But that’s impossible.
Eleven years have come and gone since that cold February morning. Four thousand days, spent and discarded, falling away one by one like leaves from the great tree that measures the weeks, months, and years of our lives. Into great moldering piles they gather, those leaves, surrendering to time and corruption until nothing remains but the memory of the leaf, the memory of the day. Eleven years; so long, yet I still know the shine: a dark oozing pitch, black as the heart that made it. There are no metaphors for darkness that suffice.
It was my sixteenth birthday.
Who goes on a Search and Rescue mission on their birthday? I almost refused but then learned it was Jessica Parker—Jess—who was missing. Cheerleader, Girl Scout troop leader, track star, honor student, Jess Parker. The worst thing she ever did was take a hit off a joint after a football game, and then only once. She was a senior and I a mere sophomore, one step above a maggot freshman, but who didn’t daydream about Jess? It wasn’t possible.
She walked down her hundred-yard driveway to get the mail and never came back. She was there, and then gone; it was that fast. And of all the countless times my special skills served me well, this was not one of them. There was no track to follow; Jess’s trail ended at the mailbox. I could see where she’d landed on the ground, could see a tiny spot of blood on the weeds by the ditch, could see the black tracks exiting the vehicle, scooping her up, and putting her in the back.
I pointed out the blood; it was so minute the deputies hadn’t seen it.
That was the extent of my usefulness; that, and the knowledge that she hadn’t wandered off or run away. This was an abduction; the news hit everyone hard in the gut and immediately changed the tone and urgency of the investigation.
Two days later they found her in a small clump of forest seven miles away. Her partially nude body was laid out on the ground, empty eyes staring at the sky, feet together, arms extending from her sides. His darkness was on her and around her and I saw what he’d done, how he’d posed her, how he’d used her.
She’s burned into my soul, Jess Parker is, seared and smoldering and raw, a hurt that everyone in the community felt and one that I could do nothing about. She’s just gone and the world is unjust and I have to look at the human wreckage floating in the wake of such monsters. Over and over and over I have to look, and I fear the monsters are looking back. They’re with me in the lonely watches of the night, when sleep has fled and all that remains are the images. And Jimmy wonders why I want to quit.
I named the evil Leonardo because he wants to be called that … he left signs.
Jess Parker was posed as Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. The detectives working the crime scene only saw her lying on the ground with her arms outstretched pointing east and west and her feet together pointing south.
I saw the rest.
I saw Jess’s shine where he’d first placed her arms in a raised position and her legs wide before moving them to their final pose. I saw the black circle he’d walked around her body. The only element missing is the square; why it’s not included remains a mystery, as does everything else about this case.
I’ve seen Leonardo’s track four times since the murder of Jess Parker, and always at Bellis Fair Mall. I beat myself up over it every time, wondering, why this mall? Why haven’t I seen his track elsewhere in the county? Does he only pass through from time to time? Is he heading to a vacation spot, a job, a reunion? Is he Canadian? After all, the border is less than twenty miles away. Is he a student at the university, or a visiting professor?
No answers come.
All that remains is the puzzle of footsteps; footsteps that always start in the same parking spot in the same far corner of the mall parking lot. He visits two or three stores, always pays cash, and leaves as quickly as he came. In the handful of previous sightings, not a single clerk has been able to provide a compelling description of Leonardo.
When I’d ask his height, they’d say, “Average.”
When I’d ask his weight, they’d say, “Average.”
When I’d ask his hair color, they’d say, “Brown,” or “Black,” or “Sandy blond,” or “Average.”
Pointless.
Useless.
Still, I follow Leonardo’s track; I go through the routine. This time it’s just two stores. Then I walk the path from the mall to his parking spot and back again, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There’s nothing.
I find my way to the security office.
“I need surveillance video of the southwest parking lot for the last three days,” I tell the security officer monitoring the cameras. A quick flash of my FBI badge dispels any objections and I wait patiently for forty-five minutes while they look for someone who knows how to copy video from the system.
I can’t see shine in pictures or video, it’s just not something that can be captured, even with the most sensitive equipment. But I can see what kind of vehicle Leonardo was driving … maybe. The southwest parking lot gets little use, particularly in the summer, so there’s a good chance I can narrow down the selection to just a few vehicles. After all, I have an advantage: I know exactly where he parked.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Craig,” the young security officer says, hurrying up to me. His shine is a pleasing ginger essence mottled with French lilac, I note, with a slow bubbling texture, much like a lava lamp. “We can’t get the DVD burner to work. It tries to copy the file but then gets hung up.”
“I’ve got a thumb drive,” I say, digging in my right front pants pocket.
“It doesn’t work with those,” he insists, eyeing the drive in my hand. “Chet will be in later. He can usually figure out the system.”