CHAPTER SIX

Mackenzie finally arrived home at 10:45, exhausted. The day had been long and draining but she knew that she would not be able to sleep for quite a while. Her mind was too focused on the lead that Kevin Lizbrook had supplied. She’d called the information in to Nelson and he assured her that he’d have someone call the strip club and whatever law firm Hailey Lizbrook had been working with to get her restraining order.

With her mind firing off in hundreds of directions, Mackenzie put on some music, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and ran herself a bath. She was typically not fond of baths, but tonight every muscle in her body was wound entirely too tight. As the tub filled with water, she walked through the house and tidied up from where Zack had apparently waited until the last minute to go to work again.

She and Zack had moved in together a little over a year ago, trying to take every possible step they could in their relationship that might prevent marriage for as long as possible. Mackenzie felt that she was ready to get married, but Zack seemed terrified of it. They’d been together for three years now and while the first two of those years had been great, the latter part of their relationship had been based on monotony and Zack’s fear of being alone and getting married. If he could stay somewhere in between those, with Mackenzie as his buffer, he’d be happy.

Yet as she picked up two dirty plates from the coffee table and stepped over an Xbox disc on the floor, Mackenzie wondered if maybe she was done being a buffer. More than that, she wasn’t even sure she’d marry Zack if he asked her tomorrow. She knew him too well; she had seen a picture of what being married to him would be like and, quite frankly, it wasn’t too promising.

She was stuck in a dead-end relationship, with a partner who didn’t appreciate her. In the same way, she realized, she was stuck in a job with colleagues who didn’t appreciate her. Her entire life felt stuck. She knew changes needed to be made, but they felt too daunting to her. And given her level of exhaustion, she just didn’t have the energy.

Mackenzie retired to the bathroom and cut off the water. Waves of steam rolled from the top of the water, as though inviting her in. She undressed, looking at herself in the mirror and becoming even more aware that she had wasted eight years of her life with a man who had no real desire to commit his life to her. She felt that she was attractive in a simple sort of way. Her face was pretty (maybe a bit more so when she wore her hair in a ponytail) and she had a solid figure, if a bit thin and muscular. Her stomach was flat and hard – so much so that Zack sometimes joked that her abs were a bit intimidating.

She slipped into the tub, the beer resting on the small towel table beside her. She let out a deep exhale and let the hot water do its work. She closed her eyes and relaxed as best as she could, but the image of Kevin Lizbrook’s eyes returned to her on a constant loop. The amount of sadness in them had been almost unbearable, speaking of a pain that Mackenzie herself had once known but had managed to push far back into her heart.

She closed her eyes and dozed, the image haunting her the entire time. She felt a palpable presence, as if Hailey Lizbrook were in the room with her now, urging her to solve her murder.

*

Zack came home an hour later, fresh off a twelve-hour shift at a local textile plant. Every time Mackenzie smelled the scents of dirt, sweat, and grease on him, it reminded her of how little ambition Zack had. Mackenzie had no issue with the job in and of itself; it was a respectable job made for men that were built for hard work and dedication. But Zack had a bachelor’s degree that he had intended to use to land a spot in a master’s program to become a teacher. That plan had ended five years ago and he had been stuck in the role of shift manager at the textile plant ever since.

Mackenzie was on her second beer by the time he came in, sitting in bed and reading a book. She figured she’d try to fall asleep around three or so, getting a solid five hours before heading in to work at nine the next morning. She’d never cared much for sleep and had discovered that on nights she got more than six hours, she found herself lethargic and out of sorts the next day.

Zack came into the room in his dingy work clothes. He kicked his shoes off by the side of the bed as he looked her over. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of high-riding bicycle shorts.

“Hey, babe,” he said, his eyes taking her all in. “So, this is nice to come home to.”

“How was your day?” she asked, barely looking up from her book.

“It was okay,” he said. “Then I came home and saw you like this and it got a lot better.” With that, he crawled onto the bed and directly toward her. His hand went to the side of her face as he angled in for a kiss.

She dropped her book and pulled away at once. “Zack, have you lost your mind?” she asked.

“What?” he said, clearly confused.

“You’re absolutely filthy. And not only have I taken a bath, but you’re getting dirt and grease and God only knows what else on the sheets.”

“Ah, God,” Zack said, annoyed. He rolled off of the bed, purposefully covering as much of the sheets as he could. “Why are you such a tight-ass?”

“I’m not a tight-ass,” she said. “I just prefer to not live in a pig sty. By the way, thanks for cleaning up after yourself before you left for work.”

“Oh, it’s so nice to be home,” Zack sneered, walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.

Mackenzie sighed and chugged down the rest of her beer. She then looked across the room where Zack’s dirty work boots were still on the floor – where they would stay until he put them on tomorrow. She also knew that when she got up in the morning and went into the bathroom to get ready, she’d find his dirty clothes in a pile in the floor.

To hell with it, she thought, returning to her book. She read only a few pages while she listened to the water from Zack’s shower in the bathroom. She then set the book aside and walked back into the living room. She picked up her briefcase, carried it into the bedroom, and pulled out the most up-to-date files on the Lizbrook murder she had retrieved from the station before coming home. As much as she wanted to rest, even for a few hours, it would not let her.

She looked through the files, digging for any detail that they might have overlooked. When she was certain that everything had been covered, she once again saw Kevin’s tear-filled eyes and it pushed her to look again.

Mackenzie was so enamored with the files that she didn’t notice Zack coming into the room. He smelled much better now and, with only a towel around his waist, looked much better, too.

“Sorry about the sheets,” Zack said almost absently as he dropped the towel and slid into a pair of boxers. “I’m…I don’t know…I just can’t remember the last time you actually paid any attention to me.”

“You mean sex?” she asked. Surprisingly, she found that she was actually up for sex. It might be just what she needed to finally unwind and get to sleep.

“Not just sex,” Zack said. “I mean any kind of attention. I get home and you’re either already asleep or looking through casework.”

“Well, that’s after I’ve picked up your crap from the day,” she said. “You live like a boy that’s waiting for mommy to clean up after him. So yeah, sometimes I jump back into work to forget about how frustrating you can be.”

“So it’s back to this again?” he asked.

“Back to what?”

“Back to you using work as a way to ignore me.”

“I don’t use it as a way to ignore you, Zack. Right now I’m more concerned with finding out who brutally killed a mother of two boys than making sure you get the attention you need.”

“That right there,” Zack said, “is why I’m in no hurry to get married. You’re already married to your work.”

There were about a thousand remarks she could have spat back at him, but Mackenzie knew there was no point. She knew that he was, in a way, right. Most every night, she found the caseloads she brought home more interesting than Zack. She still loved him, without a doubt, but there was nothing new to him – nothing challenging.

“Good night,” he said bitterly as he crawled into bed.

She looked at his bare back and wondered if it was, in some way, her responsibility to give him attention. Would that make her a good girlfriend? Would that make her a better investment for a man that was terrified of marriage?

With the idea of sex now a forgotten impulse, Mackenzie simply shrugged and looked back to the case files.

If her personal life had to melt into the background, then so be it. This life, the life inside the case, felt more real to her anyway.

*

Mackenzie walked into her parents’ bedroom, and before she made it through the doorframe, she smelled something that made her seven-year-old stomach buckle. It was a tangy sort of smell, reminding her of the inside of her piggy bank – a smell like the copper of pennies.

She stepped into the room and saw the foot of the bed, a bed that her mother had not slept in for a year or so – a bed that looked far too big for just her father.

She saw him there, legs dangling over the side of the bed, arms splayed out as if he were trying to fly. There was blood everywhere: on the bed, on the wall, even some on the ceiling. His head was turned to the right, as if he were looking away from her.

She knew he was dead right away.

She stepped toward him, her bare feet padding down in a splatter of blood, not wanting to get closer but needing to.

“Daddy,” she whispered, already crying.

She reached out, terrified, but drawn in like a magnet.

Suddenly, he turned and stared at her, still dead.

Mackenzie screamed.

Mackenzie opened her eyes and looked around the room in a glare of confusion. The case files were in her lap, spread out. Zack was sleeping beside her, his back still to her. She took a deep breath, wiping the sweat from her brow. It was just a dream.

And then she heard the creak.

Mackenzie froze. She looked toward the bedroom door and slowly got out of bed. She’d heard the weak floorboard in the living room creaking, a sound that she had only ever heard when someone was walking in the living room. Sure, she had been asleep and in the midst of a nightmare, but she had heard it.

Hadn’t she?

She got out of bed and grabbed her service pistol from the top of her dresser where it sat by her badge and small purse. She quietly angled herself around the doorframe and walked out into the hallway. The ambient glow of streetlights filtered in through the living room blinds, revealing an empty room.

She stepped into the room, the gun held in an offensive position. Every gut instinct told her that there was no one there, but she still felt shaken. She knew she’d heard the floorboards creaking. She walked to that area of the living room, just in front of the coffee table, and heard it creak.

Out of nowhere, the image of Hailey Lizbrook crossed her mind. She saw the lashes on the woman’s back and the prints in the dirt. She shuddered. She looked dumbly down to the gun in her hands and tried to remember the last time a case had ever gotten to her this badly. What the hell had she been thinking? That the killer had been here in her living room, sneaking up on her?

Irritated, Mackenzie headed back to the bedroom. She quietly placed the gun back on top of the dresser and went to her side of the bed.

Still feeling slightly spooked and with the remnants of her dream still floating in her head, Mackenzie lay back down. She closed her eyes and tried to find sleep again.

But she knew it would be a hard time coming. She was plagued, she knew, by the living and the dead.