Read He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not Online
Authors: Lena Diaz
Tags: #General, #Suspense, #Fiction, #Romance
He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not
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ILLS
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ILLS
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IAZ
To Nalini Akolekar—my mentor, my cheerleader, my rock.
To Esi Sogah—thank you for believing in my story.
To Sheila Athens and Valerie Bowman for your friendship. You are pure gold.
To Anita, Eileen, E J, Gail, Lisa, Maria, Pam, and Tracy—thank you for everything.
Thank you, Eileen Carr, Margaret Carroll, Alyssa Day, FCRW, and the Unsinkables.
Thank you, Officer Glenn Morningstar, for patiently answering my many questions.
Thank you, my wonderful son and daughter, for loving me no matter what.
Above all, thank you, my dear husband. I don’t deserve you, but I’m keeping you.
Contents
T
he sweet music of her screams echoed in his mind as he inhaled the lavender-scented shampoo he’d selected for her. He sat cross-legged on the carpet of pine needles, stroking her hair, his fingers sliding easily through the silky brown mass he had washed and brushed.
Underlying that scent, the metallic aroma of blood teased his senses. He traced his fingers across her naked belly to the sweet center of her. The temptation to linger was strong, but the ritual wasn’t complete.
He picked up the blood-red rose and tucked its velvety petals between Kate’s pale, generous breasts. Molding her cool fingers around the stem, he pressed her palms together, embedding the single remaining thorn in her flesh. As he stood, her sightless pale blue eyes stared at him accusingly, just like they had in Summerville the first time he gave her a rose.
Let her stare. She couldn’t hurt him anymore, not today.
A rhythmic pounding noise echoed through the trees, an early morning jogger trying to beat the impending heat and humidity of another scorching summer day. The sun’s first rays were starting to peek through the pine trees, glinting off the rows of swings and slides.
Thump. Thump. Closer. Closer. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead as he listened to the jogger approach. Was Kate coming for him again, already? No matter how many times he punished her, she always came back. He’d walk around a corner and there she was, condemning him with a haughty look, taunting him with her sinfully alluring long hair.
He risked a quick glance down and let out a shaky, relieved breath. She was still lying on the ground. She hadn’t come back to torture him.
Not yet.
After one last, longing glance at her body, he slid between some palmettos and followed his makeshift path through the woods. He emerged at the parking lot of Shadow Falls’ only mall, next to a row of dumpsters. Exchanging his soiled clothes for the clean ones he’d hidden in a plastic bag, he quickly dressed. Then he stepped around the dumpsters, pitched the bag into his trunk, and got into the patrol car.
L
oosening his tie in deference to the already sweltering eighty-degree heat, Police Chief Logan Richards did his best to blend into the shadows beneath the moss-covered live oak tree. Several feet away, Officer Karen Bingham interviewed the young female jogger who’d discovered the body. Logan had offered to help, but Karen had informed him the young woman didn’t need an NFL linebacker hovering over her when she was already terrified.
He’d never been a professional football player, but he conceded the point. His size intimidated people. That had served him well when he’d worked as a beat cop here in Shadow Falls, and later as a detective in the roughest precincts of New York City. But intimidating this young witness was the last thing he wanted to do.
She sat on a wooden bench a few feet away, sheltered from the press’s cameras by a stand of pine trees. Her freckled face was pale and her shoulders hunched as she wrapped her thin arms around her abdomen, shaking as if she were in the middle of a snowstorm instead of the Florida Panhandle in July.
Someone called Logan’s name. He looked toward the obscenely cheery yellow tape that cordoned off a section of the park, contrasting starkly with the macabre scene within its borders. Medical Examiner Cassie Markham was waving at him, ready to share her initial findings.
Logan crossed to the tape, ducking beneath it, careful not to step on any of the bright orange tags his detectives were using to mark off their search grid.
Cassie was kneeling next to the body, sliding a brown paper bag onto the victim’s hand. One of two Walton County medical examiners who rotated on-call duties for Shadow Falls and the neighboring communities, Cassie rarely had the need to visit this small rural town in her official capacity. Logan had only met her once before, about six months ago when she’d handled a domestic violence case, right after he’d moved back to take the job as chief of police.
“Hell of a way to spend a Sunday morning,” he said when she looked up at him.
“You got that right.” She tossed her head to flip her short blonde bangs out of her eyes. “Is she your missing college girl?”
He gave a short, tight nod. “Carolyn O’Donnell.”
“How long was she missing?” Cassie picked up another brown bag and gently lifted the victim’s other hand.
“A little over three days. She disappeared late Wednesday night, from this same park.”
“I’m guessing a young woman her age wasn’t playing on the swings. Neighborhood hangout?”
“So I hear.” An uneasy feeling gnawed at the pit of his stomach as he noted the way the body seemed posed, her legs spread for maximum shock value. Ligature marks darkened her wrists and ankles. Stab wounds riddled her abdomen and extremities. Many of her bruises were deep purple or black, indicating they’d begun to heal before she was killed. Dreading the answer, he asked, “How long has she been dead?”
Cassie finished securing the paper bag before answering. “She’s not in full rigor yet. Liver temp indicates about six hours, but it’s hard to be specific in this heat. Might be longer.”
Logan scrubbed his hand across his brow to ease the dull ache that was starting to bloom. While he and his men had been searching door-to-door, the killer was sadistically torturing this young woman. Where the hell had he stashed her? And where was he now? Was he already searching for a new victim? Logan blew out a frustrated breath. “Tell me what you have so far.”
“Not much beyond the obvious.” She peeled off her gloves and stowed them in her kit, then stood up beside him, her head barely reaching his shoulder. “The amount of blood doesn’t fit the injuries. She was killed somewhere else and washed down before he dumped her.”
Logan nodded, having reached the same conclusion. “Trace?”
“A few cotton fibers, nothing remarkable or distinctive. No hairs. No bite marks. He sliced off her fingertips. I figure she scratched him and he wanted to make sure we couldn’t get his DNA from under her nails.”
The perp was aware of forensic techniques. Then again, who
wasn’t
these days, with all the crime scene investigation shows on TV? Logan didn’t ask if the victim had been raped. The answer was painfully obvious. “Semen?”
“I’ll take swabs but I doubt we’ll find anything. As careful as he was not to leave any other evidence, he probably wore a condom. There’s bruising on her neck, petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes.”
“He strangled her.”
“Yes, but I suspect that was the killer’s version of ‘love play’. I can’t be sure until I perform the autopsy, but I’m leaning toward exsanguination as cause of death. She has deep puncture wounds in her abdomen. She would have bled out in minutes.”
“What about her face?” A deep, ragged wound splayed her open from temple to jaw. Logan hoped to God she was already dead when the killer cut her.
“That’s unusual, isn’t it?” Cassie said. “It would have bled all over the place. Not enough to kill her, but it would have hurt like hell.”
Logan’s hands curled into tight fists as he struggled to tamp down his anger. Ten years ago he’d allowed his emotions to control him, and he’d made a tragic, rookie mistake that allowed a killer to go free. How many other women had suffered and died at the hands of that killer because of Logan’s screwup? That question haunted him every day. The whole mess was the reason he’d fled Shadow Falls so long ago and had gone to New York City.