in a visitation room in a correctional facility. It was not the one she had sometimes visited Howard Randall in, but something much larger and almost Greek-looking. Rose and Jack sat across the table, a chessboard between them. All of the pieces remained on the board, but the kings had fallen over.
“He’s not here,” Rose said, her voice echoing in the cavernous room. “Your little secret weapon is not here.”
“Just as well,” Jack said. “It’s about time to learn to solve some of the bigger cases on your own.”
Jack then passed a hand over his face and in the blink of an eye, he looked the way he did on the night she had discovered his body. The right side of his face was awash in blood and his face had a sort of sag to it on the right side. When he opened his mouth to speak to her there was no tongue in his mouth. There was just darkness beyond the teeth, a chasm where his words came from and, she suspected, where he wished her to be.
“You couldn’t save me,” he said. “You couldn’t save me and now I have to trust you with my daughter.”
Rose stood up at that moment and started walking away from the table. Avery stood with her, certain that something very bad would happen if Rose got out of her sight. She started to follow her but could not move. She looked down and saw that both of her feet had been nailed to the floor with enormous railroad ties. Her feet were shattered, nothing but blood, bone, and chunks of flesh.
“Rose!”
But her daughter only looked back at her, smiled, and waved. And the farther away she got, the bigger the room seemed. Shadows came spilling from every direction, descending on her daughter.
“Rose!”
“It’s okay,” said a voice from behind her. “I’ll watch over her.”
She turned and saw Ramirez, holding his sidearm and looking into the shadows. And as he so gallantly chased after Rose, the shadows started coming after him.
“No! Stay!”
She pulled against the spikes in her feet but to no avail. She could only watch as the two people she had loved the most in the world were swallowed by the darkness.
And that’s when the screams began, pouring out of the shadows, Rose and Ramirez filling the room with cries of agony.
Still at the table, Jack pleaded with her: “For fuck’s sake, do something!”
And that’s when Avery jolted upright in bed, a scream building in her throat. She turned her bedside lamp on with a trembling hand. For a moment, she saw that enormous room spread out ahead of her but it slowly dissipated with the light and wakefulness. She looked to the still-new cabin bedroom and, for the first time, wondered if it was ever going to feel like home.
She found herself thinking of Connelly’s call. And then of Howard Randall’s package.
Her old life was haunting her drams, sure, but it was also invading this new isolated life she had tried building for herself as well.
There seemed to be no escape.
So maybe – just maybe – it was time to stop trying to escape it.
CHAPTER FIVE
Once she’d stopped the heavy drinking during the more desolate stretches of the grieving process, she had slowly replaced her alcohol intake with caffeine intake. Her reading sessions would often consist of two cups of coffee with a Diet Coke in between. Because of this, she’d started to develop minor headaches after several weeks if she went without coffee for more than a day or so. It wasn’t the healthiest of ways to live but certainly better than drinking herself into despair.
That’s why she found herself in a coffee shop after lunch the following day. She’d gone out for groceries primarily because she’d run out of coffee at the cabin and, having only had a single cup that morning, needed a quick fix before getting back to the cabin and finishing out the day. She had a book to finish reading but also thought she might head out into the woods for another try at deer hunting.
The coffee shop was a trendy local place, with four people huddled down behind their MacBooks throughout the shop. The line at the counter was long, even for such an early afternoon hour. The place was abuzz with conversation, the whirring of machinery behind the counter, and the soft volume of the TV at the waiting end of the bar.
Avery got to the cashier, ordered her dirty chai with two espresso shots, and took up her own place at the waiting area. She passed her time by looking at the small corkboard filled with fliers for upcoming local events: concerts, plays, fundraisers…
And then she noticed the conversation beside her. She did her best not to seem obvious that she was eavesdropping, keeping her eyes turned to the events board.
There were two women behind her. One was in her mid-twenties, wearing one of those Baby Bjorn baby slings that wrapped over around her chest. Her baby napped restfully against her chest. The other woman was a bit older, drink in hand but not quite ready to leave the shop.
Their attention was turned to the TV behind the counter. Their conversation was hushed but easily overheard.
“My God…have you heard about this story?” the mother was saying.
“Yeah,” the second woman said. “It’s like people are finding new ways to hurt one another. What kind of sick mind do you have to have to even think about something like that?”
“Looks like they still haven’t found the creep,” the mother said.
“They probably won’t,” the other woman said. “If they were going to catch this guy, they would have something by now. Jeez…can you imagine the poor guy’s family, having to see this on the news?”
Avery’s attention was snapped when the barista called her name and handed her drink over the counter. Avery took it and, now facing the television, allowed herself to watch the news for the first time in almost three months.
There had been a death on the outskirts of town one week ago, in a rundown apartment complex. Not just a death, but a pretty blatant murder. The victim had been found in his closet, covered in spiders of varying varieties. Police were working on the assumption that the act had been intentional, as half of the spiders there had been kinds that were not native to the region. Despite the abundance of spiders at the scene, only two bites were found on the body and neither had been venomous. According to the news, so far, the police were working on the assumption that the man had been killed by either strangulation or heart attack.
Those are two pretty different causes of death, Avery thought to herself as she slowly started to turn away.
She couldn’t help but wonder if this was the case Connelly had called her about three days ago. A case with a very unique twist and, so far, without any real answers. Yeah…this is probably the one, she thought.
With her drink in hand, Avery headed out the door. She had the rest of the afternoon ahead of her but she was pretty sure she knew how it would go. Whether she liked it or not, she’d probably be looking quite a bit at spiders.
Avery spent the rest of the afternoon getting familiar with the case. The story itself was so morbid that she didn’t have a problem finding a variety of sources. When all was said and done, she found eleven different reputable sources that told the story of what had happened to a man named Alfred Lawnbrook.
