The Lark and the Bull Read online

  "Nothing but common courtesy," Lark said, sotto voce, but Hobbs heard her and giggled.

  "What was that?" the enormous detective snarled, circling around the table to take a seat directly across from her.

  In full voice, Lark replied with a big, broad smile in the face of his scowl, "I said that the only thing that should have been necessary to compel you to shake my hand, Detective, is common courtesy."

  The other two detectives drew in audible breaths, but the chief tried to get a handle on the situation. "I'm only going to say this once, Bull. Stand. Down. And that's an order."

  "Fine, but I want it on the record that I think what she's peddling is a fuckton of complete horseshit. She's taking our money, and we're gonna get fuck all for it."

  "So noted," the chief agreed patiently. To Lark, he said, "Please forgive the detective's language, Miss—"

  "Lark, please," she said with a genuine smile, "and I can hardly take offense at language I use myself, on occasion."

  She knew it helped if they didn't think she was a stick in the mud, too, besides worrying that she was reading their every thought, and that seemed to break the ice with everyone. Everyone except him, of course.

  But the detective did manage to clamp his mouth shut and lean back in his chair, narrowing his gaze on Lark and leaving it there, as if he thought that was going to upset or intimidate her.

  "I've looked over the information you've sent me, and I think I can help. I would ask that you pull me in to a scene as soon as you can after discovering it—I want to be right behind—hell, I'd like to be in front of—CSI or forensics—"

  The big man scoffed as he sat there with his arms crossed over a truly massive chest. "CSI? Where the hell do you think you are? Hollywood? New York City? This is West Virginia. You're looking at CSI and forensics and damned near the ones who are going to clean the blood off the floor, too."

  Lark drew a deep breath, responding to him evenly and neutrally. "My apologies. I don't know the size of your department or the resources you have. So, if I could ask you three to get in contact with me—to put me in the loop— I'd like to get into the scene as soon as possible. In fact, if it's convenient, I'd love to ride there with one of you."

  The others were nodding. O'Leary added, "We'd be glad to pick you up if we get something that seems like it's within the pattern of behavior we're seeing—young, so far white, girls, long haired blondes, between five-feet and five-three or so. They've usually been hacked up pretty bad, too, some with bite marks."

  "That wouldn't be at all convenient for me," Keenan announced to no one's surprise.

  She again turned a completely false, thousand-watt smile on him. "Why, then, I won't expect your assistance, Detective Keegan."

  But he was already on to other things, mainly whining like a little bitch to the chief that she was there. "Dammit, Dale, I'm the lead detective on this case. Shouldn't I have some say about who's involved in it?"

  Then he turned his attention back to her. "Keenan."

  She just continued to smile at him with as much patently false brightness and niceness as she could muster.

  "Well, what can we do for you in the meantime?" Chief Milford asked.

  "At some point, I'd like to have access to the clothing the victim was found in, and I'd love to talk to anyone you've already talked to—suspects, witnesses, etc.—but before that, I'd really like to visit the prior scenes, please, so I can see if there's anything left there that I can pick up, although that's unlikely. I need to be at a scene that's as fresh as possible, but I figure it can't hurt to make the attempt." It could and would hurt her, as would all of this, but she wasn't about to say that.

  "I'd be glad to take you," Hobbs offered, turning her chair as if to head for the door.

  But the dickhead lead detective wasn't nearly done with her.

  "Please," Keenan snorted, shaking his head. "This is such a waste of the department's time and money."

  Lark had had just about enough, so she faced off with him. "Gosh golly, Detective, I'm sensing a wee bit of skepticism from you, along with a boatload of anger. Got a problem with me?"

  Bull leaned all the way forward. He was big enough and the table was narrow enough that doing so very nearly got in her face, yet she didn't so much as flinch. "Yes, I do."

  Incredibly, the little lady—who looked to be about a third his size— actually leaned forward, too, so that she was practically nose to nose with him, putting her fingertips to her temples, closing her eyes and scrunching up her face as she began to hum loudly in a siren-like manner before she opened them again, as if she'd received some kind of transmission from beyond. "Wow, Detective, no wonder you're angry. Those little blue pills work for everyone but you, huh? Performance issues much? So sad," she pouted, lower lip protruding outrageously.

  With that, she stood, not even appearing to notice when Keenan did, too, so fast his chair fell over behind him, his enormous fists clenched at his sides.

  "It was a pleasure to meet you, Chief, Detective O'Leary and Detective Keehan, purposely mispronouncing his name again. I'll look forward to working with all of you." To Hobbs, she smiled and said, "Lead on. I'll follow."

  As the two women moved out of the room, Keenan made to follow them, a downright murderous look in his eyes. But the chief—who was no small man, himself—stopped him with a hand on his arm. "You hang back. I want to have a chat with you. O'Leary, don't you have work to do, or do you need me to find you something?"

  None of them noticed how she paused just after going through the door and looked back at the angry detective with a puzzled look on her face.

  "I'm sorry Bull was being such an ass to you," Hobbs mentioned casually as they made their way to the first place. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

  "Absolutely not, Detective."

  "Call me Holly."

  Lark snickered, then apologized. "I'm so sorry, but your name is really Holly Hobbs? Like Holly Hobby?"

  "Yeah," she answered as she blushed.

  "Sorry, but that just tickled my funny bone."

  "Tickles my husband's, too, to no end. Frank calls me Hobby. Apparently, there's some kind of elf named Hobby, too…it's a whole thing."

  "And you're not happy about it." That got her an almost accusatory look. "No, I'm not reading your feelings." She told the little white lie easily now, because it made everyone feel more at ease, even though the younger woman was exuding unhappiness from every pore. "I'll back off. Please call me Lark. And you can ask me anything at all."

  The younger woman swallowed hard, concentrating on her driving, then piping up with, "Did you really read Bull's mind back there when you had your fingers at your temples and your face was all screwed up? And does he really take Viagra? He doesn't seem to be the type, if you know what I mean."

  Lark had to laugh at that. "No! That's something I do to people who are being jerks to me—they're usually men, so I hit 'em where it hurts and they don't know if I know. The sounds and expressions and stuff—that's just for effect. It's kind of what people expect. It's really mean, though, and I shouldn't do it, but he was being a class A dick. The Viagra stuff is just a guess. I don't know if he's pissed because he does take it or he doesn't!"

  Holly laughed, but it died down quicker than Lark's. "Are you…are you reading my thoughts right now?"

  She wanted to sigh with impatience, but didn't. "No. I can't read anyone's thoughts. You could be thinking about killing me or fucking your husband or what you're going to make for dinner. I have no idea. What I get are more impressions of how people are feeling. The more intense their feelings are, the more easily I can read them."

  "Oh." The younger woman seemed almost let down, and it made Lark smile.

  "Want me to tell you what I felt about you when I met you—which is often when I get the best reads?"

  "Do I want to know?"

  Lark shrugged. "I think so. It's all positive."

  Holly smiled. "Then, yes."

  "I felt that
you were happy and open and curious about what was going to happen and, also, just a little bit nervous. There was a tinge of sadness around the edges, though. Like, I don't know, you had a fight with your husband before you came to work? Someone close to you—that you love a lot—made you sad, just before I came into the office and met you, I'd say."

  The thought that had struck Lark just as she'd left the conference room came back to roost—while she'd been in the conference room with those four people, who were no doubt exuding all sorts of feelings, the only ones she could feel were from Detective Keenan. It was as if he was some kind of…mental block or something. She'd never experienced that before, and if he had been a decent human being, she would have asked him to help her explore it. But that certainly wasn't going to happen.

  For a moment, though, she was thunderstruck just at the possibility, nearly missing what Holly was saying.

  "My mom."

  "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "S'okay. She's a bitch."

  "Ain't it the way? Some people are just gonna be unhappy. If a-zillion-dollars landed in their lap, they'd complain about the weight. Or the paperwork. Or having to keep track of it. Or the taxes, or whatever."

  "Exactly!"

  They went to the first crime scene, but because it was so old—almost five years—and hadn't been preserved, there wasn't much there for her, unfortunately.

  As they drove around together visiting several of the six places where bodies had been found, they were working on becoming fast friends.

  "Hey, don't let Bull get you down, by the way. I know he's being a shithead right now, but he's really a great cop—the youngest detective we've ever had. He's a great mentor, too. And normally, he's a real charmer with the ladies, although I bet you'll find that hard to believe."

  "No, I wouldn't."

  Holly gave her a doubtful look as Lark cleared her throat. "I'm very aware that what I do—who I am—makes people uneasy, so, if they know about me when I meet them, I'm not really meeting them, sometimes, because they're too paranoid not to worry about what I might find out about them. Everyone has secrets they'd rather not make public, and when you know you shouldn't think about them is when they're foremost in your mind."

  "Yes!"

  "It's like a sore tooth—your tongue goes right to it every time." She shuddered a little. "I'm damned glad I can't read thoughts—feelings are bad enough!"

  Chapter 3

  Holly became the officer whom she interacted with the most, although she was careful to update everyone daily. She didn't find much until they hit the last scene, which was only a couple of months ago and had been the spur for Chief Milford to reach out to her in desperation.

  That was pretty much what spurred her career—the desperation of police departments who were willing to try anything to find the killer. But she'd been able to help in several other cases, and her reputation was built on that word of mouth. There were several others like her out there, but she'd had the most success at contributing towards an arrest, so she got the most work.

  The fact that the work sometimes cost her a tremendous amount emotionally—her emotional safety was, by necessity, out there for everyone to see, on the line every time she did this—was offset, as far as she was concerned, by the fact that she was helping find murderers and thus saving potential victims.

  The place that Hobbs brought her to was what had been a chicken farm at one time, but was now abandoned and in disrepair. It was on the outskirts of town, however, and because of the size of the operation, quite isolated. Few folks with functioning noses wanted to live next to a chicken or pig farm.

  They had been talking and laughing all the way to the site, but Holly noticed that, not long after she'd made the turn of what passed for a highway in these parts, her companion quieted considerably.

  Once she'd pulled up, instead of immediately getting out and trying to guide Lark to where the murder had taken place, she had learned to hang back, startled and amazed at the other woman's accuracy. She honed in on the spot immediately. Granted, she'd probably seen the crime scene photos, but not enough of them to know exactly which—out of six good-sized barns—was the one where it happened.

  Nonetheless, she walked right to the door to number four, practically running into Bull when she opened it as he was coming out.

  "What the fuck are you doing here?" He looked past the slight woman in front of him and glared at Hobbs accusingly. "You brought the psycho to help catch a psycho."

  Holly, who had always pretty much worshipped the ground Keenan walked on, glared right back at him. "Shut the fuck up, Bull, and let her work."

  For her part, Lark didn't hear his snort. She was paying him no attention whatsoever, moving past him and into the vast cavern of the building and making a beeline for the right spot.

  "She knows right where she's going."

  Keenan's tone was rife with scorn. "Of course, she does—there's police tape and flowers there that Becky's mom left, for fuck's sake."

  Holly was undeterred. "She knew which building to go to without me telling her."

  He remained unimpressed. "Probably could recognize it from the photos the chief sent to her."

  Hobbs sighed impatiently, heading towards where Lark had come to a stop, right in front of where the body had been found. She stood there for quite a while, not saying or doing anything at all. Hobbs was behind her, well back and to the left, Bull standing reluctantly to her right, watching her intently.

  When she fell to her knees, Hobbs was surprised to see Bull flinchingly take a bit of a step forward, as if it was his instinct to help her—as she knew it was— before he caught himself and moved back. When Lark curled her body over her legs, her face almost in the dirt, audibly crying, he did move towards her.

  But Hobbs stopped him, putting her arm out, even though he was nowhere near her. "Stop. Leave her be."

  That didn't sit well with him at all, and the fact that it didn't, sat even worse with him. He was scowling fiercely. "She's obviously upset—"

  "Adoy! She's an empath and someone was horribly tortured and died here—of course, she's in pain!"

  That got her a look that—under normal circumstances—might have made her flinch and back down. But these weren't normal circumstances, and in the here and now, because of the time they'd spent together, Holly now knew more about how Lark worked than anyone else on the force.

  "If she's getting some kind of transmission, why isn't she humming?" Bull asked.

  Holly suppressed a smile. "Shush! Let her work."

  Bull wasn't used to being shushed at a scene, grunting grudgingly, but he did as he was told.

  The sounds of her weeping grew much louder for a while, then died out completely.

  After a few minutes, Bull sidled up to Holly. "Does she always do this?"

  "It's gotten more pronounced as we've gone through the scenes from oldest to newest, and I'm not surprised that this is the worst, since it's the most recent."

  "C'mon, Holl. You can't possibly believe that she can feel feelings from people who aren't even here."

  The young woman looked up at him, crossing her arms over her chest. "I'll tell you what I think, Bull. I think we have six unsolved murders here in what used to be a small, sleepy town where no one thought this kind of thing could ever happen. Whoever it is isn't leaving us much in the way of clues to work with, the Feds have been almost no help at all, and if she can help us find the killer in any way at all, whatever fee she's charging will be more than worth it, especially if we can keep from losing another young girl."

  Then she turned on her heel and began to approach Lark, hunkering down about ten feet from the other woman.

  "I'm not trying to push you, Lark, but are you okay?"

  Bull pricked up his ears, wanting to know the answer to that question more than he wanted to acknowledge.

  It was tentative and small sounding, when it finally came. "Yes."

  "Okay. Well, I'll be right here if you need me."

>   "Th-thanks."

  Another few minutes passed, and she asked, "Is D-detective Keenan st-still here?"

  "Yes."

  Her voice gaining strength with what he thought was a considerable effort on her part. "Would you ask him to come here?"

  Holly's eyebrows rose at that request, but when she looked up, Bull was already almost there, and as he approached, passing where she was, to stand next to her, the other woman rose and turned to him, like a sunflower to the sun.

  She still looked beaten down and defeated, and somehow as if she wasn't even really there with them. There were tears streaming down her face as the words tumbled out of her almost involuntarily, but her eyes never left his face. Her voice was so soft—as if it, too, originated from some place far away— that they both had to lean in closer to hear her.

  "Pain. Incredible amounts of pain—"

  "Of course, there was pain—Becky Dempsey died—"

  Holly put her hand on Bull's arm. "Shut up."

  Lark was shaking her head. "N-not the victim—that's there, too—but the killer. Pain. Always pain." She paused for a moment. "And jealousy—a white hot lifetime of jealousy and anger. It's consumed her."

  "Her?" the two detectives repeated simultaneously.

  "Serial killers are always male," Bull stated bluntly.

  "Eileen Wuornos was a female serial killer," Holly corrected.

  "That's one," Bull pointed out. "I can name thirty male ones—"

  While they were arguing, Lark had forced herself to come to, more, to take a firm grip on the thread of reality that seemed so elusive at times like this. But this was not a safe place for her to be vulnerable.

  Not with him, even though his presence brought her a peace the likes of which she'd never known before. It was so like the universe to make a man who hated her the only person on the planet from whom she wanted comfort, but there was no denying or changing it.

  So, she expended what little energy she had left—even with his strange unknowing, unwilling help— shuddered once, hard, and began to walk back towards the door, weaving a bit and stumbling once—nearly badly enough to go down, but she righted herself through sheer strength of will.