Pretty Corpse

by Linda Berry

  “Time to go,” he said, his voice husky. “You keep kissing me like that, I won’t be able to drive.”

  She grinned. “Just as well. My lips are getting numb.”

  Grinning back, Jack pulled on his socks and shoes. They grabbed their backpacks and headed out. Ragged storm clouds blotted the last of the light, the air took on a wintry sting and the first gentle drops hit the back of her neck. The rain fell softly, almost soundlessly as they reentered the forest. The thick canopy protected them from the drizzle, but a quarter mile from the trailhead, the clouds disgorged their burden, thunderously, pelting them with hard beads of rain. The trees dripped, branches swayed, and they were both leaning forward, fighting the wind and lashing rain. They took shelter in the SUV, slogging off wet jackets, running fingers through wet hair. She laughed. “That was refreshing.”

  “Near death experiences usually are. Thought we were going to drown standing up.” He got the heater going and they sat warming up, watching water stream off the windows. “I don’t know about you, but I could eat a bear. There’s a lodge right up the highway. Good food, cold beer, big roaring fire. We can change into dry clothes.”

  “What’s not to like.”

  They drove through the deluge to a small lodge next to a ranger station. Through the curtain of rain, she saw a few cabins scattered through the trees. Jack parked up front and they ran in, entering a tiny wood-paneled lobby that opened to a rustic dining room. Only one of the ten tables scattered across the bare wood floor was occupied—an older couple talking softly. She and Jack headed for the restrooms and met a few minutes later, each wearing dry jeans. A smiling, gray-haired waitress handed them menus, and said, “Sit wherever you like.”

  They took seats at a table in front of the fireplace and studied the menus. The fire hissed and crackled and sent out a warm wave of heat. Muffled rain drummed the roof and firelight played across Jack’s rugged features. They ordered Coronas and cheeseburgers with sides of fries.

  “Glad to see you’re not afraid of food,” he said.

  “Oh I’m afraid, all right. But I lost seven pounds the last few weeks.” Stress. Not a diet she wanted to repeat. “I deserve to put a few back on.”

  “That you do.”

  The waitress put their beers on the table. The Corona was icy cold. “Boy, that hits the spot,” he said.

  “Does it ever.”

  They spoke casually while they ate. Each had another beer. Lauren marveled at Jack’s ability to shed his professional life like a heavy coat, and she adored this “other” Jack, who brimmed with boyish enthusiasm over life’s simple pleasures.

  Feeling mildly sedated from food and drink, they drove back to the inn, the rain now a drizzle. The day was dark, their room lost in shadow. Feeling sleepy, Lauren announced, “I’m gonna catch a little shut-eye.”

  “Sweet dreams.” Jack settled in front of the window with a book. Lauren lay on the bed under a blanket and passed out. When she awoke, he was still reading, light spilling over his book from a small lamp.

  “Reading something interesting?” she asked.

  “Tour book of the area.” He held it up. “Just planning what to do tomorrow.”

  “While you do the hard work, I’m gonna get cleaned up.” She retreated to the bathroom, took a hot shower, came out in a terrycloth robe, skin scrubbed clean, hair wet around her neck. She stood at the window, staring out at the gathering dusk, pretending not to notice him watching, feeling his eyes on her like a touch. “Have a plan for tonight?” she asked softly.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” He stood next to her and gently opened her robe. His warm hands traced the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips. They kissed. Jack said quietly, “Lie down.”

  She lay back on the bed, watching him shed his clothes, his limbs muscled, skin burnished brown from the sun. He joined her and the mattress became a world unto itself. They made love to the soft pattering of rain. The room darkened to black and they lay touching each other, kissing, moving rhythmically to soft moans and grunts of pleasure. It was delicious to be loved by a man who wasn’t in a hurry, who knew how to please her, who let her take the lead when she wanted, and encouraged her to be uninhibited.

  “I’ve done things with you I’ve never done before,” she confessed when they lay back, exhausted.

  “Ditto,” he laughed.

  “Really? You seem so experienced.”

  “Just going with the flow.”

  His hand cupped her breast and she curled into him. It felt exquisite to lie together, satisfied, talking in soft tones, hearing his voice rumble in his chest.

  “I’m glad you decided to come on this trip,” he said. “I know I kind of rushed you into this relationship.”

  “I admit, I was surprised when you first asked me out. It came out of nowhere.” She thought back over the brief evolution of their romance.

  “I was attracted to you the first time I laid eyes on you, three years ago.”

  “No way.”

  “I thought you were beautiful, and a really good cop. I met your husband a few times, too, when he came to station parties. Ken was a great guy. I envied what you two had. A really special marriage.”

  “Fourteen wonderful years.”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “My marriage to Jackie was on the rocks back then,” he continued. “We separated right around the time Ken died. I saw you were broken-hearted. My heart went out to you. I was glad you had Sofie and Courtney.”

  “Courtney is my light. Sofie’s been wonderful. I don’t know what I’d do without her.” She ran her hand along Jack’s shoulder as she spoke. “What happened between you and Jackie?”

  He reflected for a long moment. “We met in college. Married too quickly. We didn’t have much in common. The years pushed us apart, not closer. Jackie was tied to her career. Didn’t want kids. When she got pregnant, she wanted an abortion.” He swallowed. “We had lots of arguments about it. Finally, she just gave in, and we had Jason. My son has been the greatest joy of my life.” By the change in his tone, she knew Jack was smiling. “My greatest education, too. Raising a child has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice and loving unconditionally.”

  She was moved by the candor of his words, and that he loved being a dad. “Did Jackie come around?”

  “Not really.” He cleared his throat. “I thought a baby would make us closer, but it did the opposite. I made a mistake manipulating her like that. She loved Jason, of course, but she resented me for forcing her into motherhood. She felt it held back her career. Prevented promotions.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  “Probably. She took time off when Jason was sick, for his sports events, PTA meetings. I did, too. But women with kids face a lot of discrimination in the workplace.”

  “Sounds tough.”

  “The last few years we were just going through the motions. No affection. I realized I wasn’t doing my son any favors. In the end, I left.” He sighed. “It was a big adjustment. Living alone without Jason. After a while, I tried dating, but it takes a special kind of woman to understand what cops deal with every day.”

  “Or special man.”

  “Amen.” His lips grazed her head. “I wanted to ask you out, but you weren’t ready. Even when I finally did, you weren’t ready.” He squeezed her closer. “Seems you’ve come around.”

  She smiled in the dark. “I’m glad you didn’t give up.”

  “I don’t give up easily. Not my nature.”

  “I love your nature.”

  “I love you, too.”

  ***

  The weekend melted away and Lauren felt a touch of melancholy. It was her last evening with Jack. He proposed they do some nature photography in a kayak off the coast. Lauren begged off, wanting some quiet time to bury her nose in a novel. More importantly, she needed time to think, to process. She’d pushed everything connected to police work out of her mind. Tomorrow it was back to San Francisco, and Jack had give
n her fair warning she’d be offered a promotion. Her life was about to change, radically. As a detective, she’d be moving out of the Mission Station and Jack’s supervision.

  So much had happened in the week since Tony Romero’s death. The ramshackle house was searched and processed, and the rifle that killed Steve was found in a crawl space. Steve’s case had come to a close and would be filed away, but her former partner would live vividly in her memories forever. Sarah had moved back in with Pamela, and Lauren planned on being a doting “Auntie Lauren” to Jesse and Rosie.

  The Strangler case, too, would soon be closed. Confined to a hospital room under constant surveillance, separated from her cozy lifestyle and her cats, Agnes’s health rapidly deteriorated. On her deathbed four nights earlier, in exchange for special privileges for Gordon, she confessed to the sexual assaults and strangulations, and admitted to persuading her son to abduct the girls. Agnes also confessed to formulating the beeswax and oil mixtures and inscribing the messages inside the gold bands. She truly was the mastermind. If not for his mother’s manipulations, Gordon might have lived in obscurity, quietly tending to his flower business.

  As she thought of the Keeners, Lauren felt the familiar burn of anxiety. She’d had her first appointment with a counselor last week, which helped, but she had a long way to go before the brutal memories of her daughter in the Keeners’ shed would loosen their grip. She often woke drenched in sweat with tears on her face. The last two nights, she reached over and touched Jack, felt a sense of safety, and the power of the dreams subsided.

  Lauren’s thoughts darted back to the moment in the shed when Gordon violently yanked her body against his, the noose choking off her oxygen, the smell of his sweat filling her senses. The memory brought on a touch of nausea. Forcing the sickening image from her mind, she turned her attention back to her novel. After mindlessly reading the same paragraph several times, the words finally started taking shape in her imagination and the story grabbed her. Time passed slowly, dusk settled into the room, her lids grew heavy.

  She woke to find Jack gently freeing the book from her hands. He sat beside her and turned on the lamp. Darkness receded to the corners of the room. His face was flushed from the wind, eyes neon blue, fingers chilled from the cold. He smelled like the sea.

  “You look pretty when you sleep.”

  She pulled herself into a sitting position against the pillows. “How was the ocean?”

  “Cold, but mesmerizing. I got close to a pod of whales. Took photos of a few breaching.”

  “That’s exciting, and kind of scary. You must’ve been really far out.”

  “A mile or so.” His smile was relaxed, warm. “I missed you.”

  “Me, too.” His lips were slightly chapped, and she remembered how they felt when they kissed in bed that morning, and how pleasurable it felt lying beneath him as he made love to her.

  “I have an idea.” His thumb lightly brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.

  “What’s that?”

  “Let’s have dinner in the room tonight. Just hole up together.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He bent and kissed her, sweet and slow.

  She felt a warm current of pleasure spreading to her belly and thighs. Unraveling the softer side of Jack Monetti was going to be a beautiful adventure.

  ALSO BY LINDA BERRY

  The Killing Woods

  CHAPTER ONE

  BAILEY’S LOW, INSISTENT growls woke Ann from a dreamless sleep. She found herself sprawled on the overstuffed easy chair in the living room, feet propped on the ottoman, drool trickling down her chin. Half opening one eye, she peered at the antique clock on the mantle: 11:00 p.m.

  She heard Bailey sniffing at the front door, and then the clicks of his claws traveled to the open window in the living room. She opened her other eye. The sable hound stood sifting the breeze through his muzzle with a sense of urgency. Ann knew what was coming next. Sure enough, Bailey trotted back to the front door and whimpered, gazing expectantly over one shoulder. Damn those big brown eyes.

  Normally Ann would be in bed by now, but she passed out after dinner, exhausted from carting her boxes of organic products to town at sunrise and standing for hours in her stall at the farmers market. By the time she loaded her truck and headed home, the pain in her calves had spread up her legs to her back and shoulders, and she felt every one of her forty-five years.

  Bailey whined without let up. He knew how to play her. Ann looked longingly toward her bedroom before returning to the hound’s pleading eyes. This was more urgent than a potty break.

  No doubt, he had caught the scent of a deer or rabbit and wanted desperately to assail it with ferocious barking to assert his dominance over her small farm. Then he’d settle in for the night.

  Since an unsolved murder rocked her town three years ago, Ann resisted going out late after dark. Still, she felt a pang of guilt. She and Bailey had missed their usual after dinner walk. If the spirited hound didn’t exhaust his combustible energy, he’d be circling her bed at dawn, demanding that she rise.

  “Okay, Bailey, you win.” Ann heard the weariness in her voice as she heaved herself from the chair. Fatigue had settled into every part of her body and her limbs felt as heavy as flour sacks. “Only a half-mile up the highway and back.”

  Bailey sat at attention, tail vigorously thumping the floor.

  Still dressed in jeans, a turtleneck sweater, and sturdy hiking shoes, Ann grabbed her Gore-Tex jacket from the coat rack, wrestled her arms through the sleeves, pulled Bailey’s leash from a pocket, and snapped it onto his collar. The boards creaked softly as they stepped onto the covered front porch into the damp autumn chill. The moist air held the promise of the season’s first frost. Her flashlight beam found the stone walkway, then the gravel driveway leading to the highway. A good rain had barreled through while she slept, and a strong wind unleashed the pungent fragrance of lavender and rosemary from her garden. Silvered in the moonlight, furrowed fields of tomatoes, herbs, and flowers sloped down to the shoreline of Lake Kalapuya, where her Tri-hull motorboat dipped and bobbed by the dock. A half-mile across the lurching waves, the lights of Garnerville shimmered through a tattered mist on the opposite shore.

  Following the hound’s tug on the leash, Ann picked up her pace, breathing deeply, her mind sharpening, muscles loosening. Steam rose off the asphalt. Scattered puddles reflected moonlight like pieces of glass. The thick forest of Douglas fir, red cedar, and big leaf maple engulfed both sides of the highway, surrendering to the occasional farm or ranch. Treetops swayed, branches dipped and waved, whispered and creaked. The night was alive with the sounds of frogs croaking and water dripping. The smell of apples perfumed the air as she trekked past her nearest neighbor’s orchards. Miko’s two-story clapboard farmhouse floated on a shallow sea of mist, windows black, yellow porch light fingering the darkness.

  Ann didn’t mingle with her neighbors, few as they were, and she took special pains to avoid Miko, whose wife had been the victim of the brutal murder in the woods adjacent to his property. The killer was never found, but an air of suspicion hovered over Miko ever since. Ann detested gossip and ignored it. She had her own reasons for avoiding Miko—and all other men, for that matter.

  When they reached the narrow dirt road where they habitually turned to hike into the woods, Bailey froze, nose twitching, locked on a scent. He tugged hard at the leash, wanting her to follow.

  “No,” she said firmly, peering into the black mouth of the forest—a light-spangled paradise by day—black, damp, and ominous by night. “Let’s go home.”

  Bailey trembled in his stance, growled with unusual intensity, and tugged harder. The hound had latched onto a rivulet of odor he wanted desperately to explore.

  Ann jerked the leash. “Bailey, home!”

  Normally obedient, Bailey ignored her. Using his seventy pounds of muscle as leverage, he yanked two, three times until the leash ripped from her fingers. Off he bounded, swallowed instantly b
y the darkness crouching beyond her feeble cone of light.

  “Bailey! Come!”

  No sound, just the incessant drip of water. Ann’s beam probed the woods, jerking to the left, then the right. “Bailey!” She heard a steady, muffled, distant bark.

  He’s found what he’s looking for. Bailey’s barking abruptly ceased. Good. He’s on his way back. She waited. No movement. No appearance of Bailey’s big sable head emerging through the pitch.

  Ann trembled as fear took possession of her senses. She bolted recklessly into the woods, her light beam bouncing along a trail that looked utterly foreign in the dark. Her feet crushed wet leaves and sloshed through puddles. Her left arm protected her face from the errant branch crossing her path. A second too late she saw the gnarled tree-root which seemed to jump out and snag her foot. She fell headlong, left hand breaking the fall, flashlight skidding beneath a carpet of leaves and pine needles. Blackness enveloped her. Shakily, she pulled herself to her feet, left wrist throbbing, trying to delineate shapes in the darkness, the moist scent of decay suffocating.

  The forest was deathly still, seeming to hold its breath.

  Soft rustling.

  Silence.

  Rustling again.

  Something moved quietly and steadily through the underbrush. Adrenaline shot up her arms like electric shocks. Ann swept her hands beneath mounds of wet leaves, grasping roots and cones until her fingers closed around the shaft of her flashlight. She thumbed the switch and cut a slow swath from left to right, her light splintering between trees. Her beam froze on a hooded figure moving backward through the brush dragging a woman, her bare feet bumping through the tangled debris.

  The man kept his face completely motionless, eyes fixed on hers in a chilling stare. The world became soaked in a hideous and wondrous slowness. He lowered the woman to the ground and hung his long arms at his side. He was quiet; so was Ann. He radiated stillness. The stillness of a tree. It was hypnotic.

  Ann felt paralyzed. Tongue dry. Thoughts sluggish. Then threads of white-hot terror ripped through her chest and propelled her like a fired missile into motion. Switching off the beam, she turned and sprinted like a frightened doe back along the trail.