A Buried Past

  A Buried Past

  Alexandria Clarke

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  21. Three Months Later

  About the Author

  1

  August 31

  Durward Street, Whitechapel, England

  William Lewis’s loafers clicked rapidly across the wet pavement as he hurried across the street toward the Royal London Hospital. He was late for his shift again, and his supervisor would be none too pleased. For William, a visiting student at the hospital, waking up before dawn to get to work was a hard habit to adjust to. He was in his last year of school, and he had barely begun washing his own clothes. His mother had taken pity on him and done his work outfits the night before. He smelled of her rose-scented detergent and a hint of salt, from the sweat that dripped out of his hairline and trickled down his spine.

  Fortunately, the cobblestones on Durward Street were no more. Bits of London still favored the chunky blocks of river rock in historically preserved areas, but the stones had mostly gone by the wayside. Remnants of the Victorian age were littered about—an old building here, an original street there—but the city looked different than it once did. Thank heavens, William thought, or his slippery shoes would have surely caught on an uneven cobblestone by now.

  Clouds hung like a grandmother’s gray drapes across the sky, dampening the moon’s light with a filmy covering. The wee hours of the morning existed in between reality and the next dimension. Those who remained awake between two and five a.m. witnessed events they dared not speak of. A glance at the clock alone could raise hairs. With darting shadows, mysterious noises, voices without owners, the streets were never truly quiet. If you listened hard enough, you might hear a rat scurrying along the alleyway, dragging a tourist’s uneaten kebab into the gutters, or the pitter-patter of the ever-obliging rain.

  William squinted through the fog without luck. Dewdrops clung to the fair hair on his arms. He wiped the moisture away, shivered, and picked up his pace. Drawing his phone from his pocket, he gritted his teeth. He’d forgotten to charge it the night before, and the battery was down to three percent.

  “What else could go wrong today?” he muttered into the void. Perhaps someone whispered an answer or a warning to him from the shrouded darkness, but William, like most, chose to ignore the eerie echoes of those who came before him. With what he considered to be his last shred of dignity, he texted a fellow member of his intern program. Stall for me, mate?

  Again?

  Almost there.

  Before he could press the send button, the toe of his shoe caught a crack in the pavement. He stumbled and tripped, spreading his hands wide to catch himself and save his knees and uniform from the mud. If he showed up covered in dirt, he would be reprimanded for sure.

  His right wrist took the brunt of his weight, and William saw the break coming a moment before it happened. The crack of his bone was one more lost sound in the night. Too late, he remembered his elementary rugby lessons and rolled forward on his shoulder and came to sit on the ground.

  Cold rainwater seeped through his pants as he cradled his wrist to his chest. Mud decorated his uniform from head to toe. Experimentally, he flexed his wrist. It throbbed, already swelling.

  “Don’t need a degree to tell that’s broken.” He looked up at the dark sky. “Not my day, Nan, yeah?”

  He fetched his phone from the shadows. An ugly crack stretched across the screen, forming a map of William’s bad luck. The battery was down to one percent.

  Meet me in A&E, he texted to the same friend.

  What have you done now?

  As he typed back one-handed, his phone flashed to black. Dead.

  “Shite,” he muttered.

  Heavy boots drummed a rhythm behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, hoping for a hand up.

  “Hiya,” William said, squinting up. “Do you think I could borrow your phone? Mine’s just died.”

  If he’d listened to the whispers, he would have fled. As it was, William didn’t see the trouble coming until it was too late. The knife crossed his throat, blood spattered the pavement, and William’s lifeless body fell to the ground with a thunk.

  2

  The police came to my apartment because the library reported me for checking out an inordinate number of books about serial killers. They brought a psychiatrist with them, a man with gnarled hands and darkened age spots. The drooping purses beneath his eyes boasted at least three layers, and he looked closer to death than a tire-flattened racoon. He carried a clipboard in the crook of his elbow, and no matter how skillfully I maneuvered to catch a glimpse of the paperwork upon it, the psychiatrist remained elusive.

  “Jacqueline Frye?” asked the cop closest to me.

  I crossed my arms. “Who wants to know?”

  The cop, in full gear, tapped the name embroidered on the front of his uniform. “I’m Officer Byers from the San Diego Police Department.” He gestured to the psychiatrist. “This is Doctor Witz, and the rest of my team.” Behind Byers, a group of five additional officers waited with irritation and impatience. “May we come in?”

  “You may certainly not,” I said, standing in the way of the door as Officer Byers attempted to step inside. He bumped off of me and backed up, eyebrows raised. “Is there a particular reason for your visit?”

  “We got a disturbing call,” he said. “From the library.”

  “Overdue notices?”

  “You frequent the nearby library, do you not?” Byers asked. “The librarian mentioned you spend a lot of time there.”

  “I also frequent the farmer’s market, the craft store, and the coffee shop next door. Do you have a point?”

  Clearly uncomfortable, Byers shuffled his boots on my welcome mat. “Miss Frye, the librarian said you checked out several books on serial killers, various nonfiction and fictional accounts of first-degree murders, and a research paper on the psychological effects of becoming a murderer.”

  “Which means you’ve deduced I’m a serial killer,” I deadpanned. “Is that the nature of your visit?”

  “Your interest in the subject is worrisome,” Byers said. “People like you—”

  “Please go on,” I interrupted. “I’d love to hear what you think about people like me.”

  Byers flipped his aviators up and sucked on his teeth. Evidently, he didn’t think this would be so hard. “Not trying to put you in a corner, ma’am. We have to follow up on reports like this. It’s not the first time someone’s checked out a book like the ones you got and used them for inspiration.”

  I leaned against the doorframe, keeping my hands where the cops could see them. “It never occurred to you there might be some other reason I’m researching such a sordid topic?”

  When Byers sighed, his thin blonde mustache blew like hay in a breeze. “Miss Frye, believe me. You don’t look like you have the stones to be a killer. Regardless, I’ve got a written order here that says I have to peek around your house to make sure you’re not hiding chopped-up bodies in the oven or fertilizing your back garden with the pieces. Is that okay with you?”

  “Honesty really is the best policy, Officer Byers.” I stepped aside to let them in. “Don’t trip over the”—Byers immediately caught his boot on the upward curling c
orner of my area rug—“rug.”

  Byers righted himself and dusted off his slacks. “Thanks for the heads-up.” He waved his team inside. “You know what to do.”

  I could do nothing except let the officers scour my studio apartment for evidence of intentional morbidity. They attempted to spread out, but since I only owned a good four hundred square feet to myself, all in one room, the officers kept bumping into one another.

  “Coffee?” I offered sarcastically to the cop who’d opened the drawer of my bedside table to find a collection of vibrators. “Something to make you feel more at home? You seem uncomfortable.”

  “Sorry,” the cop muttered, shutting the drawer. He moved on to the bathroom, colliding with the officer, a woman, who was already in there. “You look around the bed.”

  The female officer rolled her eyes and said to me, “Men.” Then she pulled on a pair of gloves and went to work on the bedside drawers.

  I joined Dr. Witz, who waited out the police’s inspection in my tiny kitchen. “See that electric griddle?” I muttered deviously in his ear. “According to this complex’s handbook, I’m not supposed to have it. Report me. I dare you.”

  “Miss Frye, I must advise you not to tease me.” Dr. Witz trembled worse than a chilly chihuahua. “I am here on behalf of your mental state.”

  “I figured as much, Witz.” I hit the back of my teeth with my tongue to give the Z in his name an extra-special buzz. “What’s your story? Too broke to retire?”

  Officer Byers thumped Witz on the back, almost knocking the doctor off his feet. “Don’t listen to her, Chuck. She likes to make trouble.”

  “Have we met?” I asked Byers.

  “Holloway case,” he replied. “Last December. I was there when you got arrested for interfering with the investigation.”

  “That was after your department’s asinine detective refused to listen to me about the similarities between the Holloway case and the Golden State Killer’s victims,” I argued. “Never solved the case, did you?”

  Byers turned a light shade of pink. “That’s not the point. You’ve got a bad habit of stepping over the line in the sand. If you stayed on your side, we wouldn’t be here. Let me guess. You checked out all those books because you’ve got another unsolved case to track.”

  “On the contrary,” I replied. “I’m writing an article for my blog, and I wanted to cite a statistic. I couldn’t remember where I’d read it, so I checked out all the books I read before to look for it.”

  “What else do you include on your blog?” Byers asked disdainfully. “Recipes and decorative tips? Arts and crafts? How to make your own body bag?”

  Dr. Witz put the back of his hand to his forehead. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I don’t feel well.”

  “For your information,” I shot back at Byers, “my blog has twelve thousand followers. It’s about copycat murders, people who emulate the work of serial killers. If you took a look at it, maybe you’d be able to solve a case or two.”

  “Like any of the garbage you write has an ounce of credibility,” Byers scoffed.

  “Does anyone else feel warm?” Dr. Witz asked.

  “I cite all my sources,” I told Byers. “I’ve interviewed reputable psychologists and criminologists who specialize in serial killers. The information I put forth is all true.”

  Byers leaned across Dr. Witz. “Then why haven’t you caught anyone?”

  It was my turn to flush pink. Byers grinned.

  “I’ve seen your website,” he said. “It’s not a blog. It’s an advertisement for your private investigation services. You know it’s illegal to pose as a P.I. if you don’t have a license, right?”

  “My clients are less fortunate than the normal population,” I said. “I work for the common people.”

  “You work for crazy people,” Byers corrected. He jabbed his index finger in my face. “Stay out of our way. We’ve got enough trouble on our hands without nosy civilians like you putting their fingerprints where they don’t belong.”

  “I don’t—”

  Dr. Witz dropped to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head.

  “Ah, shit,” said Byers.

  “Did you forget to water him?” I asked dryly.

  “I don’t know, man. I think he’s diabetic.”

  “He better not be dead.” I knelt next to Witz and felt for his pulse. He was still kicking. I looked at the paperwork on his clipboard. “5150 forms? Are you kidding me?”

  Byers, shuffling through Witz’s pockets for something to help him, shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

  “Anyway, once we got Witz off the floor, they went on their way,” I said into my phone a few hours later as I chopped carrots and onions to make sofrito.

  My best friend, Evelyn Grey, let out a chuckle from the other end of the line. “They didn’t have the guts to fill out those forms, eh?”

  “They can’t put me on an involuntary psychiatric hold if there’s no evidence I’m mentally disturbed,” I told her. “I can’t believe they tried in the first place. I’m not a danger to anyone. I’ll tell you one thing: I am so not friends with Janet anymore.”

  “The librarian?”

  “Mm-hmm. Dead to me.”

  “To be fair,” Evelyn said, “you do read a lot of books about murder.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I suppose that depends on your definition of a job.”

  “Hey,” I said sharply. “We can’t all be secret agents for a mysterious private contractor, can we?”

  Evelyn groaned. Something crashed, causing a percussive sound of several tin cans tipping over. I set my knife on the cutting board, listening closely as the noise settled.

  “Everything okay over there?”

  “The beans took a dive.” Evelyn made another uncharacteristic moan of discomfort. “First of all, I’m a bodyguard, not a secret agent. Secondly, that’s kind of why I’m calling. I got into a spot of trouble at work.”

  I checked the time. It was six o’clock at night in California, which meant it was eleven p.m. in London, where Evelyn lived. Now that I thought about it, she never called this late.

  “You don’t get into trouble,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Someone made an attempt on my charge.”

  Throughout the course of her career, Evelyn had kept all sorts of people safe—politicians, members of witness protection programs, reporters with juicy stories—but most often, she was hired to babysit celebrities when they came through town. Normally, all she had to do was keep rabid fans from crying over their favorite actor or singer, but she’d never had to well and truly fight someone off before.

  “What does that mean exactly?” I asked. Worry gnawed at me. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live,” she said, not convincingly enough. “But I’ve wrecked my shoulder. Dislocated it, big time. They had to do surgery and everything.”

  “Who did it?” I demanded. “I’ll rip them to pieces.”

  Evelyn’s laugh always drew pictures of baby-winged cupids as they shot magical arrows at unknowing passersby while someone plucked dulcet tones on a harp. “Easy there, little one. I don’t think you could take him.”

  Since our teenaged years at boarding school, Evelyn and I had always been polar opposites in looks. I was short and skinny, able to squeeze into the tiniest places, which came in handy when ditching school involved a quick trip into a secret passageway to unlock a hidden door. I was also brown from head to toe—hair, eyes, and skin—a tribute to my mom’s Indian roots. If I wore dark colors, it was easy to fade into the shadows. I was built for sneaking and creeping.

  Evelyn, on the contrary, resembled an Amazonian princess. The only delicate thing about her was her accent, a lilting combination of the Queen’s English and sporadic Americanized inflections. Like me, her parents were from two different continents, another reason we bonded so young. Unlike me, Evelyn was almost six feet tall, had thigh muscles that could crush a human head, and was paler than white rice. />
  “Hey, I’m small, but I’m mighty,” I said.

  “I know,” she replied, chuckling. “But this guy was twice my size, and I didn’t see him coming until after he ripped my arm out of its socket.”

  “Did he hurt your charge?”

  “Nope,” Evelyn answered. “I got him in the temple with my good hand. He’s sitting pretty with MI5 while they try to figure out who he is.”

  “Who were you protecting?”

  “I’m afraid it’s—”

  “Confidential,” I finished for her. “Of course. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  I picked up my knife and finished chopping the carrots, which I slid off the cutting board and into a huge sauce pot. On the other line, Evelyn tonelessly hummed a tune. She was stalling.

  “What is it?” I asked. “You only sing when you need something.”

  “It’s a huge favor.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “It pains my pride to admit this, but I’m having trouble getting around,” she said. I could practically hear her teeth clenching through the phone. “I can drive and pee and all that, but I haven’t showered in days because it’s too hard. I can’t cook—” As if to prove the point, another resounding crash echoed over the line. “Oh, bollocks! There goes the second can of beans. Jack, I’ve been eating takeaway curry for three nights straight. Do you know how constipated I am?”

  I turned off the stove to give my full attention to Evelyn. “What can I do?”

  “Will you come here? Look after me for a while?”

  “To London?”

  “I know it’s a big ask,” she continued hurriedly. “But I’ll pay for your plane ticket and whatever else you need while you’re here. I don’t want to hire some stranger to take care of me. I’d rather it be someone I know.”