but nothing ever bit. She watched dragonflies alight on the surface, flicks of their wings sending ripples out in spreading concentric circles.
The cicadas droned, and the crows squabbled in the privet trees. Bull frogs groaned as evening set on, and an adult inevitably appeared at the back door and hollered, “Missy, what did we say about that swamp?” Then she’d go scampering back, with one last glance over her shoulder at the winking of fireflies like fairy lights in the tree shadows, and the faint luminescent glow of the walking path that wound back into the unknown like a fat, basking snake, waiting for the moonglow.
Brickman’s Circle was the name of their road. Roughly paved before she was born, unlined, the pavement buckling and peaking beneath the onslaught of the fat oak roots that grew beneath it. A big loop at the edge of the swamp, and each house had a trail head that led into the marshland, all joining up somewhere within, Daddy said, making one large track that the brickmaker’s who’d first founded this road had used to go in after the clay they needed for their kilns. Mama told him not to share this bit of information, that it would only make the swamp more appealing – and, as in most cases, Mama was right.
That boggy stretch of unexplored acreage was the highlight of her early childhood adventures. She spent hours imagining what it was like. Summers were flavored with cold cheese sandwiches, popsicles, citronella spray, and the stagnant, algae tang of swamp water. She imagined wild scenarios and acted them out all alone in her backyard: she was a swamp princess living in a castle of mud, the frogs and salamanders and bugs her loyal subjects; she was an adventurer, like Indiana Jones, searching for a lost artifact and dodging wild men with spears; she was in prehistoric times, hiding from dinosaurs beneath banana leaves and trying not to breathe too loudly.
The truth, when she finally discovered it, was far less fanciful, but no less thrilling.
Her cousin Ivy, eleven and leggy and worldly, snorted when Melissa started pondering aloud about artifacts and rogue T-Rexes. “You never saw it?” she said. “The witch’s house?”
With Ivy in charge of watching her, Granddad climbed in his truck and ventured into town. “Y’all be good girls, alright? Holler next door to Pastor Keith if you need anything.”
Ivy flipped the pages in her grown-up magazine, popped her gum, and said, “Alright,” without lifting her head. She had that effortless sort of cool that Melissa couldn’t hope to emulate: unflappable and all-knowing, so much wiser than the adults in their life.
When the growl of Granddad’s truck had faded down Brickman’s Circle, Ivy slapped the magazine down on the coffee table and stepped into her jelly shoes. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“The witch’s house, stupid. Unless you’re scared. You just a scared little baby, Missy?”
“No.”
Slathered in Skin So Soft, armed – in Melissa’s case – with a butterfly net and a bucket, they set off down the trail and into the cool dimness of the swamp.
One
“I love hospitals,” Contreras said as they walked through the automatic doors. “You know why?”
Melissa’s transfer paperwork had been stamped a week ago, and so far, she’d learned a lot about her new partner, Roberto Contreras. He was fifty-three, married, a father of three, Jets fan, possessor of his mother’s world-famous tamale recipe, and went by Rob or Robbie with “the boys” at the precinct. He talked with an easy, unbothered friendliness, and didn’t seem to mind that she only responded half of the time, overwhelmed by his welcoming grin and his hearty laugh. He was just so…nice. And she didn’t know what to make of that.
“Why?” she asked, dutifully. Most of their conversations this week had consisted of her one-word responses to his prompts, which launched further anecdotes. She didn’t hate those anecdotes, truthfully; she’d been partnered up as a beat cop with a string of idiots who couldn’t stop bragging about their gym routines or their dating lives. Contreras’s chatter was harmless, at least, and non-confrontational. He wasn’t trying to impress her or prove himself in any way.
“Because,” he said, and paused, turned to face her, hands in his coat pockets. A nurse had to swerve around them and machinery beeped in the background. Someone was crying softly, somewhere, and someone else murmuring in low, soothing tones. “If your victim’s in the hospital, they’re not in the morgue.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right.”
He winked, and walked on.
Melissa followed.
It was Friday just after midnight, and the ER, while bustling, was far from as crazy as it would get by dawn. She’d spent the week assisting with follow-up interviews on all of Contreras’s open cases, but this call, tonight, was her first new case since coming onto Sex Crimes. She’d been buzzing with anticipation at her desk beforehand, as sick as that was. She didn’t want to get a call; didn’t want to know anyone had been assaulted. Rather, she knew this city, knew human nature, and she wanted to take a run at the sick bastards who’d done the assaulting.
Her pulse beat now in that quick, steady way it had more than a month ago, when a stupid, freckle-faced biker told her to meet him outside a high-rise with her gun and badge. She still asked herself, on sleepless nights, why she’d
Pongo aside, seeing those girls that night…feeling like she’d actually managed to help someone, for once…that had dredged up old, foul memories better left buried. But it had lit a fire under her, too. The sole reason she’d gone into law enforcement – a career choice full of nothing but disappointment and bitterness so far – was to do something about the depravity in the world. Between the paper pushing, and the ass-kissing, and the looking the other way when a fellow officer was on the take; from the sexual harassment and the in-house politics, and the wildly demoralizing Vice task of arresting working girls and johns, she’d come to loathe her job. To feel utterly wasted; disenchanted and sick of the whole system.
But the night Pongo called, and she answered, and went running with a twist of anticipation in her gut, she’d affected positive change. She’d accomplished something.
Submitting for a transfer had been the easiest choice she’d ever made. Even if, after, Cole had looked at her with something like betrayal, before his jaw flexed and he offered a professional smile and said, “That’s a buncha twisted stuff, Dixon. You sure you’re up for it?” Kneejerk resentment had cooled some of her admiration for him.
And now here she was, right on Contreras’s heels, beneath the glaring lights of the ER.
“Ellen,” Contreras called, as a nurse walked to meet them.
“Rob,” she greeted, voice warm with recognition, though her expression was all business. “I was hoping you’d get the call tonight.”
“Rough one, huh?” He gestured to Melissa as she stepped up beside him. “Ellen, meet my new partner, Detective Dixon.”
To Melissa’s surprise, Ellen offered a quick, firm shake. “Fresh blood,” she said, tone impossible to parse. She tilted her head, gaze moving over her in an assessing way, then nodded. “Our vic and her roommate are young. They’ll like you,” she decreed, spun, and motioned for them to follow.
“Vic’s name is Lana Preston,” she continued, talking over her shoulder as they moved down the hall. “Twenty-four. She waits tables at a steakhouse for the lunch crowd and goes to school at night. Her roommate found her in their apartment around ten when she got home from work. Unconscious, with signs of a struggle.”
She paused, then, and turned back to face them, expression grave, voice lowered. “She’s in rough shape.” Her gaze moved meaningfully between the two of them. “Orbital fractures, a dislocated shoulder. Covered in contusions and scrapes.”
“She fought back,” Contreras said.
“Yeah. Her clothes were torn, the roommate said, but we didn’t find the really disturbing part until we got her undressed.” She reached into her pocket and came out with a small, clear plastic sterile baggie that she passed to Contreras between two fingers.
Melissa leaned in close against his arm to get a look at it.
Written in thick, all-caps Sharpie was the message: THIS ONE’S FOR YOU, DAVEY.
Five words. Melissa read them, and then read them again…with a chill skittering down her back.
This was a calling card, of some sort.
This made it personal.
When she glanced at Contreras, she found that his usual affable expression had turned to something hard and cold. “Davey, huh?”
“Yeah,” Ellen said. “I had the same thought.”
What thought? Melissa wondered, as Contreras passed the note back.
“Put that with the rest of her things if you would, and Forensics can take a look at all of it.”
Ellen nodded, and the exchange had the air of a conversation that had been had many times before. “She’s still unconscious. Want us to give you a call when she wakes up?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Ellen.”
Melissa hadn’t realized a part of her had been dreading the thought of meeting their vic – looking in on her while unconscious was even less savory – until they were turned around and walking back out of the ER. Her belly unclenched, and she took a deep breath that drew Contreras’s attention.
The arch of his brows was inviting, rather than mocking. As was his tone when he said, “What do you think?”
They fell into step on the sidewalk, where it smelled of exhaust and cigarette smoke. The sounds of traffic and conversation and distantly-thumping music created a pocket of privacy.
“I think it’s weird as hell he left a note behind,” she said. “That feels like the sorta thing a really cocky serial killer would do in a movie.”
“Funny you should say that.” He pulled out his phone as they walked, and after a few taps with his thumb, passed it over.
“Tribute,” she read aloud. He’d offered her the IMDb entry for a film that had released in 1996, one with an eerie black poster that featured the shadowy silhouettes of two different faces. “I’ve heard people talk about this.”
“Yeah, it never got the fanfare and award nods that other movies in the genre did, but it’s spooky. The premise is that someone starts stalking and assaulting women in the same way a convicted rapist did ten years prior. The current rapist is meticulous – never leaves so much as a single skin cell behind – but he does leave notes, without fingerprints, of course, declaring his deeds as tributes for the rapist who’s locked up. The detectives hunting him end up having to interview him in order to catch the current guy.”
She felt her brows go up. “Knock-off Thomas Harris?”
“Essentially, yeah. It wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as his stuff. Obviously, the rapists aren’t evil geniuses. But…I dunno. There’s something about it that gets under your skin. My wife didn’t sleep for a week after we watched it. She said the fact that the vics were still alive got to her. Now, to my mind, that made it easier to take: those women were still alive and they could still get justice and, hopefully, move on afterward. But the way Maria saw it, those women all had to live with the memory of it every day, afterward. Lots of trauma there.”
“Yeah.” It was difficult to swallow, throat suddenly dry. Melissa did a quick scan of the webpage…and her pulse leaped. “Wait. This was produced by Jack Waverly?”
“Yeah. Go figure, huh? The guy who turns out to be a rapist scumbag made a movie about rapist scumbags.”
A couple stood arguing in the middle of the sidewalk ahead of them. The woman had mascara tracking down her face, and was stabbing the air in front of the man’s face with a trembling finger. “…I can’t believe you would–”
“Babe, I’m sor–”
Melissa dodged around them and fell back into step beside her partner. Her pulse was still quick, an unsettling thump-thump-thump in her wrists and temples. Waverly was dead. She’d watched the video just like everyone else in America. Had seen all the headlines confirming his “murder” – and she used that term loosely, because people like him needed eliminating – but she felt the urge to glance back over her shoulder and check for him anyway.
Why was it always the most powerful and influential?
Why was it always someone trusted and revered who proved the most depraved?
She didn’t look back; took a deep breath, instead, willing her sudden flurry of nerves to settle…and swore she could smell swamp water.
“Who wrote this movie?” she asked, in an effort to distract herself. “Waverly himself?”
“Nah. But no one really knows. That was kind of a scandal: apparently, the writer used a pen name. Some poor dude in Utah named George King had to get a restraining order against the press. He said he’d never written anything in his life.”
“Wow.”
He held out his hand and she placed his phone in it. “Thanks. In the movie, the original guy’s name was Jack.”
“There’s a Freudian slip.”
“Right? And the second guy, the copycat, would leave a note somewhere on the vic that said This one’s for you, Jackie.”
“This one’s for you, Davey,” she echoed the note they’d just read. “Shit – I mean…” She trailed off when he grinned.
“You don’t gotta keep it PG on my account, Dixon. I raised two boys: I’ve heard every word in the book. In English and Spanish.”
“It’s a bad habit,” she mumbled, face warm. “I keep meaning to quit.”
